[Illustration: PLATE 17. TWO LEADERS IN THE EDUCATIONAL AWAKENING IN THE

UNITED STATES.

HORACE MANN (1796-1859)

(From the painting at the Westfield, Massachusetts, Normal School)

HENRY BARNARD (1811-1900)]

In 1843 he was called to Rhode Island to examine and report upon the

existing schools, and from 1845 to 1849 acted as State Commissioner of

Public Schools there, where he rendered a service similar to that

previously rendered in Connecticut. In addition he organized a series of

town libraries throughout the State. For his teachers' institutes he

devised a traveling model school, to give demonstration lessons in the art

of teaching. From 1851 to 1855 he was again in Connecticut, as principal

of the newly established state normal school and _ex-officio_ Secretary of

the Connecticut State Board of Education. He now rewrote the school laws,

increased taxation for schools, checked the power of the districts, there

known as "school societies," and laid the foundations of a state system of

schools. The work of Mann and Barnard had its influence throughout all the

Northern States, and encouraged the friends of education everywhere.

Almost contemporaneous with them were leaders in other States who helped

fight through the battles of state establishment and state organization

and control, and the period of their labors has since been termed the

period of the "great awakening."

V. THE BATTLE TO ELIMINATE SECTARIANISM

THE SECULARIZATION OF AMERICAN EDUCATION. The Church, it will be

remembered, was from the earliest colonial times in possession of the

education of the young. Not only were the earliest schools controlled by

the Church and dominated by the religious motive, but the right of the

Church to dictate the teaching in the schools was clearly recognized by

the State. Still more, the State looked to the Church to provide the

necessary education, and assisted it in doing so by donations of land and

money. The minister, as a town official, naturally examined the teachers

and the instruction in the schools. After the establishment of the

National Government this relationship for a time continued. [10] New York

and the New England States specifically set aside lands to help both

church and school. After about 1800 these land endowments for religion

ceased, but grants of state aid for religious schools continued for nearly

a half-century longer. Then it became common for a town or city to build a

schoolhouse from city taxation, and let it out rent-free to any

responsible person who would conduct a tuition school in it, with a few

free places for selected poor children. Still later, with the rise of the

state schools, it became quite common to take over church and private

schools and aid them on the same basis as the new state schools.

In colonial times, too, and for some decades into our national period, the

warmest advocates of the establishment of schools were those who had in

view the needs of the Church. Then gradually the emphasis shifted to the

needs of the State, and a new class of advocates of public education now

arose. Still later the emphasis has been shifted to industrial and civic

and national needs, and the religious aim has been almost completely

eliminated. This change is known as the secularization of American

education. It also required many a bitter struggle, and was accomplished

in the different States but slowly. The two great factors which served to

produce this change were:

1. The conviction that the life of the Republic demanded an educated

and intelligent citizenship, and hence the general education of all in

common schools controlled by the State; and

2. The great diversity of religious beliefs among the people, which

forced tolerance and religious freedom through a consideration of the

rights of minorities.

The secularization of education must not be regarded either as a

deliberate or a wanton violation of the rights of the Church, but rather

as an unavoidable incident connected with the coming to self-consciousness

and self-government of a great people.

THE FIGHT IN MASSACHUSETTS. The educational awakening in Massachusetts,

brought on largely by the work of Horace Mann, was to many a rude

awakening. Among other things, it revealed that the old school of the

Puritans had gradually been replaced by a new and purely American type of

school, with instruction adapted to democratic and national rather than

religious ends. Mr. Mann stood strongly for such a conception of public

education, and being a Unitarian, and the new State Board of Education

being almost entirely liberal in religion, an attack was launched against

them, and for the first time in our history the cry was raised that "The

public schools are Godless schools." Those who believed in the old system

of religious instruction, those who bore the Board or its Secretary

personal ill-will, and those who desired to break down the Board's

authority and stop the development of the public schools, united their

forces in this first big attack against secular education. Horace Mann was

the first prominent educator in America to meet and answer the religious

onslaught.

A violent attack was opened in both the pulpit and the press. It was

claimed that the Board was trying to eliminate the Bible from the schools,

to abolish correction, and to "make the schools a counterpoise to

religious instruction at home and in Sabbath schools." The local right to

demand religious instruction was insisted upon.

Mr. Mann felt that a great public issue had been raised which should be

answered carefully and fully. In three public statements he answered the

criticisms and pointed out the errors in the argument (R. 322). The Bible,

he said, was an invaluable book for forming the character of children, and

should be read without comment in the schools, but it was not necessary to

teach it there. He showed that most of the towns had given up the teaching

of the Catechism before the establishment of the Board of Education. He

contended that any attempt to decide what creed or doctrine should be

taught would mean the ruin of the schools. The attack culminated in the

attempts of the religious forces to abolish the State Board of Education,

in the legislatures of 1840 and 1841, which failed dismally. Most of the

orthodox people of the State took Mr. Mann's side, and Governor Briggs, in

one of his messages, commended his stand by inserting the following:

Justice to a faithful public officer leads me to say that the

indefatigable and accomplished Secretary of the Board of Education has

performed services in the cause of common schools which will earn him

the lasting gratitude of the generation to which he belongs.

THE ATTEMPT TO DIVIDE THE SCHOOL FUNDS. As was stated earlier, in the

beginning it was common to aid church schools on the same basis as the

state schools, and sometimes, in the beginnings of state aid, the money

was distributed among existing schools without at first establishing any

public schools. In many Eastern cities church schools at first shared in

the public funds. In Pennsylvania church and private schools were aided

from poor-law funds up to 1834. In New Jersey the first general school law

of 1829 had been repealed a year later through the united efforts of

church and private-school interests, who unitedly fought the development

of state schools, and in 1830 and 1831 new laws had permitted all private

and parochial schools to share in the small state appropriation for

education.

After the beginning of the forties, when the Roman Catholic influence came

in strongly with the increase in Irish immigration to the United States, a

new factor was introduced and the problem, which had previously been a

Protestant problem, took on a somewhat different aspect in the form of a

demand for a division of the school funds. Between 1825 and 1842 the fight

was especially severe in New York City. In 1825 the City Council refused

to grant public money to any religious Society, [11] and in 1840 the

Catholics carried the matter to the State Legislature.

The legislature deferred action until 1842, and then did the unexpected

thing. The heated discussion of the question in the city and in the

legislature had made it evident that, while it might not be desirable to

continue to give funds to a privately organized corporation, to divide

them among the quarreling and envious religious sects would be much worse.

The result was that the legislature created for the city a City Board of

Education, to establish real public schools, and stopped the debate on the

question of aid to religious schools by enacting that no portion of the

school funds was in the future to be given to any school in which "any

religious sectarian doctrine or tenet should be taught, inculcated, or

practiced." Thus the real public-school system of New York City was

evolved out of this attempt to divide the public funds among the churches.

The Public School Society continued for a time, but its work was now done,

and, in 1853, surrendered its buildings and property to the City Board of

Education and disbanded.

THE CONTEST IN OTHER STATES. As early as 1830, Lowell, Massachusetts, had

granted aid to the Irish Catholic parochial schools in the city, and in

1835 had taken over two such schools and maintained them as public

schools. In 1853 the representatives of the Roman Catholic Church made a

demand on the state legislature for a division of the school fund of the

State. To settle the question once for all a constitutional amendment was

submitted by the legislature to the people, providing that all state and

town moneys raised or appropriated for education must be expended only on

regularly organized and conducted public schools, and that no religious

sect should ever share in such funds. This measure failed of adoption at

the election of 1853 by a vote of 65,111 for and 65,512 against, but was

re-proposed and adopted in 1855. This settled the question in

Massachusetts, as Mann had tried to settle it earlier, and as New

Hampshire had settled it in its constitution of 1792, Connecticut in its

constitution of 1818, and Rhode Island in its constitution of 1842.

Other States now faced similar demands, but no demand for a share in or a

division of the public-school funds, after 1840, was successful. The

demand everywhere met with intense opposition, and with the coming of

enormous numbers of Irish Catholics after 1846, and German Lutherans after

1848, the question of the preservation of the schools just established as

unified state school systems now became a burning one. Petitions for a

division of the funds deluged the legislatures (R. 323), and these were

met by counter-petitions (R. 324). Mass meetings on both sides of the

question were held. Candidates for office were forced to declare

themselves. Anti-Catholic riots occurred in a number of cities. The

Native-American Party was formed, in 1841, "to prevent the union of Church

and State," and to "keep the Bible in the schools." In 1841 the Whig

Party, in New York, inserted a plank in its platform against sectarian

schools. In 1855 the national council of the Know-Nothing Party, meeting

in Philadelphia, in its platform favored public schools and the use of the

Bible therein, but opposed sectarian schools. This party carried the

elections that year in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode

Island, Maryland, and Kentucky.

To settle the question in a final manner legislatures now began to propose

constitutional amendments to the people of their several States which

forbade a division or a diversion of the funds, and these were almost

uniformly adopted at the first election after being proposed. No State

admitted to the Union after 1858, except West Virginia, failed to insert

such a provision in its first state constitution. [12]

VI.

THE BATTLE TO ESTABLISH THE AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL

The elementary or common schools which had been established in the

different States, by 1850, supplied an elementary or common school

education to the children of the masses of the people, and the primary

schools which were added, after about 1820, carried this education

downward to the needs of the beginners. In the rural schools the American

school of the 3 Rs provided for all the children, from the little ones up,

so long as they could advantageously partake of its instruction. Education

in advance of this common school training was in semi-private

institutions--the academies and colleges--in which a tuition fee was

charged. The next struggle came in the attempt to extend the system upward

so as to provide to pupils, free of charge, a more complete education than

the common schools afforded.

[Illustration: FIG. 204. A TYPICAL NEW ENGLAND ACADEMY

Pittsfield Academy, New Hampshire.]

THE TRANSITION ACADEMY. About the middle of the eighteenth century a

tendency manifested itself, in Europe as well as in America, to establish

higher schools offering a more practical curriculum than the old Latin

schools had provided. In America it became particularly evident, after the

coming of nationality, that the old Latin grammar-school type of

instruction, with its limited curriculum and exclusively college-

preparatory ends, was wholly inadequate for the needs of the youth of the

land. The result was the gradual dying-out of the Latin school and the

evolution of the tuition Academy, previously referred to briefly on page

463.

The academy movement spread rapidly during the first half of the

nineteenth century. By 1800 there were 17 academies in Massachusetts, 36

by 1820, and 403 by 1850. By 1830 there were, according to Hinsdale, 950

incorporated academies in the United States, and many unincorporated ones,

and by 1850, according to Inglis, there were, of all kinds, 1007 academies

in New England, 1636 in the Middle Atlantic States, 2640 in the Southern

States, 753 in the Upper Mississippi Valley States, and a total reported

for the entire United States of 6085, with 12,260 teachers employed and

263,096 pupils enrolled. [13]

The greatest period of their development was from 1820 to 1830, though

they continued to dominate secondary education until 1850, and were very

prominent until after the Civil War.

CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES. The most characteristic features of these

academies were their semi-public control (R. 325), their broadened

curriculum and religious purpose, and the extension of their instruction

to girls. The Latin Grammar School was essentially a town free school,

maintained by the towns for the higher education of certain of their male

children. It was aristocratic in type, and belonged to the early period of

class education. With the decline in zeal for education, after 1750, these

tax-supported higher schools largely died out, and in their place private

energy and benevolence came to be depended upon to supply the needed

higher education.

