JANUARY,
1887.
“Truth can never be confirm’d enough,
Though doubts did ever sleep.”
SHAKSPEARE.
NEW SERIES.
VOL. LXXI.
LONDON:
TRUBNER & Co., LUDGATE HILL.
MDCCCLXXXVII.
The
Westminster
And
Foreign Quarterly
Review.
January, 1887.
Art.I.—State Education in America.
The insular self-sufficiency of England in all matters outside of commerce, her unwillingness to receive instruction from other nations, has always been a barrier to her progress.
…Americans are essentially English, and that is why we can learn so much from American institutions. Indeed, there seems some reason to believe that in the political institutions of the United States we see, at any rate in outline, our own future as a democracy; though it is not perhaps wise to press this point too keenly, owing to the difficulty of distinguishing what is outline and what is individual detail in a political growth.
Leaving now these more general considerations, let us take a closer and more detailed view of American education.
The main body of the information presented in this article has been culled from a Report of the Commissioner of Education published in 1884, and two “circulars of Information,” also published by the Bureau of Education within the last two years. Most of the passages marked with quotation marks are from these same sources, and some other passages are taken almost verbatim.
There is, strictly speaking, no national system of education in the United States.
…The American school system is founded on the idea of local competency in the management of education…..
The old threadbare arguments in opposition about weakening parental responsibility, and impairing parental self-respect, and lessening the value of instruction in parental eyes, and overburdening the ratepayers, and making the provident pay for the improvident, have been refuted by experience; moreover, the adoption of gratuity has always been followed by an increase of attendance. (page 29)
