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

public opinion. The press in England in consequence became an educative force of great intellectual and political importance, and did much to compensate for the lack of a general system of schools for the people. In 1772 the right to publish the debates in Parliament was finally won, over the strenuous objections [26] of George III. In 1780 the first Sunday newspaper appeared, “on the only day the lower orders had time to read a paper at all,” and, despite the efforts of religious bodies to suppress it, the Sunday paper has continued to the present and has contributed its quota to the education and enlightenment of mankind. In 1785 the famous London Times began to appear. In the middle of the eighteenth century debating societies for the consideration of public questions arose, and in 1769 “the first public meeting ever assembled in England, in which it was attempted to enlighten Englishmen respecting their political rights” was held, and such meetings soon became of almost daily occurrence. All these influences stimulated political thinking to a high degree, and contributed not only to a desire for still larger political freedom but for the more general diffusion of the ability to read as well (R. 250).

 

Still other important new influences arose during the early part of the eighteenth century, each of which tended to awaken new desires for schools and learning. In 1678 the first modern printed story to appeal to the masses, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, appeared from the press. Written, as it had been, by a man of the people, its simple narrative form, its passionate religious feeling, its picture of the journey of a pilgrim through a world of sin and temptation and trial, and its Biblical language with which the common people had now become familiar—all these elements combined to make it a book that appealed strongly to all who read or heard it read, and stimulated among the masses a desire to read comparable to that awakened by the chaining of the English Bible in the churches a century before (R. 170). In 1719 the first great English novel, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, and in 1726 Gulliver’s Travels, added new stimulus to the desires awakened by Bunyan’s book. All three were books of the common people, whereas the dramas, plays, essays, and scholarly works previously produced had appealed only to a small educated class. In 1751 what was probably the first circulating library of modern times was opened at Birmingham, and soon thereafter similar institutions were established in other English cities.

 

SCIENCE AND MANUFACTURING; THE NEW ERA. England, too, from the first, showed an interest in and a tolerance toward the new scientific thinking scarcely found in any other land. This in itself is indicative of the great intellectual progress which the English people had by this time made. [27] At a time when Galileo, in Italy, was fighting, almost alone, for the right to think along the lines of the new scientific method and being imprisoned for his pains, Englishmen were reading with deep interest the epoch-making scientific writings of Lord Francis Bacon, Earlier than in other lands, too, the Newtonian philosophy found a place in the instruction of the national universities, and English scholars began to employ the new scientific method in their search for new truths. The British Royal (Scientific) Society [28] had begun to meet as early as 1645, and ever since has published in its proceedings the best of English scientific thinking. By the reign of George I (1714-27) scientific work began to be popularized, and the first little booklets on scientific subjects began to appear. These popular presentations of what had been worked out were sold at the book stalls and by peddlers and were eagerly read; by the beginning of the reign of George III (1760) they had become very common. In 1704-10 the first “Dictionary of Arts and Sciences” was printed, and in 1768-71 the first edition (three volumes) of the now famous Encyclopedia Britannica appeared. In 1755 the famous British Museum was founded.

 

As early as 1698 a rude form of steam engine had been patented in England, and by 1712 this had been perfected sufficiently to be used in pumping water from the coal mines. In 1765 James Watt made the real beginning of the application of steam to industry by patenting his steam engine; in 1760 Wedgwood established the pottery industry in England; in 1767

Hargreaves devised the spinning-jenny, which banished the spindle and distaff and the old spinning-wheel; in 1769 Arkwright evolved his spinning-frame; and in 1785 Cartwright completed the process by inventing the power loom for weaving. In 1784 a great improvement in the smelting of iron ores (puddling) was worked out. These inventions, all English, were revolutionary in their effect on manufacturing. They meant the displacement of hand power by machine labor, the breakdown of home industry through the concentration of labor in factories, the rise of great manufacturing cities, [29] and the ultimate collapse of the age-old apprenticeship system of training, where the master workman with a few apprentices in his shop prepared goods for sale. They also meant the ultimate transformation of England from an agricultural into a great manufacturing and exporting nation, whose manufactured products would be sold in every corner of the globe.

 

By 1750 a change in attitude toward all the old intellectual problems had become marked in England, and by 1775 attention before unknown was being given there to social, political, economic, and educational questions.

