Rutland weekly herald. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1859-1877, 1873-05-29
written for the RUTLAND Herald J
Compulsory Education.
No.3.


That Ignorance is everywhere the pa
rent of vice and crime, may have been
often said, but it will bear and it needs;
repetition. AS long as so many parents
will shut theireyes to the truthfulness
of this saying, and Legislators shrink
from the responsibility of enacting laws
that would ultimately remove this gene
rator of evil, so long must it be rung in
their ears, that ignorance is everywhere
the parent of vice and crime.
The legitimate effect of darkness and
superstition is long catalogue of self
perpetuating and constantly increasing
evils.
They have no power of self-reform !;
their course is downward and fearfully
ruinous.
On the other hand, in the proportion
that common intelligence is diffused
among the masses, and all acquire, at
least the rudiments of our education, in
that proportion do the violations of
wholesome laws decrease, and life and
property become secure.
Could we, then, by some means, make
education universal, reaching to the ut
most limits of the population, even to
the recently landed foreign child of
school age, we might hope to lessen,
very materially, the tide of crime that
has so strongly set in upon this country.
Our present system of free and volun-
tary schooling very effectively reaches
all those whose guardians are sufficiently
intelligent to appreciate its advantages,
and these are reaping golden harvests
from the. wise and liberal seed-sowing
of others. But there is still a large class
of youth that remain without the ele-
waiting influence of our public schools,
and that furnishes the larger per cent.
of the violators of the law.
Not knowing the value of school adj
vantages, and with parents as ignorant
and Indifferent as themselves, they will
never profit by the opportunities of
school afforded them unless compelled
to.
All these ignorant ones are candidates
for the shame and suffering of crime
and the strong hand of authority should
be laid upon every one of them, that
they may acquire the rudiments of life
under circumstances fayoring the devel-
opment of patriotism and virtue. ...
A recent writer has well said, that
'sthe practical question for society is,
whether it will have prisons or schools. 5"
The State should force children tOschoOl
that it may not be obliged to force them
to jail
The coincidence between the extension
of education and the diminution of
crime is everywhere observable.
In Baden. a city of Europe, where
special and strenuous efforts were made
for the improvement of education, the
remarkable fact is that in seven years,
from 1854 to 1861, the number of pris-
oners fell from /, 100 to AGO pauperism
decreased by one-fourth, and some of
the iails were closed for want of pris-
oners. OF course some of the worse
criminals are educated men, and what is
technically called education will not
alone produce the millennium.
But the infuence'of a general system
of education, as we see in this country,
is moral as well as intellectual: The
mere association of children for an intel
lectual purpose, begets self-respect and
regard for right things.
1t develops their humanity, so that,
in a strict sense, the elementary studies
may be truly called the humanities?