Elements of Civil Government | Page 6

therefrom a certificate
or license entitling him to teach in the public schools.
POWERS.--The teacher has the same power and right to govern the
school that the parent has to govern the family. The law puts the
teacher in the parent's place and expects him to perform the parent's
office, subject to the action of the directors or trustees. It clothes him
with all power necessary to govern the school, and then holds him
responsible for its conduct, the directors having the right to dismiss him
at any time for a failure to perform his duty.
DUTIES.--The teacher is one of our most important officers. The State
has confided to him the trust of teaching, of showing boys and girls
how to be useful men and women, of training them for citizenship. This
is a great work to do. The State has clothed him with ample power for
the purpose, and it is his duty to serve the State faithfully and well. The
teacher should govern kindly and firmly. Every pupil in school, of
whatever age or size, owes him cheerful and ready obedience. It is his
duty, the duty for which he is paid, to insist upon this obedience; to
govern the school; to teach the pupils to obey while they are children,
in order that they may rule well when they become rulers; that is, when
they become citizens.
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS.
1. Why are law and order necessary to the peace and happiness of the
people?
2. Why are public schools sometimes called free schools or common
schools?
3. About how many square miles are there in a school district in this
county?
4. What is the official title, and what the name, of the chief school
officer of this county?
5. Why does the State want its people educated?

6. Why should children be regular and punctual in their attendance?
7. What can parents do to aid their children to acquire an education?
8. What number of directors do you think would be best for the school
district? Why?
9. Should directors receive compensation? How much?
10. Why should the teacher pass an examination?
11. Should he be examined every year?
12. Why does the law place the teacher in the parent's place?
13. Why are citizens said to be rulers?
QUESTION FOR DEBATE.
Resolved, That it is right for a man without children to pay school
taxes.
CHAPTER III.
THE CIVIL DISTRICT.
INTRODUCTORY.--In our study, thus far, we have had to do with
special forms of government as exercised in the family and in the
school. These are, in a sense, peculiar to themselves. The rights of
government as administered in the family, and the rights of the
members of a family, as well as their duties to each other, are natural
rights and duties; they do not depend upon society for their force. In
fact, they are stronger and more binding in proportion as the bands of
society are relaxed.
In the primitive state, before there was organized civil society, family
government was supreme; and likewise, if a family should remove
from within the limits of civil society and be entirely isolated, family
government would again resume its power and binding force.

School government, while partaking of the nature of civil government,
is still more closely allied to family government. In the natural state,
and in the isolated household, the education of the child devolves upon
the parents, and the parent delegates a part of his natural rights and
duties to the teacher when he commits the education of his child to the
common school. The teacher is said to stand in loco parentis (in the
place of the parent), and from this direction, mainly, are his rights of
government derived. The school, therefore, stands in an intermediate
position between family government and civil government proper,
partaking of some features of each, and forming a sort of
stepping-stone for the child from the natural restraints of home to the
more complex demands of civil society. The school district, also, while
partaking of the nature of a civil institution, is in many respects to be
regarded as a co-operative organization of the families of the
neighborhood for the education of their children, and its government as
a co-operative family government.

THE CIVIL UNIT DEFINED.
In nearly every part of the United States there is a unit of civil society
in which the people exercise many of the powers of government at first
hand. This civil unit is variously named in the different States, and its
first organization may have been for some minor purpose; but it has
grown to be an important sphere of government in many States, and
throughout the entire country it is the primary school of the citizen and
the voter.
There are many