 compulsory education in the United States the development of compulsory education Perhaps some people might feel that the identification of compulsory education with tyranny could not be applicable to a free country such as the United States. On the contrary, the spirit and record of compulsory education in America point to very similar dangers. In the majority of American colonies, education was in the English tradition, i.e. voluntary parental education, with the only public schools being those established for poor families free to make use of the facilities. This system originated in the middle and in the southern colonies. The crucial exception was New England, the spark plug of the collectivist educational system in America. In contrast to the other colonies, New England was dominated by the Calvinist tradition, among the English Puritans who settled Massachusetts and later the other New England colonies. The ruthless and ascetic Puritans who founded the Massachusetts Bay colony were eager to adopt the Calvinist plan of compulsory education in order to ensure the creation of good Calvinists and the suppression of any possible dissent. Only a year after its first set of particular laws, the Massachusetts Bay colony in 1642 enacted a compulsory literacy law for all children. Furthermore, whenever the state officials judged that the parents or guardians were unfit or unable to take care of the children properly, the state could seize the children and apprentice them to the state appointees who would give them the required instruction. This law of June 14, 1642 was notable because it was the first establishment of compulsory education in the English-speaking world. It therefore deserves quoting in some detail. Quote, For as much as the good education of children is of singular behoof and benefit to any commonwealth, and whereas many parents and masters are too indulgent and negligent of their duty of that kind, it is ordered that the select men of every town shall have a vigilant eye over their neighbours, to see first that none shall suffer so much barbarism in any of their families as not to endeavour to teach by themselves or others their children and apprentices. End quote. In 1647, the colony followed up this law with the establishment of public schools. The major stress in the compulsory education was laid on the teaching of Calvinist Puritan principles. It is significant that the slightly older and more religiously liberal pilgrim colony of Plymouth did not set up a compulsory educational system. When the Plymouth colony was merged into the Massachusetts Bay, however, the latter's education laws prevailed. What was the sort of government that set up the English-speaking world's first compulsory educational system, the future inspiration for the educational systems of the other states? The spirit of the government was Calvinist absolutism. Everyone in the colony was forced to attend a congregational church, although not everyone could qualify as a member. Only church members, however, could vote in the state elections. The principles of this theocratic government were that of order, with the superior and the inferior put in their proper place. The ministerial authority of the elders of the church was to prevail. In order to be admitted to church membership and voting rights, the candidate had to be scrutinized by the elders of the church, who determined whether or not there was something of God and grace in his soul, and therefore fit as a member. The great spiritual Puritan leader, the Reverend John Cotton, however, declared that hypocrites who merely conformed to the elders' rules without inner belief could still be members, provided that they were not idle in their occupations. It is interesting to note that the colony set up Harvard College in one of its first acts in 1636 as a state college. The authorities declared that schools must depend on the magistrates in order to prevent the corruption of sound doctrines. Another leading Puritan minister and ruler, the Reverend William Hubbard, declared that it is found by experience that the greatest part of mankind are but as tools and instruments for others to work by, rather than any proper agents to affect anything of themselves. They are always sheep requiring a shepherd. The magistrates are the governing force, the head of society. The Reverend John Davenport advised the electors to choose good rulers because it was imperative for them to submit to the ruler's authority. Quote, You must submit to their authority and perform all duties to them whom you have chosen, whether they be good or bad, by virtue of their relation between them and you. End quote. Thus formal democracy was early seen to be compatible with despotism of the rulers over the ruled. The most important influence in shaping the Massachusetts Bay colony was its first governor, John Winthrop, who ruled the colony for twenty years from its inception in 1630. Winthrop believed that natural liberty is a wild beast which must be restrained by God's ordinances. Correct civil liberty means being good in a way of subjection to authority. Winthrop regarded any opposition to the policies of the governor, particularly when he was the governor, as positively seditious. The governing of Massachusetts was fully in keeping with these principles. Heretics and assumed witches were persecuted and hounded and Puritan austerity and strict conformity in almost all areas of life were enforced. Dissenters like Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson had to leave the colony. The Puritan soon spread out to other states and Connecticut was governed in the same spirit. Rhode Island however was far more liberal and it is no coincidence that Rhode Island was the exception in New England in the setting up of state school systems during the colonial period. During the 18th century the colonial religious severity gradually weakened its hold on the community. More sects arose and flourished. Massachusetts and Connecticut, however, enacted repressive laws against the Quakers, forbidding them also to establish schools. Furthermore, Connecticut, in a vain