One of the main purposes expressed in the endowment or creation of the

academies was the establishment of courses which should cover a number of

subjects having value aside from mere preparation for college,

particularly subjects of a modern nature, useful in preparing youths for

the changed conditions of society and government and business. The study

of real things rather than words about things, and useful things rather

than subjects merely preparatory to college, became prominent features of

the new courses of study. Among the most commonly found new subjects were

algebra, astronomy, botany, chemistry, general history, United States

history, English literature, surveying, intellectual philosophy,

declamation, and debating. [14]

Not being bound up with the colleges, as the earlier Latin grammar schools

had largely been, the academies became primarily independent institutions,

taking pupils who had completed the English education of the common school

and giving them an advanced education in modern languages, the sciences,

mathematics, history, and the more useful subjects of the time, with a

view to "rounding out" their studies and preparing them for business life

and the rising professions. They thus built upon instead of running

parallel to the common school course, as the old Latin grammar school had

done (see Figure 198, p. 666) and hence clearly mark a transition from the

aristocratic and somewhat exclusive college-preparatory Latin grammar

school of colonial times to the more democratic high school of to-day. The

academies also served a very useful purpose in supplying to the lower

schools the best-educated teachers of the time.

The old Latin grammar school, too, had been maintained exclusively for

boys. Girls had been excluded as "Improper & inconsistent w'th such a

Grammar Schoole as ye law injoines, and is ye Designe of this Settlem't."

The new academies soon reversed this situation. Almost from the first they

began to be established for girls as well as boys, and in time many became

co-educational. In New York State alone 32 academies were incorporated

between 1819 and 1853 with the prefix "Female" to their title. In this

respect, also, these institutions formed a transition to the modern co-

educational high school. The higher education of women in the United

States clearly dates from the establishment of the academies. Troy (New

York) Seminary, founded by Emma Willard, in 1821, and Mt. Holyoke

(Massachusetts) Seminary, founded by Mary Lyon, in 1836, though not the

first institutions for girls, were nevertheless important pioneers in the

higher education of women.

THE DEMAND FOR HIGHER SCHOOLS. The different movements tending toward the

building-up of free public-school systems in the cities and States, which

we have described in this and the preceding chapter, and which became

clearly defined in the Northern States after 1825, came just at the time

when the Academy had reached its maximum development. The settlement of

the question of general taxation for education, the elimination of the

rate-bill by the cities and later by the States, the establishment of the

American common school as the result of a long native evolution, and the

complete establishment of public control over the entire elementary-school

system, all tended to bring the semi-private tuition academy into

question. Many asked why not extend the public-school system upward to

provide the necessary higher education for all in one common state-

supported school. [15]

The demand for an upward extension of the public school, which would

provide academy instruction for the poor as well as the rich, and in one

common public higher school, now made itself felt. As the colonial Latin

grammar school had represented the educational needs of a society based on

classes, and the academies had represented a transition period and marked

the growth of a middle class, so the rising democracy of the second

quarter of the nineteenth century now demanded and obtained the democratic

high school, supported by the public and equally open to all, to meet the

educational needs of a new society built on the basis of a new and

aggressive democracy. Where, too, the academy had represented in a way a

missionary effort--that of a few providing something for the good of the

people (Rs. 319, 325)--the high school on the other hand represented a

coöperative effort on the part of the people to provide something for

themselves.

[Illustration: FIG. 205. THE DEVELOPMENT OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN THE

UNITED STATES

The transitional character of the Academy is well shown in this diagram.]

THE FIRST AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL. The first high school in the United States

was established in Boston, in 1821 (R. 326). For three years it was known

as the "English Classical School" (R. 327), but in 1824 the school

appears in the records as the "English High School." In 1826 Boston also

opened the first high school for girls, but abolished it in 1828, due to

its great popularity, and instead extended the course of study for girls

in the elementary schools.

[Illustration: FIG. 206 THE FIRST HIGH SCHOOL IN THE UNITED STATES

Established at Boston in 1821.]

THE MASSACHUSETTS LAW OF 1827. Though Portland, Maine, established a high

school in 1821, Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1824, and New Bedford,

Haverhill, and Salem, Massachusetts, in 1827, copying the Boston idea, the

real beginning of the American high school as a distinct institution dates

from the Massachusetts Law of 1827 (R. 328), enacted through the influence

of James G. Carter. This law formed the basis of all subsequent

legislation in Massachusetts, and deeply influenced development in other

States. The law is significant in that it required a high school in every

town having 500 families or over, in which should be taught United States

history, bookkeeping, algebra, geometry, and surveying, while in every

town having 4000 inhabitants or over, instruction in Greek, Latin,

history, rhetoric, and logic must be added. A heavy penalty was attached

for failure to comply with the law. In 1835 the law was amended so as to

permit any smaller town to form a high school as well.

This Boston and Massachusetts legislation clearly initiated the public

high-school movement in the United States. It was there that the new type

of higher school was founded, there that its curriculum was outlined,

there that its standards were established, and there that it developed

earliest and best.

THE STRUGGLE TO ESTABLISH AND MAINTAIN HIGH SCHOOLS. The development of

the American high school, even in its home, was slow. Up to 1840 not much

more than a dozen high schools had been established in Massachusetts, and

not more than an equal number in the other States. The Academy was the

dominant institution, the cost of maintenance was a factor, and the same

opposition to an extension of taxation to include high schools was

manifested as was earlier shown toward the establishment of common

schools. The early state legislation, as had been the case with the common

schools, was nearly always permissive and not mandatory. Massachusetts

forms a notable exception in this regard. The support for the schools had

to come practically entirely from increased local taxation, and this made

the struggle to establish and maintain high schools in any State for a

long time a series of local struggles. Years of propaganda and patient

effort were required, and, after the establishment of a high school in a

community, constant watchfulness was necessary to prevent its abandonment

(R. 329).

[Illustration: FIG. 207. HIGH SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES BY 1860

Based on the table given in the _Report of the United States Commissioner

of Education_, 1904, vol. II, pp. 1782-1989. This table is only

approximately correct, as exact information is difficult to obtain. This

table gives 321 high schools by 1860, and all but 35 of these were in the

States shown on the above map. There were two schools in California and

three in Texas, and the remainder not shown were in the Southern States.

Of the 321 high schools reported, over half (167) were in the three States

of Massachusetts (78), New York (41), and Ohio (48).]

In many States, legislation providing for the establishment of high

schools was attacked in the courts. One of the clearest cases of this came

in Michigan, in a test case appealed from the city of Kalamazoo, and

commonly known as the Kalamazoo case. The opinion of the Supreme Court of

the State (R. 330) was so favorable and so positive that this decision

deeply influenced development in almost all of the Upper Mississippi

Valley States. The struggle to establish and maintain high schools in

Massachusetts and New York preceded the development in most other States,

because there the common school had been established earlier. In

consequence, the struggle to extend and complete the public-school system

came there earlier also. The development was likewise more peaceful there,

and came more rapidly. In Massachusetts this was in large part a result of

the educational awakening started by James G. Carter and Horace Mann. In

New York it was due to the early support of Governor De Witt Clinton, and

the later encouragement and state aid which came from the Regents of the

University of the State of New York. Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire

were like Massachusetts in spirit, and followed closely its example. In

Rhode Island and New Jersey, due to old conditions, and in Connecticut,

due to the great decline in education there after 1800, the high school

developed much more slowly, and it was not until after 1865 that any

marked development took place in these States. The democratic West soon

adopted the idea, and established high schools as soon as cities developed

and the needs of the population warranted. In the South the main high-

school development dates from relatively recent times.

Gradually the high school has been accepted as a part of the state common-

school system by all the American States, and the funds and taxation

originally provided for the common schools have been extended to cover the

high school as well. The new States of the West have based their

legislation largely on what the Eastern and Central States earlier fought

out.

VII. THE STATE UNIVERSITY CROWNS THE SYSTEM

THE COLONIAL COLLEGES. The earlier colleges--Harvard, William and Mary,

Yale--had been created by the religious-state governments of the earlier

colonial period, and continued to retain some state connections for a time

after the coming of nationality. As it early became evident that a

democracy demands intelligence on the part of its citizens, that the

leaders of democracy are not likely to be too highly educated, and that

the character of collegiate instruction must ultimately influence national

development, efforts were accordingly made to change the old colleges or

create new ones, the final outcome of which was the creation of state

universities in all the new and in most of the older States. The evolution

of the state university, as the crowning head of the free public school

system of the State, represents the last phase which we shall trace of the

struggle of democracy to create a system of schools suited to its peculiar

needs.

The close of the colonial period found the Colonies possessed of nine

colleges. These, with the dates of their foundation, the Colony founding

them, and the religious denomination they chiefly represented were:

1636. Harvard College Massachusetts Puritan

1693. William and Mary Virginia Anglican

1701. Yale College Connecticut Congregational

1746. Princeton New Jersey Presbyterian

1753-55 Academy and College Pennsylvania Non-denominational

1754. King's College (Columbia) New York Anglican

1764. Brown Rhode Island Baptist

1765. Rutgers New Jersey Reformed Dutch

1769. Dartmouth New Hampshire Congregational

The religious purpose had been dominant in the founding of each

institution, though there was a gradual shading-off in strict

denominational control and insistence upon religious conformity in the

foundations after 1750. Still the prime purpose in the founding of each

was to train up a learned and godly body of ministers, the earlier

congregations at least "dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the

churches when our present ministers shall lie in the dust." In a pamphlet,

published in 1754, President Clap of Yale declared that "Colleges are

_Societies of Ministers_, for training up Persons for the Work of the

_Ministry_" and that "The great design of founding this School (Yale), was

to Educate Ministers in our _own Way_." In the advertisement published in

the New York papers announcing the opening of King's College, in 1754, it

was stated that:

IV. The chief Thing that is aimed at in this College, is, to teach and

engage the Children _to know God in Jesus Christ_, and to love

and serve him in all _Sobriety, Godliness_, and _Richness of

Life_, with a perfect Heart and a Willing Mind: and to train them

up in all Virtuous Habits, and all such useful Knowledge as may render

them creditable to their Families and Friends, Ornaments to their

Country, and useful to the Public Weal in their generation.

These colonial institutions were all small. For the first fifty years of

Harvard's history the attendance at the college seldom exceeded twenty,

and the President did all the teaching. The first assistant teacher

(tutor) was not appointed until 1699, and the first professor not until

1721, when a professorship of divinity was endowed. By 1800 the

instruction was conducted by the President and three professors--divinity,

mathematics, and "Oriental languages"--assisted by a few tutors who

received only class fees, and the graduating classes seldom exceeded

forty. The course was four years in length, and all students studied the

same subjects. The first three years were given largely to the so-called

"Oriental languages" Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. In addition, Freshmen

studied arithmetic; Sophomores, algebra, geometry, and trigonometry; and

Juniors, natural (book) science; and all were given much training in

oratory, and some general history was added. The Senior year was given

mainly to ethics, philosophy, and Christian evidences. [16] The

instruction in the eight other older colleges, before 1800, was not

materially different.

[Illustration: FIG. 208. COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES ESTABLISHED BY 1860

Compiled from data given in the _Reports of the United States Commissioner

of Education_. Of the 246 colleges shown on the map, but 17 were state

institutions, and but two or three others had any state connections.]

