Education law

“ Now, we regard the vast amount of ignorance which everywhere exists, as a national misfortune detrimental to the true interests of our country; and strenuous efforts have been made, both in and out of Parliament, to establish a thorough system of national education. The Education Act, recently become law, is a palpable indication of the recognised fact that the people must be educated.
Now I maintain that any scheme originated to educate the poor children of our land, should be universal in its application to them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The provisions of this law show how complicated is the social situation with which the community deals in its compulsory laws. The assumption that it is simple to define the necessary schooling for a future citizen is easily refuted by a little consideration. ”

“ Addressing the fundamental task of fostering virtue through education, we revised the Education Law, formulated the Family Education Promotion Law, and conducted two reviews of draft revisions to the Vocational Education Law to drive modernization in the education sector and to promote the well-rounded, healthy growth of minors. ”

“ Let us have compulsory education for three, or even two, generations, and every citizen in the state will be so well educated himself as to know the value of education, and not to deny it his children. The repeal of any law, prohibitory or compulsory, can only prove this, that the people for whom the measure was originally framed have risen in the scale of moral and social organization. ”

“ In 1881, in France, instruction in the public primary schools was made absolutely free. England has witnessed a very great change in the legal establishment of means of instruction in the rudiments of knowledge for the whole people. The Education Act of 1876 required that every child between the ages of five and fourteen should receive such teaching. In England, and in some other countries, the employment of children who have not had a certain amount of school instruction was prohibited by law. ”

“ Intellectual culture therefore is not properly distributed. A compulsory education law is not enforced because of the interference of the politicians, and thousands of children of school age in the country districts who should attend school are assisting their parents on the farms and in the homes and adding a little to the family income. ”

“ As laid down by law and without prejudice to an adequate assessment of the quality of education, universities shall enjoy autonomy in drawing up their own by-laws and in scientific, pedagogical, administrative and financial matters. Article 77 (Democratic participation in education) Teachers and students have the right to take part in the democratic management of schools, as laid down by law. The law shall regulate the forms in which associations of teachers, students and parents, communities and institutions of a scientific nature participate in the definition of the education policy. ”

“ Educational obligation.—The duty to instruct children results from the natural relations between parents and children. The obligation to raise children implies, in fact, the obligation to instruct them. There is no more education without instruction than instruction without education. To-day educational obligation is inserted in the law, and has its sanction therein. But parents owe it to themselves to obey the law without constraint. ”

“ And those who advocate a system of free education in high schools put the matter where we have put the rights of property and liberty, where we put the institutions of law and religion—upon the public judgment. And we will stand there. If the public will not maintain institutions of learning, then, I say, let institutions of learning go down. If I belong to a state which cannot be moved from its extremities to its centre, and from its centre to its extremities, for the maintenance of a system of public instruction, then, in that respect, I disown that state ”

“ A State Law shall establish regulations for teaching and for support to be given to private education. Article 73
Care shall be taken to provide adequate school-teaching, in accordance with rules to be established by State Law. Article 74
Subject to regulations to be established by State Law, teaching shall be free. Article 75
Education shall comprise care of the development of intellectual faculties, of the formation of character, of mental and physical cultivation and of the development into able members of society. ”

“ The first is that federal intervention in education is unconstitutional. It is the fashion these days to say that responsibility for education “traditionally” rests with the local community—as a prelude to proposing an exception to the tradition in the form of federal aid. This “tradition,” let us remember, is also the law. It is sanctioned by the Constitution of the United States, for education is one of the powers reserved to the States by the Tenth Amendment. ”

“ The evident want of some assistance in the rudiments of legal knowlege has given birth to a practice, which, if ever it had grown to be general, must have proved of extremely pernicious consequence: I mean the custom, by some so very warmly recommended, to drop all liberal education, as of no use to students in the law ”

“ “Education is free. The freedom of education shall be enjoyed under the conditions provided by law, and under the supervision of the State.” ”

“ The citizens shall be entitled, under equal conditions determined by law, to acquire knowledge and training in any type of school and in any other educational institution. Eight years of elementary education shall be obligatory. ”

“ The inconveniences here pointed out can never be effectually prevented, but by making academical education a previous step to the profession of the common law, and at the same time making the rudiments of the law a part of academical education. For sciences are of a sociable disposition, and flourish best in the neighbourhood of each other: nor is there any branch of learning, but may be helped and improved by assistances drawn from other arts. ”

“ The inference at which we arrive for the third or fourth time is, that education is the constraining and directing of youth towards that right reason, which the law affirms, and which the experience of the eldest and best has agreed to be truly right. ”

