The morning call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1878-1895, 1893-08-02
COMPULSORY EDUCATION.

The experiment of compulsory educa-
ton is having full trial, and late reports
from Boards of Education show how 1t is
working. The general feeling among the
people appears to be in favor of tho law.
but against its enforcement. 1t is not
enforced in New York. nor indeed any
where except in few New England
States, though it figures in the statute
books of twenty-seven States. including
California and Territories. 1t appears to
be no ones business to enforce the law,
though for want of such enforcement the
school attendance in such State as
Pennsylvania only increased ] u per cent
in the last decade against an increase OF %
per cent in the population. and tie result
was not materially different In New York.
1t works better in Europe. In Great
Britain, France and Germany. compul-
sorry laws have been enacted and are
put in force. A royal commission
in England pronounces 1t sue
cess. >as having largely increased
the attendance at schools. The law Is
quite stringent. ALI children between the
ages Of 5 and Is are compelled TO attend
school. A parent whose child does not
attend regularly and who has no good ex-
cuse for absence is liable to fine of five
shillings. The term of tuition is forty
weeks in the year. and the child must
attend twice a day for five days in the
week. Where the parents are druuk ken or
shiftless the children are taken from them
and placed at industrial schools, where
they are fed as well as taught. But the
financial part of the system does not work.
1t costs more than the fiue to collect five
shillngs from the parents OF truant, and
the industrial schools are regarded by the
poor as prisons, being, in fact places OF
confinement; so that the parents rebel At
being forced to pay even a small trifle for
their maintenance. The system really
operates through the unwIllingness of
parents to incur the disgrace Of being
taken before a magistrate for not sending
their children to school. This incentive
has raised school attendance 10 England
to 70 per cent of the number of children on
the school register, while in this country
it is only 81.
That it would be gain to raise our
percentage 10 or II per cent goes without
saying. Those who complain that con-
pulsory education is an abridgment of
natural liberty will find consolation in the
fact that in this matter coercion is only
temporary. As education becomes gen.
eral the n umbe of parents and children who
object to 1t declines. No child wants to be
more ignorant than his companions; no
parent wants to be pointed out as the
parent of ignorant children. In Prussia,
where for many years compulsory laws
were enforced, they have lately become
unnecessary, and have been repealed.
So in Illinois, where compulsory law
once figured on the statute-book. 1t was
found that children went to school without
compulsion, and the law. after period OF
desuetude. was quietly repealed.
1t Is only in our large cities at the North
and in the sparsely settled sections at the
South that the proportion of n on attendant
schoolchildren is large. Where large
bodies Of iliterate foreigners gather in
crowded localities. the proportion Of
negligent or wrong headed parents may be
considerable; and in such places a COM
pulsory law might be beneficial If it could
be enforced. Our rural districts are diff
ferent from the rural districts in England.
Here no farmer allows his children to play
truant if there is a school within reach :;
there, the farm IaDorer mas been crasSly
ignorant for generations and he objects to
an innovation for which he can see 10
reason.
TIE working of the compulsory principle
operating on an a most virgin field can be
seen in Italy, and it is worth the considera-
ton OF those who study legislation On
literacy at the South and elsewhere. In
1861, when Cavour died. 1900, 900 Italians
out of q. TO, 600 were unable to read or
write. Compulsory education in a modi-
fed form was introduced some fifteen
years later. and now the percentage of
illiterates in Northern Italy is under 40
per cent, in the old papal States some
thing over 60 per cent. and the south IS
per cent. At the end of the century litter
acy will probably disappear from all Italy
north of Rome.