The History of Education / Educational Practice and Progress Considered as a Phase of the Development and Spread of Western Civilization

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

II. MID-EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY EDUCATIONAL CONDITIONS

THE PURPOSE. The purpose of maintaining the elementary vernacular school, in all European lands, remained at the middle of the eighteenth century much as it was a century before, though in the German States and in the American Colonies there was a noticeable shifting of emphasis from the older exclusively religious purpose toward a newer conception of education as preparation for life in the world here. Still, one learned to read chiefly "to learn some orthodox Catechism," "to read fluently in the New Testament," and to know the will of God, or, as stated in the law of the Connecticut Colony (R. 193), "in some competent measure to understand the main grounds and principles of Christian religion necessary to salvation." The teacher was still carefully looked after as to his "soundness in the faith" (R. 238 a); he was required "to catechise his scholars in the principles of the Christian religion," and "to commend his labors amongst them unto God by prayer morning and evening, [5] taking care that his scholars do reverently attend during the same." The minister in practically all lands examined the children as to their knowledge of the Catechism and the Bible, and on his visits quizzed them as to the Sunday sermon. In Boston (1710) the ministers were required, on their school visits, to pray with the pupils, and "to entertain them with some instructions of piety adapted to their age." In Church-of-England schools "the End and Chief Design" of the schools established continued to be instruction in "the Knowledge and Practice of the Christian Religion as Professed and Taught in the Church of England" (R. 238 b). In German lands the elementary vernacular school was still regarded as "the portico of the Temple," "Christianity its principal work," and not as "mere establishments preparatory to public life, but be pervaded by the religious spirit." [6] The uniform system of public schools ordered established for Prussia by Frederick the Great, in 1763, were after all little more than religious schools (R. 274), conducted for purposes of both Church and State. As Frederick expressed it, "we find it necessary and wholesome to have a good foundation laid in the schools by a rational and a Christian education of the young for the fear of God, and other useful ends." In the schools of La Salle's organization, which was most prominent in elementary vernacular education in Catholic France, the aim continued to be (R. 182) "to teach them to live honestly and uprightly, by instructing them in the principles of our holy religion and by teaching them Christian precepts."

WEAKENING OF THE OLD RELIGIOUS THEORY. By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, there is a noticeable weakening of the hold of the old religious theory on the schools in most Protestant lands. In England there was a marked relaxation of the old religious intolerance in educational matters as the century proceeded, and new textbooks, embodying but little of the old gloomy religious material, appeared and began to be used. By a series of decisions, between 1670 and 1701 (chapter XXIV), the English courts broke the hold of the bishops in the matter of the licensing of elementary schoolmasters, and by the Acts of 1713 and 1714 the Dissenters were once more allowed to conduct schools of their own. Coincident with this growth of religious tolerance among the English we find the Church of England redoubling its efforts to hold the children of its adherents, by the organization of parish schools and the creation of a vast system of charitable religious schools. In German lands, too, a marked shifting of emphasis away from solely religious ends and toward the needs of the government began, toward the end of the eighteenth century, to be evident. In Würtemberg, which was somewhat typical of late eighteenth-century action by other German States, a Circular of the General Synod, of November 1787, declares the German schools to be "those nurseries in which should be taught the true and genuine idea of the duties of men—created with a reasoning soul toward God, government, their fellow-men, and themselves, and also at least the first rudiments of useful and indispensable knowledge."

It was in the American Colonies, though, that the waning of the old religious interest was most notable. Due to rude frontier conditions, the decline in force of the old religious-town governments, the diversity of sects, the rise of new trade and civil interests, and the breakdown of old-home connections, the hold on the people of the old religious doctrines was weakened there earlier than in the old world. By 1750 the change in religious thinking in America had become quite marked. As a consequence many of the earlier parochial schools had died out, while in the New England Colonies the colonial governments had been forced to exercise an increasing state oversight of the elementary school to keep it from dying out there as well.

STUDIES AND TEXTBOOKS. The studies of the elementary vernacular school remained, throughout the whole of the eighteenth century, much as before, namely, reading, a little writing and ciphering, some spelling, religion, and in Teutonic countries a little music. La Salle (R. 182) had prescribed, for the Catholic vernacular schools of France, instruction in French, some. Latin, "orthography, arithmetic, the matins and vespers, le Pater, l'Ave Maria, le Credo et le Confiteor, the Commandments, responses, Catechism, duties of a Christian, and maxims and precepts drawn from the Testament." The Catechism was to be taught one half-hour daily. The schoolbooks in England in Locke's day, as he tells us (p. 435), were "the Horn Book, Primer, Psalter, Testament, and Bible." These indicate merely a religious vernacular school. The purpose stated for the English Church charity-schools (R. 238 b), schools that attained to large importance in England and the American Colonies during the eighteenth century, shows them to have been, similarly, religious vernacular schools. The School Regulations which Frederick the Great promulgated for Prussia (1763), fixed the textbooks to be used (R. 274, § 20), and indicate that the instruction in Prussia was still restricted to reading, writing, religion, singing, and a little arithmetic. In colonial America, Noah Webster's description (R. 230) of the schools he attended in Connecticut, about 1764-70, shows that the studies and textbooks were "chiefly or wholly Dilworth's Spelling Books, the Psalter, Testament, and Bible," with a little writing and ciphering. A few words of description of these older books may prove useful here.

