LECTURE III.

CIVIL POLITY A BRANCH OF SCHOOL

EDUCATION.

BY EMORY WASHBURN, LL. D.

THE law of Massachusetts, in prescribing the subjects to be taught in her schools, enumerates among others "the civil polity of this Commonwealth and of the United States." The propriety of such a requirement is to form the theme of the remarks with which it is my privilege to occupy the passing hour.

It is hardly necessary, however, to premise that the subject is not circumscribed by state legislation, nor limited by territorial lines. The republic of letters has no such boundaries. And the culture which makes a man a wiser scholar or a better citizen in Massachusetts, may be relied on for like effects in other portions of our political republic. Regarding it, therefore, in its bearing upon the educational interests of our country, I propose to confine myself to the adaptation of the science of civil polity to the objects and purposes of our common schools.

In a subject, however, necessarily somewhat abstract and unfamiliar as a topic of school culture, I can hope to find little to interest beyond the fact of its intrinsic importance.

I hardly know in how broad a sense the framers of this law intended to use the term "civil polity," nor shall I venture to extend it beyond the principles, functions, and practical application of our system of government, whether state or national. In this sense, every citizen must be interested in its discussion, whether he is conscious of this or not. He is himself a part of the government. His will, his judgment, and the prevailing tone of his opinions, help to form that moral power in the republic, that determines the character and the policy of its administration. But the science of government is not thus limited. It comprehends all the multifarious relations in which the different parts of a great people may stand to each other, as well as the interests which are involved in the intercourse of nations themselves. And when I repeat, the theory of our government makes every man an actor, directly or indirectly, in whatever relates to the domestic police or the external affairs of the State, it becomes an obvious proposition, that whatever of science there is in this, which is susceptible of being taught, should be studied in some form by every one upon whom the duties and responsibilities of the citizen may fall.

When and how this is to be done, becomes, therefore, a question of grave import, when we consider the subject of education in its broader signification. That it should not be postponed till the pupil has left the school, to be attained in middle and after life, as many things are, through the intercourse and discipline of adult years, is at once obvious, when we remember that a young man enters, as a matter of course, upon the stage of citizenship, with all its responsibilities, at the early age of twenty-one years. His vote counts just as much in selecting the ruler and the law-maker as the wisest and most experienced, and his opinion goes to swell that aggregate of public sentiment which at times becomes all but omnipotent. Though no man can be said to have completed his education while he lives, no matter how many may be the years of his sojourn here, the period when the mind is open to new and deep impressions, when the training of its powers goes on at the same time that it is acquiring the knowledge which it afterward applies in the business of life, is circumscribed by a brief space between the opening of childhood and the claims of early manhood upon his physical activities. Whatever education a young man receives is ordinarily crowded into a few years, when he lays aside the habits of the school for the shop, or the farm, or the duties of active life. It is from this that the practical educator draws many a

useful hint in the prosecution of his work. He learns to plant the germ early. He knows, if it is ever to bring forth fruit, it is to be tended and cared for. If he hopes to develop the mind of his pupil by the processes of the school, he must begin with the rudiments, and carry out the mastery of elementary principles into the various branches which he attempts to teach. I have referred to these familiar truths that I might apply them to the subject of civil polity. My aim will be to show, that it not only may, but that it should, form a part of the elementary training and instruction of a child. Its place is, indeed, under the statute, among the branches assigned to the higher order of schools. But I have studied the minds of children to little purpose, or it is in the power of every respectable teacher to make this study of civil polity not only intelligible in many of its principles to the mind of his younger pupils, but to excite in them something beyond a mere desire to reach a certain standard of accuracy in their recitations. The subject is so immediately connected with our ideas of right and wrong, it enters into so much of what goes to make up our national characteristics, and the institutions which we are taught from our infancy to respect, that the child, as soon as his attention is directed to it as something to be studied and learned, begins to perceive that he has an interest to serve, and a curiosity to gratify, by the teachings of such a sci

ence.

Nor is it too much to say, that, in its bearing upon the ultimate condition of the nation, in its moral strength and vigor, the diffusion of sound political knowledge, and the cultivation of a national spirit in the minds of the young, would do more to give strength and perpetuity to our government than a hundred armies of mercenaries in the field. Instil into the mind of every school-boy some accurate notion of what his country is, and what her claims are upon the regard of her sons, and it would grow into a sentiment, which would become all but instinctive in his thought and action.

Without dwelling any longer upon the question at what age a topic like this may be taught, I shall assume that there are some in every school who may be made to understand something of the theory and working of our government. And if I am sustained in this, it is not difficult to show that the State owes it to itself, as well as to every pupil in its schools, to promote a knowledge of our civil polity by the instruction which is there imparted. Will it be said that the number of those who can profitably apply this instruction is too small to make it the subject of a class exercise in our schools; that it is too abstract, too much in the nature of a metaphysical speculation, to be comprehended and applied by young minds? I say nothing whether this is true, with the text-books that we now have. If it is a subject susceptible of