But how shall the evil in question be remedied? How shall we secure the attendance of children generally at the schools, provided good ones are established? In the first place, diligent effort should be made to arouse the public mind to an appreciation of the importance and necessity of universal attendance. This will go far toward remedying the evil. It should be made every where unpopular, and be regarded as dishonorable in a member of our social compact, and unworthy of a citizen of a free state, to bring up a child without giving him such an education as shall fit him for the discharge of the duties of an American citizen.
But there is a portion of almost every community who feel hardly able to allow their children the necessary time to pursue an extended course of common school education, and who are really unable to clothe them properly, furnish them with useful books, and pay their tuition. This class, although comparatively small, is not unimportant. The legal provisions made for such children vary in different states. Wherever the free school principle is adopted, their tuition is of course provided for. This provision in some instances extends further. The statutes of Michigan relating to primary schools make it the duty of the district board to exempt from the payment of teachers' wages not only, but from providing fuel for the use of the district, all such persons residing therein as in their opinion ought to be exempted, and to admit the children of such persons to the school free of charge not only, but the district board is authorized to purchase, at the expense of the district, such books as may be necessary for the use of children thus admitted by them to the district school. The entire expense incurred for tuition, fuel, and books, in such cases, is assumed by the district, and paid by a tax levied upon the property thereof.
We have now arrived at an interesting crisis. We have exhausted the legal provision, generous as it is, and yet the blessing of universal education is not secured to those who will succeed us. Good schools may every where be established, in which the wealthy, and those in comfortable circumstances, may educate their children. Provision—yes, generous provision, though but just—has been made to meet the expense of tuition and books for the children of indigent parents. Still, they may not sufficiently appreciate an education to send their children; or, if this be not so, they may keep them at home from motives of delicacy, being unable to clothe them decently. How shall such cases be met? How shall we actually bring such children into the peaceable possession and enjoyment of a good common school education, that rich legacy which noble-minded legislators have bequeathed to them, and which is the inalienable right of every son and daughter of this republic?
Legislation has already, in many of the states, done much—perhaps all that can be reasonably expected, at least, until a good common education shall be better appreciated by the community at large, and be ranked, as it ought to be, among the necessaries of life. The work, then, must be consummated chiefly by the united and well-directed efforts of benevolent and philanthropic individuals.
Benevolent females—and especially Christian mothers, who have long been pre-eminently distinguished for their successful efforts in protecting the innocent, administering to the wants of the necessitous, and reclaiming the wanderer from the paths of vice—have felt the claims of this innocent and unoffending portion of the community, and have, in some instances, organized themselves into associations to meet those claims.
Benevolent and Christian females can doubtless accomplish more, by visiting the poor and needy in their respective school districts, and making known unto them their privileges, and encouraging and assisting them, if need be, to avail themselves of these privileges, than by the same expenditure of time and means in any other way. They have long and very generally been accustomed to clothe the children of the destitute, and accompany them to the Sunday-school, and there teach them those things which pertain to their present and everlasting well-being, and have thus accomplished incalculable good; but by co-operating with the civil authorities in securing the attendance of every child in their respective districts at the improved common school, they can hardly fail to accomplish vastly more.
Several associations have been formed for this noble purpose, and many children who, but for their fostering care, would have remained at their cheerless homes, have, by this labor of love, been sought out, properly cared for, and led to the common school, that fountain of intellectual life, and of social and moral culture, which is alike open to all. Gentlemen should everywhere encourage the formation of such associations, and, when formed, should offer every facility in their power to increase their usefulness. Clergymen might help forward such benevolent labors, where they are entered upon, by preaching occasionally from that good text, Help those women.
But there are two classes of our fellow-citizens—perhaps I should say fellow-beings—who, notwithstanding the abundant legal provisions to which I have referred, and the utmost that the benevolent and philanthropic can accomplish by voluntary effort, will utterly refuse to give their children such an education as we have been contemplating. These are, first, men in comfortable circumstances, who have so much blindness of mind, and such an utter disregard for the welfare of their offspring, as to deprive them of the advantages of even a common school education; and, secondly, those who have such an obduracy of heart as absolutely to refuse to allow their children to attend school, and who, although the abundant provisions of the law are made known unto them, in meekness and love, by "man's guardian angel," prove utterly incorrigible.
Such persons are unworthy to sustain the parental relation, and the safety of the community requires that the forfeiture be claimed, and that the right of control be transferred from such unnatural parents to the civil authorities; for, as Kent says, "A parent who sends his son into the world uneducated, and without skill in any art or science, does a great injury to mankind as well as to his own family, for he defrauds the community of a useful citizen, and bequeaths to it a nuisance." How true is it that "the mobs, the riots, the burnings, the lynchings perpetrated by the men of the present day, are perpetrated because of their vicious or defective education when children! We see and feel the havoc and the ravage of their tiger passions now, when they are full grown, but it was years ago that they were whelped and suckled."
In the very expressive language of Macaulay, the right to hang includes the right to educate. This is not a strange nor a new idea. It long ago entered into civil codes in the Old World not only, but in the New. In Prussia, when a parent refuses, without satisfactory excuse, to send his child to school the time required by law, he is cited before the court, tried, and, if he refuses compliance, the child is taken from him and sent to school, and the father to prison.