Building For The Children In The South

Author : Amory Dwight Mayo
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781330818046
Total Pages : 22 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (18 download)

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Download or read book Building for the Children in the South (Classic Reprint) written by Amory Dwight Mayo and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-06 with total page 22 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Building for the Children in the South By the American system of education, I mean not one kind of schools exclusively, but all good schooling that has been found valuable in our country. The American system of education means, first and foremost, the free common school for all children, supported by public taxation, administered by experts who are chosen by the people (in public education, as in government, the final court of appeal in this Republic); the free secondary, normal, technical, and higher education, held as a matter of undoubted public right, to be exercised in every State according to a high educational expediency, of which the people are the final judge, both elementary and superior public schools being kept as near the people in their local capacity as is consistent with efficient administration: even State supervision being confined to things that are general and essential, and national aid invited only at the most critical points, with the sole purpose to stimulate local effort, with no assumption of national supervision or control. Of course, public education, thus defined, has its general function in the elementary training of mind, discipline of character, and imparting of common information which every wise man knows are essential to the humblest citizen and the loftiest statesman alike. Of the six millions of American children and youth actually in daily attendance and the ten millions loosely enrolled in public and the three hundred thousand in private schools, nine-tenths will certainly turn their backs upon the school-house door as early as the age of fourteen. The first and ever-present concern in the American system is to do the best thing possible for these millions of children whose average school life to-day in the East does not exceed six, in the West five, or in the South three full school years. In the secondary, higher, industrial, and normal departments, which deal with the few hundred thousand youth in training for educational and social leadership, the common school has its right, which the people have unmistakably confirmed in every American State. But, in this upper region of education, the people invite the cooperation of every effective school. There is ample field for the display of individual genius, of corporate enterprise, of home and neighborhood training. And here the church, of every communion, has a field of operation so broad and exacting that it may well limit its efforts to what it can never half include and provoke no conflict with the people on that field where the people are bound to have their way, whoever goes to the wall: the maintenance, at public expense, of the free elementary school, open to every child, unsectarian in religion though profoundly moral and religious in the grain, unpartisan in politics, knowing no distinction of race or sex or social condition, the peoples university of American citizenship for every American child. More and more is it coming to be understood by all competent and patriotic thinkers that there is no necessary conflict of interests between these different methods of achieving the great result, since the most exclusive private or parochial school in our country must finally adjust itself to the conditions of our peculiar American life. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com