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The Green Bag.

776.) In Bunlick ï'. Babcock (31 Iowa, 567), the court remarked obiter, that sports beyond school might be forbidden if they tended to unfit a pupil for study during school hours, and that a contrary view " is narrow, and without regard to the spirit of the law and the best interest of our common schools." According to this doctrine, authorities might forbid foot ball or boxing or rowing. This was founded on the leading Vermont case, and on Sherman v. Inhabitants of Charlestown (8 Cush. 160), where Chief Justice Shaw held that a female scholar might be excluded from school on account of " licentious propensities, language, manners and habits, amounting even to actual prostitution, al though not manifested in the school" — which is a horse of another color. But in Holding v. State (23 Tex. App. 172), Wil son, J., out-Herods Herod by asserting that "the teacher's authority extends to the pre scribing and enforcement of reasonable rules and requirements even while the pupils are at their homes! " How if the parent made a contrary rule? In the Vermont case above, the court conceded that ordinarily the teacher's authority ceased on the arrival of the child at his home, for then the parental authority is renewed, but the offence of the "bucolical Juvenal" was so gross and con temptuous of the teacher that an exception was made. The doctrine of the resumption of parental authority was recognized in Drill v. Snodgrass . (66 Mo. 286; 27 Am. Rep. 343), where it was held that school directors had no warrant to make a rule forbidding pupils to attend social parties, and to expel a scholar for attending one with the consent of his parents. Sometimes the will of the parent is allowed to prevail against that of the pedagogue. Thus in Morrow 7'. Wood (35 Wis. 61; 17 Am. Rep. 471), it was held that the teacher .was not justified in flogging a child for refus ing to study geography, in which he had the support of the parent. Perhaps the parent had conscientious scruples against the use of

globes, and having his child taught modern scientific theories of cosmography in con tempt of the scriptures and the fathers. The court remarked : " It is one of the earliest and most sacred duties taught the child, to honor and obey its parents. The situation of the child is truly lamentable, if the condition of the law is that he is liable to be punished by the parents for disobeying his orders in regard to his studies, and the teacher may lawfully chastise him for not disobeying his parent in that particular." " We see no rea son whatever for denying to the father the right to direct what studies, included in the prescribed course, his child shall take. He is as likely to know the health, temperament, aptitude and deficiencies of his child as the teacher, and how long he can send him to school." This is also the doctrine of State v. Mizner (50 Iowa, 14$; 30 Am. Rep. 129), when the court said : " Compulsory education is not yet the rule in this State." Here the lalx>red branch of learning was algebra. In Trustees v. People (87 Ill. 303; 29 Am. Rep. 55), it was held that a pupil was not lia ble to exclusion because his father did not wish him to study grammar. I have strong sympathy with that father, for much time is wasted in the schools over the study of gram matical analysis, with the result that pupils can analyze a sentence to pieces and yet ha bitually speak bad grammar. But in State 7'. Webber (108 Ind. 31; 58 Am. Rep. 30), it was held that the master might expel a scholar for refusing to study and practice music, although his refusal was with his father's approval, and the same was held in Guernsey v. Pitkin (32 Vt. 224), in respect to English composition, the court quoting Lord Bacon's apothegm, that " writing makes a correct man." In regard to the music case, Mr. Bishop observes (Non-Contract Law, sec. 594) : " Many a child could acquire no useful knowledge of music during his en tire minority, if every wakeful moment was devoted to it, and to compel such a throwing away of valuable time is a tyranny which

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