Enforced Education.

EDITOR LIBERTY: - Thanks for the copy of your most excellent first number. Count me as one subscriber, with hope of others. "The Anatomy of Liberty" is the best article on the subject that it has been my good fortune to read. The first four lines of the extract from "L. Verite" regarding liberty of parents are sufficient to convince any rationalist of the fallacy of compulsory education. We run no great risk of contradiction in saying that the public-school system is deficient, that the course of study is ill-advised and, in many respects, unwise, and that the teachers do not fully comprehend the scope of education and the field to cover. If it becomes compulsory, common schools become degraded to the level of educational jails. We lower the character of every pupil in her or her own estimation the moment they enter the schoolyard. We insult the spirit on intelligence and common sense in the American people. Children would not as readily learn if they felt they were driven to school by law. Incentive would be blighted, pride hurt, and ambition distorted. Compulsion is any form is antagonistic to the spirit of our institutions, and if a foothold is obtain in the public schools, it will establish an undesirable precedent.

With these premises we may assert that the necessity that compels parents to send their children to shops, stores, factories, etc., should be removed. If parents are to be compelled to send children to school, the community owes the parents two things: first, that the school be fit to send children to; second, that the father, by industry and thrift, be enabled to allow his children to go to school. Love of esteem; ambition; pride; the influence of good example; the advantages to be derived from education, - these and other influences combine to induce parents to send children to school without the aid of compulsory measures. In fact, the true business of the American legislature is to go behind the returns, and see to it that the conditions are such as to lead the people to accept voluntarily the benefits and advantages of common-school education. The question of compulsory education will be solved by the solution of deeper and broader questions behind it, present reference to which would intrench too far on our time and your space.

EL-D.L.
Philadelphia, August, 1881