EDUCATION IN KANSAS
=The First Schools in Kansas.= The first schools in Kansas were the
mission schools for the Indians. When Kansas was organized as a
Territory and the white settlers began to make their homes here, the
education of their children became one of their first interests. In
the summer of 1855 the first Territorial Legislature passed a law
providing for the establishment of common schools, and thus laid the
foundation for our public school system.
=Early Territorial Schools.= In January of 1855, when the town of
Lawrence was only six months old, a school was opened in the back of
Dr. Charles Robinson’s office. A term of school was held in Lawrence
every winter thereafter. Other towns also maintained schools, as did a
few of the country communities, but the settlers’ claims were so
widely scattered and the dangers during the days of raids and warfare
were so great that country schools were almost an impossibility during
the first few years.
=Subscription Schools.= Many of the earlier schools were “subscription
schools,” which means that they were not public schools supported by a
tax levy, but that the teacher’s pay came from a tuition charged each
pupil who attended.
=Beginning of Our School System.= By 1859, when Territorial conditions
had become more settled, the Legislature turned its attention to the
matter of education and passed a set of school laws that has served
ever since as the basis of our system of education. While Kansas was
still a Territory, a few districts were organized and schoolhouses
built, and the minimum school term was made three months.
[Illustration: SOD SCHOOLHOUSE.]
=Schools After the Civil War.= Little educational progress was made
during the Civil War, but when peace had come to Kansas and the people
could turn their minds to the needs of their homes and communities,
schoolhouses built of logs or sod sprang up everywhere, for the
pioneers had brought with them a desire to educate their children.
Sometimes the settlers did not even wait to organize their district,
but gathered together and began work on their schoolhouse. Where there
was a timber supply they made their buildings of logs. On the prairie
they built of sod. With the breaking plow they sliced out long pieces
of sod from two to four inches thick and twelve to fourteen inches
wide, and these, mortared with soft mud, were used like brick to build
the walls. The roof was sometimes of lumber, but often the sod was
laid over a framework of brush and poles. Whether the building was of
logs or of sod, the floor was usually of dirt sprinkled and packed
until it was hard and smooth. As the country grew in population and
resources these buildings were replaced by others made of lumber,
brick, or stone, but the little log and sod schoolhouses served the
pioneers well. They were used not only for school purposes, but for
religious services and for social gatherings, spelling schools,
singing schools, and literary societies. The schoolhouses were the
social centers in early Kansas.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF SOD SCHOOLHOUSE.]
=The Work of the Pioneer Schools.= Although the minimum term was three
months, it was usually made a little longer for the benefit of the
smaller children. As a rule the older boys and girls went to school
only during the winter months when they could be spared from the
farms. The work in the schools in those days consisted chiefly of the
three R’s, “readin’, ’ritin’ and ’rithmetic.” In most cases, the
pupils started each year at the beginning of their books and worked as
far as they could. This was continued winter after winter until the
girls and boys were eighteen to twenty-one years of age, or even
older. There was no such thing as graduating from the country schools;
the pupils attended until they were ready to quit. Since there were
almost no high schools in the State, few of the children received more
than a common school education, and most of the teachers had no more
than that.
[Illustration: A PRESENT DAY RURAL SCHOOL.]
=Changes in the District Schools.= Conditions are quite different in
the country schools to-day. Many of them have terms of eight months, a
few have nine months, while seven months is the shortest term
permitted by the State. The truancy law requires attendance during the
full term, whatever its length. The sod and log schoolhouses of
pioneer days were, in time, replaced by neat little box-like buildings
usually constructed of wood, though occasionally of brick or stone,
and these in turn are now rapidly disappearing and their places are
being taken by buildings that are larger, more beautiful, more
comfortable, and far better adapted to educational needs. The
qualifications of teachers have been raised. In earlier days, when
there were but few high schools, many teachers had no education beyond
what they had obtained in the country schools, but to-day ninety per
cent of the rural teachers of the State are high-school graduates, and
this per cent is steadily increasing. The work of the rural schools
has expanded far beyond the “three R’s.” In addition to the regular
work it now includes as much as time will permit of such subjects as
music, manual training, agriculture, and household arts. The rural
schools have been receiving a great deal of attention in recent years
and are very rapidly being improved. Several hundred of them have
already met the requirements laid down by the State for a “standard”
school, and a few for a “superior” school, and these lists are
constantly growing.
[Illustration: A CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL.]
[Illustration: A HIGH-SCHOOL CLASS IN DOMESTIC SCIENCE.]
[Illustration: A HIGH-SCHOOL CLASS IN MANUAL TRAINING.]
