Free school

“ 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. ”

“ The teachers who offer their services to the Modern School, or ask our recommendation to teach in similar schools, must refrain from any moral or material punishment, under penalty of being disqualified permanently. Scolding, impatience, and anger ought to disappear with the ancient title of “master.” In free schools all should be peace, gladness, and fraternity. We trust that this will suffice to put an end to these practices, which are most improper in people whose sole ideal is the training of a generation fitted to establish a really fraternal, harmonious, and just state of society. ”

“ In 1805 the opportunities offered in the private, church, and charity schools were seen by certain of the most prominent citizens to be totally inadequate for a city of seventy-five thousand inhabitants, and a Change of name. ‘Free School Society’ was founded to provide for the boys who were not eligible for these schools. ”

“ The principle, that a Public School education is the right of every child in the land, and that every man should contribute, according to his property, to the education of every child in the community, by whose influence and labors such property is protected and rendered valuable, had greatly obtained, so that Free Schools had increased from one hundred to five hundred per annum, until upwards of four thousand of the four thousand four hundred Public Schools were made free by actual experiments, and by the annual discussions and votes in these primary meetings of the people. ”

“ What is meant by means of education? I understand that, first and chiefly, as extraneous means of education, we must look to a correct public sentiment, which shall animate and influence the teacher, which shall give direction to the school, which shall furnish the necessary public funds. An endowed free academy can have none of these things permanently. Take, for example, the free school established at Norwich by the liberality of thirty or forty gentlemen, who contributed ninety thousand dollars. ”

“ For this reason it was much better to go to a pay school; but you had more fun at a free school, because there were more fellows; you must balance one thing against another. The boy who philosophized the matter in this way was a merry, unlucky fellow, who fully tested the advantages and disadvantages of the free-school system. ”

“ The free school had become an American institution, and many of the numberless inventions and discoveries which have done so much to increase our happiness, prosperity, and comfort, existed at least in a rude form. ”

“ Does any established or endowed school, and do any number even of private schools, make it part of their professed course to teach their pupils the value of freedom, the duties of freemen, and the free principles of the British constitution? Is the system of the public schools, where our statesmen and legislators are educated, addressed to the HEART as well as the HEAD? Is poverty any where more degraded; cruelty to the helpless animal creation any where more remorselessly practised ”

“ The lesson of history -- drawn more from the experiences of other countries than from our own -- is that a system of free public education forfeits its unique contribution to the growth of democratic citizenship when that choice ceases to be freely available to each parent. ”

“ One of our Nation's greatest gifts to its children is the right to free public education through the high school years. No country on earth offers at public expense so extended an education to so many young people without regard to their social or economic background and regardless of their race, creed, color and sex. ”

“ He did not have the advantages of free schools as young people now have. But you may learn from this that one may carry on his education after leaving school. In fact, schools only open the way for acquiring an education. ”

“ A general free school system has not been inaugurated, and any man who will coolly, deliberately and wisely consider the condition, associations and changeable nature of the government of our Territory, will see the wisdom of not entering upon such a system until it can be done under the regulations and privileges which a State government would bring. ”

“ Being, so to speak, a protected monopoly, the public school, to Justify its favored position, should do as much for every child as any other means of education, were it free to maintain itself, could accomplish. As long as the claim can anywhere truthfully be made that parents must send their children to private schools in order to their best education, just so long the public schools are falling short of their full and essential service, a service that involves the giving, not of mere instruction, but of real education. ”

“ Through this injustice, the school has been burdened with faults that are not its own, and teachers, genuine educators, have been confused with the pedantic drill-masters that are the negation of intelligent education and of inspired ethical discipline. In order to see whether education really limits the free activity of the pupil, we must not consider abstractly any school, which may not be after all a school. We must examine an institution at the moment and in the act which 60 realises its significance—when the instructor teaches and the pupils are learning. ”

“ The establishment of the free public high school and the state university represent the crowning achievements of those who struggled to found a state-supported educational system fitted to the needs of great democratic States. Probably no other influences have done more to unify the American People, reconcile diverse points of view, eliminate state jealousies, set ideals for the people, and train leaders for the service of the States and of the Nation than the academies, high schools, and colleges scattered over the land. ”

“ Political education is the kind established some time ago in France, after the fall of the Empire, the object of which is to exalt patriotism and represent the actual public administration as the instrument of the common welfare.
Sometimes the qualification free or secular is applied abusively and maliciously to education, in order to distract or alienate public opinion. Orthodox people, for instance, call free schools certain schools which they establish in opposition to the really free tendency of modern pædagogy ”

“ The change from the old to the new lines of education is even more marked in the common schools than in the colleges and universities. The practical begins in the free kindergarten and runs with more or less directness through all the grades. Millions are expended upon industrial training. The business high schools are a great feature of the free school system. ”