GROWTH OF COLLEGES BY 1860. Fifteen additional colleges were founded

before 1800, and it has been estimated that by that date the two dozen

American colleges then existing did not have all told over one hundred

professors and instructors, not less than one thousand nor more than two

thousand students, or property worth over one million dollars. Their

graduating classes were small. No one of the twenty-four admitted women

in any way to its privileges. After 1820, with the firmer establishment

of the Nation, the awakening of a new national consciousness, the

development of larger national wealth, and a court decision which

safeguarded the endowments, interest in the founding of new colleges

perceptibly quickened, as may be seen from the adjoining table, and

between 1820 and 1880 came the great period of denominational effort. The

map shows the colleges established by 1860, from which it will be seen how

large a part the denominational colleges played in the early history of

higher education in the United States. Up to about 1870 the provision of

higher education, as had been the case earlier with the provision of

secondary education by the academies, had been left largely to private

effort. There were, to be sure, a few state universities before 1870,

though usually these were not better than the denominational colleges

around them, and often they maintained a non-denominational character only

by preserving a proper balance between the different denominations in the

employment of their faculties. Speaking generally, higher education in the

United States before 1870 was provided very largely in the tuitional

colleges of the different religious denominations, rather than by the

State. Of the 246 colleges founded by the close of the year 1860, as shown

on the map, but 17 were state institutions, and but two or three others

had any state connections.

COLLEGES FOUNDED UP TO 1900

Before 1780 10

1780-89 7

1790-99 7

1800-09 9

1810-19 5

1820-29 22

1830-39 38

1840-49 42

1850-59 92

1860-69 73

1870-79 61

1880-89 74

1890-99 54

---

Total 494

(After a table by Dexter corrected by U.S. Comr. Educ. data. Only

approximately correct.)

THE NEW NATIONAL ATTITUDE TOWARD THE COLLEGES. After the coming of

nationality there gradually grew up a widespread dissatisfaction with the

colleges as then conducted, because they were aristocratic in tendency,

because they devoted themselves so exclusively to the needs of a class,

and because they failed to answer the needs of the States in the matter of

higher education. Due to their religious origin, and the common

requirement that the president and trustees must be members of some

particular denomination, they were naturally regarded as representing the

interests of some one sect or faction within the State rather than the

interests of the State itself. With the rise of the new democratic spirit

after about 1820 there came a demand, felt least in New England and most

in the South and the new States in the West, for institutions of higher

learning which should represent the State. It was argued that colleges

were important instrumentalities for moulding the future, that the kind of

education given in them must ultimately influence the welfare of the

State, and that higher education cannot be regarded as a private matter.

The type of education given in these higher institutions, it was argued,

"will appear on the bench, at the bar, in the pulpit, and in the senate,

and will unavoidably affect our civil and religious principles." For these

reasons, as well as to crown our state school system and to provide higher

educational advantages for its leaders, it was argued that the State

should exercise control over the colleges.

This new national spirit manifested itself in a number of ways. In New

York we see it in the reorganization of King's College, the rechristening

of the institution as Columbia, and the placing of it under at least the

nominal supervision of the governing educational body of the State. In

Pennsylvania an attempt was made to bring the university into closer

connection with the State, but this failed. In New Hampshire the

legislature tried, in 1816, to transform Dartmouth College into a state

institution. This act was contested in the courts, and the case was

finally carried to the Supreme Court of the United States. There it was

decided, in 1819, that the charter of a college was a contract, the

obligation of which a legislature could not impair.

EFFECT OF THE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE DECISION. The effect of this decision

manifested itself in two different ways. On the one hand it guaranteed the

perpetuity of endowments, and the great period of private and

denominational effort (see table) now followed. On the other hand, since

the States could not change charters and transform old establishments,

they began to turn to the creation of new state universities of their own.

Virginia created its state university the same year as the Dartmouth case

decision. The University of North Carolina, which had been established in

1789, and which began to give instruction in 1795, but which had never

been under direct state control, was taken over by the State in 1821. The

University of Vermont, originally chartered in 1791, was rechartered as a

state university in 1838. The University of Indiana was established in

1820. Alabama provided for a state university in its first constitution,

in 1819, and the institution opened for instruction in 1831. Michigan, in

framing its first constitution preparatory to entering the Union, in 1835,

made careful provisions for the safeguarding of the state university and

for establishing it as an integral part of its state school system, as

Indiana had done in 1816. Wisconsin provided for the creation of a state

university in 1836, and embodied the idea in its first constitution when

it entered the Union in 1848, and Missouri provided for a state university

in 1839, Mississippi in 1844, Iowa in 1847, and Florida in 1856. The state

university is today found in every "new" State and in some of the

"original" States, and practically every new Western and Southern State

followed the patterns set by Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin and made

careful provision for the establishment and maintenance of a state

university in its first state constitution.

There was thus quietly added another new section to the American

educational ladder, and the free public-school system was extended farther

upward. Though the great period of state university foundation came after

1860, and the great period of state university expansion after 1885, the

beginnings were clearly marked early in our national history. Of the

sixteen States having state universities by 1860 (see Figure 208), all

except Florida had established them before 1850. For a long time small,

poorly supported by the States, much like the church colleges about them

in character and often inferior in quality, one by one the state

universities have freed themselves alike from denominational restrictions

on the one hand and political control on the other, and have set about

rendering the service to the State which a state university ought to

render. Michigan, the first of our state universities to free itself, take

its proper place, and set an example for others to follow, opened in 1841

with two professors and six students. In 1844 it was a little institution

of three professors, one tutor, one assistant, and one visiting lecturer,

had but fifty-three students, and offered but a single course of study,

consisting chiefly of Greek, Latin, mathematics, and intellectual and

moral science (R. 331). As late as 1852 it had but seventy-two students,

but by 1860, when it had largely freed itself from the incubus of Baptist

Latin, Congregational Greek, Methodist intellectual philosophy,

Presbyterian astronomy, and Whig mathematics, and its remarkable growth as

a state university had begun, it enrolled five hundred and nineteen.

THE AMERICAN FREE PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM NOW ESTABLISHED. By the close of

the second quarter of the nineteenth century, certainly by 1860, we find

the American public-school system fully established, in principle at

least, in all our Northern States (R. 332). Much yet remained to be done

to carry into full effect what had been established in principle, but

everywhere democracy had won its fight, and the American public school,

supported by general taxation, freed from the pauper-school taint, free

and equally open to all, under the direction of representatives of the

people, free from sectarian control, and complete from the primary school

through the high school, and in the Western States through the university

as well, was established permanently in American public policy. It was a

real democratic educational ladder that had been created, and not the

typical two-class school system of continental European States. The

establishment of the free public high school and the state university

represent the crowning achievements of those who struggled to found a

state-supported educational system fitted to the needs of great democratic

States. Probably no other influences have done more to unify the American

People, reconcile diverse points of view, eliminate state jealousies, set

ideals for the people, and train leaders for the service of the States and

of the Nation than the academies, high schools, and colleges scattered

over the land. They have educated but a small percentage of the people, to

be sure, but they have trained most of the leaders who have guided the

American democracy since its birth.

[Illustration: FIG. 209. THE AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL LADDER

Compare this with the figure on page 577, and the democratic nature of the

American school system will be apparent.]

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Explain the theory of "vested rights" as applied to private and

parochial schools.

2. Does every great advance in provisions for human welfare require a

period of education and propaganda? Illustrate.

3. Explain just what is meant by "the wealth of the State must educate the

children of the State."

4. Show how the retention of the pauper-school idea would have been

dangerous to the life of the Republic.

5. Why were the cities more anxious to escape from the operation of the

pauper-school law than were the towns and rural districts?

6. Why were the pauper-school and the rate-bill so hard to eliminate?

7. Explain why, in America, schools naturally developed from the community

outward.

8. State your explanation for the older States beginning to establish

permanent school funds, often before they had established a state system

of schools.

9. Show the gradual transition from church control of education, through

state aid of church schools, to secularized state schools.

10. Show why secularized state schools were the only possible solution for

the United States.

11. Show that secularization would naturally take place in the textbooks

and the instruction, before manifesting itself in the laws.

12. Show how the American academy was a natural development in the

national life.

13. Show how the American high school was a natural development after the

academy.

14. Show why the high school could be opposed by men who had accepted tax-

supported elementary schools. Why has such reasoning been abandoned now?

15. Explain the difference, and illustrate from the history of American

educational development, between establishing a thing in principle and

carrying it into full effect.

16. Was the early argument as to the influence of higher education on the

State a true argument? Why?

17. What would have been the probable results had the Dartmouth College

case been decided the other way?

18. Show how the opening of collegiate instruction to women was a phase of

the new democratic movement.

19. Show how college education has been a unifying force in the national

life.

SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following illustrative

selections are reproduced:

316. Mann: The Ground of the Free-School System.

317. Governor Cleveland: Repeal of the Connecticut School Law.

318. Mann: On the Repeal of the Connecticut School Law.

319. Gulliver: The Struggle for Free Schools in Norwich.

320. Address: The State and Education.

321. Michigan: A Rate-Bill, and a Warrant for Collection.

322. Mann: On Religious Instruction in the Schools.

323. Michigan: Petition for a Division of the School Fund.

324. Michigan: Counter-Petition against a Division.

325. Connecticut: Act of Incorporation of Norwich Free Academy,

326. Boston: Establishment of the First American High School.

327. Boston: The Secondary-School System in 1823.

328. Massachusetts: The High School Law of 1827.

329. Gulliver: An Example of the Opposition to High Schools.

330. Michigan: The Kalamazoo Decision.

331. Michigan: Program of Studies at University, 1843.

332. Tappan: The Michigan State System of Public Instruction.

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. Do Mann's three propositions (316) hold equally true to-day?

2. Of what type of person is the reasoning of Governor Cleveland (317)

typical?

3. Assuming Mann's description of Connecticut progress (318) to be

correct, how do you account for the legislature following Governor

Cleveland's recommendations so readily?

4. Did the leaders in Norwich (319) use good diplomacy?

5. Point out the essential soundness of the reasoning of the New Jersey

Report (320).

6. Explain the willingness of people seventy-five years ago to conduct the

school business on such a small basis (321) as the rate-bill indicates.

7. Show that, as Mr. Mann points out (322), sectarian schools and a State

Church are near together.

8. Point out the weakness in the argument in the Michigan petition (323).

9. State the purpose and nature of the first American high school (326),

and contrast it with the earlier academy.

10. Contrast the English Classical School (High School) of Boston of 1823,

with the older Latin School (327), as to purpose and instruction.

11. Just what did the Massachusetts Law of 1827 (328) require?

12. Has such opposition as that described in 329 completely died out even

now?

13. State the line of reasoning and the conclusions of the Court in the

Kalamazoo Case (330). Point out how this decision might influence

development elsewhere.

14. Compare the University of Michigan of 1843 (331) with a present-day

high school.

15. Show that Michigan (332) had perfected an American educational ladder.

SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

* Brown, E. E. _The Making of our Middle Schools_.

* Brown, S. W. _The Secularization of American Education_.

Cubberley, E. P. _Public Education in the United States_.

Dexter, E. G. _A History of Education in the United States_.

* Hinsdale, B. A. _Horace Mann, and the Common School Revival in the

United States_.

* Inglis, A. J. _The Rise of the High School in Massachusetts_.

Martin, George H. _The Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School

System_.

* Mead, A. R. _The Development of Free Schools in the United States, as

Illustrated by Connecticut and Michigan_.

Taylor, James M. _Before Vassar Opened_.

* Thwing, Charles F. _A History of Higher Education in America_.

CHAPTER XXVII

EDUCATION BECOMES A NATIONAL TOOL

I. SPREAD OF THE STATE-CONTROL IDEA

THE FIVE TYPE NATIONS. We have now traced, in some detail, the struggles

of forward-looking men to establish national systems of education in five

great world nations. In each we have described the steps by means of which

the State gradually superseded the Church in the control of education, and

the motives and impulses which finally led the State to take over the

school as a function of the State. The steps and impelling motives and

rate of transfer were not the same in any two nations, but in each of the

five the political necessities of the State in time made the transfer seem

desirable. Time everywhere was required to effect the change. The movement

began earliest and was concluded earliest in the German States, and was

concluded last in England. In the German States, France, and Italy the

change came rapidly and as a result of legislative acts or imperial

decrees. In England and the United States the transfer took place, as we

have seen, only in response to the slow development of public opinion.