=Consolidated Schools.= Consolidation is generally looked upon as a
method of bettering conditions in the rural schools. A consolidated
district is one formed by the union of several districts. The little
district schoolhouses are replaced by a larger building, usually
centrally located, to which the children are conveyed in wagons
provided for that purpose. With its larger valuation the consolidated
district can have plenty of teachers and equipment and can offer a
greater variety of subjects. There are a number of consolidated
schools in the State now, and the plan is being considered in many
communities. The good roads movement will no doubt do much to
encourage consolidation.
[Illustration: A COUNTY HIGH SCHOOL.]
=Growth of the High School.= A number of years passed before there
were many high schools in Kansas. Four schools constituted the list of
accredited high schools of the State as published in 1876. By 1886 the
number had grown to thirty-six, and by 1896 it had reached
seventy-seven. From that time on the number increased very rapidly
until in 1918 there were six hundred thirty accredited high schools in
the State, one hundred twenty-one of which were rural high schools.
Until about 1905 the standard for an accredited high school was a
course of only three years. Since that time it has been four years. In
the early years the real purpose of the high school was considered to
be that of preparing the pupils for college, and the courses of study
included only such subjects as were suited to that purpose. The
present idea is that this is only one of the purposes of the high
school, the other being that of supplying to the great mass of pupils,
who will never go to college, the best possible preparation for
living. To accomplish this latter purpose courses of study have been
broadened to include such work as music, manual training, agriculture,
commercial work, household arts, teacher training, and industrial
training. Until very recent years high schools were established only
in towns and cities, but now they are to be found in consolidated
districts, and in rural districts, sometimes in small towns in those
districts and sometimes in communities that are entirely rural. There
is not now a county in the State that is without a four-year
accredited high school.
[Illustration: FORT HAYS KANSAS NORMAL SCHOOL.]
[Illustration: TWO-TEACHER RURAL SCHOOL.]
[Illustration: KANSAS STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, EMPORIA.]
=Institutions of Higher Learning.= The deep interest of the Kansas
settlers in matters of education is nowhere more apparent than in
their early establishment of institutions of higher learning. In the
first Constitution, made in 1855, one reads, “The General Assembly may
take measures for the establishment of a university”; and again,
“Provisions may be made by law for the support of normal schools.”
These matters were not lost sight of, and almost immediately after the
admission of Kansas as a state this ambition found expression in the
establishment of the Normal School, the Agricultural College, and the
University.
[Illustration: RURAL HIGH SCHOOL.]
=The Normal Schools.= The State Normal School at Emporia opened in
1865 with eighteen students enrolled. It used the upper floor of the
new schoolhouse that had just been built for Emporia which was then
but a small town. There was no furniture, and the equipment consisted
of a Bible and a dictionary. Seats were borrowed from a neighboring
church. But the Normal soon had a building of its own. In later years
this has been three times replaced by a larger and better one and many
new buildings have been added.
[Illustration: MANUAL TRAINING NORMAL SCHOOL, PITTSBURG.]
The Normal School is based on the principle that it is not only
necessary to know what to teach but how to teach; that there are new
discoveries and advances in methods of teaching as there are in other
lines, such as medicine or farming. The purpose of the Normal School
is to train teachers.
[Illustration: SCHOOLHOUSE USED AS A SOCIAL CENTER.]
When our State Normal School was established there were not more than
a dozen other such schools in the United States and none that prepared
teachers for high-school positions. To-day there are many normal
schools, but none larger than ours or more amply equipped to prepare
teachers for all lines of teaching. The course of study, reaching from
the kindergarten to the completion of a college course, places our
State Normal School in the front rank of institutions of its kind.
[Illustration: KANSAS STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE, MANHATTAN.]
In 1901 the Western Branch State Normal School was established at
Hays, and in 1903 another branch, the Manual Training Normal School,
was opened at Pittsburg. Each of these has since been made an
independent school. The one at Hays is now known as the Fort Hays
Kansas Normal School.
=The Agricultural College.= In 1862 Congress passed an act providing
for land grants to states for the purpose of establishing colleges of
agriculture and mechanic arts. Kansas was among the first states to
accept the endowment, and the next year Bluemont Central College, a
Methodist school at Manhattan, was given to the State and made the
State Agricultural College. During the first ten years the growth of
the Agricultural College was very slow. This was chiefly due to the
fact that industrial education was something new and did not receive
much attention. The College gave only a little work in agriculture or
manual training, and what was given was merely supplementary. It was
doing little to educate toward the farm or the workshop. In 1873 the
school was reorganized. Farmers began to be interested in it and to
discuss its possibilities. Such subjects as Latin and Greek were
dropped and agriculture, home economics, and mechanic arts were
emphasized. Workshops, print shops, kitchen and sewing rooms,
agricultural implements, and live stock, were provided. This was a
very advanced step at that time and it aroused some opposition. It was
called the “new-fangled” education, and farmers who read and studied
methods of farming were often sneered at as “book farmers.” But in
time people began to view these things in a different light. It has
now come to be generally recognized that successful farming requires a
broader and more varied knowledge than almost any other business, and
that in an agricultural state like ours nothing is more important than
the training of its citizens for home and farm life. The Agricultural
College now occupies the position of leadership in the agricultural
and industrial interests of the State, and is one of the largest
agricultural colleges in the United States.
