Prussia has passed through three stages. Under the first
elementary schools were entirely self-supporting; under the
second they received State aid, but were still largely
self-supporting; under the third, Laws of 1888 and 1889,
elementary schools were made free and the State pays a larger
proportion of the cost of maintenance. Districts must pay for
repairs, new buildings and cost of heating. If unwilling to
provide proper accommodations for the children of school age,
they can be forced by the government to do so. Poor districts
may receive special government aid to meet such expenses. ...
The direct aim of the laws of June 14, 1888, and March 31,
1889, was to lighten the burden of local taxation for schools
for children of school age. These laws have had a beneficial
effect in increasing slightly the wages of teachers. Teachers'
salaries are still quite small in Prussia, particularly in the
case of females. Allowances are generally made for house-rent
and fuel. Teachers in rural districts are provided with a
house and garden. Their salaries are often not much more than
half those paid city teachers of the same grade, and yet, as
regards professional training and character of work, they are
fully equal to city teachers. ... The average annual salary
received by teachers in Prussia in 1886 was $267.50. The
average for the same year in New York was $409.27. The
Prussian teacher, however, received fuel and dwelling free, in
addition to his regular salary. ... In 1885 the population of
Prussia was 28,318,470, and the total cost of public education
per caput was $1,7717. Drs. Schneider and Petersilie of
Berlin, in 'Preussische Statistik 101,' published in 1889,
reckon the total cost for 1888, excluding army and navy
schools, at $50,192,857. ... In Prussia, elementary
instruction is the first consideration. The resolution adopted
by the national assembly (Landtag) December 22, 1870, is a
good illustration of this. It was at the very crisis of the
Franco-German war, yet the Landtag called on the government to
increase the number of normal schools and the capacity of
those already existing, and 'thus to put an end to the
practice of filling up teachers' vacancies by appointing
unqualified individuals.'"
_J. R. Parsons, Jr., Prussian Schools through
American eyes, chapter 1, section 15-17._
"Throughout Prussia there is now one school-room and one
teacher to 446 inhabitants and 78.8 children actually
attending school. This shows that there are far too few
teachers. But the government and the cities have recently
devoted considerable sums to the establishment of new places
for teachers, so that, in the year 1881, there were 10,000
more teachers working in the public schools than in 1873. The
salaries of the teachers were also raised. The average payment
in the country is 954 marks, in the cities 1,430 marks. ...
The expense of maintaining the Prussian national schools
amounts annually to about 102,000,000 of marks, 43,000,000 of
which are paid by the cities. One hundred and ten colleges for
the training of teachers are now engaged in the education of
male and female instructors, with an attendance of 9,892
pupils; that is, there is one pupil to every 2,758
inhabitants. In the case of the female teachers only, a
considerable degree of assistance is rendered by private
institutions. ... The intermediary schools established in
1872, and recently converted into the higher citizen schools,
form a transition from the national schools to the higher
schools. These teach religion, German, French, English,
history and geography, arithmetic and mathematics, natural
history and physics, writing, drawing, singing, and
gymnastics. The course embraces six years without Latin, with
the privilege of one year's service in the army instead of
three. Complementary to the national school is the finishing
school. There are a large number in Prussia, namely, 1,261
with 68,766 pupils: 617 with 10,395 in the country, and 644
with 58,371 in the cities. Of these 644,342 are obligatory by
local statutes, 302 are optional. Since the law of 1878
special care has been devoted to the compulsory education of
orphaned children. ... The preparatory instruction of female
teachers leaves much to be desired."
_F. Kirchner, Contemporary Educational Thought
in Prussia (Educational Review, May, 1891)._
"About 25 per cent. of all the teachers in public middle
schools are women, hence ... women hold positions in these
schools more frequently than in the lower, the purely
elementary, schools of the kingdom. The greatest ratio of
women teachers in Prussia is found in private middle schools,
where 2,422 of 3,126 (or nearly 80 percent.) are women. ... In
all the public schools of Prussia (elementary, middle, and
secondary) only 10,600 women teachers were employed [1887], or
14¼ per cent. of all the teachers in the kingdom. ... Before
the public schools of the kingdom had the care and close
supervision on the part of the state which they have now, many
more private schools were in existence than at present. During
the last 25 years the private schools have not increased in
numbers, but perceptibly decreased."
_U. S. Commissioner of Education, Report,
1889-90, pages 287-289._
{723}
EDUCATION:
Russia.
