which Emile is to be educated, remain the same, but Emile himself
changes from time to time. In so far, therefore, as he is to be the
guide of how he is to be educated in a natural environment, his
impulses must be examined at different times in his life. Hence the
work is divided into five parts, four of which deal with Emile’s
education in the stages of infancy, childhood, boyhood, and youth
respectively, and the fifth with the training of the girl who is to
become his wife. The characteristics of the different periods in the
life of Emile are marked by the different kinds of things he desires.
[Sidenote: In infancy, physical activities.]
In the first book, which takes him from birth to five years of age,
his main desire is for physical activities, and he should, therefore,
be placed under simple, free, and healthful conditions, which will
enable him to make the most of these. He must be removed to the
country, where he will be close to nature, and farthest from the
contaminating influence of civilization. His growth and training must
be as spontaneous as possible. He must have nothing to do with either
medicine or doctors, “unless his life is in evident danger; for then
they can do nothing worse than kill him.” His natural movements must
not be restrained by caps, bands, or swaddling clothes, and he should
be nursed by his own mother. He should likewise be used to baths of
all sorts of temperature. In fact, the child should not be forced into
any fixed ways whatsoever, since with Rousseau, habit is necessarily
something contrary to impulse and so unnatural. “The only habit,” says
he, “which the child should be allowed to form is to contract no habit
whatsoever.” His playthings should be such simple products of nature as
“branches with their fruits and flowers, or a poppy-head in which the
seeds are heard to rattle.” Language that is simple, plain, and hence
natural, should be used with him, and he should not be hurried beyond
nature in learning to talk. He should be restricted to a few words that
express real thoughts for him.
[Sidenote: In childhood, limb and sense development,]
The education of Emile during infancy is thus to be ‘negative’ and
purely physical. The aim is simply to keep his instincts and impulses,
which Rousseau holds to be good by nature, free from vice, and to
afford him the natural activity he craves. Next, in the period of
childhood, between the years of five and twelve, which is treated in
the second book, Emile desires most to exercise his legs and arms, and
to touch, to see, and in other ways to sense things. This, therefore,
is the time for training his limbs and senses. “As all that enters the
human understanding comes there through the senses, the first reason
of man is a sensuous reason. Our first teachers of philosophy are our
feet, our hands, and our eyes.... In order to learn to think, we must
then exercise our limbs, our senses, and our organs, which are the
instruments of our intelligence.” To obtain this training, Emile is
to wear short, loose, and scanty clothing, go bareheaded, and have
the body inured to cold and heat, and be generally subjected to a
‘hardening process’ similar to that recommended by Locke (see p. 181).
He is to learn to swim, and practice long and high jumps, leaping
walls, and scaling rocks. But, what is more important, his eyes and
ears are also to be exercised through natural problems in weighing,
measuring, and estimating masses, heights, and distances. Drawing and
constructive geometry are to be taught him, to render him more capable
of observing accurately. His ear is to be rendered sensitive to
harmony by learning to sing.
[Sidenote: no geography, history, or reading,]
This body and sense training should be the nearest approach to an
intellectual training at this period. Rousseau condemns the usual
unnatural practice of requiring pupils to learn so much before
they have reached the proper years. In keeping with his ‘negative’
education, he asks rhetorically: “Shall I venture to state at this
point the most important, the most useful, rule of all education? It
is not to gain time, but to lose it.” During his childhood Emile is
not to study geography, history, or languages, upon which pedagogues
ordinarily depend to exhibit the attainments of their pupils, although
these understand nothing of what they have memorized. “At the age of
twelve, Emile will hardly know what a book is. But I shall be told
it is very necessary that he know how to read. This I grant. It is
necessary that he know how to read when reading is useful to him. Until
then, it serves only to annoy him.”
[Sidenote: though moral training through ‘natural consequences.’]
Incidentally, however, in order to make Emile tolerable in society, for
he cannot entirely escape it, he must be given the idea of property
and some ideas about conduct. But this is simply because of practical
necessity, and no moral education is to be given as such, for, “until
he reaches the age of reason, he can form no idea of moral beings or
social relations.” He is to learn through ‘natural consequences’ until
he arrives at the age for understanding moral precepts. If he breaks
the furniture or the windows, let him suffer the consequences that
arise from his act. Do not preach to him or punish him for lying, but
afterward affect not to believe him even when he has spoken the truth.
If he carelessly digs up the sprouting melons of the gardener, in order
to plant beans for himself, let the gardener in turn uproot the beans,
and thus cause him to learn the sacredness of property. As far as this
moral training is given, then, it is to be indirect and incidental.
[Sidenote: In boyhood, intellectual training through curiosity
concerning natural phenomena.]
However, between twelve and fifteen, after the demands of the boy’s
physical activities and of his senses have somewhat abated, there
comes “an interval when his faculties and powers are greater than his
desires,” when he displays an insistent curiosity concerning natural
phenomena and a constant appetite for rational knowledge. This period,
which is dealt with in his third book, Rousseau declares to be intended
by nature itself as the time for instruction. But as not much can be
learned within three years, the boy is to study only those subjects
which are useful and not incomprehensible and misleading, and so is
limited to the natural sciences. Later in this third book, in order
that Emile may informally learn the interdependence of men and may
himself become economically independent, Rousseau adds industrial
experience and the acquisition of cabinet-making to his training. The
most effective method of instruction, Rousseau holds, comes through
appealing to the curiosity and interest in investigation, which
are so prominent in the boy at this time. He contrasts the current
methods of teaching astronomy and geography by means of globes, maps,
and other misleading representations, with the more natural plan of
stimulating inquiry through observing the sun when rising and setting
during the different seasons, and through problems concerning the
topography of the neighborhood. Emile is taught to appreciate the
value of these subjects by being lost in the forest, and endeavoring
to find a way out. He learns the elements of electricity through
meeting with a juggler, who attracts an artificial duck by means of a
concealed magnet. He similarly discovers through experience the effect
of cold and heat upon solids and liquids, and so comes to understand
the thermometer and other instruments. Hence Rousseau feels that all
knowledge of real value may be acquired most clearly and naturally
without the use of rivalry or textbooks. But he finds an exception
to this irrational method in one book, _Robinson Crusoe_, “where all
the natural needs of man are exhibited in a manner obvious to the
mind of a child, and where the means of providing for these needs are
successively developed with the same facility.”
[Sidenote: In youth, sex interests, as basis of moral and social
training.]
The fourth book takes Emile from the age of fifteen to twenty. At
this period the sex interests appear and should be properly guided
and trained, especially as they are the basis of social and moral
relationships. Emile’s first passion calls him into relations with his
species, and he must now learn to live with others. “We have formed
his body, his senses, and his intelligence; it remains to give him a
heart.” He is to become moral, affectionate, and religious. Here again
Rousseau insists that the training is not to be accomplished by the
formal method of precepts, but in a natural way by bringing the youth
into contact with his fellowmen and appealing to his emotions. Emile
is to visit infirmaries, hospitals, and prisons, and witness concrete
examples of wretchedness in all stages, although not so frequently as
to become hardened. That this training may not render him cynical or
hypercritical, it should be corrected by the study of history, where
one sees men simply as a spectator without feeling or passion. Further,
in order to deliver Emile from vanity, so common during adolescence, he
is to be exposed to flatterers, spendthrifts, and sharpers, and allowed
to suffer the consequences. He may at this time also be guided in his
conduct by the use of fables, for “by censuring the wrongdoer under an
unknown mask, we instruct without offending him.”
[Sidenote: The passive and parasitic education of woman.]
Emile at length becomes a man, and a life companion must be found for
him. A search should be made for a suitable lady, but “in order to
find her, we must know her.” Accordingly, the last book of the Emile
deals with the model Sophie and the education of woman. It is the
weakest part of Rousseau’s work. He entirely misinterprets the nature
of women, and does not allow them any individuality of their own, but
considers them as simply supplementary to the nature of men. Like
men, women should be given adequate bodily training, but rather for
the sake of physical charms and of producing vigorous offspring than
for their own development. Their instinctive love of pleasing through
dress should be made of service by teaching them sewing, embroidery,
lacework, and designing. They ought to be obedient and industrious,
and they ought early to be brought under restraint. Girls should also
be taught singing, dancing, and other accomplishments. They should be
instructed dogmatically in religion, and in ethical matters they should
be largely guided by public opinion. A woman may not learn philosophy,
art, or science, but she should study men. “She must learn to penetrate
their feelings through their conversation, their actions, their looks,
and their gestures, and know how to give them the feelings which are
pleasing to her, without even seeming to think of them.”
[Sidenote: Defects outweighed by merits.]
=Estimate of the _Emile_.=--Such was Rousseau’s notion of the natural
individualistic education for a man and the passive and repressive
training suitable for a woman, and of the happiness and prosperity
that were bound to ensue. To make a fair estimate of the _Emile_ and
its influence is not easy. It is necessary to put aside all of one’s
prejudices against the weak and offensive personality of the author,
and to forget the inconsistencies and contradictions of the work
itself. The _Emile_ has always been accounted a work of great richness,
power, and underlying wisdom, and each of its defects is more than
balanced by a corresponding merit. Moreover, the most fundamental
movements in modern educational progress--sociological, scientific, and
psychological--may be said to have germinated through the _Emile_.
[Sidenote: Revolt from social control,]
[Sidenote: but extreme doctrine needed,]
[Sidenote: and those who followed Rousseau stressed social activities.]
=The Sociological Movements in Modern Education.=--The most marked
feature of the Rousselian education and the one most subject to
criticism has been its extreme revolt against civilization and all
social control. A state of nature is held to be the ideal condition,
and all social relations are regarded as degenerate. The child is to
be brought up in isolation by the laws of brute necessity and to have
no social education until he is fifteen, when an impossible set of
expedients for bringing him into touch with his fellows is devised.
One should remember, however, that the times and the cause had need
of just so extreme a doctrine. Such radical individualism alone could
enable him to break the bondage to the past. By means of paradoxes
and exaggerations he was able to emphasize the crying need of a
natural development of man, and to tear down the effete traditions
in educational organization, content, and methods. And many of the
social movements in modern educational organization and content were
made possible and even suggested by him, after having thus cleared
the ground. He held that all members of society should be trained
industrially so as to contribute to their own support and should be
taught to be sympathetic and benevolent toward their fellows. Thus
through him education has been more closely related to human welfare.
The industrial work of Pestalozzi and Fellenberg, the moral aim of
education held by Herbart, the ‘social participation’ in the practice
of Froebel, and the present-day emphasis upon vocational education,
moral instruction, and training of defectives and of other extreme
variations, alike find some of their roots in the _Emile_. In fact,
the fallacy involved in Rousseau’s isolated education is too palpable
to mislead anyone, and those who have best caught his spirit and
endeavored to develop his practice have in all cases most insistently
stressed social activities in the training of children and striven to
make education lead to a closer and more sympathetic coöperation in
society.
[Sidenote: Opposed to all books, but emphasized observational work.]
=The Scientific Movement in Modern Education.=--Moreover, since
Rousseau repudiated all social traditions and accepted nature as
his only guide, he was absolutely opposed to all book learning and
exaggerated the value of observation. He consequently neglected the
past, and would have robbed the pupil of all the experience of his
fellows and of those who had gone before. But he emphasized the use
of natural objects in the curriculum and developed the details of
nature study and observational work to an extent never previously
undertaken. Partly as a result of this influence, schools and colleges
have come to include in their course the study of physical forces,
natural environment, plants, and animals. Therein Rousseau not only
anticipates somewhat the nature study and geography of Pestalozzi,
Basedow, Salzmann, and Ritter, but, in a way, foreshadows the arguments
of Spencer and Huxley, and the modern scientific movement in education.
[Sidenote: Though defective in knowledge of children, Rousseau saw the
need of studying them.]
=The Psychological Movements in Modern Education.=--A matter of even
greater importance is Rousseau’s belief that education should be in
accordance with the natural interests of the child. Although his
knowledge of children was defective, and his recommendations were
marred by unnatural breaks and filled with sentimentality, he saw
the need of studying the child as the only basis for education. In
the Preface to the _Emile_ he declares that “the wisest among us are
engrossed in what the adult needs to know and fail to consider what
children are able to apprehend. We are always looking for the man in
the child, without thinking of what he is before he becomes a man. This
is the study to which I have devoted myself, to the end that, even
though my whole method may be chimerical and false, the reader may
still profit by my observation.” As a result of such appeals, the child
has become the center of discussion in modern training. Despite his
limitations and prejudices, this unnatural and neglectful parent stated
many details of child development with much force and clearness and
gave an impetus to later reformers.
