All Education Based on Primary Teaching Recent controversies over the cost of public education have raised once more the ancient ne of frills versus fundamentals, Those who are alarmed at the increasing budgets of state and city departments of education and who wish to see these budgets curtailed are disposed to attack them on the ground that too much is being spent on the frills, and to advocate a return to the three R's, writes Mr. Mark A. May to the New York "Times; The political revolution in France and America taught the doctrine of natural rights. This doctrine is most elegantly set forth in the Declaration of Independence, the key words to which are "inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" Those who signed this document were strong believers in the doctrines set forth in it. They also believed that every citizen should have at least an elementary education in order, as Jefferson püt it, "to know his rights."
So the Founding Fathers of the Republic had iwo good reasons for advocating universal public education and specially for the teaching of reading. One reason was that every one should be able to read the Bible and the other was that every one should know and defend his natural rights.
In the latter half of the nineteenth century came the industrial revolution. Its basic doctrine was equality of opportunity—freedom to work, to produce, to accumulate wealth in open competition with others. It was essentially an economic revolution based on technology and machinery in which the impact of science on s keenly felt. one went out to get it and to get as much as possible. When this happened public mass education leaped out beyond the three R's, Technical and trade schools grew rapidly vocational education was born. The justification for tax-supported schools shifted from salvation in natural rights to economic opportunities.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.