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

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

13. Just what kind of schools did the Act of 1870 (304) make provision for?

14. Have we ever had such religious requirements as those so long maintained (305) at the English universities?

SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

Allen, W. O. B. and McClure, E. Two Hundred Years; History of
S.P.C.K. 1698-1898.
Adams, Francis. History of the Elementary School Contest in
England.
* Binns, H. B. A Century of Education, 1808-1908, History of the
British and Foreign School Society.
* Birchenough, C. History of Elementary Education in England and Wales
since 1800.
Escott, T. H. S. Social Transformations of the Victorian Era.
Harris, J. H. Robert Raikes; the Man and his Work.
* Holman, H. English National Education.
* Montmorency, J. E. G. de. The Progress of Education in England.
* Montmorency, J. E. G. de. State Intervention in English Education to
1833.
* Salmon, David. Joseph Lancaster.

CHAPTER XXV

AWAKENING AN EDUCATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE UNITED STATES

I. EARLY NATIONAL ATTITUDES AND INTERESTS

THE AMERICAN PROBLEM. The beginnings of state educational organization in the United States present quite a different history from that traced for Prussia, France, Italy, or England. While the parochial school existed in the Central Colonies, and in time had to be subordinated to state ends; and while the idea of education as a charity had been introduced into all the Anglican Colonies, and later had to be stamped out; the problem of educational organization in America was not, as in Europe, one of bringing church schools and old educational foundations into harmonious working relations with the new state school systems set up. Instead the old educational foundations were easily transformed to adapt them to the new conditions, while only in the Central Colonies did the religious-charity conception of education give any particular trouble. The American educational problem was essentially that of first awakening, in a new land, a consciousness of need for general education; and second, that of developing a willingness to pay for what it finally came to be deemed desirable to provide.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, as we have pointed out (p. 438), the earlier religious interests in America had clearly begun to wane. In the New England Colonies the school of the civil town had largely replaced the earlier religious school. In the Middle Colonies many of the parochial schools had died out. In the Southern Colonies, where the classes in society and negro slavery made common schools impossible, and the lack of city life and manufacturing made them seem largely unnecessary, the common school had tended to disappear. Even in New England, where the Calvinistic conception of the importance of education had most firmly established the idea of school support, the eighteenth century witnessed a constant struggle to prevent the dying-out of that which an earlier generation had deemed it important to create.

EFFECT OF THE WAR ON EDUCATION. The effect of the American War for Independence, on all types of schools, was disastrous. The growing troubles with the mother country had, for more than a decade previous to the opening of hostilities, tended to concentrate attention on other matters than schooling. Political discussion and agitation had largely monopolized the thinking of the time.