Private school

“ Persons keeping private primary schools are free with regard to their methods, programmes and books employed, except that they may not use books expressly prohibited by the superior council of public instruction. Before opening a private school the person proposing to do so must give notice to the mayor, prefect and academy inspector, and forward his diplomas and other particulars to the latter official. ”

“ The private school has its place, and its establishment is encouraged by localities and regarded with favor by the government, but the people, acting as a whole, insist that the school door shall be open to every child born into the country. In the last quarter of a century much advance has been made in the establishment by the public of technical schools, such as law schools, medical colleges, dentistry schools, industrial schools and agricultural colleges. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And, first, the high school must be a public school. A public school I understand to be a school established by the public,—supported chiefly or entirely by the public, controlled by the public, and accessible to the public upon terms of equality without special charge for tuition.
Private schools may be established and controlled by an individual, or by an association of individuals, who have no corporate rights under the government, but receive pupils upon terms agreed upon, subject to the ordinary laws of the land. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is absolutely essential that it should be established on principle that every child, not excepting the children of the well-to-do, must attend a public elementary school, and that neither attendance at a private school nor private domestic instruction can be accepted in lieu of such attendance—if [216] only for the reason that not until this obligation is universally enforced will the richer classes acquire a genuine interest in the public elementary schools. ”

“ The goal for the student who wants to advance is not the diploma of graduation, but preparation for the entrance examinations which are next higher. This preparation can perhaps be obtained more thoroughly, more quickly, and under more fortunate social conditions, in a private school, which charges a high tuition, but in this way is able to engage the very best teachers, and able perhaps to have smaller classes than the public schools. And such a private school will be able to extend its influence over all education. ”

“ 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 ”

“ It is not everywhere possible to establish a public high school. In some cases the population may not be sufficient, in others there may not be adequate wealth, and in others there may not be an elevated public sentiment equal to the emergency. In such circumstances, those who desire education must obtain it in the best manner possible; and academies, whether free or not, and private schools, whether endowed or not, should be thankfully accepted and encouraged. Nor will high schools meet all the wants of society. ”

“ Each child must be compelled to attend the public school, or a private school which fully meets the requirements of the public school, until he has completed the elementary-school education. Such school attendance should be rigidly enforced throughout the country, which would be possible if the local school authorities, in the enforcement of the law, were made more independent of the will of the parents in their districts. ”

“ We hear a great deal about the differences between public and private schools, and certainly there are differences; but the pupils of the public and the private schools are very much alike. It is considerably easier to distinguish a public from a private school than it is to tell a public- school child from a private-school child. ”

“ All elementary private schools should be licensed or registered in the office of the public-school authorities; all should meet the same requirements as the elementary public schools in regard to the qualifications of teachers, school terms, program, teaching language, and inspection and direction by the public-school authorities. ”

“ There is another advantage in the system of public high schools, which I imagine the people do not always at first appreciate. It is, that the private school, with the same teachers, the same apparatus, and the same means, cannot give the education which may be, and usually is, furnished in the public schools. This statement may seem to require some considerable support. We must look at facts as they are. Some people are poor ”

“ The second encourages mental activity at the expense of physique. The entrance of a child into school, the promotion from one class to another, the entrance into college, are thus determined either by the purely artificial test of age or by the individual teacher's discretion. There is nothing to prevent the ambitious teacher or the ambitious parent from pushing a child into kindergarten at four, high school at twelve, college at fifteen. If this cannot be done at the public school, a private school is resorted to. A community of college professors once started a school for faculty children. ”

“ My own private school was of the old-fashioned type, with a very independent tone of tradition; but nowadays private schools are smaller and much more domesticated. The boys live like little brothers in the company of active and kindly young masters ”

“ The school inspector will feel himself moved to display his modern spirit and to show his pedagogical efficiency in just these ways. And many a private school, in order to make itself attractive to the public, is obliged to introduce the latest pedagogical foibles and to make all sorts of concessions, perhaps against its will. ”

“ The State may choose to divide up its public schools into a dozen different options and label them magnet schools, community schools, or whatever else it decides to call them, but the State is still required to provide a public education and it is the State’s decision to fund private school education over and above its traditional obligation that is at issue in these cases. ”

