INSTRUCTION IN CIVICS AS A PATRIOTIC DUTY.

(From Address of the Secretary of the American Institute of Civics, at San Francisco, California, at the Annual Meeting of the National Educational Association, July, 1888. Edited, by permission, for the "Patriotic Reader.")

THE existence and perpetuity of a nation based upon universal suffrage, give the school a prominence, and impose duties and responsibilities upon the educator, that do not exist under any other form of government. The school is not merely local, utilitarian, communal, a place where the pupil goes, simply to acquire specific knowledge and culture that may be useful to him in private life; but, in an eminent sense, is a broad, national institution, upon which the highest weal of the republic depends.

The ideal school is the nursery of intelligent citizenship, and the inspiring source of a sterling type of genuine patriotism. The age is a progressive one. The demands of our advancing civilization require that the curriculum of study should be broadened, from time to time. An enlightened public sentiment confirms this position, prompts the people to munificent donations for schools of every grade, from the kindergarten to the university, and the State willingly stands pledged to pay the necessary cost, while reasonably demanding that the school system should be so complete and comprehensive as to justify the vast expenditure.

The humblest citizen is interested in the maintenance and improvement of the public-school system, because it lies at the foundation of our national existence. The active duties of private and public life are better performed by intelligent and cultivated men and women, than by the ignorant and uncultured.

To make certain these results, the schools must train the young to become intelligent voters, fair-minded jurymen, upright judges, discreet and honest legislators, and incorruptible executive officers.

The early statute laws of Massachusetts had this in view, when they specifically enjoined upon "all instructors of youth to exert their best endeavors to impress upon the minds of the children and youth committed to their care and instruction, the principles

of piety and justice, a sacred regard for truth, love of country, humanity, universal benevolence," and other, enumerated, kindred virtues, "which are an ornament to human society, and the basis upon which a republican constitution is founded."

The time has come when the essential elements of civic instruction should be given in all grades of our public schools. This branch of education will tend to awaken and stimulate sentiments of genuine loyalty to duty, and patriotism in the administration of the affairs of the State and nation. Such teaching will develop principles of action that give dignity to the individual, increase respect and reverence for the home, and exert a salutary influence in the discharge of all public and private obligations. Whatever makes the individual citizen more intelligent and conscientious in the discharge of active personal duty will improve both State and nation.

It may not be necessary to change a school curriculum, if the work of the teacher be permeated by the purpose to make the facts and principles of good citizenship the life, the very soul, of the school. The pupil should absorb the love of country as freely as he breathes in pure air. It should surround him in the teaching atmosphere of the school itself. History, geography, biographical reading, and all departments of science, furnish the opportunities through which to inspire youth with ambition to fit themselves for future usefulness as good citizens. We emphasize the fact that this education must be begun early, to secure the best, the highest results. Lord Bacon said, "Commonwealths and good governments do nourish virtue, grown, but do not mend the seeds." The young child, the enfant terrible, has to be converted, by education, into a citizen, active and useful, or he will grow up to become an adult, of ignorance, the tool of demagogism.

But lessons must be given, calculated to make the children and youth of our land honest and upright, as well as active members of the body politic. Instruction in character-building cannot be given through a few inert formulæ, solemn maxims, or even by special exhortations. It must blossom out in all school training, and be combined with that other fundamental law, that good manners, the amenities of polite society, and the graces of fraternity and kindness of heart, must enter into

the preparation of the young for the trying ordeals of active world-life.

The true wealth of a nation is not found in its material accumulations, or in the skill of its people to make money, but in its men and women of character and culture who aim in all the relations of life to elevate and ennoble humanity. Such a training will prepare the young to become a blessing to themselves, ornaments to society, and the bulwarks of the State.

WILLIAM EVARTS SHELDON.

THE PATRIOTIC CHAUTAUQUA MOVEMENT.

(From "The Chautauqua Movement," edited, by permission, for the "Patriotic Reader.")

WE need an alliance and a hearty co-operation of Home, Pulpit, School, and Shop; an alliance consecrated to universal culture for young and old; for all the days and weeks of the year; for all the varied faculties of the soul, and in all the possible relations of life.

