teachers, and confined the results of their labors to the
more immediate effects which their daily duties might produce.

5. Perhaps, however, your plan is not the establishment of some new
institution, but the introduction of some new study or pursuit into the
one with which you are connected. Before, however, you interrupt the
regular plans of your school to make such a change, consider carefully
what is the real and appropriate object of your institution. Every thing
is not to be done in school. The principles of division of labor apply
with peculiar force to this employment; so that you must not only
consider whether the branch, which you are now disposed to introduce, is
important, but whether it is really such an one as it is, on the whole,
best to include among the objects to be pursued in such an institution.
Many teachers seem to imagine, that if any thing is in itself important,
and especially if it is an important branch of education, the question
is settled of its being a proper object of attention in school. But this
is very far from being the case. The whole work of education can never
be intrusted to the teacher. Much must of course remain in the hands of
the parent; it ought so to remain. The object of a school is not to take
children out of the parental hands, substituting the watch and
guardianship of a stranger, for the natural care of father and mother.
Far from it. It is only the association of the children for those
purposes which can be more successfully accomplished by association. It
is an union for few, specific, and limited objects, for the
accomplishment of that part, (and it is comparatively a small part of
the general objects of education) which can be most successfully
affected by public institutions, and in assemblies of the young.

6. If the branch which you are desiring to introduce appears to you to
be an important part of education, and if it seems to you that it can be
most successfully attended to in schools, then consider whether the
introduction of it, _and of all the other branches having equal claims_,
will, or will not give to the common schools too great a complexity.
Consider whether it will succeed in the hands of ordinary teachers.
Consider whether it will require so much time and effort, as will draw
off, in any considerable degree, the attention of the teacher from the
more essential parts of his duty. All will admit that it is highly
important that every school should be