We have to consider the means whereby the children of the less well- to-do classes of our population may be enabled to obtain such secondary education as may be suitable and needful for them. As we have not recommended that secondary education shall be provided free of cost to the whole community, we deem it all the more needful that ample provision be made by every local authority for enabling selected children of poorer parents to climb the educational ladder…. The assistance we have contemplated should be given by means of a carefully graduated system of scholarships, varying in value in the age at which they are awarded and the class of school or institution at which they are tenable.
The Act of 1902 unified control of both elementary and secondary education. Any private or endowed secondary school was left free to accept or reject government aid and inspection, but, if the aid were accepted, inspection and the following of government plans were required. Secondary education must provide for scholars up to or beyond the age of sixteen. No attempt was made to unify the work and character of the secondary schools, it being clearly recognized that, in England at least, these must be suited to the different requirements of the scholars, the means of the parents, the age at which schooling will stop, and the probable place in the social organism of England which the pupils will occupy. By 1910, out of 841 secondary schools in England receiving grants of state aid, 325 were supported by local authorities and were the creations of the preceding four decades. Most of the others represented old Latin grammar- school foundations, thus incorporated into the national system, and without that violence and destruction of endowments which characterized the transformations in France and Italy.
[Illustration: FIG. 195. THE ENGLISH EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM AS FINALLY EVOLVED The years, for the divisions of English education, are only approximate, as English education is more flexible than that found in most other lands.]
A NATIONAL SYSTEM AT LAST EVOLVED. It is a little more than two centuries from the founding of the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (1699) to the very important Fisher Education Act [39] of August, 1918. The first marked the beginnings of the voluntary system; the second "the first real attempt in England to lay broad and deep the foundations of a scheme of education which would be truly national." This Act, passed by Parliament in the midst of a war which called upon the English people for heavy sacrifices, completed the evolution of two centuries and organized the educational resources—elementary, secondary, evening, adult, technical, and higher—into one national system, animated by a national purpose, and aimed at the accomplishment for the nation of twentieth- century ends on the most democratic basis of any school system in Europe. In so doing Huxley's educational ladder has not only been changed into a broad highway, but the educational traditions of England (R. 306) have been preserved and moulded anew.
The central national supervisory authority has been still further strengthened; the compulsion to attend greatly extended; and the voice of the State has been uttered in a firmer tone than ever before in English educational history. Taxes have been increased; the scope of the school system extended; all elements of the system better integrated; laggard local educational authorities subjected to firmer control; the training of teachers looked after more carefully than ever before; and the foundations for unlimited improvement and progress in education laid down. Still, in doing all this, the deep English devotion to local liberties has been clearly revealed. The dangers of a centralized French-type educational bureaucracy have been avoided; necessary, and relatively high, minimum standards have been set up, but without sacrificing that variety which has always been one of the strong points of English educational effort; and the legitimate claims of the State have been satisfied without destroying local initiative and independence. In this story of two centuries and more of struggle to create a really national system of education for the people we see strongly revealed those prominent characteristics of English national progress—careful consideration of new ideas, keen sensitiveness to vested rights, strong sense of local liberties and responsibilities, large dependence on local effort and good sense, progress by compromise, and a slow grafting-on of the best elements of what is new without sacrificing the best elements of what is old.
1. Show that the English method of slow progress and after long discussion would naturally result in a plan bearing evidence of many compromises.
2. What does the extensive Charity-School movement in eighteenth-century England indicate as to the comparative general interest in learning in England and the other lands we have previously studied?
3. Show how the Sunday-School instruction, meager as it was, was very important in England in paving the way for further educational progress.
4. What do all the different late eighteenth-century voluntary educational movements indicate as to comparative popular interest in education in England and Prussia? England and France?
5. Can you explain the much greater percentage of city poor in England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries than in French or German lands?
6. Can you explain why periods of prolonged warfare are usually followed by periods of social and political unrest?
7. Can you explain why Pestalozzian ideas found such slow acceptance in England?
8. Explain, on the basis of the English adult manufacturing conception of education, why monitorial instruction was hailed as "a new expedient, parallel and rival to the modern inventions in the mechanical departments."
9. To what extent do we now accept Robert Owen's conception of the influence of education on children?
10. Show how the many philanthropic societies for the education of the children of the poor came in as a natural transition from church to state education.
11. Show the importance of the School Societies in accustoming people to the idea of free and general education.
12. Show how the Lancastrian system formed a natural bridge between private philanthropy in education and tax-supported state schools.
13. Why were the highly mechanical features of the Lancastrian organization so advantageous in its day, whereas we of to-day would regard them as such a disadvantage?
14. Explain how the Lancastrian schools dignified the work of the teacher by revealing the need for teacher-training.
15. Assuming that there may be some validity to the arguments of Kay- Shuttleworth, what are the limitations to such reasoning?
16. What theory as to education would naturally lie behind a "payment-by- results" plan of distributing state aid?
17. Show how English educational development during the nineteenth century has been deeply modified by the progress of democracy.
18. Show how the English have attained to minimum standards without imposing uniform requirements that destroy individuality and initiative.
In the accompanyingBook of Readingsthe following illustrative selections are reproduced:
291. Parliamentary Report: Charity-School Education described. 292. S.P.C.K.: Cost and Support of Charity-Schools. 293. Raikes: Description of the Gloucester Sunday Schools. 294. Guthrie: Organization, Support, and Work of a Ragged School. 295. Smith, A.: On the Education of the Common People. 296. Malthus: On National Education. 297. Smith, S.: The School of Lancaster described. 298. Philanthropist: Automatic Character of the Monitorial Schools. 299. Montmorency, de: The First Parliamentary Grant for Education. 300. Macaulay: On the Duty of the State to Provide Education. 301. Mosely: Evils of Apprenticing the Children of Paupers. 302. Kay-Shuttleworth: Typical Reasoning in Opposition to Free Schools. 303. Macnamera: The Duke of Newcastle Commission Report. 304. Statute: Elementary Education Act of 1870. 305. Statute: Abolition of Religious Tests at the Universities. 306. Times: The Educational Traditions of England.
