CHAPTER XXIII.
ON AMERICAN COMMON SCHOOLS—CONCLUSION.
American Common Schools.
It was my practice, wherever I was staying, to visit some of the schools of the place. I have spoken of several of these visits in the foregoing pages. I will now give, collectively, the conclusions at which I arrived on the subject of education in America, after an actual inspection of schools, and much conversation with persons interested and engaged in educational work in every part of the Union, with the exception of the new States on the Pacific coast.
We have had the American Common School system held up before us for many years for our imitation. We have been told that, compared with it, our own efforts in the cause of education are discreditable and contemptible. We have been urged to look at what they are doing; to consider how highly they tax themselves for this purpose; to admire the effects of this system, as seen in a people, the whole of whom are now educated and intelligent. Of course the inference always is, that the best thing we can do is to go and do likewise. These are vague generalities, which an acquaintance with the subject will in some respects largely modify.
First, I demur to the statement that Americansdo tax themselves so highly for the purpose of education. It would be much nearer to the truth to say that there is no people on the face of the earth who educate their children so cheaply as the Americans; and therefore much more in conformity with the facts of their case, and of ours in this matter, to urge us to endeavour, by considering their example, to cheapen education amongst ourselves. I have now before me the most recent report of the Board of Education for the city of New York. It is for the year 1866. From this it appears that, taking together all the common schools of the city, the Primary, the Grammar, the Coloured, the Evening, the Normal, the Corporate, and the Free Academy, now the College of the City of New York, there are 227,691 children and young persons receiving education at a total cost for everything—including rents, purchases of sites, building, repairs, and salaries of officers of the board, as well as of the teachers—of 2,420,883 dollars, or about 30s.a head. Are the children of any city in England educated as cheaply? These schools educate a considerable proportion of the children of the higher class, that is the professional men and merchants; speaking generally, all the children of the middle class, that is of the tradesmen; and as many of the children of the artisan and unskilled labouring class as their parents choose to send. This 30s.is a high average for American cities. I believe it is higher than any other in the United States. Tradesmen with us pay about 35l.a year for a child kept at a boarding-school, and about 15l.a year for the education given at day schools. In the great city of New York about400,000l.a year is spent on the education of all classes, plus the cost of the few of the upper class who are sent to private schools. How much more, we may ask, is spent here on the education of 227,691 children of the different ranks in life of these New York children? There can be no doubt but that our unmethodical system, notwithstanding our numerous foundations, costs us much more than their system costs the Americans. Ours is the costliest educational system in the world; theirs the most economical.
Cheapness of American Schools.
This is still more apparent when we pass from the towns to the country. There the cost frequently falls below 10s.a head. The children educated in these schools are those of the proprietors of the land, but who cultivate it themselves as well as own it. Are the children of this class, in any part of the world, educated for so small a number of shillings a year? Why, in New York you have to pay as much for a pair of gloves, and more for a bottle of wine. In Illinois, one of the richest States in the Union, and whose population is probably better off than any equal number of people in any other country, the average cost for the children of the whole State is little more than this 10s.a head. And in Massachusetts, the State in which attention has been most carefully and for the longest time directed to the subject, and where everything is done that is thought necessary, the average for the town and country children actually at school is only 25s.
The fact is simply this. The rural population in America is the most homogeneous in the world. It is composed entirely of farmers, and of their sonsand brothers who are the professional men and tradesmen of the district. Landlordism and tithes are unknown: so there is no one above the farmer-proprietor, and from New York to San Francisco there is no such class as our agricultural labourer, and so there is no one below the farmer. Now, how can a number of families of this kind, who are all completely on a footing of social equality, and also, if the word may be allowed to pass, pretty nearly of possessive equality, best educate their children? In a new country there are no foundation schools and few private ones—that is to say, to all practical purposes, no schools at all. There is, therefore, but one way of getting what they want—that is, by establishing schools of their own; and this can only be done by taxing themselves. There is no great sagacity shown in seeing this; and, as a matter of fact, everyone in America sees it. It is not seen more clearly in Massachusetts than it is in Ohio, or in Ohio than in California, or in California than in Colorado. I understood, indeed, that the schools of California (I had no opportunity of examining them myself) are the best in the Union; and the statement is not incredible, for the Californians are a people who will have nothing that is second-rate. One can hardly get now at any price a real Havana cigar in London or Paris, because the people of San Francisco will always pay the best price for the best thing. And in the territory, for it is not yet the State of Colorado, in the mountains, at Denver, and on the plains, two thousand miles away from Massachusetts, I saw the common-school system at work, in places where Judge Lynch is still the guardian ofsociety in its infancy. No motive of patriotism or philanthropy can act in this universal and unfailing way. It can only be done by all, and in the same way by all, because it is obviously for the interest of all to do it, and because they could not get what they want in any other way. It is not forced on the rural townships by the general government of the State, but it permits them to tax themselves, if they please. And as they happen to raise the money they require by a tax, it becomes easy to ascertain exactly what the amount is; and the figures, as they include all that is paid for educating the children of a large State, appear to represent a very considerable sum, although, when it is looked into, it is seen to be the cheapest work of the kind that is anywhere done. The State of Illinois has now perhaps 10,000 schools, not far from 20,000 teachers, and about 600,000 scholars. The aggregate sum with which the people tax themselves for these schools and scholars appears very great, but in reality there are no other 600,000 scholars so cheaply educated. Our two schools of Eton and Harrow cost the parents of the children educated at them more than these 10,000 schools cost the people of Illinois.
