e largely
one of classification and administration. With all the fact weighs that
board, lodging, etc., are given entirely free.[514] The clearest and
fullest presentation of the point of view of the charity boards is given
in the following extract from a letter by one board:[515]

The institutions are doubtless both educational and charitable, or
at least ought to be, using these words in their ordinary
application. It is not a question of merit or demerit on the part of
the unfortunates or their families. It is not a question whether
they are entitled to an education as much as normal children. So far
as there is any real issue, it is one of classification for purposes
of administration. The question seems to be whether the institutions
that care for the above mentioned classes can best be administered
under the department of charities that has charge of public
institutions, or the department of education that usually has to do
with institutions that furnish education only in the limited
technical sense, where pupils attend school a few hours a day, but
are not boarded at the institutions. Because an institution is an
educational institution, I think it may be none the less a
charitable institution. For example, it would hardly be denied that
an orphan asylum is a charitable institution; yet an orphan asylum
that was not an educational institution would be deplorable. In the
state institutions for the deaf and the blind, throughout the
country, the educational side is very properly emphasized.... These
inmates would properly be classed as public dependents as they
usually have been.... The whole trouble seems to arise from a
feeling of aversion to the word "charity", and probably the word has
been degraded.... To refer to the institutions under consideration
as "educational institutions", without any qualification, would not
be in the interest of clearness of thought, and would either lead to
confusion or to some qualifying phrases, because the deaf and the
blind are certainly different enough from the normal child to be
considered, for many purposes, in a separate class, and the
institutions which educate and support them, it would seem to me,
need some term by which they can be designated, which would
distinguish them from the educational institutions designed for the
normal child.

ARG