the democratic idea of government, education early found a place. A larger view of the functions of government than that of mere police protection, to which Spencer's doctrine would limit it, has been expressed in child-labor laws which take away from the parent the right to enslave his children, rigid health measures and various other enactments of similar character, designed not so much for the individual, but for the protection of society and the welfare of the State.

The civilized world to-day has, in the matter of public education, rather followed the dictum of Macaulay that "Whoever has the right to hang, has the right to educate."

In practice it chooses to be guided by the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson, first of English speaking statesmen who perceived the true meaning of education as an influence moulding State and national life. According to Lord Macaulay he was the foremost statesman in the world in the clearness and completeness of his conception of universal education. Jefferson said, "I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue and advancing the happiness of man. A system of general instruction which shall reach every description of our citizens, from the richest to the poorest, as it was the earliest, so it will be the latest of all the public concerns in which I shall permit myself to take an interest. Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom and happiness." He also regarded it as an economic question, for he says further," If children are untaught, their ignorances and vices will in future cost us much dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education."

The modern accepted theory of the State, then, assumes that the government not only can levy taxes for the establishment and maintenance of schools, but it is just as much its duty by this means to protect itself against ignorance and its consequences as it is to protect itself against paupers by maintaining almshouses, or against criminals by providing jails and penitentiaries. A democratic community cannot endure without adequate provision for the training of all its citizenship in intelligence, in character, in leadership and in economic efficiency. As a matter of life and death, therefore, the State undertakes to train its children. An educated citizen is a more valuable asset to the State than an ignorant one. He will produce more revenue and be less likely to become a liability. It is only on the ground of an investment an economic necessity that the State can justify the imposition of taxes for public education. Public education, then, is after all,

an exercise by the government of the police power, even if not so recognized by Spencer. It is in addition a great social and economic effort.

"The ability of this generation to recognize education as something larger than mere learning or even discipline, to perceive it as a great force moulding national character," is one of the wholesome signs of the times.

In the educative process certain well-defined and clearly established steps are necessary. Formal education begins with the elementary school and ends with the graduate school of the university. The great instrument for this training we call a system of schools. A school system, therefore, is a great social agent of the State, and the parts that compose the whole are simply sub-agents in one general educative process.

By common consent and general practice, Jefferson's scheme for a complete educational system for all the people has been adopted in this country. That plan provides for

(a) Public elementary schools.

(b) Public high schools.

(c) The university.

In addition to these our system of schools in Virginia now includes normal schools and the group of technical schools — Virginia Polytechnic Institute and Virginia Military Institute.

66

Later I shall attempt to define the peculiar function of each of the several groups above named. For the present phase of the discussion of the subject, that of support, it will be sufficient now to observe that education in a State is really one thing, from the elementary grade to the graduate school. Each part, whether it be under State control or private control must, in the long run, relate itself to the system of public instruction. Any effective school system must be an organism, instinct with life, growing and developing harmoniously in all its parts, each part receiving due portion of nourishment and life blood, and each performing its proper function in relation to every other part, and to the whole body. Any other conception can result only in waste of funds and disappointment in results. Each part must be a coöperating part and not a competing part." To organize, maintain and develop such a system should be the chief interest of the State which hopes for large developments, social and industrial.

"For the South as a whole 40 per cent. of the public revenue is devoted to the business of education. Clearly, then, education is the State's chief business." In Virginia, 35.8 per cent. of the total revenue in 1909 was expended for maintenance alone, exclusive of the amount spent for buildings and improvements which,

if added, would bring the proportion to over 46 per cent. These figures apply only to State revenues. Through local taxation a sum almost equally as large is raised for public schools.

V. STATE REQUIREMENTS;

INEQUALITIES OF SCHOOL BUR

DENS; STATE AID

[Hill, Secretary Frank A., in the 62nd An. Rept. Mass. State Bd. of Educ., 1897-98, pp. 128-132.]

The State has been steadily pressing for the better schooling of the children. Better buildings, better teaching, longer schooling, high-school instruction for all, these things are more and more strenuously insisted upon for the good of the children and the State, and/without reference to the ability or inability of the towns to provide them.) The State has taken the ground that the children must be properly schooled, whether towns have the means to school them or not. The interests of the children, and through them of the State, must be protected at all hazards. As a result, school legislation has imposed upon some of the towns burdens that, however heroically they are borne, are unquestionably excessive) If the blessings of good schooling or the evils of bad were wholly local, and therefore of less vital interest to the State, it might well be questioned whether the State has a moral right the towns so hard in this matter.