[Illustration: THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS, LAWRENCE.]
=The University.= The University of Kansas was established by an act
of the Legislature of 1864, and its object, as given by this act, is
to “provide the inhabitants of the State with means of acquiring a
thorough knowledge of the various branches of literature, science, and
the arts.” The university idea is hundreds of years old, and so there
was nothing new in the thought of a university in Kansas. The
University of Kansas was built on the flat-topped hill in Lawrence
where the first party of free-state settlers pitched their tents. It
was opened in 1866 with forty students and three professors. To-day
there are twenty great buildings on Mount Oread. The central
department of the University is the college, which provides a liberal
education in languages, sciences, mathematics, history, and kindred
subjects. Besides the college there are schools of engineering, of
fine arts, of law, of pharmacy, of medicine, and of education. Ours
now ranks high among the universities of the United States.
=Control of State Schools.= Altogether, the University, the
Agricultural College, and the Normal Schools employ about seven
hundred instructors and enroll between eight and nine thousand
students each year. The total annual cost to the people of Kansas is
nearly two million dollars. These schools, together with the School
for the Blind at Kansas City, and the School for the Deaf at Olathe,
were, in 1913, placed under the management of a board of three members
called the Board of Administration. In 1917 the Board of
Administration was reorganized and the penal and the charitable
institutions of the State were placed under its control.
=Denominational Colleges.= In addition to the State institutions
Kansas has more than thirty denominational colleges. A few of the
largest of these are Baker University at Baldwin, Washburn College at
Topeka, Ottawa University at Ottawa, Friends University at Wichita,
the Southwestern University at Winfield, and the College of Emporia.
There are also a number of business colleges and a few independent
schools.
=Other Provisions for Education.= Besides all the schools where the
people of Kansas may obtain an education, every effort is being made
to provide other educational opportunities by means of extension work,
public and traveling libraries, and night schools. The State Normal
School, the Agricultural College, and the University all do extension
work, which means that they offer correspondence courses, send out
lecturers, and in various other ways carry their work to those who can
not attend the schools. Many communities maintain free public
libraries and the State maintains a traveling library.[20] Night
schools are now provided in several of our larger cities. An education
is now possible to any one who really wants it.
All of this has been brought about within little more than a half
century, and though there is much yet to be done the people of Kansas
have every reason to be proud of what they have accomplished in the
interests of education.
SUMMARY
Education in Kansas began with the mission schools and was
one of the first interests in Territorial days. There were
many subscription schools before district schools were
organized. The organization of districts began in the
Territorial period and kept pace with settlement. The
University, the Normal School and the Agricultural College
were established during the Civil War. Since that time many
denominational colleges have been established, the high
school has been developed, and many other means of education
have been provided. Great educational progress has been
made.
REFERENCES
Prentis, History of Kansas, chap. XXXV.
Historical Collections, vol. VI, pp. 70, 114; vol. VII, pp. 167,
502; vol. XI, p. 424; vol. XII, pp. 69, 77, 195.
Catalogues of the State Schools.
Reports of State Department of Education.
Statutes of Kansas.
Blackmar, Kansas, Selected Topics.
Andreas, History of Kansas, General and County Histories.
Spring, Kansas, pp. 319-325.
QUESTIONS
1. What were the mission schools?
2. When did the settlers become interested in education?
3. What was done in education during the Territorial period?
4. What were subscription schools?
5. Describe the early schoolhouses. Compare them with the
buildings of to-day.
6. How did work in the early schools differ from work in the
schools of to-day?
7. Give the history of the growth of the high school.
8. Give an account of the establishment of the State Normal
School; its growth; its purpose. What other normal schools do
we now have?
9. When and where was the Agricultural College established? Give
an account of its growth; its work to-day.
10. What is the purpose of a university? When and where was the
University of Kansas established?
11. What is the present enrollment and cost of the State schools?
12. What is a denominational college? Name some of the most
important of the denominational colleges in Kansas.
13. What other opportunities for education have been provided?