[Illustration: FIG. 130. A HORN BOOK]

THE HORN BOOK. The Horn Book goes back to the close of the fifteenth century, [7] and by the end of the sixteenth century was in common use throughout England. Somewhat similar alphabet boards, lacking the handle, were also used in Holland, France, and in German lands. This, a thin oak board on which was pasted a printed slip, covered by translucent horn, was the book from which children learned their letters and began to read, the mastery of which usually required some time. Cowper thus describes this little book:

Neatly secured from being soiled or torn
Beneath a pane of thin translucent horn,
A book (to please us at a tender age
'T is called a book, though but a single page)
Presents the prayer the Savior designed to teach,
Which children use, and parsons—when they preach.

The Horn Book was much used well into the eighteenth century, but its reading matter was in time incorporated into the school Primer, now evolved out of an earlier elementary religious manual.

THE PRIMER. Originally the child next passed to the Catechism and the Bible, but about the middle of the seventeenth century the Primer began to be used. The Primer in its original form was a simple manual of devotion for the laity, compiled without any thought of its use in the schools. It contained the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and a few of the more commonly used prayers and psalms. [8] The Catechism soon was added, and with the prefixing of the alphabet and a few syllables and words it was transformed, as schools arose, into the first reading book for children. There was at first no attempt at grading, illustration, or the introduction of easy reading material. About the close of the seventeenth century the illustrated Primer, with some attempt at grading and some additional subject-matter, made its appearance, both in England and America, and at once leaped into great popularity.

The idea possibly goes back to the Orbis Pictus (1654) of Comenius (p. 413: R. 221), the first illustrated schoolbook ever written. The first English Primer adapted to school use was The Protestant Tutor, a rather rabid anti-Catholic work which appeared in London, about 1685. A later edition of this contained the alphabet, some syllables and words, the figures and letters, the list of the books of the Bible, an alphabet of lessons, the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and a poem, long famous, on the death of the martyr, John Rogers. [9] It was an abridgement of this book which the same publisher brought out in Boston, about 1690, under the name of The New England Primer (R. 202). This at once leaped into great popularity, and became the accepted reading book in all the schools of the American Colonies except those under the Church of England. For the next century and a quarter it was the chief school and reading book in use among the Dissenters and Lutherans in America. Schoolmasters drilled the children on the reading matter and the Catechism it contained, and the people recited from it yearly in the churches. It was also used for such spelling as was given. It was the first great American textbook success, and was still in use in the Boston dame schools as late as 1806. It was reprinted in England, and enjoyed a great sale among Dissenters there. Its sales in America alone have been estimated at least three million copies. The sale in Europe was also large. It was followed in England by other Primers and other introductory reading books, of which The History of Genesis (1708), a series of simple stories retold from the first book of the Bible, and The Child's Weeks-Work (1712), containing proverbs, fables, conundrums, lessons on behavior, and a short catechism, are types. Frederick the Great, in his list of required textbooks for Prussian schools (R. 274, § 20), does not mention a Primer.

[Illustration: THE WESTMINSTER CATECHISM.
(A page from The New England Primer, natural size)]

THE CATECHISM. In all Protestant German lands the Shorter Catechism prepared by Luther, or the later Heidelberg Catechism; in Calvinistic lands the Catechism of Calvin; and in England and the American Colonies the Westminster Catechism, [10] formed the backbone of the religious instruction. Teachers drilled their pupils in these as thoroughly as on any other subject, writing masters set as copies sentences from the book, children were required to memorize the answers, and the doctrines contained were emphasized by teacher and preacher so that the children were saturated with the religious ideas set forth. No book except the Bible did so much to form the character, and none so much to fix the religious bias of the children. Almost equal importance was given to the Catechism in Catholic lands (R. 182, §§ 21-22), though there supplemented by more religious influences derived from the ceremonial of the Church.

[Illustration: FIG. 132. THOMAS DILWORTH (?-1780)
The most celebrated English textbook writer of his day.
(From the Frontispiece of his Schoolmaster's Assistant, 1740)]

SPELLERS. The next step forward, in the transition from the religious Primer to secular reading matter for school children, came in the use of the so-called Spellers. Probably the first of these was The English School-Master of Edmund Coote (R. 229), first issued in 1596. This gave thirty-two pages to the alphabet and spelling; eighteen to a shorter Catechism, prayers, and psalms; five to chronology; two to writing copies; two to arithmetic; and twenty to a list of hard words, alphabetically arranged and explained. As will be seen from this analysis of contents, this was a schoolmaster's general manual and guide. After about 1740 such books became very popular, due to the publication that year of Thomas Dilworth's A New Guide to the English Tongue. This book contained, as the title-page (R. 229) declared, selected lists of words with rules for their pronunciation, a short treatise on grammar, a collection of fables with illustrations for reading, some moral selections, and forms of prayer for children. It became very popular in New as well as in old England, and was followed by a long line of imitators, culminating in America in the publication of Noah Webster's famous blue-backed American Spelling Book, in 1783. This was after the plan of the English Dilworth, but was put in better teaching form. It contained numerous graded lists of words, some illustrations, a series of graded reading lessons, and was largely secular in character. It at once superseded the expiring New England Primer in most of the American cities, and continued popular in the United States for more than a hundred years. [11] It was the second great American textbook success, and was followed by a long list of popular Spellers and Readers, leading up to the excellent secular Readers of the present day.

[Illustration: FIG. 133. FRONTISPIECE TO NOAH WEBSTER'S "AMERICAN SPELLING
BOOK"
This is from the 1827 edition, reduced one third in size.]

