The objects of this primary education determine its character and
limits. These objects would be,
To give to every citizen the information he needs for the
transaction of his own business;
To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and
preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts, in writing;
To improve, by reading, his morals and faculties;
To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to
discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either;
To know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he
retains; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he
delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor,
and judgment;
And, in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness
all the social relations under which he shall be placed.
To instruct the mass of our citizens in these, their rights,
interests and duties, as men and citizens, being then the objects of
education in the primary schools, whether private or public, in them
should be taught reading, writing and numerical arithmetic, the
elements of mensuration, (useful in so many callings,) and the
outlines of geography and history. And this brings us to the point
at which are to commence the higher branches of education, of which
the Legislature require the development; those, for example, which
are,
To form the statesmen, legislators and judges, on whom public
prosperity and individual happiness are so much to depend;
To expound the principles and structure of government, the laws
which regulate the intercourse of nations, those formed municipally
for our own government, and a sound spirit of legislation, which,
banishing all arbitrary and unnecessary restraint on individual
action, shall leave us free to do whatever does not violate the equal
rights of another;
To harmonize and promote the interests of agriculture,
manufactures and commerce, and by well informed views of political
economy to give a free scope to the public industry;
To develop the reasoning faculties of our youth, enlarge their
minds, cultivate their morals, and instill into them the precepts of
virtue and order;
To enlighten them with mathematical and physical sciences,
which advance the arts, and administer to the health, the
subsistence, and comforts of human life;
And, generally, to form them to habits of reflection and
correct action, rendering them examples of virtue to others, and of
happiness within themselves.
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