Notwithstanding the important differences which exist between the social and especially the religious conditions of England and Wales respectively, Wales continued to be treated as one with England for purposes of educational administration down to quite recent years. Towards the end of the 19th century the striking revival of Welsh nationality, in itself largely an educational and a literary movement, led to a spontaneous demand among the Welsh people for the organization of a national system of higher education. In accordance with the recommendations of a special royal commission the Welsh Intermediate Education Act passed in 1889 provided for the creation in every county in Wales (including Monmouthshire) of joint education committees consisting of three nominees of the county council and two nominees of the lord president of the council. To these committees were entrusted the duties of framing (under the Charity Commissioners) schemes for the establishment of intermediate and technical schools and for the application of endowments, and for administering a ½d. county rate, which was supplemented by a treasury grant not exceeding the amount raised by the rate. Certain supervisory functions were entrusted to a Central Education Board, to which are committed the duties of inspection and examination. The joint education committees have now (except for the purpose of framing schemes for endowments) been superseded by the local education authorities under the act of 1902. The public assistance afforded to secondary education in Wales under the Intermediate Act is supplemented by the grants of the Board of Education, and the Board’s revised Secondary School Regulations were applied to Wales in 1908. There were (1907-1908) 92 county secondary schools in Wales administered under schemes made under the Welsh Intermediate Act, attended by 6235 boys and 6727 girls, total 12,962; and 12 other secondary schools, of which 8 were provided by local authorities. The total attendance at all secondary schools was 13,615, viz. 6819 boys and 6796 girls. The Board of Education grant amounted to £31,090. The expenditure of the local authorities for the year 1906-1907 was £85,242.
The number of scholars on the registers of ordinary public elementary schools in Wales was (Statistics, 1907-1908), in council schools 330,413, and in voluntary schools 100,290, total 430,703. The percentage of average attendance was 86.98. The ordinary parliamentary grant (1906-1907) was £794,161, and the net expenditure of local authorities £561,234.
In 1907 a Welsh department of the Board of Education was established with a permanent secretary and a chief inspector, each responsible directly to the president. A movement was in progress in Wales in 1908-1909 for the creation of a national council of education under an independent minister, but this change could in any case only be effected by legislation; and meanwhile the special religious and social conditions in Wales caused administrative difficulties in working an act (that of 1902) primarily designed to meet those prevailing in England.
(G. B. M. C.)
United States.
History.—The first white settlers who came to North America were typical representatives of those European peoples who had made more progress in civilization than any other in the world. Those settlers, in particular those Beginnings. from England and from Holland, brought with them the most advanced ideas of the time on the subject of education. The conditions of life in the New World emphasized the need of schools and colleges, and among the earliest public acts of the settlers were provisions to establish them. The steps taken between 1619 and 1622 to provide schools for the colony of Virginia were frustrated by the Indian war which broke out in the latter year, and were never successfully renewed during the colonial period. In New York, where the influence of the Dutch was at first predominant, elementary schools were maintained at the public expense, and were intended for the education of all classes of the population. This policy reflected the very advanced views as to public elementary education which were then held in the Netherlands. The assumption of control in the colony of New York by the English was a distinct check to the development of public elementary education, and little or no further progress was made until after the Revolution. The most systematic educational policy was pursued in the colony of Massachusetts. As early as 1635, five years after it was founded, the town of Boston took action to the end that “our brother Philemon Pormort shall be entreated to become schoolmaster for the teaching and nurturing children with us.” The General Court of the colony in 1636 made the first appropriation for what was to become Harvard College, taking its name in honour of the minister, John Harvard, who died in 1638, leaving his library and one-half of his property, having a value of £800, to the new institution. The amount of this appropriation of 1636 (£400) was remarkable in that it was probably equal to the whole colony tax for a year. In 1642 followed a legislative act which, while saying nothing of schools, gave to the selectmen in every town power to oversee both the education and the employment of children. It is made the duty of the selectmen to see that the children can read and understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of the country, and that they are put to some useful work.