ARITHMETIC AND WRITING. The first English Arithmetic, published about 1540 to 1542, has been entirely lost, and was probably read by few. The first to attain any popularity was Cocker's Arithmetic (1677), this "Being a Plain and Familiar Method suitable to the meanest Capacity, for the understanding of that incomparable. Art." A still more popular book was Arithmetick: or that Necessary Art Made Most Easie, by J. Hodder, Writing Master, a reprint of which appeared in Boston, in 1719. The first book written by an American author was Isaac Greenwood's Arithmetick, Vulgar and Decimal, which appeared in Boston, in 1729. In 1743 appeared Dilworth's The Schoolmaster's Assistant, a book which retained its popularity in both England and America until after the beginning of the nineteenth century.

No text in Arithmetic is mentioned in the School Regulations of Frederick the Great (R. 274, §20), or in scarcely any of the descriptions left us of eighteenth-century schools. The study itself was common, but not universal, and was one that many teachers were not competent to teach. To possess a reputation as an "arithmeticker" was an important recommendation for a teacher, while for a pupil to be able to do sums in arithmetic was unusual, and a matter of much pride to parents. The subject was frequently taught by the writing master, in a separate school, [12] while the reading teacher confined himself to reading, spelling, and religion. Thus, for example, following earlier English practice, the Town Meeting of Boston, in 1789, ordered "three reading schools and three writing schools established in the town" for the instruction of children between the ages of seven and fourteen, the subjects to be taught in each being:

The writing schools: Writing, Arithmetic

The reading schools: Spelling, Accentuation, Reading of prose and verse, English grammar and composition

The teacher might or might not possess an arithmetic of his own, but the instruction to the pupil was practically always dictated and copied instruction. Each pupil made up his own book of rules and solved problems, and few pupils ever saw a printed arithmetic. Many of the early arithmetics were prepared after the catechism plan. There was almost no attempt to use the subject for drill in reasoning or to give a concrete type of instruction, before about the middle of the eighteenth century, [13] and but little along such reform lines was accomplished until after the beginning of the nineteenth century.

[Illustration: FIG. 134. TITLE-PAGE OF HODDER'S ARITHMETIC
An early reprint of this famous book appeared in Boston in 1719.]

Writing, similarly, was taught by dictation and practice, and the art of the "scrivener," as the writing master was called, was one thought to be difficult to learn. The lack of practical value of the art, the high cost of paper, and the necessity usually for special lessons, all alike tended to make writing a much less commonly known art than reading. Fees also were frequently charged for instruction in writing and arithmetic; reading, spelling, and religion being the only free subjects. The scrivener and the arithmetic teacher also frequently moved about, as business warranted, and was not fixed as was the teacher of the reading school.

THE TEACHERS. The development of the vernacular school was retarded not only by the dominance of the religious purpose of the school, but by the poor quality of teachers found everywhere in the schools. The evolution of the elementary-school teacher of to-day out of the church sexton, bell- ringer, or grave-digger, [14] or out of the artisan, cripple, or old dame who added school teaching to other employment in order to live, forms one of the interesting as well as one of the yet-to-be-written chapters in the history of the evolution of the elementary school.

Teachers in elementary schools everywhere in the eighteenth century were few in number, poor in quality, and occupied but a lowly position in the social scale. School dames in England (R. 235) and later in the American Colonies, and on the continent of Europe teachers who were more sextons, choristers, beadles, bell-ringers, grave-diggers, shoemakers, tailors, barbers, pensioners, and invalids than teachers, too often formed the teaching body for the elementary vernacular school (Rs. 231, 232, 233). In Switzerland, the Netherlands, and some of the American Colonies, where schools had become or were becoming local semi-civic affairs, the standards which might be imposed for teaching also were low. The grant of the tailoring monopoly to the elementary teachers of Prussia, [15] in 1738, and Krüsi's recollections of how he became a schoolmaster in Switzerland, in 1793 (R. 234), were quite typical of the time. In Catholic France, and in some German Catholic lands as well, teaching congregations (p. 345), some of whose members had some rudimentary training for their work, were in charge of the existing parish schools. These provided a somewhat better type of teaching body than that frequently found in Protestant lands, though by the latter part of the eighteenth century the beginnings of teacher-training are to be seen in some of the German States. The Church of England, too, had by this time organized strong Societies [16] for the preparation of teachers for Church-of-England schools, both at home and abroad. In Dutch, German, and Scandinavian lands, and in colonies founded by these people in America, the parish school, closely tied up with and dependent upon the parish church, was the prevailing type of vernacular school, and in this the teacher was regarded as essentially an assistant to the pastor (R. 236) and the school as a dependency of the Church.

[FIG. 135. A "CHRISTIAN BROTHERS" SCHOOL
La Salle teaching at Grenoble. Note the adult type of dress of the boys.]

In England, in addition to regular parish schools and endowed elementary schools, three peculiar institutions, known as the Dame School, the religious charity-school, and the private-adventure or "hedge school" had grown up, and the first two of these had reached a marked development by the middle of the eighteenth century. Because these were so characteristic of early English educational effort, and also played such an important part in the American Colonies as well, they merit a few words of description at this point.