1. Characterize the type of education described by the witness (291).
2. Considering equipment provided and comparative money values, then and now, about how much of an effort did support (292) involve?
3. What class of children did Raikes (293) make provision for?
4. Characterize the type of education provided (294) in the Ragged Schools.
5. Would Adam Smith's reasoning (295) still hold true?
6. Would that of Malthus (296)?
7. Indicate the improvements Lancaster had made (297, 298) in organization and teaching efficiency.
8. Was the first English parliamentary grant (299) expressive of deep national interest?
9. Would Macaulay's reasoning (300) still be true?
10. Is it probable that the apprenticing of paupers had always given such (301) results?
11. How sound was Kay-Shuttleworth's reasoning (302)?
12. What merit was there to the "payment-by-results" recommendation of the Duke of Newcastle Commission (303)?
13. Just what kind of schools did the Act of 1870 (304) make provision for?
14. Have we ever had such religious requirements as those so long maintained (305) at the English universities?
Allen, W. O. B. and McClure, E.Two Hundred Years; History ofS.P.C.K. 1698-1898.Adams, Francis.History of the Elementary School Contest inEngland.* Binns, H. B.A Century of Education, 1808-1908, History of theBritish and Foreign School Society.* Birchenough, C.History of Elementary Education in England and Walessince 1800.Escott, T. H. S.Social Transformations of the Victorian Era.Harris, J. H.Robert Raikes; the Man and his Work.* Holman, H.English National Education.* Montmorency, J. E. G. de.The Progress of Education in England.* Montmorency, J. E. G. de.State Intervention in English Education to1833.* Salmon, David.Joseph Lancaster.
THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. The beginnings of state educational organization in the United States present quite a different history from that traced for Prussia, France, Italy, or England. While the parochial school existed in the Central Colonies, and in time had to be subordinated to state ends; and while the idea of education as a charity had been introduced into all the Anglican Colonies, and later had to be stamped out; the problem of educational organization in America was not, as in Europe, one of bringing church schools and old educational foundations into harmonious working relations with the new state school systems set up. Instead the old educational foundations were easily transformed to adapt them to the new conditions, while only in the Central Colonies did the religious-charity conception of education give any particular trouble. The American educational problem was essentially that of first awakening, in a new land, a consciousness of need for general education; and second, that of developing a willingness to pay for what it finally came to be deemed desirable to provide.
By the middle of the eighteenth century, as we have pointed out (p. 438), the earlier religious interests in America had clearly begun to wane. In the New England Colonies the school of the civil town had largely replaced the earlier religious school. In the Middle Colonies many of the parochial schools had died out. In the Southern Colonies, where the classes in society and negro slavery made common schools impossible, and the lack of city life and manufacturing made them seem largely unnecessary, the common school had tended to disappear. Even in New England, where the Calvinistic conception of the importance of education had most firmly established the idea of school support, the eighteenth century witnessed a constant struggle to prevent the dying-out of that which an earlier generation had deemed it important to create.
EFFECT OF THE WAR ON EDUCATION. The effect of the American War for Independence, on all types of schools, was disastrous. The growing troubles with the mother country had, for more than a decade previous to the opening of hostilities, tended to concentrate attention on other matters than schooling. Political discussion and agitation had largely monopolized the thinking of the time.
With the outbreak of the war education everywhere suffered seriously. Most of the rural and parochial schools closed, or continued a more or less intermittent existence. In New York City, then the second largest city in the country, practically all schools closed with British occupancy and remained closed until after the end of the war. The Latin grammar schools and academies often closed from lack of pupils, while the colleges were almost deserted. Harvard and Kings, in particular, suffered grievously, and sacrificed much for the cause of liberty. The war engrossed the energies and the resources of the peoples of the different Colonies, and schools, never very securely placed in the affections of the people, outside of New England, were allowed to fall into decay or entirely disappear. The period of the Revolution and the period of reorganization which followed, up to the beginning of the national government (1775-89), were together a time of rapid decline in educational advantages and increasing illiteracy among the people. Meager as had been the opportunities for schooling before 1775, the opportunities by 1790, except in a few cities and in the New England districts, had shrunk almost to the vanishing point. For Boston (R. 307), Providence (Rs. 309, 310), and a number of other places we have good pictures preserved of the schools which actually did exist.
The close of the war found the country both impoverished and exhausted. All the Colonies had made heavy sacrifices, many had been overrun by hostile armies, and the debt of the Union and of the States was so great that many thought it could never be paid. The thirteen States, individually and collectively, with only 3,380,000 people, had incurred an indebtedness of $75,000,000 for the prosecution of the conflict. Commerce was dead, the Government of the Confederation was impotent, petty insurrections were common, the States were quarreling continually with one another over all kinds of trivial matters, England still remained more or less hostile, and foreign complications began to appear. That during such a crucial period, and for some years following, but little or no attention was anywhere given to the question of education was only natural.
NO REAL EDUCATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS BEFORE ABOUT 1820. Regardless of the national land grants for education made to the new States (p. 523), the provisions of the different state constitutions (R. 259), the beginnings made here and there in the few cities of the time, and the early state laws (R. 262), it can hardly be said that the American people had developed an educational consciousness, outside of New England and New York, before about 1820, and in some of the States, especially in the South, a state educational consciousness was not awakened until very much later. Even in New England there was a steady decline in education during the first fifty years of the national history.
