Page:An address on compulsory education.djvu/9

5 with the rights and liberties of the parent. But I maintain that every child is being educated, either in what is good or in what is evil—for a child's mind is most impressionable—and if he is not at school learning that which is right and useful to make him a good citizen, he is learning in the streets and lanes that which will in all probability make him a burden or an enemy to society. If it is admitted that every child should be educated, in order that he may exercise more judiciously any political rights he may eventually possess, and be more competent to earn his living, so that he may more probably become a support to the State, instead of an incumbrance, then, I say it is a political crime to deprive him of education, and those whose duty it is to provide it for him, ought, for this neglect, to be amenable to the power of the law, as an offence against the well-being of the commonwealth. Therefore no one should possess the power to deprive a child of that education, which will make him more useful and noble as a human being, and a benefit, rather than an incumbrance, to his fatherland.

2nd.—There is also a class of parents who, though they profess to send their children to school, yet realise so feebly the advantages their children derive, that they keep them away for the most trivial causes. I find in the Government Report (Education) for 1870, there were 1,569,139 children on the registers of inspected schools, while the average attendance was only 1,062,999, or about one-third of those children who actually go to school are absent every day. In some places, particularly in agricultural districts, the proportion of absentees is much greater. It is this irregularity of attendance which produces the teacher's greatest difficulty, and prevents our elementary schools obtaining that high state of advancement and efficiency to be found in the schools of Germany and Switzerland. Here again, therefore, I say regularity of attendance will only be accomplished by compulsion.

3rd.—Another cause which prevents many children attending school is the poverty of their parents. The wages of their children is to them an absolute necessity. A man who earns 15s. per week and has half-a-dozen olive branches to support, cannot be expected to do without the wages of those children who are able to perform such labour as is suited to their early years. For these poor children there is no school-life, or very little; they have to face so young the hardships of life, and to learn so soon that by the "sweat of his brow" a man