Religious intolerance was dying out, the harsh laws of earlier days had begun to be modified, new social and political interests [30] were everywhere attracting attention, and the great commercial expansion of England was rapidly taking shape. With England and France leading in the new scientific studies; England in the van in the development of manufacturing and the French to the fore in social influences and polite literature; England and the new American Colonies setting new standards in government by the people; the French theorists and economists giving the world new ideas as to the function of the State; enlightened despots on the thrones of Prussia, Austria, Spain, and Russia; and the hatreds of the hundred years of religious warfare dying out; the world seemed to many, about 1775, as on the verge of some great and far-reaching change in methods of living and in government, and about ready to enter a new era and make rapid advances in nearly all lines of human activity. The change came, but not in quite the manner expected.

 

IV. INSTITUTION OF CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN

AMERICA

 

[Illustration: FIG. 152. NATIONALITY OF THE WHITE POPULATION, AS SHOWN BY

THE FAMILY NAMES IN THE CENSUS OF 1790.]

 

ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA ESTABLISH A REPUBLIC. Though the early settlement of America, as was pointed out in chapter xv, was made from among those people and from those lands which had embraced some form of the Protestant faith, and represented a number of nationalities and several religious sects, the thirteen colonies, nevertheless, were essentially English in origin, speech, habits, observances, and political and religious conceptions. This is well shown for the white population by the results of the first Federal census, taken in 1790, as given in the adjoining figure.

This shows that of all the people in the thirteen original States, 83.5

per cent possessed names indicating pure English origin, and that 91.8 per cent had names which pointed to their having come from the British Isles.

The largest non-British name nationality was the German, with 5.6 per cent of the whole, and these were found chiefly in Pennsylvania where they constituted 26.1 per cent of the State’s population. Next were those having Dutch names, who constituted but 2 per cent of the total population, and but 16.1 per cent of the population of New York. No other name-nationality constituted over one half of one per cent of the total.

The New England States were almost as English as England itself, 93 to 96

per cent of the names being pure English, and 98.5 to 99.8 per cent being from the British Isles.

 

We thus see that it was from England, the nation which had done most in the development of individual and religious liberty, that the great bulk of the early settlers of America came, and in the New World the English traditions as to constitutional government and liberty under law were early and firmly established. The centuries of struggle for representative government in England at once bore fruit here. Colony charters, charters of rights and liberties, public discussion, legislative assemblies, and liberty under law were from the first made the foundation stones upon which self-government in America was built up.

 

From an early date the American Colonies showed an independence to which even Englishmen were scarcely accustomed, and when the home government attempted to make the colonists pay some of the expenses of the Seven Years’ War, and a larger share of the expenses of colonial administration, there was determined opposition. Having no representation in Parliament and no voice in levying the tax, the colonists declared that taxation without representation was tyranny, and refused to pay the taxes assessed.

Standing squarely on their rights as Englishmen, the colonists were gradually forced into open rebellion. In 1765, and again in 1774, Declarations of Rights were drawn up and adopted by representatives from the Colonies, and were forwarded to the King. In 1774 the first Continental Congress met and formed a union of the Colonies; in 1776 the Colonies declared their independence. This was confirmed, in 1783, by the Treaty of Paris; in 1787, the Constitution of the United States was drafted; and in 1789, the American government began. In the preamble to the twenty-seven charges of tyranny and oppression made against the King in the Declaration of Independence, we find a statement of political philosophy [31] which is a combination of the results of the long English struggle for liberty and the French eighteenth-century reform philosophy and revolutionary demands. [32] This preamble declared: We hold these truths to be self-evident—that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

 

AMERICAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO WORLD HISTORY. The American Revolution and its results were fraught with great importance for the future political and educational progress of mankind. Before the close of the eighteenth century the new American government had made at least four important contributions to world liberty and progress which were certain to be of large political and educational value for the future.

 

In the first place, the people of the Colonies had erected independent governments and had shown the possibility of the self-government of peoples on a large scale, and not merely in little city-states or communities, as had previously been the case where self-government had been tried. Democratic government was here worked out and applied to large areas, and to peoples of diverse nationalities and embracing different religious faiths. The possibility of States selecting their rulers and successfully governing themselves was demonstrated.

 

In the second place, the new American government which was formed did something new in world history when it united thirteen independent and autonomous States into a single federated Nation, and without destroying the independence of the States. What was formed was not a league, or confederacy, as had existed at different times among