There were many reasons in the national life for this lack of interest in education among the masses of the people. The simple agricultural life of the time, the homogeneity of the people, the absence of cities, the isolation and independence of the villages, the lack of full manhood suffrage in a number of the States, the want of any economic demand for education, and the fact that no important political question calling for settlement at the polls had as yet arisen, made the need for schools and learning seem a relatively minor one. The country, too, was still very poor. The Revolutionary War debt still hung in part over the Nation, and the demand for money and labor for all kinds of internal improvements was very large. The country had few industries, and its foreign trade was badly hampered by European nations. Ways and means of strengthening the existing Government and holding the Union together, [1] rather than plans which could bear fruit only in the future, occupied the attention of the leaders of the time.
When the people had finally settled their political and commercial future by the War of 1812-14, and had built up a national consciousness on a democratic basis in the years immediately following, and the Nation at last possessed the energy, the money, and the interest for doing so, they finally turned their energies toward the creation of a democratic system of public schools. In the meantime, education, outside of New England, and in part even there, was left largely to private individuals, churches, incorporated school societies, and such state schools for the children of the poor as might have been provided by private or state funds, or the two combined.
THE REAL INTEREST IN ADVANCED EDUCATION. In so far as the American people may be said to have possessed a real interest in education during the first half-century of the national existence, it was manifested in the establishment and endowment of academies and colleges rather than in the creation of schools for the people. The colonial Latin grammar school had been almost entirely an English institution, and never well suited to American needs. As democratic consciousness began to arise, the demand came for a more practical institution, less exclusive and less aristocratic in character, and better adapted in its instruction to the needs of a frontier society. Arising about the middle of the eighteenth century, a number of so-called Academies had been founded before the new National Government took shape. While essentially private institutions, arising from a church foundation, or more commonly a local subscription or endowment, it became customary for towns, counties, and States to assist in their maintenance, thus making them semi-public institutions. Their management, though, usually remained in private hands, or under boards or associations. [2]
Beside offering a fair type of higher training [3] before the days of high schools, the academies also became training-schools for teachers, and before the rise of the normal schools were the chief source of supply for the better grade of elementary teachers. These institutions rendered an important service during the first half of the nineteenth century, but were in time displaced by the publicly supported and publicly controlled American high school, the first of which dates from 1821. This evolution we shall describe more in detail a little later on.
THE COLLEGES OF THE TIME. Some interest also was taken in college education during this early national period. College attendance, however, was small, as the country was still new and the people were poor. As late as 1815, Harvard graduated a class of but 66; Yale of 69; Princeton of 40; Williams of 40; Pennsylvania of 15; and the University of South Carolina of 37. After the organization of the Union the nine old colonial colleges were reorganized, and an attempt was made to bring them into closer harmony with the ideas and needs of the people and the governments of the States. Dartmouth, Kings (now rechristened Columbia), and Pennsylvania were for a time changed into state institutions, and an unsuccessful attempt was made to make a state university for Virginia out of William and Mary. Fifteen additional colleges were organized by 1800, and fourteen more by 1820. Between 1790 and 1825 there was much discussion as to the desirability of founding a national university at the seat of government, and Washington in his will (1799) left, for that time, a considerable sum to the Nation to inaugurate the new undertaking. Nothing ever came of it, however. Before 1825 six States—Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Indiana, and Michigan—had laid the foundations of future state universities. The National Government had also granted to each new Western State two entire townships of land to help endow a university in each—a stimulus which eventually led to the establishment of a state university in every Western State.
A HALF-CENTURY OF TRANSITION. The first half-century of the national life may be regarded as a period of transition from the church-control idea of education over to the idea of education under the control of and supported by the State. Though many of the early States had provided for state school systems in their constitutions (R. 259), the schools had not been set up, or set up only here and there. It required time to make this change in thinking. Up to the period of the beginnings of our national development education had almost everywhere been regarded as an affair of the Church, somewhat akin to baptism, marriage, the administration of the sacraments, and the burial of the dead. Even in New England, which formed an exception, the evolution of the civic school from the church school was not yet complete.
The church charity-school had become, as we have seen (p. 449), a familiar institution before the Revolution. The English "Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts" (p. 449), which maintained schools in connection with the Anglican churches in the Anglican Colonies and provided an excellent grade of charity-school master, withdrew at the close of the Revolutionary War from work in this country. The different churches after the war continued their efforts to maintain their church charity-schools, though there was for a time a decrease in both their numbers and their effectiveness.
In the meantime the demand for education grew rather rapidly, and the task soon became too big for the churches to handle. For long the churches made an effort to keep up, as they were loath to relinquish in any way their former hold on the training of the young. The churches, however, were not interested in the problem except in the old way, and this was not what the new democracy wanted. The result was that, with the coming of nationality and the slow but gradual growth of a national consciousness, national pride, national needs, and the gradual development of national resources in the shape of taxable property—all alike combined to make secular instead of religious schools seem both desirable and possible to a constantly increasing number of citizens.
Between about 1810 and 1830 a number of new forces—philanthropic, political, social, economic—combined to change the earlier attitude by producing conditions which made state rather than church control and support of education seem both desirable and feasible. The change, too, was markedly facilitated by the work of a number of semi-private philanthropic agencies which now began the work of founding schools and building up an interest in education, the most important of which were: (1) the Sunday-School movement; (2) the City School Societies; (3) the Lancastrian movement; and (4) the Infant-School Societies. These will be described briefly, and their influence in awakening an educational consciousness pointed out.
THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL MOVEMENT. The Sunday School, as a means of providing the merest rudiments of secular and religious learning, had been made, through the initiative of Raikes of Gloucester (p. 617), a very important English institution for providing the beginnings of instruction for the children of the city poor. Raikes's idea was soon carried to the United States. In 1786 a Sunday School after the Raikes plan was organized in Hanover County, Virginia. In 1787 a Sunday School for African children was organized at Charleston, South Carolina. In 1791 "The First Day, or Sunday School Society," was organized at Philadelphia, for the establishment of Sunday Schools in that city. In 1793 Katy Ferguson's "School for the Poor" was opened in New York, and this was followed by an organization of New York women for the extension of secular instruction among the poor. In 1797 Samuel Slater's Factory School was opened at Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
Though there had been some Sunday instruction earlier at a few places in New England, the introduction of the Sunday School from England, in 1786, marked the real beginning of the religious Sunday School in America. After the churches had once caught the idea of a common religious school on Sundays for the instruction of any one, a number of societies were formed to carry on and extend the work. The most important of these were:
1808. The Evangelical Society of Philadelphia.1816. The Female Union for the Promotion of Sabbath Schools (NewYork).1816. The New York Sunday School Union.1816. The Boston Society for the Moral and Religious Instruction ofthe Poor.1817. The Philadelphia Sunday and Adult School Union.1824. The American Sunday School Union.
These different types of American Sunday Schools, being open to all instead of only to the poor and lowly, had a small but an increasing influence in leveling class distinctions and in making a common day school seem possible. The movement for secular instruction on Sundays, though, soon met in America with the opposition of the churches, and before long they took over the idea, superseded private initiative and control, and changed the character of the instruction from a day of secular work to an hour or so of religious teaching. The Sunday School, in consequence, never exercised the influence in educational development in America that it did in England.
THE CITY SCHOOL SOCIETIES. These were patterned after the English charity- school subscription societies, and were formed in a number of American cities during the first quarter of the nineteenth century for the purpose of providing the rudiments of an education to those too poor to pay for schooling. These Societies were usually organized by philanthropic citizens, willing to contribute something yearly to provide some little education for a few of the many children in the city having no opportunities for any instruction. A number of these Societies were able to effect some financial connection with the city or the State.
One of the first of these School Societies was "The Manumission Society," organized in New York, in 1785, for the purpose of "mitigating the evils of slavery, to defend the rights of the blacks, and especially to give them the elements of an education." Alexander Hamilton and John Jay were among its organizers. A free school for colored pupils was opened, in 1787. This grew and prospered and was aided from time to time by the city, and in 1801 by the State. Finally, in 1834, all its schools were merged with those of the "Public School Society" of the city. In 1801 the first free school for poor white children "whose parents belong to no religious society, and who, from some cause or other, cannot be admitted into any of the charity schools of the city," was opened. This was provided by the "Association of Women Friends for the Relief of the Poor," which engaged "a widow woman of good education and morals as instructor" at £30 per year. This Association also prospered, and received some city or state aid up to 1824. By 1823 it was providing free elementary education for 750 children. Its schools also were later merged with those of the "Public School Society."
"THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SOCIETY." Perhaps the most famous of all the early subscription societies for the maintenance of schools for the poor was the "New York Free School Society," which later changed its name to that of "The Public School Society of New York." This was organized, in 1805, under the leadership of De Witt Clinton, then mayor of the city, he heading the subscription list with a promise of $200 a year for support. On May 14, 1806, the following advertisement appeared in the daily papers:
The Trustees of the Society for establishing a Free School in the city of New York, for the education of such poor children as do not belong to, or are not provided for by any religious Society, having engaged a Teacher, and procured a School House for the accommodation of a School, have now the pleasure of announcing that it is proposed to receive scholars of the descriptions alluded to without delay; applications may be made to, &c.
Four days later the officers of the Society issued a general appeal to the public (R. 311), setting forth the purposes of the Society and soliciting funds.
[Illustration: FIG. 196. THE FIRST SCHOOLHOUSE BUILT BY THE FREE SCHOOLSOCIETY IN NEW YORK CITYBuilt in 1809, in Tryon Row. Cost, without site, $13,000.]
This Society was chartered by the legislature "to provide schooling for all children who are the proper objects of a gratuitous education." It organized free public education in the city, secured funds, built schoolhouses, provided and trained teachers, and ably supplemented the work of the private and church schools. By its energy and its persistence it secured for itself a large share of public confidence, and aroused a constantly increasing interest in the cause of popular education. In 1853, after it had educated over 600,000 children and trained over 1200 teachers, this Society, its work done, surrendered its charter and turned over its buildings and equipment to the public-school department of the city, which had been created by the legislature in 1842.
SCHOOL SOCIETIES ELSEWHERE. The "Benevolent Society of the City of Baltimore for the Education of the Female Poor," founded in 1799, and the "Male Free Society of Baltimore," organized a little later, were other of these early school societies, though neither became so famous as the Public School Society of New York. The schools of the city of Washington were started by subscription, in 1804, and for some time were in part supported by subscriptions from public-spirited citizens. [4] This society did an important work in accustoming the people of the capital city to the provision of some form of free education.
In 1800 "The Philadelphia Society [5] for the Free Instruction of Indigent Boys" was formed, which a little later changed to "The Philadelphia Society for the Establishment and Support of Charity Schools." In 1814 "The Society for the Promotion of a Rational System of Education" was organized in Philadelphia, and four years later the public sentiment awakened by a combination of the work of this Society and the coming of the Lancastrian system of instruction enabled the city to secure a special law permitting Philadelphia to organize a system of city schools for the education of the children of its poor. Other societies which rendered useful educational service include the "Mechanics and Manufacturers Association," of Providence, Rhode Island, organized in 1789 (Rs. 308, 310); "The Albany Lancastrian School Society," organized in 1826, for the education of the poor of the city in monitorial schools; and the school societies organized in Savannah in 1818, and Augusta, in 1821, "to afford education to the children of indigent parents." Both these Georgia societies received some support from state funds.
