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

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

IV. SOCIOLOGICAL

A NEW ESTIMATE AS TO THE VALUE OF CHILD LIFE. As we saw in chapter XVIII, which described the opportunities for and the kind of schooling developed up to the middle of the eighteenth century, but little of what may be called formal education had been provided up to then for the great mass of children, even in the most progressive nations. We also noted the extreme brutality of the school. Such was the history of childhood, so far as it may be said to have had a history at all, up to the rise of the great humanitarian movement early in the nineteenth century. [20] Neglect, abuse, mutilation, excessive labor, heavy punishments, and often virtual slavery awaited children everywhere up to recent times. The sufferings of childhood at home were added to by others in the school (p. 455) for such as frequented these institutions.

After the coming of mills and manufacturing the lot of children became, for a time, worse than before. The demand for cheap labor led to the apprenticing of children to the factories to tend machines, instead of to a master to learn a trade, and there they became virtual slaves and their treatment was most inhuman. [21] Conditions were worse in England than elsewhere, not because the English were more brutal than the French or the Germans, but because the Industrial Revolution began earlier in England and before the rise of humanitarian influences. England was a manufacturing nation decades before France, and longer still before Germany. By the time Germany had changed from an agricultural to a manufacturing nation (after 1871), the new humanitarianism and new economic conditions had placed a new value on child life and child welfare.

Since about 1850 an entirely new estimate has come to be placed on the importance of national attention to child welfare, though the beginnings of the change date back much earlier. As we have seen (p. 325), England early began to care for the children of its poor. In the Poor-Relief and Apprenticeship Law of 1601 (R. 174) England organized into law the growing practice of a century (p. 326) and laid the basis for much future work of importance. In this legislation, as we have seen, the foundations of the Massachusetts school law of 1642 were laid. In the Virginia laws of 1643 and 1646 (R. 200 a) and the Massachusetts law of 1660, providing for the apprenticeship of orphans and homeless children, the beginnings of child- welfare work in the American Colonies were made.

Many of the Catholic religious orders in Europe had for long cared for and brought up poor and neglected children, and in 1729 the first private orphanage in the new world was established by the Ursulines (p. 346) in New Orleans. The first public orphanage in America was established in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1790; the first in England at Birmingham, in 1817, and in 1824 the New York House of Refuge was founded. The latter was the forerunner of the juvenile reformatory institutions established later by practically all of the American States. These have developed chiefly since 1850. To-day most of the American States and governments in many other lands also provide state homes for orphan and neglected children, where they are clothed, fed, cared for, educated, and trained for some useful employment.

CHILD-LABOR LEGISLATION. One of the best evidences of the new nineteenth- century humanitarianism is to be found in the large amount of child-labor legislation which arose, largely after 1850, and which has been particularly prominent since 1900.

Under the earlier agricultural conditions and the restricted demand for education for ordinary life needs, child labor was not especially harmful, as most of it was out of doors and under reasonably good health conditions. With the coming of the factory system, the rise of cities and the city congestion of population, and other evils connected with the Industrial Revolution, the whole situation was changed. Humanitarians now began to demand legislation to restrict the evils that had arisen. This demand arose earliest in England, and resulted in the earliest legislation there.

The year 1802 is important in the history of child-welfare work for the enactment, by the English Parliament, of the first law to regulate the employment of children in factories. This was known as the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act (R. 373). This Act, though largely ineffectual at the time, ordered important reforms which aroused public opinion and which later bore important fruit. By it the employment of work-house orphans was limited; it forbade the labor of children under twelve, for more than twelve hours a day; provided that night labor of children should be discontinued, after 1804; ordered that the children so employed must be taught reading and writing and ciphering, be instructed in religion one hour a week, be taken to church every Sunday, and be given one new suit of clothes a year; ordered separate sleeping apartments for the two sexes, and not over two children to a bed; and provided for the registration and inspection of factories. This law represents the beginnings of modern child-labor legislation. It was 1843 before any further child-labor legislation of importance was enacted, and 1878 before a comprehensive child-labor bill was finally passed. In the United States the first laws regulating the employment of children and providing for their school attendance were enacted by Rhode Island in 1840, and Massachusetts in 1842. Factory legislation in other countries has been a product of more recent forces and times.

