Advancement in the means and methods of public instruction : a lecture delivered before the American Institute of Instruction, at its fourteenth anniversary at Pittsfield, MS / by David P. Page.

  • Page, David P. (David Perkins), 1810-1848.
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Advancement in the means and methods of public instruction : a lecture delivered before the American Institute of Instruction, at its fourteenth anniversary at Pittsfield, MS / by David P. Page. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    freely and fully to all classes and to both sexes the foun- tains of knowledge ; the first to establish and maintain at the public expense, wherever they felled the forest and founded a settlement—second in their affections only to the ordinances of religion—the means of public in- struction. And perhaps it is no censurable pride in us that we fondly—and, it may be, somewhat boastfully—repeat the fact, that the spot which is now the site of the city of Salem, in the county of Essex and commonwealth of Massachusetts, was the locality of the very first public free school the world ever saio ! To us, then, who are met within the limits of a State so honorably distinguished in the annals of human im- provement ; to us, who are the descendants of a New England ancestry and have been nurtured amid New England institutions; standing as we now do between the illustrious dead on the one hand and the rising progeny of such a noble parentage on the other ; charged as we are with the responsible office of ministering with pure hands and devoted hearts to the intellectual growth of a rising multitude, and of perpetuating to others yet to come the blessings we have richly received,—it cannot be uninteresting to pause a few moments, by the way, and in- quire what improvements have been introduced, and what advancement we have made in an enterprise so worthy of its founders and so necessary to our very existence as a free and self-governing people. The subject of this lecture, is the advancement IN THE MEANS AND METHODS OF PUBLIC INSTRUC TION. It will scarcely be necessary, perhaps, to discuss the