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

by Ellwood Patterson Cubberley

[Illustration: FIG. 212. THE SCHOOL SYSTEM OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC]

In Chili, the constitution of 1833 declared education to be of supreme importance, and a normal school was established in Santiago, as early as 1840. The basic law for the organization of a state system of primary instruction, however, dates from 1860, and the law organizing a state system of secondary and higher education from 1872.

In Peru, an educational reform movement was inaugurated in 1876, but the war with Chili (1879-84) checked all progress. In 1896 an Educational Commission was appointed to visit the United States and Europe, and the law of 1901 marked the creation of a ministry for education and the real beginnings of a state school system.

The Brazilian constitution of 1824 left education to the several States (twenty and one Federal District), and a permissive law of 1827 allowed the different States to establish schools. It was not until 1854, however, that public schools were organized in the Federal District, and these mark the real beginning of state education in Brazil. Since then the establishment of state schools has gradually extended to the coast States, and inland with the building of railway lines and the opening-up of the interior to outside influences. The basis for state-controlled education has now been laid in all the States, but the attendance at the schools as yet is small. [3]

In some of the other South American States, such as Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, but little progress in extending state-controlled schools has as yet been made, and the training of the young is still left largely to private effort, the Church, and the religious orders. The illiteracy in all the South American States is still high, in part due to the large native populations, and much remains to be done before education becomes general there. The state-control idea, though, has been definitely established in principle in these countries. With the establishment of stable governments, the building of railroads and steamship lines, and the development of an important international commerce—events which there have characterized the first two decades of the twentieth century—early and important progress in state educational organization and in the extension of educational advantages may be expected.

THE STATE-SCHOOL IDEA IN EASTERN ASIA. In 1854 Admiral Perry effected the treaty of friendship with Japan which virtually opened that nation to the influences of western civilization, and one of the most wonderful transformations of a people recorded in history soon began. In 1867 a new Mikado came to the throne, and in 1868 the small military class, which had ruled the nation for some seven hundred years, gave up their power to the new ruler. A new era in Japan, known as the Meiji, dates from this event. In 1871 the centuries-old feudal system was abolished, and all classes in the State were declared equal before the law. This same year the first newspaper in Japan was begun. In 1872 the first educational code for the nation was promulgated by the Mikado. This ordered the general establishment of schools, the compulsory education of the people (R. 334 a), and the equality of all classes in educational matters. Students were now sent abroad, especially to Germany and the United States; foreign teachers were imported; an American normal-school teacher was placed in charge of the newly opened state normal school; the American class method of instruction was introduced; schoolbooks and teaching apparatus were prepared, after American models; middle schools were organized in the towns; higher schools were opened in the cities; and the old Academy of Foreign Languages was evolved (1877) into the University of Tokyo. In 1884 the study of English was introduced into the courses of the public schools. In 1889 a form of constitution was granted to the people, and a parliament established. [4]

[Illustration: FIG. 213. THE JAPANESE TWO-CLASS SCHOOL SYSTEM.]

Adapting the continental European idea of a two-class school system to the peculiar needs of the nation, the Japanese have worked out, during the past half-century, a type of state-controlled school system which has been well adapted to their national needs. [5] Instruction in national morality, based on the ancestral virtues, brotherly affection, and loyalty to the constitution and the ruling class (R. 334 b-c), has been well worked out in their schools. Though the government has remained largely autocratic in form, the Japanese have, however, retained throughout all their educational development the fundamental democratic principle enunciated in the Preamble to the Educational Code of 1872 (R. 334 a), viz., that every one without distinction of class or sex shall receive primary education at least, and that the opportunity for higher education shall be open to all children. So completely has the education of the people been conceived of as one of the most important functions of the State that all education has been placed under a centralized state control, with a Cabinet Minister in charge of all administrative matters connected with the education of the nation.

[Illustration: FIG. 214. THE CHINESE EDUCATIONAL LADDER]

Since near the end of the nineteenth century what promises to be an even more wonderful transformation of a people-political, social, scientific, and industrial—has been taking place in China (R. 335). A much more democratic type of national school system than that of the Japanese has been worked out, and this the new (1912) Republic of China is rapidly extending in the provinces, and making education a very important function of the new democratic national life. [6] In the beginning, when displacing the centuries-old Confucian educational system, [7] the Chinese adopted Japanese ideas and organized their schools (1905) somewhat after the Japanese model. Later on, responding to the influence of many American- educated Chinese and to the more democratic impulses of the Chinese people, the new government established by the Republic of 1912 changed the school system at first established so as to make it in type more like the American educational ladder. The new Chinese school system is shown in the drawing on page 721. The university instruction is modern and excellent, and the addition of the cultural and scientific knowledge worked out in western Europe to the intellectual qualities of this capable people can hardly fail to result, in time, in the production of a wonderful modern nation, [8] probably in one of the greatest nations of the mid-twentieth century.