To-day important child-labor legislation has been enacted by all progressive nations, and the leading world nations have taken advanced ground on the question. All recent thinking is opposed to children engaging in productive labor. With the rise of organized labor, and the extension of the suffrage to the laboring man, he has joined the humanitarians in opposition to his children being permitted to labor. From an economic point of view also, all recent studies have shown the unprofitableness of child labor and the large money-value, under present industrial conditions, of a good education. As a result of much agitation and the spread of popular education, it has at last come to be a generally accepted principle (R. 374) that it is better for children and better for society that they should remain in school until they are at least fourteen years of age, and be specially trained for some useful type of work. Shown to be economically unprofitable, and for long morally indefensible, child labor is now rapidly being superseded by suitable education and the vocational training and guidance of youth in all progressive nations.

COMPULSORY SCHOOL-ATTENDANCE LEGISLATION. The natural corollary of the taxation of the wealth of the State to educate the children of the State, and the prohibition of children to labor, is the compulsion of children to attend school that they may receive the instruction and training which the State has deemed it wise to tax its citizens to provide.

Except in the German States, compulsory education is a relatively recent idea, though in its origins it is a child of the Protestant Reformation theory as to education for salvation. Luther and his followers had stood for the education of all, supported by (R. 156) and enforced by (R. 158) the State. This idea of the education of all to read the Bible took deep root, as we have seen, with both Lutherans and Calvinists. In 1619 the little Duchy of Weimar made the school attendance of all children, six to twelve years of age, compulsory, and the same idea was instituted in Gotha by Duke Ernest (p. 317), in 1642; the same year that the Massachusetts General Court ordered the Selectmen of the towns to ascertain if parents and the masters of apprentices (R. 190) were training their children "in learning and labor" and "to read and understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of the country." This latter law is remarkable in that, for the first time in the English-speaking world, a legislative body representing the State ordered that all children should be taught to read. Five years later (1647) the Massachusetts Court ordered the establishment of schools (R. 191) better to enforce the compulsion, and thus laid the foundations upon which the American public-school systems have since been built. In Holland, the Synod of Dort (1618) had tried to institute the idea of compulsory education (R. 176), and in 1646 the Scotch Parliament had ordered the compulsory establishment of schools (R. 179).

In German lands the compulsory-attendance idea took deep root, and in consequence the Germans were the first important modern nation to enforce, thoroughly, the education of all. In 1717 King Frederick William I issued (p. 555) the first compulsory-education law for Prussia, ordering that "hereafter wherever there are schools in the place the parents shall be obliged, under severe penalties, to send their children to school,… daily in winter, but in summer at least twice a week." He further ordered that the fees for the poor were to be paid "from the community's funds." Finally Frederick the Great organized the earlier procedure into comprehensive codes, and made (1763, R. 274, Section 10; 1765, R. 275 d) detailed provisions relating to the compulsion to attend the schools. In the Code of 1794 (p. 565) the final legislative step was taken when it was ordered that "the instruction in school must be continued until the child is found to possess the knowledge necessary to every rational being." By the middle of the eighteenth century the basis was clearly laid in Prussia for that enforcement of the compulsion to attend schools which, by the middle of the nineteenth century, had become such a notable characteristic of all German education. The same compulsory idea early took deep root among the Scandinavian peoples. In consequence the lowest illiteracy in Europe, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was to be found (see map, p. 714) among the Finns, Swedes, Norwegians, Danes, and Germans.

The compulsory-attendance idea died out in America, in the Netherlands, and in part in Scotland. In England and in the Anglican Colonies in America it never took root. In France the idea awaited the work of the National Convention, which (1792) ordered three years of education compulsory for all. War and the lack of interest of Napoleon in primary education caused the requirement, however, to become a dead letter. The Law of 1833 provided for but did not enforce it, and real compulsory education in France did not come until 1882. In England the compulsory idea received but little attention until after 1870, met with much opposition, and only recently have comprehensive reforms been provided. In the United States the new beginnings of compulsory-attendance legislation date from the Rhode Island child-labor law of 1840, and the first modern compulsory-attendance law enacted by Massachusetts, in 1852. By 1885, fourteen American States and six Territories had enacted some form of compulsory-attendance law. Since 1900 there has been a general revision of American state legislation on the subject, with a view to increasing and the better enforcement of the compulsory-attendance requirements, and with a general demand that the National Congress should enact a national child- labor law.

