The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-03-01
COMPULSORY EDUCATLON

The plan recently proposed, to compel all
children between certain ages to attend
school, public or other, seems to us, though
we recognize the truth of the principles on
which it is based, to be impracticable, at
least for the present.
1t is undoubtedly true that the integrity of
our republican institutions, high state of
social purity, minimum of crime of every
sort, and the best good of the individual, are
all most certainly assured by the education of
our future citizens. If the next genera
ton, or even very large proportion of
it, understands the fundamental truths
on which our Government rests, the
probability of any vital change is rem
dered very small. If the examples which
history affords of the destruction of other free
governments by official misdemeanor and
corruption are before the people, the latter
will much less good-naturedly look on while
their own servants squander and steal the
public money. If higher intellectual stan
dard than now marks the people as a whole
can be attained by them, immortality and
crime must be diminished, since both vice
and open violence to the laws of society
spring from and live upon ignorance. And
if the citizen be intelligent and informed, his
own success and prosperity, whether profess
sional man, merchant, mechanic, or laborer,
are rendered the surer and the easier of at
tainment.
And yet, though to all these principles
in the abstract, we, of course, yield assent
(and there are few minds, perhaps, which
would not), still, their results, when de-
veloped into practice, and especially as they
concern this question of compulsory educa-
ton, are grave enough to warrant much eau
ton before our city commits itself to the pro-
posed law.
Society no doubt has the right to insure
itself against impending evils as perfectly as
it has the power to remove the evils when
they exist From this point of view, per-
haps, it may be justified in compelling the
adoption by its members of any measures
for the prevention of crime that may be
deemed necessary. Bat whether a society
established upon the broad foundation of the
greatest personal liberty consistent with civic
existence and well-being may go aside to
enact laws based upon general principles
which are true in practice only after great
/
we think, is question that certainly has
two sides. In other words, ignorant men
are not the only criminals, and the highest
education sometimes leads directly into the
grossest vices. Of course the tendency of
ignorance is to immortality, and that of edu-
cation to virtue; but we doubt if ignorance is
so fruitful source of wrong-doing that Phila-
delphia will be justified in saying to her citi-
zens who wish their sons to earn money at
twelve years of age, 'You must wait until
they are sixteen That in vast majority of
cases it would be better for the boys to wait
the four years, does not affect the argument.
1t must be for an evidently sufficient cause,
and for such a cause only, that the liberty OF
the citizen to direct his sons mode of life
shall be curtailed. The statistical evidence
to the origin of vice and crime must be very
clear before so excessive an authority may be
welded by a free government.
But more than this. The law, if it is to
accomplish its intention, must be enforced
strictly, and all possible evasions must b'
carefully guarded against. The man, therefore
who prefers tutor for his son, or is willing
to commit his daughter to her mother oil
older sister as teacher, must either be forbid
den to adopt these plans, or else be-put to tn
trouble of showing to the proper officers tn
regularity and disciplinary results of thi
, private teaching. In many cases such in
struction accomplishes what no school Cal