“ It is quite safe to assert that there is not a private school of importance that does not take under its protection and support at least one such institution, while large numbers of teachers either own camps or assist in their management as instructors. ”

“ The settlement of the question of general taxation for education, the elimination of the rate-bill by the cities and later by the States, the establishment of the American common school as the result of a long native evolution, and the complete establishment of public control over the entire elementary-school system, all tended to bring the semi-private tuition academy into question. Many asked why not extend the public-school system upward to provide the necessary higher education for all in one common state- supported school. ”

“ ARTICLE 147 Private schools, as a substitute for the public schools, require the approval of the state and are subject to the laws of the States. Approval shall be granted if the private schools do not fall below the public schools in their educational aims and equipment as well as in the scientific training of their teachers, and if no separation of the pupils according to the wealth of their parents is fostered. ”

“ The important role of private schools in the education of our youth deserves mention here. There are now throughout the archipelago 1,770 private educational institutions from the lower grades to university level, with over three-quarters of a million students. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the rural schools the American school of the 3 Rs provided for all the children, from the little ones up, so long as they could advantageously partake of its instruction. Education in advance of this common school training was in semi-private institutions—the academies and colleges—in which a tuition fee was charged. The next struggle came in the attempt to extend the system upward so as to provide to pupils, free of charge, a more complete education than the common schools afforded. ”

“ The best private schools, on the other hand, supply a real need, and, as a large proportion of their pupils do not enter for public examinations, it is possible in them, to make valuable experiments which could not easily be tried in larger subsidised institutions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If this be admitted, as I think it must, then the nearer the management of any public school, whether large or small, especially for girls, can be made to resemble that of a well regulated private family, the better it will be calculated to attain the true, legitimate purposes of all seminaries of Education. The more easy will it be also to prove, when this point is conceded, that there are very many radical defects in a large portion of such establishments in our country. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nor is the public character of a school changed by the fact that private citizens may have contributed to its maintenance, if such contributors do not assume to stand in the relation of founders. It is well understood that the beneficial founder of a school is he who makes the first gift or bequest to it, and the legal founder is the government which grants a charter, or in any way confers upon it a corporate existence. If a town establish a high school, as in Bernardston to-day, and accept a gift or bequest, the character of the school is not changed thereby. ”

“ At the first period, the attendance of pupils upon academies and private schools was nearly 30 per cent. of the whole number, while in 1858 it was only 8 per cent. The private schools of some of these towns were established recently, and are sustained in a degree by pupils who are not inhabitants of the state, but who have come among us for the purpose of enjoying the culture which our teachers and schools, private as well as public, are able to furnish. ”

“ These institutions do not differ essentially from those of a private nature in similar situations in other parts of the United States, where common schools are not established by law.
43. In the Southern states, wealthy families often employ private tutors. Sometimes two, three, or more families, and even a whole neighborhood, unite for the purpose of forming a school; and, to induce a teacher to commence or continue his labors among them, an adequate amount is made up beforehand by subscription. ”

“ The legislation does not segregate private schools, or their pupils, as its beneficiaries or attempt to interfere with any matters of exclusively private concern. Its interest is education, broadly; its method, comprehensive. Individual interests are aided only as the common interest is safeguarded. ”

“ Of this number 1,227 were supported by self-government institutions, for example of communities, suburbs, towns or of the State, and 30 were private schools kept by private individuals. The number of higher schools with a seven years' course amounted to 211, seven of which are private. ”

“ Liberty for private schools to be opened and maintained by private people would end the disturbances now continually arising among students dissatisfied with the management of the establishments in which they find themselves. Were there no obstacles to opening private schools and colleges, both elementary and advanced, young people dissatisfied with the management of the Government educational institutions would enter private establishments which suited their requirements. ”

“ Nor, in our own country, must we fail to take notice of the establishment of School Boards. ”

“ There is no other public institution in the country so varied in its organization, its strength, its methods and ways as the elementary public-school system. It ranges from a shanty-like to a palace-like building, from a teacher almost illiterate herself to a teacher with an education and training which fit her for a college chair, from a few hundred dollars of yearly appropriation to tens of thousands of dollars for upkeep of a single school, from one teacher to a staff of teachers in one school, from an almost voluntary attendance to a rigid compulsory attendance. ”