Daily Los Angeles herald., 1879-04-15
Education Under the New ConstI-
tuition.

EDITOR HERALD: Headed like
the above 1 find an article in th'
Evening Express of April IL, il
which the author, a Mr.. M, wantl
to impress the people of Los Ange
les with his experience in schoo
matters in San Francisco. He
states that only one child out of 6
hundred entered the High School
and that that one per cent. were
children of "well-to-do parents. I,
Why does the learned gentleman
go off to San Francisco for his sta
tistics, instead of walking up to
our High School and making in.
quiries there. Surely he would
have found a different condition
of things in Los Angeles.
Having been a member of the
Board Of Education for four years,
claim to be a little informed on
this subject and take the liberty to
give Mr.. M. the benefit of nv ex.
perience in Los Angeles. L do this
not as u politician, nor as a particu-
lar enemy to the new Constitution,
but merely for the sake of truth
and fair play.
More than ten per cent. of all
children enrolled in our public
schools take the benefit of our
High School, and those ten per
cent. are not, as in San Francisco,
the children of the "well.to. do,
only, but they are mostly children
of parents that could not afford to
pay for extra tuition. or course,
do not understand me that all those
ten out of every hundred graduate.
Many dropiof the list when in the
High School, some in the junior,
some In the middle and some in
the senior class. At present there
are 30 to 95 pupils enrolled in the
High School, of which number on.
ly IL belong to the senior class and
expect to graduate; but you can
see that the High School is not
only for the benefit of those II,
but, also, for that of the 95. Now,
without trying to expose the pecu.
mary condition of tho parents of
those 95 children, 1 may venture to
say that more than rs per cent. of
those children would not be ena-
bled to enjoy any High School edu-
cation but for our Public High
School, as their parents could not
afford it. During the last four
years thirty-three scholars gradu-
ated from our High School, twen-
ty of whom were children of actu-
ally poor parents. Seven belonged
to the middle class and only six
were children of rich people, who
might have sent them to private
schools for thorough education.
This l am ready to prove at any
time, if Mr.. M. should choose to In.
spect the list of those graduates.
furthermore, out of those twenty
there are fifteen who have been or
are yet employed as teachers in our
county, and some OF them, I know,
now support their poor parents.
Does this show that the poor
miners, farmers and mechanics
"pay for the education or the rIcn?'t
1 think not.
AS for excluding foreign lam
eN"SOS 'AOh Jul puollC oCuUOiS,I IulS
can only be the idea of "Know
Nothing" If Mr.. NJ, or General
Howard either, should ever travel
in Europe, they would find that
foreign languages are there taught
in every country in the public
schools. Let me remind you of the
late Franco-German war. Almost
everyGerman soldier spoke French;
very few French soldiers or their
officers spoke German. What was
the result? To-day no man can be-
come an officer of the French army
If he does not fluently speak. besides
his own, the German and English
languages.
Surely, Mr.. NJ, our children
would not be overburdened if they
learned little more than you did I?
JOSEPH KURTz.