II. COMPULSORY EDUCATION
It is useful to recall that for centuries after mankind reached a point where prolonged formal education was available, attendance upon instruction was voluntary. Those who wished to learn what could be taught of the arts and sciences, hired tutors. It is true that the public ceremonies may, perhaps, be considered to have represented compulsory education, even in primitive times. However, education in the sense of several years of devotion to learning what men have previously done, thought, and devised, was formerly a private matter. The educated, who could communicate by writing, calculate in large numbers, see the present to some extent in the light of the past, and engage in even more complicated intellectual work, formed a small and highly selected group. They were individuals who loved learning, and their median IQ was doubtless far above 100.
As the white peoples of the earth, in parts of Europe and America, accumulated wealth, and more and more of those who cared to do so could buy education, political power began to be decentralized. Generous men of high intelligence conceived the idea that government should be representative. Political democracy with manhood suffrage was established in the United States. It was then seen that political democracy cannot be sustained on the basis of private education, and public money was appropriated to establish public schools.
Merely to establish free schools did not, however, solve the problem of education for a democracy. The leaders of thought and action found that not only must opportunity be provided, but many must be forced to take advantage of it. Compulsory education laws were therefore passed in many of our states, and they stand upon their statute books to-day. Truant officers became a part of the regular school staff, their duty being to apprehend all children between statutory ages, and bring them forcibly to school. The City of New York, for instance, now supports 308 truant officers, who are constantly kept busy by future citizens who wish to avoid education.
Why do they wish to avoid education? The reasons are various. Some of them avoid school because they have not enough clothing to wear; some because their parents need their earnings; some because they are ill; some because they are temperamentally unsuited to school discipline. The most important single cause of truancy is, however, that the curriculum does not provide for individual differences.
The curriculum upon which all children are now required by law to attend, is that which was formulated when only a few selected children were educated. Our schools are reading schools, and they teach abstract subject matter to a very great extent, much of which has no tangible relation to the life of many children. Children of IQ over 120 take pleasure in the abstract subject matter of grammar, mathematics, geography, and history. Children of IQ under 80 are made miserable thereby.
Not only is the curriculum not adapted to individual differences in general intelligence, but it is far less adapted to individual differences in special defects and aptitudes. The child who can never learn to sing is compelled nevertheless to pursue singing, even after school hours. The child who cannot learn reading by the method generally used is still treated by that method and no other. The schools were established with an undifferentiated curriculum, which they have tried to force upon intellects of an enormous range of diversity. Their purpose, so benign, has resulted in extraordinary cruelties and wastes.