“ As early as 1647, the General Court, "to the end," as the preamble of the act declares, [59] "that learning may not be buried in the graves of our forefathers in church and commonwealth," provided, under a penalty, that every township of fifty householders "shall appoint a public school for the instruction of children in writing and reading, and that every town of one hundred householders "shall set up a grammar school, the master thereof being able to instruct youth so far as may be fitted for the university." This law has, in substance, continued down to the present times ”

“ No one denies the right of the state to conscript the child for education. But coupled with this assent is the insistence that the education shall be the freest, fullest and most stimulating that we know how to give. ”

“ Underlying these cases, and underlying also the legislative judgments that have preceded the court decisions, has been a recognition that private education has played and is playing a significant and valuable role in raising national levels of knowledge, competence, and experience. ”

“ The inherent complexity surrounding the nature and scope of educational policy affecting expressional activity demonstrates that the educational legitimacy of a school policy governing such activity should, if possible, first be considered and determined by the administrative agency charged with regulating public education. ”

“ Thus, taking all these considerations, and even omitting the more special arguments which flow from legal guarantees of individual rights as established in a free community, we may be sure that, upon broad principles of the common weal, the first of the three courses suggested for public schools, in regard to education upon disputed questions of practical moment to the individual and to society, must unfailingly be most pernicious. ”

“ It is almost within our memory that we have come to substantial agreement that the State owes an elementary education to every boy and girl born within its limits, not alone as a right to the child, but as a matter of safety and practical wisdom on the part of the State; and this broader conception is followed closely by a second and still broader one, that every boy and girl is entitled not only to an elementary, but to something also of higher education. ”

“ Education becomes the essential prerequisite that allows our citizens to be able to appreciate, claim and effectively realize their established rights. The opening phrase to our constitutional mandate for a public school system underscores the truth of the principle. ”

“ Waterman interrupted. "Just a moment, Mr. Manison. In what way must the curriculum be approved? Does the State study all textbooks and the manner in which each and every school presents them? Or does the State merely insist that the school child be taught certain subjects?"
"The State merely insists that certain standards of education be observed."
"In fact," added James, "the State does not even insist that the child learn the subjects, realizing that some children lack the intellect to be taught certain subjects completely and fully. ”

“ The scheme for protecting the school system from being made the instrument of purposes other than a school system should serve in a free society certainly a concern within the constitutional powers of a State bristles with ambiguities which must enter into any constitutional decision we may make. ”

“ To apply such a test is for the Court to assume, however unwittingly, a legislative responsibility that does not belong to it. To talk about 'clear and present danger' as the touchstone of allowable educational policy by the states whenever school curricula may impinge upon the boundaries of individual conscience, is to take a felicitous phrase out of the context of the particular situation where it arose and for which it was adapted. ”

“ If their parents, or those on whom they depend, have the power of obtaining for them this instruction, and fail to do it, they commit a double breach of duty, towards the children themselves, and towards the members of the community generally, who are all liable to suffer seriously from the consequences of ignorance and want of education in their fellow-citizens. It is therefore an allowable exercise of the powers of government, to impose on parents the legal obligation of giving elementary instruction to children. ”

“ But at that time, from 1830 to 1848, no one had a right to present himself for this examination unless he had been educated in one of the public lycées, or some school licensed by the university, into whose hands the government had placed the monopoly of education. A wealthy parent might educate a boy under his own supervision in the best universities of England or Germany, or by private tutors, yet the youth would not be permitted to present himself for examination, although able to pass it with ease. ”

“ Closely connected with the position that it is the duty of the State to see not merely to the adequate and efficient provision of the means of education, but also that the whole cost of the provision should be borne by the State, is the contention that because the State imposes a legal obligation upon the individual parent to provide a certain measure of education for his children, it is also a logical conclusion from this step that education should be free. ”

“ The Educational Rights of All Children.—The right of every child to a minimum of education, which was our eighth point, is also conceded, and the duty of making public provision in tax-supported schools for these essentials of reading, writing, fair knowledge of arithmetic and the rest, is acknowledged. The idea, however, that some people have that all the children in the United States have an elementary schooling is erroneous. ”

“ Yet, in general, the educational policy, matters touching the curriculum, and all the discipline of the student body, as almost a matter of divine right, whether or not by custom or by statute, belong to the men whose craft and experience is in lines of education. ”

“ Free school system.—Intelligence and virtue being the safeguards of liberty and the bulwark of a free and good government, the State shall ever maintain a general, suitable and efficient system of free public schools and shall adopt all suitable means to secure to the people the advantages and opportunities of education. ”

“ In order to give a proper impulse to study, by securing protection for it, some insist that the full control of public instruction should be given to the government of each country, to be carried on by Ministers of State, or public boards; others attach so much importance to the development of the intellectual faculties, that they call for compulsory and gratuitous education, in order to give a great degree of culture to all classes ”