Letters from masters to whom pupils have
been apprenticed were published in the Reports, but only the letters
which had nothing but good to say of the apprentices. Large numbers of
the boys, it is true, have done and are doing credit to the College;
but the public have no means of judging whether, upon the whole, the
training of the College has been successful.
Nevertheless, we believe we may say with truth that invaluable
experience has been gained, and genuine progress has been made. To
maintain and educate six hundred boys, even if those boys had
enlightened parents to aid in the work, is a task which would exhaust
the wisdom and the tact of the greatest educator that ever lived. But
these boys are all fatherless, and many of them motherless; the
mothers of many are ignorant and unwise, of some are even vicious and
dissolute. A large number of the boys are of very inferior endowments,
have acquired bad habits, have inherited evil tendencies. It would be
hard to overstate the difficulty of the work which the will of Girard
has devolved upon the Directors and teachers of Girard College.
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