"After serfdom had been abolished, the Emperor Alexander II.
saw that the indispensable consequence of this great reform
must be a thorough reorganization of public instruction. In
1861 a committee was appointed to draw up the plan of a law.
In 1862 M. Taneef submitted to the Emperor a 'General plan for
the organization of popular education,' which contained some
very excellent points. The result was the General Regulations
of 1864, which are still in force. ... The difficulties which
a complete reorganization of popular education meets in Russia
are enormous. They are principally caused by the manner in
which the inhabitants live, scattered over a large extent of
country, and by their extreme poverty. ... The density of
population is so small that there are only 13.6 inhabitants to
one square kilometer (2.6 square kilometers to 1 square mile),
instead of 69 as in France. Under these circumstances only the
children from the center hamlet and those living-nearest to it
could attend school regularly, especially during the
winter-months. The remainder of the inhabitants would pay
their dues without having any benefit, which would necessarily
foster discontent. As Prince Gagarin says, 'It has, therefore,
not been possible to make education in Russia compulsory, as
in Germany, nor even to enforce the establishment of a school
in each community.' It is doubtless impossible at present to
introduce into Russia the educational systems of the western
countries."
_E. de Laveleye, Progress of Education in Russia
(U. S. Bureau of Education, Circulars of
Information, 1875, no. 3), pages 31-32._
EDUCATION:
Scotland.
"The existing system of education in Scotland is an outcome of
causes deeply involved in the political and religious history
of the country. ... This system was preceded by a complicated
variety of educational agencies, of which the chief were
parish schools, founded upon a statute of 1646, which was
revived and made operative in 1696. Parish and burgh schools,
supported by local funds and by tuition fees, made up the
public provision for education. In addition there were schools
partly maintained by parliamentary grants, mission and
sessional schools maintained by the Established Church and the
Free Church, and other parochial and private schools. Parish
and burgh schools carried instruction to the level of the
universities, which were easily accessible to all classes. The
date of the passage of the 'Scotch Education Act' (1872) was
opportune for the organization of these various agencies into
a system maintained by the combined action of the Government
and local authorities. In framing the Scotch act care was
taken, as in framing the English act two years before, to
guard the rights of the Government with respect to funds
appropriated from the public treasury. At the same time equal
care was shown for the preservation of the Scotch ideal. This
was a broad and comprehensive ideal, embracing the different
grades of scholastic work. ... This ideal differentiates the
Scotch act from the English act passed two years before. The
latter related to elementary schools exclusively; the former
has a wider scope, providing the foundations of a system of
graded schools correlated to the universities which lie beyond
its province. With respect to the interests of the Government,
the two acts are substantially the same. ... For the general
direction of the system a Scotch educational department was
created, composed, like the English department, of lords of
the privy council, and having the same president. ... The act
ordered every parent to secure the instruction of his children
between the ages of 5 and 13, or until a certificate of
exemption should be secured. Parents failing in this
obligation are subject to prosecution and penalty by fine or
imprisonment. The compulsory provision extends to blind
children. Parochial or burghal authorities were authorized to
pay the tuition fees of those children whose parents could not
meet the expenditure, a provision rendered unnecessary by the
recent remission of all fees. The Scotch act, by a sweeping
clause, made compulsory attendance universal; the English act
left the matter of compulsion to local managers. A subsequent
act (1878) fixed the standard of exemption in Scotland at the
fifth [grade, or year of study], which pupils should pass at
11 years of age. In 1883, the upper limit of compulsory
attendance in Scotland was raised to 14 years. ... The
universities of Scotland have been more intimately related to
the life of the common people than those of any other country.
In this respect, even more if possible than in their
constitution, they present a marked contrast to the English
universities. To their democratic spirit may be traced many of
the characteristics which differentiate the Scotch people and
policies from those of England. To their widespread influence,
to the ambitions which they awakened, and the opportunities
which they brought within the reach of the whole body of
Scottish youth is due, in large measure, the independent and
honorable part that Scotland has played in the history of the
United Kingdom. This popular character of the universities has
been fostered by the curriculum of the common schools, by the
easy passage from the schools to the higher institutions; by
the inexpensive mode of student life in the university towns,
and by the great number of scholarship funds available for the
poor. These conditions, however, have not been without their
disadvantages. Of these, the chief are the low entrance
standards and the consequent forcing of preparatory
instruction upon the university professors. ... As a result of
long-continued efforts a Scotch universities act was passed in
1889. This act provided for the reorganization of the four
universities; for the elevation of their standards; the
enrichment of their curricula, and the increase of their
resources. ... The Scotch universities have taken part in the
popular movements of the last decade. They maintain local
examinations for secondary schools and students. St. Andrews
has been particularly active in promoting the higher education
of women, having instituted the special degree of L. L. A.