attempt to suppress the New Light movement, enacted a law in 1742 forbidding the New Lights from establishing any schools. Their reasons? That this may tend to train youth in principles and practices and introduce such disorders as may be of fatal consequences to the public peace and wheel of this colony. Some of the motivation for the religious indoctrination to compulsory education in the colonial period was economic. Servants were particularly required to be instructed as many of their masters believed that the servants were less prone to be independent and to give trouble when imbued with the catechism and the Puritan Bible. Finally, the Revolutionary War disrupted the entire education system and the independent states were ready to begin anew. The new states met the problem very much as they had done as colonies. Once again, Massachusetts led the way in establishing compulsory education, which her colonial laws had always provided. She took the unusual step of including in her state constitution of 1780 a provision expressly granting authority to the legislature to enforce compulsory attendance at school. This authority was promptly exercised and in 1789 school attendance was made compulsory in Massachusetts. Connecticut followed in 1805 with the law requiring all parents to educate their children. Connecticut followed this compulsory literacy with a law in 1842 requiring all employed children under 15 to attend school for three months during a year, thus adding a compulsory schooling to its general elementary compulsory education or literacy laws. Massachusetts laws were lax on truance however and in 1845 Boston attempted to pass a bill against truancy of unemployed children but lost on the ground that the rights of parents were threatened. The bill did pass in 1846 however. In 1850 Massachusetts authorised its towns to make provisions for habitual truance and provided that they could be confined in prison. Finally in 1852 Massachusetts established the first comprehensive statewide modern system of compulsory schooling in the United States. It provided that all children between 8 and 14 had to attend school at least 13 weeks each year. Massachusetts over the rest of the century continued to extend and strengthen its compulsory education laws. In 1862 for example it made jailing of habitual truant children mandatory and extended school age to between ages 7 and 16. In 1866 school attendance was made compulsory for six months during the year. This is not the place for a discussion of the battle for the public schools that transformed the American educational system from 1800 to 1850. The goal of the proponents of the drive will be analysed but suffice it to say that between 1825 and 1850 the propaganda work had been such that the non-New England states had changed from a system of no public schools or only pauper schools to the establishment of free schools available to all. Furthermore the spirit of the schools had changed from philanthropy to the poor to something which all children were induced to attend. By 1850 every state had a network of free public schools. In 1850 all the states had public schools but only Massachusetts and Connecticut were imposing compulsion. The movement for compulsory schooling conquered all of America in the late 19th century. Massachusetts began the parade and the other states all followed mainly in the 1870s and 1880s. By 1900 almost every state was enforcing compulsory attendance. There seemed to have been little debate over the issue of compulsory schooling. We can only guess at the reason for this neglect of a fundamental issue a neglect that is evident furthermore in every history of education. It may well be because the professional educationists knew that the issue might be a touchy one if the topic were unduly stressed in public debate. After citing some of the pro and con opinions on the compulsory schooling laws we will investigate the development of the educationists and their propaganda movements since they were instrumental in establishing public schools and enrolling their operations to this day. Arguments for and against compulsion in the United States. The individualist tradition on this matter was well presented in the early 19th 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. Similarly a fellow Virginian of that period warned against any transfer of the rights of the parents to the government, thereby jeopardising the vital relation between parent and child. By the late 19th 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. It resolved that as long as there were 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. 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 31st 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 14 who had not attended school and 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. 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 attained 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. 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 Patterson 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 Hastings signed the bill with great reluctance. In 1892 the Democratic Party National Platform declared quote 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 ensures the highest type of American citizenship and the best government. End quote. The goals of public schooling the educationist movement it is important to consider the goals of the establishment of public schools particularly since professional educators were the prime force in both the establishment of free common schools and of compulsory instruction. In the first place the desire for public schools by such quasi-libertarians as Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine was based on a belief that Republican government is best suited for well-schooled citizens and that the government should make such institutions available for those too poor to afford them privately. Certainly many of those who advocated for the establishment of public schools did it simply for this reason. There were other and more dangerous goals however particularly among the educationists who were the main