As a result of this legislation the labor of young children has been greatly restricted; work in many industries has been prohibited entirely, because of the danger to life and health; compulsory education has been extended in a majority of the American States to cover the full school year; poverty, or dependent parents, in many States no longer serves as an excuse for non-attendance; often those having physical or mental defects also are included in the compulsion to attend, if their wants can be provided for; the school census has been changed so as to aid in the location of children of compulsory school-attendance age; and special officers have been authorized or ordered appointed to assist school authorities in enforcing the compulsory-attendance and child-labor laws. Having taxed their citizens to provide schools, the different States now require children to attend and partake of the advantages provided. The schools, too, have made a close study of retarded pupils, because of the close connection found to exist between retardation in school and truancy and juvenile delinquency.

ONE RESULT OF THIS LEGISLATION. One of the results of all this legislation has been to throw, during the past quarter of a century, an entirely new burden on schools everywhere. Such legislation has brought into the schools not only the truant and the incorrigible, who under former conditions either left early or were expelled, but also many children who have no aptitude for book learning, and many of inferior mental qualities who do not profit by ordinary classroom procedure. Still more, they have brought into the school the crippled, tubercular, deaf, epileptic, and blind, as well as the sick, needy, and physically unfit. By steadily raising the age at which children may leave school, from ten or twelve up to fourteen and sixteen, schools everywhere have come to contain many children who, having no natural aptitude for study, would at once, unless specially handled, become a nuisance in the school and tend to demoralize schoolroom procedure. These laws have thrown upon the school a new burden in the form of public expectancy for results, whereas a compulsory- education law cannot create capacity to profit from education. Under the earlier educational conditions the school, unable to handle or educate such children, dealt with them much as the Church of the time dealt with religious delinquents. It simply expelled them or let them drop from school, and no longer concerned itself about them. To-day the public expects the school to retain and get results with them. Consequently, within the past twenty-five years the whole attitude of the school toward such children has undergone a change; many different kinds of classes and courses, that might serve better to handle them, have been introduced; and an attempt has been made to salvage them and turn back to society as many of them as possible, trained for some form of social and personal usefulness.

THE EDUCATION OF DEFECTIVES. Another nineteenth-century expansion of state education has come in the provision now generally made for the education of defectives. To-day the state school systems of Christian nations generally make some provision for state institutional care, and often for local classes as well, for the training of children who belong to the seriously defective classes of society. This work is almost entirely a product of the new humanitarianism of modern times. Excepting the education of the deaf, seriously begun a little earlier, all effective work dates from the first half of the nineteenth century. At first the feasibility of all such instruction was doubted, and the work generally was commenced privately. Out of successes thus achieved, public institutions have been built up to carry on, on a large scale, what was begun privately on a small scale. It is now felt to be better for the State, as well as for the unfortunates themselves, that they be cared for and educated, as suitably and well as possible, for self-respect, self- support, and some form of social and vocational usefulness. In consequence, the compulsory-attendance laws of the leading world States to-day require that defectives, between certain ages at least, be sent to a state institution or be enrolled in a public-school class specialized for their training.

[Illustration: FIG. 235. ABBÉ DE L'ÉPÉE (1712-89)]

BEGINNINGS OF THE WORK. Up to the middle of the eighteenth century a number of private efforts at the education of the deaf are on record, all dating however from the pioneer work of a Spanish Benedictine, in 1578. In 1760 a new era in the education of the deaf was begun when Abbé de l'Épée opened a school at Paris for the oral instruction of poor deaf mutes, and Thomas Braidwood (1715-1806) began similar work at Edinburgh. A few years later (1778) a third school was opened at Leipzig. This last was established under the patronage of the Elector of Saxony, and was the first school of its kind in the world to receive government recognition. The Paris school was taken over as a state institution by the Constituent Assembly, in 1791. In England the instruction of the deaf remained a private and a family monopoly until 1819. In 1817 the first school in America was opened, at Hartford, Connecticut, by the Reverend Thomas H. Gallaudet, and Massachusetts, in 1819, sent the first pupils paid for at state expense to this institution. In 1823 Kentucky created the first state school for the training of the deaf established in the new world, and Ohio the second, in 1827.

