p. 187 | Untitled article by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · June 12, 1890

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 24

The Contest in Wisconsin and Illinois.

By Editor

As Judge Prendergast had something to do in assisting the Board of Education of Chicago to frame educational bills to be presented to the Illinois Legislature in 1889; and as the Illinois educational law and the Wisconsin law are both now the subject of great discussion, the Chicago Herald requested the Judge to prepare a review of the whole subject, embracing both laws. He did so, and the review was printed in the Herald of May 27. For the benefit of the readers of THE SENTINEL, we shall reprint the material part of the article. It will make two installments, the second of which will be a history of both the Illinois law and the Bennett law. We think the propositions set forth in the part here printed will bear the test of all fair criticism. Judge Prendergast says:—

A brief review of recent statutes of the States of Illinois and Wisconsin concerning education is undertaken at the request of the Chicago Herald, and from a belief that by reason of grave misunderstanding as to the provisions and effects of both these laws, good citizens, who have in common the laudable purpose of educating youth and forming individual character, are moving, if they have not already moved, into opposing lines.

The rights of parents and of the State are already so well defined by decisions of the highest judicial tribunals of both States, that it ought not to be difficult to compose the present dispute without drawing into the arena of politics, questions so fundamental and yet so easy of misrepresentation. It is wholly foreign to this statement to discuss the relative merits of the public and of the private, or denominational, school methods of instruction. To precipitate such a topic into the discussion of the relation from the general legal standpoint of the parent and the State to the education of children, would be to introduce a factor not at all relevant.

The statutes mentioned are laws, and undertake to treat of and enforce rights which, in the legislative judgment, reside in different subjects, i. e., the parent and the State, and shall be considered with reference to their bearings upon legal rights. I venture to say that the opposition to the so-called Bennett law of Wisconsin is directed against what that law is believed to be rather than against what it is, and further, that those who approve unqualifiedly the Illinois statute do so without accurate knowledge of the real ground of complaint against it. Denunciation of those who oppose both these statutes proceeds on the assumption that they are enemies of popular education and of the public school, and that they deny to the State its just share of authority in the field of education. This view would seem not to be grounded on fact.

The Bennett law has been generally published and understood to be a copy of the Illinois law. Beyond the fact that both treat of education, there is but little similarity between them. The Bennett law, while open to some objections, is yet replete with provisions recognizing and guarding parental rights, and at the same time it accords to the State recognition of its proper function. [From a careful study of the Bennett law, we are sure the Judge need not be so tender of it as he here seems to be. It is scarcely less violative of rights than is the Illinois statute.—EDITOR SENTINEL.] And in these respects it differs essentially from the Illinois act, which, as to some of its provisions, is violative of rights heretofore considered inviolable.

Before examining these acts and the history of them, it may be well to consider a few general principles, so as to find, if possible, a common ground upon which fair-minded men may stand, and which are conformable to law. Cannot agreement be had to the following propositions?

1. To determine and direct the education of the child is a natural right of the parent.

2. There arises out of this parental right the duty to provide education.

3. When one who, by natural or human law, owes a duty to another, fails to perform that duty, the State can (a) enjoin or compel performance, (b) punish for non-performance, (c) supply the lack where, to the injury of society, non-performance is wrongfully persisted in.

4. The citizen is a partner in the sovereign power and a partaker in its activities, hence the aggregate of citizens may require that those who are to exercise functions of citizenship be fitted to their proper discharge.

5. Compulsory education, in the sense

that parents who violate or neglect their parental duty may be compelled to its performance, or punished for non-performance, is licit.

6. Compulsory education, in the sense of controlling, or seeking to control, or dislodging from their rightful place those parents who are discharging their parental duty commensurately with the state of life of parent and child, is not allowable, even to the State.

7. For the education of his children one parent may select the public school; another may select the private or denominational school; still another may furnish proper education without the aid of any school, and each of the three in so doing exercises a right protected by the law of the land as well as by the law of nature, and for doing which, he need offer neither excuse nor apology.

8. The public and private or denominational schools are in law neither related nor are they subordinate one to the other, nor need they be antagonistic.

There lies within the bare proposition that “the State may compel all parents subject to its jurisdiction to give to their children instruction in the English language” much more difficulty than would at first appear. I will illustrate by the statement of a case within my own knowledge. I know a citizen, not a German, who for some years has educated several of his children in Germany, and instruction has there been given them altogether in the German language. In the Illinois act, as at present framed, if valid, this parent could be punished, for he does not send his children to a school within a district where they reside; nor are they given instruction in the English language. Another instance within my knowledge is that of a parent, not a German, who is about to remove from a comfortably and conveniently located home to another place where he can send his children to a school in which German is—to a considerable extent—the medium of instruction and of conversation among the pupils. He does this so that his children, in youth, may become proficient in that language.

It may be said that these are extreme cases, but what of that? They are facts, and what is the right of these parents is the right of every other parent. Is it competent for the State to punish either or both of these parents for such exercise of their parental rights? It is doubtful. He was a wise man who said, “It is good also not to try experiments in States, except the necessity be urgent and the utility evident.” In such cases and in the case of German parents who send their children to German parochial schools, is it not to be presumed that the parents are sensible of the manifest advantage to their children of a knowledge of the English language, and that to parental interest and affection, rather than to penal statutes, should be committed the task of providing instruction?

The right of the State to fix, by penal law, a given language as the language of instruction in schools has seldom been exercised. The only instances in mind are where drastic measures have been imposed on conquered or overborne peoples, as in Poland, Ireland, Alsace-Lorraine. This requirement for the teaching of certain studies in the English language involves questions of great delicacy. To enforce every right would often lead to offending against judiciousness. What danger sufficient to arrest legislative attention dwells in the fact that in a few rural communities the language brought by foreign-born citizens from the place of origin may obtain supremacy in a school-room. Will not this wear away? . . .

Is it not fair to presume that those who in addition to the payment of taxes for the support of the free public schools, voluntarily assume the burdens of private schools, desire that their own children become intelligent, well-informed and useful members of the community, and that they know as well as others what is for the advantage of their children?