The History Of Education by Ellwood P. Cubberley (epub e reader .txt) 📖

beginnings of state aid in any substantial sums, either from the income from permanent endowment funds, state appropriations, or direct state taxation, the State became, for the first time, in a position to enforce quite definite requirements in many matters. Communities which would not meet the State’s requirements would receive no state funds.

 

One of the first requirements to be thus enforced was that communities or districts receiving state aid must also levy a local tax for schools.

Commonly the requirement was a duplication of state aid. Generally speaking, and recognizing exceptions in a few States, this represents the beginnings of compulsory local taxation for education. As early as 1797

Vermont had required the towns to support their schools on penalty of forfeiting their share of state aid. New York in 1812, Delaware in 1829, and New Jersey in 1846 required a duplication of all state aid received.

Wisconsin, in its first constitution of 1848, required a local tax for schools equal to one half the state aid received. The next step in state control was to add still other requirements, as a prerequisite to receiving state aid. One of the first of such was that a certain length of school term, commonly three months, must be provided in each school district. Another was the provision of free heat, and later on free schoolbooks and supplies.

 

When the duplication-of-state-aid-received stage had been reached, compulsory local taxation for education had been established, and the great central battle for the creation of a state school system had been won. The right to tax for support, and to compel local taxation, was the key to the whole state system of education. From this point on the process of evolving an adequate system of school support in any State has been merely the further education of public opinion to see new educational needs.

 

II. THE BATTLE TO ELIMINATE THE PAUPER-SCHOOL IDEA THE PAUPER-SCHOOL IDEA. The pauper-school idea was a direct inheritance from England, and its home in America was in the old Central and Southern Colonies, where the old Anglican Church had been in control. New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and Georgia were the chief representatives, though the idea had friends among certain classes of the population in other of the older States. The new and democratic West would not tolerate it. The pauper-school conception was a direct inheritance from English rule, belonged to a society based on classes, and was wholly out of place in a Republic founded on the doctrine that “all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” Still more, it was a very dangerous conception of education for a democratic form of government to tolerate or to foster. Its friends were found among the old aristocratic or conservative classes, the heavy taxpayers, the supporters of church schools, and the proprietors of private schools. Citizens who had caught the spirit of the new Republic, public men of large vision, intelligent workingmen, and men of the New England type of thinking were opposed on principle to a plan which drew such invidious distinctions between the future citizens of the State. To educate part of the children in church or private pay schools, they said, and to segregate those too poor to pay tuition and educate them at public expense in pauper schools, often with the brand of pauper made very evident to them, was certain to create classes in society which in time would prove a serious danger to our democratic institutions.

 

Large numbers of those for whom the pauper schools were intended would not brand themselves as paupers by sending their children to the schools, and others who accepted the advantages offered, for the sake of their children, despised the system. [3]

 

The battle for the elimination of the pauper-school idea was fought out in the North in the States of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and the struggle in these two States we shall now briefly describe.

 

THE PENNSYLVANIA LEGISLATION. In Pennsylvania we find the pauper-school idea fully developed. The constitution of 1790 (R. 259) had provided for a state system of pauper schools, but nothing was done to carry even this constitutional direction into effect until 1802. A pauper-school law was then enacted, directing the overseers of the poor to notify such parents as they deemed sufficiently indigent that, if they would declare themselves to be paupers, their children might be sent to some specified private or pay school and be given free education (R. 315). The expense for this was assessed against the education poor-fund, which was levied and collected in the same manner as were road taxes or taxes for poor relief. No provision was made for the establishment of public schools, even for the children of the poor, nor was any standard set for the education to be provided in the schools to which they were sent. No other general provision for elementary education was made in the State until 1834.

 

With the growth of the cities, and the rise of their special problems, something more than this very inadequate provision for schooling became necessary. “The Philadelphia Society for the Establishment and Support of Charity Schools” had long been urging a better system, and in 1814 “‘The Society for the Promotion of a Rational System of Education” was organized in Philadelphia for the purpose of educational propaganda. Bills were prepared and pushed, and in 1818 Philadelphia was permitted, by special law, to organize as “the first school district” in the State of Pennsylvania, and to provide, with its own funds, a system of Lancastrian schools for the education of the children of its poor. [4]

 

THE LAW OF 1834. In 1827 “The Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of Public Schools” began an educational propaganda which did much to bring about the Free-School Act of 1834. In an “Address to the Public” it declared its object to be the promotion of public education throughout the State of Pennsylvania, and the “Address” closed with these words: This Society is at present composed of about 250 members, and a correspondence has been commenced with 125 members, who reside in every district in the State. It is intended to direct the continued attention of the public to the importance of the subject; to collect and diffuse all information which may be deemed valuable; and to persevere in their labors until they shall be crowned with success.

