Fowle's New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

For the NEW-HAMPSHIRE GAZETTE.

Mr. PRINTER,

The present mode of supporting public schools in the town of Portsmouth, very justly demands the attention of the inhabitants at their next annual meeting. The enormous sum of about three thousand dollars has been yearly wasted to support the present plan of school-keeping-to lessen this great expense, while the town is so embarrassed with their poor and State taxes, has become absolutely necessary.--No saving can be made by lessening the salaries of the present school-masters, they have little enough already.

The number of schools cannot be less, if equal justice is done to the inhabitants ; the parent who lives two miles out of town, while he pays the school tax, is equally entitled to have a convenient handy school, as the man who lives in the centre of the town-and it cannot be supposed they can be better regulated than they are at present, a committee of gentlemen well suited to the business, have without any doubt done every thing in their power for their benefit.

Yet notwithstanding all this trouble and expense we find no benefit from these public seminaries, any way adequate to the great charge on the town. they afford us no good writers, no accountants, nor scarcely any considerable improvements are made by the youth in these schools--private instructions, or distant academies are now the only places where children can have a tolerable education. The evil must then lay in the institution itself, a public school is as well managed as a public ship, a public debt or any public business would be. which of all business in the world is the worst conducted : an individual would be ashamed to see his affairs so ill managed, so deranged as the public affairs always are.

In addition to the catalogue of absurdities attending public schools ; I have no hesitation to pronounce, that they are both unjust and illegal-- unjust because many of the inhabitants are obliged to pay for the support of an institution from which they can receive no benefit--illegal because the law authorizes an assessment to be made only for the support of one grammar school, and more cannot be legally assessed without the unanimous consent of the inhabitants.

To remedy the defect in the present mode of management of the schools, and to prevent an exhausted people from paying a great deal of money to little purpose, the contrivance, I conceive is extremely simple, leave it entirely to the individuals in the town to have what private schools they please ; the town ought to have nothing to do with any schools : upon this plan we should soon see good schools opened under the care of able instructors. who would feel themselves accountable to the parents of the children, and one half the money that is now paid would answer every purpose.--The only plausible objection to putting an end to the public schools, is that the poor children could not have the benefit of schooling : this objection might have been proper three centuries ago, when few could read, and fewer write, but now these arts are so common, that in most families. children may be taught to read at home, and to write in a public school, at little expense. The education of these children in public schools where perhaps they have spent six or eight years, has been generally so slight, as to render it doubtful, whether it has not been more hurtful, by fostering laziness than advantageous, by conveying instruction.