Rapidity of development and triumph of common school idea in the West.
In all the other territory acquired or purchased by the United States in its westward expansion, the educational history has been very similar to that in the first states of the Northwest. Progress in common school sentiment has been made pari passu with the settlement of the country. Each state, upon admission, has received its sixteenth section of school land and two townships for a university, and in the states admitted since 1848 the endowment of schools has been increased to two sections, while Texas, which had been an independent republic (1836-1845), stipulated before becoming a state that it should retain sole possession of its public lands, and has set aside for education nearly two and one-half millions of acres. Hence in the first constitution of each state, permanent school and university funds, together with a regular organization of the schools of the state, have generally been provided. In few cases have sectarian interests been able to delay or injure the growth of common schools in any of the later commonwealths, and the interpretation of public education as schools for the children of paupers has never seriously influenced the West.
Organization of State Systems in the South.—Thus through the awakening of common schools that occurred throughout the union from 1835 to 1860 was the old-time country and city district school of the North gradually lifted up to the present system of graded free elementary, secondary, and normal schools, together with city and state universities. But these results were not at first as fully realized in the South, because of the approach and precipitation of the dreadful internecine conflict that weighed down and finally prostrated the resources of that section. However, except for this impending calamity, the conditions in the South were not essentially different from those in any other section. Awakening felt, but with approach of Civil War, During the earlier years of the awakening, and in some states up to the very verge of the Civil War, great progress in public education was noticeable. The attendance progress stopped, and facilities wrecked at close of the war. in the common schools, established in several states by ‘permissive’ legislation, had been rapidly growing for a score of years, and there was an increasing body of prominent men desirous of enlarging popular education. During the early forties there were many efforts and suggestions for a system of public schools, and several conventions were held in the interest of such institutions. North Carolina actually established a state system in 1839. Tennessee (1838-1843) and Kentucky (1838) made less enduring efforts toward a similar organization, and as late as 1858 Georgia took a distinct step forward in this direction. Moreover, even in their secession conventions some states, like Georgia, adopted resolutions or constitutional amendments looking to the education of the people, and North Carolina in 1863, with the union army actually at its doors, undertook to grade the schools and provide for the training of teachers. But, in general, as the impending conflict drew near, attention to educational progress was forced to give way to the preservation of state and home, and after the war, which crushed and ravaged nearly every portion of the South, educational facilities had for the most part been totally wrecked.
Nevertheless, in the end the war served as a stimulus to common schools. It brought about a complete overturn Need of universal education realized and struggles to attain it. of the old social and industrial order, and the South realized more fully than ever that it could arise from its desperate material and educational plight only through the institution of universal education. As early as 1865, school systems were organized in the border states,—Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and West Virginia, and even during the harsh and unhappy days of ‘reconstruction’ (1867-1876), efforts were made in other states to build up systems of free public education. The organization of education became more thorough and mandatory than before the war. All children, white and colored, were to attend school between six and twenty-one, and the term was to last from four to six months each year. Property and poll taxation were established for the support of the schools. A state superintendent and state board of education, county commissioners and a county board, and trustees in each district, were provided for. Text-book commissions were often established, and free books were granted to poor children. The foundation for a real system was thus laid.
This was a tremendous undertaking, and shows the Obstacles that had to be overcome. greatest courage and executive ability upon the part of the South. Property had been diminished in valuation to the extent of nearly two billion dollars, and there were two million children to be educated. Moreover, under the reconstruction régime, the tax on property was often not collected, and the appropriations for education remained on paper. Indifference and inexperience were aggravated by the fear that ‘mixed’ schools would be forced upon the white population by a reconstruction legislature or a Congress with millennial zeal in behalf of universal brotherhood. These obstacles, together with misdirected effort upon the part of Northern missionaries, and other serious interferences, for fully a decade constituted an enormous stumbling-block. Several factors, however, aided and encouraged the South in its efforts. Of these the most important was the foundation Peabody Educational Fund and other encouragement. in 1867 of the Peabody Educational Fund of $2,000,000, well characterized as “a gift to the suffering South for the good of the Union.” This fund was placed in the management of the wisest and most sympathetic agents, who appealed to the higher sentiment of the communities and the states, and granted the assistance necessary to stimulate local effort in education. When the fund proved insufficient for the great task, the trustees pleaded with Congress for an additional subsidy, and made the whole country aware of the crying needs of education in the South. Through these appeals, more than ten million dollars from various sources have since been granted to the different grades of public education.