The Mother of the Invention.
And when we come to look into the working of the American school system in the cities, we see that nothing could be done without the motives I have spoken of, as never failing to bring about one uniform result in the country. The artisans, and tradesmen, and small professional men know that this is the best and cheapest way for them to get the kind of education they desire for their children. They are the great majority, and so of course the thingis done. There is a general tax, and common schools are established. And, as they have some advantages besides that of cheapness, they are used by many of the upper class—I mean merchants, bankers, and successful professional men, especially those who wish to stand well with the democracy. None can be excluded from the schools (indeed no one wishes it), and so they are open to the lowest class of the town population, with which there is nothing to correspond in the country. In truth, so far from wishing for any exclusion, great efforts are made to get hold of the children of ignorant and vicious parents, both from philanthropic and from self-interested motives, because in cities where every man has the suffrage, a vicious and ignorant population is doubly inconvenient and dangerous. Hitherto, however, the Americans have hardly succeeded in the towns better than we have, in their efforts to bring these children into their schools. At New York they have supplemented the common schools with a system of industrial schools, intended especially for those who would never enter the common schools. But all that can be said of them is, that they have met the evil they were intended to remedy to some small extent. At Chicago, I was told by the able superintendent of the city schools that there were 20,000 children in that city who frequented no school. And this is a growing evil in all the great cities of the Union.
Abundance of Good Teaching Material.
The Americans, then, very wisely (in fact they could do nothing better, perhaps nothing else) have established, in the country and in the cities, common schools for their own children. What we are calledupon to do is a totally different thing; and this I insist upon as another great distinction between what they have done, and what we are doing, in this matter. We have to establish schools for other people’s children. With them those who pay for the school profit by it. With us those who will pay for the school will never derive any advantage from it. The point for us to settle is, How shall farmers and landlords be made to tax themselves for the education of labourers’ children; and how shall the householders, and professional men, and tradesmen of a town be made to tax themselves for the schooling of the children of artisans and operatives? The Americans may be left to manage the business themselves, for it is their own affair. But we cannot: with us the law must be imperative, not permissive, and constant supervision will be needed; and to secure this right of supervision, it will probably be found necessary that the State should itself contribute largely towards the maintenance of the school.
The Americans possess an advantage in their schools to which there is at present no prospect of our attaining. The teachers of our elementary schools are taken from the humblest and most uneducated stratum of society, and have to be trained for their work. They have none of the traditions of mental culture, and their sentiments must in a great measure be those of their relations and friends. The humbleness of their origin does also considerably detract from the social position it would be desirable they should occupy. In America a like origin would not have the same effect; but here the daughter of a labourer or mechanic has not the influence withthe parents of the children, or the respect shown to her, which would be readily conceded if she were the daughter of a farmer or tradesman; and it is from these two classes, whose social position is much higher in America than it is here, that the greater part of their teachers are drawn. They come from an educated class, and are entitled by their antecedents, as well as by their office, to some position, and they know how to assert it and maintain it. They have no more timidity ormauvaise hontethan their friends. They are full of energy and ambition, and there is always animation in their teaching. It is quite impossible for any country to have better material for teachers than America has. And they appear to have an inexhaustible supply of it. ‘Our half a million of teachers’ is not an uncommon expression among them; but though this must pass for an American figure of speech, still what it implies is true, that whatever number of teachers may be required will always be forthcoming. I once heard an American bachelor in this country affirm that whenever he thought of marrying he should, other things being equal, give the preference to a lady who had for some years been a school-teacher. I do not know to what extent this sentiment is shared by my friend’s countrymen, or whether the lady-teachers of American schools are aware of the existence of this feeling in their favour; but at all events it shows that the social position of teachers is regarded as good.
