Brown_GP15_Letter_086_51174

Gemini Fontes Oct. 1848

My dear sir,

I promised you a long letter on our parting; and I then thought the engagement would have been fulfilled before this time : but pressing duties have urged me onward from point to point so that I have heretofore persuaded myself that I had not time. Nor have I been able to find leisure to investigate the momentous subject we were discussing as I know the vastness of the interests involved in it demand ; still in the hurry and whirl of things I have not lost sight of it altogether.

We are all in usual health at this time. We have just passed through the epidemic influenza, and some of us have been quite sick for a few days; but all are now recovering. Your mother is becoming frail, I think. She has frequent attacks, but no specific disease manifests itself. This, you know, is the premonition of the approaching infirmities of age. Eliza is teaching at Lewisburg — She boards in Dr. Penn's family,- a pleasant place — Her prospects there are flattering — Stephenson's family have the mumps — All were well at Bradshaw's last week.

The following observations will, I believe, comprise in a form as much condensed as I now have time to make them, the substance of any best thoughts on common schools in our state.

I. Without some well digested system of public schools, education will never flourish in our state ; because there will always be a large number of our citizens who do not appreciate its importance with zeal sufficient to stimulate them to sustain it. Our race at large have ever been more prone to sink downward to barbarism than to rise upward to high civilization, and nothing from within has ever elevated a people to great degrees of intelligence. We always find the cause of this intellectual and moral elevation of any people not in the inward, but the outward circumstances of the nation. Here and there, to be sure, an individual genius by the power of mighty life within has bursted through the most formidable obstacles of outward circumstances, and in spite of frowning fortune has risen to moral and intellectual greatness. Such a luminary is seldom without its satelites. The light which sparkes and blazes along the track of such men, illuminates other minds, which would never have seen the way without such aid. This example incourages feebler hearts and strengthens weaker hands. Thus many in any community by watching the breath of spirits full of native greatness may be fired with a life not their own, and he whipped and spurred on to high moral worth and intellectual greatness : but such influence can never extend itself to every member of a great community.

Many will still be found who must be taken up by the strong hand of state power and lifted on high, where the ways of the rising sun will strike them, or they will never be illuminated. Such persons, however, when enlightened fill up a very important space in civil society. they are the ballast of the ship of state — they serve as an invaluable check on the more impetuous spirits of native genius. A state may have such a number of enlightened men in it as will give a just claim to the epithet of civilized, without producing those able jurists, Medical practitioners, Divines, Statesmen, Architects, Philosophers,

and enlightened, virtuous people, which will secure the regular progress of discovery and invention in every department of life. With such attainments the people learn their rights, learn how to govern themselves and how to turn the raw materials of creation to their own benefit -- They are in the way to reach the highest and purest enjoyment of which our nature is capa ble. Instead of quarreling with the Creator for making so poor a world, such as people will arise to the enjoyment of the boundless munificence spread out every where before the enlightened mind. Here you see I am accumulating matter for a volume -- I must hasten on --

II. Those states which have made it a part of their public policy to extend the benefits of education to every member of the community, have been rewarded with a sucess proportioned to the adaptedness of their system to the wants of the people. Without attempting to discuss in a letter the relative merits of different systems of public instruction, I will say a word on the utter unfitness of our own.

Our public funds are not only inadequate to the wants of the country; but they are so miserably managed as to become a public nuisance instead of a blessing. Thousands now depend wholly on the public funds for the education of their children, who would do something themselves, if they were not permitted to learn on this broken [rud?]; and under the present dispensation the funds are not sufficient to extend any real benefit to those who are who are willing to suffer their children to grow up in ignorance. So they bring relief to no body, but disappointment and distress to all. In thousands of cases those who wish to make subscription schools, find themselves disabled by the withdrawment of those of their neighbors who rely on the insufficient public funds. I do think the allowance to districts should be guarded by some such condition as would make it a blessing rather than a curse, if it be inpracticable to increase the public fund. The leguslature might enact that the districts should not be permitted to draw from the public funds their annual quota until the district itself shall have paid into its own treasury a sum equal to twice the amount of the state allowance. Or if the district fail to pay into its treasury annually, then it be permitted to draw its proporation of the public funds with interest once in three or four years. The sum would then have accumulated to such an amount that the district might have a good school one year out of three or four; and this would be infinitely better to have a school of little worth two or three months each year. It would be well also for the legislature to erect a sufficient number of competent boards of examination. who should meet once a year to ascertain the qualifications of applicants, and under oath to grant certificates only to those found able to teach: and allow none others to be employed as teachers under the public funds.