forces in the drive and who took control of the state boards of education and teachers training colleges which instructed the public school teachers. As early as 1785 the Reverend Jeremy Belknap preaching before the New Hampshire general court advocated equal and compulsory education for all emphasising that the children belong to the state and not to the parents. The influential Benjamin Rush wanted general education in order to establish a uniform, homogeneous and egalitarian nation. The doctrine of obedience to the state was the prime goal of the father of the public school system in North Carolina, Archibald D. Murphy. In 1816 Murphy planned a system of state schools as follows, quote, all children will be taught in them. In these schools the precepts of morality and religion should be inculcated and habits of subordination and obedience be formed. State in the warmth of her solicitude for their welfare must take charge of those children and place them in school where their minds can be enlightened and their hearts can be trained to virtue. End quote. By the 1820s their goals of compulsion and statism were already germinating over the country and particularly flourishing in New England although the individualist tradition was still strong. One factor that increased the power of New England in diffusing the collectivist idea in education was the enormous migration from that area. New Englanders swarmed south and west out of New England and carried their zeal for public schooling and for state compulsion with them. Into this atmosphere was injected the closest that the country had seen to Plato's idea of full state communist control over the children. This was the plan of two of the first socialists in America Francis Wright and Robert Dale Owen. Owen was the son of one of the first British utopian socialists and with Robert Owen his father had attempted an experiment in a voluntary communist community in New Harmony, Indiana. Francis Wright was a Scots woman who had also been at New Harmony and with Owen opened a newspaper called The Free Inquirer. Their main objective was to campaign for their compulsory education system. Wright and Owen outlined their scheme as follows. Quote. It is national, rational, republican education for all at the expense of all conducted under the guardianship of the state and for the honour, the happiness, the virtue, the salvation of the state. End quote. The major aim of the plan was that equality be implanted in the minds, the habits, the manners and the feelings so that eventually fortunes and conditions would be equalised. Instead of the intricate apparatus of common schools, high schools, seminaries, etc. Wright and Owen advocated that the state simply organise a series of institutions for the general reception of all children living within that district. These establishments would be devoted to the complete rearing of the various age groups of children. The children would be forced to live at these places 24 hours a day. The parents would be allowed to visit their children from time to time. From the age of two every child would be under the care and guidance of the state. Quote. In these nurseries of a free nation no inequality must be allowed to enter. Fared at a common board, clothed in a common garb, raised in the exercise of common duties. In the exercise of the same virtues. In the enjoyment of the same pleasures. In the study of the same nature. In pursuit of the same object. Say would not such a race work out the reform of society and perfect the free institutions of America. End quote. Owen was quite insistent that the system not embrace anything less than the whole people. The effect will be to regenerate America in one generation. It will make but one class out of the many. Francis Wright revealed the aim of the system starkly, calling on the people to overthrow a moneyed aristocracy and priestly hierarchy. The present is a war of class. Thus we see that a new element has been introduced into the old use of compulsory education on behalf of state absolutism. A second goal is absolute equality and uniformity. And a compulsory school system was seen by Owen and Wright to be ideally suited to this task. First the habits and minds and feelings of all the children must be moulded into absolute equality. And then the nation will be ripe for the final step of equalization of property and incomes by means of state coercion. Why did Owen and Wright insist on seizing the children for 24 hours a day from the age of two on only releasing them when the school age was over at 16? As Owen declared, quote, in Republican schools there must be no temptation to the growth of aristocratical prejudices. The pupils must learn to consider themselves as fellow citizens, as equals. Respect ought not to be paid to riches or withheld from poverty. Yet if the children from these state schools are to go every evening, the one to his wealthy parents' soft carpeted drawing room, and the other to its poor father's or widowed mother's comfortless cabin, will they return the next day as friends and equals? End quote. Likewise, differences in quality of clothing invoked feelings of envy on the part of the poor and disdain by the rich, which should be eliminated by forcing one uniform upon both. Throughout his plans there runs the hatred of human diversity, of the higher living standards of the rich, as compared to the poor. To effect his plan for thoroughgoing equalisation by force, the schools, quote, must receive the children not for six hours a day, but altogether, must feed them, clothe them, lodge them, must direct not their studies only, but their occupations and amusements, and must care for them until their education is completed. End quote. It might be asserted that the Owen Wright Plan is unimportant, that it had purely crackpot significance and little influence. The contrary is true. In the first place, the plan had a great deal of influence. Certainly the ideas of promoting equality were dominant in the thinking of the influential group of educationists that established and controlled the public schools of the nation during the 1830s and 