LA 294 
 .L6 B88 
 1834 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 BUEEAU or EDUCATION 
 
 
/D 
 
 STRICTURES. 
 
 ADPBESSED TO THB 
 
 CITIZENS OF LOUISVILLE, 
 
 /^ ON THE 
 
 RECENT PROCEEDINGS 
 
 THE CITY GOVERNMENT, 
 
 EKSPECTING 
 
 TSS PUBLIC SCSOOL. 
 
 BY MANN BUTLER, A. M. 
 
 Late Principal in the Giammar Department. 
 
 LOUISVILLE, KY. 
 
 PRINTED BT C. SETTLE— MAIK-BTKnTi 
 18S4. 
 

 ^3i 
 
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TO THE 
 
 CITIZENS OF LOUISVILLE. 
 
 Fellow Citizens: 
 
 My connection with yowr City School has been too 
 devoted and too long, to permit me to pass in silence over 
 the late extraordinary measures of the city government 
 respecting it, and the flattering advertisement of a com- 
 mittee of the trustees. It is a regard for your interests and 
 those of your children, which at all inclines, me to address, 
 you on the subject; I no longer hold a situation sub- 
 jecting zeal and experience to misinterpretation and the 
 most mortifying disregard on the part of the munici- 
 pal authority. You are deeply concemfid in the proper 
 administration of the public trust, involved in the man- 
 agement of the City School. No language can pour- 
 tray your interests too profoundly, or with a colouring too 
 deep. It is fraught with momentous consequencies to the 
 morals and intellect of unborn generations. How then 
 shall this important institution be managed.^ Shall it be 
 by children or by men? Shall its instructions be all that 
 ripened experience and zealous ability can communicate? 
 or shall your teachers stand idly and mechanically over 
 your children, while Mc?/ instruct one another? 
 
 Be not startled at the broad and palpable manner in 
 which the question is proposed for your serious considera- 
 tion. For it is in this way, your City Council want to 
 
• 
 
 manage the public school in all its branches, and in all its 
 departments, that is, by monitors, essentially, if not exclu- 
 sively; and not by adult and mature teachers. In proof 
 of this, I submit the following resolution of the City Coun- 
 cil, recently adopted upon the report of a committee com- 
 posed of Messrs. Guthrie, Alsop and Shreve. This commit- 
 tee reported, that '-Hhe Trustees have permitted the teachers to 
 depart from the monitorial plan of teaching and they recom' 
 mend the teachers be iristructed to restore the monitorial sys' 
 tern in strict accordance with the ordinance.'''' 
 
 It is mortifying to see the public business of this city 
 transacted with such looseness, such want of system and 
 precision, as this resolution so abundantly evinces. To 
 substantiate these charges against the city legislation, it 
 is only necessary to look into the ordinance of August, 
 1830, M^hich, by its 9th section repeals all other ordinances 
 within its purview. This ordinance happened, by the 
 courtesy of a committee of council, to be referred to me; 
 my draft of the ordinance had the honor of being sustain- 
 ed by the committee and a majority of the council, not, 
 however, without bitter opposition. 1 trust this piece of 
 history respecting a city ordinance may be pardoned, un- 
 der the accusatory circumstances of the occasion. 
 
 Now the fact is, that there is not one syllable about 
 monitorial instruction in the whole ordinance consisting of 
 nine sections. Moreover, "the trustees are charged with 
 the prosperity of the school, and for the purpose of for- 
 warding it, may ruake any regulations not in contravention 
 of this ordinance, which they may deem necessary" — (See 
 Sec. 2.) By the. 5th section, "the trustees shall be author- 
 ized to employ, with the said quarterly payments, assistant 
 teachers.'''' Under the latter of these sections, assistant 
 teachers have been appointed to both the other depart- 
 ments, but never in the grammar department, beyond one 
 hour's assistance per day in writing, which has itself been 
 most injuriously withdrawn for nearly a twelvemonth. Un- 
 der the former section by a regulation of the trustees, "it is 
 recommended to the teachers to avail themselves of the 
 assistance of their most advanced pupils, whenever it can 
 h^ faithfully and judiciously applied, in order to render the 
 more effectual sfervicc to the schooV This latter clause, 
 
