Part 81 (2/2)
COMPULSORY SCHOOL-ATTENDANCE LEGISLATION The natural corollary of the taxation of the wealth of the State to educate the children of the State, and the prohibition of children to labor, is the compulsion of children to attend school that theywhich the State has deemed it wise to tax its citizens to provide
Except in the German States, coh in its origins it is a child of the Protestant Reformation theory as to education for salvation Luther and his followers had stood for the education of all, supported by (R 156) and enforced by (R 158) the State This idea of the education of all to read the Bible took deep root, as we have seen, with both Lutherans and Calvinists In 1619 the little Duchy of Weimar made the school attendance of all children, six to twelve years of age, compulsory, and the same idea was instituted in Gotha by Duke Ernest (p 317), in 1642; the same year that the Massachusetts General Court ordered the Selectmen of the towns to ascertain if parents and thetheir children ”in learning and labor” and ”to read and understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of the country” This latter law is re world, a legislative body representing the State ordered that all children should be taught to read
Five years later (1647) the Massachusetts Court ordered the establishment of schools (R 191) better to enforce the compulsion, and thus laid the foundations upon which the American public-school systems have since been built In Holland, the Synod of Dort (1618) had tried to institute the idea of compulsory education (R 176), and in 1646 the Scotch Parliament had ordered the compulsory establishment of schools (R 179)
In German lands the compulsory-attendance idea took deep root, and in consequence the Germans were the first ihly, the education of all In 1717 King Frederick William I issued (p 555) the first co that ”hereafter wherever there are schools in the place the parents shall be obliged, under severe penalties, to send their children to school,
daily in winter, but in summer at least twice a week” He further ordered that the fees for the poor were to be paid ”from the coanized the earlier procedure into comprehensive codes, and made (1763, R 274, Section 10; 1765, R 275 d) detailed provisions relating to the compulsion to attend the schools In the Code of 1794 (p 565) the final legislative step was taken when it was ordered that ”the instruction in school must be continued until the child is found to possess the knowledge necessary to every rational being” By the hteenth century the basis was clearly laid in Prussia for that enforcement of the compulsion to attend schools which, by the middle of the nineteenth century, had become such a notable characteristic of all German education The sa the Scandinavian peoples In consequence the lowest illiteracy in Europe, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was to be found (see ians, Danes, and Germans
The compulsory-attendance idea died out in Aland and in the Anglican Colonies in America it never took root In France the idea awaited the work of the National Convention, which (1792) ordered three years of education compulsory for all War and the lack of interest of Napoleon in primary education caused the requirement, however, to become a dead letter The Law of 1833 provided for but did not enforce it, and real coland the compulsory idea received but little attention until after 1870, met with much opposition, and only recently have comprehensive refors of coislation date from the Rhode Island child-labor law of 1840, and the first modern compulsory-attendance law enacted by Massachusetts, in 1852 By 1885, fourteen American States and six Territories had enacted some foreneral revision of Aislation on the subject, with a view to increasing and the better enforceeneral deress should enact a national child- labor law
As a result of this legislation the labor of young children has been greatly restricted; work in many industries has been prohibited entirely, because of the danger to life and health; compulsory education has been extended in a majority of the American States to cover the full school year; poverty, or dependent parents, in er serves as an excuse for non-attendance; often those having physical or mental defects also are included in the compulsion to attend, if their wants can be provided for; the school census has been changed so as to aid in the location of children of coe; and special officers have been authorized or ordered appointed to assist school authorities in enforcing the co taxed their citizens to provide schools, the different States now require children to attend and partake of the advantages provided The schools, too, have made a close study of retarded pupils, because of the close connection found to exist between retardation in school and truancy and juvenile delinquency
ONE RESULT OF THIS LEGISLATION One of the results of all this legislation has been to throw, during the past quarter of a century, an entirely new burden on schools everywhere Such legislation has brought into the schools not only the truant and the incorrigible, who under former conditions either left early or were expelled, but also , and many of inferior mental qualities who do not profit by ordinary classrooht into the school the crippled, tubercular, deaf, epileptic, and blind, as well as the sick, needy, and physically unfit By steadily raising the age at which children may leave school, from ten or twelve up to fourteen and sixteen, schools everywhere have co no natural aptitude for study, would at once, unless specially handled, become a nuisance in the school and tend to demoralize schoolroom procedure These laws have thrown upon the school a new burden in the form of public expectancy for results, whereas a compulsory- education law cannot create capacity to profit from education Under the earlier educational conditions the school, unable to handle or educate such children, dealt with theious delinquents It sier concerned itself about theet results with them Consequently, within the past twenty-five years the whole attitude of the school toward such children has undergone a change; ht serve better to handle them, have been introduced; and an attee them and turn back to society as many of them as possible, trained for some form of social and personal usefulness
