It has been the object of the writer to make a book useful to the busy law practitioner and also to teachers and officers. An acquaintance with the law of this subject would tend in no small degree to avert much unseemly litigation, which in the infancy of our public-school system was caused more by the unsettled state of the law than by a fondness for contention. Teachers, especially, are often called upon to act with vigor and promptness in matters requiring not only tact and judgment, but also a knowledge of what has actually been decided by the courts of law, and this knowledge is often demanded when there is neither time nor opportunity to take professional advice. The writer has limited himself to the treatment of what has actually been decided, and what is believed to be the law. If any are disappointed in not finding mentioned in these pages subjects and cases which have been ably discussed in teachers' meetings, institutes, and conventions, and by State Superintendents, the writer has only this to say to them, that such discussions, though valuable and interesting, are outside of the design of this book, and he has purposely avoided them in order to present this as a distinct work on the actual law of the subject, based upon decisions of courts which are precedents in those and other legal tribunals. It often becomes important to teachers and offi- ; cers to know how their interests would fare if an action should be instituted in a court of law. The questions treated of are of a acter, and are as likely to arise in general char one State as in another. Those that are of a purely local character have been avoided as far as possible. JULY, 1880. |