..

to press

But the youth of these heavily-loaded towns are forever leaving them, the well-trained and noble-spirited to swell the enterprise and wealth of the rest of the State, the badly-trained and lowpurposed to add to its cares and clog its progress. These depleted and weakened towns help the rest of the State far more than they hurt it; but, whether they help or hurt, the State's interest in their schools is real, great and abiding, so real, so great, so abiding, that the people as a whole have invariably insisted not only on the right but the (duty of the State to require good schooling in these towns, as in all other towns of the State. This insistence is expressed in its constitution, in its legislative history from the times of the Pilgrims and Puritans, and in the decisions of its highest courts, as well as in the spoken and written words of its wisest and most eminent citizens, but nowhere probably with greater force than in the struggle of the people as a whole to improve their schools. Indeed, it may be safely said that school legislation in Massachusetts, however exacting it may seem to be for some of the towns, distinctly lags behind public sentiment; it follows on

after, as it were, to clinch policies well advanced before it takes them up and makes them binding. The minimum length of schooling, for instance, heretofore required of towns under 4,000 inhabitants, has been six months. The law of 1898 raises it to eight months. It did not do so, however, until 202 of 251 towns under a population of 4,000 had voluntarily increased their schooling to eight, nine, and, in many cases, ten months.

It follows that the State, in making requirements beyond the ability of the towns to meet without excessive effort, is under some measure of obligation to ease their burdens, at least at the points of greatest pressure. This obligation has already been cheerfully recognized in various ways, in the State reimbursement, in certain cases, of high school tuition and of additions to teachers' salaries, in the aid it gives to district superintendence, and in its distribution of the income of the school fund. These forms of aid are adapted to old conditions, but not to such new hardships as may have been created by new legislation. If such hardships appear, they merit considerate attention from the Legislature.

The policy of the State so far has been to legislate for such special cases of hardship and need as have impressed it most. Claims to their share in the income of the school fund have been generously waived by 99 towns and cities in favor of 254 towns that, in the aggregate, have seemed to stand in more pressing need of such aid. This income-so much of it as has been set apart for the towns — is distributed with due reference to valuation, tax-rate and the proportion of the amount raised by taxation which is expended on the public schools. For many years large numbers have thought that a State tax of a half mill or a mill, the proceeds to be distributed among the towns and cities on some basis of school attendance, would be an excellent measure, for the welfare of the schools. Two years ago such a measure passed both branches of the Legislature, but failed to receive the approval of the Governor. It was urged against it that towns might receive large sums from it without an additional dollar going to their schools; that wellto-do communities under it would be contributing to the payment of the bills of other well-to-do communities, - contributions the former would chafe to make and the latter to receive; that, in short, it was a measure to equalize general municipal burdens rather than special school burdens, and so was not what it purported to be, a genuine educational measure. It was replied, on the other hand, at least, by those interested in equalizing the school burdens rather than the general, that the beneficiaries of the measure were in general anxious to improve their schools; that, as a rule they taxed themselves as heavily as they

ought in efforts to do so, far more heavily, indeed, than the State as a whole; and that, if they received aid from a State tax intended to help their schools, they could be trusted to use that aid for the welfare of their schools. The help that well-to-do communities might give to other well-to-do communities was likely to be an incident, it was claimed, of any general legislation; it certainly has its parallel in every form of general taxation under which money raised by a whole is distributed in expenditure among its parts; and so, however preposterous such needless help might be made to look when isolated and viewed by itself, it should not be used as an argument against a policy that, viewed in a large way, bade fair to prove a beneficent one both for the whole that should raise the money and the parts that should receive the benefits thereof. Without giving at length the arguments for and against the measure, it is enough here to say that there seemed to be an irreconcilable difference of opinion as to whether the money raised under the measure would go to the schools or not. "The bill contains no guarantee to that effect," said one side. "No guarantee to that effect is necessary," said the other.

Inasmuch, however, as all parties have united in increasing the State school requirements, are sympathetic witnesses of the burdens these requirements have imposed upon many towns, and are practically agreed that the State should relieve such towns from a part, at least, of the load they must carry if they are to have good schools, though not agreed as to the best way of doing so, it is worth inquiring whether common ground cannot be found for a State policy that shall insure good schools where it gives aid.

The problem is a complicated one. A similar one, with fewer factors and of less difficult solution, was successfully handled in framing the law for distributing the income of the school fund. If the Legislature should direct an inquiry to be made by competent persons into the nature of this larger problem with special reference to suggesting legislation for its solution, it is by no means improbable that a measure can be devised of greater real help to the schools than the several helpful but partial measures now in existence, involving, doubtless, a greater expenditure by the State than at present, but imposing a less serious tax upon the wealthier places of the state than some of the propositions to which they have taken exception. . . . It should not be forgotten that Massachusetts stands almost alone among the States of the Union, in putting, with very modest exceptions, the full burden of the schools upon the towns and cities themselves.