^^--^ ^^-^^ .<^ " j^\ ^^ 0^ o\.;: ^D ig itize^ by the' I nternerArGhive ^^ '" \^^^^ 20^>^itil funding ,to1iH v c^^r^^A' x^-n. W'h.-^/ -^"^ <<^ -.^ <^ o • » • . o ^ , . « * ^^•n^. °^ *" V'^^ .s*^^-.-. \ ^-^ http://www.archive.org/details/oldschoolsnewOOtuth ^o ^0 i\^^.* S ■\ o ^°-n*.. -^^0^ 2[l)c (Dlt> Scljools aiiii ll)c Jfcto. AN ADDEESS DELIYEBED AT THE CLOSING EXERCISES OE THE TWENTY-NINTH TERM INEW YORK STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, FEBRUARY 3, 1859. BT HON. FRANKLIN TUTHILL. >- PUBLISHED BY REQUEST OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. A L 15 A N Y : JAMES CRUIKSHANK, 35 STATE STREET, 1859 . V s^\ .^\ ADDRESS. When friends are leaving for a new country, we go down to the pier where the iron" Giant leans resting on his elbows, awaiting the signal to force the black hull through stormy seas and mirrory waste of waters, to the land of labor and of promise. With merry words, and glistening eyes, we squeeze their hands; with swelling hearts and husky voices, we cheer when the hawsers are cast off, and, sadly remembering how our past care of them fell short, gaily bid them " take care of themselves." As the ship glides into the stream, and slowly creeps up to the line of the horizon, till at last the whole jost- liug crowd of bold and timid, loving and selfish, ambitious and quiet arc crushed into one black dot in the blue distance; strange fantasies, gloomy doubts and comfortable assurances meet and mix within the breasts of those who stay behind. So here, when anotl'er class cast oil" the fastening that for years have bound them, and swing out into the stream, anxious friends crowd around them to bid good cheer to the departing, and strangers can not look on unmoved. What fate awaits these new recipients of the diploma? Will they find friends in the new homes they seek, and nuggets in the mines they mean to work ? or will they eat poisonous herbs, fall among false friends, and wrestle with grizzlies on the mountain ? Will they bravely hold out amidst storms and oftcuest be wafted by the balmy breath of propitious skies ? or will they be shivered on unmapped rocks, pine with exhausted stores, lie impotent in the sea's trough ? High iiopes and unwhispcred fears, stop on shore at every ship's departure, and liopes no less exalted, fears no Ic^s carefnll}' concealed, tarry with these teachers and these friends, when each new graduate leaves this 4 ADDRESS. school to face the world, for which this was the threshold and port of preparation. Indeed, no doubt most of the anxiety is on the part of those who are left behind. You who are going-, are rid henceforth, for a time at least, from the irksomeness of set duties. While you suffer some sharp pangs at the sundering of friendly ties, you can not deny that your spirits rise — the ballast that so long weighed them down, to-day being tumbled over the side. True there is some tremor — Leander felt some as he plunged into the Hellespont, though the languishing Hero was on the farther side. You are at the door of a new world, your hand is on the knocker, and how should you know whether Beauty or the Beast will open it ? You are about to lead off a solo — unattended for a while at least, before a gaping auditory; whether the first note will be the one you essay, or its sadly flattened fel- low, you can only guess. Teaching school, after all, is very much like discovering Continents, somewhat easier after the first success ful effort. But take courage, friends; the business you engage in stands well with the world ; it is a most honorable one, and about as remune- rative as any of the professions. Your work is certainly a most im- portant one, equal to most in the firmness of its impression upon the passing hour — yielding to none in its power to shape the future history of the world. You go down to meet the up-coming genera- tion; to take it by the hand and lead it to the upland of quiet useful- ness, or the perilous bights of fame. Like Sandy Hook pilots, you go far down to sea, hail and board the arriving fleet of patriots, poets, men of mark, and pilot them through " the Swash," or " the main channel " clear of shoals, past quicksands, up to their port. Upon your faithfulness and skill, perhaps more than upon any one other element of molding power, it depends whether the people of the Empire State in 1880, shall be the intelligent, powerful, hearty race of men which the spirit and genius of the times has pledged that they shall be. Indeed the dullest mind can not dwell for a moment upon the nature of the teacher's errand without an overwhelming sense of its importance. But to expatiate upon this theme was no part of my intention to-day. I came simply, at the bidding of those who have your interest at heart, and the pledge of my poor services ever, to charge you seri- ously, that you touch with no bungling hand the dainty mechanisms ADDRESS. 5 that the people will entrust to you in your new calling; and to con- g^ratulate you tliat the field you enter on is broken up, ploughed and harrowed; that in other words, a new era has opened on the schools. The date of that epoch we can fix to a day. It was that day in each district when the teacher discovered and the people confessed that the true ofiice of the teacher was not to instruct hut to educate children. The just appreciation of the diff'erence between education and instruc- tion was the high wall of separation — the barrier firm and solid, between the old style of schools and the new. The account current with Popular Ignorance was closed, and anew leaf turned over, when the great fact fairly dawned upon the teacher that it was none of his business to tumble facts into the child's mind, as if it were a sunken lot to be filled up, nor even to pile up facts in orderly array in it. The child's mind is not a mail bag to be stufi'ed with a certain quan- tity of letters, news, knowledge of one sort or another, locked, label- ed and despatched on its route through life; it is rather to be treat- ed as a living, growing power or combination of powers — of imagin- ation to be fed on what imagination craves; memory to be grown and strengthened on Mr. Gradgrind's facts; judgment cultivated by opportunities to select the right out of the indifferent and the wrong; tlie reasoning faculty to be developed by exploring the relations that exist between cause and effect; and all of this intellectual feed to be administered through the medium of the child's interest. And in every living thing, every objective topic of thought, tlie child is inte- rested. Its curiosit}' would explore every secret of nature, but it is smitten down by the surrounding ignorance, perpetually rebuffed by tlie stupidity of those who should be its instructors. True, there are many things to be learned — to be committed to memory for which we have no taste (though they may have) — that immense budget of facts comprised in the multiplication table, and that oth(n- world of facts in the spelling of words. The task of remembering these, which we should make such hard work of, seems trivial to them. Happilv, childhood is capable of accomplishing very much, from which man- liood shrinks away, distrustful of its power. But memory, infantile or manly, seems to be constituted as the crab is — disposed to hold fast that at which we are constantly plucking, but relaxing its grasp upon what we surrender. The thousand dry facts that constitute ortho- graphy, and the multiplication table, there is no day in the year, nor year in our lives, that we have not occasion to pluck at, and hence memory holds them with unflinching tenacity. The (