Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1902-12-18
LAUDs PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
They Are the Mirrors of the Republic"
Declares President schurman of Cornell,
University.

They Are the Mirrors of the Republic
Declares President schurman of Cornell
University.
The opening lecture in the series OF
Certain Religious and Moral Aspects o.
Education. y before the Twentieth Century
Club. Boston, was delivered last Saturday
bv President Jacob Gould Schurman, Of
Cornell University His topic was State
Education; Its Rise and Present Standing, .
and he reviewed the systems OF Germany,
China, England and the United States,
showing how Germany took up education
to combat the localism which would have
been inevitable if the communities had been
allowed to work out the problem; how
England was bound to the idea of religious
training along with its secular education,
and how the United States schools aimed
at intellectual teaching, with the upbuild-
ing of morals merely as an Incident.
Mr.. Schurman said, in part =
ssI need not describe in this audience, or,
indeed, to any audience in the United
States, the educational system OF the
country. We are all familiar with it-so
familiar with it and so satisfied with il
that we are prone to think any other sys-
tenn inferior if not indeed irrational.
ssThe institution of free public schools
is not based on the rights of man, but il
is the most effective instrument we can
think of for the education of the rising
generation, which, if not essential to the
being of the State, is, as the Massachu-
sets law happily said, indispensable to
it's we'll being. We quarrel with no other
system or any other country; but fol
ourselves we are welded to our own.
think it may be claimed, too, and with
Justice, that State schools are, so far as
mental training and the acquisition of know
ledge 90, vastly superior to either church
schools or individual schools.
''There is another advantage in the State
public school system which, in my ludg-
ment. cannot be overestimated. Private
and church schools tend to breed caste and
division among the children of the COM
munity The public school, on the other
hand, is the mirror of the Republic. In
the public schools of town, as with no other
kind of schools, you have the purest de-
mocracy in the world.
THE children all come together on the
same footing; social, economic and &C.
clesiastical distinctions disappear; the son
OF the LlllllOuuIC anu unC COA "a eAtS HSNa
man are in the same class and have the
same opportunities, and with this equality
of opportunity you have, what every re-
public cherishes as its ideal, the merlted
promotion of the most capable, most in
dustrious and most efficient.
ssNor is this all. Plato said that the
Creator made the world out of the Same
and the Other So it takes all men and
women of all types and kinds to make
an ideal commonwealth. And the fusion
of the varieties of boys and girls in our
schools. the incubation of each with the
idea of democracy, the attrition of individu-
al idiosyncrasies and repulsions, in short,
the transformation of more or less atoms
into one community, where each has his
own rights while the rights of Others are as
GOOD as his, renders our free public schools
on invaluable preparation and safeguard
for citizenship whether in our respective
States or in the United States of America.
Long live the Republic. But, also, | say,
Long live the free public schools which
create, maintain, and diffuse the spirit OF
the Republic
'tWhen we drop cant and look at the
hard facts we see it is folly to blame the
schools for defects of blood, sins of will,
la1ses from virtue, and blights Of charac-
ter, which neither our laws nor our policy
REQUIRE the schools to combat, save in so
far as they interfere with the scholastic
exercises prescribed for the pupils by their
teachers. You must blame the church,
you must blame society, you must blame
the offenders, you must blame yourselves
when your children become the victims OF
intemperance, vice or impiety."