1840s. Furthermore, the Owen Plan pushes the whole idea of compulsory state schooling to its logical conclusion. Not only by promoting state absolutism and absolute equality, to which the system is admirably suited, but also because Owen recognised that he had to educate the whole child in order to mould the coming generation sufficiently. Is it not probable that the progressive drive to educate the whole child aims to mould the child's entire personality in lieu of the complete Owen Wright compulsory communist seizure, which no one in America would accept? The influence of the Owen Wright Plan is attested to by the fact that a contemporary laudatory historian of the public school movement places it first in his story and devotes considerable space to it. Kremlin reports that a great many newspapers reprinted Owen's essays on the plan and approved them. Owen began expounding his project in the late 1820s and continued on until the late 1840s when he wrote the elaborated plan with Miss Wright. It had a considerable influence on workers' groups. It exerted a great influence on the widely noted report of a committee of Philadelphia workers in 1829 to report on education in Pennsylvania. The report called for equality and equal education and proper training for all. And this and similar reports had a considerable influence in preparing the way for the progressive legislation of the middle 30s. Shortly thereafter there arose on the American scene a remarkable phenomenon a closely knit group of educationists. Kremlin calls them educational reformers whose tireless propaganda was instrumental in pushing through public schools who then came to control the schools through positions on the state boards of education as superintendents etc. through the control of teachers' training institutions and thereby of the teachers. This same grouping under different names continues to dominate primary and secondary education to this day with their own tightly knit ideas and jargon. Most important they have managed to impose their standards on state certification requirements for teachers so that no one can teach in a public school who does not go through a course of teacher training instruction run by the educationists. It was this same group that pushed through compulsory education and advocated more and more progressive education therefore they deserve close scrutiny. Some Americans pride themselves that their educational system can never be tyrannical because it is not federally but state controlled. This makes very little difference however. Not only does this still mean the government whether state or federal but also the educationists through national associations and journals are almost completely coordinated. In actuality therefore the school systems are nationally and centrally controlled and formal federal control would only be the crowning step in the drive for national conformity and control. Another important source of tyranny and absolutism in the school system is the fact that the teachers are under civil service. As a result once a formal examination is passed and this has little relation to actual teaching competence and a little time passes the teacher is on the public payroll and foisted on the children for the rest of his working life. The government bureaucracy has fostered civil service as an extraordinarily powerful tool of entrenchment and permanent domination. Tyranny by majority vote may be unpleasant enough but at least if the rulers are subject to democratic checks they have to please the majority of the voters but government officials who cannot be voted out at the next election are not subject to any democratic check whatever. They are permanent tyrants. Taking something out of politics by putting it under civil service certainly does increase the morale of the bureaucracy. It elevates them into near perpetual absolute rulers in their sphere of activity. The fact that teachers are under civil service is one of the most damning indictments against the American compulsory system of today. To return to the first educationists the main figures in the movement were such men as New Englanders, Horace Mann in Massachusetts and Henry Bernard in Connecticut also James Carter, Calvin Stowe, Caleb Mills, Samuel Lewis and many others. What were their methods and their goals? One of the methods to achieve their aims was to found a welter of interlocking educational organisations. One of the first was the American Lyceum organised in 1826 by Isaiah Holbrook. A major aim was to influence and try to dominate state and local boards of education. In 1827 the first Society for the Promotion of Public Schools was opened in Pennsylvania. This society engaged in an extensive programme of correspondence pamphlets, press releases, etc. Similar organisations were formed in the early 1830s throughout the West with lectures, meetings, memorials to legislatures and lobbying featured. Hundreds of such associations formed throughout the land. One of the principal ones was the American Institute of Instruction established in New England in 1830. The annual meetings and papers of this institute were one of the leading clearing houses and centres of educationist movements. Secondly, the educationists formed educational journals by the dozens through which the leading principals were disseminated to the followers. Principal ones were the American Journal of Education, the American Analysts of Education, the Common School Assistant and the Common School Journal. The most important route of educationist influence was obtaining leading positions in the state school systems. Thus Horace Mann, editor of the Common School Journal became Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education and his annual reports during the 1840s were extremely influential in setting the educationists' line. Henry Bernard became Secretary of the Connecticut Board of Education, Calvin Wiley became head of the public schools in North Carolina, Caleb Mills in Indiana, Samuel Lewis in Ohio, etc. The educationists, particularly under the influence of Horace Mann did not go as far as advocating compulsory