Private education

“ In another direction, recognizing the major role of private education, we are considering policy measures that will enable us to allocate public funds in support of programs of private schools that directly contribute to manpower development in key areas and to improvement of educational quality. ”

“ Equal opportunities for elementary and higher education for all persons; equal opportunity for continued education for all persons throughout life; the right of any person or parent to choose a private educational institution at any time. ”

“ But in the case of the professional schools and the colleges and universities the state is merely dabbling in the matter, leaving so great a proportion of the work to private enterprise that of the youth being educated in such institutions seventy-four per cent, are receiving such education through private munificence. ”

“ It is the force of private voluntary enterprise, that force which has built up the multitude of private schools, academies, and colleges throughout the United States, not always wisely, but always with enthusiasm and wonderful energy.
I am considering what is the best system of organizing the educational work of a nation, not from the political stand-point alone, but from the stand-point of the school-house itself. This work of public education partakes in a peculiar way of the spirit of the human mind in its efforts for culture. The mind must be as free from extraneous control as possible ”

“ The Government has encouraged private initiative in education, but at the same time, it has adopted the necessary safeguards to protect the public interest, and to carry out the educational aims enunciated in the Constitution. Through closer supervision by the Office of Private Education, the number of competent instructors has grown, school libraries have been expanded and laboratory equipment and facilities improved. ”

“ Education is here placed among the articles of public care, not that it would be proposed to take its ordinary branches out of the hands of private enterprise, which manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal; but a public institution can alone supply those sciences which, though rarely called for, are yet necessary to complete the circle, all the parts of which contribute to the improvement of the country, and some of them to its preservation. ”

“ Free schools and public education have everywhere in the United States, shown themselves to be the great principle of the popular elevation and development. The American mind has caught the idea, and will not lose sight of it, that the whole of the States' property, public or private, is holden subject to the sacred trust of providing the means of education for every child in the State. ”

“ The control of education has passed from private parties and even quasi-public societies to the state. The schools have likewise come to be supported by the state, and are open to all children alike without the imposition of any financial obligation. ”

“ In the United States the public school is probably the best illustration [479] of extensive co-operation on the part of the public. We regard the education of the people as a matter of public importance—so vital a matter, in fact, that we no longer depend upon the private school. ”

“ The private institutions of America did a vast work for the education of the youth, but proved entirely inadequate to meet the immediate demands of universal education, and the public-school system sprang up as a necessary means of preparation for citizenship. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The meanly equipped and pretentiously conducted private schools of Great Britain, staffed with ignorant and incapable young men, exist, on the other hand, to witness that public education is no matter to be left to merely commercial enterprise working upon parental ignorance and social prejudice. The necessary condition to the effective development of the New Republic is a universally accessible, spacious, and varied [Pg 268] educational system working in an atmosphere of efficient criticism and general intellectual activity. ”

“ Recently, many schools have developed private sector partnerships in an effort to broaden available resources and reach out to their communities for support. The private sector has much to offer the growing national movement to improve our education system. ”

“ In no nation of the world, too, has private benevolence created and endowed so many private universities of high rank as in the United States, [6] and these have fallen into their proper places as auxiliary agents for the promotion of the national welfare in government, science, art, and the learned professions. ”

“ IN ALL profitable thinking about modern education one central fact is stated or assumed—the fact that education has become a public enterprise. To think of it as a matter mainly of private interest, to discuss it chiefly in terms of personal development, is to ignore the achieved conditions of civilized life and the clear trend of progress. ”

“ We have directed such a system of general superintendence and inspection by Government to be established, as will, if properly carried out, give efficiency and uniformity to your efforts. We propose by the institution of universities to provide the highest test and encouragement of a liberal education. By sanctioning grants in aid of private efforts, we hope to call to the assistance of Government private exertions and private liberality. The higher classes will now be gradually called upon to depend more upon themselves ”

“ For, however numerous and excellent may be the institutions founded by the state, or conducted by private individuals, for special branches and objects, or for particular classes and ages, still, on the whole, education must be regarded as pre-eminently the business and duty of the family. ”

“ Even then public institutions to fulfill the legislation were not established, but it was arranged that the tuition of poor children should be paid for at public expense in private, church, and neighborhood schools, and the proceeds of the sixty thousand acres of land appropriated for ‘aiding public schools’ went to subsidize private institutions. But the idea of common schools continued to develop, and governors and other prominent men constantly called attention to the need of universal education. ”

“ In this connection, we must recognize the role that private schools have in our educational system. Their contribution to the country should be geared at all times to the public interest and their activities attuned to our national objectives. ”

