IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) V' // Y 1.0 I.I 1.25 ■- 128 |J0 ""^S I 4,0 - 6" IM 2.0 M. IIIIII.6 w Photographic Sci^ces Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 f^ V ^N^ •1>^ :\ \ >, .,y 1 2 3 4 5 6 m f V ^OVA SCOT/4 PROVINCE HOUSE .r 'i ,\ E C T IJ R E ON THE EYI1.S OF A SUPERFKIAl. PTV1T(UTU)N BY THIi REV. DR. MacGREGOR, PROfESSOB m ikll^T FRANCIS XAVIBR'S COLLEO-K AlsTTIGONIBH, N, HALIFAX. N. M ■ (JOMPTON & CO.. «EDFORi> KUw 1HB<'). I imn^xfimi. - j xiri i i nn i lf i ^ p i w ■flP W- "S 4fViMi M\ m g~immm :>ti!mus 00mm f m ' ' ^w mtm-Jt ummma^Kix- n t immimnmi I LECTURE ON THE EVILS OF A SUPERFICIAL I EDUCATION. BY THE REV. BK. MacGREQOR, PROFESSOR IN SAINT FRANCIS XAVIER'S COLLEGE, ANTIGOKiSH, N, S, 18C0, HALIFAX, N. B.i COMITON & CO., BEDFORD ROW, I860* J'-/ 4 ' Ja^/mmm^^'^mm' !sg^i^ii##9i^biM' %^^:i^i««-«ajk.%».«4^»wi«isu«^. .-.-■-^ife-^sJMafa.a ^hi tfe . jw a ca aa rfliHiiiiiftwfcMit iiimiiiiiwnif^ TO THE RIGHT REVEREND BISGOP OF ARICHaT, Afc A BM.^LL TRxriCJE TO VAIIIED LEARNINQ, VAST ADMINISTRATIVE t'-PAvJI-rr, AOKNOWtKDCED WORTH IN ALL THE RELATIONS OF LIFE, AND KSPECIALLT UNBOUVUKD ZEAL AND MUNIFICENT EXERTIONS IN THE DIFFUSION OF THE IILRSSINOS OP EDUCATION AMONGST EVER ORATBFUL SPIRITiUAL SUnjECTS, THIS LECTURE IS DUTIFULLY IN8CK1BED. ft INTRODUCTION. Since tlio College ai„l Scminaiy of Si. Francis Xavier were first established i„ the tow,, of Anti' gomsh, ,t has always been customary to open the Hrst Hes8,on ot each scholastic year with a lcetu,-e on some subject connected with educaticn. The fol- low,ng pages contain that of the pi-esent year. It was dehvered, for the greater co.,venionoe ,.f a lar« me, the Lecturer s notes have been secured for pub- lieation, with the hope that their perusal may tend in ^omc measure to make scholastic training'as ^rae tically useful to the disciple as it is generally estab lished throughout the province. Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Feast of St. Rose of Viterbo, 1866. is-mm^^^^ii^is&MMiis L E C T U 11 E . My Lord, Ladies and Gentlemen, — The favor witli which you wcro pleased to receive the obsorvutlonfi that I made on a fo'-mor occafcvl,i<.h l,o i„u,„.|, Ihom to "ccZ .n «ft.T l,.o; „,Ml yet, ft.v, very f„„.. .,.|,„l,.„ „ V t^"^b^ mot amongst our ,„.o,,lo. Fn.,, ...,.,y iu,Un..y ,„ p.^i,,! honu ,n«t,tut,on» ..rc lK.q„ont..d; .ho Hlth „, ,| " v„l„.blo pnrt of a ,ir,.tin,„ i, j,a,,cd i„ .cl.olasti "t „iZ of on,. l<,n,I „,. anoti,,,,; „,„, ^.,^ ,^„ ^.^^^ majority o"^t young mon an, ,von„.n ..„,o,-go. n.on, the tebool-™ , aud m,.v,.s „, ,|,e wi,|„ „,,,|j „, „^^, ,,,„ .j" '■ ...ore than ,„,o ligonco ,.no„gl, to u„.lo,.„an,I ; ,, " ral ne«-,pa,,e,- litoratu,-,, „f th„ da,-. Jfihit. „f ,1 ' o,- ratho,. of thir,lvn and untbought, of; and when, be8ides, children were withdrawn early from the toacher'a care, to nsniHt in tlie inultifurious luborH attending the coloniza- tion of a M'ilderncHS country; — when all this, I say, was too common to ©licit com!nent or attract notice, the youth went forth with, a less extensive, I admit, bnt a more solid and a more useful tr. ining, than tluvt which in general they now receive. In our days, wo have numerous schools and commodioui' school-houses, dotted all over the country ; we have uniformity of text bookri ; vc have wall maps, and black boards, and ball frames, and .uiitable sen.ts, and proportionate writing desks j — wo have every thing but scholars. 1 do not in^Mul to assort that it is possible, or expedient, even if po :>lo, t(> have a Newton in every family, or a Johnson in every district; but 1 raaintain that we have not scholars, that is, practical, useful aoholars in their own spl...e, such as it, would not be presumptuous to expect from the interest taken, and the effort made, to diffuse education aniong all classes of the people. I speak under the correction of such of my auditors as have seen more summer suns and winter snows than myself, when I assert that, years ago, results were more proportionate to the means employed, than they are to-day, in the midst of this enlightened nineteenth century. To inquire into the causes of this anoniuly, to investigate the features of this paradox, is a necessity on the part of us all ; to remedy the defect, for defect there obviously exists, is alike the duty of the teacher, the parent, and the pupil. In what, then, does the defect consist ? Which portion of our school machinery jars against the rest of the system find partially nullifies the entire procedure? The answer is simple. American education is specious rather than solid ; more apparent than real ; extensive and superficial cut of proportion to its profundity ; memorial more than intellectual ; the elementary outlines of various branches rathor than the complete mastery of one. «• A little learning is a dang'rous thing ; Drink deep, or taste uot the Pierian spring," said the poet of Twickenham, and had he lived in o .' days, a myriad move of examples wonld have been ibrth- •"^••i '%^- 8 