The formation of these school societies, the subscriptions made by the leading men of the cities, the bequests for education, and the grants of some city and state aid to these societies, all of which in time became somewhat common, indicate a slowly rising interest in providing schools for the education of all. This rising interest in education was greatly stimulated by the introduction from England, about this time, of a new and what for the time seemed a wonderful system for the organization of education, the Lancastrian monitorial plan.
THE LANCASTRIAN MONITORIAL SCHOOLS. Church-of-England ideas were not in much favor in the United States for some time after the close of the Revolutionary War, and in consequence it was the Lancastrian plan which was brought over and popularized. In 1806 the first monitorial school was opened in New York City, and, once introduced, the system quickly spread from Massachusetts to Georgia, and as far west as Cincinnati, Louisville, and Detroit. In 1826 Maryland instituted a state system of Lancastrian schools, with a Superintendent of Public Instruction, but in 1828 abandoned the idea and discontinued the office. A state Lancastrian system for North Carolina was proposed in 1832, but failed of adoption by the legislature. In 1829 Mexico organized higher Lancastrian schools for the Mexican State of Texas. In 1818 Lancaster himself went to America, and was received with much distinction. Most of the remaining twenty years of his life were spent in organizing and directing schools in various parts of the United States.
In many of the rising cities of the eastern part of the country the first free schools established were Lancastrian schools. The system provided education at so low a cost (p. 629) that it made the education of all for the first time seem possible. [6] The first free schools in Philadelphia (1818) were an outgrowth of Lancastrian influence, as was also the case in many other Pennsylvania cities. Baltimore began a Lancastrian school six years before the organization of public schools was permitted by law. A number of monitorial high schools were organized in different parts of the United States, and it was even proposed that the plan should be adopted in the colleges. A number of New England cities, that already had other type schools, investigated the new monitorial plan and were impressed with its many important points of superiority over methods then in use. The Report of the Investigating Committee (1828) for Boston (R. 312), forms a good example of such. As in England, the system was very popular from about 1810 to 1830, but by 1840 its popularity was over.
THE INTEREST THE NEW PLAN AWAKENED. It is not strange that the new plan aroused widespread enthusiasm in many discerning men, and for almost a quarter of a century was advocated as the best system of education then known. Two quotations will illustrate what leading men of the time thought of it. De Witt Clinton, for twenty-one years president of the New York "Free School Society," and later governor of the State, wrote, in 1809:
When I perceive that many boys in our school have been taught to read and write in two months, who did not before know the alphabet, and that even one has accomplished it in three weeks—when I view all the bearings and tendencies of this system—when I contemplate the habits of order which it forms, the spirit of emulation which it excites, the rapid improvement which it produces, the purity of morals which it inculcates—when I behold the extraordinary union of celerity in instruction and economy of expense—and when I perceive one great assembly of a thousand children, under the eye of a single teacher, marching with unexampled rapidity and with perfect discipline to the goal of knowledge, I confess that I recognize in Lancaster the benefactor of the human race. I consider his system as creating a new era in education, as a blessing sent down from heaven to redeem the poor and distressed of this world from the power and dominion of ignorance.
In a message to the legislature of Connecticut, a State then fairly well supplied with schools of the Massachusetts district type, Governor Wolcott said, in 1825:
If funds can be obtained to defray the expenses of the necessary preparations, I have no doubt that schools on the Lancastrian model ought, as soon as possible, to be established in several parts of this state. Wherever from 200 to 1000 children can be convened within a suitable distance, this mode of instruction in every branch of reading, speaking, penmanship, arithmetic, and bookkeeping, will be found much more efficient, direct, and economical than the practices now generally pursued in our primary schools.
The Lancastrian schools materially hastened the adoption of the free school system in all the Northern States by gradually accustoming people to bearing the necessary taxation which free schools entail. They also made the common school common and much talked of, and awakened thought and provoked discussion on the question of public education. They likewise dignified the work of the teacher by showing the necessity for teacher- training. The Lancastrian Model Schools, first established in the United States in 1818, were the precursors of the American normal schools.
COMING OF THE INFANT SCHOOL. A curious early condition in America was that, in some of the cities where public schools had been established, by one agency or another, no provision had been made for beginners. These were supposed to obtain the elements of reading at home, or in the Dame Schools. In Boston, for example, where public schools were maintained by the city, no children could be received into the schools who had not learned to read and write (R. 314 a). This made the common age of admission somewhere near eight years. The same was in part true of Hartford, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other cities. When the monitorial schools were established they tended to restrict their membership in a similar manner, though not always able to do so.
In 1816 there came to America, also from England, a valuable supplement to education as then known in the form of the so-called Infant Schools (p. 630). First introduced at Boston (R. 313), the Infant Schools proved popular, and in 1818 the city appropriated $5000 for the purpose of organizing such schools to supplement the public-school system. These were to admit children at four years of age, were to be known as primary schools, were to be taught by women, were to be open all the year round, and were to prepare the children for admission to the city schools, which by that time had come to be known as English grammar schools. Providence, similarly, established primary (Infant) schools in 1828 for children between the ages of four and eight, to supplement the work of the public schools, there called writing schools.
THE DAME SCHOOL ABSORBED. For New England the establishment of primary schools virtually took over the Dame School instruction as a public function, and added the primary grades to the previously existing school. We have here the origin of the division, often still retained at least in name in the Eastern States, of the "primary grades" and the "grammar grades" of the elementary school.