Five years later, in 1647, was enacted the law which is not only the real foundation of the Massachusetts school system, but the type of later legislation throughout the United States. This epoch-making act, the first of its kind in the world, represented the public opinion of a colony of about 20,000 persons, living in thirty towns. It required every town of fifty house-holders to establish a school, the master of which should be paid either by the parents of the children taught or by public tax, as the majority of the town committee might decide; and it further required every town of one hundred families or house-holders to set up a grammar school in which pupils might be prepared for the “University,” as the new institution at Cambridge was designated. Moreover, a penalty was attached to neglect of this legislative requirement, in the form of a fine to be devoted to the maintenance of the nearest school. Horace Mann said of the act of 1647: “It is impossible for us adequately to conceive the boldness of the measure, which aimed at universal education through the establishment of free schools. As a fact it had no precedent in the world’s history; and, as a theory, it could have been refuted and silenced by a more formidable array of argument and experience than was ever marshalled against any other institution of human origin. But time has ratified its soundness. Two centuries of successful operation now proclaim it to be as wise as it was courageous, and as beneficent as it was disinterested.” The significance of these acts of 1642 and 1647 is that they foreshadow the whole American system of education, including elementary schools, secondary schools and colleges, and that they indicate the principles upon which that system rests. These principles as summarized by George H. Martin in his Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School System are the following:—(1) The universal education of youth is essential to the well-being of the state. (2) The obligation to furnish this education rests primarily upon the parent. (3) The state has a right to enforce this obligation. (4) The state may fix a standard which shall determine the kind of education and the minimum amount. (5) Public money raised by general tax may be used to provide such education as the state requires. The tax may be general, though the school attendance is not. (6) Education higher than the rudiments may be supplied by the state. Opportunity must be provided at the public expense for youths who wish to be fitted for college. These principles have now found expression in the public acts of every state, and upon them education in the United States is founded.
Despite the praiseworthy attempts made in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania to develop schools and school systems, very little was accomplished in those colonies which was permanent. The sentiment in the more southern Development. colonies was, as a rule, unfriendly to free schools, and nothing of importance was attempted in that section of the country until the time of Thomas Jefferson. Through religious zeal or philanthropy colleges were founded as far south as Virginia, and no fewer than ten of these institutions were in operation in 1776. Their present names and the dates of their foundation are: Harvard University, Massachusetts (1636); College of William and Mary, Virginia (1693); Yale University, Connecticut (1701); Princeton University, New Jersey (1746); Washington and Lee University, Virginia (1749); University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania (1749); Columbia University, New York (1754); Brown University, Rhode Island (1764); Rutgers College, New Jersey (1766); and Dartmouth College, New Hampshire (1769). In the colleges the ecclesiastical spirit was at first almost uniformly dominant. The greater number of their students were preparing for the ministry in some one of the branches of the Protestant Church. These facts caused the grammar schools to take on more and more the character of college-preparatory schools; and when this was brought about they supplied the educational needs of but one portion of the community. As time passed, the interdependence of governmental and ecclesiastical interests began to weaken in the colonies, and there arose among those who represented the new secularizing tendency a distrust of the colleges and their influence. This gave rise to a new and influential type of school, the academy, which took its name from the secondary schools established in England by the dissenting religious bodies during the latter part of the seventeenth century at the suggestion of Milton. These academies were intended to give an education which was thought to be more practical than that offered by the colleges, and they drew their students from the so-called middle classes of society. The older academies were usually endowed institutions, organized under the control of religious organizations or of self-perpetuating boards of trustees. Their programme of studies was less restricted than that of the grammar schools, and they gave new emphasis to the study of the English language and its literature, of mathematics and of the new sciences of nature. For two generations the academies were a most beneficent factor in American education, and they supplied a large number of the better-prepared teachers for work in other schools. These schools were in a sense public in that they were chartered, but they were not directly under public control in their management. Early in the 19th century there arose a well-defined demand for public secondary schools—high schools, as they are popularly known. They were the direct outgrowth of the elementary school system. Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York were the first of the large cities to establish schools of this type, and they spread rapidly. These public secondary schools met with opposition, however, springing partly from the friends of the academies, and partly from those who held that governmental agency should be restricted to the field of elementary education. The legal questions raised were settled by a decision of the supreme court of Michigan, which contained these words: “Neither in our state policy, in our constitution, nor in our laws do we find the primary school districts restricted in the branches of knowledge which their officers may cause to be taught, or the grade of instruction that may be given, if their voters consent, in regular form, to bear the expense and raise the taxes for the purpose.” This decision gave marked impetus to the development of public secondary or high schools, and they have increased rapidly in number. The academies have relatively declined, and in the Western states are almost unknown.
