638 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



affirmative. His answer might be correct if confined to some kinds of 

 education. But he do'es not seem to consider that the education con- 

 ducted without official or state assistance, permission or direction, may- 

 be entirely opposed to the best interests of the state, and, indeed, sub- 

 versive to its organization, and thus fall short of the kind of education 

 required for the very existence of the state. Had he asked the more vital 

 question, " Could education, such as is required for the existence of the 

 state, be certainly supplied without state direction or official assist- 

 ance?" the writer would hardly have answered that "the kind of edu- 

 cation required could well be supplied without state direction and 

 state authority." And it would seem that the real question for Eng- 

 land and America to answer is. Will voluntary, individual, or associ- 

 ated parental authority at all times sustain the education required by 

 the stato ? And still further. Will the education furnished by volun- 

 tary eifort be equal to the demands of the successive generations as 

 they come and go ? To provide this, some authority must interpose 

 some organized system of supervision, as active and continuous as the 

 life of the government, and. as extensive as the demands of the gen- 

 erations passing through the required course. 



State education, then, is not only not a hindrance, but a necessity, 

 state aid, however, in education is of wide application. It may not 

 be necessary for the state to pay for education out of the state treas- 

 ury, and still it may necessary to regulate by law some system of uni- 

 form public instruction. It may be necessary for the state to allow 

 local taxation for the education which, without law, they might de- 

 mand in vain. It may be necessary for states to allow, by statute 

 law, a graded system of education, culminating in a university course. 

 If the child is required to be educated in some particular way, he cer- 

 tainly should have the legal right to demand the time to acquire it, 

 and the course of study legally defined. If he is allowed, a time to 

 acquire the state education, he should be allowed the necessary instruc- 

 tion during the time. These are correlative relations. 



On no individual or associated plan, of a voluntary character, can 

 education be supplied to the entire people, such as the state can rely 

 upon for its own existence. It would take generations to give it 

 even a partial existence in the most favored communities in the most 

 advanced governments. At no one period could the voluntary plan 

 apply the requisite culture to the entire masses passing the age of 

 school culture. And to this conclusion the honorable gentleman seems 

 himself to have come when criticising the present English attempt to 

 introduce a national system. He says : " No truly great thing grows 

 like a mushroom. An intelligent value for education can only spread 

 slow, like civilization itself. In our hurry to act, we have not seen 

 how much life and movement is sacrificed to make place for an official 

 system. Those who administer such systems wish to get the flo^ver 

 ready made without any process of growth." 