THE DAME SCHOOL. The Dame School arose in England after the Reformation. By means of it the increasing desire for a rudimentary knowledge of the art of reading could be satisfied, and at the same time certain women could earn a pittance. This type of school was carried early to the American Colonies, and out of it was in time evolved, in New England, the American elementary school. The Dame School was a very elementary school, kept in a kitchen or living-room by some woman who, in her youth, had obtained the rudiments of an education, and who now desired to earn a small stipend for herself by imparting to the children of her neighborhood her small store of learning. For a few pennies a week the dame took the children into her home and explained to them the mysteries connected with learning the beginnings of reading and spelling. Occasionally a little writing and counting also were taught, though not often in England. In the American Colonies the practical situations of a new country forced the employment as teachers of women who could teach all three subjects, thus early creating the American school of the so-called "3 Rs"—"Reading, Riting, Rithmetic." The Dame School appears so frequently in English literature, both poetry and prose, that it must have played a very important part in the beginnings of elementary education in England. Of this school Shenstone (1714-63) writes (R. 235):

In every village marked with little spire,
Embowered in trees, and hardly known to fame,
There dwells, in lowly shed and mean attire,
A matron old, whom we schoolmistress name,
Who boasts unruly brats with birch to tame.

[Illustration: FIG. 136. AN ENGLISH DAME SCHOOL
(From a drawing of a school in the heart of London, after Barclay)]

The Reverend George Crabbe (1754-1832), another poet of homely life, writes (R. 235) of a deaf, poor, patient widow who sits

And awes some thirty infants as she knits;
Infants of humble, busy wives who pay,
Some trifling price for freedom through the day.

This school flourished greatly in America during the eighteenth century, but with the coming of Infant Schools, early in the nineteenth, was merged into these to form the American Primary School.

[Illustration: FIG. 137. GRAVEL LANE CHARITY-SCHOOL, SOUTHWARK Founded in 1687, and one of the earliest of the Non-Conformist English charity-schools. Still carrying on its work in the original schoolroom at the time this picture appeared, in Londina Illustrata in 1819.]

THE RELIGIOUS CHARITY-SCHOOL. Another thoroughly characteristic English institution was the church charity-school. The first of these was founded in Whitechapel, London, in 1680. In 1699, when the School of Saint Anne, Soho (R. 237), was founded by "Five Earnest Laymen for the Poore Boys of the Parish," it was the sixth of its kind in England. In 1699 the "Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge" (S.P.C.K.) was founded for the purpose, among other things, of establishing catechetical schools for the education of the children of the poor in the principles of the Established Church (R. 238 b). In 1701 the "Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts" (S.P.G.) was also founded to extend the work of the Anglican Church abroad, supply schoolmasters and ministers, and establish schools, to train children to read, write, know and understand the Catechism, and fit into the teachings and worship of the Church. To develop piety and help the poor to lead industrious, upright, self- respecting lives, "to make them loyal Church members, and to fit them for work in that station of life in which it had pleased their Heavenly Father to place them," were the principal objects of the Society.

All were taught reading, spelling, and the Catechism, and instruction in writing and arithmetic might be added. The training might also be coupled with that of the "schools of industry" (workhouse schools, as described by Locke [R. 217]) to augment the economic efficiency of the boy. Girls seem to have been provided for almost equally with boys, and, in addition to being taught to read and spell, were taught "to knit their Stockings and Gloves, to Mark, Sew, and make and mend their Cloathes." Both boys and girls were usually provided with books and clothing, [17] a regular uniform being worn by the boys and girls of each school.

[Illustration: FIG. 138. A CHARITY-SCHOOL GIRL IN UNIFORM
Saint Anne's, Soho, England]

The chief motive in the establishment of these schools, though, was to decrease the "Prophaness and Debauchery … owing to a gross Ignorance of the Christian Religion" (R. 237) and to educate "Poor Children in the Rules and Principles of the Christian Religion as professed and taught in the Church of England." Writing, in 1742, Reverend Griffith Jones, an organizer for the S.P.C.K. in Wales, said:

It is but a cheap education that we would desire for them [the poor], only the moral and religious branches of it, which indeed is the most necessary and indispensable part. The sole design of this charity is to inculcate upon such … as can be prevailed upon to learn, the knowledge and practice, the principles and duties of the Christian religion; and to make them good people, useful members of society, faithful servants of God, and men and heirs of eternal life.

These schools multiplied rapidly and soon became regular institutions, as the following table, showing the growth of the S.P.C.K. schools in London alone, shows:

Year Schools Boys Girls Total 1699 0 0 0 0 1704 54 1386 745 2131 1709 88 2181 1221 3402 1714 117 3077 1741 4818

In England and Ireland combined the Society had, by 1714, a total of 1073 schools, with 19,453 pupils enrolled, and by 1729 the number had increased to 1658, with approximately 34,000 pupils. From England the charity-school idea was early carried to the Anglican Colonies in America and became a fixed institution in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and somewhat in the Colonies farther south. In the Pennsylvania constitution of 1790 we find the following directions for the establishment of a state charity-school system to supplement the parish schools of the churches:

Sec. I. The legislature shall, as soon as conveniently may be,
provide, by law, for the establishment of schools throughout the
State, in such manner that the poor may be taught gratis.

[Illustration: FIG. 130. A CHARITY-SCHOOL BOY IN UNIFORM
Saint Anne's, Soho, England]

The first Pennsylvania school law of 1802 carried this direction into effect by providing for pauper schools in the counties, a condition that was not done away with until 1834. In New Jersey the system lasted until 1838.

THE PRIVATE-ADVENTURE, OR "HEDGE," SCHOOL. This was a school analogous to the Dame School, but was kept by a man instead of a woman, and usually at his home or shop. Plate 15, showing a shoe cobbler teaching, represents one type of such schools. The term "hedge schools" arose in Ireland, where teaching was forbidden the Catholics, and secret schools arose in which priests and others taught what was possible. Of these McCarthy writes: [18]

On the highways and on the hillsides, in ditches and behind hedges, in the precarious shelter of the ruined walls of some ancient abbey, or under the roof of a peasant's cabin, the priests set up schools and taught the children of their race.

