Staunton Spectator

The Educational System of Virginia.

The Hon. Willoughby Newton has lately published an able and very elegantly written letter, addressed to Gov. Wise, on the subject of education in Virginia. It will be recollected that an Educational Convention was held in Richmond last summer, which unanimously recommended the adoption of a school system proposed by the Governor. Mr. Newton gives an outline of the scheme and says:

"None but a master spirit could have had the boldness to conceive it, or the persuasive power of eloquence to induce a grave assembly of Doctors of Divinity and Masters of Art unanimously to recommend it. With the genius of Napoleon, you have overleaped all obstacles to your progress. Neither dense nor sparse populations, nor rivers nor mountains, nor the heats of summer, nor the snows of winter, can arrest your reforming march. At the magic touch of your stylus, the whole Commonwealth becomes a tabula rasa, divided into equal squares with the regularity of a chessboard, containing equal populations and presenting equal facilities for schools. Surely, grave argument cannot be necessary to show that such a scheme is utterly impracticable!"

What, too, will be the effect of your College superintendency over the schools on the peace of the community? If the Colleges were all State institutions publicly endowed and under the control of the public authorities, the objection would be to it, that it is a great organized system, under the influence of the party in power for the time being, and will be used, as the great school system of New York unquestionably is, to subserve the ends of party. The Colleges, however, are not all on State account, but most of them are endowed by private munificence, and under the control of the different Christian denominations. The Professors of these Colleges are to examine the teachers, select their text books, and see to the system and progress of instruction. Think for a moment what a pleasing spectacle of brotherly unity we should have when Bethany College undertakes to appoint teachers and select text books for the children of the old Baptists and other orthodox denominations in the North West; or when Lynchburg College, established by the Protestant Methodists, shall perform the same office for the Episcopal Methodists; or the Episcopal Methodists of Randolph Macon for the Protestants; or the Episcopalians of Williamsburg for the Baptists and Methodists of the surrounding country; or the Presbyterians of Hampden Sidney for the Episcopalians of the Metropolis,- Under such management we should have not only greater inefficiency than now complained of, and the feuds between Protestant and Catholic which disgrace the New York system, but the relentless fury of the odium theologicum would be let loose upon us, and there would be no peace in Israel."

On the subject of "free schools" Mr. Newton makes the following remarks:

"The principle of free schools-by which I mean schools at which all are educated gratuitously at public expense-is radically wrong. It is borrowed from the despotisms of the continent of Europe, or from the socialistic ideas of our Northern States. It affects injuriously private rights and invades the sanctity of property, without which true liberty cannot exist. The State is bound to educate the children of the poor, but the dogma that the State has greater interest in the children of the Commonwealth than their parents,' lately officially announced as a truism by the Governor of New York, is of the very essence of despotism. It justified the arbitrary proceedings of the Prussian government, by which the cottage of the peasant, which, according to English ideas of liberty, is his castle, is invaded, and his children dragged by the public officer to school against his consent. It is the duty, the right, and the highest privilege of every citizen to educate his children at his own expense and in his own way—a right least of all liable to abuse, and which no true hearted parent will ever willingly surrender to any earthly power. In addition to the education of the indigents, the State may be under obligations to provide Universities and other extensive institutions which are beyond the reach of individual means, but all else should be left to private enterprise."

Mr. Newton thinks the Governor attaches too much importance to agricultural schools, and says we want no special schools of that kind in Virginia. He also shows that the census report in reference to the number of persons in the State unable to read and write, is full of palpable blunders and entirely unreliable.