Education: Free and Compulsory

The tradition of voluntarism was at its strongest in England. So strong was it that, not only was there no compulsory education in England until the late nineteenth century, but there was not even a public school system. Before the 1830s, the State did not interfere in education at all. After 1833, the State began to make ever-increasing grants to promote indirectly the education of the poor in private schools. This was strictly philanthropic, and there was no trace of compulsion. Finally, compulsion was introduced into English education in the famous Education Act of 1870. This act permitted County boards to make attendance compulsory. London County immediately did so for children between five and thirteen, and other large towns followed suit. The rural counties, however, were reluctant to impose compulsory attendance. By 1876, 50 percent of the school population was under compulsion in Britain, and 84 percent of the city children.27 The Act of 1876 set up school attendance boards in those areas where there were no school boards, and attendance was compulsory in all of those remote areas, except where children lived more than two miles from school. Finally, the Act of 1880 compelled all the county school boards to decree and enforce compulsory attendance. Thus, in a decade, compulsory education had conquered England.

The great legal historian A.V. Dicey analyzed this development in no uncertain terms as part of the movement toward collectivism:

It means, in the first place, that A, who educates his children at his own expense, or has no children to educate is compelled to pay for the education of the children of S, who, though maybe having means to pay for it, prefers that the payment should come from the pockets of his neighbors. It tends, in the second place, as far as elementary education goes, to place the children of the rich and of the poor, of the provident and the improvident, on something like an equal footing. It aims, in short at the equalization of advantage.28

The compulsory collectivist principle represented quite a clash with the individualist tradition in England. The notable Newcastle Commission in 1861 rejected the idea of compulsory education on the grounds of individualistic principle. Trenchant criticism of the compulsory state education plan as a capstone of growing State tyranny was leveled by Herbert Spencer29 and by the eminent historian and jurist Sir Henry Maine.30 In recent years, Arnold Toynbee has pointed out how compulsory state education stifles independent thought.31

The movement for compulsory education in England and Europe in the late nineteenth century was bolstered by trade unionists who wanted more popular education, and upper classes who wished to instruct the masses in the proper exercise of their voting rights. Each group in society characteristically wished to add to State power with their particular policies hopefully prevailing in the use of that power.

The change of opinion in England was particularly swift on this issue. When Dicey wrote in 1905, he declared that scarcely anyone could be found to attack compulsory education. Yet, when John Stuart Mill wrote his On Liberty in 1859, he declared that scarcely anyone could be found who would not strenuously oppose compulsory education. Mill, curiously enough, supported compulsory education, but opposed the erection of any public schools, and, indeed, it turned out that in England, compulsion came before public schools in many areas. Mill, however, at least recognized that compulsory state schooling would abolish individuality on behalf of State uniformity, and would naturally make for obedience to the State.

Mill’s argument for compelling education was successfully refuted by Spencer in Social Statics. Mill had asserted that in education the consumer does not know what is best for him, and that therefore the government is justified in intervening. Yet, as Spencer points out, this has been the excuse for almost every exercise in State tyranny. The only proper test of worth is the judgment of the consumer who actually uses the product. And the State’s judgment is bound to be governed by its own despotic interests.

Another common argument in England for compulsory education was also prevalent in the United States. This was Macauley’s argument — education would eliminate crime, and since it is the duty of the State to repress crime the State should institute compulsory education. Spencer showed the speciousness of his argument, demonstrating that crime has little to do with education. This has become all too evident now, a glance at our growing juvenile delinquency rate in compulsorily educated America is proof enough of that. Spencer investigated the statistics of his day, and demonstrated that there was no correlation between ill-educated areas and criminal areas; indeed, in many cases, the correlation was the reverse — the more education, the more crime.

• 27Howard C. Barnard, A Short History of English Education, 1760 — 1944 (London: University of London Press, 1947). Strictly, the first element of compulsion had been introduced in 1844, since some of the Factory Acts had required children to be educated before beginning to work.
• 28A.V. Dicey, Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England During the Nineteenth Century (New York: Macmillan, 1948), pp. 276 — 278.
• 29In The Man Versus the State (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1946).
• 30Sir Henry Maine, Popular Government (Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Classics, [I8851 1976).
• 31Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, 10 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), vol. 4, pp. 196 — 97.