The term soon came to be applied to any kind of a poor school, taught in an irregular manner or place. Similar irregular schools, under equivalent names, also were found in German lands, [19] the Netherlands, and in France, while in the American Colonies "indentured white servants" were frequently let out as schoolmasters. The following advertisement of a teacher for sale is typical of private-adventure elementary school-keeping during the colonial period.

[Illustration: FIG. 140. ADVERTISEMENT FOR A TEACHER TO LET
(From the American Weekly Mercury of Philadephia, 1735)]

These schools were taught by itinerant school-keepers, artisans, and tutors of the poorer type, but offered the beginnings of elementary education to many a child who otherwise would never have been able to learn to read. In the early eighteenth century these schools attained a remarkable development in England.

A new influence of tremendous future importance—general reading—was now coming in; the vernacular was fast supplanting Latin; newspapers were being started; little books or pamphlets (tracts) containing general information were being sold; books for children and beginners were being written; the popular novel and story had appeared; [20] and all these educative forces were creating a new and a somewhat general desire for a knowledge of the art of reading. This in turn caused a new demand for schools to teach the long-locked-up art, and this demand was capitalized to the profit of many types of people.

THE APPRENTICING OF ORPHANS AND CHILDREN OF THE POOR. The compulsory apprenticing of the children of the poor, as we have seen (p. 326), was an old English institution, and workhouse training, or the so-called "schools of industry" became, by the eighteenth century, a prominent feature of the English care of the poor. These represented the only form of education supported by taxation, and the only form of education to which Parliament gave any attention during the whole of the eighteenth century. This type of institution also was carried to the Anglican Colonies in America, as we have seen in the documents for Virginia (R. 200 a), and became an established institution in America as well.

The apprenticing of boys to a trade, a still older institution, was also much used as a means for training youths for a life in the trades, not only in England and the American Colonies, but throughout all European lands as well. The conditions surrounding the apprenticing of a boy had by the eighteenth century become quite fixed. The "Indenture of Apprenticeship" was drawn up by a lawyer, and by it the master was carefully bound to clothe and feed the boy, train him properly in his trade, look after his morals, and start him in life at the end of his apprenticeship. This is well shown in the many records which have been preserved, both in England (R. 242) and the American Colonies (R. 201). For many boys this type of education was the best possible at the time, and worthily started the possessor in the work of his trade.

In the eighteenth century different English church parishes began to set up workhouse schools of various types, and to maintain these out of parish "rates." The one established in Bishopsgate Street, London, in 1701, is typical. This cared for about 375 children and in it, by 1720, there had been educated and placed forth 1420 children, and in addition 123 had died. Of this school it is recorded that poor children

"being taken into the said Workhouse are there taught to Read and Write, and kept to Work until they are qualified to be put out to be Apprentices, and for the Sea Service, or otherwise disposed; … The Habit of the Children is all the same, being made of Russit Cloth, and a round Badge worn upon their Breast, representing a poor Boy, and a Sheep; the Motto: 'God's Providence is our Inheritance.'" … In this workhouse children were "taught to spin Wool and Flax, to Sow and Knit, to make their own Cloaths, Shoes, and Stockings, and the like Employments; to inure them betimes to labour. They are also taught to read, and such as are capable, to write and cast Accounts; and also the Catechism, to ground them in Principles of Religion and Honesty." [21]

The school established by Saint John's parish, Southwark, London, in 1735, and designed to train and "put out" girls for domestic service (R. 241), and which cared for, clothed, and trained forty girls, is also typical of these parish schools "for the children of the industrious poor."

METHODS OF INSTRUCTION. Throughout the eighteenth century the method of instruction commonly employed in the vernacular schools was what was known as the individual method. This was wasteful of both time and effort, and unpedagogical to a high degree (R. 244). Everywhere the teacher was engaged chiefly in hearing recitations, testing memory, and keeping order. The pupils came to the master's desk, one by one (see Figures 98, 99), and recited what they had memorized. Aside from imposing discipline, teaching was an easy task. The pupils learned the assigned lessons and recited what they had learned. Such a thing as methodology—technique of instruction— was unknown. The dominance of the religious motive, too, precluded any liberal attitude in school instruction, the individual method was time- consuming, school buildings often were lacking, and in general there was an almost complete lack of any teaching equipment, books, or supplies. Viewed from any modern standpoint the schools of the eighteenth century attained to but a low degree of efficiency (R. 244). The school hours were long, the schoolmaster's residence or place of work or business was commonly used as a schoolroom, and such regular schoolrooms as did exist were dirty and noisy and but poorly suited to school purposes. Schools everywhere, too, were ungraded, the school of one teacher being like that of any other teacher of that class.

So wasteful of time and effort was the individual method of instruction that children might attend school for years and get only a mere start in reading and writing. Paulsen, [22] writing of schools in German lands at an even later date, says that even in the better type of vernacular schools

many children never achieved anything beyond a little reading and knowing a few things by heart…. The instruction in reading was never anything else but a torture, protracted through years, from saying the alphabet and formation of syllables to the deciphering of complete words, without any real success in the end, while writing was nothing but a wearisome tracing of the letters, the net result of all the toil being the gabbling of the Catechism and a few Bible texts and hymns, learned over and over again.

