Rights and duties are inseparable they must be accepted or rejected together. In the case under consideration they center on one common object: namely, the welfare of the children. And since they have but one end it is evident that they should operate together. Separate them, and in many cases they may and do nullify each other. Unite them, and almost anything desired can be executed. Education means simply leading forth or training and disciplining the mind. Physical education may be compared to the attention given to proper construction of the human locomotive. Intellectual education forms and develops its power. Moral education applies this power to the proper use, instructing it how to labor, for the common good of society. It is yet very questionable whether these portions of one whole can wisely be separated and placed under difference delegate authorities. It is certain, however, that they all center under the proper charge and special supervision of parents. Not withstanding this general admission it is singular and much to be regretted that both here and in Europe, many if not most writers on the subject of education ignore or forget the use of parental power. Their strictures refer to children and teachers, while the rights and duties of parents are very rarely discussed. To make no use of highest natural authorities is to set them aside as worthless. Is this wise? Consider how important a part for good or evil or home education is constantly performing.
First, then parents have supreme right over their children. Any other authority exercised by state or city or an individual is only delegated. Penalties for neglect of duty by parents or their delegates are therefore naturally and rightly visited upon the former in after life. In order to make proper choice of a delegate, parents have the right to enter a schoolroom during working hours. He capabilities of children are so various that the capabilities of teachers cannot always be correctly estimated by an examination of his pupils. One hour's careful inspection of a school in action will give a better idea of the trustworthiness and capabilities of a teacher than a volume of regulations or yards of printed references. To neglect this duty, is on the part of parents, a serious error. Parents have no right to expect more than a simple recognition of their presence in the school room, inasmuch as the teachers are paid for the sue of their time, and have no right to appropriate the time set apart for tuition to other purposes than those for which they are remunerated. It is not wise for parents to take counsel of their children with regard to what school the latter prefer, for it natural in them to prefer play to study. If parents wish their children to respect a teacher and improve under his training, they will do well not to relate their own youthful delinquencies and school pranks in the presence of their little ones, unless they desire them to be imitated, with additions and improvements, first at school, afterwards at home. It is miserable policy on the part of parents to threaten children with the school as a place of punishment. It forms a barrier, which must be removed before children can pass up the hill of knowledge. Having selected an instructor, it is the duty of the parents to support his ordinances as supreme laws over their children at home as well as at school. Any clashing between parental and scholastic authority is productive of evil. When parents can be relied upon, teachers can render the simplest home deprivation, the most effectual punishment. Latitude in amusements should always be regulated by high or low standing in school. When parents neglect their duty they set before their children a lesson in negligence. Parents, who please themselves, sacrifice their children to ignorance by constantly writing excuses for their lessons, are very reprehensible. Three regular exemplars of this crime are enough to demoralize a school. The public will in this country is supreme. Parents should understand that they form and model the systems in operation in our public schools. If they demand the right to elect politicians to perform improper work, they have little right to complain if it be ill done
In private schools the carelessness on the part of parents as to the use of the right of supervisory power, begets carelessness in the children and sometimes in the teachers. For the many aberrations, which spring from this neglect, fathers and mothers, the blame rightly rests on yourselves. Principals of schools and teachers have been lectured, addressed and written to and written at, in order to post them well as to the best method of performing rightly their parts in the great work in which they are engaged. Volumes have been addressed to children and youths with the same purpose and intent. Alas! Even in our most elaborate education compilations how short and how few are the paragraphs devoted to the instruction of parents with regard to their duties; how little care has been taken to obtain their cooperation or to ensure their aid and power over their families as instruments requisite to and necessary for the full development of all that is worthy of commendation. School directors should be men and well informed, ready at any time to meet the necessary ants of the teacher, see that their is plenty of fuel, keep the house in good repair, visit the school when in action, etc.
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