education is one of these points. God has ordained the parental
relation, and has implanted the parental affections, for this very
reason, among others, that the faculties of the helpless young immortal
may have due training and development,--that this development may not be
left to chance, like that of a worthless weed, but may have the
protection and guardianship which are the necessary birthright of every
rational creature brought into being by the voluntary act of another.
But God has ordained society also for this same end, among others,
namely, that his rational creatures may have a competent agency, bound
by the laws and necessities of its own welfare to make adequate
provision for the instruction and education of every human being. The
one duty does not conflict with the other. The one obligation does not
impair the other. Both lie in coincident lines.

But, as a question of fact, is it true that common schools impair the
sense of obligation in the minds of parents in regard to the duty of
educating their children? I affirm the fact to be exactly the contrary.
Those communities in which there are no common schools, and in which the
people generally are in a state of deplorable ignorance, are precisely
those in which the sense of parental obligation on this point is at the
lowest ebb. Go to a region of country in which not one man in ten can
read and write, and you will find that not one man in ten will care
whether his children are taught to read and write. Those communities on
the contrary which have the best and most complete system of common
schools, and in which this system has prevailed longest and has taken
most complete hold of the public mind, are the very ones in which
individuals will be found most keenly alive to the importance of the
subject, and in which a parent will be regarded as a monster, if his
children are allowed to grow up uneducated.

The objection, therefore, has no foundation either in fact or in reason.
There is moreover another consideration not to be overlooked. In this
matter of education, it is after all but a small part which the school
does for a child. The main part of the child's education always takes
place at home. The teacher is at best only an aid to the parent,
supplementing the influences of the home and the street. The child is
taking lessons continually from the father and mother, whether they mean
it or not. Every teacher knows how much more rapidly a child improves at