The imparting of information by the teacher to a class, or a class discussion of a topic, were almost unknown. Hearing lessons, assigning new tasks, setting copies, making quill pens, dictating sums, and imposing order completely absorbed the time and the attention of the teacher.

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE. The discipline everywhere was severe. "A boy has a back; when you hit it he understands," was a favorite pedagogical maxim of the time. Whipping-posts were sometimes set up in the schoolroom, and practically all pictures of the schoolmasters of the time show a bundle of switches near at hand. Boys in the Latin grammar schools were flogged for petty offenses (R. 245). The ability to impose order on a poorly taught and, in consequence, an unruly school was always an important requisite of the schoolmaster. A Swabian schoolmaster, Häuberle by name, with characteristic Teutonic attention to details, has left on record [23] that, in the course of his fifty-one years and seven months as a teacher he had, by a moderate computation, given 911,527 blows with a cane, 124,010 blows with a rod, 20,989 blows and raps with a ruler, 136,715 blows with the hand, 10,235 blows over the mouth, 7,905 boxes on the ear, 1,115,800 raps on the head, and 22,763 notabenes with the Bible, Catechism, singing book, and grammar. He had 777 times made boys kneel on peas, 613 times on a triangular piece of wood, had made 3001 wear the jackass, and 1707 hold the rod up, not to mention various more unusual punishments he had contrived on the spur of the occasion. Of the blows with the cane, 800,000 were for Latin words; of the rod 76,000 were for texts from the Bible or verses from the singing book. He also had about 3000 expressions to scold with, two thirds of which were native to the German tongue and the remainder his invention.

[Illustration: FIG. 141. A SCHOOL WHIPPING-POST
Drawn from a picture of a five-foot whipping-post which once stood in the
floor of a school-house at Sunderland, Massachusetts. Now in the Deerfield
Museum.]

[Illustration: FIG. 142. AN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY GERMAN SCHOOL
Reproduction of an engraving by J. Mettenleiter, now in the
Kupferstichkabinet, Munich, and printed in Joh. Ferd. Schlez's.
Dorfschulen zu Langenhausen. Nuremberg, 1795.]

Another illustration of German school discipline, of many that might be cited, was the reform work of Johann Ernest Christian Haun, who was appointed, in 1783, as inspector of schools in the once famous Gotha (p. 317). Due to warfare and neglect the schools there had fallen into disrepute. Haun drove the incapable teachers from the work, and for a time restored the schools to something of their earlier importance. Among other reforms it is recorded that he forbade teachers to put irons around the boys' necks, to cover them with mud, to make them kneel on peas, or to brutally beat them. Diesterweg (R. 244) describes similar punishments as characteristic of eighteenth-century German schools. The eighteenth- century German schoolmaster shown in Fig. 142 was probably a good sample of his class.

Pedagogical writers of the time uniformly complain of the severe discipline of the schools, and the literature of the period abounds in allusions to the prevailing harshness of the school discipline. A few writers condemn, but most approve heartily of the use of the rod. "Spare the rod and spoil the child" had for long been a well-grounded pedagogical doctrine. Among many literary extracts that might be cited illustrating this belief, the following poem by the English poet Crabbe (1754-1832) is interesting. He puts the following words into the mouth of his early schoolmaster:

Students like horses on the road,
Must be well lashed before they take the load;
They may be willing for a time to run,
But you must whip them ere the work be done;
To tell a boy, that if he will improve,
His friends will praise him, and his parents love,
Is doing nothing—he has not a doubt
But they will love him, nay, applaud without;
Let no fond sire a boy's ambition trust,
To make him study, let him learn he must.

CONDITIONS SURROUNDING CHILDHOOD. It is difficult for us of today to re- create in imagination the pitiful life-conditions which surrounded children a century and a half ago. Often the lot of the children of the poor, who then constituted the great bulk of all children, was little less than slavery. Wretchedly poor, dirty, unkempt, hard-worked, beaten about, knowing strong drink early, illiterate, often vicious—their lot was a sad one. For the children of the poor there were few, if any, educational opportunities. Writing on the subject David Salmon says: [24]

The imagination of the twentieth century cannot fathom the poverty of the eighteenth. The great development of mines and manufactures, which has brought ease and independence within the reach of industrious labour everywhere, had hardly begun; employment was so scarce and intermittent, and wages were so low, that the working classes lived in hovels, dressed in rags, and were familiar with the pangs of hunger; while those who were forced to look to the rates for hovels, rags, and food sufficient to maintain a miserable life numbered a sixth of the whole population.

In the towns children were apprenticed out early in life, and for long hours of daily labor. Child welfare was almost entirely neglected, children were cuffed about and beaten at their work, juvenile delinquency was a common condition, child mortality was heavy, and ignorance was the rule. Schools generally were pay institutions or a charity, and not a birthright, and usually existed only for the middle and lower-middle classes in the population who were attendants at the churches and could afford to pay a little for the schooling given. Reading and religion were usually the only free subjects. Only in the New England Colonies, where the beginnings of town and colony school systems were evident, and in a few of the German States where state control was beginning to be exercised, was a better condition to be found.

[Illustration: FIG. 143. CHILDREN AS MINIATURE ADULTS
Children leaving school, from an eighteenth-century drawing by Saint
Aubin.]