[Illustration: FIG. 197 "MODEL" SCHOOL BUILDING OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SOCIETY Erected in 1843. Cost (with site), $17,000. A typical New York school building, after 1830. The infant or primary school was on the first floor, the second floor contains the girls' school, and the third floor the boys' school. Each floor had one large room seating 252 children; the primary schoolroom could be divided into two rooms by folding doors, so as to segregate the infant class. This building was for long regarded as the perfection of the builder's art, and its picture was printed for years on the cover of the Society's Annual Reports.]
An "Infant-School Society" was organized in New York, in 1827. The first Infant School was established under the direction of the Public School Society as the "Junior Department" of School No. 8, with a woman teacher in charge, and using monitorial methods. A second school was established the next year. In 1830 the name was changed from Infant School to Primary Department, and where possible these departments were combined with the existing schools. In 1832 it was decided to organize ten primary schools, under women teachers, for children from four to ten years of age, and after the Boston plan of instruction. This abandoned the monitorial plan of instruction for the new Pestalozzian form, which was deemed better suited to the needs of the smaller children. By 1844 fifty-six Primary Departments had been organized in connection with the upper schools of the city.
In Philadelphia three Infant-School Societies were founded in 1827-28, and such schools were at once established there. By 1830 the directors of the school system had been permitted by the legislature of the State to expend public money for such schools, and thirty such, under women teachers, were in operation in the city by 1837.
[Illustration: FIG. 198. EVOLUTION OF THE ESSENTIAL FEATURES OF THEAMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM]
PRIMARY EDUCATION ORGANIZED. The Infant-School idea was soon somewhat generally adopted by the Eastern cities, and changed somewhat to make of it an American primary school. Where children had not been previously admitted to the schools without knowing how to read, as in Boston, they supplemented the work of the public schools by adding a new school beneath. Where the reverse had been the case, as in New York City, the organization of Infant Schools as Junior Departments enabled the existing schools to advance their work. Everywhere it resulted, eventually, in the organization of primary and grammar school departments, often with intermediate departments in between, and, with the somewhat contemporaneous evolution of the first high schools, the main outlines of the American free public-school system were now complete.
These four important educational movements—the secular Sunday School, the semi-public city School Societies, the Lancastrian plan for instruction, and the Infant-School idea—all arising in philanthropy, came as successive educational ideas to America during the first half of the nineteenth century, supplemented one another, and together accustomed a new generation to the idea of a common school for all.
It is hardly probable, however, that these philanthropic efforts alone, valuable as they were, could have resulted in the great American battle for tax-supported schools, at as early a date as this took place, had they not been supplemented by a number of other movements of a social, political, and economic character which in themselves materially changed the nature and direction of our national life. The more important of these were: (1) The rise of cities and of manufacturing, (2) the extension of the suffrage, and (3) the rise of new class-demands for schools.
GROWTH OF CITY POPULATION AND MANUFACTURING. At the time of the inauguration of the National Government nearly every one in America lived on the farm or in some little village. The first forty years of the national life were essentially an agricultural and a pioneer period. Even as late as 1820 there were but thirteen cities of 8000 inhabitants or over in the whole of the twenty-three States at that time comprising the Union, and these thirteen cities contained but 4.9 per cent of the total population of the Nation.
After about 1825 these conditions began to change. By 1820 many little villages were springing up, and these frequently proved the nuclei for future cities. In New England many of these places were in the vicinity of some waterfall, where cheap power made manufacturing on a large scale possible. Lowell, Massachusetts, which in 1820 did not exist and in 1840 had a population of over twenty thousand people, collected there largely to work in the mills, is a good illustration. Other cities, such as Cincinnati and Detroit, grew because of their advantageous situation as exchange and wholesale centers. With the revival of trade and commerce after the second war with Great Britain the cities grew rapidly both in number and size.
The rise of the new cities and the rapid growth of the older ones materially changed the nature of the educational problem, by producing an entirely new set of social and educational conditions for the people of the Central and Northern States to solve. The South, with its plantation life, negro slavery, and absence of manufacturing was largely unaffected by these changed conditions until well after the close of the Civil War. In consequence the educational awakening there did not come for nearly half a century after it came in the North. In the cities in the coast States north of Maryland, but particularly in those of New York and New England, manufacturing developed very rapidly. Cotton-spinning in particular became a New England industry, as did also the weaving of wool, while Pennsylvania became the center of the iron manufacturing industries. [7]
The development of this new type of factory work meant the beginnings of the breakdown of the old home and village industries, the eventual abandonment of the age-old apprenticeship system (Rs. 200, 201), the start of the cityward movement of the rural population, and the concentration of manufacturing in large establishments, employing many hands to perform continuously certain limited phases of the manufacturing process. This in time was certain to mean a change in educational methods. It also called for the concentration of both capital and labor. The rise of the factory system, business on a large scale, and cheap and rapid transportation, all combined to diminish the importance of agriculture and to change the city from an unimportant to a very important position in our national life. The 13 cities of 1820 increased to 44 by 1840, and to 141 by 1860. There were four times as many cities in the North, too, where manufacturing had found a home, as in the South, which remained essentially agricultural.
NEW SOCIAL PROBLEMS IN THE CITIES. The many changes in the nature of industry and of village and home life, effected by the development of the factory system and the concentration of manufacturing and population in the cities, also contributed materially in changing the character of the old educational problem. When the cities were as yet but little villages in size and character, homogeneous in their populations, and the many social and moral problems incident to the congestion of peoples of mixed character had not as yet arisen, the church and charity and private school solution of the educational problem was reasonably satisfactory. As the cities now increased rapidly in size, became more city-like in character, drew to them diverse elements previously largely unknown, and were required by state laws to extend the right of suffrage to all their citizens, the need for a new type of educational organization began slowly but clearly to manifest itself to an increasing number of citizens. The church, charity, and private school system completely broke down under the new strain. School Societies and Educational Associations, organized for propaganda, now arose in the cities; grants of city or state funds for the partial support of both church and society schools were demanded and obtained; and numbers of charity organizations began to be established in the different cities to enable them to handle better the new problems of pauperism, intemperance, and juvenile delinquency which arose.
