other wrote: "We take the most useful servants for farm hands, artisans, sailors and merchants; but when we find a drunkard, or a gluttonous pilferer, who is unfit for anything else, we give him the care of your sons. It was said of one of the most distinguished ministers of this country, that hls first and second teachers were indentured servants, and that in the school he attended the scholars got their lessons by repeating them aloud, and that the noise could be heard a long distance away.

While these things were said of teachers in some parts of the country, and in a certain period of our history, the most encouraging and commendable words have been spoken of teachers in other parts of the country, and in other periods of our history. We must remember, that while many who taught in other days did not have the title of teachers, yet they were as truly teachers as others. The ministers in a large part of this land were the teachers. The minister of the church was at the same time the teacher of the school. The times have changed in this respect, so that comparatively few ministers are found as teachers in our schools to-day. Without their aid in the schools of long ago, the land would be very different from what it is at this time. -Education.

COMMON SCHOOLS FROM COMMON SENSE STANDPOINT.*

BY D. F. FORTNEY, ESQ.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I have been led to take this subject because of the undue and unwarranted assaults that are, and have been made upon the public schools by learned men who occupy positions in some of our colleges and universities. They seem to have misconceived the real purpose and work of the free schools, and to realize that to them, more than any other force in the world, we are indebted for our high standing as a people among the nations of the earth. The last arraignment by one of these men charges that the "public schools have failed for two generations in dealing with the barbarous vice of drunkenness, that they have injured the

*Address of D. F. Fortney, Esq., of Bellefonte, delivered at the recent dedication of new high school building, at Clearfield, Pa.

teaching of science in attempts to inculcate total abstinence; have failed to suppress a taste for ephemeral reading matter, improper plays and a liking for patent medicines; have failed to develop sufficient reasoning power to prevent strikes, violence and loss; and to abolish the spoils system; and many other crimes and misdemeanors.

These are grave and serious charges to bring against any school system, and put upon the public schools burdens which neither the home, the church, the college nor the university have been able to accomplish, even with those who come within their portals. If these great moral and educational forces working together could overcome or abolish the

barbarous habit of drunkenness" it would be a great stride toward the ennobling of mankind and the uplifting of all the people. But this burden should not be laid upon the public schools alone, nor do we concede that the public schools under the laws of this or any other commonwealth have injured the teaching of science in attempting to inculcate total abstinence.

This brings me to what the public schools have done. A full comprehension of this requires that we should, in a measure, at least, understand the condition of the people of the state, so far as general intelligence is concerned, at the adoption of the system of public education we now enjoy, or as far back as half a century ago. Then it was, that the few could read and write, and children in great numbers were coming to years of maturity without the most ordinary education. Whole communities were so benighted that, if it was declared that on a particular day at a certain hour the world would come to an end, many would put on ascension robes as the time fixed for the " upward journey" drew nigh. As a rule, the townships were, in a political way, controlled by a single individual, and a candidate seeking office found it only necessary to secure the support of that particular person in each township. Nicholas Comenius, in the School Master of "Ye Olden Time," relates that Squire Benton ran the politics of his district for more than forty years, and there was never a trustee elected in all that time who was not the first choice of the Squire. And so it was all over the Commonwealth. There are no doubt men living in your beautiful town whose

memories carry them back to an election day 60 or 70 years ago. If so, they can, if they will, tell you that on the day on which the general elections were held, besides voting, fighting and rioting, disorder and drunkenness were the principal amusements of the day. Only within recent years in the town in which I live, have we laid away a citizen who often described in vivid language the fighting done in the town, then only a village of a few hundred inhabitants, on the day of election. It began early in the day and increased in fury and frequency until far into the night. So, too, it was on the days the the Corn Stalk" militia drilled. Men from the country would gather into the town where the company met. So sure was it that there would be drinking and fighting done, and much of it, that preparation for it was made in advance; and sometimes so much of it was done that the women and children were terrorized, and if any whole noses were found in the town, they belonged to the women, children and the tea kettles.