This change in control and extension of educational advantages was

essentially a nineteenth-century movement, and a resultant of the new

political philosophy and the democratic revolutions of the later

eighteenth century, combined with the industrial revolution of the

nineteenth century. A new political impulse now replaced the earlier

religious motive as the incentive for education, and education for

literacy and citizenship became, during the nineteenth century, a new

political ideal that has, in time, spread to progressive nations all over

the world.

The five great nations whose educational evolution has been described in

the preceding chapters may be regarded as having formed types which have

since been copied, in more or less detail, by the more progressive nations

in different parts of the world. The continental European two-class school

system, the American educational ladder, and the English tendency to

combine the two and use the best parts of each, have been reproduced in

the different national educational systems which have been created by the

various political governments of the world. The continental European idea

of a centralized ministry for education, with an appointed head or a

cabinet minister in control, has also been widely copied. The Prussian

two-class plan has been most influential among the Teutonic and Slavic

peoples of Europe, and has also deeply influenced educational development

among the Japanese; English ideas have been extensively copied in the

English self-governing dominions; and the American plan has been clearly

influential in Canada, the Argentine, and in China. The French centralized

plan for organization and administration has been widely copied in the

state educational organizations of the Latin nations of Europe and South

America. In a general way it may be stated that the more democratic the

government of a nation has become the greater has been the tendency to

break away from the two-class school system, to introduce more of an

educational ladder, and to bring in more of the English conception of

granting to localities a reasonable amount of local liberty in educational

affairs.

SPREAD OF THE STATE CONTROL IDEA AMONG NORTHERN NATIONS. The development

of schools under the control of the government, and the extension of state

supervision to the existing religious schools, took place in the different

cantons of Switzerland, and in Holland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden,

somewhat contemporaneously with the development described for the five

type nations. The work of Pestalozzi and Fellenberg, and of their

disciples and followers, had given an early impetus to the establishment

of schools and teacher-training in the Swiss cantons, most being done in

the German-speaking portions.

In Holland, where the Reformation zeal for schools largely died out in the

eighteenth century, the organization of the "Society of Public Good," in

1784, by a Mennonite clergyman, did much to awaken a new interest in

schools for the people and to inaugurate a new movement for educational

organization. In 1795 a revolution took place in Holland, a republic was

established, and the extension of educational advantages followed. From

1806 to 1815 Holland was under the rule of Napoleon. A school law of 1806

forms the basis of public education in Holland. This asserted the

supremacy of the State in education, and provided for state inspection of

schools. In 1812 the French scientist, M. Cuvier, reported to Napoleon

that there were 4451 schools in little Holland, and that one tenth of the

total population was in school. In 1816 a normal school was established at

Haarlem. Both the constitutions of 1815 and 1848 provided for state

control of education, which has been steadily extended since the beginning

of the revival in 1784. Today Holland provides a good system of public

instruction for its people.

[Illustration: Fig. 210. THE SCHOOL SYSTEM OF DENMARK]

In Denmark and Sweden the development of state schools has been worked

out, much as in England, in coöperation with the Church, and the Church

still assists the State in the administration and supervision of the

school systems which were eventually evolved. In each of these countries,

too, the continental two-class school system has been somewhat modified by

an upward movement of the transfer point between the two and the

development of people's high schools, so as to produce a more democratic

type of school and afford better educational opportunities to all classes

of the population. The annexed diagram, showing the organization of

education in Denmark, is typical of this modification and extension.

Finland should also be classed with these northern nations in matters of

educational development. Lutheran ideas as to religion and the need for

education took deep hold there at an early date (p. 297). A knowledge of

reading and the Catechism was made necessary for confirmation as early as

1686, and democratic ideas also found an early home among this people. In

consequence the Finns have for long been a literate people. The law making

elementary education a function of the State, however, dates only from

1866, and secondary education was taken over from the ecclesiastical

authorities only in 1872.

Similarly, Scotland, another northern nation, began schools as a phase of

its Reformation fervor. During the eighteenth century the parish schools,

created by the Acts of 1646 (R. 179; p. 335) and 1696, proved

insufficient, and voluntary schools were added to supplement them.

Together these insured for Scotland a much higher degree of literacy than

was the case in England. The final state organization of education in

Scotland dates from the Scottish Education Act of 1872.

[Illustration: FIG. 211. THE PROGRESS OF LITERACY IN EUROPE BY THE CLOSE

OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY]

The map reproduced here, showing the progress of general education by the

close of the nineteenth century, as measured by the spread of the ability

to read and write, reveals at a glance the high degree of literacy of the

northern Teutonic and mixed Teutonic nations. It was among these nations

that the Protestant Reformation ideas made the deepest impression; it was

in these northern States that the Protestant elementary vernacular school,

to teach reading and religion, attained its earliest start; it was there

that the school was taken over from the Church and erected into an

effective national instrument at an early date; and it was these nations

which had been most successful, by the close of the nineteenth century, in

extending the elements of education to all and thus producing literate

populations.

THE STATE-CONTROL IDEA IN THE SOUTH AND EAST OF EUROPE. As we pass to the

south and east of Europe we pass not only to lands which remained loyal to

the Roman Church, or are adherents of the Greek Church, and hence did not

experience the Reformation fervor with its accompanying zeal for

education, but also to lands untouched by the French-Revolution movement

and where democratic ideas have only recently begun to make any progress.

Greece alone forms an exception to this statement, a constitutional

government having been established there in 1843. Removed from the main

stream of European civilization, these nations have been influenced less

by modern forces; the hold of the Church on the education of the young has

there been longest retained; and the taking-over of education by the State

has there been longest deferred. In consequence, the schools provided have

for long been inadequate both in number and scope, and the progress of

literacy and democratic ideas among the people has been slow.

Despite the beginnings made by Maria Theresa (p. 475) in the late

eighteenth century, Austria dropped backward to a low place in matters of

education during the period of reaction following the Napoleonic wars, and

the real beginnings of state elementary-schools there date from the law of

1867. The beginnings in Hungary date from 1868. The beginnings of other

state elementary school systems are: Greece, 1823; Portugal, 1844; Spain,

1857; Roumania, 1859; Bulgaria, 1881; and Serbia, 1882. In many of these

States, despite early beginnings, but little real progress has even yet

been made in developing systems of national education that will provide

gratuitous elementary-school training for all and inculcate the national

spirit. In many of these States the illiteracy of the people is still

high, [1] the people are poor, the nations are economically backward, the

military and clerical classes still dominate, and intelligent and

interested governments have not as yet been evolved.

In Russia, though Catherine II and her successors made earnest efforts to

begin a system of state education, the period following Napoleon was one

of extreme repressive reaction. The military class and the clergy of the

Greek Church joined hands in a government interested in keeping the people

submissive and devout. In consequence, at the time of the emancipation of

the serfs, in 1861, it was estimated that not one per cent of the total

population of Russia was then under instruction, and the ratio of

illiteracy by the close of the nineteenth century was the highest in

Europe outside of Spain, Portugal, and the Balkan States.

THE STATE-CONTROL IDEA IN THE ENGLISH SELF-GOVERNING DOMINIONS. The

English and French settlers in Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritime Provinces

of Canada brought the English and French parochial-school ideas from their

home-lands with them, but these home conceptions were materially modified,

at an early date, by settlers from the northern States of the American

Union. These introduced the New England idea of state control and public

responsibility for education. In part copying precedents recently

established in the new American States, as an outcome of the struggles

there to establish free, tax-supported, and state-controlled schools, both

Ontario and Quebec early began the establishment of state systems of

education for their people. A superintendent of education was appointed in

Ontario in 1844, and the Common School Act of 1846 laid the foundation of

the state school system of the Province. In the law of 1871 a system of

uniform, free, compulsory, and state-inspected schools was definitely

provided for. Quebec, in 1845, made the ecclesiastical parish the unit for

school administration; in 1852 appointed government inspectors for the

church schools; and in 1859 provided for a Council of Public Instruction

to control all schools in the Province. The Dominion Act of 1867 left

education, as in the United States, to the several Provinces to control,

and state systems of education, though with large liberty in religious

instruction, or the incorporation of the religious schools into the state

school systems, have since been erected in all the Canadian Provinces.

Following American precedents, too, a thoroughly democratic educational

ladder has almost everywhere been created, substantially like that shown

in the Figure on page 708.

In Australia and New Zealand education has similarly been left to the

different States to handle, but a state centralized control has been

provided there which is more akin to French practice than to English

ideas. In each State, primary education has been made free, compulsory,

secular, and state-supported. The laws making such provision in the

different States date from 1872, in Victoria; 1875, in Queensland; 1878,

in South Australia, West Australia, and New Zealand; and 1880, in New

South Wales. Secondary education has not as yet been made free, and many

excellent privately endowed or fee-supported secondary schools, after the

English plan, are found in the different States.

In the new Union of South Africa all university education has been taken

over by the Union, while the existing school systems of the different

States are rapidly being taken over and expanded by the state governments,

and transformed into constructive instruments of the States.

THE STATE-CONTROL IDEA IN THE SOUTH AMERICAN STATES. As we have seen in

Chapter XX, the spirit of nationality awakened by the French Revolution

spread to South America, and between 1815 and 1821 all of Spain's South

American colonies revolted, declared their independence from the mother

country, and set up constitutional republics. Brazil, in 1822, in a

similar manner severed its connections from Portugal. The United States,

through the Monroe Doctrine (1823), helped these new States to maintain

their independence. For approximately half a century these States,

isolated as they were and engaged in a long and difficult struggle to

evolve stable forms of government, left such education as was provided to

private individuals and societies and to the missionaries and teaching

orders of the Roman Church. After the middle of the nineteenth century,

the new forces stirring in the modern world began to be felt in South

America as well, and, after about 1870, a well-defined movement to

establish state school systems began to be in evidence.

The Argentine constitution of 1853 had directed the establishment of

primary schools by the State, but nothing of importance was done until

after the election of Dr. Sarmiento as President, in 1868. Under his

influence an American-type normal school was established, teachers were

imported from the United States, and liberal appropriations for education

were begun. In 1873 a general system of national aid for primary education

was established, and in 1884 a new law laid the basis of the present state

school system. Though some earlier beginnings had been made in some of the

other South American nations, Argentine is regarded as the leader in

education among them. This is largely due to the democratic nature of the

government which, in connection with the deep interest in education of

President Sarmiento, [2] found educational expression in the creation of

an American-type educational ladder, as the accompanying diagram shows.

Large emphasis has been placed on scientific and practical studies in the

secondary _colegios_. The normal school has been given large importance,

and made a parallel and connecting link in the educational ladder between

the primary schools and the universities. The Argentine school system,

probably due to American influences acting through President Sarmiento,

forms an exception to the usual South American state school system, as

nearly all the other States have followed the French model and created a

European two-class school system.

[Illustration: FIG. 212. THE SCHOOL SYSTEM OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC]

In Chili, the constitution of 1833 declared education to be of supreme

importance, and a normal school was established in Santiago, as early as

1840. The basic law for the organization of a state system of primary

instruction, however, dates from 1860, and the law organizing a state

system of secondary and higher education from 1872.

In Peru, an educational reform movement was inaugurated in 1876, but the

war with Chili (1879-84) checked all progress. In 1896 an Educational

Commission was appointed to visit the United States and Europe, and the

law of 1901 marked the creation of a ministry for education and the real

beginnings of a state school system.