[Sidenote: Theory of ‘delayed maturing.’]
[Sidenote: Physical activities and sense training]
[Sidenote: Sympathetic understanding of the child.]
In this connection should especially be considered Rousseau’s theory
of stages of development. He makes a sharp division of the pupil’s
development into definite periods that seem but little connected with
one another, and prescribes a distinct education for each stage.
This seems like a breach of the evolution of the individual, and the
_reductio ad absurdum_ of such an atomic training is reached in his
hope of rendering Emile warm-hearted and pious, after keeping him
in the meshes of self-interest and doubt until he is fifteen. But,
as in the case of his attitude toward society, Rousseau takes an
extreme view, and he has thereby shown that there are characteristic
differences at different stages in the child’s life, and that only
as the proper activities are provided for each stage will it reach
maturity or perfection. He may, therefore, be credited to a great
degree with the increasing tendency to cease from forcing upon children
a fixed method of thinking, feeling, and acting, and for the gradual
disappearance of the old ideas that a task is of educational value
according as it is distasteful, and that real education consists in
overcoming meaningless difficulties. Curiosity and interest rather
are to be used as motives for study, and Rousseau therein points the
way for the Herbartians. It is likewise due to him primarily that we
have recognized the need of physical activities and sense training in
the earlier development of the child as a foundation for its later
growth and learning. To these recommendations may be traced much of
the object teaching of Pestalozzianism and the motor expression of
Froebelianism. Thus Rousseau made a large contribution to educational
method by showing the value of motivation, of creating problems, and of
utilizing the senses and activities of the child, and may be regarded
as the father of the psychological movements in modern education. He
could not, however, have based his study of children and his advanced
methods upon any real psychological foundation, for in his day the
‘faculty’ psychology (see p. 182) absolutely prevailed. Instead of
working out his methods from scientific principles, he obtained them,
as did Pestalozzi afterwards, through his sympathetic understanding of
the child and his ability to place himself in the child’s situation and
see the world through the eyes of the child.
[Sidenote: Intellectual progenitor of modern reformers, but influence
upon schools not immediate.]
[Sidenote: First attempt through Basedow.]
=The Spread of Rousseau’s Doctrines.=--Thus seeds of many modern
developments in educational organization, method, and content, were
sown by Rousseau, and he is seen to be the intellectual progenitor
of Pestalozzi, Herbart, Froebel, Spencer, and many other modern
reformers. But his principles did not take immediate hold on the
schools themselves, although their influence is manifest there as
the nineteenth century advanced. In France they were apparent in the
complaints and recommendations concerning schools in the lists of
desired reforms (_cahiers_) that were issued by the various towns,
and afterward clearly formed a basis for much of the legislation
concerning the universal, free, and secular organization of educational
institutions. In England, since there was no national system of
schools, little direct impression was made upon educational practice.
But in America this revolutionary thought would seem to have had much
to do with causing the unrest that gradually resulted in upsetting the
aristocratic and formal training of the young and in secularizing and
universalizing the public school system. The first definite attempt,
however, to put into actual practice the naturalistic education of
Rousseau occurred in Germany through the writings of Basedow and the
foundation of the ‘Philanthropinum,’ and is of sufficient importance to
demand separate discussion.
[Sidenote: Naturally captivated by Rousseau’s doctrines.]
[Sidenote: Education of the day needed naturalism.]
=Development of Basedow’s Educational Reforms.=--Johann Bernhard
Basedow (1723-1790) was by nature the very person to be captivated
by Rousseau’s doctrines. He was talented, but erratic, unorthodox,
tactless, and irregular in life. He had been prepared at the University
of Leipzig for the Lutheran ministry, but proved too heretical, and,
giving up this vocation, became a tutor in Holstein to a Herr von
Quaalen’s children. With these aristocratic pupils he first developed
methods of teaching through conversation and play connected with
surrounding objects. A few years after this, in 1763, Basedow fell
under the spell of Rousseau’s _Emile_, which was most congenial to his
methods of thinking and teaching, and turned all his energy toward
educational reform. As in the case of Rousseau with education in
France, he realized that German education of the day was sadly in need
of just such an antidote as ‘naturalism’ was calculated to furnish. The
schoolrooms were dismal and the work was unpleasant, physical training
was neglected, and the discipline was severe. Children were regarded
as adults in miniature (Fig. 25), and were so treated both in their
dress and their education. The current schooling consisted largely of
instruction in artificial deportment. The study of classics composed
the entire intellectual curriculum, and the methods were purely
grammatical. As a result, suggestions made by Basedow for educational
improvement attained as great popularity as his advanced theological
propositions had received abuse.
[Sidenote: Success of his _Address_ and production of his text-books.]
In 1768 by his _Address on Schools and Studies, and their Influence
on the Public Weal_, he called generally upon princes, governments,
ecclesiastics, and others in power, to assist him financially in
certain definite educational reforms. In addition to suggesting that
the schools be made nonsectarian and that public instruction be placed
under a National Council of Education, he proposed that, in contrast
to the formal and unattractive training of the day, education should
be rendered practical in content and playful in method. To assist this
reform, he planned to bring out a work on elementary education, which
he described in outline. Great interest in his proposals was shown
throughout Europe by sovereigns, nobles, prominent men, and others
desiring a nonsectarian and more effective education, and a subsidy of
some ten thousand dollars was speedily raised, to enable him to perfect
his plans. Six years later, Basedow completed his promised text-book,
_Elementarwerk_, and the companion work for teachers and parents known
as _Methodenbuch_. The _Elementarwerk_ was accompanied by a volume
containing ninety-six plates, which illustrated the subject-matter of
the text, but were too large to be bound in with it. While in these
manuals Basedow included many naturalistic ideas from Rousseau, he also
embodied features from other reformers and even additions of his own.
[Sidenote: _Elementarwerk_]
[Sidenote: and _Methodenbuch_.]
[Sidenote: Popular story books for children.]
=Text-books and Other Works.=--The _Elementarwerk_ clearly combines
many of the principles of Comenius as well as of Rousseau. It has,
in fact, been often called ‘the _Orbis Pictus_ (see p. 170) of the
eighteenth century,’ and gives a knowledge of things and words in the
form of a dialogue. The _Methodenbuch_, while not following Rousseau
completely, contains many ideas concerning natural training that are
suggestive of him. In this study of the nature of children, the book
makes some advance upon the Rousselian doctrine by finding that they
are especially interested in motion and noise, although Basedow would
have shocked Rousseau by being so much under the control of tradition
as to suggest using these interests in the teaching of Latin. Later,
Basedow, together with Campe, Salzmann, and others of his followers,
also produced a series of popular story books especially adapted to
the character, interests, and needs of children. These works are all
largely filled with didactics, moralizing, religiosity, and scraps
of scientific information. The best known of them is _Robinson der
Jüngere_ (Robinson Crusoe Junior), which was published by Campe in
1779. It seems to have been suggested by Rousseau’s recommendation of
_Robinson Crusoe_ as a text-book, and in turn a generation later it
became the model for _Der Schweizerische Robinson_ (The Swiss Family
Robinson) of Wyss, which has been so popular with children in America
and elsewhere.
[Sidenote: Salary, equipment,]
[Sidenote: teachers,]
[Sidenote: and pupils.]
=Course and Methods of the Philanthropinum.=--Eight years before this,
however, Prince Leopold of Dessau had been induced to allow Basedow to
found there a model school called the ‘Philanthropinum,’ which should
embody that reformer’s ideas. Leopold granted him a generous salary,
and three years later gave him an equipment of buildings, grounds, and
endowment. At first Basedow had but three assistants, but later the
number was considerably increased. The staff then included several very
able men, such as Campe, formerly chaplain at Potsdam, and Salzmann,
who had been a professor at Erfurt. The underlying principle of the
Philanthropinum was ‘everything according to nature.’ The natural
instincts and interests of the children were only to be directed and
not altogether suppressed. They were to be trained as children and not
as adults, and the methods of learning were to be adapted to their
stage of mentality. That all of the customary fashion and unnaturalness
might be eliminated, the boys were plainly dressed and their hair cut
short.
[Sidenote: Universal education, but social distinctions.]
[Sidenote: Industrial training]
[Sidenote: and wide objective course.]
While universal education was believed in, and rich and poor alike were
to be trained, the traditional idea still obtained that the natural
education of the one class was for social activity and leadership,
and of the other for teaching. Consequently, the wealthy boys were to
spend six hours in school and two in manual labor, while those from
families of small means labored six hours and studied two. Every one,
however, was taught handicrafts,--carpentry, turning, planing, and
threshing, as suggested in the third book of the _Emile_, and there
were also physical exercises and games for all. On the intellectual
side, while Latin was not neglected, considerable attention was paid
to the vernacular and French. In keeping with the _Elementarwerk_,
Basedow planned a wide objective and practical course very similar
to that suggested by Comenius. It was to give some account of man,
including bits of anthropology, anatomy, and physiology; of brute
creation, especially the uses of domestic animals and their relation to
industry; of trees and plants with their growth, culture, and products;
of minerals and chemicals; of mathematical and physical instruments;
and of trades, history, and commerce. He afterward admitted that he had
overestimated the amount of content that was possible for a child, and
greatly abridged the material.
[Sidenote: Languages taught by conversation and games.]
[Sidenote: Progressive methods in other subjects.]
The most striking characteristic of the school, however, was its
recognition of child interests and the consequently improved methods.
Languages were taught by speaking and then by reading, and grammar
was not brought in until late in the course. Facility in Latin was
acquired through conversation, games, pictures, drawing, acting
plays, and reading on practical and interesting subjects (Fig. 26).
His instruction in arithmetic, geometry, geography, physics, nature
study, and history was fully as progressive as that in languages,
and, while continuing Rousseau’s suggestions, seems to anticipate
much of the ‘object teaching’ of Pestalozzi. Arithmetic was taught by
mental methods, geometry by drawing figures accurately and neatly,
and geography by beginning with one’s home and extending out into the
neighborhood, the town, the country, and the continent.
[Sidenote: Great expectations.]
[Sidenote: Stimulus for younger pupils.]
=Influence of the Philanthropinum.=--The attendance at the
Philanthropinum was very small in the beginning, since the institution
was regarded as an experiment, but eventually the number of pupils
rose to more than fifty. Most visitors were greatly pleased with the
school, especially on account of the interested and alert appearance
of the pupils. Kant declared that it meant “not a slow reform, but a
quick revolution,” although afterward he admitted that he had been too
optimistic. While it may not have served well for older pupils, it was
certainly excellent in its stimulus to children under ten or twelve,
who can be reached by appeals to physical activities and the senses
better than by books.
[Sidenote: Similar institutions of Campe,]
[Sidenote: Salzmann,]
[Sidenote: and Rochow.]
Basedow, however, proved temperamentally unfit to direct the
institution. Joachim Heinrich Campe (1746-1818), who first succeeded
him, withdrew within a year to found a similar school at Hamburg.
Institutions of the same type sprang up elsewhere, and some of them
had a large influence upon education. The most striking and enduring
of these schools was that established in 1784 by Christian Gotthilf
Salzmann (1744-1811) at Schnepfenthal under the patronage of the royal
family of Saxe-Gotha. The natural surroundings--mountains, valleys,
lakes--were most favorable for the purpose of the institution, and much
attention was given to nature study, ‘lessons on things,’ organized
excursions, gardening, agricultural work, and care of domestic animals.
Manual training, gymnastics, sports, informal moral and religious
culture, and other features that anticipated later developments in
education also formed part of the course. During the decade before the
establishment of Salzmann’s school, institutions embodying many of
Basedow’s ideas were also opened at Rechahn and his other Brandenburg
estates by Baron Eberhard von Rochow (1734-1805). His schools were
simply intended to improve the peasantry in their methods of farming
and living, but, when this step toward universal education proved
extraordinarily successful, Rochow advocated the adoption of a complete
national system of schools on a nonsectarian basis.
[Sidenote: Becomes a fad, but accomplished some good.]