which is copied from the regulations of the Boston public 
 schools, is the sole foundation upon which monitorial in- 
 struction has been established in our present city school, 
 as in a feio grammar schools of Boston. What becomes 
 now of these grave charges of the committee and approv- 
 ed by the council? What is the ordinance, which has 
 been departed from by the permission of the trustees and 
 the practice of the teachers, as charged by the committee 
 of council? What is the monitorial system, which is to 
 be restored in strict accordance with the ordinance? Where 
 is the system prescribed, and in what ordinance? I call 
 for the letter of the law, or if no law of the kind can be 
 produced, then none of that purport has been departed 
 from. It would seem to me that when the Fathers of the 
 city make such grave implications of dereliction in duty, 
 on the part of their public agents, it behooves their dignity, 
 quite as much as their justice, that they should be well 
 founded. Were my lessons as a pieceptor, to be as ground- 
 less as these official rebukes are unwarranted by law, I 
 should expect, as I should deserve, to be cashiered with 
 disgrace. I by no means wish so heavy a penalty to be 
 inflicted on those legislative monitors. I am inclined to 
 consider the whole matter as an instance of monitorial 
 legislation^ and not to be classed among its mature speci- 
 mens. You see my fellow citizens, I speak with a freedom 
 becoming your interests, and my own feelings. The school- 
 master, though said to be abroad, feels quite at home on 
 this subject. He feels the pride of his profession at stake, 
 and in its relations, and on its subjects, he claims full 
 equality with the proudest of lawyers, or the most skilful 
 of physicians, however humble a rank he himself may hold 
 in his profession. The care of the mind requires quite as 
 much skill, and is at least, quite as important as that of the 
 body or the estate. When lawyers and doctors turn school 
 masters, their scholars are just as likely to suffer, as in a 
 contrary metamorphosis, would the clients and patients of 
 a schoolmaster, converted into a medical or legal charac- 
 ter. There is one profession, a higher order of instructors, 
 the head of all the professions, to whose professors I read- 
 ily bow, with a respect inspired by the sacred character of 
 their precepts: It is the profession which teaches "peace 
 
6 
 
 on earth and good vvill to man;" which points affliction 
 and repentance to the joys and the consolations of a never 
 ending state of blessedness, in the bosom of our God. — 
 When I reflect on these holy labors of the clergyman, faith- 
 ful to the duties of his consolatory and humanizing pro- 
 fession, I feel some pride, that the schoolmaster has his 
 agency in preparing minds for such sacred functions. Not 
 that I am insensible to the value of other professions, 
 or that I depreciate the holy efforts of patriot statesmen 
 in defence of the liberties of their country, or the sound 
 usefulness of all practical men. 
 
 What then has been the principle of government hitherto 
 pursued in the City School.^ and how far have monitors 
 been employed? 
 
 The public School began in 1829, on a modified monito- 
 rial footing: It never has been conducted by monitors es- 
 sentially, as now required by the Council. There were 
 two teachers, one was entirely engaged in preparing moni- 
 tors in the old-fashioned way, of the gray head teaching 
 the young; of experience instructing youthful ignorance. 
 The other of the teachers performed the comparatively 
 easy task of superintending the exercises and deportment 
 of the monitors at their stations, while reciting the lessons 
 of their classes. In this stage, your public school was 
 conducted by two teachers, and was not essentially monito- 
 rial. It was then on the footing of the best grammar 
 schools in the ancient and enlightened city of Boston. 
 In 1830 the City Council divided the public school into 
 three departments, assigning one principal to each, and 
 creating a small fee for the employment of assistant teach- 
 ers and other contingent expenses. In this ordinance the 
 term monitorial, which had been employed in the ordinance 
 of 1829, was entirely omitted. The trustees of the public 
 school now endeavored to infuse as much adult instruction 
 into the establishment as their funds would admit: wisely 
 preferring ripeness to rawness, experience to ignorance. 
 They knew that monitorial instruction wherever attempt- 
 ed, with the exception perhaps of Professor Pillans in 
 Edinburgh, had been confined to the more elementary stu- 
 dies^ and was only to be viewed as an economical substitute 
 for a system of higher and adult instruction. On this prin- 
 
