Education

ACCORDING to the census of 1870, the illiterate population ten years old and over, in this country, amounted to the fearful number of 5,658,144. In other words, of the whole number of persons ten years of age and more, a little above twenty in every hundred are set down as incapable of reading and writing. In view of this prodigious mass of illiteracy, in a country of universal suffrage, the question of compulsory education deserves the serious consideration of every citizen and statesman. It is already attracting considerable attention in different States, but as yet action on the subject has been hesitating and timid. The notion has prevailed very generally among us, that the exercise of compulsory powers to secure school attendance is somehow incongruous with the spirit of republican institutions. And besides, it has been the common belief that in due time universal instruction would be attained through the agency of good free schools, without resort to coercive measures. But such opinions are justified neither by reason nor by experience.

The history of education affords the strongest proof of the necessity of compulsion as a means of combating illiteracy. The compulsion meant here is not the obligation, so generally imposed on towns or other territorial districts, to set up and maintain schools, but the obligation imposed on parents by legal provision, and enforced by legal sanction, to send their children to school, or otherwise to provide for their instruction. Compulsion has nothing to do with the higher grades of education, its sole object being to secure universal instruction in those subjects which are deemed essential for all children, without regard to their social station or their future occupations. The need of coercion for the attainment of this object may be inferred from the fact, which cannot be disputed, that no considerable commimity can be named where, in the absence of this agency, illiteracy has as yet been conquered. The census referred to revealed an unexpected percentage of ignorants in those parts of our country most favored educationally,— where for many years good free schools in sufficient numbers have been open to all.

To show the advantages of the compulsory system, there is nothing more instructive or more convincing than a comparison of the educational results in countries where it has been in operation, with those in countries which have not accepted it. The school systems of France and Prussia afford a striking contrast in this respect, which the issue of the Franco-Prussian war has brought Out in bold relief.

The law of 1833, proposed by M. Guizot, then minister of public instruction, founded in France the national system of elementary education, which with some modifications has continued in operation until the present time. Of this law Matthew Arnold says, in his report on education in France, in 1860, “It has the great merit of being full of good sense, full of fruitful ideas, full of toleration, full of equity ; but it has the still greater merit of attaining the object it had in view. ... It was not more remarkable for the judgment with which it was framed, than for the energy with which it was executed. . . . The results of the law were prodigious. ... I believe that the great mass of the population now passes, at some time or other, through the schools.” But subsequent official inquiries showed a vast aggregate of non-attendance, and revealed a most deplorable prevalence of ignorance among the people as the consequence. A recent authentic account states that one out of four and a half of the children of school age attends no school, that two fifths of those who attend leave school having learned so little that they soon forget it, that three fifths scarcely profit by the instruction received, that a third of the conscripts can neither read nor write, that of the men contracting marriage twentyeight out of a hundred cannot write their names, and that of the women so contracting forty-three out of a hundred are “ completely ” illiterate. Professor Bréal, of the Collége de France, in a recent able work on public instruction in France, goes still further, and says, “ Instead of two fifths, three fourths of our children must be regarded as devoted to ignorance.” Such is the result of the French system, which established schools, but did not compel the children of France to enter them. Of the disastrous consequences of this ignorance, M. Émile de Laveleye, an eminent publicist, in an elaborate review of popular instruction, says, “ It is an indisputable fact that ignorance combined with universal suffrage was the immediate cause of the recent reverses of France.” M. Guizot lived to be convinced, by such facts as these, of the mistake in not making education in France compulsory, in accordance with the views of his ablest associate in the work of educational reform, Victor Cousin, who had thoroughly studied the working of the coercive system in Prussia and other German states. Speaking of this system in 1831, Cousin said, “In my judgment, such a law is not only justifiable, but absolutely indispensable ; and I know not a single example of a country in which such a law is wanting and in which the education of the people is in a flourishing and satisfactory state.” This judgment the French people were not then prepared to accept. But since the events of 1870, the wisest men in the nation are earnest for the adoption of the plan which contributed so largely to the success of their conquerors. Professor Bréal perfectly expresses this new conviction in saying to his countrymen, “ We must take our model from our adversaries.”

The condition of Prussia after Jena was more humiliating than that of France after Sedan. But when the Prussian monarch saw his army annihilated and his kingdom at the mercy of Napoleon, he said, " The state must regain in intellectual force what it has lost in physical force.” Such men as William von Humboldt, Fichte, and Stein put their hands to the work of reorganizing the national education, which was begun in 1807 and brought to completion in the famous Regulative of 1819. The obligation of school attendance was rigorously imposed on all children from seven to fourteen years of age whose instruction was not otherwise satisfactorily provided for. Subsequently the obligation was extended to children from six to seven years of age; and, more recently, children from fourteen to seventeen years of age, after completing the regular elementary course of instruction, have been required to attend supplementary or “ improvement ” schools, a certain limited number of hours each week.

In advocating the strict enforcement of obligatory instruction, at the beginning of this reform, Fichte said, “ The first generation will be the only one upon whom it will be necessary to use constraint; for those who will have received the proposed education will voluntarily send their children to school.” Experience proved this opinion to be substantially correct; in 1863, it was found necessary to inflict the prescribed penalty in only seven cases of delinquency. In proportion as knowledge advances among the masses of the people, public opinion is more and more in favor of the system. It has become rooted in the legal and moral habits of the country.

