Society still leaves it to the individual to decide whether he is to study higher branches. One may take algebra or not as one elects, but not so with arithmetic. The common interests of our common life dictate that everyone shall be able to count and to make accurate numerical statements. People must know some arithmetic; they must be able to read, or they are a menace to public comfort and safety.
Compulsion of Communities
The full acknowledgment of the fact that education is a public necessity has developed gradually. History shows us the steps by which this fact has been recognized in legislative action. The first step was the adoption of laws requiring communities to provide schools. We may put the matter in terms of contemporary conditions by referring to communities which would to-day be backward in this matter if it were not for state control. Thus there are sparsely settled districts or poor districts which cannot afford good schools, or, indeed, any kind of a school. The state is vitally interested in seeing to it that the untoward conditions in these regions do not deprive the children of an education. In the later years of their lives the children from these districts will surely scatter to other parts of the state. They will be less productive than they would have been if they had been educated. It is much more economical for the state as a whole to take a hand in the training of the children than to have to support even a small number of dependent adults during the unproductive period of later life when the consequences of poor schooling appear.
In some cases the delinquency of a community is due not to economic stress but to shortsighted frugality. Here again the higher authority of the larger community must take control and force the backward group to give the children such training as will bring them to reasonable productivity.
The earliest legislation on this matter is of the type which was quoted in the last chapter, where reference was made to the Connecticut law of 1650. Such legislation was addressed to the community and enjoined on it the obligation to provide schools.
Later Stages of Compulsory Legislation
Such compulsion of the community was followed, but at a much later date, by legislation compelling the child to attend school; and finally the period was reached in the midst of which we live to-day, when the state is taking a hand in the supervision of schools for the purpose of insuring as high and as uniform a grade of education as it can afford.
American Education to 1850
The first period of our national life, during which we were very gradually evolving the conception of a need for public education and were setting up the requirement of schools in every community, extended down to the decade before the Civil War. Professor Cubberley has given a very illuminating description of this period, from which we may quote the following extracts:
During the early decades of the nineteenth century, schools and the means of education made little progress. There were among the founders of our states certain far-seeing men who wished for general public education, but it was well along toward the middle of the century before these men represented more than a hopeful minority in most of our states, and in the South little was done until after the Civil War....