In 1793 the Philanthropinum at Dessau was closed permanently. Its
teachers were scattered through Europe, and gave a great impulse to the
new education. An unfortunate result of this popularity was that the
Philanthropinum became a fad, and schools with this name were opened
everywhere in Germany by educational mountebanks. These teachers
prostituted the system to their own ends, degraded the profession into
a mere trade, and became the subject of much satire and ridicule.
Nevertheless, the philanthropinic movement seems not to have been
without good results, especially when we consider the educational
conditions and the pedagogy of the times. It introduced many new ideas
concerning methods and industrial training into all parts of France and
Switzerland, as well as Germany, and these were carefully worked out by
such reformers as Pestalozzi, Froebel, and Herbart. In this way there
were embodied in education the first positive results of Rousseau’s
‘naturalism.’
[Illustration: Fig. 25.--The child as a miniature adult.
(Reproduced from a French fashion plate of the eighteenth century.)]
[Illustration: Fig. 26.--A naturalistic school.
(Reproduced from the _Elementarwerk_ of Basedow.)]
SUPPLEMENTARY READING
Graves, _In Modern Times_ (Macmillan, 1913), chap. II; and _Great
Educators_ (Macmillan, 1912), chaps. VII and VIII; Monroe,
_Text-book_ (Macmillan, 1905), chap. X; Parker, S. C., _History
of Modern Elementary Education_ (Ginn, 1912), chaps. VIII-X. The
_Emile_ (Translated by Payne; Appleton, 1895) should be read, and
the _Elementarwerk_ (Wiegandt, Leipzig, 1909) should be examined.
A judicial description of the life and work of Rousseau is that by
Morley, J. (Macmillan), while Davidson, T., furnishes an interesting
interpretation of _Rousseau and Education from Nature_ (Scribner,
1902), but the standard treatise on _The Educational Theory of
Rousseau_ (Longmans, Green, 1911) at present has been written by
Boyd, W. A good brief account of _Basedow: His Educational Work and
Principles_ (Kellogg, New York, 1891) is afforded by Lang, O. H. See
also Barnard, H., _American Journal of Education_, vol. V, pp. 487-520.
CHAPTER XX
PHILANTHROPY IN EDUCATION
OUTLINE
In England, during the eighteenth century, there were numerous
attempts to provide education for the poor through charity schools.
The most important factor in maintaining these institutions was the
Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge.
Among other organizations, there sprang up a Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, which supported schools
throughout the American colonies, except Virginia. Charity schools
were also maintained in America by various other agencies.
An attempt was likewise made by Raikes of Gloucester, England, to
establish Sunday schools, for training the poor to read, and these
institutions spread throughout the British Isles and America.
A system of instruction through monitors, developed by Lancaster
and Bell, while formal and mechanical, furnished a sort of
substitute for national education in England, and, spreading
throughout the United States, paved the way for state support, and
greatly improved the methods of teaching.
‘Infant schools’ for poor children also grew up during the
nineteenth century in France, England, and the United States, and
found a permanent place in the national systems, but they soon
became formalized and mechanical.
Philanthropic education proved a first step toward universal and
national education.
[Sidenote: Even in Rousseau and the philanthropinists,]
[Sidenote: and especially in England.]
=Reconstructive Tendencies of the Eighteenth Century.=--The eighteenth
century cannot be regarded altogether as a period of revolution and
destruction. While such a characterization describes the prevailing
tendencies, there were also social and educational forces that looked
to evolution and reform rather than to a complete disintegration
of society and a return to primitive living. Even in Rousseau,
the arch-destroyer of traditions, we found many evidences of a
reconstruction along higher lines, and such a positive movement was
decidedly obvious in Basedow, Salzmann, and other philanthropinists.
But in England reforms were especially apparent. In the land of the
Briton, progress is proverbially gradual, and sweeping victories
and Waterloo defeats in affairs of society and education are alike
unwonted. The French tendency to cut short the social and educational
process and to substitute revolution for evolution is out of accord
with the spirit across the English Channel.
[Sidenote: Wretched conditions of laboring class.]
[Sidenote: Charity schools as remedy.]
=The Rise of Charity Schools in England.=--And yet conditions in
England at this time might well have incited people to revolution.
Wages were low, employment was irregular, and the laboring classes, who
numbered fully one-sixth of the population, were clad in rags, lived in
hovels, and often went hungry. Opportunities for elementary education
were rare. The few schools that remained after the Reformation had
largely lost their endowments or had been perverted into secondary
institutions, and had suffered from incompetent and negligent masters
and from the religious upheaval of the times. It was as a partial
remedy for this situation, that, toward the close of the seventeenth
century, there sprang up a succession of ‘charity schools,’ in which
children of the poor were not only taught, but boarded and sometimes
provided with clothes, and the boys were prepared for apprenticeship
and the girls for domestic service. Probably about one thousand schools
upon this general philanthropic basis had been established in England
and Wales by the middle of the eighteenth century. Most of these had
received substantial endowment, but numbers of them were maintained by
private subscriptions.
[Sidenote: Foundation,]
[Sidenote: management,]
[Sidenote: books,]
[Sidenote: teachers,]
[Sidenote: and course.]
=The Schools of the S. P. C. K.=--A factor that was even more important
in opening charity schools was the ‘Society for the Promotion of
Christian Knowledge’ (often abbreviated to S. P. C. K.). This society
was founded in 1698 by Reverend Thomas Bray, D. D., and four other
clergymen and philanthropists. As a rule, its schools were established,
supported, and managed by local people, but the Society guaranteed
their maintenance, and assisted them from its own treasury whenever
a stringency in funds arose. The S. P. C. K. also inspected schools,
and advised and encouraged the local managers, and furnished bibles,
prayer books, and catechisms at the cheapest rates possible. It made
stringent regulations of eligibility for its schoolmasters, requiring,
in addition to the usual religious, moral, pedagogical, and age tests,
that they be members of the Church of England and approved by the
minister of the parish. Each master was expected to teach the children
their catechism, and purge them of bad morals and manners, besides
training them in reading, writing, and elementary arithmetic. The
pupils were, moreover, clothed, boarded, and at times even lodged.
[Sidenote: Development,]
[Sidenote: opposition and advocacy,]
[Sidenote: decadence,]
[Sidenote: and influence.]
The number of charity schools of the S. P. C. K. grew by leaps and
bounds, and by the close of the first decade there were eighty-eight
within a radius of ten miles of London. The gifts made had amounted to
almost ten thousand pounds, and nearly one thousand boys and over four
hundred girls had been sent out as apprentices. And before the middle
of the eighteenth century the total number of these charity schools
in England and Wales reached nearly two thousand, with about fifty
thousand boys and girls in attendance. This increase in facilities for
the education of the poor was not kindly received by many in the upper
classes, who often felt that “there is no need for any learning at all
for the meanest ranks of mankind: their business is to labour, not to
think.” But the charity schools had also many warm supporters, and
Addison even believed that as a result of them there would be “few in
the next generation who will not at least be able to write and read,
and have not an early tincture of religion.” The benefactions for these
institutions continued to increase for nearly half a century, but by
the middle of the eighteenth century popular interest had waned. The
subscriptions began to fall off, the system of inspection and the
teaching became less effective, and the schools ceased to expand.
Nevertheless, the S. P. C. K. had succeeded in impressing the Church
of England with a sense of responsibility for the establishment of a
national school system upon a religious basis. Its schools were largely
continued throughout the eighteenth century, and in most instances
after 1811 were absorbed by the new educational organization of the
English Church, the so-called ‘National Society’ (see p. 239).
[Sidenote: Nonconformist schools.]
[Sidenote: ‘Circulating schools.’]
[Sidenote: Foundation of the S. P. G.]
=Other British Charity Schools.=--These institutions of the Church of
England society may be regarded as typical of British charity schools
in general. There were, however, also a dozen well-known foundations
by nonconformists, including the ‘Gravel Lane School’ of Southwark,
London, which was started over a decade before the S. P. C. K. was
organized. And an interesting type of philanthropic institution known
as ‘circulating schools’ was founded in Wales. These schools simply
aimed to teach pupils to read the Bible in Welsh, and when this had
been accomplished in one neighborhood, the school was transferred to
another. But a much more important organization was the offshoot of
the S. P. C. K., that arose chiefly to carry on charity schools in the
American colonies. This association, the ‘Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel in Foreign Parts,’ (commonly known as S. P. G.), was
founded by Dr. Bray three years after the parent society, but no
schools were established for several years.
[Sidenote: S. P. G. school in New York City,--]
[Sidenote: now ‘Trinity Church School.’]
=The Charity Schools of the S. P. G.=--The first school of the S. P. G.
was opened in New York City in 1709 under William Huddleston, who had
been conducting a school of his own there. It was intended that the new
school should follow the plan of the charity schools in England, but,
while free tuition and free books were granted from the beginning, it
was not until many years later that the means of clothing the children
gratuitously was provided. Under different masters and with varying
fortunes, the school was supported by the society until 1783, when the
United States had finally cut loose from the Mother Country and started
on a career of its own. Meanwhile Trinity Church had come more and more
to take the initiative in the endowment and support of the school, and
since the withdrawal of the society from America the institution has
been known as ‘Trinity Church School.’
[Sidenote: Other colonies]
[Sidenote: Attendance,]
[Sidenote: course, and books.]
Schools of the same type were active throughout the colonies in the
eighteenth century. We possess more or less complete accounts of these
institutions in New York and all the other colonies, except Virginia,
where they were not believed to be needed. Except for size and local
peculiarities, all of them closely resembled the school in New York
City. The attendance ranged from eighteen or twenty pupils to nearly
four times that number. Girls were generally admitted, and occasionally
equalled or exceeded the boys in number. As a rule, children of other
denominations were received on the same terms as those of Church of
England members, and at times nearly one-half the attendance was
composed of dissenters, but often those outside the Church were given
secondary consideration, or the catechism was so stressed by the school
that the dissenting children were withdrawn and rival schools set
up. The character of the course of study in these charity schools is
further indicated by the books furnished by the society. In packets of
various sizes it sent over horn-books, primers, spellers, writing-paper
and ink-horns, catechisms, psalters, prayer books, testaments, and
bibles. There is also some evidence that secondary instruction was
carried on intermittently in the various centers by the missionaries or
by the schoolmasters in conjunction with their elementary work.
[Sidenote: Opposition to the S. P. G.]
[Sidenote: Its devotion and generosity,]
[Sidenote: and influence upon universal education.]
Throughout its work in the American colonies the S. P. G. met with
various forms of opposition. The dissenters, Quakers, and others were
often openly hostile through fear of the foundation of an established
national church similar to that of England, and both sides displayed
considerable sectarianism and bigotry. After 1750 the opposition to the
society increased in bitterness and became more general, owing to the
feeling that its agents were supporting the king against the colonists.
Yet its patronage of schools was most philanthropic and important for
American education in the eighteenth century. While it insisted upon
the interpretation of Christianity adopted by the Church of England, it
stood first and foremost for the extension of religion and education
to the virgin soil of America. It carried on its labors with devoted
interest and showed great generosity in the maintenance of schools,
and the support of schools in the colonies by the S. P. G. must have
exerted some influence toward universal education.
[Sidenote: Organization,]
[Sidenote: course, and]
[Sidenote: disappearance of S. P. K. G. schools.]
=Charity Schools among the Pennsylvania Germans.=--During the
eighteenth century the efforts of the S. P. G. were supplemented by the
formation of minor associations and the establishment of other charity
schools in various colonies. Perhaps the most noteworthy instance was
the organization in 1753 of ‘A Society for Propagating the Knowledge of
God among the Germans,’ and the maintenance of schools among the sects
of Pennsylvania. These schools were managed by a general colonial board
of six trustees, who visited the schools annually and awarded prizes
for English orations and attainments in civic and religious duties. The
course of study included instruction in “both the English and German
languages; likewise in writing, keeping of common accounts, singing
of psalms, and the true principles of the holy Protestant religion.”
Twenty-five schools were planned, but probably there were never more
than half that number. The schools lasted only about a decade, as the
Germans soon came to feel that this English schooling threatened their
language, nationality, and institutions.
[Sidenote: Foundation,]
[Sidenote: opposition,]
[Sidenote: advocacy, and spread.]
=The ‘Sunday School’ Movement in Great Britain.=--A variety of charity
school, quite different from those already mentioned, sprang up
toward the close of the century under the name of ‘Sunday Schools.’
