Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 6, Number 841, 3 December 1853 — Common Schools. [ARTICLE]

Common Schools.

Oar 'public school system is one of the most interesting and beautiful features of our government. In this particular is stands as the parent and benefactor of the people. In a republic where all laws emanate from the governed — where the high and low, rich and poor are all equally elevated to the condition of sovereigns, it is both humane and wise on the part of the government to aake liberal provisions for common education — to place all the facilities of learning within the reach of the most humble. This system is the Archimedean lever for the elevation of the people — it bridges the mote which formerly separated the rich from the poor. It is said that " knowledge is power." It is our system of common schools that hay infused into our people the present spirit of inquiry that has peopled these United States with automaton laborers which perform, without sorrow or sigh, fatigue or rebellion, the work of hundreds of millions of stout and ablebodied men. It is this system that has given the masses a knowledge of the principles and provisions of our government — that has enabled them to scan the actions of public men and to pronounce ujx>n the justice or injustice of our laws — it is our school system that has dignified labor and elevated its representatives to positions of honor, trust and emolument. It has imparted new life to literature, awakened a desire for information, to satisfy which requires the publication of more newspapers than all the rest of the globe. These are times that demand education — times that will not reward ignorance — that require learning for others beside the three professions denominated formerly, and now even, by way of preeminence, " the learned." There has been a time, in some few places, perhaps now, when learning was not materially essential to enable a man to prosecute the affairs of life. There are now among us the representatives of the past who regard education for the million as one of the humbugs of modern times — a system that disqualifies the poor for toil, and makes them restless and ambitious to obtain the higher and more lucrative positions. " Will education," say these, " better enable a man to chop, sow, reap, plow, or perform many of the important vocations of life ? " *' We," they continue, " have lived well and made money without laming, and cannot per-

ceive any gooa reason wny it is any more necessary for our children than it waa for ourselves. It is a useless expenditure upon those who are designed, from necessity, to obtain their bread by the sweat of their face." To euch we would say, times are changed — changed essentially in all their principal features. The day of man's servitude is rapidly passing away. New spheres, grand and ennobling, are now opening up to the vision of the aspiring and ambitious, requiring attainments of the highest order. Agriculture is no longer a business that can be successfully prosecuted by the ignorant. Science has, in its broad and comprehensive range, been invoked by those who till the earth. To be successful in this most important branch of productive industry, the farmer should be able to comprehend the qualities, combinations and powers of the earth upon which we tread, and to draw the greatest amount of sustenance from her bosom with the least expenditure of labor — to understand the rarious original elements which enter into the composition of the different members of the cereal family — into grasses, fruits and flowers, shrubs and trees, that the laboring soil may be fed of the food of which it has been exhausted — to know how to combine vegetable, mineral or animal matter, that the hungry earth may be economically fed, that she may ungrudgingly continue to yield her supplies — to know the kinds of seeds, and soils, and tools, best adapted to each kind of cultivation — we say, to be able to understand these things as every farmer

should, requires an amount of information equal, to say the least, of that demanded for the practice of either of the three learned professions. The plow and hoe, the sickle and scythe, and various other instruments of labor, are being rapidly displaced by iron laborers of untiring industry. Invention has but just commenced its great work. If the curtain of the next fifty years could be raised, and the changes which machinery is to bring about could pass in reTiew before the minds of the parents of to-day, we are confident they would feel the importance of securing to their children a superior education. Soon they must become the directors of the ten times ten thousand machines, or be driven into mines and made the variest drudges upon earth. To this condition must the untrained mind come at last. " Knowledge is power/ but man cannot be powerful without it. Times have changed. War, with its gory ensigns, no longer allures the aspirant for fame. The triumphs of peace are commanding the admiration of the civilized world. Inventors now are ranked among the great. The names of "Watt and Arkwright, Fulton, Whitney, and many others, stand high in the temple of fame. For engineering, what a brilliant field is opened. Till now, a great portion of the globe has been a terra incognita ; but our new possessions and new discoveries will offer lucrative employment for an untold number of educated young men to survey the rivers, harbors, vales and mountains. The earth is to be tattooed with railroads. The engineering to be done will be immense. Civil architecture and engineering offer grand inducements. An army of educated young men will find these fields of enterprise abundant and ample. Teaching is another branch that is to be elevated among the grandest and noblest professions. Science and the arts will become more and more appreciated, and soon will those destitute of general knowledge find themselves unfitted for the new duties which his day and generation will impose upon him. In no country in the world is education of more importance than to the people of this State. Here is energetic, educated mind. Informed and farßeeing— posted on all the matters and movements of this stirring age — new fields of enterprise are and will be constantly opening, it becomes doubly important that the next generation should come on to the stage of action with minds well disciplined and stored •with useful information. This State has a very good common school system. There is about half a million of dollars to the credit of the school fund, and about

$50,000 of interest has accumulated, and as yet not one dollar has been appropriated, unless it has been to pay the salary and expenses of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction — an officer that has thus far been of about as much service to the cause of education as would be the fifth wheel to a coach. Why should not the good people of our city take the initiative steps for the commencement, at as early a day us practicable of a system of common schools I By the last census returns it appears that this city has over 1800 children between the ages of four and eighteen years. In a matter of so great a moment, delays are undesirable. If there is any one thing to procure which, will justify the contraction of debts, it is for the construction of good and well ventilated school houses — school books and able and efficient teachers.