[Illustration: FIG. 236. REV. THOMAS H. GALLAUDET TEACHING THE DEAF AND
DUMB
From a bas-relief on the monument of Gallaudet, erected by the deaf and
dumb of the United States, in the grounds of the American Asylum, at
Hartford, Connecticut.]

The education of the blind began in France, in 1784; England, in 1791; Austria, in 1804; Prussia, in 1806; Holland, in 1808; Sweden, in 1810; Denmark, in 1811; Scotland, in 1812; in Boston and New York, in 1832; and in Philadelphia, in 1833. All were private institutions, and general interest in the education of the blind was awakened later by exhibiting the pupils trained. The first book for the blind was printed in Paris, in 1786. The first kindergarten for the blind was established in Germany, in 1861; the first school for the colored blind, by North Carolina, in 1869.

[Illustration: FIG. 237. EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS MAINTAINED BY THE STATE
As state institutions, other than public schools.]

Before the nineteenth century the feeble-minded and idiotic were the laughing-stock of society, and no one thought of being able to do anything for them. In 1811 Napoleon ordered a census of such individuals, and in 1816 the first school for their training was opened at Salzburg, Austria. The school was unsuccessful, and closed in 1835. The real beginning of the training of the feeble-minded was made in France, by Edouard Séguin, "The Apostle of the Idiot," in 1837, when he began a life-long study of such defectives. By 1845 three or four institutions had been opened in Switzerland and Great Britain for their study and training, and for a time an attempt was made to effect cures. Gallaudet had tried to educate such children at Hartford, about 1820, and a class for idiots was established at the Blind Asylum in Boston, in 1848. The interest thus aroused led to the creation of the Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Youth, in 1851, the first institution of its kind in the United States. In 1867 the first city school class to train children of low-grade intelligence was organized in Germany, and all the larger cities of Germany later organized such special classes. Norway followed with a similar city organization, in 1874; and England, Switzerland, and Austria, about 1892. The first American city to organize such classes was Providence, Rhode Island, in 1893. Since that time special classes for children of low-grade mentality have become a common feature of the large city school systems in most American cities.

In 1832 the first attempt to educate crippled children, as such, was made in Munich. The model school in Europe for the education of cripples was established in Copenhagen, in 1872. The work was begun privately in New York City, in 1861, and first publicly in Chicago, in 1899. The London School Board first began such classes in England, in 1898.

Dependents, orphans, children of soldiers and sailors, and incorrigibles of various classes represent others for whom modern States have now provided special state institutions. To-day a modern State finds it necessary to provide a number of such specialized institutions, or to make arrangements with neighboring States for the care of its dependents, if it is to meet what have come to be recognized as its humanitarian educational duties. The more important of these special state institutions are shown in the diagram given in Fig. 237.

Public playgrounds and play directors, vacation schools, juvenile courts, disciplinary classes, parental schools, classes for mothers, visiting home-teachers and nurses, and child-welfare societies and officers, are other means for caring for child life and child welfare which have all been begun within the past half-century. The significance of these additions lies chiefly in that the history of the attitude of nations toward their child life is the history of the rise of humanitarianism, altruism, justice, order, morality, and civilization itself.

THE EDUCATION OF SUPERIOR CHILDREN. All the work described above and relating to the work of defectives, delinquents, and children for some reason in need of special attention and care has been for those who represent the less capable and on the whole less useful members of society—the ones from whom society may expect the least. They are at the same time the most costly wards of the State.

