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The public schools, in their relations to the morals of the pupils and to the morality of the community, are attracting a large share of attention. In some sections of the country the system is boldly denounced on account of its immoral tendencies. In states where free schools exist there are persons who doubt their utility; and occasionally partisan or religious leaders appear who deny the existence of any public duty in regard to education, or who assert and maintain the doctrine that free schools are a common danger. As the people of this commonwealth are not followers of these prophets of evil, nor believers in their predictions, there is but slight reason for discussion among us. It is not probable that a large number of the citizens of Massachusetts entertain doubts of the power and value of our institutions of learning, of every grade, to resist evil and promote virtue, through the influence they exert. But, as there is nothing in our free-school system that shrinks from light, or investigation even, I have selected from the annual reports everything which they contain touching the morality of the institution. In so doing, I have had two objects in view. First, to direct attention to the errors and wrongs that exist; and, secondly, to state the opinion, and enforce it as I may be able, that the admitted evils found in the schools are the evils of domestic, social, municipal, and general life, which are sometimes chastened, mitigated, or removed, but never produced, nor even cherished, by our system of public instruction. In the extracts from the school committees' reports there are passages which imply some doubt of the moral value of the system; but it is our duty to bear in mind that these reports were prepared and presented for the praiseworthy purpose of arousing an interest in the removal of the evils that are pointed out. The writers are contemplating the importance of making the schools a better means of moral and intellectual culture; but there is no reason to suppose that in any case a comparison is instituted, even mentally, between the state of society as it appears at present and the condition that would follow the abandonment of our system of public instruction. There are general complaints that the manners of children and youth have changed within thirty or fifty years; that age and station do not command the respect which was formerly manifested, and that some license in morals has followed this license in manners.

The change in manners cannot be denied; but the alleged change in morals is not sustained by a great amount of positive evidence. The customs of former generations were such that children often manifested in their exterior deportment a deference which they did not feel, while at present there may be more real respect for station, and deference for age and virtue, than are exhibited in juvenile life. In this explanation, if it be true, there is matter for serious thought; but I should not deem it wise to encourage a mere outward show of the social virtues, which have no springs of life in the affections.

And, notwithstanding the tone of the reports to which I have called attention, and notwithstanding my firm conviction that many moral defects are found in the schools, I am yet confident that their moral progress is appreciable and considerable.

In the first place, teachers, as a class, have a higher idea of their professional duties, in respect to moral and intellectual culture. Many of them are permanently established in their schools. They are persons of character in society, with positions to maintain, and they are controlled by a strong sense of professional responsibility to parents and to the public. It has been, to some extent, the purpose and result of Teachers' Associations, Teachers' Institutes, and Normal Schools, to create in the body of teachers a better opinion concerning their moral obligations in the work of education. It must also be admitted that the changes in school government have been favorable to learning and virtue. For, while it is not assumed that all schools are, or can be, controlled by moral means only, it is incontrovertible that a government of mild measures is superior to one of force. This superiority is as apparent in morals as in scholarly acquisitions. It is rare that a teacher now boasts of his success over his pupils in physical contests; but such claims were common a quarter of a century ago. The change that has been wrought is chiefly moral, and in its influence we find demonstrative evidence of the moral superiority of the schools of the present over those of any previous period of this century. Before we can comprehend the moral work which the schools have done and are doing, we must perceive and appreciate with some degree of truthfulness the changes that have occurred in general life within a brief period of time. The activity of business, by which fathers have been diverted from the custody and training of their children; the claims of fashion and society, which have led to some neglect of family government on the part of mothers; the aggregation of large, populations in cities and towns, always unfavorable to the physical and moral welfare of children; the comparative neglect of agriculture, and the consequent loss of moral strength in the people, are all facts to be considered when we estimate the power of the public school to resist evil and to promote good. If, in addition to these unfavorable facts and tendencies, our educational system is prejudicial to good morals, we may well inquire for the human agency powerful enough to resist the downward course of New England and American civilization. To be sure, Christianity remains; but it must, to some extent, use human institutions as means of good; and the assertion that the schools are immoral is equivalent to a declaration that our divine religion is practically excluded from them. This declaration is not in any just sense true. The duty of daily devotional exercises is always inculcated upon teachers, and the leading truths and virtues of Christianity are made, as far as possible, the daily guides of teachers and pupils. The tenets of particular sects are not taught; but the great truths of Christianity, which are received by Christians generally, are accepted and taught by a large majority of committees and teachers. It is not claimed that the public schools are religious institutions; but they recognize and inculcate those fundamental truths which are the basis of individual character, and the best support of social, religious, and political life. The statement that the public schools are demoralizing must be true, if true at all, for one of three reasons. Either because all education is demoralizing; or, secondly, because the particular education given in the public schools is so; or, thirdly, because the public-school system is corrupting, and consequently taints all the streams of knowledge that flow through or emanate from it. For, if the public system is unobjectionable as a system, and education is not in itself demoralizing, then, of course, no ground remains for the charge that I am now considering.