ciple the school began ; this foundation is distinctly recog- 
 nized in the account of the school drawn up by myself 
 for the Trustees, and printed by them in 1830, in which it 
 is avowed that "the adult teacher affords the maximum of 
 instruction." It has repeatedly been recognized by the trus- 
 tees, reported on to a committee of the Council so recent- 
 ly as last February ; and yet, after these reiterated recog- 
 nitions, the above mentioned order has been recently 
 passed by the City Council. If this order means anything, 
 it is to place the institution on an exclusively monitorial 
 footing. 
 
 The monitorial system has been constantly employed in 
 my department in the only way that is advisable, and in 
 the only way which has been approved of by the Trustees 
 — namely, just so far as adult teaching could not be em- 
 ployed for the discharge of the instruction. 
 
 It has been the constant effort of the Trustees, of the 
 teachers, and the most enlightened friends of the public 
 school, to give it the greatest quantity of mature instruc- 
 tion, that the funds of the school or of the city would ad- 
 mit. Such has been the purpose of repeated reports of the 
 teachers to the Trustees and of theirs to the Council. Such 
 was the whole drift and aim of a report on the state of edu- 
 cation in the city to the Louisville Lyceum, made by a com- 
 mittee composed of Mr. Chapman (the late worthy Minister 
 of the Unitarian church in this city,) Mr. Goddard, Dr. 
 Powell, Dr. Harrison, Mr. Cosby and the writer of this ad- 
 dress. In this report it is said, 
 
 "Whatever Louisville may hereafter achieve in the lofty enterprize 
 of public instruction, may well be attributed to the noble impulse 
 communicated by the high-spirited and beneficent policy in the Coun- 
 cil of 1829. It was they wholigbted up this commanding beacon, and 
 opened this public shrine dedicated to the glorious services of know 
 ledge and virtue. All we now want, in regard to this building, is, to 
 see it adapted to the increased public wants; an improvement which 
 from the actual progress of the scholars, as well as their increased 
 numbers, is urgently called for. We think it wasteful to suffer the 
 present capacities for education, already in the power of the City, to 
 be comparatively idle, owing to the want of additional teachers and 
 suitable divisions of study. The present school began with two 
 teachers, devoted to about 200 scholars of the male sex, engaged in 
 elementary studies — None above Grammar and Geography. It now 
 
8 
 
 teaches about 350 scholars, of both sexes, employed in sereral of the 
 higher and more liberal branches. Shall the public school be novr 
 arrested in this course of improvement, and turned back upon its ele- 
 mentary lessons? Or shall it go on, imparting higher and more 
 valuable knowledge to its scholars, adequate to the hopes and wishes 
 of parents and children? In this way only can it be made a subject 
 of just pride and extended usefulness to our fellow citizens." 
 
