Excerpt from Inaugural Address: Delivered in the Hall of the House of Representatives, Columbia, Before the Teachers Association of South Carolina, December 3, 1850

Gentlemen and Fellow-Teachers:

In preparing, as you have desired me, something in the nature of an Inaugural, on assuming your Chair, I have found myself in the common difficulties of a small mind handling a large subject. By leaving me the whole field of our common pursuits, as Teachers, to explore, you have given one portion of my poor faculties an unusual chance of chasing others of them to death: or, at the best, you have placed me in the old logical position of a certain animal, which no man would wish to connect, eo nomine, with himself, - and the two bundles of hay. So that if I nibble right and left, with little profit to any one but myself - here at the Science and there at the Art of Education; sometimes at Education at large, and sometimes at the discipline of our schools; now at the minds we have to direct, and now at the difficulty of engaging them to mind us, or how we shall direct them - you, gentlemen, must share with me, at least, the responsibility of an ill-spent hour! I shall only demonstrate to you that of which I am well convinced, - how much abler a President you may at any time find among yourselves.

What a mighty word is Education! What a breadth and depth of meaning is in it! What projectile force and power! There is no other of greater importance to either Teachers or the taught. How many other words are contained within its range! Birth and its privileges; parentage and its influences; liberty and its peerless blessings - property; reason, science; morality, piety; with all their inestimable advantages. Education, properly understood, we say, takes them all within its scope.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге Inaugural Address