It remained particularly for the fathers of the American republic like Washington, Jeffer son and Madison to lay stress on the idea that the safety of the republic lay in the education of the people. In 1786 Jefferson wrote to Washington : "It is an axiom in my mind that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that, too, of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This is the business of the state to effect and on a general plan.° Washington in his message to Congress in 1790 wrote : gIC.nowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happi ness. In one in which the measures of the government receive their impression so im mediately as in ours, from the sense of the community, it is proportionally essential.' °Whether this will be best promoted by afford ing aid to seminaries of learning already estab lished, by the institution of a national university, or by any other expedients, will be well worthy a place in the deliberations of the Legislature.' Madison wrote: 'A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.* °The best service that can he rendered to a country, to giving it liberty, is in diffusing the mental Im provement equally essential to the preservation and. enjoyment of that blessing, These three men set by their words the standards which not only the United States but all democracies had to follow for the sake of self-preservation. Though progress along such lines was slow in the first half of the 19th century, in the latter half, the state has entered into fields of instruction little dreamt of by the fathers of the constitution and which would probably have been condemned by them as tend ing to go altogether too far in interfering with the liberty of the individual.
Once grant, however, that the state for its best good has the right to take steps along educational lines which serve for its preserva tion and there is no limit to the extent to which it may go. In a democracy perhaps little harm will come from such a doctrine, for the people are in the end the determining factors of the length to which interference with the individual is to go. In an autocratic government, however, the dangers of such a doctrine have become only too obvious. Under the leadership of an un scrupulous sovereign and military clique the educational system of the state is devised to make good soldiers who are to do the will of the rulers. Under such a system, unlike con ditions existing in a democracy, the people can exercise no restraining hand and the citizens are debauched morally and mentally so that they conduct themselves like obedient slaves. Trained under such a system they do not have any minds of their own, but are shaped to do the bidding of a tyrant.
The first attempt to give to the people an absolutely uniform education over a vast area was connected with religion. The Church and state combined in the Middle Ages to compel every citizen to receive uniform religious doc trine not only in one state, but all over Europe. The salvation of the state was thought to de pend on religious uniformity. As James I of England said: "No bishop, no Icing.° The secu rity of the state was deemed to rest on a religious instruction which all must receive. He who refused it put himself outside the pale and was to be regarded both as a heretic and an an archist —a fit candidate for the stake or the block.
The states of the world have gradually dropped the idea that the safety of the state is bound up with religious education, but in its place the theory of the safety of the state has dictated the institution of a system for the instruction of youth, not only mentally, as was originally intended by Washington, Jefferson and Madison, but physically, morally, vocation ally and in an infinite variety of subordinate ways. The justification for such instruction in a democracy is not hard to find. If it is to the
best interest of the state that its people should be trained mentally, it is also necessary that they be trained physically. Citizens that arc weak physically arc a menace to the state. The state has the right to step in and say that its citizens shall not be permitted to become physi cal weaklings. For this purpose it can interfere with the individual to see that he gets the proper physical culture, that he lives hygienically, that he is vaccinated, that he conforms to good physical health laws and subjects himself to food regulations. The same also holds true for moral education. Morally debased people arc a danger to the state and therefore the state may step in to give moral instruction. Citizens who are poorly prepared to earn their own living are also a menace to the state and on the same ground, here as elsewhere, it may for its own safety's sake see to it that the citizens are properly trained to follow vocations that will prevent them from becoming dependents.
For all of these purposes the curricula, not only of public schools but of private schools, must answer. In them must appear the neces sary courses and the properly trained teachers.
Such, briefly stated, is the somewhat common theory of citizenship and its relation to educa tion. How far the state will go along these lines only the future can reveal. It will go in a democracy as far as the people wish it to, subject to constitutional limitations, but even the latter may be broadened, if the people see fit. In an autocratic state there are no limits except those found in a revolutionary overturn of the state by the people who feel that the state is going too far.
At the present time (1918) the most progres sive states are insisting that their minor citizens must learn reading, writing and arithmetic and are compelling them to attend school to do so. From that minimum of the literary and mathe matical, various states have added other subjects which the pupils must study: hygiene and physiology, history and civics, geography and natural science, music and drawing, trades and vocations, physical culture, military drill and religion and morals. In order that the minor may not escape such education he is forced to attend school up to a certain age and no one is allowed to give employment to him before that time. Even if he then goes to work, he is, by the law of certain states, forced to attend for a time certain continuation or evening schools to make himself better prepared for citizenship —political, social and industrial.
The present tendency of states is to increase the age limits for compulsory education, to add more subjects that must be taken for the sake of good citizenship and even to force adults to make up their deficiencies. In the United States trades and vocations have been recent additions, and physical culture and military drill are making great strides. Subjects present in European schools for generations, but still gen erally absent in the schools of the United States, arc those of religion and morals. A campaign to introduce the latter without the former as essential to good citizenship and the safety of the state is being carried on.
Brewer, J. M.,