Year: 1878

Aot9A AV. 0oU Vi


From which the reader will see that the
average expense per pupil, for the 2l per cent
Of the pupils served by the high schools was
nearly three times the average expense per
pupil of the 81 per cent of tie pspils served
by the common school.


Can any rational person pretend that schools
which serve only p per ceht of all the pupils
that participate in the benefits of ihs school
fuud-schools from which ga per cent of all
those pupils are excl1ded-schools which con
sume per cent of rhe school money for the
special leneht of 23 per cent of the pupils
Who share in the pubic school syStem-schOOf5
for the special education of so ipsignificaut @
fraction of the pupils at nearly Luree times
the expense per pupil thrt appears in the CON-
understanding sretepd TO say that such special
schools tJr the few at the cost of fund which
belongs equally to all, axe common schools
1t is perfectly absurd to call them common
schools. Common schools schools which
are common to and for all, and from which
none is excluded by any test of education, of
social status, or of anything else.


The public school system is in tended to be a
common school system system of schools
common to all persons within the "school nge"
The language of the supreme law is: " The
and efficient system Of free schools, whereby
all the children of the State may olive O
good common school education.


In New York State the school tax last
year was over S1l, ,O00,0 900, and very large
percentage of that amount was used for the





the rule. In Rochester, N. Y, the High
School has just been abolished by the
Board of Education fer the very reasons
urged in Chcago-i. C., the enormous
expense, which yields such meagre results.
In New York city the board is consider
! ing the proposition of abolishing the Free
College.


There are many people who lift up their
hands in horror ut the bare mention of
Remaining instruction in ecience, art and
foreign languages to the private schools,
where they properly belong; but there is
a general feeling throughout the country
that what the youth of the school age need
is good, free, common school education,
the State merely furnishing the sound
sabstFUcture upon which the pupil, if there
ls anything in him, can build advanta.
| geousty by bis OWL exerti' ms. The show
! ing from Chicago furnishes a very poor
argument in favor of the academy, classi
| cal, intermediate or professional school,
| free to the masses ; but there ia q solution
of the difficulty, and that is through the
medium of schools of the industries, like
the Normal Art School aud Institute of
| Technology of Massachusetts, which pro-
vide the industrial education which will
qualify nine tenths of the pupils of the
common schools for the voeations in life
which they inevitably follow after receiv-
| ing the regular course of elementary
| instruction in the common schools. We
oIo no' III laNor OF any upheaVal of the
present advanced sysrem but when we
observe the general complaint in all the
States where public education has been
carried to extremes, we are inclined to
believe that educational theories have
expanded too extensively, and that if more
money raised by taxation for school pur.
poses was devoted to bringing all the
population of school age into the benefits
OF thorough elementary education, the
! net results wOnld be far more gratifying
than under the present inflated system. 1t
ls the desire to return to the excellent
elementary educational programme which
led the Society of Municipal Reform in
New York to say, in recent report on the
public school system of that city, after a