 How these efforts ought to have been received, in a free 
 and intelligent community is left to the public to determine. 
 How they have been received is easier to tell. They have 
 been stigmatised as presumptuous, by members of the City 
 government. They have sneered at them as efforts to eS' 
 cape from the monitorial system. As if it were not com- 
 petent for citizens, at least possessing ordinary intelligence 
 to discuss a subject of public interest in a society boasting 
 and justly so, of th€ freedom of its institutions. As if ex- 
 ertions to improve the organization of society, by any com- 
 petent minds, ought not to be hailed with a generous wel- 
 come; and while their errors might be dispassionately 
 pointed out, their motives should have been shielded from 
 every shade of reproach. What has been the high offence 
 of the Trustees of the City School.? What has been the 
 neglect of the teachers for five successive years .^ What 
 was the sin of the Lyceum committee.? It was to give the 
 city and its rising generation the aid of all the learning 
 and talents, which could be commanded in their service, 
 above those, which monitors could convey. Would it be 
 any benefaction to the parents and children of this com- 
 munity, to give them a pauper-stricken system stamped with 
 the lowest instruction, as a gracious present from a wealthy 
 city? I put the question boldly and plainly to a high 
 spirited people, whether they want, or will suffer their pub- 
 lic agents to paralyze the public school by a mismanage- 
 ment, which shall consign their noble edifice to contempt 
 and insignificancy? What signifies your roomy and airy 
 building, capable of ministering, nobly ministering to the 
 intellectual and moral wants of a thousand children, if it is 
 starved in competent adult instructors? To fill such an ed- 
 ifice with child-instructors of children would be worse than 
 mockery. It would be a cruel waste of public opportuni- 
 ties and public treasure. Nothing but the most imperious 
 
9 
 
 necessity could for a moment justify a course produetiv* of 
 such disgrace and of ruin to the best prospects of the pub- 
 lic school. Does this necessity exist? If the funds of the 
 city can not justify a more liberal and extended organiza- 
 tion of the city school, why not raise its very small Jees, to 
 some moderate standard, still greatly short of those for 
 private instruction? The money would go to animate the 
 public establishment, and to fill the solitudes of its great 
 rooms with a cohipetent number of teachers, and a neces- 
 sary result — with overflowing scholars. 
 
 But the mode of filling up the generous design of the 
 Council of 1829 may be well left, to the financial ability of 
 the City Council. Yet, fellow citizens, have it filled up, at 
 all events; be not satisfied with mere monitorial teaching. 
 No longer suffer the school of your own property, in which 
 you have staked nearly ^"^ 10,000, to continue of walls with- 
 out a sufficient number of teachers to retain the public con- 
 fidence or to deserve it, by carrying forward the institution 
 to greater heights of usefulness. Bricks and mortar are a 
 wretched substitute for a full, active corps of teachers ; such 
 an one might, under the animation of a proper spirit, carry 
 your noble institution from advancement to advancement, 
 till it should become at once a favorite object of pride and 
 a wide spread blessing to your flourishing city, I have fond- 
 ly hoped for years, and have flattered myself under many 
 privations and eff"orts, that public sympathy would at 
 length arouse from its apathy, and impel the city authority 
 to more vigorous and liberal measures. 
 
 But its friends have been scowled upon, the representa- 
 tions of its trustees have been unheeded or rebuked; the 
 remonstrances of its teachers for efficient aid for your ser- 
 vice, have been illiberally attributed to a desire of per- 
 sonal ease in them and of lessening the activity of their own 
 duties. Till at length at "one fell swoop," every feature 
 of liberal instruction, every thing which exempts it from 
 the character of a pauper school, every thing which has 
 deserved and received the public confidence, is threatened 
 with destruction. 
 
 If, fellow citizens, you are satisfied with this mismanage- 
 ment of your valuable concerns, you have the power to do 
 so, however your moral right may be questioned. You 
 
