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education; that it should become a national obligation. It is interesting to find in the writings of Erasmus on education the same objections reported which are repeated to-day in the twentieth century, met by the same arguments by which they are met to-day.

You say [says Erasmus] that you have no time to educate your children. If you will give up some of your foolish pleasures, if you will give up some of your useless avocations, and especially if you will devote less time to your senseless social functions, you will have time enough to educate your children. You have no money. No money! Why, you pay less for your teachers than you pay for your cook. [I believe that is still sometimes true in New York City.] You mothers are more particular to dress your children than to educate them. You are anxious for their hats and their dresses that they should appear well. If you must gratify your vanity by dressing somebody, buy a monkey and dress him. You say that education impairs the health. I should certainly always advise moderation in the amount of mental exertion demanded, but I have little patience with critics who only become anxious about the youthful constitution when education is mooted, but who are indifferent to the far more certain risks of overfeeding, late hours, and unsuitable dressing in the classes about whom I am here concerned.1

1 W. H. Woodward, Erasmus Concerning Education. I here summarize, not quoting with verbal accuracy.

That would not be a bad lesson in some homes in America. Erasmus laid stress on the taking up of education by the State. He was more radical than the most radical of advocates of State education to-day. Secular education, or none at all, was his cry. Luther spoke on this subject with even greater forcefulness:

Since we are all required, and especially the magistrates, above all other things to educate the youth who are born and are growing up among us, and to train them up in the way of virtue, it is needful that we have schools, preachers, and pastors. If the parents will not reform, they must go their way to ruin; but if the young are neglected and left without education, it is the fault of the State, and the effect will be that the country will swarm with vile and lawless people, so that our safety, no less than the command of God, requireth us to see and ward off this evil. [He maintains in this letter that government] as the natural guardian of the young has a right to compel the people to support the schools. What is necessary to the well-being of a state, that should be supplied by those who enjoy the privileges of such state.1

Since the sixteenth century the public school, that is, the school supported and maintained by, and under the government of, the political organization, has been the constant companion and the

1 Letter of Martin Luther to the Elector of Saxony, quoted in Barnard's German Pedagogy, p. 13.

true foundation of every democratic state. The public schools of Germany date from the days of Luther. Their excellence is due in part to the fact that they have been under a process of harmonious development for more than three centuries. The public schools passed gradually over into other countries, which gradually became democratic. It was not until 1870 that the State made any provision for public education in England. It was not until 1881 that the State undertook compulsory education in France.

The Puritans brought their system of public education with them as the foundation of their theocracy. It extended, after the Civil War, into the South, and has now gone wherever the American flag has gone. One of the most inspiring surprises which the visitor to Porto Rico sees today as he travels over that island is the rural schoolhouse in every village, and oftentimes in spots remote from any town. In Porto Rico,' in Hawaii, in the Philippines, the public schoolthat is, the school supported and carried on and maintained by the State-has followed, accompanied, been the foundation of, the democratic

1 The latest statistics available at this writing show in Porto Rico: schools, 2,040; scholars, 87,236; teachers, 1,736. And when our troops landed in Porto Rico, there were no schools outside a few of the larger towns, and not a school building in the island which had been erected for that purpose.

movement. I sat one night recently by the side of Baron Kikuchi, the head of the Educational Department of Japan, and he told me that in that country ninety-eight per cent of the children were in the public school. I said to him, “You are in advance of America." I wonder how long it will be before we catch up.

Thus there have developed from very primitive beginnings three instruments of education,-the Home, the Church, and the State. How the education should be divided between these three is a matter of hot debate. In France the government has recently prohibited the Church from doing any teaching. In Germany the State does the teaching, but in some parts of the Empire the Church comes in after hours to add religious instruction. In England the Church and State combine to render instruction, the Church carrying on some schools, the State others. In America the State carries on the schools, but the Church is perfectly free to establish and maintain schools by its own action and under its own direction, if it sees fit to do so.

I believe that these three organizations, the Home, the Church, and the School, should combine in education. How they should combine, and what education they should furnish, I shall consider in a succeeding chapter.

CHAPTER VI

THE HOME, THE CHURCH, THE SCHOOL

EDUCATION begins at the cradle. The first educator is the mother. The first lesson to be taught is obedience. This is the first lesson which must be learned by a self-governing member of a selfgoverning community.

We are born into a world of law. We cannot do as we please. We are not at liberty, if liberty means exemption from law. If a man thinks he has liberty to fly, and jumps off the roof of the house, he finds when he reaches the sidewalk that he has not even liberty to walk, unless first he has learned the laws of aerial navigation and flies in accordance with them. Obedience to law is the foundation of all civilization, material, intellectual, social, spiritual. The first thing the child has to learn is that there are other wills superior to his will, and laws to which he must himself be obedient. An indulgent mother is a cruel mother. She is sending out her child unprepared for the restraints of law, which will be enforced by seemingly cruel penalties. If she were wise and strong, she would temper law to the child's

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