To overcome the prevailing ignorance, vice, and squalor in the
manufacturing center of Gloucester, England, Robert Raikes in 1780 set
up a school in Sooty Alley for the instruction of children and adults
in religion and the rudiments. Six months later he started a new school
in Southgate street, and soon had other schools established. He paid
his teachers a shilling each Sunday to train the children to read in
the Bible, spell, and write. This charity education, meager as it was,
was attacked by many of the upper classes, and was often viewed with
suspicion by the recipients themselves. Yet the new movement had warm
supporters among the nobility and such reformers as Wesley, and the
schools soon spread to London, and then throughout England, Wales,
Ireland, Scotland, and the Channel Islands. A Sunday School Society was
founded in 1785, and within a decade distributed nearly one hundred
thousand spellers, twenty-five thousand testaments, and over five
thousand bibles, and trained approximately sixty-five thousand pupils
in one thousand schools.
[Sidenote: Individual centers]
[Sidenote: and permanent associations.]
=The ‘Sunday School’ Movement in the United States.=--The Raikes system
of Sunday instruction was also soon introduced in America. The first
school was organized in 1786 by Bishop Asbury at the house of Thomas
Crenshaw in Hanover County, Virginia, and within a quarter of a century
a number of schools arose in various cities. Before long, permanent
associations were also started to promote Sunday instruction. ‘The
First Day or Sunday School Society’ was organized at Philadelphia in
1791, and during the first two decades of the nineteenth century a
number of similar societies for secular instruction on Sunday were
founded in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and elsewhere. In 1823 these
associations were all absorbed into a new and broader organization,
known ever since as the ‘American Sunday School Union.’ At the start
it published suitable reading-books, and furnished primers, spellers,
testaments, and hymn-books to needy Sunday schools at a reasonable rate.
[Sidenote: Makeshift, but prepared the way for universal education.]
=Value of the Instruction in ‘Sunday Schools.’=--Both in Great Britain
and the United States, however, the Sunday schools gradually tended to
abandon their secular instruction and become purely religious. At the
same time the teachers came to serve without pay and to instruct less
efficiently. And the value of the secular teaching was not large at the
best, as the work was necessarily limited to a few hours once a week.
Raikes and all others interested in these institutions recognized their
inadequacy as a means of securing universal education, and regarded
them merely as auxiliary to a more complete system of instruction.
But while a makeshift and by no means a final solution for national
education, they performed a notable service for the times, and helped
point the way to universal education.
[Sidenote: Lancaster]
[Sidenote: and the British and Foreign Society;]
=The Schools of the Two Monitorial Societies.=--While philanthropic
education started largely in the eighteenth century, some of the
schools continued well into the nineteenth. This was especially the
case with the ‘monitorial’ system, started at Southwark in 1798. This
district of London was thronged with barefoot and unkempt children; and
Lancaster, the founder of the school, undertook to educate as many as
he could. His schoolroom was soon filled with a hundred or more pupils.
In order to teach them all, he used the older pupils as assistants.
He taught the lesson first to these ‘monitors,’ and they in turn
imparted it to the others, who were divided into equal groups. Each
monitor cared for a single group. The work was very successful from
the first, but Lancaster, attempting to introduce schools of this kind
throughout England, fell so recklessly into debt that an association
had to be founded in 1808 to continue the work on a practical basis.
Within half a dozen years Lancaster withdrew from the organization, but
the association, under the name of the ‘British and Foreign Society,’
continued to flourish and found new schools.
[Sidenote: Bell and the National Society.]
So successful was the Lancasterian work that the Church of England,
fearing its nonsectarian influence upon education, in 1811 organized
‘The National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the
Principles of the Established Church.’ This long-named association was
to conduct monitorial schools under the management of Doctor Andrew
Bell, who had experimented with the system in India before Lancaster
opened his school. Although they had formed no part of Bell’s original
methods, the Anglican catechism and prayer book were now taught
dogmatically in the schools founded by the National Society. Bell
proved an admirable director, and a healthy rivalry sprang up between
the societies.
[Sidenote: Differences in the two systems.]
[Sidenote: Both were unoriginal]
[Sidenote: and mechanical.]
=Value of the Monitorial System in England.=--The plans of the two
organizations were similar, but differed somewhat in details. Both used
monitors and taught writing by means of a desk covered with sand, but
the system of Lancaster was animated by broader motives and had many
more devices for teaching. It also instituted company organization,
drill, and precision, and developed a system of badges, offices,
rewards, and punishments. Monitorial instruction, however, was not
original with either Lancaster or Bell. It had long been used by the
Hindus and others, although the work of the two societies brought it
into prominence. It overemphasized repetition and recitation mechanics,
and consisted of a formal drill rather than a method of instruction.
[Sidenote: Afforded substitute for national education.]
[Sidenote: Training colleges.]
[Sidenote: British and Foreign schools absorbed, but National a system
by themselves.]
Yet the monitorial schools were productive of some achievements.
Most of them afforded a fair education in the elementary school
subjects and added some industrial and vocational training. They
also did much to awaken the conscience of the English nation to the
need of general education for the poor. The British and Foreign and
the National Societies afforded a substitute, though a poor one, for
national education in the days before England was willing to pay
for general education, and they became the avenues through which
such appropriations as the government did make were distributed. In
1833 the grant of £20,000, constituting the first government aid to
elementary education, was equally divided between the two societies
(see p. 388), and this method of administration was continued as the
annual grant was gradually increased, until the system of public
education was established. Likewise, in 1839, £10,000 for normal
instruction was voted to the societies, and was used by the British
and Foreign for its Borough Road Training College, and by the National
for St. Mark’s Training College. These were followed by several other
training institutions, established by each society through government
aid. In 1870, when the ‘board,’ or public elementary, schools were at
length founded, the schools of the British and Foreign Society, with
their nonsectarian instruction, fused naturally with them; but the
institutions of the National Society, though transferred to school
boards in a few cases, have generally come to constitute by themselves
a national system on a voluntary basis.
[Sidenote: Adoption by New York and other cities.]
[Sidenote: Introduced into high schools and academies.]
=Results of the Monitorial System in the United States.=--In the
United States the monitorial system was introduced into New York City
in 1806. The ‘Society for the Establishment of a Free School,’ after
investigating the best methods in other cities and countries, decided
to try the system of Lancaster (see p. 260). The method was likewise
introduced into the charity schools of Philadelphia (see p. 261). The
monitorial system then spread rapidly through New York, Pennsylvania,
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and other States. It is almost impossible
to trace the exact extent of this organization in the United States,
but before long it seems to have affected nearly all cities of any
size as far south as Augusta (Georgia), and west as far as Cincinnati.
There are still traces of its influence throughout this region,--in
Hartford, New Haven, Albany, Washington, and Baltimore, as well as in
the places already mentioned (Figs. 27, 28, and 29). In 1818 Lancaster
himself was invited to America, and assisted in the monitorial schools
of New York, Brooklyn, and Philadelphia. A dozen years later the system
began to be introduced generally into the high schools and academies.
Through the efforts of Dr. John Griscom, who had been greatly pleased
with the monitorial high school of Dr. Pillans in Edinburgh, a similar
institution was established in New York City in 1825, and the plan was
soon adopted by a number of high schools in New York and neighboring
states. Likewise, the state systems of academies in Maryland and in
Indiana, which became high schools after the Civil War, were organized
on this basis. For two decades the monitorial remained the prevailing
method in secondary education. Training schools for teachers on the
Lancasterian basis also became common.
[Sidenote: Increased school facilities]
[Sidenote: and improved organization and methods.]
In fact, the monitorial system was destined to perform a great service
for American education. At the time of its introduction, public and
free schools were generally lacking, outside of New England, and the
facilities that existed were meager and available during but a small
portion of the year. In all parts of the country illiteracy was almost
universal among children of the poor. This want of school opportunities
was rendered more serious by the rapid growth of American cities.
‘Free school societies,’ like that in New York City, formed to relieve
the situation, came to regard the system of Lancaster, because of its
comparative inexpensiveness, as a godsend for their purpose. And when
the people generally awoke to the crying need of public education,
legislators also found monitorial schools the cheapest way out of the
difficulty, and the provision made for these schools gradually
opened the road to the ever increasing expenditures and taxation
that had to come before satisfactory schools could be established.
Moreover, the Lancasterian schools were not only economical, but most
effective, when the educational conditions of the times are taken into
consideration. Even in the cities, the one-room and one-teacher school
was the prevailing type, and grading was practically unknown. The whole
organization and administration were shiftless and uneconomical, and
a great improvement was brought about by the carefully planned and
detailed methods of Lancaster. The schools were made over through his
definite mechanics of instruction, centralized management, well-trained
teachers, improved apparatus, discipline, hygiene, and other features.
[Illustration: Fig. 27.--A monitorial school, with three hundred pupils
and but one teacher.]
[Illustration: Fig. 28.--Pupils reciting to monitors.]
[Illustration: Fig. 29.--Monitor inspecting slates.]
[Sidenote: Disappeared when educational sentiment improved.]
But while the monitorial methods met a great educational emergency in
the United States, they were clearly mechanical, inelastic, and without
psychological foundation. Naturally their sway could not last long,
and as enlarged material resources enabled the people to make greater
appropriations for education, the obvious defects of the monitorial
system became more fully appreciated and brought about its abandonment.
Before the middle of the century its work in America was ended, and it
gave way to the more psychological conceptions of Pestalozzi and to
those afterward formulated by Froebel and Herbart.
[Sidenote: Beginning with Oberlin;]
[Sidenote: development in Paris;]
[Sidenote: part of national system.]
=The ‘Infant Schools’ in France.=--Another form of philanthropic
education that came to be very influential during the nineteenth
century and has eventually been merged in several national systems is
that of the so-called ‘infant schools.’ The first recorded instance of
these institutions occurred late in the eighteenth century through the
attempt of a young Lutheran pastor named Oberlin to give an informal
training to the small children in all the villages of his rural charge
in northeastern France. This type of training was copied in Paris as
early as 1801, but did not amount to much until its revival through the
influence of a similar development in England a quarter of a century
later. It then rapidly expanded, and in 1833 was adopted as part of
the French national system of education. In 1847 a normal school was
founded to prepare directresses and inspectors for these institutions,
and in 1881 they became known as ‘maternal schools,’ and the present
type of curriculum was adopted. Besides reading and writing, these
schools have always included informal exercises in the mother tongue,
drawing, knowledge of common things, the elements of geography and
natural history, manual and physical exercises, and singing.
[Sidenote: Owen at New Lanark;]
[Sidenote: Buchanan’s school in London,]
[Sidenote: became model for Wilderspin,--formal and mechanical.]
=The ‘Infant Schools’ in England.=--Quite independently, though over a
generation later than Oberlin, Robert Owen opened his ‘infant school’
in 1816 at New Lanark, Scotland. He was a philanthropic cotton-spinner,
and wished to give the young children of his operatives a careful
moral, physical, and intellectual training. From the age of three they
were taught in this school for two or three years whatever was useful
and within their understanding, and this instruction was combined with
much singing, dancing, amusement, and out-of-door exercise. They were
not “annoyed with books,” but were taught about nature and common
objects through maps, models, paintings, and familiar conversation, and
their “curiosity was excited so as to ask questions concerning them.”
To afford this informal training, Owen secured a “poor simple-hearted
weaver, named James Buchanan, who at first could scarcely read, write,
or spell,” but who, by following the instructions of Owen literally,
made a great success of the system. But when Buchanan, with the consent
of Owen, had been transferred to London, to start a similar school for
a group of peers and other distinguished philanthropists, his lack
of intelligence reduced the training to a mere mechanical imitation
of the procedure he had learned at New Lanark. Unfortunately, this
London school became the model for Samuel Wilderspin, who was destined
to become the leading exponent of infant schools. The schools of
Wilderspin, while retaining some of the principles and devices of Owen,
were much more formal and mechanical. He thought too highly of ‘books,
lessons, and apparatus,’ and confounded instruction with education.
He overloaded the child with verbal information, depending upon the
memory rather than the understanding. Before the child was six, it was
expected that he had been taught reading, the fundamental operations
in arithmetic, the tables of money, weights, and measures, a knowledge
of the qualities of common objects, the habits of different animals,
the elements of astronomy, botany, and zoölogy, and the chief facts of
the New Testament. Even the games were stereotyped, and the religious
teaching most formal.
[Sidenote: Spread of schools;]
[Sidenote: Infant School Society;]
[Sidenote: Home and Colonial Society;]
[Sidenote: Part of public system.]
