Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/210

206 tion whether it would not be well, as a last resort, for the State to assume the guardianship of the child for its own Bake, and for the child's sake. We allow no one, with over so thick a skin, to grow up in nakedness; why should we suffer a child, with however so perverse a parent, to grow up in ignorance and degenerate into crime? Certainly, a naked man is not so dangerous to society as an ignorant man, nor is the spectacle so revolting. I should have less hope of a State where the majority were so perverse as to continue ignorant of reading, writing, and calculating, than of one where they were so thick-skinned as to wear no clothes. In Massachusetts, there is an Asylum for juvenile offenders, established by the city of Boston; a Farm School for bad boys, established by the characteristic benevolence of tho rich men of that place; and a State Reform School under the charge of the Commonwealth: all these are for Jade who break the laws of the land. Would it not be better to take one step more, adopt them before they offended, and allow no child to grow up in the barbarism of ignorance P Has any man an unalienable right to live a savage in the midst of civilization?

We need also public high schools to take children where the common schools leave them, and carry them further on. Some States have done something towards establishing such institutions; they are common in New England. Some have established normal schools, special high schools for the particular and professional education of public teachers. Without these, it is plain there would not be a supply of competent educators for the public service.

Then we need free colleges, conducted by public officers, and paid for by the public purse. Without these the scheme is not perfect. The idea which lies at the basis of the public education of a people in a democracy is this every man, on condition of doing his duty, has a right, to the means of education, as much as a right, on the same condition, to the means of defence from a public enemy in time of war, or from starvation in time of plenty and of peace. I say every man, I mean every woman also. The amount of education must depend on the three factors named before,—on the general achievement of mankind, the special ability of tho State, and the particular power of the individual.