I. Is all education demoralizing? An affirmative answer to this question implies so much that no rational man can accept it. It is equivalent to the assertion that barbarism is a better condition than civilization, and that the progress of modern times has proceeded upon a misconception of the true ideal perfection of the human race. As no one can be found who will admit that his happiness has been marred, his powers limited, or his life degraded, by education, so there is no process of logic that can commend to the human understanding the doctrine that bodies of men are either less happy or virtuous for the culture of the intellect. I am not aware of any human experience that conflicts with this view; for individual cases of criminals who have been well educated prove nothing in themselves, but are to be considered as facts in great classes of facts which indicate the principles and conduct of bodies of men who are subject to similar influences. In fact, the statistics to which I have had access tend to show that crime diminishes as intelligence increases. On this point the experience of Great Britain is probably more definite, and, of course, more valuable, than our own. The Aberdeen Feeding Schools were established in 1841, and during the ten years succeeding the commitments to the jails of children under twelve years of age were as follows:[1]

In 1842, … .	30	In 1847, … .	27
1843, … .	63	1848, … .	19
1844, … .	41	1849, … .	16
1845, … .	49	1850, … .	22
1846, … .	28	1851, … .	8
	—		—
	211		92

In the work of Mr. Hill it is also stated that "the number of children under twelve committed for crime to the Aberdeen prisons, during the last six years, was as follows:

	Males.	Females.	Total.
1849–50, … .	11	. … . 5	. … . 16
1850–51, … .	14	. … . 8	. … . 22
1851–52, … .	6	. … . 2	. … . 8
1852–53, … .	28	. … . 1	. … . 24
1853–54, … .	24	. … . 1	. … . 25
1854–55, … .	47	. … . 2	. … . 49

"It will be observed that in the last three years there has been a great increase of boy crime, contemporaneously with an almost total absence of girl crime, though formerly the amount of the latter was considerable. Now, since this extraordinary difference coïncides in point of time with the fact of full girls' schools and half empty boys' schools, the inference can hardly be avoided that the two facts bear the relation of cause and effect, and that, so far from the late increase of youthful crime in Aberdeen any-wise impairing the soundness of the principle on which the schools are based, it is its strongest confirmation. In moral as in physical science, when the objections to a theory are, upon further investigation, explained by the theory itself, they become the best evidence of its truth. Indeed, it is proved, by the experience, not only of Aberdeen, but, as far as I have been able to ascertain, of every town in Scotland in which industrial schools have been established, that the number of children in the schools and the number in the jail are like the two ends of a scale-beam; as the one rises the other falls, and vice versa.

"The following list of imprisonments of children attending the schools of the Bristol Ragged School Union shows considerable progress in the right direction:

	1847.	1848.	1849.	1850.	1851.	1852.	1853.	1854.	1855.
Imprisoned,	12	19	26	9	1	1	—	1	—

Imprisonments in } the first four years}	66, averaging 16.5 per year on number of 417 children.
In subsequent five } years, }	3, averaging 0.6 per year on number of 728 children.
	——
Difference,	. … 15.9

16.5 : 15.9 :: 100 : 96.36.

