The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1867-06-10
The Department Of EducatIon.

According to our Washington dispatches,
which were published yesterday morning,
the Department of Education is now as
fully organized as the limited means at the
disposal of Commissioner Barnard will admit,
in the absence Of any appropriation by Con-
gress. The Commissioner is tusly occupied
in what must be for some time the main object
Of the Department-the collection of sta stics
relative 10 the educational interests of the
different States Of the Union. In each State
education is under the control Of the State
government, and as the Commissioner is EN-
powered merely to request replies to the circu-
lars which he has sent to the SAFE Governors,
there will probably b. considerable delay in
pro -uring the information necessary to the de-
velopmeat of anything like national system
OF education. Meanwhile the census Of the
District of Columbia is about to be taken as a
point OF commencement for salts ical reports
on education throughout the country. II is
also intended to obtain the census of all the
more important cities in the United States, witt
the same end in view; and the city Of New
York has already made an appropriation OF
twenty-five hundred dollars to assis. the De-
parim ,nl in this work. Special researches hava
been instituted by the Comm ssioner as to the
land grants made to the States in behalf of edu-
cation, and as to Normal schools Ii nothing
else can be accomplished at present than the
collection of educational statistics, these will
suffice, when embodied in the report which the
Commissioner expects to make to Congress in
December next, to impress upon the national
mind the vast Importance of the work to be IN
dertaken by the new Department of Education.
The various school systems of the States can
be intelligcntly compared, their defects discov
cred and remedied, and their best features
adopted and applied in common to ALL so as to
harmonize them and lead the way, without
undue interference with State righs, to an
efficient national system. Il is true that the
scattered populations of certain sections of
the country are not now ready for precisely
those public school systems which are specially
adapted to the populous towns and villages Of
provements even in the best organized of these
systems. And they must be modified in i'm.
portant particulars to suit the actual condition
of things in other localities-for instance, in
the South. Some of the Southern States have
no public school system whatever, and most of
the others have only an imperfect and feeble
one. The necessity for education is imperative
throughout the South, where even the private
schools and the colleges, sustained by the
Weather classes, were broken up by the war
and have been but partially revived since its
close, and where large class of "poor whites"
is still waiting for educational advantages,
which they have never enjoyed. How large
this class Is may be inferred from the fact that
the number Of whites who cannot read or write
has been estimated at thirty-three thousand in
Alabama, sixty-three thousand in Georgia and
seventy-four thousand in Virginia. It has even
been stated that the schools established within
the past two years for the education of the
freedmen and their children outnumber
all the schools for the whites throughout
the South. Everywhere, North as well as
South, West as well as East, the prosperity Of
the American people and the perpetuity OF
their republican government will depend
largely on their improvement or their neglect
of the means of education. 1t is by no means
impossible that certain educational qualifca-
tons for the franchise will ultimately be re-
quired, and this would quicken the popular
appreciation Of educational privileges.