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THE

INTRODUCTORY

DISCOURSE AND LECTURES

DELIVERED IN BOSTON,

BEFORE THE

CONVENTION OF TEACHERS,

AND OTHER

FRIENDS OF EDUCATION,

ASSEMBLED TO FORM

THE

AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF INSTRUCTION.

AUGUST 1830.

PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE BOARD OF CENSORS.

BOSTON:

HILLIARD, GRAY, LITTLE AND WILKINS.

1831.

200. e., 40.

200+ 67.

DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS....TO WIT:
District Clerk's Office.

BE IT REMEMBERED, That on the third day of November, A. D. 1830, in the fiftyfifth year of the Independence of the United States of America, Hilliard, Gray, Little and Wilkins, of the said District, have deposited in this Office the Title of a Book, the right whereof they claim as Proprietors, in the words following, to wit:

'The Introductory Discourse and Lectures, delivered in Boston, before the Convention of Teachers, and other Friends of Education, assembled to form the American Institute of Instruction. August, 1830. Published under the Direction of the Board of Censors.'

In conformity to the Act of the Congress of the United States, entitled An Act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of Maps, Charts and Books, to the Authors and Proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned: ' and also to an Act entitled 'An Act supplementary to an Act, entitled, an Act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of Maps, Charts and Books to the Authors and Proprietors of such copies during the times therein mentioned; and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving, and etching historical and other prints.' JOHN W. DAVIS, Clerk of the District of Massachusetts.

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PREFACE.

On the 15th of March, 1830, a meeting of teachers and other friends of education was held at the Columbian Hall in Boston. It was continued by adjournment from day to day until the 19th, and occupied with statements relative to the condition and wants of schools, in different parts of the New England States. It was thought that advantages would arise from future meetings of a similar kind, and from the formation of a society of teachers.

A committee was accordingly chosen on the 18th, to prepare a constitution for such a society, and to take measures for a future meeting. E. Bailey, B. D. Emerson, A. Andrews, G. B. Emerson, and G. F. Thayer of Boston, H. K. Oliver of Salem, and J. Wilder of Watertown, were this committee.

The work assigned them was executed at several meetings of the committee, held in April, May and June. The sketch of a constitution was formed; and, in order that the convention, which might be

assembled to take it into consideration, might be usefully occupied in the intervals of business, it was determined to invite gentlemen to give lectures before the convention, upon subjects of interest to the cause of education.

Such are the origin and occasion of the discourses which form the present volume.

The committee invited the lecturers, and suggested the subjects. Everything else was left entirely to the lecturers. Their opinions are their own. Perfect uniformity could not be expected from men who came from different and distant parts of the country, and who met for the first time at this convention. This free expression of opinions, independently formed, will not, certainly, be considered unfavorable to the eliciting of truth.

Agreeably to their instructions, the committee called a meeting, by invitations extensively circulated through the country, in the newspapers. The time of the summer holidays, the season of literary anniversaries, was thought most favorable to a general attendance.

ers,

The convention met on the 19th of August, in the Representatives' Hall, at Boston. It consisted of several hundred persons, most of them actual teachfrom at least eleven different States of the Union. It was organized by the choice of Wm. B. Calhoun of Springfield, as chairman, and Geo. B. Emerson and Dr J. W. M'Kean of Boston, as secretaries of the convention. In the subsequent absence of Mr Calhoun, W. Sullivan of Boston was called to the chair.

The convention proceeded immediately to discuss the draught of a constitution which was reported by the committee. This discussion occupied a large portion of four days, and terminated in the unanimous adoption of the constitution which follows at the end of the volume. The chief alterations from the original draught are in the preamble, which was first offered in the convention, and in articles first and fourth. A less comprehensive and assuming name, The New England Association of Teachers,' had been offered by the committee. But as several of the Middle, Southern and Western States, were represented in the convention, and many persons, not teachers, were desirous of belonging to the society which was to be formed, it became obviously proper to adopt a name which should exclude none.

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The intervals of discussion were spent in listening to the discourses contained in this volume. They are offered to the public as contributions to the storehouse of facts from which the science of education is to be formed. They are the fruits of observation and experiment. It probably will not lessen the interest with which they will be read, to know that they were, without exception, prepared in moments of relaxation from the most exhausting occupations, at the season of the year least of all suited to literary labor.

No country, it has often been remarked, has so great an interest in the education of its citizens, as this. Not only private welfare and happiness, and the advancement of the arts and sciences, but the

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