Grading, an Improvement on Classes.
Of course it is a mere truism to say that American teachers would be more efficient if they had had more special training. But whatever their deficiency maybe in this respect, the advantages I have just spoken of as possessed by them are very manifest; and as soon as you enter an American school (this may be said generally of those in the North), you feel at once that you are surrounded by quite a different atmosphere from anything you are familiar with at home.
Another advantage their schools possess over ours is, that they are what, in American school-phraseology, is called ‘graded.’ This, unlike what I have just been mentioning, may be transplanted to our side of the water. I need not now explain what grading means, because I have spoken more than once of this method of arranging and teaching schools. It ensures much more careful teaching than our method, and that the whole of the school-time shall be devoted to study. I know that there are some who have recently said that it fails in individualising each case. I see, however, no force in this remark, because I was struck with the degree to which the very reverse of it resulted from the adoption of the method. It must be compared with the only other alternative for schools—that of the class system—and a little consideration will show that it is the class system perfected; for it is simply the assigning of one class to one person, and obliging that person to devote the whole of the school-time, from the first to the last minute, to teaching that one class. It prevents the scholars having any idle time while they are in school. It necessitates a great deal of oral teaching. It concentrates the teacher’s whole attention on one point, as well as on one class.
It does also very much cheapen the cost of education. But this is not a benefit that will, amongourselves, be so understood and felt as that there should be any desire to secure it, until we have rate-supported schools. Our adoption of the rate to some extent, and in some form or other, can only be a question of time, for it is the only just method of supporting open schools; and the people will be averse to the schools in which their children are educated bearing an eleemosynary character. And when that day shall have come, then the majority of the rate-payers here, just as in America, will be in favour of the system, which, while it very much improves the teaching, will at the same time very much diminish its cost, by substituting where parishes are small one school for many.
Any remarks on American schools would be very incomplete if nothing were said on the exclusion from them of all direct or dogmatic religious teaching. The general rule is that a small portion, sometimes limited to ten verses, of the Holy Scriptures should be read daily, and that this should be followed by the Lord’s Prayer. Some cities and districts allow more latitude for the prayer, a choice of certain forms that are provided being permitted, or even an extempore prayer founded on the Lord’s Prayer. In some schools moral, as distinguished from religious or doctrinal teaching, may be founded on the portion of Scripture that has been read. Christianity, therefore, and the Bible are not ignored, as much being done as can be done in schools that are supported equally by many Churches differing from one another in their interpretation of the Bible. The masters, however, do not in all cases avail themselves of the opportunities allowed them for reading the Holy Scriptures andfor prayer. Among the laity there is spreading a feeling of disapprobation at such omissions.
Non-religious not Irreligious.
But what is the effect of this limitation of religious teaching? It must be remembered that these are all day schools. The children are present in school only during school hours. They are under the parental roof every night, at all their meals, and during the morning and evening of each day. The teacher, therefore, is notin loco parentis, as he is in the case of the child who boards and lodges with him, and is entirely entrusted to his care. The parents still have ample time and opportunities for all the religious instruction they desire to give their children, and then there is the Sunday, the Sunday-school, and the teaching of the ministers of religion. The question, therefore, as far as the primary schools are concerned, narrows itself to this—Is any irreligious effect produced by the absence of all direct dogmatic teaching from a school in which the children are only present a few hours a day, and where they go for the purpose of learning to read, write, and cipher, with a little geography and music? I do not think that much evil results from this, nor do I think that any very great amount of good would result from any attempt to alter the present system.
In the grammar school, where the instruction is not so mechanical, the conditions of the question are somewhat different. But even here I do not think that the tendency of the system is irreligious. I cannot believe that the cultivation of the intellect, even if there be nothing addressed directly and formally to their spiritual instincts, is, in the case of children so circumstanced as these, necessarily evil and hostileto religion. It would be so if they were confined for all the year, except the vacations, to the walls of a boarding-school, and the subject of religion never alluded to. But here again, as was observed with respect to the scholars of the primary school, the influences of home, of the church, and of the Sunday-school, ought to render the silence of the week-day school in a great measure innocuous. And this is the more likely to be the case with the scholars of the grammar school, as their parents do for the most part belong to a higher grade in society.
What is Really Taught.