The Brazilian constitution of 1824 left education to the several States

(twenty and one Federal District), and a permissive law of 1827 allowed

the different States to establish schools. It was not until 1854, however,

that public schools were organized in the Federal District, and these mark

the real beginning of state education in Brazil. Since then the

establishment of state schools has gradually extended to the coast States,

and inland with the building of railway lines and the opening-up of the

interior to outside influences. The basis for state-controlled education

has now been laid in all the States, but the attendance at the schools as

yet is small. [3]

In some of the other South American States, such as Bolivia, Ecuador, and

Venezuela, but little progress in extending state-controlled schools has

as yet been made, and the training of the young is still left largely to

private effort, the Church, and the religious orders. The illiteracy in

all the South American States is still high, in part due to the large

native populations, and much remains to be done before education becomes

general there. The state-control idea, though, has been definitely

established in principle in these countries. With the establishment of

stable governments, the building of railroads and steamship lines, and the

development of an important international commerce--events which there

have characterized the first two decades of the twentieth century--early

and important progress in state educational organization and in the

extension of educational advantages may be expected.

THE STATE-SCHOOL IDEA IN EASTERN ASIA. In 1854 Admiral Perry effected the

treaty of friendship with Japan which virtually opened that nation to the

influences of western civilization, and one of the most wonderful

transformations of a people recorded in history soon began. In 1867 a new

Mikado came to the throne, and in 1868 the small military class, which had

ruled the nation for some seven hundred years, gave up their power to the

new ruler. A new era in Japan, known as the _Meiji_, dates from this

event. In 1871 the centuries-old feudal system was abolished, and all

classes in the State were declared equal before the law. This same year

the first newspaper in Japan was begun. In 1872 the first educational code

for the nation was promulgated by the Mikado. This ordered the general

establishment of schools, the compulsory education of the people (R. 334

a), and the equality of all classes in educational matters. Students were

now sent abroad, especially to Germany and the United States; foreign

teachers were imported; an American normal-school teacher was placed in

charge of the newly opened state normal school; the American class method

of instruction was introduced; schoolbooks and teaching apparatus were

prepared, after American models; middle schools were organized in the

towns; higher schools were opened in the cities; and the old Academy of

Foreign Languages was evolved (1877) into the University of Tokyo. In 1884

the study of English was introduced into the courses of the public

schools. In 1889 a form of constitution was granted to the people, and a

parliament established. [4]

[Illustration: FIG. 213. THE JAPANESE TWO-CLASS SCHOOL SYSTEM.]

Adapting the continental European idea of a two-class school system to the

peculiar needs of the nation, the Japanese have worked out, during the

past half-century, a type of state-controlled school system which has been

well adapted to their national needs. [5] Instruction in national

morality, based on the ancestral virtues, brotherly affection, and loyalty

to the constitution and the ruling class (R. 334 b-c), has been well

worked out in their schools. Though the government has remained largely

autocratic in form, the Japanese have, however, retained throughout all

their educational development the fundamental democratic principle

enunciated in the Preamble to the Educational Code of 1872 (R. 334 a),

_viz_., that every one without distinction of class or sex shall receive

primary education at least, and that the opportunity for higher education

shall be open to all children. So completely has the education of the

people been conceived of as one of the most important functions of the

State that all education has been placed under a centralized state

control, with a Cabinet Minister in charge of all administrative matters

connected with the education of the nation.

[Illustration: FIG. 214. THE CHINESE EDUCATIONAL LADDER]

Since near the end of the nineteenth century what promises to be an even

more wonderful transformation of a people-political, social, scientific,

and industrial--has been taking place in China (R. 335). A much more

democratic type of national school system than that of the Japanese has

been worked out, and this the new (1912) Republic of China is rapidly

extending in the provinces, and making education a very important function

of the new democratic national life. [6] In the beginning, when displacing

the centuries-old Confucian educational system, [7] the Chinese adopted

Japanese ideas and organized their schools (1905) somewhat after the

Japanese model. Later on, responding to the influence of many American-

educated Chinese and to the more democratic impulses of the Chinese

people, the new government established by the Republic of 1912 changed the

school system at first established so as to make it in type more like the

American educational ladder. The new Chinese school system is shown in the

drawing on page 721. The university instruction is modern and excellent,

and the addition of the cultural and scientific knowledge worked out in

western Europe to the intellectual qualities of this capable people can

hardly fail to result, in time, in the production of a wonderful modern

nation, [8] probably in one of the greatest nations of the mid-twentieth

century.

In 1891 the independent Kingdom of Siam, [9] awakened from its age-long

isolation by new world influences, sent a prince to Europe to study and

report on the state systems of education maintained there. As a result of

his report a department of public education was created, which later

evolved into a ministry of public instruction, and elementary schools were

opened by the State in the thirteen thousand old Buddhist temples. These

schools offered a two-year course in Siamese, followed by a five-year

course in English, given by imported English teachers. Schools for girls

were provided, as well as for boys. Since this beginning, higher schools

of law, medicine, agriculture, engineering, and military science have been

added, taught largely by imported English and American teachers. In

consequence of the new educational organization, and the new influences

brought in, the whole life of this little kingdom has been transformed

during the past three decades.

GENERAL ACCEPTANCE OF THE STATE-FUNCTION CONCEPTION. The different

national school systems, the creation of which has so far been briefly

described, are typical and represent a great world movement which

characterized the latter half of the nineteenth century. This movement is

still under way, and increasing in strength. Other state school

organizations might be added to the list, but those so far given are

sufficient. Beginning with the nations which were earliest to the front of

the onward march of civilization, the movement for the state control of

education, itself an expression of new world forces and new national

needs, has in a century spread to every continent on the globe. To-day

progressive nations everywhere conceive of education for their people as

so closely associated with their social, political, and industrial

progress, and their national welfare and prosperity (R. 336), that the

control of education has come to be regarded as an indispensable function

of the State. State constitutions (R. 333) have accordingly required the

creation of comprehensive state school systems; legislators have turned to

education with a new interest; bulky state school codes have given force

to constitutional mandates; national literacy has become a goal; the

diffusion of political intelligence by means of the school has naturally

followed the extension of the suffrage; while the many new forces and

impulses of a modern world have served to make the old religious type of

education utterly inadequate, and to call for national action to a degree

never conceived of in the days when religious, private, and voluntary

educational effort sufficed to meet the needs of the few who felt the call

to learn. What a few of the more important of these new nineteenth-century

forces have been, which have so fundamentally modified the character and

direction of education, it may be worth while to set forth briefly, before

proceeding further.

II. NEW MODIFYING FORCES

THE ADVANCE OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. The first and most important of these

nineteenth-century forces, and the one which preceded and conditioned all

the others, was the great increase of accurate knowledge as to the forces

and laws of the physical world, arising from the application of scientific

method to the investigation of the phenomena of the material world (R.

337). During the nineteenth century the intellect of man was stimulated to

activity as it had not been before since the days when little Athens was

the intellectual center of the world. What the Revival of Learning was to

the classical scholars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the

movement for scientific knowledge and its application to human affairs was

to the nineteenth. It changed the outlook of man on the problems of life,

vastly enlarged the intellectual horizon, and gave a new trend to

education and to scholarly effort. What the scholars of the seventeenth

and eighteenth centuries had been slowly gathering together as interesting

and classified phenomena, the scientific scholars of the nineteenth

century organized, interpreted, expanded, and applied. Since the day of

Copernicus (p. 386) and Newton (p. 388) a growing appreciation of the

permanence and scope of natural law in the universe had been slowly

developing, and this the scholars of the nineteenth century fixed as a

principle and applied in many new directions. A few of the more important

of these new directions may profitably be indicated here.

[Illustration: FIG. 215. BARON JUSTUS VON LIEBIG (1803-73)]

In the domain of the physical sciences very important advances

characterized the century. Chemistry, up to the end of the first quarter

of the nineteenth century largely a collection of unrelated facts, was

transformed by the labors of such men as Dalton (1766-1844), Faraday

(1791-1867), and Liebig into a wonderfully well-organized and vastly

important science. Liebig carried chemistry over into the study of the

processes of digestion and the functioning of the internal organs, and

reshaped much of the instruction in medicine. Liebig is also important as

having opened, at Giessen, in 1826, the first laboratory instruction in

chemistry for students provided in any university in the world. By many

subsequent workers chemistry has been so applied to the arts that it is

not too much to say that a knowledge of chemistry underlies the whole

manufacturing and industrial life of the present, and that the degree of

industrial preeminence held by a nation to-day is largely determined by

its mastery of chemical processes.

Physics has experienced an equally important development. It, too, at the

beginning of the nineteenth century was in the preliminary state of

collecting, coördinating, and trying to interpret data. In a century

physics has, by experimentation and the application of mathematics to its

problems, been organized into a number of exceedingly important sciences.

In dynamics, heat, light, and particularly in electricity, discoveries and

extension of previous knowledge of the most far-reaching significance have

been made. What at the beginning of the nineteenth century was a small

textbook study of natural philosophy has since been subdivided into the

two great sciences of physics and chemistry, and these in turn into

numerous well-organized branches. Today these are taught, not from

textbooks, but in large and costly laboratories, while manufacturing

establishments and governments now find it both necessary and profitable

to maintain large scientific institutions for chemical and physical

research.

The great triumph of physics, from the point of view of the reign of law

in the world of matter, was the experimental establishment (1849) of the

fundamental principle of the conservation of energy. This ranks in

importance in the world of the physical sciences with the theory of

evolution in the biological. The perfection of the spectroscope (1859)

revealed the rule of chemical law among the stars, and clinched the theory

of evolution as applied to the celestial universe. The atomic theory of

matter [10] was an extension of natural laws in another direction. In 1846

occurred the most spectacular proof of the reign of natural law which the

nineteenth century witnessed. Two scientists, in different lands, [11]

working independently, calculated the orbit of a new planet, Neptune, and

when the telescope was turned to the point in the heavens indicated by

their calculations the planet was there. It was a tremendous triumph for

both mathematics and astronomy. Such work as this meant the firm

establishment of scientific accuracy, and the ultimate elimination of the

old theories of witchcraft, diabolic action, and superstition as

controlling forces in the world of human affairs.

The publication by Charles Lyell (1797-1875) of his _Principles of

Geology_, in 1830, marked another important advance in the knowledge of

the operations of natural law in the physical world, and likewise a

revolution in thinking in regard to the age and past history of the earth.

Few books have ever more deeply influenced human thinking. The old

theological conception of earthly "catastrophes" [12] was overthrown, and

in its place was substituted the idea of a very long and a very orderly

evolution of the planet. Geology was created as a new science, and out of

this has come, by subsequent evolution, a number of other new sciences

[13] which have contributed much to human progress.

[Illustration: FIG. 216. CHARLES DARWIN (1809-82)]

Another of the great books of all time appeared in 1859, when Charles

Darwin (1809-1882) published the results of thirty years of careful

biological research in his _Origin of Species_. This swept away the old

theory of special and individual creation which had been cherished since

early antiquity; and substituted in its place the reign of law in the

field of biological life. This substitution of the principle of orderly

evolution for the old theory of special creation marked another forward

step in human thinking, [14] and gave an entirely new direction to the old

study of natural history. [15] In the hands of such workers as Wallace

(1823-1913), Asa Gray (1810-88), Huxley (1825-94), and Spencer (1820-1903)

it now proved a fruitful field.