Among the middle and upper social classes, particularly on the continent of Europe, a stiff artificiality everywhere prevailed. Children were dressed and treated as miniature adults, the normal activities of childhood were suppressed, and the natural interests and emotions of children found little opportunity for expression. Wearing powdered and braided hair, long gold-braided coats, embroidered waistcoats, cockaded hats, and swords, boys were treated more as adults than as children. Girls, too, with their long dresses, hoops, powdered hair, rouged faces, and demure manner, were trained in a, for children, most unnatural manner. [25]

The dancing master for their manners and graces, and the religious instructor to develop in them the ability to read and to go through a largely meaningless ceremonial, were the chief guides for the period of their childhood.

SCHOOL SUPPORT. No uniform plan, in any country, had as yet been evolved for even the meager support which the schools of the time received. The Latin grammar schools were in nearly all cases supported by the income from old "foundations" and from students' fees, with here and there some state aid. The new elementary vernacular schools, though, had had assigned to them few old foundations upon which to draw for maintenance, and in consequence support for elementary schools had to be built up from new sources, and this required time.

In England the Act of Conformity of 1662 (R. 166), it will be remembered (p. 324), had laid a heavy hand on the schools by driving all Dissenters from positions in them, and the Five Mile Act of 1665 had borne even more severely on the teachers in the schools of the Dissenters. Fortunately for elementary education in England, however, the English courts, in 1670, had decided in a test case that the teacher in an elementary school could not be deprived of his position by failure of the bishop to license him, if he were a nominee of the founder or the lay patron of the school. The result of this decision was that, between 1660 and 1730, 905 endowed elementary schools were founded in England, and 72 others previously founded had their endowments increased. The number continued to increase throughout the eighteenth century, and by 1842 had reached a total of 2194. These new foundations probably gave the best schooling of the time, and tended to stir the Established Church to action. Accordingly we find that during the eighteenth century the vestries of the different church parishes began the creation of parish elementary schools for the children of the poor of the parish, supporting a teacher for them out of the parish rates, and without specific legal authorization to do so. These new parish schools also contributed somewhat to the provision of elementary education, and mark the beginning of the church "voluntary schools" which were such a characteristic feature of nineteenth-century English education. We thus have, in England, endowed elementary schools, parish schools, dame schools, private-adventure schools of many types, and charity-schools, all existing side by side, and drawing such support as they could from endowment funds, parish rates, church tithes, subscriptions, and tuition fees. The support of schools by subscription lists (R. 240) was a very common proceeding. Education in England, more than in any other Protestant land, early came to be regarded as a benevolence which the State was under no obligation to support. Only workhouse schools were provided for by the general taxation of all property.

In the Netherlands and in German lands church funds, town funds, and tuition fees were the chief means of support, though here and there some prince had provided for something approaching state support for the schools of his little principality. Frederick the Great had ordered schools established generally (1763) and had decreed the compulsory attendance of children (R. 274), but he had depended largely on church funds and tuition fees (§7) for maintenance, with a proviso that the tuition of poor and orphaned children should be paid from "any funds of the church or town, that the schoolmaster may get his income" (§8). In Scotland the church parish school was the prevailing type. In France the religious societies (p. 345) provided nearly all the elementary vernacular religious education that was obtainable.

In the Dutch Provinces, in the New England Colonies, and in some of the minor German States, we find the clearest examples of the beginnings of state control and maintenance of elementary schools—something destined to grow rapidly and in the nineteenth century take over the school from the Church and maintain it as a function of the State. The Prussian kings early made grants of land and money for endowment funds and support, and state aid was ordered granted by Maria Theresa for Austria (R. 274 a), in 1774. In the New England Colonies the separation of the school from the Church, and the beginnings of state support and control of education, found perhaps their earliest and clearest exemplification. In the other Colonies the lottery was much used (R. 246) to raise funds for schools, while church tithes, subscription lists, and school societies after the English pattern also helped in many places to start and support a school or schools.

Only by some such means was it possible in the eighteenth century that the children of the poor could ever enjoy any opportunities for education. The parents of the poor children, themselves uneducated, could hardly be expected to provide what they had never come to appreciate themselves. On the other hand, few of the well-to-do classes felt under any obligation to provide education for children not their own. There was as yet no realization that the diffusion of education contributed to the welfare of the State, or that the ignorance of the masses might be in any way a public peril. This attitude is well shown for England by the fact that not a single law relating to the education of the people, aside from workhouse schools, was enacted by Parliament during the whole of the eighteenth century. The same was true of France until the coming of the Revolution. It is to a few of the German States and to the American Colonies that we must turn for the beginnings of legislation directing school support. This we shall describe more in detail in later chapters.

THE LATIN SECONDARY SCHOOL. The great progress made in education during the eighteenth century, nevertheless, was in elementary education. Concerning the secondary schools and the universities there is little to add to what has previously been said. During this century the secondary school, outside of German lands, remained largely stationary. Having become formal and lifeless in its teaching (p. 283), and in England and France crushed by religious-uniformity legislation, the Latin grammar school of England and the surviving colleges in France practically ceased to exert any influence on the national life. The Jesuit schools, which once had afforded the best secondary education in Europe, had so declined in usefulness everywhere that they were about to be driven from all lands. The Act of Conformity of 1662 (R. 166) had dealt the grammar schools of England a heavy blow, and the eighteenth century found them in a most wretched condition, with few scholars, and their endowments shamefully abused. The Law of 1662, says Montmorency, "involved such a peering into the lives of schoolmasters, such a course of inquisitorial folly, that the position became intolerable. Men would not become schoolmasters…. Education had no meaning when none but political and religious hypocrites were allowed to teach…. National education was destroyed." and the grammar schools of England were "practically withdrawn during more than two centuries (1662-1870) from the national life." [26]

In German lands the old Latin schools continued largely unchanged until near the middle of the eighteenth century, with Latin, taught as it had been for a century or more, as the chief subject of study. Shortly after the coming of Frederick the Great to the throne (1740) the Latin schools of Prussia, and after them the Latin schools in other German States, were reorganized and given a new life. The influence of Francke's school at Halle (p. 418), and the new types of teaching developed there and by his followers elsewhere, began to be felt. German, French, and mathematics were given recognition, and some science work was here and there introduced. Above all, though, Greek now attained to the place of first importance in the reorganized Latin schools.

