25. “The books employed,” says Mr. Crowe, “besides the gloomy character of their contents, are in bulk sufficient to discourage the most enterprising child. They are four or five in number, consisting of heavy volumes, which make an antique collection, heavy and dry enough to discourage adults. First ‘La Cartilla,’ containing the alphabet, the forms of prayer, and the commandments of the Church, with no attempt at gradation. The second, ‘El Canon,’ the third, ‘El Catecismo,’ and fourth, ‘El Ramillete.’ All these, which are much larger than the first, contain theological definitions, digests of doctrines, creeds, holy legends, and devotional formulas, addressed to the Virgin and the Saints. Through every one of these the unhappy scholar is doomed to wade from beginning to end; and so deep is his aversion to the task, and so great is the triumph when a child has overcome one of these obstacles to his progress, that the event is actually celebrated in his family by feasting.”—p. 287.
. “In Leon, I may add, there are ten or a dozen schools, in some of which there is an average daily attendance of two hundred scholars. The highest pay of teachers is ten dollars per month.”
But notwithstanding the general deficiency in education, and the means of acquiring it, there exists a most laudable bn p3820.png ambition to secure its benefits. The States of Nicaragua, San Salvador, and Costa Rica, offer the largest encouragement to the establishment of schools of every grade. Under the old Confederation, during the dominance of the Liberals, the most effective means were adopted to educate the people. The officers of the army and the subordinates of the Government, when not occupied with the immediate duties of their stations, opened free schools in the barracks of the soldiery, in the offices of customs, and the rooms of the general and local courts. The house of the National Government, at the close of office hours, became an academy. But the system of education, as all the other plans of improvement originating with the Liberals, were suspended during the disturbances created by the Serviles, and overthrown whenever and wherever the latter attained ascendancy. In the new career now opening before Central America, the subject of education claims and no doubt will receive the first attention of the respective States. But nothing beneficial can be done without a complete abandonment of the old systems of teaching—old authorities and books, and the substitution of others adapted to the age, and the state of general knowledge amongst civilized nations. If creeds and catechisms are still required, let them be assigned their proper time and place; they constitute no part of an education, and are chilling and oppressing in their influences on the youthful mind. The sooner this fact is not only understood, but acted upon, in Central America, the better for its people.