In 1856 the German Virchow (1821-1902) made his far-reaching contribution

of cellular pathology to medical science; between 1859 and 1865 the French

scientist Pasteur (1822-95) established the germ theory of fermentation,

putrefaction, and disease; about the same time the English surgeon Lister

(1827-1914) began to use antiseptics in surgery; and, in 1879, the

bacillus of typhoid fever was found. Out of this work the modern sciences

of pathology, aseptic surgery, bacteriology, and immunity were created,

and the cause and mode of transmission of the great diseases [16] which

once decimated armies and cities--plague, cholera, malaria, typhoid,

typhus, yellow fever, dysentery--as well as the scourges of tuberculosis,

diphtheria, and lockjaw, have been determined. The importance of these

discoveries for the future welfare and happiness of mankind can scarcely

be overestimated. Sanitary science arose as an application of these

discoveries, and since about 1875 a sanitary and hygienic revolution has

taken place.

[Illustration: FIG. 217 LOUIS PASTEUR (1822-95)]

The above represent but a few of the more important of the many great

scientific advances of the nineteenth century. What the thinkers of the

eighteenth century had sowed broadcast through a general interest in

science, their successors in the nineteenth reaped as an abundant harvest.

The three great master keys of science--the higher mathematics, the

principle of the conservation of energy, and the principle of orderly

evolution of life according to law--so long unknown to man, had at last

been discovered, and, with these in their possession, men have since

opened up many of the long-hidden secrets of cause and growth and form and

function, both in the heavens and on the earth, and have revealed to a

wondering world the prodigious and eternal forces of an orderly universe.

The fruitfulness of the Baconian method (p. 390) in the hands of his

successors has far surpassed his most sanguine expectations.

THE APPLICATIONS OF SCIENCE AND THE RESULT. All this work, as has been

frequently pointed out (R. 338), had of necessity to precede the

applications of science to the arts and to the advancement of the comforts

and happiness of mankind. The new studies soon caught the attention of

younger scholars; special schools for their study began to be established

by the middle of the nineteenth century; [17] enthusiastic students of

science began forcefully to challenge the centuries-long supremacy of

classical studies; funds for scientific research began to be provided; the

printing-press disseminated the new ideas; and thousands of applications

of science to trade and industry and human welfare began to attract public

attention and create a new demand for schools and for a new extension of

learning. During the past century the applications of this new learning to

matters that intimately touch the life of man have been so numerous and so

far-reaching in their effects that they have produced a revolution in life

conditions unlike anything the world ever experienced before. In all the

days from the time of the Crusades to the end of the Napoleonic Wars the

changes in living effected were less, both in scope and importance, than

have taken place in the century since Napoleon was sent to Saint Helena.

THIS TRANSFORMATION WE CALL THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. This, as we pointed

out earlier (p. 492), began in England in the late eighteenth century.

France did not experience its beginnings until after the Napoleonic Wars,

though after about 1820 the transformations there were rapid and far-

reaching. In the United States it began about 1810-15, and between 1820

and 1860 the industrial methods of the people of the northeastern quarter

of the United States were revolutionized. Between 1860 and 1900 they were

revolutionized again. In the German States the transformation began about

1840, though it did not reach its great development until after the

establishment of the Empire, in 1871. Since the middle of the nineteenth

century, with the development of factories, the building of railroads, and

the extension of steamship lines, even the most remote countries have been

affected by the new forces. Nations long primitive and secluded have been

modernized and industrialized; century-old trades and skills have been

destroyed by machinery; the old home and village industries have been

replaced by the factory system; cities for manufacturing and trade have

everywhere experienced a rapid development; and even on the farm the

agricultural methods of bygone days have been replaced by the discoveries

of science and the products of invention. Almost nothing is done to-day as

it was a century ago, and only in remote places do people live as they

used to live. The nature and extent of the change which has been wrought,

and some estimate as to its effect upon educational procedure, may perhaps

be better comprehended if we first contrast living conditions before and

after this industrial transformation.

[Illustration: FIG. 218. MAN POWER BEFORE THE DAYS OF STEAM

Foot power a century ago. (From a cut by Anderson, America's first

important engraver)]

LIVING CONDITIONS A CENTURY AGO. A century ago people everywhere lived

comparatively simple lives. The steam engine, while beginning to be put to

use (p. 493), had not as yet been extensively applied and made the willing

and obedient slave of man. The lightning had not as yet been harnessed,

and the now omnipresent electric motor was then still unknown. Only in

England had manufacturing reached any large proportions, and even there

the methods were somewhat primitive. Thousands of processes which we now

perform simply and effectively by the use of steam or electric power, a

century ago were done slowly and painfully by human labor. The chief

sources of power were then man and horse power. The home was a center in

which most of the arts and trades were practiced, and in the long winter

evenings the old crafts and skills were turned to commercial account. What

every family used and wore was largely made in the home, the village, or

the neighborhood.

Travel was slow and expensive and something only the well-to-do could

afford. To go fifty miles a day by stage-coach, or one hundred by sailing

packet on the water, was extraordinarily rapid. "One could not travel

faster by sea or by land," as Huxley remarked, "than at any previous time

in the world's history, and King George could send a message from London

to York no faster than King John might have done." The steam train was not

developed until about 1825, and through railway lines not for a quarter-

century longer. It took four days by coach from London to York (188

miles); six weeks by sailing vessel from Southampton to Boston; and six

months from England to India. People moved about but little. A journey of

fifty miles was an event--for many something not experienced in a

lifetime. To travel to a foreign land made a man a marked individual.

Benjamin Franklin tells us that he was frequently pointed out on the

streets of Philadelphia, then the largest city in the United States, as a

man who had been to Europe. George Ticknor has left us an interesting

record (R. 339) of his difficulties, in finding anything in print in the

libraries of the time, about 1815, or any one who could tell him about the

work of the German universities, which he, as a result of reading Madame

de Staël's book on Germany, was desirous of attending. [18]

Everywhere it was a time of hard work and simple living. Every youngster

had to become useful at an early age. The work of life, in town or on the

farm, required hard and continual labor from all. Farm machinery had not

been perfected, and hand labor performed all the operations of ploughing

and sowing, reaping and harvesting. With the introduction of the factory

system, men, women, and children were used to operate machinery, children

being apprenticed to the mills at about eight years of age and working ten

to twelve hours a day. This soon worked the life out of human beings, and

in consequence sickness, wretchedness, juvenile delinquency, ignorance,

drunkenness, pauperism, and crime increased greatly as cities grew and the

factory system drew thousands from the farms to the towns. When Queen

Victoria came to the throne (1837) one person in twelve in England was a

pauper, and the lot of the poor was wretched in the extreme. In cities

they lived in cellars and basements and hovels. There was practically no

sanitation or drainage. Streets and alleys were filthy. Graveyards were

commonly located in the heart of a town. A pure water-supply through

water-mains was unknown. Pumps and water-carriers supplied nearly all the

needs. There was in consequence much sickness, and such diseases as

typhoid and malaria ran rampant.

[Illustration: FIG. 219. THRESHING WHEAT A CENTURY AGO

(After a woodcut by Jacque, in _L'Illustration_)]

CHANGE IN LIVING CONDITIONS TO-DAY. In a century all has been changed.

Steam and electricity and sanitary science have transformed the world; the

railway, steamship, telegraph, cable, and printing-press have made the

world one. The output of the factory system has transformed living and

labor conditions, even to the remote corners of the world; sanitary

science and sanitary legislation have changed the primitive conditions of

the home and made of it a clean and comfortable modern abode; men and

women have been freed from an almost incalculable amount of drudgery and

toil, and the human effort and time saved may now be devoted to other

types of work or to enjoyment and learning. Thousands who once were needed

for menial toil on farm or in shop and home are now freed for employment

in satisfying new wants and new pleasures that mankind has come to know,

[19] or may devote their time and energies to forms of service that

advance the welfare of mankind or minister to the needs of the human

spirit.

[Illustration: FIG. 220. A CITY WATER-SUPPLY ABOUT 1830

(After a lithograph by Bellange)]

Labor-saving devices and the applications of scientific work have touched

all phases of life and labor of men and women, and under modern methods of

transportation go everywhere. The American self-binding reaper is found in

the grain-fields of Russia and the Argentine; one may buy cans of kerosene

and tinned meats and vegetables almost anywhere in the world today; sewing

machines and phonographs add to the comfort and pleasure of the African

native and the dweller on the Yukon; "milady" in Siam uses cosmetics

manufactured for the devotees of fashion in Paris; the Sultan of Sulu

wears an elegant American wrist-watch; the Dahomeny tribesman has a safety

razor, and a mirror of French plate; the Persian dandy wears shoes and

haberdashery made in the United States; old Chinamen up the Yellow River

Valley read their Confucius by the light of an Edison Mazda; the steam

train wends its way up from Jaffa to Jerusalem; the gasoline power boat

chugs its course up the Nile the Pharaohs sailed; and modern surgical

methods and instruments are used in the hospitals of Manila and Singapore,

Cairo and Cape Town. A rupee spent for thread at Calcutta starts the

spindles going in Manchester; a new calico dress for a Mandalay belle

helps the cotton-print mills of Leeds; a new carving set for a Fiji

Islander means more labor for some cutlery works in Sheffield; a half-

dollar for a new undershirt in Panama means increased work for a cotton

mill in New England; a new blanket called for against the winter's cold of

Siberia moves the looms of some Rhode Island town; a dime spent for a box

of matches in Alaska means added labor and profit for a match factory in

California; a new bath tub in Paraguay spells increased output for a

factory at Milan or Turin; and the Christmas wishes of the children in

Brazil give work to the toy factories of Nüremberg.

Trains and huge steamers move today along the great trade routes of the

modern world, exchanging both the people and their products. The holds of

the ships are filled with coal and grain and manufactured implements and

commodities of every description, while their steerage space is crowded

with modern Marco Polos and Magellans going forth to see the world. The

Hindoo walks the streets of Cape Town, London, Sydney, New York, San

Francisco, and Valparaiso; the Russian Jew is found in all the Old and New

World cities; the Englishman and the American travel everywhere; the

Japanese are fringing the Pacific with their laboring classes; toiling

Italians and Greeks are found all over the world; peasants from the

Balkans gather the prune and orange crops of California; the moujic from

the Russian Caucasus tills the wheat-fields of the Dakotas; while the

Irish, Scandinavians, and Teutons form the political, farming, and

commercial classes in many far-distant lands. In the recent World War

Serbs from Montana and Colorado fought side by side with Serbs from

Belgrade and Nisch; Greeks from New York and San Francisco helped their

brothers from Athens drive the Bulgars back up the Vardar Valley; Italians

from New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro helped their kinsmen from the valley

of the Po hold back the Hun from the Venetian plain; Chinese from the

valleys of the Tong-long and the Yang-tse-Kiang backed up the Allied

armies by tilling the fields of France; and Algerian and Senegalese

natives helped the French hold back the Teutonic hordes from the

ravishment of Paris. So completely has the old isolation been broken down!

So completely is the world in flux! So small has the world become!

[Illustration: FIG. 221. THE GREAT TRADE ROUTES OF THE MODERN WORLD

Broken lines, on land, indicate gaps soon to be closed. Compare this with

the maps on pages 161 and 258, and note the progress in discovery and

intercommunication. Ships and trains are constantly passing over these

routes, bearing both freight and peoples.]

It was almost a century from the time instruction in Greek was revived in

Florence (1396) until Linacre first lectured on Greek at Oxford (c. 1492);

six months after the X-ray was perfected in Germany it was in use in the

hospitals of San Francisco. In the Middle Ages thousands might have died

of starvation in Persia or Egypt, a famous city in Asia Minor might have

been destroyed by an earthquake and many people killed, or war might have

raged for years in the Orient without a citizen of western Europe knowing

of it all his life. Today any important event anywhere within the range of

the telegraph or the cable would be reported in tomorrow morning's paper,

and carefully described and illustrated in the magazines at an early date.

Man is no longer a citizen of a town or a state, but of a nation and of

the world. How intelligently he can use this larger citizenship depends

today largely upon the character and the extent of the education he has

received.

