Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1839, by T. H. GALLAUDET, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Connecticut. PREFACE. BY T. H. GALLAUDET. The following work I received, some time since, from an esteemed friend in England. The official station and high character of the author, fed me to anticipate much satisfaction and improvement from its perusal. I was not disappointed. Sound, practical, and enlarged views of education, attracted my attention on every page; while a spirit of unaffected piety and benevolence, breathing through the whole, showed that the writer's heart, as well as head, was well prepared for his task. His is a mind to appreciate the worth of good schools and good teachers, and of the moral influence which they can be made to exercise upon the whole mass of society. He holds no such fallacious sentiment that mere intellectual training will be sufficient to produce private or public virtue. Both teacher and pupils, in his opinion, should feel their accountability to God in their daily intercourse with each other, and be under the dominion of that love which the Gospel inspires, in order that education may be conducted on the best principles, and produce the happiest results. Should the Yet he is neither a bigot, nor a sectarian. reader, (taking it for granted that he is a believer in divine revelation,) happen to differ from the author on some two or three points of religious opinion, he will find nothing to lead him to do this with any other feelings than those of kindness and respect for one who holds what he considers the truth, in love, and expresses it with "the meekness of wisdom." The work is emphatically a MANual for teachers. No one who is a teacher, whether of a day or Sunday school, can fail to be benefitted by its perusal. There are other works, indeed, of a similar kind before the public, and deserving of the highest commendation. But this will be found to have its peculiar excellencies, the results of long experience, careful observation, and profound thought, expressed in a clear, forcible, engaging, and often eloquent manner. He who reads it once, if employed in the business of instruction, will be sure to read it again; and could its principles and spirit but find their way into our schools, and academies, and even higher institutions of learning, good would be done of which we can hardly estimate the amount. While making these remarks, it will be allowed me to say that in a very few things, if writing on the same topics, I might express sentiments differing somewhat from those of the author. My object, however, is not to give my own views, but his. This I have endeavored faithfully to do; though I have omitted some passages, and slightly modified others in the English edition, in order to divest it of what was peculiarly adapted to the state of things in that country, and not to the condition of our own. The title, too, has been somewhat varied, being in the original; "Popular Education, or, The Normal School Manual, &c," and the letter on the Monitorial system, which is the fourth in the series, I have transferred to the close of the volume as an Appendix. To do this, I thought, would give more unity to the whole with reference to the great mass of the schools among us, (they not being generally conducted on that plan;) while I was desirous to have its peculiar features, and as some think, advantages, spread before the reader by so competent and able a hand, It is cheering to every friend of popular education to see so many gifted and experienced individuals, both in this country and in Europe, among whom our author holds a conspicuous rank, coming to similar results on this momentous subject. Universal intelligence underthe influence of sound moral and religious principle, and diffused, in connection with other modes of doing it, through the extensive medium of common schools so as to embrace the whole rising generation, is to constitute with the blessing of God, the security, the ornament, and the happiness of the social state, and to render it, (what we ought ever to regard as its principal value,) the propitious auxiliary to our preparation for a higher and nobler condition of being beyond the grave. Such are the views of the author, expressed in one of the paragraphs which, for the reasons already given, have been omitted in the body of the work, but though coming from an Englishman, and relating particularly to his own country, it is not without interest to the American reader. These are his words: "The main object of the work is the improvement of our (home) schools, and the elevation of our (English) elementary teachers. Until this is effected, a deadly" apathy will continue to chill every effort to extend education, and cold contempt still wither the aspirations of those, who, but for this burden, would cheerfully devote themselves to the arduous and important duties of the school. "I have been the tutor of princes," said the friend of Silvio Pellico, "I am now ambitious to rise to the elevation of a schoolmaster to the poor. ""* If that noble sentiment found a cordial response in British bosoms, I should say of England, "the day of her deliverance draweth nigh." But it does not meet with such response, and it never will, until the moral power which yet slumbers in our schools, is, in a far greater degree than heretofore, recognized, developed, and sanctified. The improvement of education will alone lead to its extension. Then, and not till then, will the benevolent anticipations of one of nature's sweetest poets find their happy fulfilment, and mankind witness * -"The coming of that glorious time, When, prizing knowledge as her noblest wealth While she exacts allegiance, shall admit An obligation, on her part, to teach Them who are born to serve her and obey; Speech of Henry Meyer, Esq. of Rome, at the meeting of the British and Foreign School Society. |