Meanwhile the elementary school system had grown rapidly. The school district, the smallest civil division, was created in Connecticut in 1701, in Rhode Island about 1750, and in Massachusetts in 1789. From the point of view of efficient, well-supported schools, it has been felt since the time of Horace Mann that the substitution of the small school district for the town as the unit of school administration was a mistake. Yet the school district has exercised a profound influence for good upon the American people. In New York state, for example, there were in 1900 over eleven thousand school districts, and in Illinois over twelve thousand. The districts are small in extent and often sparsely settled. Their government is as democratic as possible. The resident legal voters, often including women, hold a meeting at least once a year. They elect trustees to represent them in the employment of the teacher and the management of the school. They determine whether a new schoolhouse shall be built, whether repairs shall be made, and what sum of money shall be raised for school purposes. In the rural districts this system has often been itself a school in patriotism and in the conduct of public affairs. Recently the tendency is to merge the school districts into the township, in order that larger and better schools may be maintained, and that educational advantages may be distributed more evenly among the people. Most of the southern states have the county system of school administration. This is because the county, rather than the township, has been the political unit in the south from the beginning. Special laws have been made for the school system in cities, and the form of these laws differs very much. In nearly every city there is a separate board of education, sometimes chosen by the voters, sometimes appointed by the mayor or other official, which board has full control of the schools. The city board of education has as its executive officer a superintendent of schools, who has become a most important factor in American educational administration. He exerts great influence in the selection of teachers, in the choice of text-books, in the arrangement of the programme of studies, and in the determination of questions of policy. Sometimes he is charged by law with the initiative in some or all of these matters. He is usually a trained administrator as well as an experienced teacher. The first superintendent was appointed in 1837 at Buffalo. Providence followed in 1839, New Orleans in 1841, Cleveland in 1844, Baltimore in 1849, Cincinnati in 1850, Boston in 1851, New York, San Francisco and Jersey City in 1852, Newark and Brooklyn in 1853, Chicago and St Louis in 1854, and Philadelphia in 1883. In general, it may be said that the progress of public education in the United States is marked by (1) compulsory schools, (2) compulsory licensing of teachers, (3) compulsory school attendance, and (4) compulsory school supervision, and by the increasingly efficient administration of these provisions. The compulsion comes in each case from the state government, which alone, in the American system, has the power to prescribe it and to enforce it. Each state is therefore an independent educational unit, and there is no single, uniform American system of education in any legal sense. In fact, however, the great mass of the American people are in entire agreement as to the principles which should control public education; and the points in which the policies of the several states are in agreement are greater, both in number and in importance, than those in which they differ. An American educational system exists, therefore, in spirit and in substance, even though not in form.
Neither in the Declaration of Independence nor in the Constitution of the United States is there any mention of education. The founders of the nation were by no means indifferent to education, but they shared the common view of National policy. their time, which was that the real responsibility for the maintenance of schools and the expense of maintaining them should fall upon the several local communities. The relation of government to education was not then a subject of ordinary consideration or discussion. Later, when this question did arise and the power of taxation was involved, the several states assumed control of education, as it was necessary that they should do. Nevertheless, from the very beginning the national government has aided and supported education, while not controlling it. This policy dates from the 13th of July 1787, when there was passed the famous “Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States North-West of the River Ohio,” meaning the territory north and west of the Ohio river now represented by the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the eastern side of Minnesota, embracing more than 265,000 sq. m. of territory. This ordinance contains this declaration: “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall for ever be encouraged.” The Ordinance of 1787 also reaffirmed the provisions of the so-called Land Ordinance of 1785, by which section No. 16 in every township (a township consists of 36 numbered sections of 1 sq. m. each), or one thirty-sixth of the entire north-west territory, was set aside for the maintenance of public schools within the township. The funds derived from the sale and lease of these original “school lands” form the major portion of the public school endowment of the states formed out of the north-west territory. The precedent thus established became the policy of the nation. Each state admitted prior to 1848 reserved section No. 16 in every township of public land for common schools. Each state admitted since 1848 (Utah being an exception, and having four sections) has reserved sections No. 16 and No. 36 in every township of public lands for this purpose. In addition, the national government has granted two townships in every state and territory containing public lands for seminaries or universities. A third land grant is that made in 1862 for colleges of agriculture and the mechanical arts. The sum total of these three land grants amounted in 1900 to 78,659,439 acres, to which there must be added various special grants made from time to time to the states and devoted to education. The portion of the public domain so set apart in 1900 amounted in all to 86,138,473 acres, or 134,591 English sq. m. This is an area greater than those of the six New England states, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware added together. It is a portion of the earth’s surface as great as the kingdom of Prussia, about seven-tenths as great as France, and considerably greater than the combined areas of Great Britain (including the Channel Islands) and the kingdom of Holland. Besides the enormous grants of land in aid of education, the national government has maintained since 1802 a military academy at West Point, New York, for the training of officers for the army, and since 1845 a naval academy at Annapolis, Maryland, for the training of officers for the navy. It has also taken charge of the education of the children of uncivilized Indians, and of all children in Alaska. It has voted, by act of 1887, a perpetual endowment of $15,000 a year for each agricultural experiment station connected with a state agricultural college, and, by act of 1890, an additional endowment of $25,000 a year for each of the agricultural colleges themselves. The aggregate value of land and money given by the national government for education in the several states and territories is about $300,000,000.