EDUCATION Importance of education.—In order to insure an education to every person of school age the constitution of Illinois states that "the General Assembly shall provide a thorough and efficient system of free schools whereby all children of this state may receive a good common school education." Under this provision the Legislature has established by means of public funds a complete school system from the lowest to the highest grade, comprising ele mentary schools, high schools, normal schools, and a state university which includes almost every department of gen eral and professional edu cation. More than a million pupils are enrolled in the public schools of Illinois, and one-fifth as many in the private schools. More persons are engaged in Illinois in the one business of getting an education than in any other single industry of the state. The welfare of the state, the nation, and the world depends very largely on the proper conduct of this largest of public enterprises— the education of the rising generation, and the extension of educational opportunities to adults. In addition to the com plete system of public education for the children and youth of the state as a whole, special schools have been established at state expense for the best development of those children who cannot take advantage of the ordinary school. These special schools provide for the education of the blind, the deaf, the feeble-minded, the orphans, and the wayward. Evening schools are maintained in the larger cities of the state where young people may con tinue their education and where foreign-born men and women may learn the English language.
School districts.—The administration of a sys tem of public education requires that the state be divided into school dis tricts. Every home in the state is located within the limits of an elementary-school dis trict. These districts have definite boundaries. A school district may in clude four square miles, more or less, of farm lands and employ one teacher; or a larger country district with a consolidated school and several teachers; or the school district may be the corporate limits of a vil lage or small city with one building and few teachers; or a larger city with its numerous school buildings and hundreds of teachers. The city of
Chicago constitutes the largest single school dis trict in the state with more than 300 large school buildings and over S,000 teachers.
Not all the state is included in the high-school districts.
The state may therefore be divided into high-school territory and non-high-school territory. Under an insistent public demand for free public high-school privileges for all boys and girls of the state, and under the operation of a recent law favorable to the devel opment of community high schools, the high school territory of Illi nois is being rapidly extended. The present law provides that pupils living in non-high school territory may attend a high school and have their tuition paid by the taxpayers of the non-high-school territory of the county. Thus every boy and girl in Illinois may now have a full four-year high-school education without charge for individual tuition. All children and youth of Illinois are thus given the opportunity of attending schools provided by state action from the first grade to the most ex tensive and most spe cialized courses of the state university.
Normal schools.— Trained teachers are necessary "to provide a thorough and efficient system of free schools," and Illinois has been generous in establish ing five state normal schools in different parts of the state. These normal schools were opened to students in the following order: (1) Illinois State Normal University, Nor mal, McLean County, 1857; (2) Southern Illi nois State Normal University, Carbondale, Jackson County, 1S74; (3) Northern Illinois State Normal School, DeKalb, DeKalb County, and (4) East ern Illinois State Normal School, Charles ton, Coles County, both on the same day, September, 1899 ; and (5) Western Illinois State Normal School, Macomb, McDonough County, 1902.