"Thus," says Mr. Thornton, "it appears that the diminution of the average annual number of children attending our schools imprisoned in the latter period of five years, as compared with the annual average of the previous four years, is ninety-six per cent.—a striking fact, which is, I think, a manifest proof of the benefit conferred on them by the religious and secular instruction they receive in our schools, or, at the very least, of the advantages of rescuing them from the temptations of idleness, and from evil companionship and example."

I also copy, from the work already referred to, an extract from a paper on the Reformatory Institutions in and near Bristol, by Mary Carpenter: "In numberless instances children may be seen growing up decently, who owe their only training and instruction to the school. Young persons are noticed in regular work, who, before they attended the Ragged Schools, were vagrants, or even thieves. Not unfrequently a visit is paid at the school by a respectable young man, who proves to have been a wild and troublesome scholar of former times."

Mr. Hill, Recorder of Birmingham, in a charge to the grand jury, made in 1839, speaking of the means of repressing crime, says: "It is to education, in the large and true meaning of the word, that we must all look as the means of striking at the root of the evil. Indeed, of the close connection between ignorance and crime the calendar which I hold in my hand furnishes a striking example. Each prisoner has been examined as to the state of his education, and the result is set down opposite his name. It appears, then, that of forty-three prisoners only one can read and write well. The majority can neither read nor write at all; and the remainder, with the solitary exception which I have noted down, are said to read and write imperfectly; which necessarily implies that they have not the power of using those great elements of knowledge for any practical object. Of forty-three prisoners, forty-two, then, are destitute of instruction."

These authorities are not cited because they refer to schools that answer in character to the public schools of Massachusetts, for the latter are far superior in the quality of their pupils, and in the opportunities given for intellectual and moral education; but these cases and opinions are presented for the purpose of showing what has been done for the improvement of children and the repression of crime under the most unfavorable circumstances that exist in a civilized community. If such benign results have followed the establishment of schools of an inferior character, is it unreasonable to claim that education and the processes of education, however imperfect they may be, are calculated to increase the sum of human progress, virtue, and happiness?

II. Is the particular education given in the public schools unfavorable to the morals of the pupils, and, consequently, to the morality of the community? I have already presented a view of the moral and religious education given in the schools, and it only remains to consider the culture that is in its leading features intellectual. It may be said, speaking generally, that education is a training and development of the faculties, so as to make them harmonize in power, and in their relations to each other. Among other things, the ability to read is acquired in the public schools. In the individual, this is a power for good. It opens to the mind and heart the teachings of the sacred Scriptures; it secures the companionship of the great, the wise, and the good, of every age; and it is a possession that, in all cases, must be the foundation of those scientific acquisitions, intellectual, moral, and natural, which show the beneficence and power of the Creator, and indicate the fact and the law of human responsibility. The natural and general effect of the sciences taught in the schools is an illustration of the last statement. Moreover, the mere presence of a child, though he took no part in the studies of the school, is to him a moral lesson. He feels the force of government, he acquires the habit of obedience, and, in time, he comprehends the reason of the rules that are established. This discipline is essentially moral, and furnishes some basis, though partial and unsatisfactory, for the proper discharge of the duties of life. But it is to be remembered that the power of the school is but in its beginning when the presence of a pupil is recognized. The constancy and punctuality of attendance required by all judicious parents and faithful teachers are important moral lessons, whose influence can never be destroyed. The fixedness of purpose that is required, and is essential in school, remains as though it were a part of the nature of the child and the man. School-life strengthens habits of industry when they exist, and creates them when they do not. It is, indeed, the only means, of universal application, that is competent to train children in habits of industry. Private schools can never furnish this training; for large numbers of children, by the force of circumstances, are deprived of the tuition of such schools. Business life cannot furnish this training; for the habits of the child are usually moulded, if not hardened, before he arrives at an age when he can be constantly employed in any industrial vocation. The public school is no doubt justly chargeable with neglects and omissions; but its power for good, measured by the character of the education now furnished, is certainly very great. It inculcates habits of regularity, punctuality, constancy, and industry, in the pursuits of business; through literature and the sciences in their elements, and, under some circumstances, by an advanced course of study, it leads the pupil towards the fountain of life and wisdom; and, by the moral and religious instruction daily given, some preparation is made for the duties of life and the temptations of the world.