[Illustration: FIG. 222. AN EXAMPLE OF THE SHIFTING OF OCCUPATIONS.

Sawing boards by hand, before the introduction of steam power.]

EFFECT OF THESE CHANGES ON THE LABORING-CLASSES. At first the effect of

the introduction of factory-made goods and labor-saving devices was to

upset the old established institutions. Trades practiced by the guilds

since the Middle Ages were destroyed, because factories could turn out

goods faster and cheaper than guild workmen could make them. The age-old

apprenticeship system began to break down. Everywhere people were thrown

out of employment, and a vast shifting of occupations took place. There

was much discontent, and laborers began to unite, where allowed to do so,

[20] with a view to improving their economic and political condition by

concerted action. The political revolutions of 1848 throughout Europe were

in part a manifestation of this discontent, and the right to organize was

everywhere demanded and in time generally obtained. Among the planks in

their platform were equality of all before the law; the limitation of

child and woman labor; better working conditions and wages; the provision

of schools for their children at public expense; and the extension of the

right of suffrage.

Despite certain unfortunate results following the change from age-old

working conditions, the century of transition has seen the laboring man

making gains unknown before in history, and the peasant has seen the

abolition of serfdom [21] and feudal dues. Homes have gained tremendously.

The drudgery and wasteful toil have been greatly mitigated. To-day there

is a standard of comfort and sanitation, even for those in the humblest

circumstances, beyond all previous conceptions. The poorest workman to-day

can enjoy in his home lighting undreamed of in the days of tallow candles;

warmth beyond the power of the old smoky soft-coal grate; food of a

variety and quality his ancestors never knew; kitchen conveniences and an

ease in kitchen work wholly unknown until recently; and sanitary

conveniences and conditions beyond the reach of the wealthiest half a

century ago. The caste system in industry has been broken down, and men

and their children may now choose their occupations freely, [22] and move

about at will. Wages have greatly increased, both actually and relatively

to the greatly improved standard of living. The work of women and children

is easier, and all work for shorter hours. Child labor is fast being

eliminated in all progressive nations. In consequence of all these changes

for the better, people to-day have a leisure for reading and thinking and

personal enjoyment entirely unknown before the middle of the nineteenth

century, and governments everywhere have found it both desirable and

necessary to provide means for the utilization of this leisure and the

gratification of the new desires. Along with these changes has gone the

development of the greatest single agent for spreading liberalizing ideas

--the modern newspaper--"the most inveterate enemy of absolutism and

reaction." Despite censorships, suppressions, and confiscations, the press

has by now established its freedom in all enlightened lands, and the

cylinder press, the telegraph, and the cable have become "indispensable

adjuncts to the development of that power which every absolutist has come

to dread, and with which every prime minister must daily reckon."

III. EFFECT OF THESE CHANGES ON EDUCATION

GENERAL RESULT OF THESE CHANGES. The general result of the vast and far-

reaching changes which we have just described is that the intellectual and

political horizon of the working classes has been tremendously broadened;

the home has been completely altered; children now have much leisure and

do little labor; and the common man at last is rapidly coming into his

own. Still more, the common man seems destined to be the dominant force in

government in the future. To this end he and his children must be

educated, his wife and children cared for, his home protected, and

governments must do for him the things which satisfy his needs and advance

his welfare. The days of the rule of a small intellectual class and of

government in the interests of such a class have largely passed, and the

political equality which the Athenian Greeks first in the western world

gave to the "citizens" of little Athens, the Industrial Revolution has

forced modern and enlightened governments to give to all their people. In

consequence, real democracy in government, education, justice, and social

welfare is now in process of being attained generally, for the first time

in the history of the world.

The effect of all these changes in the mode of living of peoples is

written large on the national life. The political and industrial

revolutions which have marked the ushering-in of the modern age have been

far-reaching in their consequences. The old home life and home industries

of an earlier period are passing, or have passed, never to return. Peoples

in all advanced nations are rapidly swinging into the stream of a new and

vastly more complex world civilization, which brings them into contact and

competition with the best brains of all mankind. At the same time a great

and ever-increasing specialization of human effort is taking place on all

sides, and with new and ever more difficult social, political,

educational, industrial, commercial, and human-life problems constantly

presenting themselves for solution. The world has become both larger and

smaller than it used to be, and even its remote parts are now being linked

up, to a degree that a century ago would not have been deemed possible,

with the future welfare of the nations which so long bore the brunt of the

struggle for the preservation and advancement of civilization.

THESE CHANGES AND THE SCHOOL. It is these vast and far-reaching political,

industrial, and social changes which have been the great actuating forces

behind the evolution and expansion of the state school systems which we

have so far described. The American and French political revolutions, with

their new philosophy of political equality and state control of education,

clearly inaugurated the movement for taking over the school from the

Church and the making of it an important instrument of the State. The

extension of the suffrage to new classes gave a clear political motive for

the school, and to train young people to read and write and know the

constitutional bases of liberty became a political necessity. The

industrial revolution which followed, bringing in its train such extensive

changes in labor and in the conditions surrounding home and child life,

has since completely altered the face of the earlier educational problem.

What was simple once has since become complex, and the complexity has

increased with time. Once the ability to read and write and cipher

distinguished the educated man from the uneducated; to-day the man or

woman who knows only these simple arts is an uneducated person, hardly fit

to cope with the struggle for existence in a modern world, and certainly

not fitted to participate in the complex political and industrial life of

which, in all advanced nations, he or she [23] to-day forms a part.

It is the attempt to remould the school and to make of it a more potent

instrument of the State for promoting national consciousness (R. 340) and

political, social, and industrial welfare that has been behind the many

changes and expansions and extensions of education which have marked the

past half-century in all the leading world nations, and which underlie the

most pressing problems in educational readjustment to-day. These changes

and expansions and problems we shall consider more in detail in the

chapters which follow. Suffice it here to say that from mere teaching

institutions, engaged in imparting a little religious instruction and some

knowledge of the tools of learning, the school, in all the leading

nations, has to-day been transformed into an institution for advancing

national welfare. The leading purpose now is to train for political and

social efficiency in the more democratic types of governments being

instituted among peoples, and to impart to the young those industrial and

social experiences once taught in the home, the trades, and on the farm,

but which the coming of the factory system and city life have deprived

them otherwise of knowing.

NEW PROBLEMS TO BE MET BY EDUCATION. As participation in the political

life of nations has been extended to larger and larger groups of the

people, and as the problems of government have become more and more

complex, the schools have found it necessary to add instruction in

geography, history, government, and national ideals and culture to the

earlier instruction. In the less democratic nations which have evolved

national school systems, this new instruction has often been utilized to

give strength to the type of government and social conditions which the

ruling class desired to have perpetuated. This has been the evident

purpose in Japan (R. 334), though the government of Imperial Germany

formed perhaps the best illustration of such perversion. This was seen and

pointed out long ago by Horace Mann (R. 281). There the idea of

nationality through education (R. 342) was carried to such an extreme as

made the government oppressive to subject peoples and a menace to

neighboring States. [24] On the other hand, the French have used their

schools for national ends (R. 341) in a manner that has been highly

commendable.

As the social life of nations has become broader and more complex, a

longer period of guidance has become necessary to prepare the future

citizens of the State for intelligent participation in it. As a result,

child life everywhere has and is still experiencing a new lengthening of

the period of dependence and training, and all national interests now

indicate that the period devoted to preparing for life's work will need to

be further lengthened. All recent thinking and legislation, as well as the

interests of organized labor and the public welfare, have in recent

decades set strongly against child labor. Economically unprofitable under

modern industrial conditions, and morally indefensible, it has at last

come to be accepted as a principle, by progressive nations, that it is

better for children and for society that they remain under some form of

instruction until they are at least sixteen years of age. To this end the

common primary school has been continued upward, part-time continuation

schools of various types have been organized for those who must go to

labor earlier, and people's high schools or middle schools have been added

(see Figure 210, p. 713) to give the equivalent of a high-school education

to the children of the classes not patronizing the exclusive and limited

tuition secondary school.

As large numbers of immigrants from distant lands have entered some of the

leading nations, notably England and the United States, and particularly

immigrants from less advanced nations where general education is not as

yet common, and where far different political, social, judicial, and

hygienic conditions prevail, a new duty has been thrust upon the school of

giving to such incoming peoples, and their children, some conception of

the meaning and method and purpose of the national life of the people they

have come among. The national schools have accordingly been compelled to

give attention to the needs of these new elements in the population, and

to direct their attention less exclusively to satisfying the needs of the

well-to-do classes of society. Educational systems have in consequence

tended more and more to become democratic in character, and to serve in

part as instruments for the assimilation of the stranger within the

nation's gates and for the perpetuation and improvement of the national

life.

EDUCATION A CONSTRUCTIVE NATIONAL TOOL. One result of the many political,

social, and industrial changes of a century has been to evolve education

into the great constructive tool of modern political society. For ages a

church and private affair, and of no great importance for more than a few,

it has to-day become the prime essential to good government and national

progress, and is so recognized by the leading nations of the world. As

people are freed from autocratic rule and take upon themselves the

functions of government, and as they break loose from their age-old

political, social, and industrial moorings and swing out into the current

of the stream of modern world-civilization, the need for the education of

the masses to enable them to steer safely their ship of state, and take

their places among the stable governments of a modern world, becomes

painfully evident. In the hands of an uneducated people a democratic form

of government is a dangerous instrument, while the proper development of

natural resources and the utilization of trade opportunities by backward

peoples, without being exploited, is almost impossible. In Russia, Mexico,

and the Central American "republics" we see the results of a democracy in

the hands of an uneducated people. There, too often, the revolver instead

of the ballot box is used to settle public issues, and instead of orderly

government under law we find injustice and anarchy. A general system of

education that will teach the fundamental principles of constitutional

liberty, and apply science to production in agriculture and manufacturing,

is almost the only solution for such conditions. By contrast with the

surrounding "republics" one finds in Guatemala [25] a country that has

used education intelligently as a tool to advance the interests of its

people.

[Illustration: FIG. 223. THE PHILIPPINE SCHOOL SYSTEM

A teacher-training course is given as one of the vocational courses in the

Intermediate School, and the Normal School at Manila represents one of the

secondary school courses. The University, besides the combined five-year

college course, has eight professional courses of from three to five years

in length.]

When the United States freed Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines from

Spanish rule, a general system of public education, modeled after the

American educational ladder, was created as a safeguard to the liberty

just brought to these islands, and to education the United States added

courts of justice and bureaus of sanitation as important auxiliary

agencies. As a result the peoples of these islands have made a degree of

progress in self-government and industry in three decades not made in

three centuries under Spanish rule. The good results of the work done in

these islands in establishing schools, building roads and bridges,

introducing police courts, establishing good sanitary conditions, building

hospitals and training nurses, applying science to agriculture, developing

tropical medicine, and training the people in the difficult art of self-

government, will for long be a monument to the political foresight and

intelligent conceptions of government held by the American people. In a

similar way the French have opened schools in Morocco, Algiers, Tunis,

Senegal, Madagascar, and French Indo-China, as have the English in Egypt,

India, Hong Kong, [26] the West Indies, and elsewhere. With the freeing of

Palestine from the rule of the Turk, the English at once began the

establishment of schools and a national university there, and doubtless

they will do the same in time in Persia and Mesopotamia.