THE EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVES Another nineteenth-century expansion of state education has coenerally made for the education of defectives To-day the state school systeenerally make some provision for state institutional care, and often for local classes as well, for the training of children who belong to the seriously defective classes of society This work is almost entirely a product of the new hu the education of the deaf, seriously begun a little earlier, all effective work dates from the first half of the nineteenth century At first the feasibility of all such instruction was doubted, and the work generally was commenced privately Out of successes thus achieved, public institutions have been built up to carry on, on a large scale, as begun privately on a small scale It is now felt to be better for the State, as well as for the unfortunates themselves, that they be cared for and educated, as suitably and well as possible, for self-respect, self- support, and some form of social and vocational usefulness In consequence, the co world States to-day require that defectives, between certain ages at least, be sent to a state institution or be enrolled in a public-school class specialized for their training
[Illustration: FIG 235 ABBe DE L'ePeE (1712-89)]
BEGINNINGS OF THE WORK Up to the hteenth century a number of private efforts at the education of the deaf are on record, all dating however from the pioneer work of a Spanish Benedictine, in 1578 In 1760 a new era in the education of the deaf was begun when Abbe de l'epee opened a school at Paris for the oral instruction of poor deaf an sih A few years later (1778) a third school was opened at Leipzig This last was established under the patronage of the Elector of Saxony, and was the first school of its kind in the world to receive governnition
The Paris school was taken over as a state institution by the Constituent asseland the instruction of the deaf remained a private and a family monopoly until 1819 In 1817 the first school in America was opened, at Hartford, Connecticut, by the Reverend Thomas H
Gallaudet, and Massachusetts, in 1819, sent the first pupils paid for at state expense to this institution In 1823 Kentucky created the first state school for the training of the deaf established in the neorld, and Ohio the second, in 1827
[Illustration: FIG 236 REV THOMAS H GALLAUDET TEACHING THE DEAF AND DUMB From a bas-relief on the monument of Gallaudet, erected by the deaf and durounds of the American Asylum, at Hartford, Connecticut]
The education of the blind began in France, in 1784; England, in 1791; Austria, in 1804; Prussia, in 1806; Holland, in 1808; Sweden, in 1810; Denmark, in 1811; Scotland, in 1812; in Boston and New York, in 1832; and in Philadelphia, in 1833 All were private institutions, and general interest in the education of the blind akened later by exhibiting the pupils trained The first book for the blind was printed in Paris, in 1786 The first kindergarten for the blind was established in Germany, in 1861; the first school for the colored blind, by North Carolina, in 1869
[Illustration: FIG 237 EDUCATIONAL INStitUTIONS MAINTAINED BY THE STATE As state institutions, other than public schools]
Before the nineteenth century the feeble--stock of society, and no one thought of being able to do anything for them In 1811 Napoleon ordered a census of such individuals, and in 1816 the first school for their training was opened at Salzburg, Austria
The school was unsuccessful, and closed in 1835 The real beginning of the training of the feeble-uin, ”The Apostle of the Idiot,” in 1837, when he began a life-long study of such defectives By 1845 three or four institutions had been opened in Switzerland and Great Britain for their study and training, and for a time an attempt was made to effect cures Gallaudet had tried to educate such children at Hartford, about 1820, and a class for idiots was established at the Blind Asylum in Boston, in 1848 The interest thus aroused led to the creation of the Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Youth, in 1851, the first institution of its kind in the United States In 1867 the first city school class to train children of low-grade intelligence was organized in Geranized such special classes Norway folloith a siland, Switzerland, and Austria, about 1892 The first Aanize such classes was Providence, Rhode Island, in 1893 Since that tirade e city school systems in most American cities
In 1832 the first attempt to educate crippled children, as such, was made in Munich The model school in Europe for the education of cripples was established in Copenhagen, in 1872 The as begun privately in New York City, in 1861, and first publicly in Chicago, in 1899 The London School Board first began such classes in England, in 1898
Dependents, orphans, children of soldiers and sailors, and incorrigibles of various classes represent others for whom modern States have now provided special state institutions To-day a modern State finds it necessary to provide a nue States for the care of its dependents, if it is to nized as its humanitarian educational duties The more important of these special state institutions are shown in the diagrarounds and play directors, vacation schools, juvenile courts, disciplinary classes, parental schools, classes forhome-teachers and nurses, and child-welfare societies and officers, are otherfor child life and child welfare which have all been begun within the past half-century The significance of these additions lies chiefly in that the history of the attitude of nations toward their child life is the history of the rise of humanitarianism, altruism, justice, order, morality, and civilization itself
THE EDUCATION OF SUPERIOR CHILDREN All the work described above and relating to the work of defectives, delinquents, and children for some reason in need of special attention and care has been for those who represent the less capable and on the whole less useful members of society--the ones from whom society may expect the least They are at the same time the most costly wards of the State
Wholly within the second decade of the present century, and largely as a result of the work of the French psychologist Alfred Binet (1857-1911) we are now able to sort out, for special attention, a new class of what are known as superior, or gifted children, and to the education of these special attention is to-day here and there beginning to be directed
Educationally, it is an atteanization what a two-class school system does for monarchical forms, but to select intellectual capacity from the whole mass of the people, rather than from a selected class or caste We kno that the nue as the number of the feeble in es largely upon the proper education and utilization of these superior children One child of superior intellectual capacity, educated so as to utilize his talents, reater benefits upon mankind, and be educationally far more important, than a thousand of the feeble-minded children upon e have recently come to put soto the training of leaders for denificance in terence, as also do questions relating to grading, classification in school, choice of studies, rate of advanceuidance of children in school
_Net Average Worth of a Person_ _Age_ _Worth_ 0 90 5 950 10 2000 20 4000 30 4100 40 3650 50 2900 60 1650 70 15 80 -700 (Calculations by Dr Williaistrar of Vital Statistics for Great Britain Based on pre-war values)