Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1884 [PAGE 60]

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64 so economically as it can be performed by the state. On this basis it becomes the sure in heritage of every American child; a portion of his birthright, inalienable in estate, inestimable in value. Even in lands where this grade of instruction is not, as with us, absolutely free, the principle is yet recognized that it is the prerogative of the state to direct and to control the education of its children. In France, and in Germany, the chief officer of the department of education is a cabinet minister, like the chief of the departments of finance, or law, or diplomacy. The interests are so vast, the consequences so important, the details of such intricacy, that no power less than the highest can control, and no authority less than that of the government can be entrusted with their management. In this respect there is great room for improvement in the administration of our own public school systems. In the year ending June 30, IS80, the State of Illinois expended on her primary school system $7,531,941.79, of which $4,587,015.10 were paid for teachers' wages, and distributed to an army of 22,255 persons, for the instruction of 704,041 pupils. The total number of persons of school age in the State was 1,010,851, 75 per cent, of whom were enrolled in the schools during the year, wrhile it will be safe to assume that the larger part of the remainder have passed through their school experience and are occupied in labor. In the United States the number of pupils in the public schools in 1880 were 9,333,576; of teachers, 261,786; and the expenditure, $92,748,974. The aggregates show the enormous extent of our school system, and illustrate the statement that such an enterprise would not and could not be operated by any feebler machinery. On the other hand,' it is well known to every one who is at all conversant with this school work, in its multifarious forms, that the outcome of all this toil and cost is far less valuable than it might be made. The State does not reap from this broadcast sowing the harvest that it might reasonably expect. It is indeed a marvel that the* harvest is as good as it is. The results are matters of constant surprise to every well-informed educator, when he scans this army of more than a quarter of a million of school teachers, and knows how large a proportion of them might well be superseded by persons of greater ability and intelligence, and when he reflects upon the great losses which follow the plentiful lack of system and of supervision which too frequently exists. Encouraged and hopeful at the great good that is done, one has yet reason to lament that the grander possibilities are not achieved which could be secured under a wiser, abler and more systematic control. Whatever criticisms may arise upon the way in which the duties of public instruction are discharged, it still remains for my argument that this duty is by common consent delegated to the public authorities as one of the most important parts of their official duties. In an address presented to this same body on a former occasion, I attempted to show the great interest of the state in the development of higher technical education. From the history of some of