Domestic Encyclopædia (1802)/Education

EDUCATION, is the art of rearing, forming, and instructing children, according to the most appropriate rules and maxims.— Many volumes have, from time to time, been published on this most impotant subject; and though almost every writer aims at giving to the public a system peculiar to himself, yet all agree that the grand object of education is the gradual improvement of our moral, physical, and intellectual faculties.—Thus it happens, that the means to be adopted for attaining this salutary end, constitute all the difference of opinion prevailing among men. It would lead us too far from our limits, to lay down only the general principles by which a good and rational education ought to be regulated. And as this subject has lately been investigated by the Editor of these pages, in the Preliminary Lectures to Doctor Struve's Familiar Treatise on Education; besides which, there have been published several useful works, that are briefly reviewed in those lectures; the curious reader will probably avail himself of the original sources, from which we have no room to insert copious extracts.