Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Reports of an Investigation Concerning the Cost of Maintaining the Public School System of the City of New York, by the Department of Finance (Investigations Division): Submitted to the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, New York, June, 1904
And yet, if public schools were not necessary in order to insure that popular knowledge of the ordinary common school branches deemed necessary to intelligent citizenship, that is, if such knowledge were sure to be acquired without the aid of such schools, it is by no means certain that public opinion would favor their maintenance for the sole purpose of affording an Opportunity to pursue the extra or special branches 110w taught therein. The latter have one after another found place in the curriculum on the ground that attendance upon the public schools so monopolizes the pupil's time that the special branches must be taught him there if anywhere. But, as already suggested, there can be 110 warrant for their introduction to the exclusion or neglect of the ordinary branches, or to such an extent or in such manner as to interfere with the successful prosecution of the ordinary common school course of study.
It is, of course, always easier to criticise a system than to construct one, easier to hnd faults than to remedy them. Bearing this in mind, and realizing, moreover, that the popular favor in which the public schools have deservedly come to be held, renders any criticism of them, however well intended or well founded, more or less liable to the charge of hostility to the system as a whole, it is not without some hesita tion and much deliberation that the following suggestions are made.
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