(lady literate in arts). Edinburgh also grants a certificate
in arts to women. Aberdeen has recently appointed a lecturer
on education, following thus the precedent set by Edinburgh
and St. Andrews. The four universities are united in a scheme
of university extension."
_U. S. Commissioner of Education, Report, 1889-90,
volume 1, pages 188-207._
{724}
EDUCATION:
Sweden.
"Sweden has two ancient and famous universities--Upsala and
Lund. That of Lund is in the south part of the kingdom, and
when founded was on Danish territory. The income from its
estates is about 176,000 rix-dollars ($46,315) per annum. It
also receives yearly aid from the state. In 1867 it had 75
professors and tutors, and 400 students. Upsala is the larger
university, located at the old town of that name--the ancient
capital of Sweden--an hour and a half by rail north of
Stockholm. It has 100 professors and tutors, and 1,449
students, an increase of 131 over the year 1869. ... This
university had its beginning as an institution of learning as
far back as 1250. In 1438 it had one academic professorship,
and was dedicated as an university in 1477. Its principal
endowment was by Gustavus Adolphus in 1624, when he donated to
it all of the estate in lands that he possessed, amounting in
all to 300 farms."
_C. C. Andrews, Report on the Educational System
of Sweden (U. S. Bureau of Education, Circulars
of Information, July, 1871)._
EDUCATION:
Switzerland.
"The influence of the Reformation, and, in the following age,
of the Jesuit reaction, gave to Switzerland, as to Germany,
its original and fundamental means and agencies of national
education, and impressed also upon the population a habit of
dutiful regard for schools and learning. It was not, however,
till forty years ago that the modern education of Switzerland
was organized. 'The great development of public education in
Switzerland,' to quote Mr. Kay, 'dates from 1832, after the
overthrow of the old oligarchical forms of cantonal government
and the establishment of the present democratic forms.'
Zürich, Lausanne, and Geneva take the lead in Switzerland as
centres of educational influence. The canton in which the work
of educational reform began was Zürich. ... The instrument of
the reform, rather the revolution, was Scherr, a trained
school-teacher from Würtemberg, a teacher, in particular, of
deaf mutes to speak articulately. This man initiated in Zürich
the new scheme and work of education, and founded the first
Training College. He was looked upon by the oligarchs, partly
feudalists, and partly manufacturers, as a dangerous
revolutionist, and was exiled from Zürich. But now a monument
to his memory adorns the city. The work which he began could
not be suppressed or arrested. Zürich has ever since taken the
lead in education among the cantons of Switzerland. Derived
originally from Germany, the system is substantially identical
with that of Germany. ... The principles and methods are
substantially alike throughout. There are, first, the communal
schools--these of course in largest number--one to every
village, even for every small hamlet, provided and maintained,
wholly or chiefly, by the commune; there are burgher schools
in towns, including elementary, real, and superior schools,
supported by the towns; there are cantonal schools--gymnasia
and industrial or technical schools--supported by the State,
that is, by the canton. There is often a Cantonal University.
There is of course a Cantonal Training School or College, and
there are institutes of various kinds. The Cantonal
Universities, however, are on a small and economical scale; as
yet there is no Federal University. School life in Switzerland
is very long, from six to fourteen or fifteen, and for all who
are to follow a profession, from fifteen to twenty-two."
_J. H. Rigg, National Education, chapter 4._
EDUCATION: Modern: Asiatic Countries.
China.
"Every step in the process of teaching is fixed by unalterable
usage. So much is this the case, that in describing one school
I describe all, and in tracing the steps of one student I
point out the course of all; for in China there are no new
methods or short roads. In other countries, a teacher, even in
the primary course, finds room for tact and originality. In
those who dislike study, a love of it is to be inspired by
making 'knowledge pleasant to the taste'; and the dull
apprehension is to be awakened by striking and apt
illustrations. ... In China there is nothing of this. The land
of uniformity, all processes in arts and letters are as much
fixed by universal custom as is the cut of their garments or
the mode of wearing their hair. The pupils all tread the path
trodden by their ancestors of a thousand years ago, nor has it
grown smoother by the attrition of so many feet. The
undergraduate course may be divided into three stages, in each
of which there are two leading studies: In the first the
occupations of the student are committing to memory (not
reading) the canonical books and writing an infinitude of
diversely formed characters, as a manual exercise. In the
second, they are the translation of his text books (i. e.,
reading), and lessons in composition. In the third, they are
belles lettres and the composition of essays. Nothing could be
more dreary than the labors of the first stage. ... Even the
stimulus of companionship in study is usually denied, the
advantages resulting from the formation of classes being as
little appreciated as those of other labor saving machinery.
