fundamental. It constitutes the bed-rock on which rest all other
rights in matters of education. To deny that principle, to deflect it
from its proper meaning, to recognize it only partially, is to blast
the very foundation of human nature. No reason of common good, of
citizenship, can overthrow this right; on the contrary, it presupposes
it; for, the State can only interfere to protect and help this right.
It can never suppress it, and only supplement it when the parents are
deficient and fall short of this sacred duty they owe their offspring.

_II.--A Social Reason_

Society is made up of various units, lending to one another support by
the mutual participation in the activities of life. The family--the
first in order of time and dignity--is beyond doubt the principal and
central unit. The other social factors presuppose it and exist for its
protection. Is it not the source from which springs the very life of
the individual and wherein society replenishes its forces? The placing
of the individual as the specific social unit of our modern democracy
is a pernicious error. This fallacy has destroyed Society by upsetting
the essential order of its units and has robbed the individual of his
most elementary rights.

The substitution of the State for the family is most detrimental in any
sphere of life. In matters of education it is nothing short of a
disaster. The "State School Teacher" is an anomaly. It is the
subversion of true social order for it constitutes "an unwarranted
interference of the State in a function preeminently social. Education
is a social function and cannot be converted into a governmental charge
without violence to it." What Treitsche said of the Judiciary Power in
a country may well be applied to education. "We find the first and
fundamental principle of jurisprudence to be that no one should be
withdrawn from the jurisdiction of his natural judge." The natural
school of the child is the family; the common school should be nothing
but an extension of the home. The mission of the school is to
supplement the home and not to supplant it. The child and the parent
therefore are entitled to have the same atmosphere pervade both school
and home. Everything that is relevant to education belongs to the
family. A policy that favours intrusion of an undue influence of the
State in the school and destroys home authority and parental influence
is unnatural and therefore anti-social. The