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

Church-of-England Colonies all elementary education was left to private initiative and philanthropic and religious effort (p.

373). In the southern Colonies the classes in society and the character of the plantation life made common schools impossible, and the feeling of any need for elementary schools almost entirely died out. In New England the eighteenth century was a continual struggle on the one hand to prevent the original religious town school from disappearing, and on the other to establish in its place a series of scattered and inferior district schools, while either church or town support and tuition fees became ever harder to obtain. Among other changes of importance the reading school and the writing school now became definitely united, in all the smaller places and in the rural districts, as a measure of economy, to form the American school of the “3 Rs.” New textbooks, too, containing less of the gloomily religious than the New England Primer, and secular rather than religious in character (p. 443), appeared after 1750 and began to be used in the schools. After 1750, too, it was increasingly evident that the old religious enthusiasm for schools had largely died out; that European traditions and ways and types of schools no longer completely satisfied; and that the period of the transplanting of European educational ideas and schools and types of instruction was coming to an end. Instead, the evolution of a public or state school out of the original religious school, and the beginnings of the evolution of distinctly American types of schools, better adapted to American needs, became increasingly evident in the Colonies as the eighteenth century progressed.

 

RISE OF THE CIVIL OF STATE SCHOOL. As has been stated earlier, the school everywhere in America arose as a child of the Church. In the Middle Colonies, where the parochial-school conception of education was the prevailing type, the school remained under church control until after the foundation of our national government. In New England, though—and the New England evolution in time became the prevailing American practice—the school passed through a very interesting development during colonial times.

 

As we have seen (p. 360), each little New England town was originally established as a little religious republic, with the Church in complete control. The governing authorities for church and civil affairs were much the same. When acting as church officers they were known as Elders and Deacons; when acting as civil or town officers they were known as Selectmen. The State, as represented in the colony legislature or the town meeting, was clearly the servant of the Church, and existed in large part for religious ends. It was the State acting as the servant of the Church which enacted the Massachusetts laws of 1642 and 1647 (Rs. 190, 19l), requiring the towns to maintain schools for religious ends. Now, so close was the connection between the religious town, which controlled church affairs, and the civil town, which looked after roads, fences, taxes, and defense—the constituency of both being one and the same, and the meetings of both being held at first in the meeting-house—that when the schools were established the colony legislature placed them under the civil—as involving taxes, and being a public service—rather than under the religious town. The interests of one were the interests of both, and, being the same in constituency and territorial boundaries, there seemed no occasion for friction or fear. From this religious beginning the civil school and the civil school-town and school-township, with all their elaborate school administrative machinery, were later evolved.

 

The erection of a town hall, separate from the meeting-house, was a first step in the process. School affairs now were discussed at the town hall, instead of in the church. The town authorities now appointed committees to locate and build schoolhouses, select and certificate the teachers, and visit and examine the school. Next a regular town school committee was provided for. To this was given the management of the town school, and town taxes, instead of church taxes, were voted for buildings and maintenance. The minister continued to certificate the grammar-school master until the close of the colonial period, but the power to certificate the elementary-school teachers passed to the town authorities early in the eighteenth century. By the close of the century all that the minister—as the only surviving representative of church control—had left to him was the right to accompany the town authorities in the visitation of schools. Thus gradually but certainly did the earlier religious school in America pass out from under the control of the Church and come under the control of the State. When our national government and the different state governments were established, the States were ready to accept, in principle at least, the theory gradually worked out in New England that schools are state institutions, and should be under the control of the State.

 

THE EARLY STATE CONSTITUTIONS AND LAWS. In framing the Federal Constitution, in 1787, education, then being regarded largely as a local matter, was left to the States to handle as they saw fit; so we turn to the early state constitutions and laws to see how far the new American States had, by the close of the eighteenth century, advanced toward the conception of education as an affair of the State.