Revolution Wrought by Schools -These are not isolated instances, but they were the rule. Contrast scenes like these with what we see on the days on which the elections are now held, not in one place, but all over the land, while fifteen millions of freemen are depositing their ballots. They will assemble by hundreds, vote and return to their homes without a jar, orderly, sober, respectable citizens.

The annual encampment of our National Guard is another illustration. Not only a company, but ten thousand men. They will remain in camp a week and be visited by a hundred thousand people, half that number in a single day, men, women and children, all in good humor, cheerful, well dressed, sober and happy. The same thing can be said of the great multitudes of people that go to witness our national games. The individual owner and dispenser of favors, political or otherwise, in the township has practically been replaced by men who think and act for themselves. And the latest enumeration reveals the fact that 98% per cent of all children 14 years of age can read and write, so that illiteracy in that line is practically obliterated.

We have, moreover, witnessed within the last six months a strike in the anthracite coal regions of 150,000 miners and laborers, representing a population of more than half a million of people, all

idle for a period of five months or more. No riot, very little lawlessness, and disturbance of the public peace. Many of these people may not be able to speak our language, but their children can. They have been in the public school and have been taught our language, and the need of respect and obedience to lawful authority.

What has caused this great revolution and what lies at the foundation of this great improvement in the moral and law abiding disposition of the people? They no doubt went to church in those days as they do now, and the laws were as rigidly administered then as now. There is only one cause for the solution of the problem and one answer to the question. The free schools have wrought this great change. These conclusions are fairly sustained in a story told of a foraging party sent out from Nashville during the Civil War with instruction to visit every mill, barn, and shed and seize upon everything fit for consumption by man or beast. During the expedition a squad made for a free school house. "Don't disturb anything there," commanded one of the officers. If there had been a few more such institutions in the South there would have been no Civil War.

The

What the Schools Should Do.-What I have said is only some of the things in the way of bettering men and women, making them more useful to themselves, society, the church and the state. evil that remains affords ample room for further improvement. What the schools should do beside, or in addition to that which they are now doing, to properly instruct the youth of the state, is a problem on which men will honestly differ. It is a question of the greatest import and should command and receive the careful thought and calm consideration of school authorities, and educators, as well as of the state.

Our educational system has largely come up out of the middle ages as the result of the cloister and monastery. Men were then educated for one purpose, or rather it was only thought necessary to educate men who were to become clergymen. So it was in the founding of Harvard, Yale and Princeton, and in the establishing of all the earlier and higher institutions of learning in this country. They were founded by the church primarily for the education of men who desired to enter the ministry. And the

same curriculum of Greek, Latin, Mathematics, Mental and Moral Philosophy had to be followed, no matter what you desired to be, or you did not enjoy the privilege of being called a college graduate. The men educated in this way were the men who prescribed the educational system in our common schools. Nobody thought much of this, because years ago there seemed but little demand for educated men outside of what were called the learned professions.

Industrial Education.-While the public schools are not by any means at the end along the lines they have been, and are now moving, they certainly have reached the point considering the tremendous development of our industries, discovery, and advance in the use of the forces of nature, and the demand for educated and skilled labor, mechanics, and for artificers in and workers in wood, brass and iron, where it is time to inquire whether or not for the proper training of the boys and girls (especially the boys), it would not be wise to introduce into the schools a system of industrial education. They should be taught to express thought not in words alone, but in things. As Girard expressed it, "that they may be taught facts and things rather than words and signs." "Educate the people," was the first admonition addressed by Penn to the commonwealth he had founded. "Educate the people" was the last admonition of Washington to the citizens of the Republic. Educate the people" was the unceasing exhortation of Jefferson.

This Commonwealth has certainly undertaken to obey the injunction of these illutrious citizens. She has, through the provision of law, established a system of education and conferred well defined, yet almost unlimited authority upon certain individuals chosen by their fellow citizens to carry into effect the command she has issued to educate the people. The most advanced and best methods that will do this, so as to meet the demands of the age in which we live, should be adopted and carried out in all of the schools. The conditions which surround us are so different from what they were half a century ago, that to properly meet the demands of these conditions we must change our system and manner of educating the present and coming generations.

