VIII

Every child in the country has known of Clara Barton.

Oakland (Calif.)Tribune.

Pestalozzi was the Father of the Public School; Washington the Father of his Country; Lincoln, the Father of a Race; Clara Barton, the Mother of the Red Cross.The Author.

The building which housed Clara Barton in her efforts for popular education is still standing along with other historic landmarks.

Bordentown (N. J.)Register.

If you will let me try, I will teach the children free for six months.Clara Barton.

I thank God that we have no free schools—in the colony—and I hope we shall not have these hundred years.

Governor Berkeleyof Virginia in 1670.

The first incorporation to provide free schools, under the provisions of the State, was passed in New York in 1805.

The Modern School System.

The basis of free government is in education; in a republic the hope of the millions is the free public school.

The Two Republics.

The hope of all modern civilization is the public free school.

Ancient School Systems.

I taught in an uninclosed shed at North Oxford, there being no house for that purpose.Clara Barton.

The first meetings for the establishment of a kindergarten system at Washington was held at the Clara Barton home, in Washington;among others present Phoebe Hearst and Mrs. Grover Cleveland, wife of the President, the chairman.The Author.

Let us live in our children.Frederick Froebel.

New Jersey had no public schools. The people said they were not paupers and would not have their children taught at public expense—would not send them to “pauper schools.” In New Jersey Clara Barton opened, for the first time, what was called a “free school for paupers.” Since those puritan days, what a change in public sentiment! Then it was “Pauper school” education; now

Free education is the poor man’s marble staircase that leads upward, and into, the palaces of wealth, health and happiness.

Clara Barton was told that a public school was impossible; every time it had been tried, it had failed. At Bordentown she found herself with six bright boys, and the public school[2]commenced. At the end of twelve months her six pupils had grown to six hundred pupils—among whom no corporal punishment had been administered.

2. The School Building, erected in 1837. School taught by Clara Barton, in 1853. Building and site the property of New Jersey, purchased through contributions by teachers and pupils. Building dedicated June 11, 1921, and now known as The Clara Barton Memorial School but used as a Clara Barton Museum.

“Pauper schools” became thence in fact the free public school; now the free public school is the one institution from whose flagstaff freedom’s flag is never hauled down.

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