coming to confirm the truth of the pointed couplet. "A little learning" of many and diverse subjects has been, and now is, the bane of our schools. " Timeo hoininem unius libri," saic' Jicero. Wo have readers, writers, gram- marians, arithmeticians, geometricians, mathematicians, geographers, astronomers, by the thousand; we have individuals professing to possess the acquirements of all together within the scientific compass of one personality ; buv we find scarcely one individual an adept in any one art. We have classical scholars poring for years over the beauties of Grecian and Eoman literature, and scarcely one who appreciates them— scarcely one that has caught the spirit of the noble languages in the whole of their animating influence—scarcely one that reads Livy or Demosthenes without losing the point of a period, the significance of an epithet, the finely turned shades of skilful flattery, or the withering sarcasm of passing in- VeetiVe, which gives so much gratification to the deeply i'cad classical scholar. American education is not suf- ficiently thorough, sufiiciently exhaustive of any one sub- ject. We aim at too much; our ambition is too much firad; the height we all strive to attain makes the head giddy, when the footsteps by which we ascend are not sufiiciently indented in the ?tecp wall, and too many of our young men, after passing through the curriculum of studies, find themselves on calm reflection at the bottoni of the very precipice on whose summit they va'untingly stood in their day dreams. Like the Yorkshire I'ustic, who fondly believed that the Derby cup would be easily won by the to him marvellous speed of his untried ances- tral Bucephalus, they find that their mental steeds, instead of distancing all competitors, and being received at the goal amid the plaudits of admiring spectators, have on practical trial hopelessly subsided into a sort of faint reminiscence of an almost forgotten canter. They are trained, too, after a fashion. In school, in class, at public examinations, their readiness is obvious, and their mv ficoiucy conceded by auditors and professors. J3ut theirs is not education. The system is radically defective. Their acquirements on paper are imposing; with text 4* '-^mutm books, even, they are familiar; certain time iionored maxims they repeat time and again; but submit them to the ordeal of rigid personal scrutiny ; bring them into individual contact with really original and earnest per- sonality; try them as gold in the furnace; bring mind to mind and soul to soul in keen intellectual contest ; and the whole panoplied array of acquirements and accom- plishments dwindles into a shivering consciousness of actual nothingness. The mind is not really cultivated ; the reasoning powers lie almost as dormant as if the owner had yet to make his introductory glance of curi- osity at the school door. Effect and display are intended in the training, and the more solid understructure of re ,*1 mental developement is neglected. Effect and display there are, too, but it is the effect and display of the cloud whose airy base shall have vanished before the view is impressed on the retina, not the effect of the dome and the cupola which rest on a granite foundation, and which you view* day after day and year after year with emotions of ever increasing gratification. The system aims per saltum at the result. The intermediate processes are ignored. The method is only partially effective ; and from this partially effective method of education — education cornprehensive in the catalogue of subjects it embraci s, superficial indi- vidually in the treatment of each ; exhaustive nominally ; actually inceptive, and always so ; generically inclusive of the om?ie scibile; inclusive specifically of a few paltry out^ lines and fewer paltry details — from this method, T assert, now so general on this continent, and introducing itself also imperceptibly, I am sorry to observe, into the higher institutions of the m-other country, many evils flow, not only to literature, but also to society and government. On the one hand, if we consider the subject under the literary aspect, public taste has been rendered less refined ; the ring of the true metal, so perceptible in the vigorous prose, and pointed, yet imaginative, poetry, of our older authors, seem to have faded away into remote hiitory,amid the maudlin effusions of a myriad of sciolists, whose only merit, if merit it bo, consists in a vague and dreamy mystification of the sublimer and abstruser truths 2 I 10 known to the human intellect. On the other, u strange pomposily of diction, interspersed with stranger epithets, and boldly ridiculous and inapplicable figures of speech, drops from the pen of every aspirant after popular fame with most infelicitous fluency, clothing, as it proceeds, the most commonplace occurrences in a garb of sesqui- pedalian verbiage, more than capacious enough to describe the devastations of Hastings in India, or all the horrors of th'> French