“ The Nation shall guarantee equal access of children and adults to education, professional training, and culture. The establishment of free, secular, public education on all levels, shall be a duty of the State. ”

“ It is my own conviction that a higher order of teaching talent is required in the primary school, or for the early, judicious education of children, than is required in any other institutions of learning. Nor can it be shown that equal ability for government is not essential. ”

“ The exact point where government ownership becomes economical and legitimate must be decided by a careful weighing of the general interests of the whole community.
Universal education.—The necessity for universal intelligence is so evident that governments not only recognize and foster benevolent efforts of individuals for education, but rightly make the organization itself a direct force in maintaining educational institutions. Public schools are now universally recognized by most enlightened people as meeting a universal need, and therefore one of the essentials of good government. ”

“ To supply such alleviations—to afford to our citizens who are engaged in the employment of active life an opportunity of keeping up, or of renewing their acquaintance with those great branches of knowledge which form the staple of a liberal education—is the object which this Institution has especially at heart. Its aim is to lift you, at times, above the distractions of your worldly cares, and the pursuit of your professional interests, by spreading before you man's fairer heritage of wisdom and of truth ”

“ The anonymous author argued that the Government should confine its operations to promoting elementary education, leaving all higher education to be organized on the voluntary principle and to be paid for by those who value it. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Therefore, in conclusion, I would say to all teachers who wish to magnify their office, and to all those who earnestly desire the education of the poor as a means to enhance the reputation and prosperity of our noble empire, endeavour to obtain a universal system of compulsory education. ”

“ These statements refer, not to the small percentage of children who go to high school, but to that great mass of children who leave the school at, or before, fourteen years of age. If you do not believe them, go among working children and find out what their intellectual qualifications really are.
One fact must be clearly borne in mind,—the school system is a social institution. In the schools are the people’s children. Public taxes provide the funds for public education. Perhaps no great institution is more generally a part of community interest and experience than the public school system. ”

“ With this view, it is confidently believed that the public will endow a foundation, say, for forty foundation scholars—say, twenty girls and twenty boys—who shall always receive their education gratuitously, and who shall always be the children of actors, actresses, or dramatic writers. This school, you will understand, is to be equal to the best existing public school. It is to be made to impart a sound, liberal, comprehensive education, and it is to address the whole great middle class at least as freely, as widely, and as cheaply as any existing public school. ”

“ Or an inquiry might be made as to whether the educational system of the country, which should remain under exclusive state jurisdiction, is well adapted to the extremely complicated purpose of endowing its various pupils with the general and special training most helpful to the creation of genuine individuals, useful public servants, and loyal and contented citizens of their own states. In this matter of education the state governments, particularly in the North, have shown abundant and encouraging good will ”

“ Our Country, then, is most abundantly supplied with endowed institutions, which secure a liberal education, on such low terms as make them accessible to all classes, and in which the interests of education are watched over, sustained, and made permanent, by an appropriate board of trustees. ”

“ In fact, the whole public educational system, if the ideals of humanity as expressed by the labor movement, are to receive adequate consideration in public education, will require reconstruction around the social studies. ”

“ The State which seeks economic health must demand that each citizen shall do his best [45] work. He will do his best work in the vocation for which he has a natural aptitude. The business of the school is to discover and foster natural aptitudes. The business of the State as an economic entity is to contrive by all possible means to guide its children into suitable vocations. In a state with a proper economic organisation there must, therefore, of necessity be a vital connection between a child’s school-training and his future career. ”

“ If all is free, common schools, high schools, and colleges, boys and girls of common ability and common love of learning, will get a common education; those of greater ability, a more extended education, and those of the highest powers, the best culture which the race can now furnish, and the state afford. Hitherto no nation has established a public college, wholly at the public cost, where the children of the poor and the rich could enjoy together the great national charity of superior education. ”

“ EXPANSION OF THE EDUCATIONAL IDEA. In all lands to-day where there is an intelligent government, the education of the people through a system of state-controlled schools is regarded as of the first importance in moulding and shaping the destinies of the nation and promoting the country's welfare. ”

“ 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 met only when every prospective citizen may secure without undue sacrifice that extent and kind of education which will make him most efficient in his fundamental social relationships, including his vocation. The state needs knowledge, efficiency, insight, and idealism in industry, commerce, the arts, science, philosophy, religion, and family life as much as in citizenship more narrowly defined. The only logical result of the thoroughly social character of education is public support of every socially profitable kind of schooling, with commensurate public authority. ”