 

Memorials were presented to the legislature year after year, governors were interested, “Addresses to the Public” were prepared, and a vigorous propaganda was kept up until the Free-School Law of 1834 was the result.

 

This law, though, was optional. It created every ward, township, and borough in the State a school district, a total of 987 being created for the State. Each school district was ordered to vote that autumn on the acceptance or rejection of the law. Those accepting the law were to organize under its provisions, while those rejecting the law were to continue under the educational provisions of the old Pauper-School Act.

 

[Illustration: FIG. 201. THE PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOL ELECTIONS OF 1835

Showing the percentage of school districts in each county organizing under and accepting the School Law of 1834. Percentage of districts accepting indicated on the map for a few of the counties.]

 

The results of the school elections of 1834 are shown, by counties, on the below map. Of the total of 987 districts created, 502, in 46 of the then 52 counties (Philadelphia County not voting), or 52 per cent of the whole number, voted to accept the new law and organize under it; 264 districts, in 31 counties, or 27 per cent of the whole, voted definitely to reject the law; and 221 districts, in 46 counties, or 21 per cent of the whole, refused to take any action either way. In 3 counties, indicated on the map, every district accepted the law, and in 5 counties, also indicated every district rejected or refused to act on the law. It was the predominantly German counties, located in the east-central portion of the State, which were strongest in their opposition to the new law. One reason for this was that the new law provided for English schools; another was the objection of the thrifty Germans to taxation; and another was the fear that the new state schools might injure their German parochial schools.

 

The real fight for free versus pauper schools, though, was yet to come.

Legislators who had voted for the law were bitterly assailed, and, though it was but an optional law, the question of its repeal and the reinstatement of the old Pauper-School Law became the burning issue of the campaign in the autumn of 1834. Many legislators who had favored the law were defeated for reelection. Others, seeing defeat, refused to run.

Petitions for the repeal of the law, [5] and remonstrances against its repeal, flooded the legislature when it met. The Senate at once repealed the law, but the House, largely under the leadership of a Vermonter by the name of Thaddeus Stevens, [6] refused to reconsider, and finally forced the Senate to accept an amended and a still stronger bill. This defeat finally settled, in principle at least, the pauper-school question in Pennsylvania, [7] though it was not until 1873 that the last district in the State accepted the new system.

 

ELIMINATING THE PAUPER-SCHOOL IDEA IN NEW JERSEY. No constitutional mention of education was made in New Jersey until 1844, and no educational legislation was passed until 1816. In that year a permanent state school fund was begun, and in 1820 the first permission to levy taxes “for the education of such poor children as are paupers” was granted. In 1828 an extensive investigation showed that one third of the children of the State were without educational opportunities, and as a result of this investigation the first general school law for the State was enacted, in 1829. This provided for district schools, school trustees and visitation, licensed teachers, local taxation, and made a state appropriation of $20,000 a year to help establish the system. The next year, however, this law was repealed and the old pauper-school plan re�stablished, largely due to the pressure of church and private-school interests. In 1830 and 1831

the state appropriation was made divisible among private and parochial schools, as well as the public pauper schools, and the use of all public money was limited “to the education of the children of the poor.”

 

Between 1828 and 1838 a number of conventions of friends of free public schools were held in the State, and much work in the nature of propaganda was done. At a convention in 1838 a committee was appointed to prepare an “Address to the People of New Jersey” on the educational needs of the State (R. 320), and speakers were sent over the State to talk to the people on the subject. The campaign against the pauper school had just been fought to a conclusion in Pennsylvania, and the result of the appeal in New Jersey was such a popular manifestation in favor of free schools that the legislature of 1838 instituted a partial state school system. The pauper-school laws were repealed, and the best features of the short-lived Law of 1829 were re�nacted. In 1844 a new state constitution limited the income of the permanent state school fund exclusively to the support of public schools.

 

With the pauper-school idea eliminated from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the North was through with it. The wisdom of its elimination soon became evident, and we hear little more of it among Northern people. The democratic West never tolerated it. It continued some time longer in Maryland, Virginia, and Georgia, and at places for a time in other Southern States, but finally disappeared in the South as well in the educational reorganizations which took place following