Philadelphia Public Education Ass
Published: 2017-10-30
Total Pages: 42
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Excerpt from Compulsory Education: Prepared for the Public Education Association of Philadelphia, and the Department of Education of the Civic Club of Philadelphia Compulsory education is not a new thing. It finds many advocates and many opponents. Undoubtedly, it is not the highest ideal in education. It is but a means to the end desired. With reason, its Oppon ents urge that the family is the unit of our social fabric; the control of the child is a right inherent in the parent. Yet so long as we have ignorant or selfish parents, we shall have to resort to compulsion: for by its aid only can the child's right to an education be enforced. III our zeal for parental authority, let us not forget the child. Compulsory education has been found necessary in nearly every country of Europe, in several countries of South America, in Japan, and in thirty-one of the United States. The Pennsylvania law is the most recent, having been enacted May 16, 1895. It took effect at once in the State at large, but not in Philadelphia. This fact was due partly to its defective form. The original report of the Civic Club Committee (presented November 21, 1896, by Mrs. Talcott Williams) showed the Objects Of the Pennsylvania law and the difficulties in its enforce ment. Attention was called to the fact that absentees become vagrants or criminals. Another report points out that in Chicago, according to one of its own school reports, out of children not attending school, in 1891-1892, more than three-fourths were notorious loafers and idlers, who could not be forced into the schools and who furnished recruits for reform schools and penitentiaries. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.