The Russellville Democrat. [volume] (Russellville, Ark.) 1875-1898, 1882-10-12
Mission OF the Public Schools,
From the Washington Post.

The right to educate all children
at public expense is based on the
| first law of lature--the instinct oil
self preservation. The State, having
q right to exist, may properly do all
things essential to the protection OF
| that right. Honest, law -abidiDg men
are compelled to bear their proper
tlon Of the enormous cost entailed on
society BY the criminal classes. On
the same principle precisely the law
puts Is hand into tile strong box Of
the childless millionaire, and takes
/ theretrom, whether he viii or no,
whatever the assessors decide that
he shall contribute towards the sup
port OF free schools schools in which
he has no immediate interest, and in
which the children of the thief and
saint, the beggar and the merchant
prince, the Senator III the West end
and the rag picker in Hooker's di-
vision are placed on common level.
The American people are justly
proud of their free schools. A blow
aimed at them from any quarter is
instantly resented. Whenever and
wherever, in any local election, any
party has been so unfortunate as to
seem to tolerate antagonism to the
public school system, that party has
been thoroughly chastised with de-
served defeat. There is no right
guaranteed by nature or by human
law of which the people are more
jealous than the right to maintain,
at the general cost unsectarian free
schools. open to the children of all
the parents in the country. Not
even the maintenance of free speech
aud a free press is deemed more i'm
portant, and he who assals the free
schools is accounted as dangerous an
enemy to the public welfare as If he
attacked the fundamental right to
utter thought in words or in type.
But it is one of our National char
acteristics to go to extremes in all
things. We must reach the topmost
heights and sound the ncthermost
depths in all that we undertake.
We make business as arduous as
slave labor, and push the pursuit of
pleasure until it becomes painful
toll. In accordance with this habit,
we are extending the limits OF free
public instruction with very little
regard to the basis on which the
structure stands-the States right
to protect itself against ignorance.
When we compel the childless tax
payer, or any property holder who
is not directly interested therein, to
hand out his money to pay for schools
in which the dead languages and the
higher branches of mathematics are
taught, we do that for which there is
no good warrant. The safety of the
State does not require that A shall
pay for the instruction of BIS chill
dren in Latin, Greek or Trigonome-
try. The greatest good OF the great
est number is not promoted by the
free maintenance of such schools;
for scarcely one in hundred of the
children who enter the lower grades
is able TO go through the last.
The real object Of these schools is
not to prepare q child for Harvard,
Yale, Princeton or any Of the higher
institutions Of learning. We have
no right to tax one man for such ed
ucation of another mans children.
The ignorance that is dangerous to
the State is disposed of when child
has been Taught TO read, write and
talk correctly, aud has mastered the
course III arithmetic, geography, his
tory, etc, common TO the free schools
Of all our towns and cities. This is
the scope of the educational process
for which public schools were design.
ed. The child thus instructed is
prepared TO enter any of the walks
of business life. The boy thus taught
has been supplied with the ladder on
which he may climb to any height
in literature, science or statesman.
ship. He has in his hands the keys
that will unlock all the repositories
Of knowledge. 1t is his business TO
climb, and it is not the duty Of the
State ! to shoulder him him. and carry
him up.
nut, eyel If We had an -
right 70 classIcally o.
ucaJe the ohii' -.duouOteC