Each pupil reads and writes alone, the penalty for failure
being so many blows with the ferule or kneeling for so many
minutes on the rough brick pavement which serves for a floor.
At this period fear is the strongest motive addressed to the
mind of the scholar. ... This arctic winter of monotonous toil
once passed, a more auspicious season dawns on the youthful
understanding. The key of the cabala which he has been so long
and so blindly acquiring is put into his hands. He is
initiated in the translation and exposition of those sacred
books which he had previously stored away in his memory. ...
The light however is let in but sparingly, as it were, through
chinks and rifts in the long dark passage. A simple character
here and there is explained, and then, it may be after the
lapse of a year or two, the teacher proceeds to the
explication of entire sentences. Now for the first time the
mind of the student begins to take in the thoughts of those he
has been taught to regard as the oracles of wisdom. ... The
value of this exercise can hardly be overestimated. When
judiciously employed it does for the Chinese what translation
into and out of the dead languages of the west does for us. It
calls into play memory, judgment, taste, and gives him a
command of his own vernacular which, it is safe to assert, he
would never acquire in any other way. ... The first step in
composition is the yoking together of double characters.
{725}
The second is the reduplication of these binary compounds and the
construction of parallels--an idea which runs so completely through
the whole of Chinese literature that the mind of the student
requires to be imbued with it at the very outset. This is the
way he begins: The teacher writes, 'wind blows,' the pupil
adds, 'rain falls'; the teacher writes, 'rivers are long,' the
pupil adds, 'seas are deep,' or 'mountains are high,' &c. From
the simple subject and predicate, which in their rude grammar
they describe as 'dead' and' living' characters, the teacher
conducts his pupil to more complex forms, in which qualifying
words and phrases are introduced. He gives as a model some
such phrase as 'The Emperor's grace is vast as heaven and
earth,' and the lad matches it by 'The Sovereign's favor is
profound as lake and sea.' These couplets often contain two
propositions in each member, accompanied by all the usual
modifying terms; and so exact is the symmetry required by the
rules of the art that not only must noun, verb, adjective, and
particle respond to each other with scrupulous exactness, but
the very tones of the characters are adjusted to each other
with the precision of music. Begun with the first strokes of
his untaught pencil, the student, whatever his proficiency,
never gets beyond the construction of parallels. When he
becomes a member of the institute or a minister of the
imperial cabinet, at classic festivals and social
entertainments, the composition of impromptu couplets, formed
on the old model, constitutes a favorite pastime. Reflecting a
poetic image from every syllable, or concealing the keen point
of a cutting epigram, they afford a fine vehicle for sallies
of wit; and poetical contests such as that of Melibœus and
Menalcas are in China matters of daily occurrence. If a
present is to be given, on the occasion of a marriage, a
birth-day, or any other remarkable occasion, nothing is deemed
so elegant or acceptable as a pair of scrolls inscribed with a
complimentary distich. When the novice is sufficiently
exercised in the 'parallels' for the idea of symmetry to have
become an instinct, he is permitted to advance to other
species of composition which afford freer scope for his
faculties. Such are the 'shotiah,' in which a single thought
is expanded in simple language, the 'lun,' the formal
discussion of a subject more or less extended, and epistles
addressed to imaginary persons and adapted to all conceivable
circumstances. In these last, the forms of the 'complete
letter writer' are copied with too much servility; but in the
other two, substance being deemed of more consequence than
form, the new fledged thought is permitted to essay its powers
and to expatiate with but little restraint. In the third
stage, composition is the leading object, reading being wholly
subsidiary. It takes for the most part the artificial form of
verse, and of a kind of prose called 'wen-chang,' which is, if
possible, still more artificial. The reading required embraces
mainly rhetorical models and sundry anthologies. History is
studied, but only that of China, and that only in compends;
not for its lessons of wisdom, but for the sake of the
allusions with which it enables a writer to embellish classic
essays. The same may be said of other studies; knowledge and
mental discipline are at a discount and style at a premium.
