The Opelousas courier., 1882-05-13
THE Education Bill.
IN. o. City Item.1

Senator Blair, chairman of the com
mittee on education and labor, has re-
ported the bill to aid in the establish
ment and temporary support of COM
mon schools. We suppose this is the
bill or a similar one, Which was intro
ducsd by Senator Kellogg several
weeks ago, aud referred to the commit
tee on education. The report favors
an appropriation to aid in the support
of common schools, the money to be
distributed to the several States and
Territories for a limited time, and
upon the basis of iliteracy. There was
no action taken by the committee as to
the superintendent of the details of
administration, leaving those matters
for a. fuller and wider discussion i'll one
or both houses of Congress.
The committee has advanced this
great measure n step by thus bring
ing it before the Senate and putting it
in a shape for full and open discussion.
We do not know of any question now
before the country which will suffer
less by a through examination than
that of supporting public education
throughout the United States. The
tables of illiteracy. just issued in the
census reports, show serious deficiency
and a very low standard of education
in very many of the States. Few are
exempt from reproach in this respect,
and the South, especially Louisiana,
occupies a prominent position in the
list of those whose children have been
and are still deprived of the means of
liberal instruction. There are causes
here too powerful for local control.
which stand in the way of healthy
progress. Like our l%evees, our schools
have become o great a burden to be
successfully borne by the State with
out powerful assistance. The want OF
means;, the p~reponderance of poor
children, especially colored sectarian
hostility to public schools, combined
with inability to achieve the task they
would prohibit the State from under
taking, are among the more serious
obstacles the friends of education in
Louisiana have to encounter. The
-snL - nar%,rIa {ha+ his nrannp{r
can not rightfally be taxed to educate
the child of the poor man, forgetting
that the poor man is liable at any time
to be called upon to shoulder a musket
to protect his property from mob vio-
lence or invasion. The abstract rights
are lost sight of in the conflicting
strifes of self-intsrest. and we Some
times see the principle carried so far
that very poor people-and at the
same time very weak ones-make
heroic sacrifices to send their children
to inferior pay schools to escape the
imputation that they are charity pu-
pills!
Charity schools The public educa-
tionai institutions of this State are far
from being anything of the kind. In
all the elements of progress they are
greatly superior to the secular or the
so-called private schools. Properly
conducted, as they could and would be
with better means to sustain them,
they are honorable seats of learning,
in charge of able, conscientious, disci-
plined teachers ordained by the
sovereign mandate of the State for the
preparation of the boys and girls for
the duties of citizenship. Proper in
structiou is a part of the public policy
of all civilized States, and some of
them-Prussia, for instance-makes
attendance at school for a prescribed
time compulsory. Most of the ether
nations, however, have net found it
necessary to go to such an extreme
length, finding, as a rule, that the
people are willing enough to discharge
their duty to their children without
compulsion. IF this question be taken
up by the Federal government, it will
have q tendency to give the character
of the public schools a higher stamp in
the estimation of the ~popnlace. In
stead of looking upon them as charity
asylums for young panpers, they will
be respected as part of the rightful
heritage of citizenship, and ~partaking
to some extent of the dignity of the old
flag itself. All honor, then, TO the men
who have appeared as the champions
of this great cause in the Congress of
the Union.
Not a Friend in Town.