The morning star and Catholic messenger. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1868-1881, 1868-08-23
Compulsory Education.

for the organization of the public schools
ofthis State on the basis of compulsory
education. 1t requires that all children
from eight years of age to fourteen shall be
sent to school six months in the year. This
regulation is enforced by several severe
remedies. 1t is enacted that: "No child
under the age of fourteen years shall be
employed in any manufacturing establish
ment, or on any farm or plantation, or in
any employment in this State, unless such
child has attended some public or private
school at least six of the twelve months
next preceding" etc. Any one who shall
furnish employment contrary to this regu-
lation will be fined one hundred dollars.
And, again, it is provided in section five of
chapter six, that if parents do not send their
children to some school six months out of
the twelve, the school commissioners may,
by certain proceedings, take the children
from them entirely for five months. During
those five months, the children shall be
kept at school, or some place Of correc-
tion," their board to be paid out of the
school fund, if it's amount cannot be col
lectcd from their parents.
This is compulsory education. Tearing
the infant from it's mothers arms to educate
it, no matter what its constitution of mind
or body, no matter what the mothers an
guish, or her desire to keep her little girl
as a solacc for the last months of a life
which may be slowly fading away with
disease. How many a widowed mother
stretched on the bed of decreptitude, is
dependent on her boy of twelve years for
the nccessarics of life! During the day
he earns the pittance which keeps them
both in comparative comfort; iii the evening
she teaches him more than wild, thought
less boy would have learned during the
day at school. Yet, his education must not
"place of correction" while she is left to
her fate!
The rich, it is true, will not be affected
by this portiolAof the bill, as it stands at
present. 1t is the misery of the poor on
which the philanthropists depend to find
material for their machine citizens. Yet,
the poor frequently have honest hearts and
noble affections. They would oftentimes
rather their innocent children taken by
the moral contagiOn of State schools, or
the moral death of "places of correction"
oh, We mothers in Israel {! they might say,
We wept over your children, and would not
be comfortcd because they We're not; yet,
Herod only gave your innocents to God,
while the State gives ours to the Evil One.
This is only the wall of the poor: the rich
may not consider themselves intere sted.
Let us see if they will be entirely safe.
Ii is said that history repeats itself. The
idea of compulsory education is not new
it is revival of the old Spartan idea that
the citizen belonged to the Stato Ask the !
military despotism of Prussia, OF the fanat- i
zeal optmists of Massachusetts,, by what |
right they tear children away from the
control aud care of their parents, and they
will answer that ignorance is productive of
crime; that education is necessary to make
good citizen; that the State has right
to secure the presence of all qualities de
sirable for good citizens in those who are
to be such: and therefore, the State has IL
right to that its citizens arc educated.
The fundamental idea of this formula will
be seen to be this: The State has a ri yht to
provide for and secure to its citizens all
those qualities which will make them better
and more effective as citizens.
The slightest reflection ought to convince
any practical man that this is a mere
Utopian vision. Society never really
formed itself with any such view. Men
join churches, or ions, or clubs, for
their Improvement morally, mentally, and
physically. They form governments for
mutual protection in their rights against
violence and crime. \ government can
prohibit crime and wrong, but it cannot
prohibit anything simply because it may
lead to wrong; it can punish any act i'll