THREE HOURS SCHOOL A DAY:

A

TALK WITH PARENTS.

1. SIX HOURS SCHOOL A DAY, is a curse to Children, a curse to Teachers, a curse to Parents. It is rapidly making of the American People a nation of cripples-Intellectually, Morally, Physically. It is driving stamina out of the nation! It is in the teeth of all the natural laws of the human constitution. I challenge every man and woman, every boy and girl, in the United States, to the proof, that Six Hours School a Day, or a Forenoon and Afternoon session, or that mongrel thing, a Session from 9 to 2 o'clock, is in harmony with any one Law of the Constitution of Man. If THREE HOURS SCHOOL A DAY, then, be true, what a terrible lie, is Six! But how happens it that we have Six? Because some overlook, and the rest repudiate, the SCIENCE OF MAN. That's the reason. The Pharisees of Education, repudiate the Science of Man, because, like Christianity, the "common people" can understand it. Science

8

SIX HOURS SCHOOL A DAY, DESTROYS denounces the present System, and will demolish it. It is a deadly crusade on Nature, and crushes the nobility out of men and women. The period of Childhood and Youth, is the constructing period. As the layers are put on, from day to day, during bodily growth, so is the structure for life. Six Hours a Day so enfeebles them for this work, that the structure is not more than half made, and thus the innocent victims hobble and suffer through the time they stay on earth: they never live! At the best, they have but half the power designed for them by Nature. Our Schools, from top to bottom, and from bottom to top, are DYSPEPTIC FACTORIES! Where are your stalwart men, who hold and express Truth, because it is Truth, though they stand alone in the world? So far from that, nearly every American seems to think himself a goner, if he be not either the head or tail of a Party, in Church or State: so thoroughly has this dyspeptic imbecility, caused by over-schooling, eaten out the capacity for the idea that a man should "belong" to himself, and should not "belong" to a party, sect, or clique. He may act with either, at times, but always "belonging" to himself. We want a race of men and women who belong to themselves! We can't have it, till we have THREE HOURS SCHOOL A DAY: NO SCHOOL AFTER 12 O'CLOCK, M., for that day! That must

come.

INDIVIDUALITY OF CHARACTER.

9

come, before INDIVIDUALITY OF CHARACTER can We want original men and women: those who are themselves, and nobody else. We don't want a race "made to order," by being crimped Six Hours a Day. Education, is every thought and every action from the cradle to the grave. To have independent men and women, a portion of that thought and action in Childhood and Youth, must be independent. Parrots are no longer wanted. This-that is, the next ten years -is to be an Age of enquiry, of controversy, in regard to the Nature of Man, and his relations, to which no other Age bears any sort of comparison. Why? Because Science is to take the place of Guessing-otherwise called Speculation. The man whose attainment is to learn and repeat what others have said, is no longer wanted. He can no longer act a part. The Age for him has gone by. Consequently, we should adapt our School System to the New Age and the New Wants. We now want men and women who can Do: who can strike a blow Now for the race, and furnish THEIR IDEA of what the world Is TO BE. The Six Hours a Day system, makes men mere funnels for that which is and has been, to run through. The men who have made their mark on the world's progress, as a general fact, are men who did not, for any considerable portion of the period of growth of

10

EDUCATION, NOW, IS A THING OF

body, stay in School Six Hours per day. The exceptions, are men whose marvellous positive power made them proof against all assault from without: who could neither be moulded nor crushed by the present unnatural System. This eternal cramming-stuffing-must make Dyspepsia: nothing is better settled by the Laws. What wonder, then, that we see the transcendant plunge from investigation and argument, to a hiss, when new Propositions in Philosophy or in the Social Relations, are brought forward! Is not a hiss or a sneer, a reasonable effort for an Intellectual Dyspeptic? What wonder, then, that men, formed in the image of their God, with attributes divine, should so oft assume the character of the unarguing goose! Free Discussion trampled under foot: for when was not weakness the parent of cowardice? These things are these things will be-till our School System gives Intellectual vigor, by giving a chance for independent thought, and for physical stamina.

2. Our Education is now a thing of Fashion, and not a thing of Science. It is a thing of manner and not of matter; of forms and not of ideas; of words and not of things; of the way in which a thing is said, and not of what is said. Above all, it is a thing of Fashion, not of Science. The time is to come, and is comparatively at hand,