Education: Free and Compulsory

The individualist tradition on this matter was well presented in the early nineteenth century by Thomas Jefferson. Although an ardent advocate of public schools to aid the poor, Jefferson squarely rejected compulsion:

It is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings and ideas by the forcible transportation and education of the infant against the will of the father.39

Similarly, a fellow Virginian of that period warned against any transfer of the rights of the parents to the government, thereby jeopardizing the vital relation between parent and child.40

By the late nineteenth century, however, the individualist tradition had dwindled sharply. Typical in support of compulsory education was a report prepared by one of the professional educationist groups, the Public Education Association of Philadelphia in 1898.41 It resolved that as long as there are ignorant or selfish parents, compulsion must be used in order to safeguard the child’s rights. The report complained that the Pennsylvania Compulsory Education Law of 1895 did not take effect in the city of Philadelphia, and recommended that it do so. It indicated that one of the major forces for such laws came from the budding trade union movement.42

The report greatly praised the Prussian system and its compulsory attendance record. It praised Massachusetts and Prussia for their systems of only permitting schooling in private schools when they fulfilled the requirements imposed by the government school committee. It also lauded the fact that Massachusetts and New York had set up truant schools, and if parents refused to give permission for their truant child to be sent there, the courts could commit him to the institution.

The spirit of the professional educationists is indicated in some of the statements mentioned in this report. Thus, a Brooklyn educator criticized the existing system of discharging truant children on July 31 of each year, and advocated that the sentence be extended indefinitely until evidence of reform is shown, or until the child is past school age.

In other words, complete seizure and incarceration of young truants. A school superintendent of Newburgh, New York, suggested that children over fourteen who had not attended school, and who were therefore above the age limit for compulsion, should be forced to attend schools for manual training, music, and military drill.

Prussia was also the ideal for a prominent newspaper supporting compulsory education. The influential New York Sun declared that children must have education, and that they should be obliged to receive it from the State; it praised the universality of the compulsory education system in Prussia and other German states.43

In 1872, Secretary B.G. Northrup of the Connecticut State Board of Education felt it self-evident that the children had “sacred rights” to education, and that growing up in ignorance was a “crime.” (We have seen in the first section that everyone, including the illiterate, attain knowledge and “education,” even if not formally instructed.)

The leading educationist body, the National Education Association, resolved in its 1897 meeting in favor of state laws for compulsory attendance.44

Thus we see that the professional educationists were the major force, assisted by the trade unions, in imposing compulsory education in America.

There was a flurry of opposition to compulsory education in the early 1890s, but by that time the movement was on its way to a clear victory. Twice, in 1891 and 1893, Governor Pattison of Pennsylvania, a state with a tradition of freedom in education, vetoed compulsory education bills on the grounds that any interference with the personal liberty of the parents is un-American in principle. The law passed in 1895, however, when Governor Hasting signed the bill with great reluctance.45 In 1892, the Democratic Party National Platform declared:

We are opposed to state interference with parental rights and rights of conscience in the education of children as an infringement of the fundamental Democratic doctrine that the largest individual liberty consistent with the rights of others insures the highest type of American citizenship and the best government.46

• 39Cf. Saul K. Padover, Jefferson (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1942), p. 169.
• 40“A Constituent,” Richmond (Va.) Enquirer, January 1818.
• 41Compulsory Education, prepared for the Public Education Association of Philadelphia, 1898.
• 42Cf. Philip Curoe, Educational Attitudes and Policies of Organized Labor in the United States (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1926).
• 43New York Sun, 16 April 1867.
• 44Journal of Proceedings and Addresses, N.E.A., 1897, p. 196.
• 45Knight and Hall, Readings in American Educational History.
• 46Ibid.; and H.L. Mencken, A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles from Ancient and Modern Sources (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1942), pp. 333 — 34.