UNIVERSITY COURIER.
9
patriotic American, who has one spark of desire for the glory and perpetiuty of the republic if he thinks that such men ought to have a voice in the affairs of this government? Is this country, under the cloak of freedom, liberty, and equality, to be the repository for outcasts and the scum of foreign society? These disorganizers and destroyers, banished from their own country, come to us, and without any ideas of our constitution or the character of our government, attempt to foment just such disorder and commotion as they stirred up in Europe. They have no feeling of patriotism for any government. The principles of communism, socialism, nihilism are antagonistic to all governments.
Suffrage is participation in governments; in the choice of officers, in the discussing of public questions. The purpose is to keep up the continuity of government and to preserve and to perpetuate public order and the protection of individual rights. Whatever suffrage is calculated to defeat the general purpose, whatever, if permitted, would tend to break up the government, to introduce anarchy, and to bring upon the people the innumerable mischiefs which would follow from the destruction of public order—is not admissible in reason, but is proved by consequences which follow to be condemned by the great author of government. What better examples have we of this than the state of Europe during the last eighty years? Suffrage was given to the French; the Parisian rabble committed all sorts of excesses. Austria granted freedom and suffrage to her subjects; they accepted them as licenses for lawlessness. The idea of unrestrained suffrage and the extent to which it has been carried have shaken European governments to the foundation stones.
To say that one whose participation in government would bring danger to the state and probable disaster has nevertheless a right to participate, is not only madness and folly in itself, is to set up the individual above the state, and above all the manifold interests which are represented by it and bound up in its destiny. Suffrage must come to the individual, not as a right but as a regulation which the state establishes as a means of perpetuating its own existence and to insure to the people the blessings it was intended to secure.
NORMAL.
SCHOOL GOVERNMENT.
The most difficult qualification for the teacher is the power to govern his school correctly. Any plan of government which does not secure the hearty goodwill and cheerful co-operation of the large majority of the governed is wrong and can only bring about evil. Governing power must, in any true sense of the word, have its foundation on the principle of self-government; for who can be satisfied with any control that is again and again crossing his purposes, arousing opposition, and exciting conflict in will or act. That power to which every truly ambitious teacher will aspire is that which will enlist the generous sympathies, and win the honest, hearty support of his pupils. A government, with the utmost freedom to the governed, will secure the most thorough, self-control and self-mastery for good and noble purposes in school-life, thus giving the pupil that training, which beyond comparison will be the most powerful and beneficial for his success in after life.
We have two prominent plans of school government, which we can designate as the "Force Method" and the "Personal Influence, or Self-Governing" plan. The "Force Method," though not as prevalent as it was fifty years ago still holds a prominent place, and is mainly relied on for securing order and respect as well as progress and diligence in study. It is the only plan known or considered efficient by many of our school boards, though any individual director is inclined to think, when force is applied to his child, that it ought to have been applied at some other time and in some other manner; thus implying that the teacher is more blameworthy in his way of administering the punishment than the child in offending.
This plan strives to crush out all evils and to stimulate all that is good and noble by the same process, varied only in the degree or method according to demands of the case. If John has played hookey and the teacher finds it out John knows what to expect. If Peter is caught making figures on his desk with his knife, the teacher in tones that sound like the roar of thunder to Peter, says, "Come up here, I see I must ferrule you again." If idleness has prevented any of the pupils from learning their lessons, the same remedy is supposed to be the only efficient one. If Mary Jane is caught whispering the teacher is sorry, very sorry, that he is compelled to puuish such large girls, but he must do his duty. So Mary Jane passes under the rod. The teacher is a good man, the scholars do not hate him, but on the contrary rather like and respect him. They will admit that he manifested a faithful interest in their behalf. Will sometimes say, "We do behave too badly and will try to do better," but they all long for vacation, and keep strict account of the number of days to the end of the term, and happy is the boy who can say he does not expect to attend school any more.
Teachers, in your own experience, is not this a true picture? if not, I think it has been too mildly drawn. Another teacher still using the same "force method" imposes extra lessons as a penalty for tardiness, mischief, idleness or the breaking of any rules. These lessons are extorted by imprisonments, "in being kept in at recess and after school, or by the use of the rod if necessary." Teachers, this is no picture of fancy, but the practice of thousands of schools, which have a reputation for being well regulated and governed.
The teacher who best succeeds in making a prison of his school-room and a jailor of himself too often is the one who gains a high reputation for ability. Teachers, can inventive genius devise a course of government better calculated to make the school-room repulsive, studies tiresome tasks, and the teacher a tyrant instead of a noble leader?
The next plan is that of Pure Personal Influence, or the plan founded upon self-government. The teachers who succeed in this plan are a master of their profession; for its requirements, physical, mental, moral and social, are such as few possess. By this plan the teacher so governs that it is not known there any government, yet harmony and union prevail in all its purposes, resulting from the one controlling center, the earnest magic influence of the teacher. Have you ever had such a teacher, or has such an ideal never been reached? Have you never had the idea of governing without governing, harmony being the force, order and diligence the results? This is my ideal of a perfect school govern-