 B 
 
10 
 
 ^Wn however, hear the warning voice of a parting friend, 
 in jour ears. Every deterioration of the public school will 
 put more fees into the private schools. Every inferiority 
 in the teachers, the plan of instruction or the course of 
 studies in the public school, to those of private establish- 
 ments, will fill them with scholars. My professional inte- 
 rest dictates a silent acquiescence in this murderous policy, 
 which is to consign your public school to contempt, and 
 convert it into an asylum for the ill-starred children of 
 poverty alone. But I scorn to be governed by such sordid 
 <5onsiderations, at the expense of ^owr important interests. 
 I have experienced too many obligations at your hands, to 
 treat you so ungratefully. Prompted by this community 
 of feeling, 1 conjure you to arouse from indifference to a sub- 
 ject of so much social consequence. Take the vital inte- 
 rest of city education into your own guardianship, and suf- 
 fer not yojir noble institution to be surrendered to child-in- 
 structors with one adult inspector rather than teacher, in 
 rooms capable of accommodating two or three i^undred 
 scholars in each, of three capacious stories. The public 
 school has been reeling under the frowns of the City 
 Council, for the last eighteen months. Save it from the 
 dislike, or the indifference of the rich and powerful, who 
 may be opposed to it, because they have no personal want 
 of its aids. Take pattern after the noble people of Bos- 
 ton, whose public schools of the higher order, may well be 
 denominated, city colleges, all officered by efficient adult 
 teachers, not taught by monitors. Require your city estab- 
 lishment to be put into full and vigorous operation, and no 
 Jonger allow its ample capacities to lie idle and go to 
 waste, owing to a mistaken economy; if a severer name be 
 not more applicable, to such neglect of public benefits and 
 opportunities of social good. 
 
 If, however, children are to supercede men in the instruc- 
 tions of the City School, by all means let us make thorough 
 work in this great intellectual and moral revolution. Let 
 the grave and reverend seniors of the bar and the bench 
 come down from their proud heights of learning and acute- 
 ness, and give way to the unfledged striplings, who are just 
 learning to flutter about their libraries, and who can 
 scarcely distinguish between Coke and Croke. Away 
 
with the "lucnbrationes viginti annorum," the study of a life. 
 Let the doctors too, learned in books, and still more learned 
 in living disease, make way for the raw students, who have 
 just learned to distinguish one bone from another; but who 
 are yet uninitiated iti the beauties and the natural glories 
 of their philosophical profession. But, fellow citizens, to 
 come home to your bosoms and firesides, when child-instruc- 
 tors shall supercede grown and adult teachers, then it will 
 be equally proper to take your apprentices from their work 
 shops and their benches, and place them over the business 
 of society, instead of the master workmen. 
 
 If one profession is to be inverted contrary to the dic- 
 tates of all good sense, let us make the confusion worse 
 confounded,, and the hope is, that out of such moral chaos, 
 society will sooner be restored to its natural order and 
 subordination. Then years may again claim the privilege 
 of their experience and devotion, to qualify their possessors 
 for the service of society. 
 
 But I should fall short of my task, if 1 were not to lay be- 
 fore you my views respecting the best organization of your 
 public school. I beg leave to xefpr you to a report to the 
 Louisville Lyceum, already mentioned. It was deliberate- 
 ly weighed by a committee of gentlemen having claims to 
 your consideration, very superior to my humble expecta- 
 tions. A few words respecting the nature of monitorial in- 
 struction, must finish my address. Education, it should 
 not be forgotten, consists much more in bringing out the 
 faculties of scholar^s,. and teaching them how to employ 
 their own mental powers in the investigation and applica- 
 tion of truth, than- in communicating a given quantity of 
 learning. By the former method, the child becomes self- 
 poised and trained to enter the lists of exertion with his 
 fellows. By the latter, he is kept in the rear- of other 
 men's thoughts: still these two objects constitute the es- 
 sence and marrow of education, and the mode of accom- 
 plishing them, presents a subordinate and inferior con- 
 sideration. In teaching, a thousand occasions arising out 
 of the character, the temper of the ,scholar,,the nature of 
 the subject — call for a tact and illustration, which can 
 only come from ripe experience. Monitorial instruction is 
 therefore a substitute for adult teaching, always intrinsically 
 