Industrial education, or the idea of it,

is not new in our school system. The Act of April 1, 1834, under which public schools were originally organized, contained this as the 10th section: "Whereas manual labor may be advantageously connected with intellectual and moral instruction in some of the schools, it shall be the duty of the school directors to decide whether such connection in their respective districts shall take place or not, and if decided affirmatively, they shall have power to purchase materials and employ artisans for the instruction of the pupils in the useful branches of the mechanic arts, and where practicable, in agricultural pursuits.”

The need of instruction and training on the lines indicated in this old act of Assembly is every day becoming more manifest, and is evidenced by the demand for those who have been trained and instructed in such schools.

The national government maintains a number of schools in which the Indians are instructed in industrial education. The State makes such instruction obligatory in the reformatory at Huntingdon and the Pennsylvania Reform School at Morganza. If education on this line is good for the savage and the criminal, I am of the conviction that it would be better to so educate and train our young people before they become either savages or criminals.

"I do not mean that the public schools shall turn out finished mechanics or train pupils to mere manual dexterity. The manual work should train the senses, quicken the perception and form the judgment by furnishing the pupil an opportunity to study at the bench, forge and lathe, and inquire into the nature of matter and the manifestation of force. It is purely educational in its aspect. It teaches the pupil first to portray in drawing a variety of beautiful forms, then to embody them in form in wood, clay and metals."

I do not mean, nor do I desire to be so understood, that all boys and girls must take an industrial course of training, any more than that all should take a course in Greek and Latin. We are not all born in the same mold, and we should recognize this fact in educational matters. Mozart never would have come to anything as a soldier, nor would Edison ever have accomplished anything as a musician; while as an inventor or a musician, Grant would never have won the affec

tions of a grateful people, or commanded the admiration of the world.

To train the hereditary tendencies in our youth, guide and direct and develop them from an early age under the eye of an accomplished instructor, makes masters in their chosen line, whatever it shall be, and with industry, good habits, honesty, high aspirations, and noble aims, they will in their day "stand before kings."

It is very easy to plan for a higher education. I find no fault with this. It should be done, but in doing so, all school authorities, I apprehend, overlook the fact that of the nearly a million four hundred thousand pupils in the public schools of our great state, not one-twentieth ever reach the High School, and a still less number graduate therefrom. The great mass of the children of the common people go the common schools for only a very small portion of their school age. In the words of another, what I am anxious about and want you to be anxious about so far as the public schools are concerned is, not the higher education of the few who can go to college," or if they do not, are in such circumstances that they will have little difficulty in securing positions with good incomes, but for the great hordes that leave school at twelve and fourteen years of age to get their living in the world without having first learned to use their hands.

This is a question that demands from the educator, the school director and the patriot the most candid and serious consideration, and he who successfully solves the problem will rank in the ages to come as one of the great benefactors of mankind.

I believe in and advocate this line of instruction in the schools. Great care must and should be taken that the pupils are not imbued with the idea that they are only worth what they can earn in dollars and cents. There is too much of this kind of instruction now. In technical schools not under the control of any Christian denomination, there is nothing so much, so strongly and so persistently impressed on the mind of the student as the amount of money he can make as soon as he is through school. The full development of his moral and spiritual nature is at best only a secondary consideration. While all education should be useful and practical, so far as it is possible and reasonable to so have it, we

should never forget the God-like nature of the pupil and remember that it is "righteousness that exalteth a nation."

Another Thing Schools Should Teach.There is another thing that should be diligently taught, not only in the public schools, but in all schools from the kindergarten to the last round in the college and university. That is love of country, obedience to all lawful authority. Nowhere is disobedience to lawful authority more manifest than in the higher institutions of learning. Considering the millions in the public schools, to the very few thousands in colleges and universities, and the fact that the great mass of the 80,000,000 of population within the borders of our great country have never been at any school other than the public schools, the respect for, and obedience exhibited toward, all lawfully constituted authority, the public schools, from the lowest to the highest, must be given the honor of carrying the banner. The chances are that those who lead the mobs and riots which so frequently override all authority and play the devil generally in many of our higher institutions of learning, have received their preparatory training in other than the public schools.

