Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/863

Rh is a lottery, at another a mining speculation; here a gift concert, there a family newspaper sent free for six months with valuable premiums into the bargain; one man has a remedy for every form of disease, another is prepared to reveal an easy and delightful way of making a fortune in a few weeks: it matters little what the pretense is, the fly is no sooner cast than some silly fish begin to rise. Those who pride themselves on being more knowing than their neighbors nibble a little at the bait at first, and enter into correspondence with the advertiser. The latter knows just what to do with such customers. He sends them the most solemn protestations that his business is bona fide, and his personal reputation beyond all possibility of attack. He is prepared to show testimonials by the thousand as to the thorough uprightness and eminently satisfactory character of his dealings. That is enough: the money comes forward by the next mail, and one more gudgeon is hooked.

It may be asked what all this has to do with science. Well, a good deal; or, if not with science, at least with the want of it. What are the schools of the country doing, let us ask, that the Post-Office should have to step in to save the free and enlightened citizens of this republic from the consequences of their own ignorance and folly? The object of popular education, we make bold to say, ought to be to give the people sense; yet here we have indisputable evidence that large masses of our population don't know enough to protect themselves against the most barefaced forms of imposture. The intellectual quality most largely developed in certain extensive regions of society would seem to be credulity. How does this fact tally with our supposed educational progress? Evidently we are here face to face with a question which should come home very directly to all who are interested in public education; and we would respectfully ask teachers and trustees to consider whether, through the schools, something might not be done to diminish an evil which really has assumed very large proportions. Let private education pursue what ends it will; but public or state education, we hold, should aim, above all, at the production of good and efficient citizens. But a man is not an efficient citizen who is so grossly credulous as the majority of those who fall a prey to the advertising quack or confidence-man. A part, and no mean part, of the exercises of every school should consist of the imparting to the pupils of sound practical precepts bearing on civil and social life. We want to develop common sense in the young; we want to give the boys a manly bearing and manly ideas; we want to qualify the girls to act with sound judgment and right womanly feeling in the several positions in life they may be called upon to fill. We want to show that the lust of wealth is a poor motive for any man's or woman's chief activity. Bat how is all this to be done? The mere teaching of arithmetic, geography, and grammar will not do it. It can best be done, as it seems to us, by a scientific, that is to say, a rational exposition, on the one hand, of the principles which go to produce the dignity, security, and happiness both of nations and of individuals; and, on the other, of the causes which lead to national decay and individual misery. In connection with such a course of lessons as we have now in view, it would be well to glance at some of the methods by which dishonest men prey upon society, and, by way of illustration, we can hardly imagine anything more serviceable than an analysis of the advertisements and circulars of some of the "frauds" operated through the post-office. The children who heard these things exposed would carry home the information to their parents; and the net result in many cases would be an