The New Orleans bulletin. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1874-1876, 1876-01-28
case or mentioning names. Come up, ye vic
"And find relief in bidding sorrow flow. "
THE INJUSTICE OF FREE HIGH
SCHOOLS,

Eliot, President of Harvard University, re-
ports that 81 in each hundred of the students
of that institution have been prepared to1
entry at public schools In recent letter to
Prof. Jones, of the Vanderbilt (Methodist)
University of Tennessee, he says that he is
not in favor of supporting schools
above the grammar-school grade COM
pletely by taxation. 1t is his opinion
that the means of acquiring plain,
primary, or English eommon-school ednca-
ton should be given free by the State, bat
that scientific or classical education should
be paid for chiefly by the parent, except in
cases of few very promising lads VITO may
properly have the benef. Of free scholarships
when too poor to pay for their tuition in
academic schools. Scarcely one boy in fifty
in cities or one in a hundred in the country
receives an academic education sufficient to fl
him for entering college, and it is in the opinion
of Prof Eliot an unjust burden upon the
parents of the many to tax them for high
schools for the benefit Of the few. The
eminent scholV's letter concludes as follows:
So far as is possible. money raised by taxa
ton should be applied 10 objects of dir sc'
universal benefit, and should not be used for
the direct benefit of what mast inevitably DO
small class iii the community. In good
times and in prosperous State perhaps one
child in fifty can 60 to high school. The
indirect benefit which the community will
probably receive from that one child out OF
fifty Is just ground for some public contribu-
ton to its advanced education, but does not
Justify the State In paying the whole cost OF
that education. Now, elementary education,
on the contrary, is of direct and universal
benefit, and is not only o legitimate, but the
most legitimate public charge. l am an advo-
cate of compulsory elementary education, and
of an enforced reading and writing test for the
ballot, because, although education alone will
not preserve free institutions, diffused ele-
mentary education is one of the essentia con-
ditions of the formation of that sound national
character upon which the safety OF our polit-
Cal institutions does absolutely depend But
the secondary and superior education seem to
me to stand upon different basis They, too
are necessary to the State; but the selected
individuals who receive such prolonged traia-
ing profit so much personally that they or
their parents should pay part of the cost.
Our system of schools must be lust one, or
it will not be enduring To tax town OF
5000 families for the whole cost of educating
up to their eighteenth year the children
of 400 families, is conspicuous in
justice which can not be said to be
without remedy. Therefore, I think this
practice detrimental one, the interests of the
public schools alone being considered. have
been told that this is an arstocratic view;
but on the contrary. it seems to me an emf:
nently democratic principle that people who
have special privileges should pay for them,
at least in part. AS to trying to make fine
culture the possession of the many, we all
know that that is quite impossible. AS we'll
expect to make all men poets. The real es-
sence of the solidarity OF primary schools and
seems to me to be in their COM
mon aim and motive. Together they work in
purity and upGft humanity; alike they
" make for righteousness"