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    pupil . Long , very long , did we l educate not at all : ' we have now got the length of ' educate very bad ; ' and of us , alas ! as of the fiddler ' s pupil , it is not to be conjectured when we shall reach the final stage . An uneasy fermentation has long pervaded the mass ; thick vapid scum has bubbled up and coated the whole surface ; and the dark , fat , and noxious dregs have unwillingl y and but partially subsided . When , oh ! when shall we drink freely of the pure and generous stream , unstifled by mephitic vapours , unchoked and unsickened by the filthy dreg .

    National education is beginning to attract the attention of the community . The ancient dame schools ., with a slight sprinkling of free and boarding schools , have long ceased to satisfy us . The Bell , Lancaster , and Sunday schools followed , with loud acclamation , but still we are dissatisfied : we are beginning to suspect that in most instances they are mere mockeries ; clumsy machines for giving the worst education to the greatest numberan education cleverly divested of intellectual or moral culture .

    and often proving worse than useless . The infant schools , too , have turned aside from the rational plans with which they started ; and here again we are dissatisfied . Dissatisfied with the empty aristocratic arrogance of the public school , and the inflated ignorance of the trading pedagogue , we try joint stock schools and subscription schools , and wonder that masters , selected because they are thoroughly imbued with old errors , will not discover new truths : we quarrel about religion being ( professedly ) taught or not taught , and about respectability and vulgarity . In time we niay discover that it is worth while

    to inquire , not whether the master is an M . A . but whether he knows his business ; and call upon him to prove that he has penetrated the husk of learning . We may even get the length of discovering that the management of a school is not a faculty inhering in every A . M ., or indeed in every unsuccessful speculator who can persuade parents that he can read and write . Then , and not till then , shall we insist upon our instructors giving

    instruction ; and then we shall take measures for discovering if they have acquired those statesman-like qualities that are indispensable towards enabling them to rule their little world with proper effect . In the mean time schemes of all kinds crowd upon us—like bubbles they arise , and like bubbles they burst—as in the sample we have given above , —leaving much ink impressed on much paper , and nothing besides .

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    National Immorality Cured . 423

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1834, page 423, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2634/page/41/