Annual Report of the Superintendent of Education [excerpt]

THE LESSON OF THE TRAGEDY.

     To all charged with the grave responsibility of training the young, the terrible tragedy enacted in Buffalo last September should teach a serious lesson. The efforts to learn something definite about the school history of the assassin Czolgosz have been unfruitful. While on trial he stated that he had attended public and parochial schools. It is plain, however, that he did not attend any school long enough to have its influence deeply impressed upon his character. The lesson of his life is, first of all, that it is the duty of the State to see to it that no child is allowed to grow up a stranger to the training and good influences which every school should exert; and, second, that it is [25][26] the paramount duty of the school to give all who come within the sphere of its influence direct training in citizenship. The first duty of a public school is to instill right notions regarding our government, and by precept, example and practice to give pupils an insight into their duties and their responsibilities, their privileges and their powers, as citizens of the Republic.
     I know from experience that pupils can, at an early age, be interested intelligently and profitably in these questions. The young may be powerfully influenced by a proper system of school discipline, which is a practical working out of the ideas of government. The school itself as an organized community should teach the child lessons of equality before the law, the necessity of giving up complete liberty of action for the general good, and of subordinating the individual will to the will of the majority. Every principal and teacher should feel that there is no higher duty than to make the formal lessons and the methods of discipline afford such training as will bring high ideals of public duty. To discharge this high function, principals and teachers must be alert and devoted. They must keep up their own interest, enlarge their intelligence, renew their enthusiasm. The daily round of duty tends to formalism. Every effort which promises to keep the right spirit alive should be encouraged. Teachers should not take up their work in the spirit of hirelings. They should not be actuated simply by a desire to get and keep a job. They should look upon their business not as a trade, but as a profession, and not as a profession merely, but as a mission.