 

During the period from the Declaration of Independence to the close of the eighteenth century (1776-1800), all the States, except Rhode Island and Connecticut, which considered their colonial charters as satisfactory, formulated and adopted new state constitutions. Three new States—Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee—were admitted to the Union before 1800, and these framed constitutions also. Of the sixteen States forming the Union by 1800, seven had incorporated into their constitutions a clause setting forth the State’s duty in the matter of education (R. 259). As in the earlier period of American education, it was Calvinistic New England which incorporated into the constitutions the best provisions regarding learning. In the parochial-school central Colonies the mention was much less emphatic, while the old Anglican-Church Colonies and the new States of Kentucky and Tennessee remained silent on the subject. Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire, in particular, incorporated strong sections directing the encouragement of learning and virtue, the protection and fostering of school societies, and the establishment of schools. The Massachusetts provision, afterwards copied by New Hampshire, is so explicit in the matter of state duty that it is worth quoting in full.

 

Chap. V, Sec. 2. Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties; and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of the people, it shall be the duty of the legislatures and magistrates, in all future periods of this Commonwealth, to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them; especially the university at Cambridge, public schools, and grammar schools in the towns; to encourage private societies and public institutions, by rewards and immunities, for the promotion of agriculture, arts, sciences, commerce, trades, manufactures, and a natural history of the country; to countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and frugality, honesty and punctuality in their dealings; sincerity, good humor, and all social affections and generous sentiments among the people.

 

Though the Federal Constitution made no provision for education or aid to schools, when the Congress of the Confederation, in 1787, adopted the Ordinance for the organization and government of the Northwest Territory, out of which the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin were later carved, it prefixed to this Ordinance the following significant provision:

 

Art. 3. Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged [in the States to be formed from this Territory].

 

By the time the first State formed from this western territory was ready to be admitted to the Union (Ohio, 1802), the theory that education is a function of the State had come to be so thoroughly accepted, in principle at least, by the new American people that Congress now began a policy, ever since continued, of aiding each new State to establish and maintain a state system of schools. To this end Congress gave the new State for this purpose a generous endowment of national land, and in addition three townships of land to endow a state university. We also find that the constitutions of the first States created from this new Northwest Territory (Ohio, 1802; Indiana, 1816 [12]) contain for the time good provisions relating to public education. The Ohio provisions (R. 260) are noteworthy for the strong stand for religious freedom and against any discrimination in the schools between rich and poor, while the Indiana provisions (R. 261) are marked for their broad and generous conception of the scope and purpose of a state system of public instruction.

 

Many of the older States enacted general state school laws early in their history (R. 262). Connecticut continued the general school laws of 1700, 1712, and 1714 unchanged, and in 1795 added $1,200,000, derived from land sales, to a permanent state school endowment fund, created as early as 1750. Vermont enacted a general school law in 1782. Massachusetts and New Hampshire enacted new general school laws, in 1789, which restated and legalized the school development of the preceding hundred and fifty years.

All these required the maintenance of schools by the towns for a definite term each year, ordered taxation, and fixed the school studies required by the State. New York, in 1784, created an administrative organization, known as the University of the State of New York, to supervise secondary and higher education throughout the State—an institution clearly modeled after the centralizing ideas of Condorcet, Rolland, and Diderot (p. 477), and very similar to the ideas proposed by Talleyrand and Condorcet and later (1808) embodied in the University of France by Napoleon. In 1795 New York also provided for a state system of elementary education. Georgia created a state system of academies, as early as 1783. Delaware created a state school fund, in 1796, and Virginia enacted an optional school law the same year. North Carolina created a state university, as early as 1795.

 

THE NEW POLITICAL MOTIVE FOR SCHOOLS. We thus see, in the new United States, the theories of the French revolutionary thinkers and statesmen actually being realized in practice. The constitutional provisions, and even the legislation, often were in advance of what the States, impoverished as they were by the War of Independence, could at once carry out, but they mark the evolution in America of a clearly defined state theory as to education, and the recognition of a need for general education in a government whose actions were so largely influenced by the force of public opinion. The Federal Constitution had extended the right to vote for national officers to all, and the older States soon began to remove their earlier property qualifications for voting and to extend general manhood suffrage to all citizens.

 

This new development in government by the people, which meant the passing of the rule of a propertied and educated class and the establishment of a real democracy, caused the leading American statesmen to turn early to general education as a necessity for republican safety. In his Farewell Address to the American people, written in 1796, Washington said: Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.

 

Jefferson spent the years 1784 to 1789 in Paris, and became a great propagandist in America for French political ideas. Writing to James Madison