Excerpt from Special Report on the Present State of Education in the United States and Other Countries, and on Compulsory Instruction The neglect of public officers to collect and preserve books and documents relating to schools has rendered the compilation of facts and statistics, showing the provisions made in di 'erent States to educate the people, a task slow and difficult. This is especially true of our State. Until the organization of the Department of Public Instruction, not even the annual reports of the Superin tendent were saved and kept upon the official shelves. If reports were received from other States of this Union, or from foreign countries, care was not taken to preserve them. None certainly were in the office when this Department was organized in 1854. From 1821 to 1854, the school department was merged in the office of the Secretary of State, and the decision of appeals, the replies by letter to a multitudeof inquiries from all parts of the State, the collating of school returns, the apportionment of public moneys and the visitation and inspection of institutions subject to the oversight of the Superintendent, and the want of appropri ations, must have precluded any considerable attention to the collection of an educational library. While providing with com mendable liberality for the support of common schools, the Legis lature has ever neglected to make appropriations for the preserva tion of records, and for collecting books and reports, showing the progress of education in this and other countries. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."