Mr. Darlingby had something more to say in favor of high-schools, in which he had been a teacher for several years. He wanted to know if Captain Gildrock believed that the higher branches should be taught at the public expense.
“I think the expense is the least important part of the subject,” replied the principal; “but I will answer the question. I do not believe that high-schools should be supported, as a rule, out of the public taxes.”
“You are very radical in your opinions, Captain Gildrock,” added the instructor.
“Let us look at it a moment. There are two thousand scholars of all ages in the public schools of Genverres. Not more than one in five of them will ever reach the highest class in the grammar-school. The other four will leave school, and go to work: their parents need them, or what they can earn. But the parents of all those who fall out of the schools by the way are tax-payers. Some are only poll-taxes, but a few of them pay on their little lots of land and houses. It costs about five times as much to educate a pupil in the high-school as in the elementary schools. The parents of four-fifths of the scholars can’t afford
even to send their children through the grammar-school course, to say nothing of the high-school; but they have to pay their share of the expenses of the high-school, which I contend is not just.”
“But the safety of our institutions depends upon the education of the people,” replied Mr. Darlingby.
“Does it depend upon a college education? Why not insist that every person should be a graduate of a college, and that no person could be moral and upright without having a college degree?” added the principal.
“There is reason in all things.”
“You draw the line after the high-school, and I before: that is the only difference. It would be as just to support the colleges at the public expense as the high-schools. The education that preserves the State is not French and German, Latin and Greek, chemistry and physics; but it is the education that distinguishes the immigrant who cannot read and write from the farmers and mechanics of this country. It does not include a high-school training.”
“Then, if a poor man’s son or daughter, with a taste for learning, wants an education, he shall