As with the community, so also with the school.
The school was an independent organization, but it was likewise an
experimental organization, being, practically, a first attempt to
inaugurate industrial education, and only pupils suited for such an
education were wanted. It was not a place for the feeble-minded, the
deficient or the intractable, but for bright children capable of
responding to instruction directed to certain ends. The teachers,
earnestly devoted to these selected courses of instruction, could not
afford to give time and attention to incompetents.
These matters are worth mentioning for the reason that Brook Farm in
general and Dr. Ripley in particular have been censured for refusing to
accept members of the community and pupils of the school not suited to
the forwarding of undertakings held as almost sacred. This exclusiveness
was neither hard-hearted nor uncharitable, but was simply necessary
under the circumstances. To charge Brook Farm with being heathenish and
unchristian on this account, as certain Puritan critics have done, is as
unjust as it would be to blame Luther Burbank for discarding a thousand
plants to cultivate the one growth giving promise of answering his
purpose.
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