Evolution of Public Education in New York.—After the English took possession of New York, we have seen ([p. 195]) how that territory lapsed into the laissez faire support of education. The upper classes of society largely sought their education abroad or through tutors and the clergy, although in 1754 King’s College (now Columbia University) was founded, and during the century a number of secondary schools were organized and granted gratuities by the legislature. The few elementary schools that existed were either private or maintained by some church or philanthropic society. As already shown ([pp. 234] ff.), this was the period distinguished for the schools founded by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. At the close of the Revolution, however, the various elements of the population had been welded together in the common struggle, and a sentiment for public education began to prevail over vested interests and sectarian jealousies. A series of broad-minded governors—the Clintons, Lewis, Tompkins, and Marcy—constantly reminded the legislature of System under Board of Regents, but did not include elementary schools. its duty to establish common schools. In 1787 a system of public education was theoretically organized under the management of a Board of Regents, with the title of ‘The University of the State of New York,’ but it did not include elementary schools. Two years later lands in Endowment of common schools. each township were set apart for the endowment of common schools, and in 1795 it was enacted that the sum of $50,000 for five years should be distributed for the encouragement of elementary education in counties where the towns would raise by taxation half as much as the amount of their share. This arrangement was not carried on beyond the five years, but in 1805 the proceeds from 500,000 acres of land were appropriated for a common school fund, which was not to be used until the interest reached $50,000 per annum.

In 1812 further organization was enacted whereby a State superintendency and further progress. state superintendent of common schools was to be appointed, and the county unit replaced by a more democratic town and district basis. But it had been supposed that the state fund would provide for the entire support of the schools, and there still remained an obstinate opposition to local taxes. The towns, however, were gradually persuaded to raise the amount required to secure their share of the state donation. Much progress was brought about through the first superintendent, Gideon Hawley, and while, after eight years of service, he was Combination with secretaryship of state. removed by political manipulation and the office combined with the secretaryship of state, each of his successors undertook to distinguish the educational side of his administration by some marked advance or improvement in the common schools. But for a generation the academies and colleges remained under supervision of the regents, and, except for state appropriations to academies, no one undertook to extend the public Public secondary and normal schools delayed by academy appropriations. system into secondary and higher education. Moreover, the professional training of teachers in the academies was encouraged by the state, and thereby the organization of normal schools was delayed. Hence, while New York started the first system of public education adjusted to the political and social conditions of the new nation, and probably had the most effective schools of the times, not until the great period of common school development (1835-1860) were its people fully willing to contribute for a general school system, make it entirely free, or develop it consistently in all directions.

‘Free School Society.’

New York City.—Meanwhile, an interesting development of educational facilities was taking place in New York City. In 1805 the opportunities offered in the private, church, and charity schools were seen by certain of the most prominent citizens to be totally inadequate for a city of seventy-five thousand inhabitants, and a Change of name. ‘Free School Society’ was founded to provide for the boys who were not eligible for these schools. The president was De Witt Clinton, afterward governor, and in 1806 the first school was opened, from motives of economy, upon the monitorial basis (see p. 241). The state fund did not reach a sufficient amount to be available until 1815, but special gifts were made to the school society from time to time by the legislature, the city, and private individuals, and there was a rapid increase in the number of the society’s schools during the first quarter of a century. In 1826 the legislature authorized the organization to charge a small tuition fee and change its name to the ‘Public School Society.’ While the fee system was soon found to injure the efficiency of the work and was abolished within six years, the new title persisted, as it did not suggest pauperism in the way the old name had. In 1828 the society was allowed the benefit of a small local tax. For quite a time the work of the association was unhindered, but in 1820-1825 a vigorous effort was made to obtain a share of the state Bethel Baptist Church controversy. appropriation for the sectarian schools of the Bethel Baptist Church. This move was finally defeated, but the Roman Catholics made a more successful protest fifteen years later by indicating that the society, while nominally nonsectarian, was really Protestant. To settle this dispute, the legislature in 1842 established a City board of education. city board of education, and after eleven years the institutions of the Public School Society were merged in this city system. Thus was the way prepared for a public school system in New York City, and this development was typical of the training of educational sentiment through quasi-public societies that took place in Buffalo, Utica, Oswego, and several other cities.

Development of Systems of Education in Pennsylvania and the Other Middle States.—The rise of public systems in the other Middle states was also gradual. In Pennsylvania, the state system slowly arose through a Constitutional provision in Pennsylvania produced only ‘poor schools.’ prolonged stage of ‘poor schools.’ The new constitution (1790) of the state declared: “The legislature shall, as soon as conveniently may be, provide by law for the establishment of schools throughout the State, in such manner that the poor may be taught gratis.” Men of broad vision, like Franklin, Benjamin Rush, and Timothy Pickering, had striven hard to have popular education introduced, but the general sentiment of the times could not reach beyond providing free education for the poor. Moreover, although this moderate constitutional provision was a compromise, it was not until some years later (1802, 1804, and 1809) that the legislature passed acts to make it effective. Even then public institutions to fulfill the legislation were not established, but it was arranged that the tuition of poor children should be paid for at public expense in private, church, and neighborhood schools, and the proceeds of the sixty thousand acres of land appropriated for ‘aiding public schools’ went to subsidize private institutions. But the idea of common schools continued to develop, and governors and other prominent men constantly called attention to the need of universal education. Philadelphia was the first municipality to be converted, and in 1818, under a special act of the legislature, it became ‘the first school district of Pennsylvania,’ with the power to provide a Public system in Philadelphia and elsewhere. system of education on the Lancasterian plan at public expense. After three or four years this special legislation was extended to five more ‘districts’, and in 1824 a general law permitting the establishment of free schools in any community was enacted, though soon repealed.