Wholly within the second decade of the present century, and largely as a result of the work of the French psychologist Alfred Binet (1857-1911) we are now able to sort out, for special attention, a new class of what are known as superior, or gifted children, and to the education of these special attention is to-day here and there beginning to be directed. Educationally, it is an attempt to do for democratic forms of national organization what a two-class school system does for monarchical forms, but to select intellectual capacity from the whole mass of the people, rather than from a selected class or caste. We know now that the number of children of superior ability is approximately as large as the number of the feeble in mind, and also that the future of democratic governments hinges largely upon the proper education and utilization of these superior children. One child of superior intellectual capacity, educated so as to utilize his talents, may confer greater benefits upon mankind, and be educationally far more important, than a thousand of the feeble-minded children upon whom we have recently come to put so much educational effort and expense. Questions relating to the training of leaders for democracy's service attain new significance in terms of the recent ability to measure and grade intelligence, as also do questions relating to grading, classification in school, choice of studies, rate of advancement, and the vocational guidance of children in school.

Net Average Worth of a Person
Age Worth
0 $90
5 950
10 2000
20 4000
30 4100
40 3650
50 2900
60 1650
70 15
80 -700
(Calculations by Dr. William Farr, formerly Registrar of Vital
Statistics for Great Britain. Based on pre-war values.)

THE NEW INTEREST IN HEALTH. Another new expansion of the educational service which has come in since the middle of the nineteenth century, and which has recently grown to be one of large significance, is work in the medical inspection of schools, the supervision of the health of pupils, and the new instruction in preventive hygiene. This is a product of the scientific and social and industrial revolutions which the nineteenth century brought, rather than of humanitarian influences, and represents an application of newly discovered scientific knowledge to health work among children. Its basis is economic, though its results are largely physical and educational and social (R. 375).

The discovery and isolation of bacteria; the vast amount of new knowledge which has come to us as to the transmission and possibilities for the elimination of many diseases; the spread of information as to sanitary science and preventive medicine; the change in emphasis in medical practice, from curative to preventive and remedial; the closer crowding together of all classes of people in cities; the change of habits for many from life in the open to life in the factory, shop, and apartment; and the growing realization of the economic value to the nation of its manhood and womanhood; have all alike combined with modern humanitarianism and applied Christianity to make progressive nations take a new interest in child health and proper child development. European nations have so far done much more in school health work than has the United States, though a very commendable beginning has been made here.

MEDICAL INSPECTION AND HEALTH SUPERVISION. Medical inspection of schools began in France, in 1837, though genuine medical inspection, in a modern sense, was not begun in France until 1879. The pioneer country for real work was Sweden, where health officers were assigned to each large school as early as 1868. Norway made such appointments optional in 1885, and obligatory in 1891. Belgium began the work in 1874. Tests of eyesight were begun in Dresden in 1867. Frankfort-on-Main appointed the first German school physician in 1888. England first employed school nurses in 1887; and, in 1907, following the revelations as to low physical vitality growing out of the Boer War, adopted a mandatory medical-inspection and health-development act applying to England and Wales, and the year following Scotland did the same. Argentine and Chili both instituted such service in 1888, and Japan made medical inspection compulsory and universal in 1898.

In the United States the work was begun voluntarily in Boston, in 1894, following a series of epidemics. Chicago organized medical inspection in 1895, New York City in 1897, and Philadelphia in 1898. From these larger cities the idea spread to the smaller ones, at first slowly, and then very rapidly. The first school nurse in the United States was employed in New York City, in 1902, and the idea at once proved to be of great value. In 1906 Massachusetts adopted the first state medical inspection law. In 1912 Minnesota organized the first "State Division of Health Supervision of Schools" in the United States, and this plan has since been followed by other States.

From mere medical inspection to detect contagious diseases, in which the movement everywhere began, it was next extended to tests for eyesight and hearing, to be made by teachers or physicians, and has since been enlarged to include physical examinations to detect hidden diseases and a constructive health-program for the schools. The work has now come to include eye, ear, nose, throat, and teeth, as well as general physical examinations; the supervision of the teaching of hygiene in the schools, and to a certain extent the physical training and playground activities; and a constructive program for the development of the health and physical welfare of all children. All this represents a further extension of the public-education idea.