Love of country and the spirit of a pure and exalted patriotism must find their quickening and their highest development in the ideas which these institutions embody and represent, the home idea of mutual love and tenderness, the church idea of reverence and conscientiousness, the school idea of personal culture, and the shop idea of diligence, economy, and mutual help. The young and the old need these things. The rich and the poor need them. Capital and labor need them.

Chautauqua has, therefore, a message and mission for all. It exalts education, the mental, social, moral, and religious culture of all, everywhere, without exception. It pleads for a universal education; for plans of reading and study; for all legitimate enticements and incitements to ambition; for all necessary adaptations as to time and topics; for ideal associations which shall at once excite the imagination and set the heart aglow. Chautauqua stretches over the land a magnificent temple, broad as the continent, lofty as the heavens, into which homes, churches,

schools, and shops may build themselves, as parts of a splendid university, in which people of all ages and conditions may be enrolled as students. It says, "Unify such eager and various multitudes. Let them read the same books, think along the same lines, sing the same songs, observe the same sacred days, -days consecrated to the delights of a lofty intellectual and spiritual life."

A plan of this kind, simple in its provisions, limited in its requirements, accepted by adults as well as youth, appealing to the imagination as well as the conscience, must work miracles, intellectual, social, and religious, in household, neighborhood, and nation. It brings parents into fuller sympathy with their children, at the time when sympathy is most needed,―sympathy with them in their educational aims, sympathy with them in lines of reading and study. It incites and assists youth, at school, to do good work in preparation and recitation, protects against the temptations of play-ground and class-room, inspires them to higher courses of study and a grander conception of the responsibility and honor of American citizenship.

Such education must increase the power of the people in politics, augmenting the independent vote which makes party leaders cautious where lack of conscience would make them careless concerning truth and honesty. It must tend to a better understanding between the classes of society, causing the poor to honor wealth won by honest work, economy, and skill; to despise winners of wealth, when greed and trickery gather the gold; to hate sham and shoddy; to avoid struggles between capital and labor, and to promote, in all possible ways, the glorious brotherhood of hon esty, sympathy, and culture,—a culture that addresses itself to all sides of a man's nature.

The Chautauqua movement is based upon the idea that the whole of life is a school, and that a broad catholic basis of reading and study is attainable, alike promotive of the principles of the noblest Christian citizenship, and true to the law of all noble living, that "he who most wisely loves his own denomination or party is likely to love others generously," so that the fruitage for his country, and the world, shall be that glorious liberty with which Christ shall make all men free. JOHN HEYL VINCENT.

TEMPERANCE EDUCATION THE PATRIOT'S ALLY.THROUGH OUR YOUTH THE NATION LIVES.

(Extract from Address of Mrs. Mary H. Hunt, Superintendent of Scien tific Instruction of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, before the Committee on Education and Labor, United States Senate, January 26, 1886, in favor of the bill "providing for the study of Physiology and Hygiene and the effects of intoxicating, narcotic, and poisonous substances upon the life, health, and welfare, by the pupils in the public schools of the Territories, and of the District of Columbia, and in the Military and Naval Academies." Edited, by permission, for the "Patriotic Reader."

Similar enactments have been secured, under the same auspices, in nearly all the States of the Union,-that of Louisiana as late as July, 1888. The imitative Japanese have reproduced some of the books so endorsed, and in Europe the same work has been organized, as appealing to every paternal and patriotic instinct that protects home and country. The Sandwich Islands, as well as Japan, have these text-books in their own language; and the school-book-publishing houses of America are in harmony of purpose to advance the cause.)

OUR fathers believed a government of the people possible, and thus the Republic was born, with all its great destinies anchored to the masses, with all its possibilities dependent upon the capacity of individual citizens for self-government, and that capacity again dependent upon the enlightenment of the conscience and the understanding. Our fathers were far-seeing men. They did not leave this enlightenment of the conscience and under standing to the hap-hazard teaching of the street, of society, or even of the home or the church. Their underlying philosophy was the now accepted axiom, that "whatever we should have appear in the character of citizenship must be wrought into that character through the schools." As those times were simple, so were their schools.

But the curriculum of our schools has kept pace with the demands of our citizenship. When the war of 1861 burst upon us, it found a nation of civilians on both sides of the Potomac. That struggle was greatly prolonged, while "the boys in blue and in gray" were being transformed into soldiers. Taught by that experience, many a State said, "This must never happen again," and added military drill for schools where boys were old enough to carry a musket.