Charles S. Bryant

“ On no individual or associated plan, of a voluntary character, can education be supplied to the entire people, such as the state can rely upon for its own existence. It would take generations to give it even a partial existence in the most favored communities in the most advanced governments. At no one period could the voluntary plan apply the requisite culture to the entire masses passing the age of school culture. And to this conclusion the honorable gentleman seems himself to have come when criticising the present English attempt to introduce a national system. ”

“ Private efforts, individual and associated labors, all personal benefactions, and various national foundations, have severally exerted the voluntary and in part the coercive methods of education, and, under the most effective operation of them all combined, the national illiteracy has not been diminished, but is rather increasing with the growth in population. How, then, can this system, or, properly, no system, be relied on? With it, can England apply to practical demands the education which the slow growth of the ages has made ready for her hand? ”

“ The state must retain control of all the elements necessary to its life. The educational element the state can not intrust to any organism beyond its control. Sovereignty must control the education which is the life and soul of the state. ”

“ And the right of the state to the custody and control of the citizen is as complete as the right of the parent to the control of the infant child. These are only the natural laws belonging to the several relations in the growth of society in all artificial conditions, under all governments. State control, therefore, comes into rightful exercise of authority over the education of every human being entitled to the privileges and protection of government. ”

“ It may not be necessary for the state to pay for education out of the state treasury, and still it may necessary to regulate by law some system of uniform public instruction. It may be necessary for the state to allow local taxation for the education which, without law, they might demand in vain. It may be necessary for states to allow, by statute law, a graded system of education, culminating in a university course. If the child is required to be educated in some particular way, he certainly should have the legal right to demand the time to acquire it, and the course of study legally defined. ”

“ No truly great thing grows like a mushroom. An intelligent value for education can only spread slow, like civilization itself. In our hurry to act, we have not seen how much life and movement is sacrificed to make place for an official system. Those who administer such systems wish to get the flower ready made without any process of growth. ”

“ Over matters of conscience the higher law has dominion; but only over intentional acts has human legislation any rightful control. The control of men's actions lies within, but the control of men's consciences without and beyond, the scope of human legislation; so that state education is a legitimate subject of state control, while the support of a national Church is altogether beyond the sphere of national authority. ”

“ And it would seem that the real question for England and America to answer is. Will voluntary, individual, or associated parental authority at all times sustain the education required by the state? And still further. Will the education furnished by voluntary effort be equal to the demands of the successive generations as they come and go? To provide this, some authority must interpose some organized system of supervision, as active and continuous as the life of the government, and. as extensive as the demands of the generations passing through the required course. ”

“ As stated in a previous report, Cincinnati enjoys the most complete system of public-school education of any city in the world; for the pupils of both sexes have not only open to them the advantages of the district, intermediate, and high schools, but possess the privilege of attending, free of charge, the University of Cincinnati. ”

“ It certainly seems sad, nationally, indeed, that a few more millions of those who will have the destinies of this country in their hands are likely to be launched into active life, with all their education to acquire, ere legislation steps in to give us the advantages which nearly every other civilized nation gives to its children. ”

“ Under our present system the Nonconformists are putting a grievous strain upon their own principles. Whoever fairly faces the question must admit that the same set of arguments which condemns a national religion also condemns a national system of education. ”

“ Now, it is hard to see how a tax for the education of the children of the workman should be more likely to create a feeling of obligation toward the tax-payer than would necessarily exist in any other case of taxation for the support of government, standing on the same legal foundation as a tax for education. ”

“ The cities, in the American State school system, under State law, by means of local levies, limited to the property of the city or district, with scarcely an exception, have built up this class of schools. The common school, with its corps of teachers, is followed by the high-school, with higher instructors and added supervision, and this again by the university, either for the city or the State, with a still higher order of instruction and supervision; and the organism is complete, each element in the series working apart but in harmony with the whole. ”

“ The conditions of the state, also, must be continually advancing beyond the demands of earlier efforts, as society in its tastes and needs moves forward. State growth has no limit, and hence no rule can be laid down for the government of the future that does not embrace the possibility of new combinations. ”

“ The child of the family in turn becomes the man of the tribe, and the member of the tribe becomes the citizen of the state or nation. In this forward movement the family may have had absolute control during the age of childhood. In the next stage parental government is modified, or terminated, and yields to the dominant claims of the tribe. In the still wider national relation, the tribal government, embracing whatever there may be of culture in war and peace, at once yields to the supreme demands of the state or nation. ”

“ When the higher grades are reached, the pupils take more and more optional studies, and less and less required. And, as the curriculum widens toward the end of the course, the linguistic and scientific studies yield more and more to the inclination of the parent or the pupil, until the post-graduates of the high-school, as well as of the university, severally fall into chosen specialties, as their tastes and preparation may dictate. ”

“ This power must be the sovereign will. The Cloister and the Castle, the Church and the State, at different stages have severally presented their peculiar claims to 'wield the scepter of education. And the supreme control is now, in England and in America, fast passing from the Church to the state. Is the growth in this direction sound and normal? The integral elements certainly have more freedom, the intellectual powers more activity, and the forces and laws of nature are made more thoroughly subservient to the wants of the whole. ”

“ The truth expressed in the above quotation, that England, holding one of the most advanced positions of the human race, is yet being outstripped in one industry and another, in one department after another, "by the results of better—i. e., more scientific—knowledge," can not fail, in the reflecting mind, to suggest another truth: that civil society is a constantly developing organism, the range of whose future specialties must remain unknown. Yet through all, in the line of its direction, it is evident that some power must control. ”

“ The comprehensive specialty of the Church is faith in a revealed religion. This, according to each sectarian creed, must be taught by the Church. The distinguishing specialty of the state is law, and obedience to this arbiter is the foundation on which the "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are guaranteed to the citizen, and must be taught by secular schools, either permitted directly or aided by the state. These organisms have each a special work. ”

“ So independent and so varied are the subjects of this uniform, organized system of required and optional studies, and so thorough is the knowledge imparted in the selected fields embraced in its curriculum, that from one city its fame has passed from the Western to the Eastern Hemisphere, and in several important lines of skilled industries and art-culture received the award of superiority at the late Paris Exposition over the schools of the civilized world! ”

“ Herbert objects seriously to state education, because "forced payments taken from other classes place the workman under an obligation; that, in consequence, the upper and middle classes interfere m the education of his children; that under a practical system there is no place for his personal views." ”

“ And the uniformity of the American system of graded free schools, for the forty years of their operation, has not as yet presented any of the special or general evils so much feared by the honorable gentleman, and which to him seem so threatening in the schools of England. ”

“ And every worker of the series required to swell this reservoir of wealth has an interest in the end to be attained, and in every contribution to that end. The workmen embrace nearly every member of the national family. ”

“ However, a little inquiry will satisfy any one that the laborer feels that the world owes him quite as much as he owes the world. This argument, drawn from dependence and obligation, has no application in the family or in the nation. Analogies in nature are everywhere at hand. ”

“ In several of our American cities the system has matured, during a period of some thirty-odd years, from the kindergarten to the university. These schools have produced whatever results the organism of the graded system is calculated to accomplish. The pupils have passed from the lowest grade, in regular order, in large classes, under similar programmes, in a uniform course, supervised by boards of trustees, and taught by instructors rising in literary attainments from grade to grade through the entire series. ”

“ Every day we hear of the ignorance of the working-classes, every other month 'congresses' are held to devise means to remedy the consequences of this ignorance: ignorance of the laws of health; ignorance of household economy ”