Instruction in this may be covered by the term patriotism. I mean the genuine stuff. That which is loyal to all the highest and best interests of the country, with unbounding faith in its future, willing to live and serve and die, if need be, for its honor and glory. Not that of the blatant demagogue who will one minute boast of the glory of the institutions and freedom of the country, and the next sell his vote to the highest bidder, or corrupt his fellow-citizen by the use of vast sums of money to produce certain results at the election, or in the halls of legislation, or, it may be, enter into a scheme to stuff the ballot box.

The public schools should, moreover, teach that it is a crime against society and the State for any citizen, at any time, or anywhere, to sell his vote to any party, whatever may be the consideration. That it is a crime for any man to buy or offer to buy another man's vote, and that men who do this, or connive at it, are, in every sense of the word, traitors to the interests, welfare, peace, happiness and prosperity of the country.

The millions in the public schools should be taught that when they reach

the years of maturity and take upon themselves the duties of citizens, the right of suffrage is theirs, guaranteed to them by the most solemn obligations of law, and in its exercise, if they but stand on their individuality and manhood, they are the peer of any other man in all the land, no matter what his position, his business or his wealth. They should, furthermore, be taught that it is a crime fraught with great evil to the country for any man, however affluent his circumstances may be, or whatever his station in life, or in whatsoever relation they may stand to him, to buy, attempt to buy, or influence him by any other means save that of open, honest discussion, in the exercise of his right of suffrage. President Roosevelt expressed the whole idea in saying that "no man who is corrupt, no man who even condones corruprion in another, can fulfill his duty toward the public.' When a generation of voters so instructed during the years they are at school, shall come upon the stage, it is my conviction that the lobbyist will disappear from our legislative hall, and the boss and machine must cease to control and use the government of great Commonwealths for their selfish purposes, to the detriment and great disgrace of all the people.

In all

Schools Should Build Character. schools, public and private, and in all teaching, wherever done, it should ever be kept before the pupils that they from day to day are building a character that must last through life and reach into the great hereafter. That just as this building was erected. one brick at a time; or stone by stone and brick by brick, until at last it stood forth a completed building, beautiful in its outlines, massive to behold, an ornament to the town, an honor to the men who conceived and constructed it, and a glory to the purposes to which it is dedicated; so, too, day by day, the youth should be taught they are building a character. That daily they should by "giving all diligence, add to their faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness. to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity."

Then we have the fruits of right living set forth in beautiful language by the wisest man that ever lived when he declares that "happy is the man that find

eth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver and the gain thereof than gold. She is more precious than rubies; and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. Length of days are in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace.'

In this day we need character above everything else in men in public and private life. In addressing his fellow citizens at Pittsburg on the Fourth of July last, the President of the United States said: "Oh, my fellow countrymen, as we face these infinitely difficult problems, let us ever keep in mind that though we need the highest qualities of intellect in order to work out practical schemes for their solution, yet we need a thousand times more what counts for many, many, many times as much intellect-we need character. Character, that compound of honesty and courage and common sense, will avail us more in the long run than any brilliancy on the stump or any advising legislative means and methods. The brilliancy is good. We need the intellect; we need the best intellect we can get; we need the best intelligence, but we need more still, CHARACTER. We need common sense, common honesty and resolute courage."

In various speeches at different places, the same distinguished citizen has substantially repeated this statement. In his exalted position he understands full well what is needed. The character he wants to meet with is the character that will place the nation, its honor and glory and the welfare of all the people, above self. Character of this kind must come from the home and the public schools, and unless it comes from these it will only be realized in rare instances.

Every pupil of the millions in the public schools should be taught that they owe to the nation the duty of maintaining in him or herself a high, clean, moral and religious character. That their personal morality is a debt to the natiou. That it is indeed the nation's morality.

One of the ablest Judges of the greatest Civil Court in the world asks, What is character? And then proceeds to define it as "righteousness in the soul. It is the shining jewel of life, that which we all look for, which we all admire.