American Political Writing During the Founding Era: 1760–1805: Two Volume Paperback Set

54. Robert Coram, Political Inquiries, to which is Added A Plan for the Establishment of Schools Throughout the United States

PolWritV2_751-800.indd 756 2/23/12 1:38 PM [54} ROBERT CORAM I76I-I796 Political Inquiries} to which is Added A Plan for the Establishment of Schools Throughout the United States WILMINGTON, 1791 Agreat deal was written about education for youth in the founding era. Making education available to a broad public was seen as critical to preparation for citizenship and the development of virtues necessary for continued support of republican government. There was no shortage of plans for national or statewide systems, some coming very close to what we have in fact developed. Robert Coram was born in England but migrated with his family to South Carolina while a boy. He fought in the revolutionary war, serving for a time under John Paul Jones aboard the Bonhomme Richard. After the war he moved to Wilmington, Delaware, where, among other things, he was the editor of the Delaware Gazette. Coram was a strong Anti-Federalist during the ratification period. Ironically, Robert Coram did not himself receive a formal education, but was self-taught in the political and literary classics well enough to run a night school in Wilmington providing instruction in Latin and French. His essay reproduced here is considered by many to be the most advanced and thoughtful piece on education written during the era. It is notable for carrying the discussion far beyond mere formal education to consider it in the context of what we would today recognize as socialization broadly conceived. PolWritV2_751-800.indd 757 2/23/12 1:38 PM [ 757} ROBERT CORAM q6r-q96 Above all, watch carefully over the education of your children. It is from public schools, be assured, that come the wise magistrates-the well trained and courageous soldiers-the good fathers-the good husbands-the good brothers-the good friends-the good man.RAYNAL . This work is intended merely to introduce a better mode of education than that generally adopted in the country schools throughout the United Sfates. INTRODUCTION It is serious truth, whatever may have been advanced by European writers to the contrary, that the aborigines of the American continent have fewer vices, are less subject to diseases, and are a happier people than the subjects of any government in the Eastern world. From the first of these facts may be drawn two important consequences-first, that the proneness to vice, with which mankind have always been charged and to check which is the ostensible purpose of government, is entirely chimerical; secondly, that vice in civilized nations is the effect of bad government. It is plain, if men are virtuous without laws, they may be virtuous with good [iv]laws, for no reason can be given why good laws should make men vicious. Government is, no doubt, a very complicated machine; but vice in the subject cannot be the mere consequence of complexity in the form of government: for if one good law would not necessarily produce vice, neither would one hundred. These truths are simple, but they are not the less useful. Europeans have been taught to believe that mankind have something of the Devil ingrafted in their nature, that they are naturally ferocious, vicious, revengeful, and as void of reason as brutes, etc., etc. Hence their sanguinary laws, which string a man to a gibbet for the value of twenty pence. They first frame an hypothesis, by which they prove men to be wolves, and then treat them as if they really were such. But notwithstanding the Europeans have proved men to be naturally wolves, yet they [v] will assert that "men owe everything to PolWritV2_751-800.indd 758 2/23/12 1:38 PM [ 758} WILMINGTON, I79I education. The minds of children are like blank paper, upon which you may write any characters you please." Thus will they every day refute the fundamental principles upon which their laws are built, and yet not grow a jot the wiser. Whoever surveys the history of nations with a philosophic eye will find that the civilized man in every stage of his civilization and under almost every form of government has always been a very miserable being. When we consider the very splendid advantages which the citizen seems to possess, the grand scheme of Christianity, the knowledge of sciences and of arts, the experience of all ages and nations recorded in his libraries for a guide, how mortifying must it be to him to reflect that with...