The Newtown bee. (Newtown, Conn.) 1877-current, 1897-12-24

land, taking the high school as an Illus
tratiOn, shows that in Massachusetts a
| city of 20, 900 or more population has a
full or triple high school by the statute
of 1895. Massachusetts, youth outside
such city limits have no access to me-
chanic art schools, English and CLASH
cal, there is inequality in the scope and
quality of instruction given. In other
states the inequalities are more marked.
Only one or two cities of Connecticut
have manual training high schools, and
some New England states wholly lack
this important feature of public educa-
ton.
A study of New England cities shows
a small group of cities with highly de-
veloped school systems, larger number
with inferior educational advantages, and
such inferiority increases as we go to
smaller cities, villages and rural commu-
mites. These conditions require close
scrutiny and wiser adjustment of agen-
cies to make education more nearly
equal.
One singular fact, revealed by an ex-
animation of present conditions, is that a
black boy whose parent may have been
slave in 1860, or the child of an emf
grant, living in New England city, has
access to superb educational advantages,
from which the village or country boy
who is generally sprung from old New
England families, is debarred. No New
Englander objects to education irrespec
tive of race, color or nationality, but
many have not considered that locality
or local or geographic 81 lines, are a bar
rier in many cases as in the past religion
and race have been. To equalize these
dispal titles as between city and city, and
city, village and country, so far as pos
sible, is one of the aims of the New Eng
land Education League.
Moreover, all students of New Eng
land education have noticed that public
education has been dominated by pro-
fessional and literary classes. The time
was when in every New England town
the representative personages were the
preacher, the doctor and the lawyer.
The contributions of these honored pro-
fessions to public education and to other
tant; but, as New England life grows
more complex and cosmopolitan, other
great sections of society claim a share in
public instruction. Men In mechanics,
| commerce, agriculture, industry, art,
music have place in the teaching of q
free people. Whatever is shut out from
the schools is implicitly unworthy.
Hence it is felt additions are called for
in public instruction. Education to be
equal must be broader, and thus meet
the needs not Of special classes alone but
of the body of society also. Wendell
Phillips said of our system of irstruc.
ton: "It stops too short" Talleyrand
said: ''In a well organized society,
though no one can attain to universal
knowledge, it should, nevertheless, be
possible to learn everything" The Hon
NJ. S. Stone, state superintendent of Yer
mont, in his last annual report, writes
1.-THE spirit of American institutions is
that of equality, and any system of
schools that fails in the furnishing of as
nearly equal advantages as possible by
way of schoolhoases, equipment, length
of terms and quality of teaching ia I'M
American" TO teach Latin four wears
and Greek three to pupils in public
schools is believed to be justifiable on
educational grounds and sound public
policy; also to teach a girl how to cook,
the nutritive and economic values of
foods, or to make bonnet or a dress, or
right views Of home sanitation and the
Ike, or to give a boy commercial, me-
chanic, agricultural training equal In
time value with classical studies accords
with reason and the public good. These
ideas are accepted by teaching bodies
and are IN operation in some parts of
New England; what is needed is their
diffusion that all New England youth, so
Ear as is attainable, may stand upon the
same high plane of educational opportu.
nifty.
1t is further urged that the burden of
support of public education falls unequal
ly. While elementary schools may be
sustained In very small communities, a
divisive policy 10 injurious to the grammar
and especially to high schools for reasons
obvious TO all students of public educa-
tion. The Connecticut high school act
of 1897, for example, is declaration |
that for many towns the high school is
too heavy burden. Towns must work |
In groups or the State must take larger
share OF the burden. The Massachusetts !
mechanic arts high school law OF 1895