At present the funds inadequate as they are, are too generally squandered on as unworthy a class as would be found in our state -- young men who are too lazy to work and too indolent either to study themselves or to urge them to it. As well might the money be distributed as the state award of [laziness?] withouth the trouble of passing through the useless ceremony of gaing to the

monotonous school room from day to day. Even where the money is not thus squandered, the teacher employed although in most respects a worthy young man seecking the means necessary complete his own eduction, is often without experience and destitute of tact in governing and in communicating instruction. The same zeal to complete his literary course which drove him to the school house for means, still urges him on in the prosecution of his own stud ies, and neither heart nor attention is on his duties as a teacher. The mony [sic] would perhaps do more to futher education, if the state would give it to the young man without the useless task assigned to him as the condition: for no one is profited by his teaching, many have learned, perhaps, to be indolent and careless in the school room.

III. In all this distress and perplexity it appears the state is not ready to go foraward in this great work. A majority, it seems. deem it more important to lay up om external fortune around their sons and daughters than to fill their minds with the incorrupitable treasures of knowledge; or rather, perhaps, a majority have never seen the value of a good education. In view of these humbling facts the question, What shall be done? thrills on every [cord?] of patriotic sympathy and christian benevolence

Let us first ask, What is the object of direct effort? for we will all agree that the ultimate object is the universal diffusion of knowledge; but how is that to be accomplished? Shall those who see and feel its importance undertake the work by a direct effort? or will it not be better to stimulate, if possible, the people to efforts to enlighten themselves?

If we undertake the work by a direct efffort, the number of volentary contributares will not, I suppose, exceed one tenth part of those, who are so far enlightened as to bear without flinching legislative enactments. which would secure adequate funds: and there is, perhaps no more than one third of the votes of the state that would yield to such legislation. On this plan, then, one man must educate his own children and those of twenty other efore sucess would be con plete. This is impossible. But if we hope on this plan to enlighten the people so as to lead them to do the work for themselves, then it must be done by establishing model schools here and there as the funds collected by voluntary contribtion would permit. Who could hardly hope that this would amount to ore than one school for each congressional district; and let us suppose that to be done. Then. 1st. when the proclamaton is made that such a school is established, it will immediately be so crowded that none can be benefited, and it will prove a failure in every respect. Or, 2ndly, let it be announced that for the sake of making it a model school tto enlighten the people on the subject, its benefits shall be confinded to a select number, and it will excite more envy and spite towards the favored few than zeal for the extension of similar privilages to all. 3rdly Nine tenths of the people in the distrct where it is estabished, will merely hear of the fact and cease to make futher inquiry; because they have no zeal on the subject, and they of course will not be exicted to to urge on the legislation on the subject. 4thly Many of the contributors will give from motives more or less selfish, hoping perchance to have a school established in their own vincenty; but as it would be impossible for all such expecttions to be realized, they will withdraw

their contributions, which will weaken the enterprise until others from despondence will also withdraw, and a failure will be the result. As this plan viewed from every point promises little else but failure, and as our aim should be to bring the people up to their duty on this subject. I am persuaded that the most effficent and econom ical plan will be to employ popular lecturers who shall traverse the whole state and lecture publicly in every civil disctrict until the wholse body of the people are enlightened and roused. These lecutures should be furnished with able tracts writ ten in a popular style for gratuitous distribution. Eight hundred or a thousand dollars paid as the salary of such a lecturer, will diffuse more information among the people than ten thousand expended in the establishment of schools. Besides all this the people will set a higher estimate on the school which they establish by their own industry than on those given to them by there neighbors. To do this best a voluntary society be formed at Nashville with its board of managers as executive committee and auxiliary societies throughout the state.

Write me soon and remark freely on what I have said -- Mother hopes to see you when you next visit Pulaski -- She, Mary Ann, and all the little Goons unite with me in much love to you and yours

very sincerly yours Edward Mcmillan

N.S. Brown Nashville Ten.

His Excellency, N.S. Brown

Nashville Ten.