A few facts taken from the recent educational statistics will serve to indicate how far the object in view has been attained. It appears that the actual school attendance of the children from six to fourteen years of age is about ninety-eight out of a hundred ; that is to say, it is substantially universal. Illiteracy is almost unknown. Among the conscripts of the districts purely German, hardly one in a hundred is without education ; in Berlin, the proportion is two in a thousand; the average is raised to three per cent. by the drafts from the non-German districts in the eastern provinces, where it is difficult to furnish qualified teachers on account of the dialects required to be spoken. It was in view of such facts as these that Jules Simon, the late minister of public instruction in France, wrote, “ Prussia, with obligatory instruction, has conquered ignorance, a victory from which we are separated, after thirty years of efforts, by nine hundred thousand children, ignorant and neglected.”

The comparison of the results of the French and Prussian systems of education would seem to be sufficient to demonstrate the advantages and the necessity of obligatory instruction ; but there are still other examples equally convincing.

In Saxony, compulsion was not strictly applied until 1835. It was only in the first years that it was necessary to punish delinquents. Soon parents were convinced that it was for the advantage of their children to attend school. And now to send children to school has come to appear as natural and as necessary as to supply them with daily food. Constraint has disappeared and habit has taken its place. The number of pupils in the schools corresponds almost exactly with the number of children of school age.

In Belgium, where much attention has been bestowed on education, and where the expenditure for this object is proportionally larger than in Saxony, but where the children are not obliged to attend school, a very different state of things exists. The last official census of the kingdom places half of the inhabitants under the head, “ not knowing how to read and write.”

A comparison of Switzerland and Holland would lead to the same conclusion in respect to the operation of the obligatory system.

Of the recent progress of this system England is just now presenting the most interesting illustration. In the long agitation for national education in England, although one of its most illustrious advocates, Macaulay, contended that the right to hang involved the right to enforce instruction, it has generally been taken for granted that it would not be practicable to compel the two million schoolless children to learn the alphabet. Matthew Arnold expressed the belief, some years ago, that the gradual rise in their wealth and comfort was the only obligation which could be safely relied on to draw such a “self-willed” people as the English to school.

But the world moves. The framers of the elementary education act of 1870, which for the first time gave to England and Wales a national system of instruction, ventured to insert a provision permitting the local boards of education to make by-laws compelling attendance at school. It was intended as a feeler. Many members of Parliament who voted for it believed it would remain a dead letter.

But it turned out that public opinion was in advance of the legislators, on this subject. Hate payers who had been compelled to put their hands into their pockets and pay heavily for fine school-houses and good teachers, sufficient for the schoolless multitude, were not long in coming to see the justice and expediency of compelling the street Arabs to go to school, and take a dose of reading and writing and good behavior. The result is almost astounding. Already in all the great towns, comprising millions of inhabitants, compulsory education is as rigorously imposed as it ever was in Prussia. The metropolis, with its three and a quarter millions of inhabitants, is completely covered by a corps of attendance officers under the direction of a general superintendent, who go from house to house with their official lists of children in their hands, to see that all are receiving instruction. As it is always the first step that costs, of course it is often found necessary to exercise coercive powers. The same thing is doing in Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, and many other places.

All this is certainly very noteworthy, but what is still more remarkable, there are unmistakable indications that Parliament will soon be forced by public opinion to make educational compulsion absolute and universal throughout England and Wales. On one day last August, the school board of Sheffield dedicated, with interesting ceremonies, five of the sixteen noble schoolhouses comprised in their scheme for meeting the educational wants of that town. Excellent speeches were made by the Archbishop of York, Mr. Roebuck, M. P., Mr. Mundella, M. P., and the Rt. Hon. W. E. Forster, the head of the educational department, in the Gladstone ministry, whom Mr. Mundella characterized as “ the father of the education act, one of the statesmen of the future, and the hope of the country.” Mr. Forster, in his admirable speech, planted himself squarely on the compulsory platform, saying, “ I believe the time has come at which it will be only fair to school boards like the Sheffield board, which has been passing a by-law and working it regardless of any obloquy it might possibly cause,— the time has come in which it is only fair to them that Parliament should step forward and support their efforts by declaring by Act of Parliament that it is the duty of every parent to see that his child is taught, and for the state to say, ‘ We can’t allow the parent to exercise what is called parental neglect by leaving his child without food for the mind any more than without food for the body.’ It is too dangerous for us; it is too sad and distressing, too fearful in its results for the child ; it is too dangerous for the whole community for us to allow it. I believe public opinion is quite ready for this.” He expressed the hope that the present government would speedily pass the act, and added, “ Our government declared that it was the duty of the state to see that in every locality sufficient school room was provided ; but it is far nobler for them to have an opportunity of passing a law declaring what is the duty of the parent, and how that duty shall be enforced.” So it is found at last by actual experiment that these compulsory laws are not un-English at all, but purely an English and practical method.

We are of the same stock, and when it has been fairly tried in America, it will be found that the system is not un-American, or undemocratic, but an eminently democratic instrumentality. Universal suffrage and universal instruction must be one and inseparable. But little has been done as yet in this country in the way of actually enforcing instruction. There has been an over-confidence in the power of moral suasion as a means of securing the school attendance of the more degraded classes, on the one hand, and a want of faith in the efficacy of compulsion, on the other. Although compulsory acts have been passed in eight or ten of the States, no adequate provision has been made for their execution, and so they remain for the most part inoperative. The truant laws of Massachusetts and two or three other States have, however, been to some extent enforced. The truant system of Boston is administered by a corps of fourteen officers who devote their whole time to the looking up of absentees. The compulsory act of the State of New York went into operation on the 1st of last January. The State superintendent of education does not cordially indorse it, but deems it entitled to a fair trial.