Despite the tremendous rally during the seventies, Struggle won by 1890 and constant progress since. however, the struggle for public education in the South was not won for twenty years, but complete systems of common schools have now at length been generally established. With the cessation of the reconstruction influence and the subsidence of the dread of mixed schools, attendance and appropriations have greatly increased, schools for the education of colored children have been furnished, and provision has been made for training and stimulating teachers of both races. Separate state institutions for higher education, cultural and vocational, have been established to furnish a broad education for both whites and negroes. Since 1890 there has been an ever increasing interest in improving the public school in all respects, and the expenditures and facilities for education have been constantly increasing.
Development of the American System of Education.—With its final development in the South during the last decade of the nineteenth century, the distinctly American public school system may be said to have been fully elaborated. The educational ideals and institutions imported from Europe in the colonial period have gradually been modified and adapted to the needs of America. Universal education, state support and control, high schools replaced academies, colleges non-sectarian, and state universities established. Schools have become public and free in the modern sense. The control of education has passed from private parties and even quasi-public societies to the state. The schools have likewise come to be supported by the state, and are open to all children alike without the imposition of any financial obligation. In secondary education, the academies, which supplanted the ‘grammar’ schools, first became ‘free academies’ and made no charge for tuition from local patrons, though remaining close corporations, and then were in time replaced by the true American secondary institution,—the high school (Fig. 41). Colleges became largely non-sectarian, even when not nominally so, and state universities were organized in all except a few of the oldest commonwealths ([Fig. 42]). Thus has the idea of common schools and the right to use the public wealth to educate the entire body of children into sound American citizenship been made complete. Although the system is still capable of much improvement, it is expressive of American genius and development. It is simply the American idea of government and society applied to education. It is the educational will of the people expressed through the majority, and the resultant of the highest thinking and aspirations of a great nation made up of the most powerful and progressive elements from all civilized peoples.
SUPPLEMENTARY READING
Graves, In Modern Times (Macmillan, 1913), chaps. VI and VIII, and Great Educators (Macmillan, 1912), chap. XIII; Parker, Modern Elementary Education (Ginn, 1912), chap. XII. For the details of the life and work of Mann in brief form, read Hinsdale, B. A., Horace Mann and the Common School Revival (Scribner, 1899), or the readable little work on Horace Mann the Educator (New England Publishing Co., 1896) by Winship, A. E. Monroe, W. S., has briefly recounted The Educational Labors of Henry Barnard (Bardeen, Syracuse, 1893), and a longer account of Henry Barnard is that of Mayo, A. D., in Report of U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1896-1897, vol. I, chap. XVI. For the development of public education in the various parts of the country during this third period, see Martin, G. H., Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School System (Appleton, 1894), lects. IV-VI; Steiner, B. C., History of Education in Connecticut (U. S. Bureau of Education, Circular of Information, No. 2, 1893), chaps. III-V; Stockwell, T. B., History of Public Education in Rhode Island (Providence Press Co., Providence, 1876), chaps. VI-X; Randall, S. S., History of the Common School System of the State of New York (Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor, New York, 1871), third and fourth periods; Wickersham, J. P., History of Education in Pennsylvania (Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1886), chaps. XVII-XVIII; Mayo, A. D., The Development of the Common Schools in the Western States (Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1898-99, vol. I, pp. 357-450); Boone, R. G., History of Education in Indiana (Appleton, 1892), chaps. IV and VIII-XXXIII; Smith, W. L., Historical Sketch of Education in Michigan (Lansing, 1881), [pp. 17]-38, 49-57, and 78-109; Knight, E. W., The Influence of Reconstruction on Education in the South (Columbia University, Teachers College Contributions, No. 60, 1913) and The Peabody Fund and Its Early Operation in North Carolina (South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. xiv, no. 2). Mayo, A. D., Education in the Several States, Education of the Colored Race, and The Slater Fund (Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education 1894-95, XXX, XXXI, and XXXII).