Finally, in 1828, ‘the Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of Common Schools,’ after demonstrating Establishment of a state school fund and a state school system. the ineffectiveness of the ‘pauper school’ law in a series of memorials, succeeded in having a state school fund established, and in 1834, “an act to establish a general system of education by common schools” was passed. This law established a state system of schools under the general superintendency of the secretary of state. For this system it appropriated $75,000 per annum from the income of the state school fund, and permitted the wards, townships, and boroughs, which it constituted school districts, to share in this, provided they levied local taxes for schools. The Northern counties, settled mostly by New England colonists, and the Western portion of the state, with its large element of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, ardently favored this encouragement of universal education, but the law was only ‘permissive’ and was bitterly opposed by the Quaker and German inhabitants of ‘old’ Pennsylvania, who feared that their own parochial schools would be replaced. The wealthy classes were also hostile to the new law, on the ground that they ought not to be taxed to educate other people’s Effort to repeal unsuccessful. children. In a vigorous campaign to repeal the act, however, the opponents of the law, largely through the eloquent speech of Thaddeus Stevens, were defeated the following year (1835), and the desire to establish public schools was greatly increased in 1836 by the passage of a new law, which enlarged the annual appropriation to $200,000, in which the school districts might participate only on condition of local taxation. Even then not more than one-half the districts took advantage of the opportunity, and it was several years before most of them claimed their share. Hence, while the battle was won by 1835, the consummation of public education in Pennsylvania did not take place until the great awakening of common schools had swept over the country.

After the formation of the Union, New Jersey and Similar hindrances in New Jersey and Delaware. Delaware met with the same kinds of hindrance to the development of common schools as did Pennsylvania, and they were even slower in getting a system established. In both commonwealths a state school fund was started early in the nineteenth century, but it was not distributed for about a dozen years, and then it was used mostly for the education of paupers in subsidized private schools. Some ‘permissive’ legislation for the organization of school districts and commissioners and the establishment of public schools was also passed, but it accomplished little before the middle of the century.

Decline of Education in Massachusetts.—In Massachusetts, on the other hand, efforts for the provision of universal training degenerated during the eighteenth century. The generous support of public education that had been started in 1647 was followed by a period of decline for about a century and a half. The causes of this decadence of local interest in education were rather complicated. In the first place, the complete domination Disintegration of the domination of Calvinism. of Calvinism gradually disintegrated and was replaced by a toleration of several creeds. The non-Puritans, who were constantly increasing in numbers, were obliged by the law of 1638 to preserve an outward conformity to the Calvinistic régime under penalty of banishment, but by 1662 a compromise was granted, whereby persons not conforming in every respect might be admitted to all church privileges, except communion, and the persecution of Quakers, Baptists, and other sects was largely abandoned. In 1670 came the successful secession of the Old South Church from the original church of Boston, as the result of a quarrel concerning this very compromise, and within a decade the Baptists were permitted to build a meeting-house in Boston. By 1692 recognition had been largely granted to all Protestant beliefs, and to be a ‘freeman,’ or voter on all colonial questions, it was no longer necessary to be a member of a Puritan church. While every town was still required to support by tax an orthodox pastor, by 1728 the Episcopalians, Quakers, and Baptists were permitted to pay their assessments to their own ministers, and the alliance of the State with a despotic Church, which had made possible the system of public education, was largely broken.

Lowering of intellectual standards.

Moreover, there was a decided lowering of intellectual standards upon the part of the colonists. The hard struggle to wring a living from an unpropitious soil, and the disturbances due to wars, Indian skirmishes, and the difficulties of pioneer life greatly lessened their feeling of need for a literary training. Another reason for Dispersion of population. the educational decline was the dispersion of the population in the towns. At first, because of possible attacks by the Indians, a law forbade any dwelling to be built more than half a mile from the church and school, and not infrequently the school was equipped with a watch-tower ([Fig. 22]). But, as the best land near the center was more and more taken up, the towns spread out in various directions, and the intervening hills, streams, swamps, and poor roads, together with the fear of Indians and wild animals, greatly hindered those on the outskirts in reaching the church and school of the town. As a result of all these conditions, the towns, most of which had been eager to establish schools even before being compelled to do so, began to seek various methods of Consequent attempts to evade the school law. evading the school law without incurring the fine. The minister was at times made the nominal schoolmaster, or a teacher was even employed during the session of the ‘General Court’ (i. e., legislature) and discharged upon adjournment. Laws were enacted against these subterfuges, greater vigilance was exercised, and the fine was increased first to £10 (1671) and then to £20 (1683), with a progressive increase where the number of families ran over one hundred (1712). Thus the fine came to be almost sufficient to support a schoolmaster, and it was made more and more unprofitable for a town to disobey the law.