involution. David is literally travestied with the ponderous sword and buckler and helmet of Goliah, and naturally fails to discover himself to sucli persons as were wont to behold him in the simple but graceful vesture of the Jewish shepherd. A half eupho- nious but unmeaning volubility of ex])res&ion begins to pass for eloquence; turgidity and bombast for grandeur of conception ; indefinite mystific".tion of simple truths for metaphysical profoundity,and a multitudinous number of syllables is funnily denominated elegance of language. Such are some of the evils deriving to literature from imperfect education. Would to God that society at large did not suffer socially and morally from the same cause ! A literary evil amounts, after all, only to a per- version of taste; and as taste is partially natural, and partially acquired, and, again, us that which is natural is permanent and invariable, it follows that taste can never be radically vitiated. It may be vitiated in this or that particular «. "^umstance, in this or that particular detail ; but it has that in it which i;.' natural and undying ; it pos- sesses a vivifying spark, which may smoulder, but will perish never; and, hence, however much obscured at times, however apparently insignificant the ember, it ever and anon consumes the dross and debris which surrounded it and temporarily checked its brilliancy; and, at last when the cloud of popular prejudices passes away like the mist of the morning, it bursts forth again in all its pristine transparency. The sentimental silliness of Pamela had its day and host of admirers ; the exaggerated super- naturalism of Frankenstein, in not unfaithful imitation of the earlier romances, had its votaries; the licentious and shameless panegyrists of the first Georges pandered to a 11 doubly corrupt taste, find wore called wits ; the ponderous syllabication of Sydney was once lauded as poetry; the stiff mannerism of Uncle Tom's Cabin, even in our own day, floated into general approbation on a whirlwind of applause, and was wafted by ephemeral critics into the seventh heaven of excellence ; but taste soon righted itself, and, having regained its posit jn, energetically and forever rejected that M'hich, when it was depraved, it had painted in the most gorgeous of colors. The glittering rainbow of ihe morning, at the termination of the shower, is only an angry cloud. Not so easily remedied are evils which eat into the core of society and government ; not bo easily effaced a stain on morality's page ; not so easily rectified a div irgence from the cour.se ot moral order, or of social subordination. In matters of purely literary taste, the true, the elegant, and the beautiful h.ave their own efficacious charms, while they impose no restraint on the passions, and meet no emulous opposition from the lower nnd more violent inclinations of human nature. But a social error always panders to a grovelling passion, and a moral delinquency arrays " the world, the flesh, and the devil," in threaten- ing phalanx, in its own defene-o. Hence, then, the greater danger of our system of education — of a sort of literary Jack-of-all-tradcism in schoolastic proficiency — of that which is vi' tually literary retrogression. You ask, perhaps, the number and kind of evils ; and my answer is, that they are almost innumerable, and of almost every imaginable species. Proofs may be required of my assertion : I appeal to the invincible argument of fact. Go to the printing presses of this entire continent, — take up leaf after leaf, as it falls damp from the cylinder; walk into the book-stores of fifty millions- ©if English speaking Americans, — examine v©iiume after volume of the matter prepared for the mental! pabulumi of throngs of willing purchasers; glam-e at the privjiite libraries scattered over the cowntvy,- uead from tlw toybook of the child, through tbe^ nnugazine and three-volumed novel of the youth, up tsyt\w larger typed tome which old age Kion-ly p'MT.s<'>. }iA^fjH' ll.nos i;'r()\v l>a/,y boiwaittli the failing m ) 12 viBion ; - and tell mo the result of your examination. Is it not indubitably certain, that, of a score of volumeB, scarcely one is calculated to improve the tone of public morality, and not more than one in ten is devoted to he cultivation of the useful or esthetic avts ? The rest, he remainder, the multitudinous remainder, are simply the morbid reflections of half refined, ratogethcr corrupt, popular authors, whose sole aim Avould seem to be to excite the animal passions of human nature and deify concrete humanity, as it exists since the fall. How diifer- ent from the solid reading the public patronized a genera- tion or two ago, it is not my intention, nor is it necessary, to state. Purchasers soon find authors to suit; and halt- educated purchasers will not bo offered the opportunity of wearying themselves in search of literature adapted to their comprehension and inclinations. Never trained to think for themselves, sagacious writers know only too well how