EDUCATION AND CRIME.

[Extract from the Twenty-First Annual Report of the Secretary of the
Massachusetts Board of Education.]

The public schools, in their relations to the morals of the pupils and
to the morality of the community, are attracting a large share of
attention. In some sections of the country the system is boldly
denounced on account of its immoral tendencies. In states where free
schools exist there are persons who doubt their utility; and
occasionally partisan or religious leaders appear who deny the existence
of any public duty in regard to education, or who assert and maintain
the doctrine that free schools are a common danger. As the people of
this commonwealth are not followers of these prophets of evil, nor
believers in their predictions, there is but slight reason for
discussion among us. It is not probable that a large number of the
citizens of Massachusetts entertain doubts of the power and value of our
institutions of learning, of every grade, to resist evil and promote
virtue, through the influence they exert. But, as there is nothing in
our free-school system that shrinks from light, or investigation even,
I have selected from the annual reports everything which they contain
touching the morality of the institution. In so doing, I have had two
objects in view. First, to direct attention to the errors and wrongs
that exist; and, secondly, to state the opinion, and enforce it as I may
be able, that the admitted evils found in the schools are the evils of
domestic, social, municipal, and general life, which are sometimes
chastened, mitigated, or removed, but never produced, nor even
cherished, by our system of public instruction. In the extracts from the
school committees' reports there are passages which imply some doubt of
the moral value of the system; but it is our duty to bear in mind that
these reports were prepared and presented for the praiseworthy purpose
of arousing an interest in the removal of the evils that are pointed
out. The writers are contemplating the importance of making the schools
a better means of moral and intellectual culture; but there is no reason
to suppose that in any case a comparison is instituted, even mentally,
between the state of society as it appears at present and the condition
that would follow the abandonment of our system of public instruction.
There are general complaints that the manners of children and youth have
changed within thirty or fift