Compulsory Education?”
“Most decidedly, sir! How could you doubt that for a moment? If parents are obliged to maintain their children with food and the ‘necessaries of life,’ why should they not be compelled to look after the nurturing of their minds?”
“Why, because the one is a moral obligation, whereas, if I rightly understand you, school education has been made compulsory by the law; and this would appear to me to be an infringement of individual liberty, and of the rights of parents.”
“You did understand me rightly, so far as the law is concerned; but permit me, sir, to point out to you that you have taken a very one-sided view of the question of compulsion. You will probably admit that for any properly managed society to exist, every member of the same has to sacrifice a portion of his individual liberty in the interests of the whole of which he forms part. In many cases such sacrifices are borne without any reluctance or opposition; then, namely, when they are visibly and amply compensated by the many advantages involved in our living in a well-regulated society. With regard to the much-vaunted rights of parents, it should never be lost sight of that the children have their rights as well; aye, from the moment they enter upon this world; and one of these rights is that they, born in civilized society, where ignorance is excluded as a foreign element, must be somehow enabled to appropriate some culture to themselves. If now the parents abuse their rights by sheer force it becomes the duty of the state to intervene on behalf of the weaker, and, by legal exactions, protect the children in their future welfare. This is, at the same time, in the interests of the state; for the experience of preceding centuries, when compulsory education was not universally recognised, has taught us again and again that the jails of Europe were mostly filled with those that could neither read nor write.”
“One more question permit me. Has not the introduction of compulsory education been accompanied by great, almost insuperable obstacles?”
“That these obstacles were at least not insuperable you may easily gather from the fact that, even in the nineteenth century, the compulsory measure existed in some parts of Germany, and met with no opposition. Of course, on its application to other countries, some difficulties had at first to be surmounted; for all novelties meet with opposition somewhere, and all changes are fraught with more or less evil somehow. At first the measure had to be occasionally enforced by the arm of the law, but a very few years sufficed for the legal clause to grow into a popular habit; and the present generation, grown up under its beneficent influence, is so deeply convinced of the indispensability of some elementary knowledge in every member of society, that the law might be safely repealed without fear that any school would lose a single pupil.”[8]
Bacon’s arguments were by no means lost upon me; nay, it seemed now almost strange and inexplicable to me that in an age when the word “progress” proceeded and was re-echoed from lip to lip, so absolute a sine quâ non of progress could have found opponents. But then I remembered at the same time that the word progress admitted of more acceptations than one. I was about to inquire of Bacon in what sense the term was taken in the twenty-first century, when my eye fell upon another row of buildings far greater in extent than those constituting the National Library. I was informed by my guide that we had arrived at the National Museum. “Here,” said he, “are preserved some glorious works of art and all the most remarkable objects of nature.”
“I easily understand,” said I, “that even the ordinary tourist would require a couple of days to gratify his morbid curiosity in this enceinte; but could I not see some small department at least of all these sightworthy productions?”
“Well,” answered Miss Phantasia, “let us see the collection in the