But the so-called general obligation of school attendance is not really general, and applies exclusively, or almost exclusively, to the lower classes of the population. The other classes can evade the obligation of school attendance by having their children educated at home. The proletarian parents are well aware that the elementary school teaches neither in matter nor in manner in accordance with proletarian conceptions; but at present they have to submit. The duty of universal school attendance is not very strictly enforced. Even in the most highly civilised countries, a certain proportion of children of school age receive no elementary education. In many countries the universal obligation of school attendance exists only on paper. The conditions in this respect are especially bad, on the one hand, in the country districts (where, therefore, the proportion of illiterates is much greater than in the towns), and, secondly, in districts where there is a great demand for labour. The principle of universal compulsory school attendance is not accepted without opposition. It is resisted by many proletarian parents who wish their children to engage in wage-labour at an early age, and it is resisted also by many capitalists who think they could make larger profits with cheaper labour. _The Purpose of the Elementary School._--To enable us to answer the question, what is the purpose of the public elementary school, it is necessary that we should first be able to decide what is the purpose of education. This question is not educational merely, but also social and political. The purpose of the public elementary school is dependent at any particular period upon the general characteristics of that period; for, first, one learns, not at school, but in life; secondly, the dominant authority in the State in any epoch wishes to instil in the minds of the young whatever “virtues” are considered essential to the maintenance of the power of the dominant caste. All political parties consider the public elementary school to be extremely important, and each one of them wishes to use this institution for its own purposes. They all recognise that the future belongs to the young, that the public elementary school plays the leading part in the education of the young; and each party sees that its special aims can be attained only by the education of individuals to consider that these aims are sacred and desirable. The adherents of a particular political tendency therefore oppose the inculcation in the public elementary schools of any tendency adverse to their own, but they regard it as self-evident that their own views ought to be inculcated in the elementary school.