Wilderspin’s first school was opened at Spitalfields, London, and soon
attracted a horde of visitors. He then began lecturing upon the subject
throughout the United Kingdom, often demonstrating his methods with
classes of children he had taken along, and organized infant schools
everywhere. In 1824 an ‘Infant School Society’ was founded and through
it several hundred schools were established. A dozen years later
an organization for training infant school teachers, known as ‘The
Home and Colonial School Society,’ was founded at London by Reverend
Charles Mayo, D. D., and others. This society undertook to graft
Pestalozzianism upon the infant school stock. While the combination
resulted in some improvement of the infant schools, and real object
teaching and sense training were more emphasized than they had been,
the spirit of Pestalozzi was largely lost, and there was too much
imitation of the formal instruction of older children, and there was an
evident attempt to cultivate infant prodigies. Through these agencies
infant schools spread rapidly in Great Britain, and were adopted as a
regular part of the public system, when it was established in 1870 (p.
388). And four years later a marked advance was made through merging in
them some of the methods and games of the kindergarten.
[Sidenote: Boston ‘primary schools.’]
=‘Infant Schools’ in the United States.=--Schools open to all younger
children also sprang up in the United States during the first quarter
of the nineteenth century. For many years they were nowhere regarded
as an essential part of the public school system, and were managed
separately, but about the middle of the century they were generally
united. In 1818 Boston made its first appropriation for “primary
schools, to provide instruction for children between four and seven
years of age.” These schools were divided into four grades, beginning
with the study of the alphabet and closing with reading in the New
Testament. Besides reading, writing, and spelling, sewing and knitting
were taught the girls. A formal course and the monitorial method were
employed until about 1840, when the primary schools became largely
inoculated with the informal procedure of Pestalozzi. The primary
schools were for a long time under a separate committee, but in 1854
the management was fused in a general city board.
[Sidenote: ‘Primary departments’ in New York.]
New York started an ‘Infant School Society’ in 1827. This organization
opened two ‘infant schools’ for poor children between three and six
years of age. One of these schools was located in the basement of a
Presbyterian Church and the other in that of a monitorial institution
belonging to the Public School Society (see p. 261). The Pestalozzian
methods used in these infant schools greatly commended themselves, and
in 1830 the Public School Society added them as ‘primary departments’
in all their buildings, but under separate management. A committee
was appointed in 1832 to examine the Society’s schools and suggest
improvements. Upon the recommendation of two of this committee, who
had inspected education in Boston, primary schools were established
in rented rooms in sufficient numbers to be within easy reach for the
young children. The subject-matter and methods were likewise made less
formal.
[Sidenote: ‘Infant schools’ in Philadelphia]
[Sidenote: and other centers.]
[Sidenote: Improvements through infant schools.]
In 1827 three ‘infant schools’ were also founded in Philadelphia
and other centers of Pennsylvania through Roberts Vaux. By 1830 the
number of infant schools in the state had risen to ten, with two to
three thousand pupils. As the numbers would indicate, the schools
were largely organized upon the Lancasterian plan. Two years later
a model infant school was started in Philadelphia, and in 1834 six
others were organized. By 1837 there were thirty primary schools in
Philadelphia alone. Several other cities started infant schools early.
Hartford began them in 1827, and Baltimore in 1829. These institutions
were in most cases fostered by the leading men of the community, and
the ultimate service performed for American education by this form of
philanthropy was considerable. Among other improvements, the infant
schools developed a better type of schoolroom, secured separate rooms
for different classes, introduced better methods and equipment,
encouraged a movement toward playgrounds, and brought women into the
city schools of the United States.
[Sidenote: Purpose,]
[Sidenote: location,]
[Sidenote: course,]
[Sidenote: and methods.]
=The Importance of Philanthropic Education.=--Many other types of
charity school arose during the eighteenth century both in Great
Britain and America, but the chief movements have been described, and
sufficient has been said to indicate the important part in education
played by philanthropy. The moral, religious, and economic condition of
the lower classes had been sadly neglected, and by means of endowment,
subscription, or organized societies, a series of attempts was made to
relieve and elevate the masses through education. As a result, charity
schools of many varieties and more or less permanent in character
arose in all parts of the British Isles, the United States, and even
France. In many instances the pupils were furnished with lodging,
board, and clothes. The curriculum in these institutions was, of
course, mostly elementary. It generally included reading, spelling,
writing, and arithmetic, while a moral and religious training was
given through the Bible, catechism, prayer book, and psalms, and
sometimes through attendance at church under supervision of the master.
Frequently industrial or vocational subjects were taught, or the pupils
apprenticed to a trade or to domestic service. The course was usually
most formal both in matter and method, but occasionally in the later
types drawing, geography, nature study, physical exercises, and games
were added, and the more informal methods of Pestalozzi or Froebel were
partially employed. Sometimes the training was especially intended for
and adapted to children under the usual school age.
[Sidenote: Various sorts of opposition.]
These efforts to improve social conditions by means of philanthropic
education encountered various sorts of opposition. Often the upper
classes held that the masses should be kept in their place, and feared
that any education at all would make them discontented and cause an
uprising. The poor themselves, in turn, were often suspicious of any
schooling that tended to elevate them, and were unwilling to stamp
themselves as paupers. Moreover, the sectarian color that sometimes
appeared in the religious training not infrequently repelled people of
other creeds or kept the schools from receiving their children.
[Sidenote: Paved the way for national and public education.]
However, this philanthropic education may, in general, be considered
a fortunate movement, although its greatest service consisted in
paving the way for better things. In contrast to the negative phase
of ‘naturalism,’ it represented a positive factor in the educational
activities of the century. Instead of attempting to destroy existing
society utterly, it sought rather to reform it, and when the work of
destruction gave opportunity for new ideals, it suggested and even
furnished a reconstruction along higher lines. Hence philanthropy
in education exercised an important influence in the direction of
universal, national, and public training for citizenship. It was in
many of its forms merged in such a system in several countries, and in
succeeding chapters references to the S. P. C. K., S. P. G., Sunday,
monitorial, and infant schools will naturally appear.
SUPPLEMENTARY READING
Graves, _In Modern Times_ (Macmillan, 1913), chap. III; and _Great
Educators_ (Macmillan, 1912), chap. XII; Parker, _Modern Elementary
Education_ (Ginn, 1912), pp. 101-107. Allen, W. O. B. and McClure, E.,
have presented _The History of the S. P. C. K._ (Christian Knowledge
Society, London, 1901), and Pascoe, C. F., _Two Hundred Years of the
S. P. G._ (Christian Knowledge Society, London, 1898), while Kemp, W.
W., gives a detailed history of _The Support of Schools in Colonial
New York by the S. P. G._ (Columbia University, Teachers College
Contributions, no. 56, 1913), and Weber, S. E., of _The Charity
School Movement in Pennsylvania_ (Doctoral dissertation, University
of Pennsylvania). Harris, J., furnishes a good description of _Robert
Raikes; the Man and His Work_ (Dutton, New York, 1899); Salmon, D., of
_Joseph Lancaster_ (Longmans, Green, 1904); Meiklejohn, J. M. D., of
_An Old Educational Reformer, Dr. Andrew Bell_ (Bardeen, Syracuse); and
Salmon, D., and Hindshaw, W., of _Infant Schools, Their History and
Theory_ (Longmans, Green, 1904).
CHAPTER XXI
THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION IN AMERICAN EDUCATION
OUTLINE
Between the ‘transplantation’ period and that of the purely
American conception of education was a distinctive stage in
American education,--the ‘period of transition.’
During this period Virginia and the other Southern states began to
develop sentiment for universal education, and started permanent
school funds and ‘permissive’ laws for common schools.
In the state of New York, appropriations were made for elementary
education, but the public system was not really extended to the
secondary field; while in New York City the way for universal
education was prepared by quasi-public societies. In Pennsylvania,
school districts were established at Philadelphia and elsewhere,
but not until 1834 was the state system of common schools started.
New Jersey and Delaware were even slower in getting their systems
started.
The generous support of colonial education in Massachusetts was
followed by a decline, and the control of schools was transferred
from the towns to the districts. Academies were subsidized by the
state and took the place of the grammar schools. A similar decline
took place in the schools of the other New England states, except
Rhode Island, which for the first time began to develop schools at
public expense.
In the new states erected out of the Northwest Territory during
this period there was a prolonged struggle to introduce common
schools among those who had come from states not yet committed to
this ideal, and state systems of education began to appear toward
the close of the first quarter of the nineteenth century.
Thus before the educational awakening spread through the land, a
radical modification had taken place in the European institutions
with which America began its education.
[Sidenote: Transition to American conception began about the middle of
the eighteenth century.]
=Evolution of Public Education in the United States.=--We may now
return to our discussion of education in America. It has already been
seen (chap. XVII) that the organization of schools in the various
colonies was largely the result of educational ideals and conditions in
the Mother Country. At first the schools of America closely resembled
those of the European countries from which the colonists came, and
the seventeenth century in American education is largely a period of
‘transplantation.’ But toward the middle of the eighteenth century, as
new social and political conditions were evolving and the days of the
Revolution were approaching, there were evident a gradual modification
of European ideals and the differentiation of American schools toward
a type of their own. America has long stood, in theory at least, for
equality of opportunity, and this conception of society is apparent
in its views of education. The distinguishing characteristic of the
American schools has throughout been the attempt of a free people to
educate themselves, and, through their elected representatives, the
people of the various states have come, in harmony with the genius of
American civilization, to initiate, regulate, and control their own
systems of education. While the purely American conception of education
cannot be fully discerned until almost the middle of the nineteenth
century, there can for three-quarters of a century before be clearly
distinguished ‘a period of transition’ from the inherited ideals to
those of America to-day. This intervening stage of evolution covers
roughly the last quarter century of colonial life and the first half
century of statehood. To it we must now direct our attention.
[Sidenote: The ‘field school.’]
[Sidenote: Jefferson’s plan for universal education.]
=Rise of the Common School in Virginia.=--By the opening of the period,
as we noted (p. 193), Virginia had voluntarily made a fair provision
for secondary and higher education in various localities, but as
yet no real interest in common elementary schools had been shown by
the responsible classes. The nearest approach to such institutions
was found in the plantation ‘field school.’ Organized by a group of
neighbors, these schools were supported by tuition fees and were not
dependent upon any authority other than the good sense of the parents
and pupils. But by the close of the Revolution a desire for genuine
public education began to appear. The leader in the movement was
the great statesman, Thomas Jefferson. As early as 1779, he first
introduced into the legislature a scheme of universal education. His
bill proposed to lay off all the counties into small districts five
or six miles square, to be called ‘hundreds.’ Each hundred was to
establish at its own expense an elementary school, to which every
citizen should be entitled to send his children free for three years,
and for as much longer as he would pay. The leading pupil in each
school was to be selected annually by a school visitor and sent to one
of the twenty ‘grammar’ (i. e. secondary) schools, which were to be
erected in various parts of the state. After a trial of two years had
been made of these boys, the leader in each grammar school was to be
selected and given a complete secondary course of six years, and the
rest dismissed. At the end of this six-year course, the lower half of
the geniuses thus determined were to be retained as teachers in the
grammar schools, while the upper half were to be supported from the
public treasury for three years at the College of William and Mary,
which was to be greatly expanded in control and scope.
[Sidenote: Permissive law and ‘literary fund.’]
[Sidenote: University of Virginia.]
This comprehensive plan for a system of common schools was, in the face
of most discouraging opposition, constantly adhered to by Jefferson,
although he did not live to see universal education an accomplished
fact. He did, however, stimulate some movements toward this end. In
1796 the legislature passed an ineffective law whereby the justices of
each county were permitted to initiate a school system by taxation,
and in 1810 a ‘literary fund’ was established for public education.
When, in 1816, this fund had been increased to a million dollars, those
in charge of it recommended to the legislature the establishment of
“a system of public education, including a university, to be called
the University of Virginia, and such additional colleges, academies,
and schools as should diffuse the benefits of education through
the Commonwealth.” This revision of Jefferson’s suggestion did not
immediately result in any legal steps toward universal education,
except the appropriation in 1818 of $45,000 from the income of the
literary fund to have the poor children of each county sent to a
proper school, but it did bring about in 1820 the foundation of the
University of Virginia and a generous grant for the erection of a set
of buildings. In the same year the effectiveness of the ‘permissive’
law for common schools of 1796 and of the appropriation act of 1818
was somewhat strengthened by the division of the counties into
districts, among which the appropriation for education of the poor was
distributed and managed by special commissioners.
