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] The movement gained a firm hold everywhere east of the Missouri River, the States incorporating the largest number being New York with 887, Pennsylvania with 524, Massachusetts with 403, Kentucky with 330, Virginia with 317, North Carolina with 272, and Tennessee with 264. Some States, as Kentucky and Indiana, provided for a system of county academies, while many States extended to them some form of state aid. In New York State they found a warm advocate in Governor De Witt Clinton, who urged (1827) that they be located at the county towns of the State to give a practical scientific education suited to the wants of farmers, merchants, and mechanics, and also to train teachers for the schools of the State.

[14] The new emphasis given to the study of English, mathematics, and book-science is noticeable. New subjects appeared in proportion as the academies increased in numbers and importance. Of 149 new subjects for study appearing in the academies of New York, between 1787 and 1870, 23 appeared before 1826, 100 between 1826 and 1840, and 26 after 1840. Between 1825 and 1828 one half of the new subjects appeared. This also was the maximum period of development of the academies.

[15] The existence of a number of colleges, basing their entrance requirements on the completion of the classical course of the academy, and the establishment of a few embryo state universities in the new States of the West and the South, naturally raised the further question of why there should be a gap in the public-school system. The increase of wealth in the cities tended to increase the number who passed through the elementary course and could profit by more extended education; the academies had popularized the idea of more advanced education; while the new manufacturing and commercial activities of the time called for more training than the elementary schools afforded, and of a different type from that demanded by the small colleges of the time for entrance.

[16] For an interesting table showing the simple entrance requirements of Harvard in 1642, 1734, 1803, 1825, 1850, 1875, and 1885, see Report of the United States Commissioner of Education, 1902, vol. I, pp. 930-33.

CHAPTER XXVII

[1] In Spain, for example, the percentage of illiteracy in 1860 was 75.52; in 1870 70.01 per cent; in 1887, 68.01 per cent; in 1890, 63.78 per cent; and in 1910, 59.35 per cent. The percentage for 1920 will probably not be less than for 1910, due to the closing of many schools for lack of teachers during the World War. In 1916 ten provinces had an illiteracy of over 70 per cent, and but five had less than 40 per cent. In Madrid and Barcelona, cities as large as Baltimore and Cleveland, the illiteracy approaches a third of the population in Madrid, and a half in Barcelona.

[2] While an exile from the Argentine, Dr. Sarmiento was commissioned by Chili to visit, study, and report on the state school systems of the United States and Europe. While in the United States he became intimately acquainted with Horace Mann. Later he was Minister from the Argentine to the United States, being recalled, in 1868, to assume the presidency of the Republic. He was deeply impressed with the type of educational opportunity provided in the schools of the United States and, through an appointed Minister of Education, impressed his ideas on the Argentine nation.

[3] In 1910 only about 3 per cent of the total population was in any type of school.

[4] The Mikado still retained, through his ministers, very large powers, while the parliament was a consultative assembly rather than a legislative one. The form of government has been much like that of the German Empire before the World War.

[5] The Japanese Government has so far been a military autocracy, and the Japanese have been the Prussians of the Orient. The two-class school system has accordingly met the needs of a benevolent autocracy fairly well. With the rise of a liberal party in Japan, and the beginning of some democratic life, we may look for progressive changes in their schools which will tend to produce a more democratic type of educational organization.