The rights and privileges of school children

Society always assigns certain duties, rights, and privileges to its children. Each generation has trained, in one way or another, consciously or unconsciously, the next generation. There has developed, in every age and everywhere in the world, a conscious attempt on the part of those who are to guide and assist those who are to be the responsible citizenship. Folk ways became, as primitive society passed into modern, state ways; and the early provisions for really adequate education only for the few were, in the course of time, extended to be practically universal in range. In America this conception of education has outrun the belief and practice of the rest of the world. In every state of this great commonwealth an adequate education is now really, in effect, guaranteed to every child who will accept it. What is this education ? By legislative acts and by the rulings of state boards of education, the various states of the Union have been building up a conception of what American society expects to give to its youth in order to fit them for a fruitful maturity. A statement of this conception is the purpose of the present paper. In the development toward present-day practice and theory, certain of the American states have developed faster than others along particular lines, so that there is not now uniformity. The extent to which various educational privileges are assured to children of the immediate day varies among the states. But there is a very notable approach to uniformity, and its accomplishment seems not far off. Practically, throughout the Union, there is, or soon will be, a guarantee solemnly given, by his nation and commonwealth, to every child. With the variations of practice and the trend of development in mind, this paper attempts to state those educational rights and privileges to which the American people consider the American child to be entitled. The criteria, by means of which tendencies were scrutinized, were as follows

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