The Stereoscope by David Brewster — Read

The observations contained in the preceding chapters prepare us for appreciating the value of the stereoscope as an indispensable auxiliary in elementary as well as in professional education. When the scholar has learned to read, to write, and to count, he has obtained only the tools of instruction. To acquire a general knowledge of the works of God and of man-of things common and uncommon-of the miracles of nature and of art, is the first step in the education of the people. Without such knowledge, the humblest of our race is unfit for any place in the social scale. He may have learned to read his Bible, and he may have read it after he had learned to read; -he may have committed to memory every sentence in the Decalogue; -he may have packed into the storehouse of his brain all the wisdom of Solomon, and all the divine precepts of a greater than Solomon, while he is utterly ignorant of everything above him, around him, and within him,-ignorant, too, of the form, the magnitude, and the motions of his terrestrial home,-ignorant of the gigantic structures which constitute the material universe,-ignorant of the fabrics which industry prepares for his use, and of the luxuries which commerce brings from the ends of the earth and places at his door,-ignorant even of the wonderful operations of that beneficent commissariat, which is every moment, while he sleeps and dreams, elaborating the materials by which he is fed and clothed.

Were we to say, though we do not say it, that in our own country the teachers, so penuriously endowed by the State, are not much in advance of their pupils, we should err only in stating what is not universally true; and yet there are men of influence and character insisting upon the imposition of sectarian tests, and thus barricading our schools against the admission of the wisest and the fittest masters! And while every civilized community in the world is eagerly teaching their people, irrespective of religious creeds, the same bigots, civil and ecclesiastical, in our own country, have combined to resist the only system of education which can stem the tide of vice and crime which is desolating the land.