THE EXTENSION OF THE SUFFRAGE. The Constitution of the United States, though framed by the ablest men of the time, was framed by men who represented the old aristocratic conception of education and government. The same was true of the conventions which framed practically all the early state constitutions. The early period of the national life was thus characterized by the rule of a class—a very well-educated and a very capable class, to be sure—but a class elected by a ballot based on property qualifications and belonging to the older type of political and social thinking.
Notwithstanding the statements of the Declaration of Independence, the change came but slowly. Up to 1815 but four States had granted the right to vote to all male citizens, regardless of property holdings or other somewhat similar restrictions. After 1815 a democratic movement, which sought to abolish all class rule and all political inequalities, arose and rapidly gained strength. In this the new States to the westward, with their absence of old estates or large fortunes, and where men were judged more on their merits than in an older society, were the leaders. As will be seen from the map, every new State admitted east of the Mississippi River, except Ohio (admitted in 1802), where the New England element predominated, and Louisiana (1812), provided for full manhood suffrage at the time of its admission to statehood. Seven additional Eastern States had extended the same full voting privileges to their citizens by 1845, while the old requirements had been materially modified in most of the other Northern States. This democratic movement for the leveling of all class distinctions between white men became very marked, after 1820; came to a head in the election of Andrew Jackson as President, in 1828; and the final result was full manhood suffrage in all the States. This gave the farmer in the West and the new manufacturing classes in the cities a preponderating influence in the affairs of government.
[Illustration: FIG. 199. DATES OF THE GRANTING OF FULL MANHOOD SUFFRAGE Some of the older States granted almost full manhood suffrage at an earlier date, retaining a few minor restrictions until the date given on the map. States shaded granted full suffrage at the time of admission to the Union.]
EDUCATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE EXTENSION OF SUFFRAGE. The educational significance of the extension of full manhood suffrage to all was enormous and far-reaching.
There now took place in the United States, after about 1825, what took place in England after the passage of the Second Reform Act (p. 642) of 1867. With the extension of the suffrage to all classes of the population, poor as well as rich, laborer, as well as employer, there came to thinking men, often for the first time, a realization that general education had become a fundamental necessity for the State, and that the general education of all in the elements of knowledge and civic virtue must now assume that importance in the minds of the leaders of the State that the education of a few for the service of the Church and of the many for simple church membership had once held in the minds of ecclesiastics.
This new conception is well expressed in the preamble to the first (optional) school law enacted in Illinois (1825), which declares:
To enjoy our rights and liberties, we must understand them; their security and protection ought to be the first object of a free people; and it is a well-established fact that no nation has ever continued long in the enjoyment of civil and political freedom, which was not both virtuous and enlightened; and believing that the advancement of literature always has been, and ever will be the means of developing more fully the rights of man, that the mind of every citizen in a republic is the common property of society, and constitutes the basis of its strength and happiness; it is therefore considered the peculiar duty of a free government, like ours, to encourage and extend the improvement and cultivation of the intellectual energies of the whole.
UTTERANCES OF PUBLIC MEN AND WORKINGMEN. Governors now began to recommend to their legislatures the establishment of tax-supported schools, and public men began to urge state action and state control. An utterance by De Witt Clinton, for nine years governor of New York, may be taken as an example of many. In a message to the legislature, in 1826, defending the schools established, he said:
The first duty of government, and the surest evidence of good government, is the encouragement of education. A general diffusion of knowledge is a precursor and protector of republican institutions, and in it we must confide as the conservative power that will watch over our liberties and guard them against fraud, intrigue, corruption, and violence. I consider the system of our common schools as the palladium of our freedom, for no reasonable apprehension can be entertained of its subversion as long as the great body of the people are enlightened by education.
After about 1825 many labor unions were formed, and the representatives of these new organizations joined in the demands for schools and education, urging the free education of their children as a natural right. In 1829 the workingmen of Philadelphia asked each candidate for the legislature for a formal declaration of the attitude he would assume toward the provision of "an equal and a general system of education" for the State. In 1830 the Workingmen's Committee of Philadelphia submitted a detailed report (R. 315), after five months spent in investigating educational conditions in Pennsylvania, vigorously condemning the lack of provision for education in the State, and the utterly inadequate provision where any was made. Seth Luther, in an address on "The Education of Workingmen," delivered in 1832, declared that "a large body of human beings are ruined by a neglect of education, rendered miserable in the extreme, and incapable of self-government." Stephen Simpson, in hisA Manual for Workingmen, published in 1831, declared that "it is to education, therefore, that we must mainly look for redress of that perverted system of society, which dooms the producer to ignorance, to toil, and to penury, to moral degradation, physical want, and social barbarism." Many resolutions were adopted by these organizations demanding free state- supported schools. [8]
THE ALIGNMENT OF INTERESTS. The second quarter of the nineteenth century may be said to have witnessed the battle for tax-supported, publicly controlled and directed, and non-sectarian common schools. In 1825 such schools were still the distant hope of statesmen and reformers; in 1850 they had become an actuality in almost every Northern State. The twenty- five years intervening marked a period of public agitation and educational propaganda; of many hard legislative fights; of a struggle to secure desired legislation, and then to hold what had been secured; of many bitter contests with church and private-school interests, which felt that their "vested rights" were being taken from them; and of occasional referenda in which the people were asked, at the next election, to advise the legislature as to what to do. Excepting the battle for the abolition of slavery, perhaps no question has ever been before the American people for settlement which caused so much feeling or aroused such bitter antagonisms. The friends of free schools were at first commonly regarded as fanatics, dangerous to the State, and the opponents of free schools were considered by them as old-time conservatives or as selfish members of society.
