Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions. George S. Boutwell
man can accept it. It is equivalent to the assertion that barbarism is a better condition than civilization, and that the progress of modern times has proceeded upon a misconception of the true ideal perfection of the human race. As no one can be found who will admit that his happiness has been marred, his powers limited, or his life degraded, by education, so there is no process of logic that can commend to the human understanding the doctrine that bodies of men are either less happy or virtuous for the culture of the intellect. I am not aware of any human experience that conflicts with this view; for individual cases of criminals who have been well educated prove nothing in themselves, but are to be considered as facts in great classes of facts which indicate the principles and conduct of bodies of men who are subject to similar influences. In fact, the statistics to which I have had access tend to show that crime diminishes as intelligence increases. On this point the experience of Great Britain is probably more definite, and, of course, more valuable, than our own. The Aberdeen Feeding Schools were established in 1841, and during the ten years succeeding the commitments to the jails of children under twelve years of age were as follows:[1]
| In 1842, … . | 30 | In 1847, … . | 27 |
| 1843, … . | 63 | 1848, … . | 19 |
| 1844, … . | 41 | 1849, … . | 16 |
| 1845, … . | 49 | 1850, … . | 22 |
| 1846, … . | 28 | 1851, … . | 8 |
| — | — | ||
| 211 | 92 |
In the work of Mr. Hill it is also stated that "the number of children under twelve committed for crime to the Aberdeen prisons, during the last six years, was as follows:
| Males. | Females. | Total. | |
| 1849–50, … . | 11 | . … . 5 | . … . 16 |
| 1850–51, … . | 14 | . … . 8 | . … . 22 |
| 1851–52, … . | 6 | . … . 2 | . … . 8 |
| 1852–53, … . | 28 | . … . 1 | . … . 24 |
| 1853–54, … . | 24 | . … . 1 | . … . 25 |
| 1854–55, … . | 47 | . … . 2 | . … . 49 |
"It will be observed that in the last three years there has been a great increase of boy crime, contemporaneously with an almost total absence of girl crime, though formerly the amount of the latter was considerable. Now, since this extraordinary difference coïncides in point of time with the fact of full girls' schools and half empty boys' schools, the inference can hardly be avoided that the two facts bear the relation of cause and effect, and that, so far from the late increase of youthful crime in Aberdeen any-wise impairing the soundness of the principle on which the schools are based, it is its strongest confirmation. In moral as in physical science, when the objections to a theory are, upon further investigation, explained by the theory itself, they become the best evidence of its truth. Indeed, it is proved, by the experience, not only of Aberdeen, but, as far as I have been able to ascertain, of every town in Scotland in which industrial schools have been established, that the number of children in the schools and the number in the jail are like the two ends of a scale-beam; as the one rises the other falls, and vice versa.
"The following list of imprisonments of children attending the schools of the Bristol Ragged School Union shows considerable progress in the right direction:
| 1847. | 1848. | 1849. | 1850. | 1851. | 1852. | 1853. | 1854. | 1855. | |
| Imprisoned, | 12 | 19 | 26 | 9 | 1 | 1 | — | 1 | — |
| Imprisonments in } the first four years} | 66, averaging 16.5 per year on number of 417 children. |
| In subsequent five } years, } | 3, averaging 0.6 per year on number of 728 children. |
| —— | |
| Difference, | . … 15.9 |
16.5 : 15.9 :: 100 : 96.36.
"Thus," says Mr. Thornton, "it appears that the diminution of the average annual number of children attending our schools imprisoned in the latter period of five years, as compared with the annual average of the previous four years, is ninety-six per cent.—a striking fact, which is, I think, a manifest proof of the benefit conferred on them by the religious and secular instruction they receive in our schools, or, at the very least, of the advantages of rescuing them from the temptations of idleness, and from evil companionship and example."
I also copy, from the work already referred to, an extract from a paper on the Reformatory Institutions in and near Bristol, by Mary Carpenter: "In numberless instances children may be seen growing up decently, who owe their only training and instruction to the school. Young persons are noticed in regular work, who, before they attended the Ragged Schools, were vagrants, or even thieves. Not unfrequently a visit is paid at the school by a respectable young man, who proves to have been a wild and troublesome scholar of former times."
Mr. Hill, Recorder of Birmingham, in a charge to the grand jury, made in 1839, speaking of the means of repressing crime, says: "It is to education, in the large and true meaning of the word, that we must all look as the means of striking at the root of the evil. Indeed, of the close connection between ignorance and crime the calendar which I hold in my hand furnishes a striking example. Each prisoner has been examined as to the state of his education, and the result is set down opposite his name. It appears, then, that of forty-three prisoners only one can read and write well. The majority can neither