Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1895-10-03
The Meaning of Pubic Education.


education means in this country refers
particularly to the free education pro-
vided by the State; and the answer is
that it ought to mean the school in
strucsion which the whole community
can justly be taxed to pay for, and
every child rightfully compelled to OBJ
tain, as requisite preparation for the
duties of citizenship and a safeguard
of civilization.
The instruction whose cost is
charged against all the people should
be for the benefit of all their children
alike. and hence it should be uniform
in its standards, and those should be
regulated according to the practical
necessities of the children generally.
If for the advantage of the few the
education is carried further than the
many are able to go because of the
restraint of their circumstances. its
benefits are unequally and unjustly
distributed; and therefore its cost can
not r1ghtfully be imposed on all the
community. What the whole pay for
the whole should be able to profit by,
share and shore alike.
The great mass of the children of
New York cannot go to school longer
than the period required for their
elementary or primary instruction.
They cannot afford the luxury of an
education which extends further.
Hence, as the school grades advance.
the number of pupils in them steadily
diminishes, until few score boys only
are graduated from the college at the
top of the course. All the superior
grammar school training is regulated
with special reference to that end, but
it is attainable by scarcely more than
one in thousand OF the whole number
enrolled in the schools. Even those
who are able to continue long enough
at their preparatory study to pass
ahead to the high school or introduc-
tory college course, constitute only a
small fraction of the scholars. When
the regular collegiate course begins
these pupils themselves fail off rapidly,
until the end of the four years the class
remaining to be graduated is smaller
than that at many struggling interior
college.
Of course, as the grades advance and
the number of pupils diminishes. the
cost of instruction per pupil increases
greatly. At the last meeting of the
Board of Education a committee re-
ported that this cost for all the 175 900
or $50, 900 boys and girls in the schools
is now $31 head, and that as they
are increasing in number, with the
growth of the city, at the rate of 700
annually. the aggregate is greater by
about $25O,O00 evero succeeding year.
But $31 must be much moro than the
average cost of educating pupil in
the primary department, for whose in
struction a great majority of the de-
mand is. 1t is a very high price to
pay, and it must be due to the great
expense of the superior training.
which can be enjoyed by the minority
only. Father McSweeney, the rector
of st. Brigid's, the largest Roman
Catholic parish in this country, we be-
lieve, offers to furnish instruction full
ly as good as that of the public schools
for $15 head. Probably If the Board
of Education provided only the educa-
tion for which there is the general de-
mand justifying general taxation for
its cost, its own expenditure per pupil
would not be greater in the public
schools. The luxuries, the frills, and
the fancy ornamentation of the few
rather than the substantial necessities
of the many put up the average cost.
Nor is that the worst of it. The
supply of the luxurious education is
made equal to the comparatively small
demand for it, nay, 1t is more; but the
provisions for primary instruction
needed by the multitude are shameful
ly inadequate. The people of New
York will be taxed nearly six millions
of dollars next year for the schools, |
yet many thousands of children who
want to learn their A B Cs will be |
shut out of them simply because OF
lack of room. The few hundred boys
and girls who want to polish off their
with Greek and Latin,
French aud German, geometry, trigo-
nometry. and the calculus, philosophy, |
and polite learning will be looked af-
ter by expensive professors in spacious
class rooms: but in all the croWed dis
tricss multitudes of youngsters who
can't read and write and cipher will be
left in their ignorance because there
are no primary schools for them.
though under the law their parents
are compelled to. send them to school.
That is not the sort OF system of
education for which the people can !