[Sidenote: Hindrances to universal education,]
[Sidenote: but gradual improvement.]
While this law marked one more step in advance, it was hampered by
several of the features that in various states continually delayed
the establishment of common schools at public expense. In the first
place, it was based on the conception of public education as poor
relief, rather than universal training for citizenship. It was often
viewed with hostility or indifference by the wealthy, who felt that
they were paying for that from which they received no benefit, and with
pride and scorn by the poor, who refused to be considered objects of
charity. Moreover, the sum distributed ($45,000) was totally inadequate
for over one hundred thousand children, and every variety of school,
private as well as public, was subsidized without distinction. The
system lacked a strong central organization, and the commissioners,
often appointed by the county judges from the classes most opposed to
the arrangement, were notoriously inefficient. The teachers also were
generally incompetent, as it was practically impossible to persuade
college or academy graduates to undertake the instruction of the poor.
Nevertheless, under this apology for a people’s common school, the
state went on for a score of years, and there was a steady growth in
the literary fund, the appropriations, the length of the school term,
and the number of pupils who were willing to take advantage of such
opportunities as it afforded. State officials of wide vision, moreover,
sought in every way to improve the teaching corps and the defective
administration. While the great majority of the school children still
attended the denominational, private, and ‘field’ schools (see p. 253),
this system of subsidies was educating public opinion for something
better. By the close of the first half century of statehood, while
Virginia was not yet ready to establish a complete system of public
education, we shall later (see pp. 327f.) find that the ground had
been prepared for the development of common schools that was spreading
throughout the country.
[Sidenote: Maryland,]
[Sidenote: South Carolina,]
[Sidenote: Georgia,]
[Sidenote: North Carolina,]
=Similar Developments in the Other Southern States.=--This advance
toward the common school in Virginia is typical of the South. The
development in Maryland was very similar to that of Virginia. The
state began to move slowly toward universal education by subsidizing
the education of the poor (1816), and by the passage of a ‘permissive’
law for common schools in the counties (1825). In South Carolina an
annual appropriation for ‘free schools’ was started in 1811. A law
was passed establishing a number of schools in each election district
equal to that of its members in the legislature and providing $300
for each school. But these schools were largely regarded as pauper
institutions, and, because legislative representation was based upon
property, the distribution of the appropriation was very inequitable,
for the inland parts of the state, which most needed assistance,
received least. Yet the amount of appropriation gradually increased,
and sentiment for universal education steadily developed. Within the
first half dozen years of statehood, Georgia began the provision of
land endowment for schools, and the organization of a state system
under the title of the ‘University of Georgia.’ While the value of the
land was too small to establish a genuine system of public education
so soon, before the close of the transition period, a permanent school
fund had been started, and sentiment for public education had begun to
grow. North Carolina made even earlier progress toward common schools.
The constitution of 1776 provided for the establishment of schools,
and, by 1817, at the request of the legislature, Judge Archibald D.
Murphy, a statesman with broad educational traditions, even formulated
an elaborate plan for a complete system of public schools. This scheme
failed, because it proposed to ‘maintain,’ as well as educate, the
children of the poor. But the suggestions of the Murphy committee
shortly brought about the establishment of a ‘literary,’ or common
school fund (1825), the income of which was to be used for the support
of public schools.
[Sidenote: and afterward other commonwealths, had the beginnings of a
state system;]
[Sidenote: and the larger cities had organized their schools.]
In the case of the other Southern commonwealths, which were admitted
after the union had been formed, there was similarly a very gradual
growth of sentiment for universal education. In every state there
appeared an alliance between far-sighted statesmen and educators and
the great middle class of citizens for the purpose of establishing
common schools for all white children, and the old ecclesiastical and
exclusive idea of education was beginning to fade. By the close of
the first half century of national existence, a public system had not
actually materialized in any of the states, but most of them had begun
to create ‘literary funds,’ subsidize schooling for the poor, and enact
‘permissive’ laws for establishing public schools. Except in Virginia
and South Carolina, provisions had been made for general administration
in state, county, and district; and in North Carolina the organization
of a complete common school system awaited only a first hint of the
great educational awakening (1835-1860). Moreover, most of the larger
cities--Baltimore, Charleston, Louisville, Nashville, Memphis, Mobile,
New Orleans--had already organized a regular system of public schools,
and all of the older commonwealths had made some attempt at supporting
a state institution of higher learning, which was virtually the head
of a public school system. The various denominations had begun to
found colleges in some numbers, but even these institutions were not
so strictly ecclesiastical as William and Mary started out to be, and
assumed a wider function than merely training for the ministry, while
the aristocratic and classical ‘grammar’ schools had largely given way
to the ‘academies’ (Fig. 32), which were nonsectarian, democratic, and
more comprehensive in their curriculum.
[Sidenote: System under Board of Regents, but did not include
elementary schools.]
[Sidenote: Endowment of common schools.]
=Evolution of Public Education in New York.=--After the English took
possession of New York, we have seen (p. 195) how that territory lapsed
into the _laissez faire_ support of education. The upper classes of
society largely sought their education abroad or through tutors and
the clergy, although in 1754 King’s College (now Columbia University)
was founded, and during the century a number of secondary schools were
organized and granted gratuities by the legislature. The few elementary
schools that existed were either private or maintained by some church
or philanthropic society. As already shown (pp. 234 ff.), this was
the period distinguished for the schools founded by the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel. At the close of the Revolution,
however, the various elements of the population had been welded
together in the common struggle, and a sentiment for public education
began to prevail over vested interests and sectarian jealousies. A
series of broad-minded governors--the Clintons, Lewis, Tompkins, and
Marcy--constantly reminded the legislature of its duty to establish
common schools. In 1787 a system of public education was theoretically
organized under the management of a Board of Regents, with the title
of ‘The University of the State of New York,’ but it did not include
elementary schools. Two years later lands in each township were set
apart for the endowment of common schools, and in 1795 it was enacted
that the sum of $50,000 for five years should be distributed for the
encouragement of elementary education in counties where the towns
would raise by taxation half as much as the amount of their share.
This arrangement was not carried on beyond the five years, but in
1805 the proceeds from 500,000 acres of land were appropriated for a
common school fund, which was not to be used until the interest reached
$50,000 per annum.
[Sidenote: State superintendency and further progress.]
[Sidenote: Combination with secretaryship of state.]
[Sidenote: Public secondary and normal schools delayed by academy
appropriations.]
In 1812 further organization was enacted whereby a state superintendent
of common schools was to be appointed, and the county unit replaced by
a more democratic town and district basis. But it had been supposed
that the state fund would provide for the entire support of the
schools, and there still remained an obstinate opposition to local
taxes. The towns, however, were gradually persuaded to raise the amount
required to secure their share of the state donation. Much progress
was brought about through the first superintendent, Gideon Hawley,
and while, after eight years of service, he was removed by political
manipulation and the office combined with the secretaryship of state,
each of his successors undertook to distinguish the educational side
of his administration by some marked advance or improvement in the
common schools. But for a generation the academies and colleges
remained under supervision of the regents, and, except for state
appropriations to academies, no one undertook to extend the public
system into secondary and higher education. Moreover, the professional
training of teachers in the academies was encouraged by the state, and
thereby the organization of normal schools was delayed. Hence, while
New York started the first system of public education adjusted to the
political and social conditions of the new nation, and probably had
the most effective schools of the times, not until the great period of
common school development (1835-1860) were its people fully willing
to contribute for a general school system, make it entirely free, or
develop it consistently in all directions.
[Sidenote: ‘Free School Society.’]
[Sidenote: Change of name.]
[Sidenote: Bethel Baptist Church controversy.]
[Sidenote: City board of education.]
=New York City.=--Meanwhile, an interesting development of educational
facilities was taking place in New York City. In 1805 the opportunities
offered in the private, church, and charity schools were seen by
certain of the most prominent citizens to be totally inadequate for a
city of seventy-five thousand inhabitants, and a ‘Free School Society’
was founded to provide for the boys who were not eligible for these
schools. The president was De Witt Clinton, afterward governor, and
in 1806 the first school was opened, from motives of economy, upon
the monitorial basis (see p. 241). The state fund did not reach a
sufficient amount to be available until 1815, but special gifts were
made to the school society from time to time by the legislature, the
city, and private individuals, and there was a rapid increase in the
number of the society’s schools during the first quarter of a century.
In 1826 the legislature authorized the organization to charge a small
tuition fee and change its name to the ‘Public School Society.’ While
the fee system was soon found to injure the efficiency of the work and
was abolished within six years, the new title persisted, as it did not
suggest pauperism in the way the old name had. In 1828 the society was
allowed the benefit of a small local tax. For quite a time the work of
the association was unhindered, but in 1820-1825 a vigorous effort was
made to obtain a share of the state appropriation for the sectarian
schools of the Bethel Baptist Church. This move was finally defeated,
but the Roman Catholics made a more successful protest fifteen years
later by indicating that the society, while nominally nonsectarian,
was really Protestant. To settle this dispute, the legislature in
1842 established a city board of education, and after eleven years
the institutions of the Public School Society were merged in this
city system. Thus was the way prepared for a public school system in
New York City, and this development was typical of the training of
educational sentiment through quasi-public societies that took place in
Buffalo, Utica, Oswego, and several other cities.
[Sidenote: Constitutional provision in Pennsylvania produced only ‘poor
schools.’]
[Sidenote: Public system in Philadelphia and elsewhere.]
=Development of Systems of Education in Pennsylvania and the Other
Middle States.=--The rise of public systems in the other Middle states
was also gradual. In Pennsylvania, the state system slowly arose
through a prolonged stage of ‘poor schools.’ The new constitution
(1790) of the state declared: “The legislature shall, as soon
as conveniently may be, provide by law for the establishment of
schools throughout the State, in such manner that the poor may be
taught gratis.” Men of broad vision, like Franklin, Benjamin Rush,
and Timothy Pickering, had striven hard to have popular education
introduced, but the general sentiment of the times could not reach
beyond providing free education for the poor. Moreover, although this
moderate constitutional provision was a compromise, it was not until
some years later (1802, 1804, and 1809) that the legislature passed
acts to make it effective. Even then public institutions to fulfill
the legislation were not established, but it was arranged that the
tuition of poor children should be paid for at public expense in
private, church, and neighborhood schools, and the proceeds of the
sixty thousand acres of land appropriated for ‘aiding public schools’
went to subsidize private institutions. But the idea of common schools
continued to develop, and governors and other prominent men constantly
called attention to the need of universal education. Philadelphia
was the first municipality to be converted, and in 1818, under a
special act of the legislature, it became ‘the first school district
of Pennsylvania,’ with the power to provide a system of education on
the Lancasterian plan at public expense. After three or four years
this special legislation was extended to five more ‘districts’, and in
1824 a general law permitting the establishment of free schools in any
community was enacted, though soon repealed.
[Sidenote: Establishment of a state school fund and a state school
system.]
[Sidenote: Effort to repeal unsuccessful.]
Finally, in 1828, ‘the Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of
Common Schools,’ after demonstrating the ineffectiveness of the
‘pauper school’ law in a series of memorials, succeeded in having a
state school fund established, and in 1834, “an act to establish a
general system of education by common schools” was passed. This law
established a state system of schools under the general superintendency
of the secretary of state. For this system it appropriated $75,000
per annum from the income of the state school fund, and permitted the
wards, townships, and boroughs, which it constituted school districts,
to share in this, provided they levied local taxes for schools. The
Northern counties, settled mostly by New England colonists, and the
Western portion of the state, with its large element of Scotch-Irish
Presbyterians, ardently favored this encouragement of universal
education, but the law was only ‘permissive’ and was bitterly opposed
by the Quaker and German inhabitants of ‘old’ Pennsylvania, who feared
that their own parochial schools would be replaced. The wealthy classes
were also hostile to the new law, on the ground that they ought not to
be taxed to educate other people’s children. In a vigorous campaign
to repeal the act, however, the opponents of the law, largely through
the eloquent speech of Thaddeus Stevens, were defeated the following
year (1835), and the desire to establish public schools was greatly
increased in 1836 by the passage of a new law, which enlarged the
annual appropriation to $200,000, in which the school districts might
participate only on condition of local taxation. Even then not more
than one-half the districts took advantage of the opportunity, and it
was several years before most of them claimed their share. Hence, while
the battle was won by 1835, the consummation of public education in
Pennsylvania did not take place until the great awakening of common
schools had swept over the country.
