This conviction on the part of parents is certainly justified in many sections of the country, and when justifiable, disarms the critic who is prepared to take a father to task for sending his children to a private school. Also, it is the only argument which the well-to-do aristocrat can successfully protect himself behind. It is a full suit of armor in itself, but it is all he has. Every other excuse which he can give is flimsy as tissue-paper, and exposes him utterly. Therefore, if the State is desirous to educate the sons of its leading citizens, it ought to make sure that the public schools are second to none in the land. If it does not, it has only itself to blame if they are educated apart from the sons of the masses of the population. Nor is it an answer to quote the Fourth of July orator, that our public schools are second to none in the world; for one has only to investigate to be convinced that, both as regards the methods of teaching and as regards ventilation, many of them all over the country are signally inferior to the school as it should be, and the school, both public and private, as it is in certain localities. So long as school boards and committees, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, are composed mainly of political aspirants without experience in educational matters, and who seek to serve as a first or second step toward the White House, our public schools are likely to remain only pretty good. So long as people with axes to grind, or, more plainly speaking, text-books to circulate, are chosen to office, our public schools are not likely to improve. So long--and here is the most serious factor of all--so long as the well-to-do American father and mother continue to be sublimely indifferent to the condition of the public schools, the public schools will never be so good as they ought to be.
It must certainly be a source of constant discouragement to the earnest-minded people in this country, who are interested in education, and are at the same time believers in our professed national hostility to class distinctions, that the well-to-do American parent so calmly turns his back on the public schools, and regards them very much from the lofty standpoint from which certain persons are wont to regard religion--as an excellent thing for the masses, but superfluous for themselves. Of course, if we are going, in this respect also, to model ourselves on and imitate the older civilizations, there is nothing to be said. If the public schools are to be merely a semi-charitable institution for children whose parents cannot afford to separate them from the common herd, the discussion ceases. But what becomes, then, of our cherished and Fourth of July sanctified theories of equality and common school education? And what do we mean when we prate of a common humanity, and no upper class?