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School," "State and County Institutes," "Attendance," "Female Teachers," "Evening Schools," "Politics in the Public Schools," "San Francisco Industrial School," "Uniformity of Text-Books," "The California Teacher," "The Institution of the Deaf and Dumb and Blind," "The State University," and "Cosmopolitan Schools."

It closes as follows:

This exhibit cannot fail to inspire every good citizen with pride, gratification, and hope. It gives assurance that, while our State is evidently about to enter upon a fresh career of material development and prosperity, we have abundant reason to hope that it is destined to a progress equally rapid in the development of the higher interests of education. For what has been done, I take no credit to myself. I only claim that I have earnestly tried to do my duty.

34. SCHOOL LEGISLATION, 1870.

The first legislation of this session was the repeal of the law passed in 1868-9, in relation to the appointment of the City Superintendent of Public Schools in San Francisco. The bill continued the former Superintendent, James Denman, in office for one year, and then made the Superintendent elective at the next general election. The original purpose of this law thus repealed was to take the office "out of politics."

The "Revised School Law" was re-enacted under the title of the "California School Law," but was not changed in any of its main features.

The sections relating to rate-bills were stricken out, being no longer needed; the State Normal School was taken from the hands of the State Board of Education and placed under the control of a Board of Normal School Trustees, appointed by the Governor; and a provision was made authorizing the County Superintendents to fix the rate of county school tax, which was carried into effect in only three or four counties, and was afterwards pronounced unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

TEXT-BOOKS.

The original provision for uniformity extended only to country districts, all incorporated cities and towns having special Boards of Education being independent. The law was amended so as to compel San Francisco and other cities to adopt the State series of text-books.

In 1869 the State Board of Education had made a sweeping change of all the school-books in previous use.

The State tax was increased to 10 cents on each hundred dollars.

35. FOURTH BIENNIAL REPORT, 1871-72.

The last report of Superintendent Fitzgerald opened as follows:

During no period in the history of California has more steady and substantial progress been made in popular education than the two years since the last biennial exhibit was made by the Department of Public Instruction. This progress has been realized in spite of an unusual and general depression in business, resulting from various exceptional causes, and a consequent temporary check upon immigration and material prosperity.

Great educational enterprises have been successfully inaugurated, abuses have been corrected, important and necessary reforms have been made, antagonisms have been reconciled, and a course of policy initiated that, with the united and earnest efforts of the true friends of popular education, will at a very early day culminate in the attainment of what every good citizen of California must desire -a public school system that will furnish the fullest advantages of an English education to every child in the State.

The State is growing, and its educational development keeps pace with its growth in wealth and population. The increase in the number of public school children is more than 20 per cent. in two years. The increase in the value of school property is about 20 per cent. for the same period.

This large increase in the number of children attending the public schools is evidence of their growing popularity. A just and liberal administration of public school affairs has won the confidence and elicited the support of all classes to a gratifying extent. This can be claimed by me in behalf of my co-officials in the Department of Public Instruction throughout the State, without any reservation. The friends of education have worked together in perfect harmony, and rapid progress has been the result.

The enormous amount added to the value of school property, let it be noted, is the result of voluntary taxation, voted directly by the people themselves. This fact furnishes the most conclusive proof of the deep interest felt by the citizens of California in the education of their children, and affords a guarantee that they will cordially sustain any judicious measures that may be presented for the further improvement of our school system.

AN INCREASE OF STATE SCHOOL TAX.

While in our centres of wealth and population the children have the advantage of a full school year's instruction, with the best facilities for learning, truth compels the confession that for the more remote and sparsely settled districts of the State our present

system is shamefully inadequate, and is but a pretense for popular education. Under the present system, many districts can maintain schools only from three to six months of the year. No one need be told that such fragmentary bits of instruction are only a little better than none at all. During these short school terms, the pupils of such schools only get fairly started in their studies to be turned out for the greater part of the year, forgetting what little they had learned, and then coming back after this long and ruinous interval to commence again at the former starting-place, at the foot of the hill of knowledge, under a new teacher-the old one having sought a new place rather than attempt to live on the hope of another three or six months' school next year. This is but a sham, a waste of the public money, and a flagrant injustice toward a portion of the children of the State. There are very many of these schools thus revolving year after year on the axis of a defective system, making some motion, but scarcely any real progress. In a State system of public instruction should not all the children of the State be treated alike? As a good mother, she should dispense the blessings of education with an equal hand. The remedy for this great evil and injustice is obvious: Let all the property of the State be taxed to educate all the children of the State. This is the chief point that should now engage the attention of those intrusted with the management of our public schools. The public mind is prepared to welcome legislation for this purpose. The people are ready to sustain any practical measure that will give them a thorough instead of a partial public school system. The principle involved is already recognized in our present school law. The ten per cent. ad valorem State school tax is an unequivocal recognition of the principle that the property of the whole State may be taxed for the benefit of all parts of the State. All that is needed, therefore, is the extension of the practical application of the principle. If it be objected that the taxation of all the property of the State for all the children of the State would be attended with inequality, some localities paying more than their proportion of taxes into the general school fund, the answer is, that according to the theory already adopted, the State is the educational unit, therefore it must-act as a whole, and not partially, in disregard of the avowed theory on which our system is based. As a complete organism, the good of each part is the good of the whole State. There is a fallacy in the assumption that the benefits of education are confined to the particular individuals or localities directly affected by the expenditure of the proceeds of local taxation. The benefits resulting from the diffusion of intelligence by means of education in the public schools affect the entire body politic. The dollar contributed by San Francisco judiciously expended in Plumas for education is no less a benefit to the former than to the latter. It is equally evident that the evils resulting from the prevalence of ignorance and vice in any neglected locality cannot be merely local evils. The virus will spread through the whole organism, and the results will be seen in the criminal courts, jails, hospitals, and insane asylums everywhere. If the State has the right to tax all her citizens equally to maintain State prisons, institutions for the insane, the deaf,

