The New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

OBSERVATIONS ON EDUCATION.

THE benefits resulting from general knowledge have been disputed. The opposers of the means of learning for the poorer class of people, have said, that you cannot make every poor man a good scholar: They ask, what is gained by making matterers in learning; science they affirm, gains little, and labour loses much—for men who read much will work little—They become discontented with their lot, and even if they could change it to their own advantage, the case would not be mended, for others must be found to take their places. The drudgery of the world must be done; and it would be found as hard on those who have it to do as before learning was given them; and harder, because they would then know it to be drudgery.

These are plausible arguments in favour of ignorance—and such as ignorance could not have suggested in its own defence; tis thus that the sons of science turn parricides against the mother whose milk has nourished them—

The answer to this ungenerous philosophy is not hard to be found—Education is most recommended merely to make men book wise, but to extend the comprehension of their minds—to increase their ideas, that is to say, to increase their wisdom; real wisdom can do no harm—surely it will not make men prefer idleness to industry, nor a vain ambition to thrift and steadiness, even in an humble calling. It is true, that the attempts to make men wiser may sometimes fail, and may even make a few more vain; idle and worthless, than if they had been left to themselves.

The like charge may be urged against education in the families of the wealthy, and indeed against any good institution whatever. It is plain that education has the opposite tendency, which is a sufficient answer to that part of the oration in favour of ignorance.

But why is it forgotten that a few instances of folly made worse by teaching, are nothing compared with the many instances of men made sober, virtuous and diligent by it. Add to this that it is as likely to happen that an eminent genius shall start up from the family of a poor man as of a rich one; one such might benefit mankind more than education ever cost them.—

Then give to all the means of knowledge, and leave it to nature to mark out the differences between her children. The light of heaven is pleasant, would you pluck poor men's eyes out? The light of knowledge is no less so, and will you blind them? Then establish schools, that is, open the windows, and let in the day-light.