Naturally such a bitter discussion of a public question forced an alignment of the people for or against publicly supported and controlled schools, and this alignment of interests may be roughly stated to have been about as follows:
I. For Public Schools.Men considered as: 1. "Citizens of the Republic." 2. Philanthropists and humanitarians. 3. Public men of large vision. 4. City residents. 5. The intelligent workingmen in the cities. 6. Non-taxpayers. 7. Calvinists. 8. "New England men."
II. Lukewarm, or against Public Schools.Men considered as:1. Belonging to the old aristocratic class.2. The conservatives of society.3. Politicians of small vision.4. Residents of rural districts.5. The ignorant, narrow-minded, and penurious.6. Taxpayers.7. Lutherans, Reformed-Church, Mennonites, and Quakers.8. Southern men.9. Proprietors of private schools.10. The non-English-speaking classes.
THE WORK OF PROPAGANDA. To meet the arguments of the objectors, to change the opinions of a thinking few into the common opinion of the many, to overcome prejudice, and to awaken the public conscience to the public need for free and common schools in such a democratic society, was the work of a generation. To convince the masses of the people that the scheme of state schools was not only practicable, but also the best and most economical means for giving their children the benefits of an education; to convince propertied citizens that taxation for education was in the interests of both public and private welfare; to convince legislators that it was safe to vote for free-school bills; and to overcome the opposition due to apathy, religious jealousies, and private interests, was the work of years. In time, though, the desirability of common, free, tax- supported, non-sectarian, state-controlled schools became evident to a majority of the citizens in the different American States, and as it did the American State School, free and equally open to all, was finally evolved and took its place as the most important institution in the national life working for the perpetuation of a free democracy and the advancement of the public welfare.
For this work of propaganda hundreds of School Societies and Educational Associations were organized; many conventions were held, and many resolutions favoring state schools were adopted; many "Letters" and "Addresses to the Public" were written and published; public-spirited citizens traveled over the country, making addresses to the people explaining the advantages of free state schools; many public-spirited men gave the best years of their lives to the state-school propaganda; and many governors sent communications on the subject to legislatures not yet convinced as to the desirability of state action. At each meeting of the legislatures for years a deluge of resolutions, memorials, and petitions for and against free schools met the members.
The invention of the steam printing press came at about this time, and the first modern newspapers at a cheap price now appeared. These usually espoused progressive measures, and tremendously influenced public sentiment. Those not closely connected with church or private-school interests usually favored public tax-supported schools.
1. Explain why the development of a national consciousness was practically necessary before an educational consciousness could be awakened.
2. Show why it was natural, suffrage conditions considered, that the early interest should have been in advanced education.
3. Why did the Sunday-School movement prove of so much less usefulness in America than in England?
4. Show the analogy between the earlier school societies for educational work and other forms of modern associative effort.
5. Explain the great popularity of the Lancastrian schools over those previously common in America.
6. What were two of the important contributions of the Infant-School idea to American education?
7. Why are schools and education much more needed in a country experiencing a city and manufacturing development than in a country experiencing an agricultural development?
8. Show how the development of cities caused the old forms of education to break down, and made evident the need for a new type of education.
9. Show how each extension of the suffrage necessitates an extension of educational opportunities and advantages.
10. Explain the alignment of each class, for or against tax-supported schools, on historical and on economic grounds.
In the accompanyingBook of Readingsthe following illustrative selections are reproduced:
307. Fowle: The Schools of Boston about 1790-1815. 308. Rhode Island: Petition for Free Schools, 1799. 309. Providence: Rules and Regulations for the Schools in 1820. 310. Providence: A Memorial for Better Schools, 1837. 311. Bourne: Beginnings of Public Education in New York City. 312. Boston Report: Advantages of the Monitorial System. 313. Wightman: Establishment of Primary Schools in Boston. 314. Boston: The Elementary-School System in 1823. 315. Philadelphia: Report of Workingmen's Committee on Schools.
1. Just what advantages for boys and for girls existed in Boston (307 a, b) before the creation of the reading schools?
2. What improvements and additions did the reading schools (307 c) introduce?
3. State the main features of the Rhode Island petition (308) of 1799.
4. Just what kind of schools do the Providence regulations (309) of 1820 provide for and describe?
5. Despite the many advances made in public schools since the date of the Providence Memorial (310), have relative public and private school expenditures materially changed?
6. Compare the New York Public School Society Address (311) with the English charity-school organization (237, 238) as to purpose and instruction.
7. Show that a report on modern classroom organization would present advantages over the monitorial plan, comparable with those outlined by the Boston Report (312) comparing the monitorial and individual plans.
8. Just what does the Boston Report on Primary Schools (313) reveal as to the character of education then provided?
9. Just what kind of elementary schools did Boston have (314) in 1823?
10. Just what kind of schools existed in the cities of Pennsylvania in 1830, judging from the Report (315) of the Workingmen's Committee? Was the Report correct with reference to "a monopoly of talent"?
Binns, H. B.A Century of Education, 1808-1908.Boese, Thos,Public Education in the City of New York.Cubberley, E. P.Public Education in the United States.* Fitzpatrick, E. A.The Educational Views and Influences of De WittClinton.McManis, J. T. "The Public School Society of New York City," inEducational Review, vol. 29, pp. 303-11. (March, 1905.)* Palmer, A. E.The New York Public School System.* Reigart, J. F.The Lancastrian System of Instruction in the Schoolsof New York City.* Salmon, David.Joseph Lancaster.* Simcoe, A. M.Social Forces in American History.