Extended excerpt [Address as the incoming University of Cincinnati president. Dabney held a doctorate in chemistry and had previously served as an agricultural specialist, Assistant U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, and as a nonprofit & university leader at other institutions.]:

“Democracy means self-government; self-government necessitates universal education; and universal education can only be accomplished by free public schools under the control of all the people. Let us have done with these hackneyed arguments against the public school.

Let us have done with these hackneyed arguments against the public school. Free public schools are not institutions of “paternalism.” The city or the state does not establish schools as it does orphan asylums for children who have no parents. Who are the voters and tax-payers but the fathers, uncles, and brothers of the children?” (p. 30)

Extended excerpt [Address as the incoming University of Cincinnati president. Dabney held a doctorate in chemistry and had previously served as an agricultural specialist, Assistant U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and as a nonprofit & university leader at other institutions.]:

“Let us also cast out of our minds all half-hearted arguments for the free education of all the people. It is true that it pays a community to educate all its youth; but the public school is not a charity institution. School-houses and school-masters are cheaper than jails and soldiers, but we do not build public schools for that reason. Such arguments for free schools are little less than an insult to a free people. Democracy is something nobler than a policeman guarding and protecting our property and our rights. The democracy establishes its public schools to train new citizens and to fit them for self-government, and when it shall have done its full duty in this respect there will be little need of policemen and soldiers. A democracy spending hundreds of millions for warships and forts, for armies and navies, is enough to give devils joy.” (p. 30)

Source link: University of Cincinnati Record (December 1904-January 1905) online via Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=BuUSAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=Let+us+also+cast+out+of+our+minds+all+half-hearted+arguments+for+the+free+education 

Extended excerpt: [Address as the incoming University of Cincinnati president. Dabney held a doctorate in chemistry and had previously served as an agricultural specialist, Assistant U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and as a nonprofit & university leader at other institutions.]

“Education conserves and education advances. Education conserves all the good in the past of the race. It gathers up the fragments, so that the new man takes up the burden of progress which his fathers laid down with their lives: “Other men labored and ye have entered into their labors.” It preserves the achievements of man as the foundation on which to build the more stately mansions of the soul. How impossible then to neglect the school and the scholar as factors in the maintenance of civilization!” (pp. 30-31)

Source link: University of Cincinnati Record (December 1904-January 1905) online via Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=BuUSAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=Education+conserves+and+education+advances

Extended excerpt [Address as the incoming University of Cincinnati president.]:

“The university is at once the creature and the creator of the democracy; it is born of the people, and it lives for the people. It is the very brain and heart of progress, supplying it with both direction and food. It is at one and the same time the school, the work-shop, the library and the light-house of democracy. Every democratic state or city must have its university to supply direction for its people and to train their leaders, or it can never realize its glorious aims.” (p. 33)

Source link: University of Cincinnati Record (December 1904-January 1905) online via Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=BuUSAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33&dq=The+university+is+at+once+the+creature+and+the+creator+of+the+democracy+it+is+born+of+the+people