education but they went up to that point in calling on everyone to go to the public schools and in disparaging private schools. They were particularly eager to induce everyone to go to the public schools so that all might be moulded in the direction of equality. Virginia's educationist Charles Mercer wrote a eulogy of the Common School which it might be well to compare with Owen's plan. The equality on which our institutions are founded cannot be too intimately interwoven in the habits of thinking among our youth and it is obvious that it would be greatly promoted by their continuance together for the longest possible period in the same schools of juvenile instruction to sit upon the same forms, engage in the same competitions, partake of the same recreations and amusements and pursue the same studies in connection with each other under the same discipline and in obedience to the same authority. And Mercer was the leader in Virginia's educationist movement. The vigorous championing of the public schools levelling role appeared again and again in the educationists literature. Samuel Lewis particularly stressed that the common schools would take a diverse population and mould them into one people. Theodore Edson exalted that in such schools the good children must learn to mingle with the bad ones as they will have to do in later life. The influential Orville Taylor, editor of the Common School Assistant, declared, let all send to it the common school. This is duty. And in 1837 words very much like Mercer's and Owen's quote, where high and low are taught in the same class and out of the same book and by the same teacher. This is a republican education. End quote. Hand in hand with such sentiments went disparagement of the private schools. This theme appeared almost universally in the educationist writings. James Carter stressed it in the 1820s. Orville Taylor declined in terms reminiscent of Owen that if a rich child is sent to a private school he will be taught that he is better than a public school child. This is not republicanism. The educationists thought it essential to inculcate the children with moral principles. And this meant religious faith as well. They could not be sectarian however and still induce all the religious groups to send their children to public schools. Therefore they decided to teach the fundamentals of Protestant Christianity in the public schools as the common faith of everyone. This solution might not have been too glaring in the early period but heavy immigration of Catholics soon after mid-century created insuperable difficulties in such a programme. Another interesting facet of this period was an indication of the great limitation imposed on the educationists because instruction was still voluntary. Since parents could choose or not to send their children to the public schools, the teaching bureaucracy could not have full sway. The parents were still in control. Therefore there could not be any religious absolutism. Furthermore Horace Mann was emphatic in insisting that for all controversial political subjects the teacher must be neutral. If he is not strictly neutral then the parents of opposing views would not send their children to the public schools and the ideal of uniform equal education for all would be defeated. Thus we see the enormous importance of voluntary education as a check on tyranny. The public schools had to be kept politically as well as religiously neutral. One basic flaw in this plan of course is that in dealing with political and economic subjects it is almost impossible to treat them intelligently and accurately while being strictly neutral and avoiding all controversy. It is obviously the best plan however given the establishment of public schools. The educationists chafed at these restrictions and looked toward the Prussian model where these difficulties did not arise. Actually they were only politically neutral where no great controversies existed and they inculcated American nationalism and uniformity of language. Calvin Stowe urged adoption of the Prussian methods although he claimed of course that in America the results would be Republican and not despotic. Stowe urged the universal placing of school duty on the same plane as military duty. The influential Stowe spoke in almost the same terms in 1836 as had Martin Luther three centuries before. Quote If a regard to the public safety makes it right for a government to compel the citizens to do military duty when a country is invaded the same reason authorizes the government to compel them to provide for the education of their children for no foes are so much to be dreaded as ignorance and vice. A man has no more right to endanger the state by throwing upon it a family of ignorant and vicious children than he has to give admission to spies of an invading army. If he is unable to educate his children the state should assist him. If unwilling it should compel him. General education is as much certain and much less expensive means of defence than military array. Popular education is not so much a want as a duty as education is provided by the parents and paid for by those who do not profit by its results it is a duty. End quote Another principle of the Prussian system which Stowe admired was its compulsory uniformity of language. He also praised its vigorous compulsory attendance and antitruant laws. Stowe's report on Prussian education was enormously influential among the educationists and they took his lead on the subject. Man and Bernard held similar views although the former hesitated on compulsion. Bernard was not reluctant however. Praising the Prussian educational system he wrote quote The regular attendance at the school shall be an object of specific control and the most active vigilance. For this is the source from which flow all the advantages the school can produce. It would be very fortunate if parents and children were always willing of themselves. Unhappily this is not the case particularly in great cities. Although it is lamentable to be forced to use constraint it is almost always necessary to commence with it. End quote Horace Mann's sincerity