QUESTION FOR DEBATE.
Resolved, That it is right for a man without children to pay school taxes.
CHAPTER III.
THE CIVIL DISTRICT.
INTRODUCTORY.--In our study, thus far, we have had to do with special forms of government as exercised in the family and in the school. These are, in a sense, peculiar to themselves. The rights of government as administered in the family, and the rights of the members of a family, as well as their duties to each other, are natural rights and duties; they do not depend upon society for their force. In fact, they are stronger and more binding in proportion as the bands of society are relaxed.
In the primitive state, before there was organized civil society, family government was supreme; and likewise, if a family should remove from within the limits of civil society and be entirely isolated, family government would again resume its power and binding force.
School government, while partaking of the nature of civil government, is still more closely allied to family government. In the natural state, and in the isolated household, the education of the child devolves upon the parents, and the parent delegates a part of his natural rights and duties to the teacher when he commits the education of his child to the common school. The teacher is said to stand in loco parentis (in the place of the parent), and from this direction, mainly, are his rights of government derived. The school, therefore, stands in an intermediate position between family government and civil government proper, partaking of some features of each, and forming a sort of stepping-stone for the child from the natural restraints of home to the more complex demands of civil society. The school district, also, while partaking of the nature of a civil institution, is in many respects to be regarded as a co-operative organization of the families of the neighborhood for the education of their children, and its government as a co-operative family government.