The interest awakened in public education led also to the passage of laws for the certification of teachers. Often legislation of this type indirectly describes the character of the curriculum, for, in general, the teacher was examined in those subjects which he was expected to teach. At an early time, the chief qualifications for teachers seemed to be “good morals” and “competency,” but with the expansion of the curriculum, there were added, in many cases, specifically named subjects.[21]
Thus a Connecticut law of 1841 provided that “the board of visitors [of the schools] ... shall ... examine all candidates for teachers ... and shall give to these persons with whose moral character, literary attainments, and ability to teach, they are satisfied, a certificate, setting forth the branches he or she is found capable of teaching; provided that no certificate shall be given to any person not found qualified to teach reading, writing, arithmetic, and grammar, thoroughly, and the rudiments of geography and history.”[22] In 1857 in the Revisions of their laws, Maine and Rhode Island specified a knowledge of history as a necessary qualification for a teacher.[23] Illinois, in her Revised Statutes of 1845, included a law which made it the duty of the school commissioner to examine “any persons proposing to teach a common school, in any township in his county,” on the candidate’s ability to teach the usual branches, including “the history of the United States.”[24]
In 1846, during the period of her earliest legislation, Iowa prescribed the history of the United States as a requirement for a teacher’s license. This state is an example of those states which have passed little legislation defining the content of the curriculum, but have secured the same end by specifying subjects for the examination of their teachers. The law appeared again in the Code of 1851, but history was dropped from the required list of subjects in 1858.[25] Legislation in Nebraska took much the same course as had that in Iowa. In 1855, the territorial laws placed United States history among the subjects required in a teacher’s examination, but the laws of 1856 ignored it as a prescribed subject.[26]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Shurtleff, N. B., ed., Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, 5 v. (Boston, 1853), Vol. II, p. 6.
[2] Ibid., p. 203. Connecticut in 1650 expressed a similar purpose for the establishment of her schools. The Code of Connecticut, 1650, p. 90.
[3] Laws of the Colony of New York, 1720-1737, Vol. II, p. 813.
[4] “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 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 public schools and grammar schools in towns; ...” Thorpe, Francis Newton, editor, The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and other Organic Laws of the States, Territories, Now or Heretofore Forming the United States of America. 7 v. (Government Printing Office, Washington, 1909), Vol. II, p. 1907. Similar statements were placed in the constitutions of neighboring New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. Indiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Kansas and North Dakota have likewise pinned their faith to “knowledge and learning” as an agent for democratizing the government as well as for the encouragement of “the principles of humanity, industry, and morality.” Ibid., Vol. IV, p. 2487; Vol. II, pp. 1069, 1086; Vol. I, pp. 283, 322, 353; Vol. IV, p. 2080; p. 2212; Vol. VI, p. 3233; p. 3373; p. 3469; Vol. II, p. 1232; Vol. V, p. 2872. In constitutions adopted at a much later time the same purposes of education are often expressed. In 1789 a Massachusetts law charged “instructors of youth” that they should “take diligent care, and to exert their best endeavors to impress on the minds of children and youth committed to their care and instruction, the principles of piety, justice, and a sacred regard to truth, love to their country, humanity, and universal benevolence, sobriety, industry, and frugality, chastity, moderation and temperance, and those other virtues which are the ornament of human society, and the basis upon which the Republican Constitution is structured. And it shall be the duty of such instructors to endeavor to lead those under their care (as their ages and capacities will admit) into a particular understanding of the tendency of the above mentioned virtues, to preserve and perfect a Republican Constitution, and to secure the blessings of liberty, as well as to promote their future happiness; and the tendency of the opposite vices to slavery and ruin.” Statutes of Massachusetts, 1780-1807, sec. 4, Vol. I, pp. 470-471. On the statute books in 1823. Also Statutes, 1826, ch. 143, p. 180; also General Statutes, 1860, ch. 38, sec. 10, p. 216; also Public Statutes, 1882, ch. 44, sec. 16. This law became the source of many similar in character.
[5] In 1784, Jefferson took occasion to declare, “In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve. Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories; and to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree.” Jefferson, Thomas, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson. Paul Leicester Ford, ed. (New York, 1894), Vol. III, p. 254.
[6] See footnote 4 for the Massachusetts law of 1789. Statutes of New Hampshire, 1830, title XCII, ch. 1, sec. 8, p. 431; also Compiled Statutes, 1853, sec. 20, p. 179. Statutes of Maine, 1821, Vol. II, sec. 2, p. 504, also Revised Statutes, 1840, ch. 17, p. 170. Supplement to Revised Statutes, 1885-1895, ch. 11, sec. 91; Acts and Resolves, 1917, ch. 228, p. 263. Revised Code of Mississippi, 1824, ch. 82, sec. 14, p. 407; Ibid., 1840, ch. 9, sec. 12, p. 124. Statutes of Indiana, 1806, p. 17. Revised Statutes of Illinois, 1833, p. 556.