Presbyterian College - Pac Sac Yearbook (Clinton, SC)

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12 THE COLLEGIAN pensed with. If the government can compel such citizens as are Ht for military service to bear spear and rifle, to mount ramparts and perform other martial duties in time of war, how much more has it a right to compel the people to send their children to school, because in this case we are warring with the devil, whose object it is secretly to exhaust our cities and principalities of their strong men, to destroy the kernel and leave a shell of ignorant and helpless people, whom he can sport and juggle with at pleasure. This is starving out a city, destroying it without a struggle, and Without its knowl- edge. Most of public sentiment, nowadays, heartily agrees with Luther on compulsory education, yet it seems strange that there is such a number who hold the opposite view. Any one with a spark of sympathy, or feeling in his bosom cannot help being touched by the wretched condition of the factory chil- dren. If each and every little child were required by the government to attend school, how much would the little crea- tures be helped, benefitted and blessed! Some one will doubt- less raise the cry, How are poor, disabled widows to be sup- ported if their children be unmercifully snatched from their side and made to attend school? To such a cry let me say that there is, and always will be, a way provided. Society at large is not so cruel and heartless as to let a poor wretched widow sulferg there is always some one who graciously gives assistance, who loves to do good to the poor. Granting that this is not true, there are many poor-houses scattered the country over, and to these such parents should go. Parents owe as much as this to their children, they should be con- soled in that their offspring are being raised to a higher and nobler plane. Parents should not be so foolish as to let pride prevent them from taking refuge in poor asylums, when na- ture demands that their children receive a happy and glorious development. Luther did much to mould popular thought concerning compulsory education and his influence continues even to the present day. With his vigorous intellect he has given education such a stimulus as to set active brains to deep

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THE COLLEGIAN 11 eries and there would be more advancement. Indeed, compul- sory education would make us a more intellectual society, more capable to confront the battles of life. La Salle, one of our most noted educators, favored a gratuitous school for the poor, and if parents were unwilling to take advantage of this opportunity of instruction for their children, the rectors would give them no more assistance, hence parents were forced to make their children attend the schools. He did not think that this would be any encroachment at all on the right and liberty of parents and what a grand thing it would be for all humanity! If we are careful think- ers, we must agree with La Salle, as he is surely right and there is not much ground upon which to question him. Lepelletier, who wrote a great deal on education, re- garded obligatory education favorably. According to his system, each and every girl from five to eleven as well as each and every boy from five to twelve, was to be taken from the parents, placed in barracks, educated, and supported by the State. The boys and the girls were to receive the same education, and if parents objected to sending their offspring to school, they were to be wrested from them, if need be, by cruel force and placed in his curious boarding schools. He made perfect equality between the boys and the girls, and they were treated exactly alike. Martin Luther, the greatest of Protestant leaders, did not conceal his views on compulsory education. He express- ly stated that he who is in power has the undoubted right of providing schools and requiring parents to send their chil- dren thither. Just a little quotation, if you please, from his sermon on the Duty of Sending Children to School. I maintain that the civil authorities are under obligation to com- pel the people to send their children to school, especially such as are promising. For our rulers are certainly bound to maintain the spiritual and secular offices and callings, so that there may always be preachers, jurists, pastors, scribes, phy- sicians, schoolmasters, and the like, for these cannot be dis-

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THE COLLEGIAN 13 thought and meditation. It is he who has done so much for reforming religion, it is he who knew how to give the poor child a chance. Diderot, who labored so unwearily to prepare youth by a better education for a better future, is given the credit of advocating compulsory education as a means of improving society. He regarded the individual, and wanted all to think, to choose, to follow and to do good things. Diderot said that education would show man within what limits progress is needed, furthermore it would show him how to protect him- self, and how to employ his time usefully, so as to avoid that thing which is so dangerous to all flesh and blood-idleness Diderot is right. In a well educated society, the people would be more efficient to perform their respective tasks and duties, they would be more competent to manage businesses and en- terprises. Compulsory education would give all a chance, We should love it for its fairness, and it would be as a fertilizer to the soil of civilization. In the eighteenth century, we find sovereigns devoting their attention to popular education, and as early as 1717, Frederick William I of Prussia published an edict of com- pulsory education. Consider Germany. She has compulsory education, and think you how enlightened and cultured her people are. The Germans have the reputation of being the deepest scholars, the profoundest thinkers of modern times, and this reputation seems to be traceable only to compulsory education. In Ger- many the general supervision of educational affairs is entrust- ed to a Minister of Public Institutions and this minister is aided by school boards in the several provinces, regencies, and districts of the state. Everything is exclusively under the control of the government-text books, courses of study, se- lection of teachers, everything. Germany has her school houses bountifully supplied With the apparatus requisite to instruction and sees that each and every scholar is not neglect- ed. If compulsory education be undesirable, it seems as if Germany, who has carefully tried and tested it. would reject