12 
 
 inferior to it. It is only admissible as an economical suc- 
 ceclaneum for the lessons of ripened and adult preceptors, 
 and barely admissible in the simplest lessons and under 
 vigilant, mature superintendence, and never without two 
 adults at least to each room. In this light, it was presented 
 by the Trustees of the City School in their account of your 
 establishmei t, in 1830. In this, they confess the superiority 
 of the instructions of adult preceptors. Such have been the 
 views of five bodies of trustees, for five successive years, 
 composed of some of your most discreet and intelligent 
 fellow citizens. Nor were any other thought of, until the 
 new lights, which have been shed on the subject by the 
 learned professors in the city council. Are you prepared 
 to act upon these new doctrines, so repugnant to your most 
 valuable trustees, the feelings of our most respectable citi- 
 zens, (I do not mean rich ones) and the conviction of the 
 most experienced teachers; confirmed too by all the ac- 
 tual working of the City School in its monitorial opera- 
 tions. Are you disposed to have your children taught 
 upon these raw, imperfect and unproductive doctrines as 
 they are, when applied to any of the higher branches of 
 education. Or shall nothing but the poorest elements be 
 taught in your noble and spacious building? With you is 
 the answer, and with you is the course of conduct, which 
 you shall deem necessary to rescue your city establishment 
 from final degradation and comparative nothingness. 
 
 To illustrate those truths, allow me to point your atten- 
 tion to the noble institution, with which the piety of the 
 catholic Sisters of Charity has adorned your city. In the 
 exemplary devotion of this noble sisterhood, whose most 
 pious labors, are at once both an honor to religion and a 
 blessing to society, you have a practical illustration of the 
 difference in numerous establishments, (as pubjic schools 
 must be to afford extended usefulness) between mature 
 adult instructors, and those of monitors, however carefully 
 superintended they may be. And I predict, that if you 
 permit the City Council to surrender your public school 
 mainly or essentially to monitors, the noble charity of the 
 catholic ladies will eclipse it so totally, that but few years 
 more will see it employed for the purposes of education at 
 all. 
 
13 
 
 Not that I, an unworthy pupil of the venerable and ex- 
 cellent Bishop of Bardstown, can whisper a word against 
 his ancient church — the church of Fenelon, of Pascal and 
 Bossuet; nor do I. But while I sympathize with the pros- 
 perity of the catholic efforts to enlighten society; yet, as a 
 patriot, I desire such exertions to emanate from our public 
 councils, for the good of all the children of the republic, 
 whether protestant or catholic. I want to see the good 
 work proceed from the government of all, rather than from 
 the sanctuary of any church. Yet I fear, the zeal of sec- 
 tarian activity will be lost upon us; and that our efforts 
 are but too likely, amid the public indifference, to turn out 
 like other contests between raw militia, against disciplined 
 forces. 
 
 What but the higher instructions, conveyed in my own 
 and in the female department, have commanded the confi- 
 dence of thoso^of our fellow citizens, who could well send 
 their children elsewhere. 
 
 This parsimony of mature instruction, has blasted the 
 public schools of Philadelphia with the blight of pau- 
 perism, and the complaint has been constant, that the 
 clever lads were always leaving them, so soon as they 
 could render acceptable service in the schools. 
 
 To save the public school of Louisville from this degra- 
 ding operation, to elevate it in usefulness, to make it a 
 benefaction worthy of being a present from a generous 
 and enlightened community, to its less fortunate fellow- 
 citizens; and in fine, to place your school in the same rank 
 with the glorious establishments of high-spirited Boston, 
 has been the favorite object of my heart. The hope of 
 such a result has been the consolation for no little labours, 
 mortifications and rebuffs, in the public service. 
 
 I have now done, I have fought my fight; and if you fel- 
 low citizens, will not take up the cause of your own school ; 
 if you will not battle for its improvement, as a great moral 
 and intellectual legacy for your children and the children 
 of your country, 1 am content. 1 may sigh over the degra- 
 dation of an institution of mighty capacities of social 
 good, if properly administered ; but it is equally the lesson 
 of necessity and of patriotism, for individual will to ac- 
 quiesce in the determinations of the majority of society. 
 
/ 
 
 14 
 
 I return to private labours in a profession, to whose im- 
 provement and duties I have devoted my life. I fear not 
 the full compensation of some experience and some zeal 
 in my humble way, quite equal to the munificence of the 
 Council of Louisville. 
 
\J-- 
 
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