“ But I want them, while giving their money, to give also their time; to study the schools and school problems, and see that their money is honestly spent for the children, and that educational policies are in the hands of men and women who love the children, and believe in freedom and enlightenment—not, as so often at present, in the hands of intriguing politicians, and the sycophants and hirelings of vested greed. The aim of my two books is to set our educators free from this control of selfish private interest ”

“ Mechanics and working-men will find the free school system encouraged by the State, and endowed with a large revenue for the support of the schools. Children can live in sight of the school, the college, the church, and grow up with the prosperity of the leading State in the Great Western Empire. ”

“ To this end God speed the kitchen garden and the cooking school!
Education.—The public school and kindergarten, free libraries, art galleries and museums, cheap literature, and compulsory education laws would seem, to the casual observer, to leave little need for the philanthropist in the field of education. A philosopher of today looks forward to the time when "the object of all free education shall be the emancipation of the individual," and to the time "when general education shall be supplemented by special schools for the special vocations of life." ”

“ A public-school system, in itself, is indeed of enormous benefit to the race. But it is of benefit only if it is kept healthy at every moment by the absolutely free possibility of the competition of private schools. A public-school system, if it means the providing of free education for those who desire it, is a noteworthy and beneficent achievement of modern times ”

“ The duty of the public is to provide means for the education of all. To do that, we need the political, social, and moral power of all, to sustain teachers and institutions of learning; and, endowed or free schools, depending upon the contributions of individuals, can never, in a free country, be raised to the character of a system. If you rob the public schools of the influence of our public-spirited men, if they take away a portion of their pupils from them, our system is impaired. ”

“ Let them ask that the burden of culture studies be put where it belongs, that is, on the shoulders of those who are the sole beneficiaries; and that free popular education be made popular, that is, for all, and not for an elite of society. The public school system was called into existence to do one work, namely, to educate the masses: it was never intended to furnish a college education for the benefit of the rich men's sons at the expense of the poor. ”

“ Answering along this line, the protagonists of salvation through education pretty well agree that the thing itself means the widest possible extension of our public school system, with free state universities and technical schools, and the extension of the educational period, with laws so rigid, and enforcement so pervasive and impartial, that no child between the ages of six and sixteen can possibly escape. ”

“ It may be observed, and we think it an important observation, that the proposal of free education is in the teeth of all our recent policy; and some pressing reasons ought to be given for a complete and sudden reversal of all that we have hitherto been doing. There are many free schools in the country, endowed by 'pious founders,' and established for the special purpose of giving free education to the children of particular parishes. ”

“ Much of the public criticism of the school is no doubt unintelligent, but what are we to say of that blanket defense we hear so often from the educator, that the niggardliness of the public prevents his providing the best schools and the best teachers? Now a country that attempts [Pg 80] almost universally to provide free secondary school education—something provided in no European country—is certainly not thus guilty. ”

“ Is it not fitting and necessary that a nation of such religious, social, political and commercial originality and progress should develop co-ordinate with these a system of education? The free public school system is among the purest and most effectual of our democratic institutions. It has fostered the American [612] spirit, it has laid the foundation for an American culture; it has, in large part, made possible the present success in American industrial life. ”

“ We next pass to consider the term “free”—an epithet which usually accompanies the expression “grammar school” and which has given rise to a certain amount of controversy. A special meaning was given to this term in 1862 by Dr. Kennedy, headmaster of Shrewsbury School, in a paper which he submitted to the Public Schools’ Commission and which was published by them. This special meaning was that the term “free” denoted a “school free from the control of a superior body, e.g. a chapter, a college, a monastery.” He advances the following arguments in support of his contention. ”

“ Oftentimes, at the first, private societies came forward as volunteers in the task of education, but the states early recognized their duty, and usually established schools as soon as they were deemed practicable, either taking over the existing private school or creating one of their own. After a time, as another stage in their development, the schools were made free by express provision, or have become so to all practical purpose. ”

“ But look carefully through any large school and many a small one, and you will find children who would gladly partake of this free education but who for many reasons, and through no fault of their own, are unable to do so. Children who sit idly in school or stumble blindly through a grade or two, and children whose names are finally taken from the register because for them no place in school can be made. ”

“ Free education will shortly be an accomplished fact; the partial absorption of the voluntary schools by the School Boards will necessarily follow, and further facilitate the abolition of what have been the cause of so much evil--result examinations, and 'grant payments.' 'Write "Grant factory" on three-fourths of our schools,' said an educator to me. ”

“ The daughter of the hired man "spelled down" the farmer's son in the district school; the poor country boy and girl earned their board and tuition at the academy by doing chores; American colleges made no distinctions between "gentlemen commoners" and common folk; and as our public school system developed its kindergartens, its primary, grammar, and high schools, free to any child living in the United States, irrespective of his father's health, social status, or citizenship, we might well be excused for thinking that the last word in democratic education had been spoken. ”