If ever infant schools are to become real blessings to the country, they must be placed under the care of wise, discreet, and experienced persons, for no others will be fit or able to develop and cultivate the infant faculties aright.

I have felt it necessary to make these remarks, because in different parts of the country I have found mere children employed as school-masters and school-mistresses, to the great detriment of the young committed to their charge, and the dishonour of the country that permits it.

No wise man would put a mere child to break his colts; none but a foolish one would employ an inexperienced boy to break in his dogs; even the poultry and pigs would be attended by a person who knew something about them; but almost any creature who can read and write, and is acquainted with the first rules of arithmetic, is too frequently thought a fit and proper person to superintend infants.

I know many instances of discarded servants totally unfit, made teachers of infants, merely to put them in place; to the destruction of the highest and most noble of God's creatures! which I contend infants are.

To expect that such persons can give gallery lessons as they ought to be given, is expecting what will never, nor can take place.
The public must possess different views of the subject; more rational ideas on the art of teaching must be entertained, and greater remuneration must be given to teachers, and greater efforts made to train and educate them, to fit them for the office, before any very beneficial results can be seen; and it is to produce such results, and a better tone of feeling on the subject, that I have thus ventured to give my opinion more in detail.