In this view of the proper qualifications of teachers, we need only inquire what is the character of those who are usually employed, to discover the great deficiency which exists on this subject. The common schools of the country are extensively taught, in the winter season, by a set of intelligent and enterprising young men, who, in the summer season, are engaged in agricultural or other employments, not connected with literature; or in the neighborhood of colleges, in some instances, by young men who are in them receiving an education, and who resort to this means to help them to sustain the expenses which they necessarily incur. Far be it from the writer to speak lightly of those farmers' sons who have more taste for literature than the generality of their fellows, and have better improved the advantages which they have enjoyed, and who aspire to the office of teachers; or of those young men in colleges, who are conflicting with the disadvantages of poverty, and by diligence and perseverance, are raising themselves to usefulness, and perhaps to fame. Many a man, who has been an honor to his country, and sustained with reputation the higher offices of the state, has been, in early life, a teacher of a common school. The academies of the country have hitherto been chiefly taught by young men, who have completed a collegiate course, and having exhausted their patrimony, have resorted to this means to provide themselves with the funds necessary for the study of a profession. Before they have had time to become thoroughly acquainted with their business, they have relinquished it for another employment. In a large proportion of instances, the teachers of schools have labored under the disadvantages of youth and inexperience, and to a great extent, of a contracted education.
In the summer season, the common schools of the country have been chiefly taught by a fine collection of amiable, virtuous, and intelligent females, in many respects well adapted to the instruction of those younger children who, at that busy period, are alone extensively found in common schools. But these teachers have generally labored under the disadvantage of a very limited education.
In the cities, teaching has been more extensively a profession, and has received a more liberal patronage; and from these circumstances, it might be expected that the schools of the cities would have risen to a highly respectable standing. This has been, in some instances, true, but is by no means a general fact. Mere pretension and display, on the part of a teacher, often command more patronage than solid and unostentatious merit. The advertisements of teachers, of almost every description, in the cities, will be found to contain a catalogue of studies nearly sufficient for a collegiate course; studies, many of which some of these teachers do not thoroughly, if at all, understand. And in order that illiterate parents may have a high idea of the proficiency of their children, they are hurried through this course with a most unprofitable rapidity. The hurry and bustle and thousand diversions of a city are not favorable to mental cultivation. Show extensively occupies the place of substance; and even an intelligent teacher will often be found sacrificing his own better judgment to a perverted public taste. Fashionable accomplishments, particularly in the education of females, have been suffered to throw into the back-ground those intellectual pursuits, which can alone raise the mind to its proper dignity, and produce a full development of its powers. If most of the teachers of the cities would pretend to less, and attempt less, they would accomplish more, in the substantial business of education. Like some farmers in the country, they should cultivate a less extent of ground, and they would produce greater crops.