to think for them ; and consequently touch the very chord which has the less spirituality, but the more painted passion, to recommend it to half-educated culture. Nor is the evil confined to books. The newspaper press also is proportionately affected. Books do an immense evil, but they do good also. Tlie d^ily, tri-weekly, and weekly press did, and still does, its share of evil) but as truth is, in many cases, either too raro or too costly an ingredient to enter much into the composition newspapers are made of, and as this truth is gradually becoming more widely appreciated, the power tor evil daily diminishes, just as newspaper editors in America find that, unliko their brethren in Europe, their control of popular opinion is waning away. They discover that they no longer teach or lead, but obsequiously follow the trau. This 1 look upon as the dark moment before the dawn. A think- ing people will require an intelligent press, and people will of necessity think for themselves, when they shall have lopt confidence in the judges of Israel. Educate the readers, and the press will arise, Phoenix like, from the ftshos of desolation, to which subserviency and abuse have reduced it, to the great position for it intended in the nature of things, and become, in this country, what it i8 13 in other countries — a heaven-sent gift in the work ot enlightenment and ci-^ilization. But the evil of imperfect education rests not here. It permeates, through the printing establishment, society in ail its channels. Designing demagogues flourish, ardent patriots die, under the exhalations of its pestiferous breath. Popular clamor sits haughtily in the tribunal of unimpas- sioned justice, and metes out rewards and punishments with indiscriminating prodigality. Heroes are made and unmade as if by magic wands. The meteor of to day is the charred stick uf to-morrow. Populations are excited to frenzy in liie acquisition of imaginary rights, and in the sullen madness of reaction see real ones fall from their nervelestt grasp in despondent resignation. Society suf- fers through all the ramifications of its machinery. Men enter into the forum whon\ nature intended for the bench of St. Crispin ; medicine has its nostrums, and patant specifics, and quacks presuming to be dispensers of lifo and death, vhosc training would scarcely add accomplish, ments to a professor of the culiniry art; and worse still, the most sacred of all avocations, the seat of religion itself, has been profaned, and tlie Holy Volume, which '• the'ignorant wrest to their own destruction," desecrated by the caricatured explanation of newly manufactured clerics, whom one day sometimes transfers from the pen^ itentia'ry to the pulpit. I speak of facts to which no one acquainted with the current events transpiring in the neighboring republic of the United States will hazard a contradiction. Spiritualism and all its prolific train of misfortunes; clairvoyance, the abuse of magnetism, and all its deceptive illusions, hurry along an unthinking people to the obliteration of the last shred of morality. Keligion itself is, in many cases, received only in fractions, and fractious, too, so infinitesimal in their extension, that the portion of these alone is smaller who possess none at all of the commodity either for private use or public edi- fication. These are the effects of imperfect and superficial scholastic training. Men boast of these effects— of that which, if really known, would bo shunned as hideous and disgraceful, and in the gyves of their ignorance they hug, 14 with a wild and convulwive embrace, the very chain that drags thorn to a lower and still lower depth. Ask the remedy? You know the cause. Let educa- tion bo thorough. If it be but a black mark that the tiny childish fingers essay to draw, let it bo a straight one ; if it be the letters of the alphabet that the child's lips learn to pronounce, let the enunciation bo distinct ; if it be a simple reading lesson, let the reading be really reading, and the English really English, and not a curious amalga- mation of half a dozen outlandish sounds, with a Chinese monosyllabic drone to fill up the interstices ; if it be an exercise in ordinary calligraphy, let the characters be faultless and the words legibly written, bo that one part of a phrase be not left to conjecture, another perhaps read, and a third deferred to a clearer atmosphere and future consideration. In one word, let progress be estimated by its profundity, not by its extension. Let habits of thought be formed. The child, after all, is a little man, and let him learn to think, or rather let not the spontaneous evo^ lution of his thinking faculties be retarded or stopped by crowding the mind with undigested and unappreciated matter. In education, as in everything else, let that which is done be well done. That it be so must be the care of the teachers of youth. To them, consequently, I address the remaining observa- tions which I have to make. They ought to remember that the