It was not until after 1740 that the German people awakened to the possibility of an independent national life. Then, under the new impulse toward nationality, French influence and manners were thrown off, German literature attained its Golden Age, the Ritterakademieen (p. 405) were discarded, and a number of the German Principalities and States revised their school regulations and erected, out of the old Latin schools, a series of humanistic gymnasia in which the study of Greek life and culture occupied the foremost place. New methods in classical study were thought out and applied, and a new pedagogical purpose—culture and discipline—was given to the regenerated Latin schools. A new Renaissance, in a way, took place in German lands, [27] and a knowledge of Greek was proclaimed by German university and gymnasial teachers as indispensable to a liberal education with an earnestness of conviction not exceeded by Battista Guarino (p. 268) four centuries before. To know Greek and to have some familiarity with Greek literature and history now came to be regarded as necessary to the highest culture, [28] and a pedagogical theory for such study was erected, based on the discipline of the mind, [29] which dominated the German classical school throughout the entire nineteenth century. It was in the eighteenth century also that the German States began the development of the scientific secondary school (Realschule), see p. 420, as described in a preceding chapter.

[Illustration: FIG. 144. A PENNSYLVANIA ACADEMY
York Academy, York, Pennsylvania, founded by the Protestant Episcopal
Church, in 1787.]

RISE OF THE ACADEMY IN AMERICA. As we have seen (p. 361), the English Latin grammar school was early (1635) carried to New England, and set up there and elsewhere in the Colonies, but after the close of the seventeenth century its continued maintenance was something of a struggle. Particularly in the central and southern colonies, where commercial demands early made themselves felt, the tendency was to teach more practical subjects. This tendency led to the evolution, about the middle of the eighteenth century, of the distinctively American Academy, with a more practical curriculum, and by the close of the century it was rapidly superseding the older Latin grammar school. Franklin's Academy at Philadelphia, which began instruction in 1751, and which later evolved into the University of Pennsylvania, was probably the first American Academy. The first in Massachusetts was founded in 1761, and by 1800 there were seventeen in Massachusetts alone. The great period of academy development was the first half of the nineteenth century. The Phillips Academy, at Andover, Massachusetts, founded in 1788, reveals clearly the newer purpose of these American secondary schools. The foundation grant of this school gives the purpose to be:

to lay the foundation of a public free school or ACADEMY for the purposes of instructing Youth, not only in English and Latin Grammar, Writing, Arithmetic, and those Sciences wherein they are commonly taught; but more especially to learn them the GREAT END AND REAL BUSINESS OF LIVING … it is again declared that the first and principle object of this Institution is the promotion of TRUE PIETY and VIRTUE; the second, instruction in the English, Latin, and Greek Languages, together with Writing, Arithmetic, Music, and the Art of Speaking; the third, practical Geometry, Logic, and Geography; and the fourth, such other liberal Arts and Sciences or Languages, as opportunity and ability may hereafter admit, and as the TRUSTEES shall direct.

Though still deeply religious, these new schools usually were free from denominationalism. Though retaining the study of Latin, they made most of new subjects of more practical value. A study of real things rather than words about things, and a new emphasis on native English and on science were prominent features of their work. They were also usually open to girls, as well as boys,—an innovation in secondary education before almost wholly unknown. Many were organized later for girls only. These institutions were the precursors of the American public high school, itself a type of the most democratic institution for secondary education the world has ever known.

THE UNIVERSITIES. The condition of the universities by the middle of the eighteenth century we traced in the preceding chapter. They had lost their earlier importance as institutions of learning, but in a few places the sciences were slowly gaining a foothold, and in German lands we noted the appearance of the first two modern universities—institutions destined deeply to influence subsequent university development, as we shall point out in a later chapter.

END OF THE TRANSITION PERIOD. We have now reached, in our study of the history of educational progress, the end of the transition period which marked the change in thinking from mediaeval to modern attitudes. The period was ushered in with the beginnings of the Revival of Learning in Italy in the fourteenth century, and it may fittingly close about the middle of the eighteenth.

We now stand on the threshold of a new era in world history. The same questioning spirit that animated the scholars of the Revival of Learning, now full-grown and become bold and self-confident, is about to be applied to affairs of politics and government, and we are soon to see absolutism and mediaeval attitudes in both Church and State questioned and overthrown. New political theories are to be advanced, and the divine right of the people is to be asserted and established in England, the American Colonies, and in France, and ultimately, early in the twentieth century, we are to witness the final overthrow of the divine-right-of- kings idea and a world-wide sweep of the democratic spirit. A new human and political theory as to education is to be evolved; the school is to be taken over from the Church, vastly expanded in scope, and made a constructive instrument of the State; and the wonderful nineteenth century is to witness a degree of human, scientific, political, and educational progress not seen before in all the days from the time of the Crusades to the opening of the nineteenth century. It is to this wonderful new era in world history that we now turn.