But if the system be tried in the most legitimate of all ways, that is by its fruits, I do not think that we shall have any reason to be dissatisfied with it. The sums raised voluntarily every year in the United States for the building and maintenance of churches, and for the support of the ministers of religion, is quite unequalled by what is collected in the same way among any population of equal amount in the world. It is impossible to ascertain a point of this kind, but I believe that it is far greater than what is contributed voluntarily by the whole of the Latin race. Almost the first buildings raised in the newest settlements are the churches. No one, unless he has experienced it, can tell what are the feelings and thoughts that spontaneously arise on finding yourself, as you enter such a place as Denver, beyond the prairies and the plains, as it were, welcomed by the Houses of God, which are the most conspicuous buildings of the place; and then, again, a few miles further on, as you pass through the first gorge of the mountains at Golden City, to find yourself surrounded by a cluster of three churches; and when you havegot up among the little mining towns, perched like eagles’ nests in the clefts of the mountains, still to find that the object which first of all attracts your attention is the little tower or spire, albeit of wood, that marks the building consecrated to God’s service. I was astonished at the amount collected in the offertory at many of the churches in which I attended the service. I found the Sunday as well observed in America as I ever saw it anywhere else. I know that there are some facts to be set down on the other side, but they do not counterbalance what I have just been pointing out. And so the conclusion that I arrived at on this question was, that I should have liked some direct Christian teaching in the primary schools, and still more in the grammar schools, but this I knew was impossible. And on the whole I was not dissatisfied with the results of the American system of education on the religious character of the people.
Only one point remains—What, after all, do these schools teach? It has been lately objected to them that they aim at information, and not at the development of the faculties; and that they do not cultivate the taste. We are speaking of the common schools, and so of course are thinking of what school education in America does for the artisan and labouring class, and the lower stratum of the middle class; that is, children corresponding to those who are taught in our national schools, and those of a somewhat higher grade in society. Are the faculties (for that is the word insisted on by the most recent writer on the subject) of these two classes at all more developed here at home by our schools, than they arein America by their common schools? Or what fruit does our system bear among these classes in the refinement and the cultivation of the taste? Or, to put the question in the ordinary way, Are these classes better taught, rendered better able to use their wits, and rescued to a greater extent from the brutalising effects of ignorance among ourselves, or among them? Could the American system do more for these classes? If it could, I should be disposed to say it might do more for them on the very point where it is alleged that it does comparatively too much, that of giving information. But I do not say this because I thoroughly approved of so much time being devoted not in the least to imparting information, but to what is the main point in the schooling of those who must leave school very young—the teaching them to read, to write, and to cipher, with accuracy and facility. Among ourselves there is an enormous amount of failure in these primary matters; among the Americans there is very little failure in them. They teach their scholars to write with so much ease, that we may be sure they will never forget or lay aside the use of the pen; and they teach them to read with so much ease, and so much with the understanding, that we may be sure they will continue to read when they have left school. Do our schools accomplish this?
The Dawn of a Better Day.
For ‘the development of the faculties,’ which are big words with rather indistinct meaning, I would substitute the concentration of the powers of the mind on special subjects, such as poetry, history, classical literature, philology, and the different branches of physical science, and I would say that the Americansas a nation have not yet arrived at the point where we may expect much either of this, or of ‘refinement of taste.’ At present all their mental strength and activity is required for the grand work of bringing a new world into subjection to man. They become settlers in the wilderness, or engineers and machinists, or merchants, or professional men, or newspaper-writers. All who enter on these employments are wanted in them, and can get a living by them. They invite and receive and remunerate all the energetic minds of the nation. But it will not always be so. As soon as the continent begins to fill up, and extension ceases, then multitudes of active minds will not find themselves called to the same employments as those of the present generation are. The battle with nature will then be over. By that time, too, wealth will have accumulated and become hereditary in many families. There will be many to appreciate, as well as many to devote themselves to art and literature. It is then that we may expect that the American mind and American culture will bear their fruit. They will then, I believe, have schools and styles of art of their own, and a literature of their own, as untrammelled as that of Greece, and richer and more varied than that of any other age or country. The day for these things has not yet come, but we see already the symptoms of the dawn; and when it has come, I think there will be no ground for complaining of ‘want of development of the faculties,’ or of ‘want of refinement of taste’ in America.
I trust that no word has been inadvertently set down in this book, should it be so fortunate as to findsome readers among those who treated me with so much hospitality and kindness, which can in any way be displeasing to an American. If any from that side shall have accompanied me through its pages, now that the time for saying ‘farewell’ has arrived, my one wish is, that they may have come to look upon me somewhat in the light in which one of my Boston acquaintances told me a week’s intercourse had brought him to regard me, that is, ‘as one of themselves.’
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