[Sidenote: Similar hindrances in New Jersey and Delaware.]
After the formation of the Union, New Jersey and Delaware met with
the same kinds of hindrance to the development of common schools
as did Pennsylvania, and they were even slower in getting a system
established. In both commonwealths a state school fund was started
early in the nineteenth century, but it was not distributed for about
a dozen years, and then it was used mostly for the education of
paupers in subsidized private schools. Some ‘permissive’ legislation
for the organization of school districts and commissioners and the
establishment of public schools was also passed, but it accomplished
little before the middle of the century.
[Sidenote: Disintegration of the domination of Calvinism.]
=Decline of Education in Massachusetts.=--In Massachusetts, on the
other hand, efforts for the provision of universal training degenerated
during the eighteenth century. The generous support of public education
that had been started in 1647 was followed by a period of decline for
about a century and a half. The causes of this decadence of local
interest in education were rather complicated. In the first place,
the complete domination of Calvinism gradually disintegrated and was
replaced by a toleration of several creeds. The non-Puritans, who were
constantly increasing in numbers, were obliged by the law of 1638
to preserve an outward conformity to the Calvinistic régime under
penalty of banishment, but by 1662 a compromise was granted, whereby
persons not conforming in every respect might be admitted to all church
privileges, except communion, and the persecution of Quakers, Baptists,
and other sects was largely abandoned. In 1670 came the successful
secession of the Old South Church from the original church of Boston,
as the result of a quarrel concerning this very compromise, and within
a decade the Baptists were permitted to build a meeting-house in
Boston. By 1692 recognition had been largely granted to all Protestant
beliefs, and to be a ‘freeman,’ or voter on all colonial questions,
it was no longer necessary to be a member of a Puritan church. While
every town was still required to support by tax an orthodox pastor, by
1728 the Episcopalians, Quakers, and Baptists were permitted to pay
their assessments to their own ministers, and the alliance of the State
with a despotic Church, which had made possible the system of public
education, was largely broken.
[Sidenote: Lowering of intellectual standards.]
[Sidenote: Dispersion of population.]
[Sidenote: Consequent attempts to evade the school law.]
Moreover, there was a decided lowering of intellectual standards upon
the part of the colonists. The hard struggle to wring a living from an
unpropitious soil, and the disturbances due to wars, Indian skirmishes,
and the difficulties of pioneer life greatly lessened their feeling
of need for a literary training. Another reason for the educational
decline was the dispersion of the population in the towns. At first,
because of possible attacks by the Indians, a law forbade any dwelling
to be built more than half a mile from the church and school, and not
infrequently the school was equipped with a watch-tower (Fig. 22).
But, as the best land near the center was more and more taken up, the
towns spread out in various directions, and the intervening hills,
streams, swamps, and poor roads, together with the fear of Indians and
wild animals, greatly hindered those on the outskirts in reaching the
church and school of the town. As a result of all these conditions, the
towns, most of which had been eager to establish schools even before
being compelled to do so, began to seek various methods of evading
the school law without incurring the fine. The minister was at times
made the nominal schoolmaster, or a teacher was even employed during
the session of the ‘General Court’ (i. e., legislature) and discharged
upon adjournment. Laws were enacted against these subterfuges, greater
vigilance was exercised, and the fine was increased first to £10 (1671)
and then to £20 (1683), with a progressive increase where the number of
families ran over one hundred (1712). Thus the fine came to be almost
sufficient to support a schoolmaster, and it was made more and more
unprofitable for a town to disobey the law.
[Sidenote: Influence of ‘dame’ and private elementary schools and of
parishes.]
[Sidenote: The ‘moving,’]
[Sidenote: ‘divided,’]
[Sidenote: and ‘district’ schools.]
Under these circumstances it became advantageous to many citizens,
especially those at the center of a town, to have the entire support
of the school come through general taxation rather than partially by
means of tuition fees. But the people in the more distant portions of
the town refused to vote a rate from which they themselves obtained
no profit. They demanded that, in return for their taxes, the public
school should be brought nearer to them. Probably they were influenced
in this stand by the fact that private ‘dame’ schools, and possibly
elementary schools, had for some time been opened in various parts of
the town conveniently near their homes. Another factor that may have
aided in suggesting this solution was the legal recognition of various
remote settlements within the town, known as ‘parishes’ or ‘districts,’
through the grant of self-government, separate church organizations,
and other privileges similar to those of the town as a whole, though
on a smaller scale. At any rate, we find that in the early part of
the eighteenth century, wherever a rate was adopted as the sole means
of school support, it was agreed that, instead of holding the town
school for twelve months in the center alone, opportunities should
be offered for a fraction of that period in various portions of the
town. Usually the compromise at first took the form of having one town
master teach in different districts through the year, and the result
was known as a ‘moving’ school. This necessitated holding the school
in a number of isolated communities, and the temple of learning often
came at first to be located in a private house, usually in the kitchen.
And although, in time, another room was added to the farm house for
the accommodation of the school, the institution has since then been
known as a ‘kitchen school’ (Fig. 30). But, by a later development,
when separate schools under different masters or mistresses came to
be taught at the same time, the town school was said to be ‘divided.’
Then in the winter, when the big boys were out of the fields and came
to school, the session was held in the center of the town, and usually
required the brawn of a man. But in summer, when only the younger
children could attend, schools were held in various parts of the town
and were taught chiefly by women (Fig. 31). The divisions of the town
that thus came to be recognized were allowed more and more control of
their schools until they practically became autonomous. Before the
time of the Revolution ‘divided schools’ were recognized as a regular
institution, and, together with other customs that had grown up during
the eighteenth century, they were given legal sanction and denominated
‘district schools’ in the law of 1789. By 1800 the districts were
not only allowed to manage their own share of the town taxes, but
were authorized to make the levy themselves; in 1817 they were made
corporations and empowered to hold property for educational purposes;
and in 1827 they were granted the right to choose a committeeman, who
should appoint the teacher and have control of the school property.
[Sidenote: Degeneracy of the district system.]
[Sidenote: Endowment of academies with public lands.]
[Sidenote: High schools not yet influential.]
Thus the year 1827 “marks the culmination of a process which had been
going on for more than a century,--the high-water mark of modern
democracy, and the low-water mark of the Massachusetts school system.”
The district system did in its earlier stages bind the families of a
neighborhood into a corporation whose intent was the most vital of
human needs,--education, and the people came to feel the necessity of
supporting it by their own generous contributions. But in the course
of time the districts became involved in private and petty political
interests, and had but little consideration for the public good. The
choice of the committeeman, the site, and the teacher caused much
unseemly wrangling, and as each received only what it paid in, the poor
district obtained only a weak school and that for but a short term. The
increasing expense of the district system had also made it impossible
for any except the larger towns to support the old-time ‘grammar’
school, and this part of the old school requirements had fallen into
disuse before the close of the eighteenth century. To meet the needs
of secondary education, the policy of endowing ‘academies’ (Fig. 32)
with wild lands in Maine had gradually grown up, and this custom was
legalized in 1797. Seven academies,--four in Massachusetts proper and
three in the province of Maine, had originally been endowed with a
township apiece, and some fourteen more had been chartered by towns at
an early date, and empowered by the state to hold educational funds.
By the time of the educational awakening there were some fifty of
these private secondary institutions subsidized by the state, although
managed by a close corporation. The first public high school
(Fig. 41) had been established in Boston (1821), but this type of
secondary school had not begun to have any influence as yet. Into such
a decadence had the liberally supported system of public education
fallen, before the rapid development in common schools began and the
influence of Horace Mann and other reformers was felt.
[Illustration: Fig. 30.--A ‘kitchen school.’]
[Illustration: Fig. 31.--A colonial ‘summer school.’]
[Illustration:
Fig. 32.--The first ‘academy,’ founded by Benjamin Franklin at
Philadelphia in 1750, and later developed into the University of
Pennsylvania.]
[Sidenote: Connecticut,]
[Sidenote: Vermont,]
[Sidenote: New Hampshire, and Rhode Island.]
=Developments in the Other New England States.=--The development
of common schools in Massachusetts may be considered typical of
New England in general, except Rhode Island. Connecticut similarly
degenerated into a district system, which was recognized by law in
1794, and was destined later to constitute one of the greatest problems
during the period of educational development (see pp. 313 and 320).
Vermont likewise made provision for town and district schools, and
eventually established a state school fund and school commissioners,
but this legislation was soon repealed, and the schools of the state
were in a parlous condition when the awakening found them. New
Hampshire and Maine also present very similar features. In Rhode Island
the voluntary organization of education continued throughout the
eighteenth century. In 1800 a law permitting each town to maintain ‘one
or more free schools’ was passed, but no municipality availed itself
of this permission, except Providence, and the act was repealed in
1803. The basal state law for common schools was not passed until 1828,
when at length $10,000 was appropriated, and each town was required to
supplement its share by such an amount as should annually be fixed in
town meeting.
[Sidenote: Conditions at close of transition period in the Southern]
[Sidenote: and Middle states,]
[Sidenote: as opposed to those in New England.]
=The Extension of Educational Organization to the Northwest.=--It
is thus evident that by the close of the first half century of the
republic, there was everywhere slowly growing up a sentiment for
public education. The development of common schools had, however, been
greatly hindered in the Southern states by the separation of classes
in an aristocratic organization of society. Yet the superior class
had shown no lack of educational interest in their own behalf and had
through the facilities offered reared a group of intellectual leaders,
some of whom, like the far-sighted Jefferson, had caught the vision of
universal education. The great diversity of nationality and creed in
the Middle states, on the other hand, had fostered sectarian jealousies
and the traditional practice of the maintenance of its own school by
each congregation. This had proved almost as disastrous to the rise
of a system of public schools, although Pennsylvania, and even more
New York, had well begun the establishment of a public system. In both
sections of the country public education was at first viewed as a
species of poor relief, and the wealthy were unable to see any justice
in being required to educate the children of others. As a result, the
young ‘paupers’ at times had their tuition paid in private schools, and
these institutions were not infrequently allowed to share in public
funds. The New England states, however, as a result of the homogeneity
of their citizens, had early adhered to a system of public schools
for all, organized, supported, and supervised by the people. While
the efficiency of their common schools was eventually crippled by the
grant of autonomy to local districts and the arising of petty private
and political interests, they had initiated this unique American
product,--a public system for all, dependent upon local support and
responsive to local wishes.
[Sidenote: Effect of these conditions upon the Northwest Territory.]
[Sidenote: The Ordinance of 1787, and its provisions for education.]
This growth of a ‘common schools consciousness’ was destined, as the
result of a great educational awakening, to increase rapidly during the
second quarter of the nineteenth century in the Middle and Southern, as
well as the New England, states. But before describing this development
further, it is important to see the effect of the ideals of these
three sections of the country when introduced into a new part of the
United States by emigrants from the older commonwealths. The new domain
referred to was those large tracts of unsettled territory, belonging,
according to claims more or less overlapping, to six or seven of the
original states, and finally (1781), in settlement of these disputes,
ceded to the federal government, with the understanding that the
territory should be ‘formed into distinct republican States.’ After
much discussion and various acts of Congress for half a dozen years,
the famous ‘Ordinance of 1787’ was passed for the government of this
‘Northwest Territory.’ An earlier act (1785) had divided the entire
territory into townships, six miles square, after the New England
system, and of the thirty-six sections into which each township was
subdivided, section sixteen was reserved for the support of public
schools. A special contract also started the practice of providing two
townships for the establishment of a university in each state. These
provisions were later extended to the vast territory purchased from
France in 1803 and known as ‘Louisiana,’ and to all the other territory
afterward annexed to the United States.
[Sidenote: Hindrances to educational development.]
