How many children were benefited by it? Who can tell? 16,600,000 boys and girls were enrolled in the public schools (that is to say, more than 70 per cent of the whole number of children between five and eighteen years of age, and about 20 per cent of the total population). The teachers employed were 109,000 men, 356,000 women. The average daily expenditure for each pupil was 17 cents; the average annual expenditure, about $25.
In addition to this number there are at least 1,500,000 children in privately endowed and supported schools, secular or religious. The Catholic Church has a system of parochial schools which is said to provide for about a million children. Many of the larger Protestant Churches support high schools and academies of excellent quality. Some of the most famous secondary schools, like Phillips Exeter and Andover, St. Paul’s, the Hill School, Lawrenceville School, are private foundations well endowed.
These figures do not mean much to the imagination. Statistics are like grapes in their skins. You have to put a pressure upon them to extract any wine. Observe, then, that if you walked through an American town between eight and nine in the morning, and passed a thousand people indoors and out, more than two hundred of them would be children going to school. Perhaps twenty of these children would turn in at private schools, or church schools. But nine-tenths of the little crowd would be on their way to the public schools. The great majority of the children would be under fourteen years of age; for only about one child out of every twenty goes beyond that point in schooling. Among the younger children the boys would outnumber the girls a little. But in the small group of high-school children there would be three girls to two boys, because the boys have to go to work earlier to earn a living.
Suppose you followed one of these groups of children into the school, what would you find? That would depend entirely upon local circumstances. You might find a splendid building with modern fittings; you might find an old-fashioned building, overcrowded and ill-fitted. Each State, as I have said before, has its own common-school system. And not only so, but within the State there are smaller units of organization—the county, the township, the school district. Each of these may have its own school board, conservative or progressive, generous or stingy, and the quality and equipment of the schools will vary accordingly. They represent pretty accurately the general enlightenment and moral tone of the community.
Wealth has something to do with it, of course. People cannot spend money unless they have it. The public treasury is not a Fortunatus’ purse which fills itself. In the remote country districts, the little red schoolhouse, with its single room, its wooden benches, its iron stove, its unpainted flagstaff, stands on some hill-top without a tree to shadow it, in brave, unblushing poverty. In the richer cities there are common school palaces with an aspect of splendour which is almost disconcerting.
Yet it is not altogether a question of wealth. It is also a question of public spirit. Baltimore is nearly as large and half as rich as Boston, yet Boston spends about three times as much on her schools. Richmond has about the same amount of taxable property as Rochester, N.Y., yet Richmond spends only one-quarter as much on her schools. Houston, Texas; Wilmington, Delaware; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Trenton, New Jersey; New Bedford, Massachusetts; and Des Moines, Iowa, are six cities with a population of from 80,000 to 100,000 each, and not far apart in wealth. But their public-school bills in 1906 varied as follows: Des Moines, $492,000; New Bedford, $472,000; Harrisburg, $304,000; Trenton, $300,000; Wilmington, $226,000; and Houston, the richest of the six, $163,000.
If you should judge from this that the public schools are most liberally supported in the North Atlantic, North Central, and Far Western States, you would be right. The amount that is contributed to the common schools per adult male inhabitant is largest in the following States in order: Utah, $22; North Dakota, $21; New York, $20; Colorado, $20; Massachusetts, $19; South Dakota, $19; Nebraska, $17; and Pennsylvania, $16. The comparative weakness of the common schools in the South Atlantic and South Central States has led to the giving of large sums of money by private benevolence, the Peabody Fund, the Slater Fund, the Southern Education Fund, which are administered by boards of trustees for the promotion of education in these backward regions. The Spirit of America strongly desires to spread, to improve, to equalize and coördinate, the public schools of the whole country.
Is it succeeding? What lines is it following? Where are the changes most apparent?
First of all, there is a marked advance in the physical equipment of the common school. In the villages and in the rural districts the new buildings are larger and more commodious than the old ones. In many parts of the country the method of concentration is employed. Instead of half a dozen poor little schoolhouses scattered over the hills, one good house is built in a central location, and the children are gathered from the farmhouses by school omnibuses or by the electric trolley-cars. Massachusetts made a law in 1894 requiring every township which did not have a high school to pay the transportation expenses of all qualified pupils who wished to attend the high schools of neighbouring towns.
In many States text-books are provided at the public cost. In the cities the increased attention to the physical side of things is even more noticeable. No expense is spared to make the new buildings attractive and convenient. Libraries and laboratories, gymnasiums and toilet-rooms, are provided. In some cities a free lunch is given to the pupils.