dumb, and blind, and orphans, where is the wrong in imposing a tax for education for the whole State, that will lessen all those burdens resulting so largely and so directly from crime consequent upon ignorance?

There is another aspect of this question that deserves consideration. The disabilities of the present system fall upon the frontier and thinly settled districts of the State. The result is that our hardy pioneers, who lead the march of American civilization, extend the area of freedom, subdue the wilderness, and incur the hardships and dangers of frontier life, are, as the reward of their enterprise, energy, and courage, compelled to pay the penalty of seeing their children grow up in ignorance. Such disability may in some cases be inevitable and invincible, but there are in California but few of these children of the border who are beyond the reach of the beneficent hand of the State. Justice and sound policy require that the poorest barefoot boy of the humblest citizen in the poorest district of the most impoverished county should have as abundant facilities for a common school education as the son of the richest citizen of the most opulent city in the State. The fundamental purpose of a public school system is to insure the education of all the children of the State. The chief recommendation of such a system is that it secures the advantages of education to those who can be reached in no other way. If it fail in this it fails essentially to accomplish its highest end. Our system, then, is at present a partial failure. It is not the part of wisdom to ignore such a fact, looking only on the bright side of the picture. It is not honest. While singing the usual peans of praise to our public school system, and rejoicing, as we legitimately may, in its benefits, such facts as these remind us that we still fall far short of a perfect system, and that much work, wisely planned and earnestly executed, remains to be done.

The following are some of the leading topics of this report:

State Text-Book System.
Drawing.

State and County Boards of Examina-
tion.

County Teachers' Institutes.

State Normal School.
School District Libraries.
University of California.
Against Compulsory Education?
School Discipline-a New Departure.

The following is the closing section of this report:

During my term of office this department has been happily free from sectional animosities. I have uniformly deprecated the introduction of sectional prejudices into our public school literature and exercises, and I think I can safely appeal to my late official associates to prove that my action has been consistent with my profession. A Southern man by birth and education, I would not be willing to put into our schools any book that would tend to excite or perpetuate hatred or contempt towards the Southern people. An American in feeling and principle, I would not be willing to put into our schools any book that did not inculcate love for our whole country. I would as zealously protect from insult or disparage

ment any other portion of our land as that in which I happened to be born and reared. My official relation to the teachers of California gave me a better acquaintance with the men and women from different parts of our Republic, and the consequence has been a broadening of my ideas and an enlargement of the circle of my sympathies and attachments. I will never forget these lessons nor lose these sympathies.

Knowing the teachers and school officers of California as I do, I lay aside the responsibilities and arduous labors of State Superintendent with a firm belief that the educational interests of the State are safe in their hands. Leaving all the various departments of our educational work in vigorous operation and healthful development, I trust the next four years will bring uninterrupted progress and increased prosperity.

36. SCHOOL LEGISLATION, 1872.

At this session there was no school legislation worth mentioning.

The Code Commissioners reported the Codified Statutes, including, of course, the School Law. The main features of the Revised School Law of 1866 remained intact, subject only to rearrangement and changes of phraseology.

Among the minor changes was a provision excepting incorporated cities from the action of "State uniformity" of text-books. An appropriation of $300,000 was made for erecting buildings for the State University.

37. FIFTH BIENNIAL REPORT, 1872-73.

Superintendent Bolander's Report opens with an argument in favor of compulsory education, from which the following points are taken:

To the question, "What is this remedy?" only one answer can be given, or at least only one answer has thus far been found. Admitted that education forms the only secure foundation and bulwark of a republican form of government, if not of every form of government; admitted that the universality of education becomes thus of vital importance to the State; and admitted that the exigencies of the case not only empower but compel the State to provide all the facilities necessary to enable every child to acquire at least a common school education, and we are forced to the conclusion that it is not only the privilege, but the duty of the State, to compel every parent to bestow upon his children at least the education which the State places within his reach.

Education is one of the primary conditions necessary to the very

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