Germany, too, before the World War, but with less benevolent purposes than

the Americans, the French, or the English, was also busily engaged in

extending her influence through education. Her universities were thrown

open to students from the whole world, and excellent instruction did they

offer. The "Society for the Extension of Germanism in Foreign Countries"

rendered an important service. Professors were "exchanged"; the

introduction of instruction in the German language into the schools of

other nations was promoted; and German schools were founded and encouraged

abroad. Especially were _Realschulen_ promoted to teach the wonders of

German science, pure and applied. In southern Brazil and the Argentine,

and in Roumania, Bulgaria, and Turkey, particular efforts were made to

extend German influence and pave the way for German commercial and perhaps

political expansion. Primary schools, girls' schools, and _Real_-schools

in numbers were founded and aided abroad, and their progress reported to

the colonial minister at home. All through the Near East the German was

busily building, through trade and education, a new empire for himself.

Had he been content to follow the slower paths of peaceful commercial and

intellectual conquest, with his wonderful organization he would have been

irresistible. With one gambler's throw he dashed his future to the ground,

and unmasked himself before the world!

EXPANSION OF THE EDUCATIONAL IDEA. In all lands to-day where there is an

intelligent government, the education of the people through a system of

state-controlled schools is regarded as of the first importance in

moulding and shaping the destinies of the nation and promoting the

country's welfare. Beginning with education to impart the ability to read

and write and cipher, and as an aid to the political side of government,

the education of the masses has been so expanded in scope during the

century that today it includes aims, classes, types of schools, and forms

of service scarcely dreamed of at the time the State began to take over

the school from the Church, with a view to extending elementary

educational advantages and promoting literacy and citizenship. What some

of the more important of these expansions have been we shall state in a

following chapter, but before doing so let us return to another phase of

the problem--that of the progress of educational theory--and see what have

been the main lines of this progress in the theory as to the educational

purpose since the time when Pestalozzi formulated a theory for the secular

school.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What does the emphasis on the People's High Schools in Denmark indicate

as to the political status of the common people there?

2. Explain the educational prominence of Finland, compared with its

neighbor Russia.

3. Show the close relation between the character of the school system

developed in Japan and the character of its government. In China.

4. Show why the state-function conception of education is destined to be

the ruling plan everywhere.

5. Show the close connection between the Industrial Revolution and a

somewhat general diffusion of the fundamental principles revealed by the

study of science.

6. Show how the Industrial Revolution has created entirely new problems in

education, and what some of these are.

7. Show the connection between the Industrial Revolution and political

enfranchisement.

8. Enumerate some of the educational problems we now face that we should

not have had to deal with had the Industrial Revolution not taken place.

9. Why has the result of these changes been to extend the period of

dependence and tutelage of children?

10. Outline an educational solution of the problem of Mexico. Of Russia.

Of Persia.

11. Show how Germany found it profitable to establish _Realschulen_ in

such distant countries as Turkey, Mesopotamia, and the Argentine.

12. Describe the expansion of the educational idea since the days when

Pestalozzi formulated the theory for the secular school.

13. What is the social significance of the development of parallel

secondary schools and courses, in all lands?

14. Contrast the American and the European secondary school in purpose.

Why should the American be a free school, while those in Europe are

tuition schools?

15. Show why the essentially democratic school system maintained in the

United States would not be suited to an autocratic form of government.

16. Show that the weight of a priesthood and the force of religious

instruction in the schools would be strong supports for monarchical forms

of government.

17. Homogeneous monarchical nations look after the training of their

teachers much better than does such a cosmopolitan nation as the United

States. Why?

SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying _Book of Readings_ the following illustrative

selections are reproduced:

333. Switzerland: Constitutional Provisions as to Education and

Religious Freedom.

334. Japan: The Basic Documents of Japanese Education.

(a) Preamble to the Education Code of 1872.

(b) Imperial Rescript on Moral Education.

(c) Instructions as to Lessons on Morals.

335. Ping Wen Kuo: Transformation of China by Education.

336. Mann: Education and National Prosperity.

337. Huxley: The Recent Progress of Science.

338. Anon.: Scientific Knowledge must precede Invention.

339. Ticknor: Illustrating Early Lack of Communication.

340. Monroe: The Struggle for National Realization.

341. Buisson, F.: The French Teacher and the National Spirit.

342. Fr. de Hovre: The German Emphasis on National Ends.

343. Stuntz: Landing of the Pilgrims at Manila.

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. Compare the Swiss and American Federal organizations, and state just

what the Swiss Constitution (333) provides as to education.

2. Suppose you knew nothing about the Japanese, what type of government

would you take theirs to be from reading the Imperial Rescript (334b)?

3. In comparing the Chinese transformation and the Renaissance (335), does

Mr. Ping propose comparable events?

4. Show that Mr. Mann's argument (336) is still sound.

5. Does Huxley overdraw (337) our dependence on science?

6. From 338, show why the Middle Ages were so poor in inventions and

discoveries.

7. Are there universities anywhere to-day of which we know as little as

Ticknor was able to find out (339) a century ago?

8. Show that Monroe's statements are true that the struggle for national

realization (340) has dominated modern history from the fifteenth century

on.

9. Compare the conceptions as to the function of education in a State as

revealed in the selections as to French (341) and German (342) educational

purpose.

10. Show the entirely new character of the event (343) described by

Stuntz.

SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

* Buisson, F. and Farrington, F. E. _French Educational Ideals of To-

day_.

Butler, N. M. "Status of Education at the Close of the Century"; in

_Proceedings National Education Association_, 1900, pp. 188-96.

Davidson, Thos. "Education as World Building"; in _Educational

Review_, vol. xx, pp. 325-45. (November, 1900.)

Doolittle, Wm. H. _Inventions of the Century_.

Foster, M. "A Century's Progress in Science"; in _Educational

Review_, vol. xviii, pp. 313-31. (November, 1899.)

* Friedel, V. H. _The German School as a War Nursery_.

Gibbons, H. de B. _Economic and Industrial Progress of the

Century_.

Hughes, J. L., and Klemm, L. R. _Progress of Education in the

Nineteenth Century_.

* Huxley, Thos. "The Progress of Science"; in his _Methods and

Results_.

* Kuo, Ping Wen. _The Chinese System of Public Education_.

Lewis, R. E. _The Educational Conquest of the Far East_.

Macknight, Thos. _Political Progress of the Century_.

* Ross, E. A. "The World Wide Advance of Democracy"; in his _Changing

America_.

Routledge, R. _A Popular History of Science_.

Sandiford, Peter, Editor. _Comparative Education_.

* Sedgwick, W. T., and Tyler, H. W. _A Short History of Science_.

* Thwing, C. F. _Education in the Far East_.

Webster, W. C. _General History of Commerce_.

White, A. D. _The-Warfare of Science and Theology_.

CHAPTER XXVIII

NEW CONCEPTIONS OF THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS

I. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ORGANIZATION OF ELEMENTARY INSTRUCTION

THE BEGINNINGS OF NORMAL-SCHOOL TRAINING. The training of would-be

teachers for the work of instruction is an entirely modern proceeding. The

first class definitely organized for imparting training to teachers,

concerning which we have any record, was a small local training group of

teachers of reading and the Catechism, conducted by Father Démia, at

Lyons, France, in 1672. The first normal school to be established anywhere

was that founded at Rheims, in northern France, in 1685, by Abbé de la

Salle (p. 347). He had founded the Order of "The Brothers of the Christian

Schools" the preceding year, to provide free religious instruction for

children of the working classes in France (R. 182), and he conceived the

new idea of creating a special school to train his prospective teachers

for the teaching work of his Order. Shortly afterward he established two

similar institutions in Paris. Each institution he called a "Seminary for

Schoolmasters." In addition to imparting a general education of the type

of the time, and a thorough grounding in religion, his student teachers

were trained to teach in practice schools, under the direction of

experienced teachers. This was an entirely new idea.

The beginnings elsewhere, as we have previously pointed out were made in

German lands, Francke's _Seminarium Praeceptorum_, established at Halle

(p. 419), in 1697, coming next in point of time. In 1738 Johann Julius

Hecker (1707-68), one of Francke's teachers (p. 562), established the

first regular Seminary for Teachers in Prussia, and in 1748 he established

a private _Lehrerseminar_ in Berlin. In these two institutions he first

showed the German people the possibilities of special training for

teachers in the secondary school. In 1753 the Berlin institution was

adopted as a Royal Teachers' Seminary (p. 563) by Frederick the Great.

After this, and in part due to the enthusiastic support of the Berlin

institution by the King, the teacher-training idea for secondary teachers

began to find favor among the Germans. We accordingly find something like

a dozen Teachers' Seminaries had been founded in German lands before the

close of the eighteenth century. [1] A normal school was established in

Denmark, by royal decree, as early as 1789, and five additional schools

when the law organizing public instruction in Denmark was enacted, in

1814. In France the beginnings of state action came with the action of the

National Convention, which decreed the establishment of the "Superior

Normal School for France," in 1794 (p. 517). This institution, though, was

short lived, and the real beginnings of the French higher normal school

awaited the reorganizing work of Napoleon, in 1808 (p. 595; R. 283).

The schools just mentioned represent the first institutions in the history

of the world organized for the purpose of training teachers to teach. The

teachers they trained, though, were intended primarily for the secondary

schools, and the training was largely academic in character. Only in

Silesia was any effort made, before the nineteenth century, to give

training in special institutions to teachers intended for the vernacular

schools. There Frederick the Great, in his "Regulations for the Catholic

Schools of Silesia" (R. 275, a § 2) designated six cathedral and monastery

schools as model schools, where teachers could "have the opportunity for

learning all that is needed by a good teacher." In another place he

defined this as "skill in singing and playing the organ sufficient to

perform the services of the Church," and "the art of instructing the young

in the German language" (R. 275, a § 1). So long as the instruction in the

vernacular school consisted chiefly of reading and the Catechism, and of

hearing pupils recite what they had memorized, there was of course but

little need for any special training for the teachers. It was not until

after Pestalozzi had done his work and made his contribution that there

was anything worth mentioning to train teachers for.

PESTALOZZI'S CONTRIBUTION. The memorable work done by Pestalozzi in

Switzerland, during his quarter-century (1800-25) of effort at Burgdorf

and Yverdon, changed the whole face of the preparation of teachers

problem. His work was so fundamental that it completely redirected the

education of children. Taking the seed-thought of Rousseau that sense-

impression was "the only true foundation of human knowledge" (R. 267), he

enlarged this to the conception of the mental development of human beings

as being organic, and proceeding according to law. His extension of this

idea of Rousseau's led him to declare that education was an individual

development, a drawing-out and not a pouring-in; that the basis of all

education exists in the nature of man; and that the method of education is

to be sought and constructed. [2] These were his great contributions.

These ideas fitted in well with the rising tide of individualism which

marked the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries, and upon

these contributions the modern secular elementary school has been built.

These ideas led Pestalozzi to emphasize sense perception and expression;

to formulate the rule that in teaching we must proceed from the concrete

to the abstract; and to construct a "faculty psychology" which conceived

of education as "a harmonious development" of the different "faculties" of

the mind. He also tried, unsuccessfully to be sure, to so organize the

teaching process that eventually it could be so "mechanized" that there

would be a regular A, B, C, for each type of instruction, which, once

learned, would give perfection to a teacher. In his Report of 1800 (R.

267), which forms a very clear statement of his aims, he had said:

I know what I am undertaking; but neither the difficulties in the way,

nor my own limitations in skill and insight, shall hinder me from

giving my mite for a purpose which Europe needs so much... The most

essential point from which I start is this:--Sense-impression of

Nature is the only true foundation of human knowledge. All that

follows is the result of this sense-impression, and the process of

abstraction from it....

Then the problem I have to solve is this:--How to bring the elements

of every art into harmony with the very nature of mind, by following

the psychological mechanical laws by which mind rises from physical

sense-impressions to clear ideas.

Largely out of these ideas and the new direction he gave to instruction

the modern normal school for training teachers for the elementary schools

arose.