This federal land endowment gave an additional stimulus to the
establishment of public education in the four commonwealths--Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan--that were admitted from the Northwest
Territory before 1840. But the final system of public education in
these new states took form slowly for various reasons. The settlers
were poor; incessant Indian wars, the wilderness, wretched roads, and
lack of transportation facilities tended to repel immigrants and leave
the country sparsely settled; the large tracts of school land were slow
in acquiring value, and, to attract settlers, were often leased at
nominal rates or sacrificed at a small price; and social distinctions
and sectarian jealousies persisted among the immigrants. As a whole,
immigration from the earlier commonwealths had followed parallels
of latitude, and the northern parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois
were occupied mostly by people from New England and New York, and
the southern by former inhabitants of Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee,
Louisiana, and other states where the public school system was not
yet as well developed. In Michigan, however, because of its northerly
location, the great influx throughout the state had come from New York,
New England, and Northern Ohio.
[Sidenote: Struggle to secure public school system,--]
[Sidenote: Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois;]
[Sidenote: Michigan.]
Consequently, the history of public education in the first three of the
new states seems to be in each case largely a record of a prolonged
struggle to introduce common schools among those of the people who
had come from states not yet committed to this ideal, but Michigan,
whose inhabitants had migrated from states where public education was
in vogue, showed the germs of a public system even before statehood
was conferred. The history of the common schools in Ohio, Indiana,
and Illinois is very similar in general outline. Each one started off
by claiming two townships of land for a university and the sixteenth
section for schools, and the state constitution committed it to equal
school opportunities for all. But not until the close of the first
quarter of the nineteenth century was a system of common schools, with
the organization of districts, appointment of school officers, and
local taxation provided by the legislature. Even then the acts were
largely ‘permissive,’ the tax was not exacted from anyone who objected,
and for some time various laws allowed public funds to be paid to
existing private schools for the tuition of the poor. The complete
system with a state superintendent was first organized in Ohio by
1836, but a similar stage of development was not reached by the other
two states until after the great wave of common school development
(1835-1860) had passed over the country. Michigan, on the other hand,
as early as 1817 established a ‘catholepistemiad,’ which was to include
a university and a system of schools of all grades, and a dozen years
later in its revision of the school laws provided for a department
of Education at the university and a territorial superintendency of
schools. While under this law of 1829 tuition fees were to be required,
except from the poor, by the first state constitution in 1837 the
school lands were taken over from the wasteful management of the towns,
and a public school was required to be open for three months in every
district. The state superintendency was also established, and before
1840 Michigan was well started with a complete system of common schools.
[Sidenote: Progress in all sections of the country.]
=Condition of the Common Schools Prior to the Awakening.=--Thus, while
some of the New England states, New York, and Ohio possessed the only
definitely organized systems of public education, the movement for
common schools had made some progress in all sections of the country
even before the educational awakening spread through the land. A
radical modification had taken place in the European institutions
with which education in the United States began. To meet the demands
of the new environment, education had become more democratic and
less religious and sectarian. Wealth had become much greater and
material interests had met with a marked growth. The old aristocratic
institutions had begun to disappear. Town and district schools had
been taking the place of the old church, private, and ‘field’ schools,
and in some of the cities the foundation for public education was
being laid by quasi-public societies or even through local taxation.
The academies (Fig. 32) had replaced the ‘grammar’ schools, and the
colleges had lost their distinctly ecclesiastical character. State
universities were starting in the South and Northwest. All these
evidences of the growth of democracy, nonsectarianism, and popular
training in education were destined to be greatly multiplied and spread
before long. Such an awakening will be found to be characteristic of
the great development of common schools that took place in the decades
around the middle of the nineteenth century. But, before pursuing the
subject further, we must direct our attention to some new reforms
in method and content that were being introduced by Pestalozzi into
education in Europe and were destined to produce a great stimulus in
the public systems of the United States.
SUPPLEMENTARY READING
Graves, _In Modern Times_ (Macmillan, 1913), chap. IV; Parker, _Modern
Elementary Education_ (Ginn, 1912), chap. XII. A general, but not
always accurate account of the period has been contributed by Mayo, A.
D., to the Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1893-94, XVI;
1894-95, XXVIII; 1895-96, VI and VII; 1897-98, XI; and 1898-99, VIII.
For the special states, see Adams, H. B., _Thomas Jefferson and the
University of Virginia_ (United States Bureau of Education, Circular
of Information, 1888, no. 1); Boone, R. G., _History of Education
in Indiana_ (Appleton, 1892), chaps. I-III, and V-VII; Johnston, R.
M., _Early Educational Life in Middle Georgia_ (Report of the U. S.
Commissioner of Education, 1894-95, XVI, and 1895-96, VII); Martin, G.
H., _Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School System_ (Appleton,
1894), lect. III; Palmer, A. E., _The New York Public School_
(Macmillan, 1905); Randall, S. S., _History of the Common School System
of the State of New York_ (Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor, New York, 1871)
Second Period; Smith, C. L., _History of Education in North Carolina_
(U. S. Bureau of Education, Circular of Information, no. 2, 1888);
Smith, W. L., _Historical Sketch of Education in Michigan_ (Lansing,
1881), pp. 1-7, 39-49, and 57-78; Steiner, B. C., _History of Education
in Connecticut_ (U. S. Bureau, Circular of Information, no. 2, 1893),
and _History of Education in Maryland_ (U. S. Bureau, Circular of
Information, no. 2, 1894), chaps. II-IV; Stockwell, T. B., _History of
Public Education in Rhode Island_ (Providence Press Co., Providence,
1876), chaps. II-V; Updegraff, H., _The Origin of the Moving School in
Massachusetts_ (Columbia University, Teachers College Contributions,
no. 17, 1907), chaps. V-X; Wickersham, J. P., _History of Education in
Pennsylvania_ (Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1886), chaps. XIII-XVII.
CHAPTER XXII
OBSERVATION AND INDUSTRIAL TRAINING IN EDUCATION
OUTLINE
Pestalozzi was the first prominent educator to develop the negative
naturalism of Rousseau into positive reforms.
He desired to elevate the peasantry about him, and, failing
in other expedients, undertook to accomplish this through a
combination of industrial and intellectual training at Neuhof.
This training he continued at Stanz, and began the development of
his observational methods. In his work at Burgdorf, he was forced
to suspend his industrial training, but he further developed his
‘A B C of observation,’ and at Yverdon the method reached its
culmination.
Like Rousseau, Pestalozzi conceived of education as a natural
development of innate powers, and he extended its application to
all children. In his method he held that clear ideas could be
formed only by means of sense perceptions, and he undertook to
analyze each subject into its simplest elements and develop it by
graded exercises.
While not original, practical, or scientific, Pestalozzi made
education the remedy for corruption in society, and started the
modern methods in the elementary studies. Pestalozzian schools and
methods spread rapidly through Europe and the United States.
The attempt to combine industrial training with intellectual, which
Pestalozzi had to give up, was continued by his friend, Fellenberg,
in his institutions at Hofwyl. Similar training was developed
throughout Europe. In the United States it stimulated the ‘manual
labor’ movement, and was later utilized as a solution for racial
and other peculiar problems in education.
[Sidenote: Development of naturalism of Rousseau by Pestalozzi.]
=Pestalozzi as the Successor of Rousseau.=--Having outlined the various
phases of philanthropic education and surveyed the development of the
common school in America, we may now turn again to the more immediate
development of the movements that found their roots in Rousseau. It has
been noted how Rousseau’s ‘naturalistic’ doctrines logically pointed
to a complete demolition of the artificial society and education
of the times. A pause at this point would have led to anarchy. If
civilization is not to disappear, social destruction must be followed
by reconstruction. Of course the negative attitude of the _Emile_ was
itself accompanied by considerable positive advance in its suggestions
for a natural training, but this advice was often unpractical and
extreme and its main emphasis was upon the destruction of existing
education. Hence the happiest educational results of Rousseau’s work
came through Pestalozzi, who especially supplemented that reformer’s
work upon the constructive side. Pestalozzi became the first prominent
educator to develop the negative and somewhat inconsistent ‘naturalism’
of Rousseau into a more positive attempt to reform corrupt society by
proper education and a new method of teaching.
[Sidenote: Example of mother and grandfather,]
[Sidenote: and early attempts to elevate the peasantry.]
=Pestalozzi’s Philanthropic and Industrial Ideals.=--Johann Heinrich
Pestalozzi was born at Zurich in 1746. After the death of his father,
he was brought up almost altogether by his mother. Through her
unselfishness and piety, and the example of his grandfather, pastor in
a neighboring village, Pestalozzi was inspired to relieve and elevate
the degraded peasantry about him. He first turned to the ministry as
being the best way to accomplish this philanthropic purpose, and later
took up the study of law, with the idea of defending the rights of his
people, but he was not able to succeed in either profession. Then, in
1769, he undertook to demonstrate to the peasants the value of improved
methods of agriculture. He took up a strip of waste land at Birr, which
he called _Neuhof_ (‘new farm’), but within five years this experiment
also proved a lamentable failure. Meantime a son had been born to him,
whom he had undertaken to rear upon the basis of the _Emile_, and the
results, recorded in a _Father’s Journal_, suggested new ideas and
educational principles for the regeneration of the masses. He began to
hold that education did not consist merely in books and knowledge, and
that the children of the poor could, by proper training, be taught to
earn their living and at the same time develop their intelligence and
moral nature.
[Sidenote: Scholastic instruction given while the children were
working.]
=His Industrial School at Neuhof and the _Leonard and
Gertrude_.=--Hence the failure of his agricultural venture afforded
Pestalozzi the opportunity he craved to experiment with philanthropic
and industrial education. Toward the end of 1774 he took into his home
some twenty of the most needy children he could find. These he fed,
clothed, and treated as his own. He gave the boys practical instruction
in farming and gardening on small tracts, and had the girls trained in
domestic duties and needlework. In bad weather both sexes gave their
time to spinning and weaving cotton. They were also trained in the
rudiments, but were practiced in conversing and in memorizing the Bible
before learning to read and write. The scholastic instruction was given
very largely while they were working, and, although Pestalozzi had not
as yet learned to make any direct connection between the occupational
and the formal elements, this first attempt at an industrial education
made it evident that the two could be combined. Within a few months
there was a striking improvement in the physique, minds, and morals
of the children, as well as in the use of their hands. But Pestalozzi
was so enthusiastic over the success of his experiment that he greatly
increased the number of children, and by 1780 was reduced to bankruptcy.
[Sidenote: After the school was closed, he published his views.]
Nevertheless, his wider purpose of social reform by means of education
was not allowed to languish altogether, for a friend shortly persuaded
him to publish his views. His first production, _The Evening Hour of a
Hermit_, embodied most of the educational principles he afterward made
famous, but he was advised to put his thought into more popular form,
and soon wrote his highly successful story of _Leonard and Gertrude_
(1781). This work, with subsequent additions, gives an account of the
degraded social conditions in the Swiss village of ‘Bonnal’ and the
changes wrought in them by one simple peasant woman. ‘Gertrude’ reforms
her drunkard husband, educates her children, and causes the whole
community to feel her influence and adopt her methods. When finally a
wise schoolmaster comes to the village, he learns from Gertrude the
proper conduct of the school and begs for her continued coöperation.
Then the government becomes interested, studies the improvements that
have taken place, and concludes that the whole country can be reformed
in no better way than by imitating Bonnal.
[Sidenote: Having no other facilities, he instructed through
‘observation’ in]
[Sidenote: morals,]
[Sidenote: number, language, and other subjects,]
=His School at Stanz and Beginning of His Observational Methods.=--In
1798 he was given an opportunity to carry on his philanthropic and
industrial ideals in education through the orphan home and school at
Stanz, of which he was put in charge. Here he found it impossible to
obtain any assistants, books, and materials, but he felt that none of
these conventional aids could be of service in the work he desired to
do. Hence he sought to instruct the children rather by experience and
observation than by abstract statements and words (Fig. 33). This was
the real beginning of his teaching through ‘observation,’ and, while
at Stanz he further developed his correlation of intellectual with
manual training, his observational methods were thereafter destined to
be more stressed. Religion and morals, for example, were never taught
by precepts, but through instances that arose in the lives of the
children he showed them the value of self-control, charity, sympathy,
and gratitude. In a similarly concrete way the pupils were instructed
in number and language work by means of objects, and in geography
and history by conversation rather than by books. While they did not
learn their natural history primarily from nature, they were taught
to corroborate what they had learned by their own observation. About
this method he said: “According to my experience, success depends
upon whether what is taught to children commends itself to them as
true through being closely connected with their own observation. As a
general rule, I attached little importance to the study of words, even
when explanations of the ideas they represented were given.”
[Sidenote: reducing perception to its lowest terms.]