was certainly open to question. In his annual reports he denounced property rights and talked of social control and the one commonwealth's property. On the other hand while asking for gifts from the industrialists for the schools he abandoned this line and his talk of political neutrality and declared that he thoroughly approved of indoctrination against Jacksonian democracy and mobocracy. Henry Bernard also approved of indoctrination for property as against mob rebellion. It is obvious that the educationists chafed hugely against the restraints of volunteerism. What was needed to permit state indoctrination and uniformity was the Prussian system of compulsion. This was adopted in the late 19th century and the wraps were off. Neutrality would no longer need to be imposed or claimed. Another educationist declaration on behalf of state authority was made by the influential Josiah Quincy, Mayor of Boston and President of Harvard who declared in 1848 that every child should be educated to obey authority. George Emerson in 1873 asserted that it was very necessary for people to be accustomed from their earliest years to submit to authority. These comments were printed in leading educationist journals Common School Journal and School and Schoolmaster respectively. The influential Jacob Abbott declared in 1856 that a teacher must lead his students to accept the existing government. The superintendent of public instruction of Indiana declared in 1853 that school policy was to mould all the people into one people with one common interest. Progressive Education and the Current Scene It is obvious that there is little time or space here to enter into an extensive discussion of the much criticised system of permissive progressive education and the state of current teaching in the public schools. Certain broad considerations however, emerge particularly in the light of the triumph of the Rousseau Pestilocy Dewey system in this country since 1900. 1. The effect of progressive education is to destroy independent thought in the child indeed to repress any thought whatsoever. Instead the children learn to revere certain heroic symbols, Gentile or to follow the domination of the group as in Lafcadio Hearn's Japan. Thus subjects are taught as little as possible and the child has little chance to develop any systematic reasoning powers in the study of definite courses. This program is being carried forward into high school as well as grammar school so that many high school graduates are ignorant of elementary spelling or reading and cannot write a cogent sentence. The ruling set of educationists are on the way to establishing colleges of this type in which there would be no systematic courses and have largely succeeded in the case of their teacher training schools. The policy of letting the child what he likes is an insidious one since the children are encouraged to continue always at their original superficial level without receiving guidance in study. Furthermore the three Rs, the fundamental tools are neglected as long as possible with the result that the child's chance to develop his mind is greatly retarded. The policy of teaching words via pictures instead of by the alphabet tends to deprive the young child of the greatest reasoning tool of all. 2. Equality and uniformity are pursued more than ever even under the guise of letting individuals do as they like. The plan is to abolish grades by which better and worse children know the extent to their progress and instead to grade subjectively or not at all. Subjective grading is a monstrous scheme to grade each student on the basis of what the teacher arbitrarily thinks the capacities of the child are the grading to be rated on the extent to which the child fulfills these capacities. This places a terrible handicap on the bright students who aren't special privileges to the moronic ones who may get A's if they are no more moronic than they truly are. Studies tend to be pursued now at the lowest common denominator rather than at the average so as not to frustrate the more moronic. As a result the bright pupils are robbed of incentive or opportunity to study and the dull ones are encouraged to believe that success in the form of grades, promotions etc will come to them automatically. Individuality is suppressed by teaching all to adjust to the group. All emphasis is on the group and the group votes runs its affairs by majority rule etc. As a result the children are taught to look for truth in the opinion of the majority rather than in their own independent inquiry or in the intelligence of the best in the field. Children are prepared for democracy by being led to discuss current events without first learning the systematic subjects politics, economics, history which are necessary in order to discuss them. The mole effect is to substitute slogans and superficial opinion for considered individual thought and the opinion is that of the lowest common denominator of the group. It is clear that one of the major problems comes from the dullest group. The progressive educationists saw that the dullest could not be taught difficult subjects or indeed simple subjects. Instead of drawing the logical conclusion of abandoning compulsory education for the uneducable they decided to bring education down to the lowest level so that the dullest could absorb it in fact to move toward the elimination of subjects or grading altogether. 3. The emphasis on frills on physical education play and numerous trivial courses again has the effect of being comprehensible to the most moronic and hence ensuring completely equal instruction for all. Furthermore the more such subjects are emphasised the less room there is for systematic thought. 4. The idea that the school should not simply teach subjects but should educate the whole child in all phases of life is obviously an attempt to arrogate to the state all the functions of the home. It is an attempt to accomplish the moulding of the child without actually seizing him as in the plans of Plato or Owen. 5. Unquestionably the effect of all this is to foster dependence of the individual on the group and on the state.