panegyric, if I may reverently say so, of Him who was Perfection itself, was that " He did all things well " " omnia bene fecit." The sanctity of ascetic theology consists not in the moving of mountains, or in the resto- ration to inanimate clay of the departed breath, but in the thorough well-doing of ordinary actions. The sun fertilizes the earth, not because it radiates through space immense, but because it penetrates to the deepest roots of each particular blade of grass. All the works of nature are exhaustive. Art must be exhaustiive, too, to be effec tivc, and the art of educating youth is of the noblest whose exercise was concredited to man. After the minis- tev of religion, who stands up charged with the great ..ommiss'on to unfold the eternai immutable dogma?, & » ! 16 which Wisdom luiinite has vouchsafed to reveal to en- liKhtcn, ennoble, and amaze man's opening comprehension the educator of youth has the most sublime mission. His is the exalted duty to develop the latent .nerg.es of the human soul, to direct and <=<"'t'-°l . t''<"'»ir ' f " hL tv^ dency of man's restless intellect in search of objective truth, to lay a foundation out of which the grace of Add.- son, or the poetry of Milton, or the warlike genius of Napoleon, or the eloquence of Pitt, or *e .eie"ce of a Leibnit., may, perhaps, at some future period be deve oped. His the part, in all cases, to prepare the way for al the vicissitudes of after life, in which mind shall meet mind, and men have to wage the battle of life. His, then, is clearly the obligation of fulfilling his avocation with scrupulous accuracy, with unwavering fidelity^ A ialee step in the beginning, like the thin edge o the wedge, wilens as education progresses. One imperfectly under- stood principle necessitates the ignorance "f » '""S™^^ catenation of consectaries flowing from it. One false prLiple similarly induces a train of false eonj^^',''™'- Lt as a decayed portion of the trunk of the oak wither. ZbranehesontLsame side to its lofty summit. One downward impetus, like the first and almost 'nipcrceptiblc motion of the Alpine avalanche, is but the P-'"de *» a devastating cours. of swift destruction. One small defect in early youth, like the little dark cloud on the morning sky of aVest India horizon, widens as education pro- ceeds, until at the noonday sun, it bursts out ui the ter- rme desolation of the hurricane; and in the calm of the evening of Me. men discover that all their labors have to borecommenced anew on a surer foundation, and with more accurate workmanship. u-x ^ „ Th« The education of youth is menta architecture. The solid rock of principle must lie at the foundation Tne walls and pilLs, and braces, must be built and shaped Td fitted with seiupulous care. Piece must be adapted to Ice foot to meet foot, inch to meet inch, greater to greate. [ess to less. Ornament must harmonize with material, and mat rial must harmonize with ornament. All must be pro- port onate, one part to another, and all to the use for which 16 the edifice is designed. Thus will the entire ^ding ri^se in sraeefttl ,'randeur and commodious usefulness. Stoims lake it not; the rains of heaven pierce it not through i ttand cold stay at the threshold: booause the work manshir -«« B»~l. """ ">" ""?'•'"' T rfulfilUheir must ou. teachers of youth train themselves to fulfill tben Th position in life ; so, too, will a benefited people avo.d the n any evils consequent on imperfect education. i have now arrived at the conclusion of my remarks - remarks which must necessarily have tired your patience as much in listening to, a, my vocal "^S^"' ^" ^^""^ T thank vou for the favor of your marked attention U oughoift No one is more sensible thai, myself of the oontLued violation I have made, during the whole course my observations to-day, of the rule which I was laying down for yiur guidance, namely, that wnatever is done ouZ o b'^, well done. No one, then, can be more grate- Mfor the forbearance you have shown, but 1 ask you to forget the defects of the lecture in the Tn»gn>tude of the subject and to appreciate the good wdl, where the actual performance deserves reprobation. Locald amongst >•<>''. I «»»'f%J-''"';.''r:r°t the cerning the true, the just, and the boaut.ftd, as no the least charm of your society ; connected with the lite.ary 1 1 rwhich opens to-day, I solicit yo-^t— ^ its progress ; and allow me here, as one of its professors, n nrcsence if its learned originator, and most munificent patron in presence of more than one that has already ' ; cipated'in the benefits it confers, in presence o^many \r\.r J^f hone to taste the sweet draughts ot Helicon :it;irit,ersic portals; in presence of all you that know .. ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes Emollit mores, nee sinit esse feros," to avow the resolve of myself and my colleagues in the work that the maxims I have endeavored to elucidate hall, with the help of God, be the distinctive feature ol eholastic training in St. Francis Xavier's College. THE END.