The goal of the long course, the flower and fruit of the whole
system, is the 'wen-chang '; for this alone can insure success
in the pubic examinations for the civil service, in which
students begin to adventure soon after entering on the third
stage of their preparatory course. ... We hear it asserted
that 'education is universal in China; even coolies are taught
to read and write.' In one sense this is true, but not as we
understand the terms 'reading and writing.' In the
alphabetical vernaculars of the west, the ability to read and
write implies the ability to express one's thoughts by the pen
and to grasp the thoughts of others when so expressed. In
Chinese, and especially in the classical or book language, it
implies nothing of the sort. A shopkeeper may be able to write
the numbers and keep accounts without being able to write
anything else; and a lad who has attended school for several
years will pronounce the characters of an ordinary book with
faultless precision, yet not comprehend the meaning of a
single sentence. Of those who can read understandingly (and
nothing else ought to be called reading), the proportion is
greater in towns than in rural districts. But striking an
average, it does not, according to my observation, exceed one
in twenty for the male sex and one in ten thousand for the
female." The literary examinations, "coming down from the
past, with the accretions of many centuries, ... have expanded
into a system whose machinery is as complex as its proportions
are enormous. Its ramifications extend to every district of
the empire; and it commands the services of district
magistrates, prefects, and other civil functionaries up to
governors and viceroys. These are all auxiliary to the regular
officers of the literary corporation. In each district there
are two resident examiners, with the title of professor, whose
duty it is to keep a register of all competing students and to
exercise them from time to time in order to stimulate their
efforts and keep them in preparation for the higher
examinations in which degrees are conferred. In each province
there is one chancellor or superintendent of instruction, who
holds office for three years, and is required to visit every
district and hold the customary examinations within that time,
conferring the first degree on a certain percentage of the
candidates. There are, moreover, two special examiners for
each province, generally members of the Hanlin, deputed from
the capital to conduct the great triennial examination and
confer the second degree. The regular degrees are three:
1st. 'Siu-tsai' or 'Budding talent.'
2d. 'Ku-jin' or 'Deserving of promotion.'
3d. 'Tsin-shi' or 'Fit for office.'
To which may be added, as a fourth degree, the Hanlin, or
member of the 'Forest of Pencils.' ... The first degree only
is conferred by the provincial chancellor, and the happy
recipients, fifteen or twenty in each department, or 1 per
cent. of the candidates, are decorated with the insignia of
rank and admitted to the ground floor of the nine storied
pagoda. The trial for the second degree is held in the capital
of each province, by special commissioners, once in three years.
It consists of three sessions of three days each, making nine
days of almost continuous exertion--a strain to the mental and
physical powers, to which the infirm and aged frequently
succumb. In addition to composition in prose and verse, the
candidate is required to show his acquaintance with history,
(the history of China;) philosophy, criticism, and various
branches of archæology. Again 1 per cent. is decorated; but it
is not until the more fortunate among them succeed in passing
the metropolitan triennial that the meed of civil office is
certainly bestowed.
{726}
They are not, however, assigned to their respective offices
until they have gone through two special examinations within
the palace and in the presence of the emperor. On this
occasion the highest on the list is honored with the title of
'chuang yuen' or 'laureate,' a distinction so great that in
the last reign it was not thought unbefitting the daughter of
a 'chuang yuen' to be raised to the position of consort of
the Son of Heaven. A score of the best are admitted to
membership in the Academy, two or three score are attached to
it as pupils or probationers, and the rest drafted off to
official posts in the capital or in the provinces, the
humblest of which is supposed to compensate the occupant for
a life of penury and toil."
_Reverend W. A. P. Martin, Report on the System of Public
Instruction in China (U. S. Bureau of Education,
Circulars of Information, 1877, no. 1)._
ALSO IN:
_W. A. P. Martin, The Chinese: their Education, &C._
EDUCATION:
Japan.
From the fourth to the eighth centuries of the Christian era,
"after the conquest of Corea by the Japanese emperor Jigo
Kogo, came letters, writing, books, literature, religion,
ethics, politics, medicine, arts, science, agriculture,
manufactures, and the varied appliances of civilization; and
with these entered thousands of immigrants from Corea and
China. Under the intellectual influence of Buddhism--the
powerful and aggressive faith that had already led captive the
half of Asia--of the Confucian ethics and philosophy, and
Chinese literature, the horizon of the Japanese mind was
immensely broadened. ... In the time of the European 'dark
ages' the Japanese were enjoying what, in comparison, was a
high state of civilization. ... Under the old regime of the
Sho-guns, all foreign ideas and influences were systematically
excluded, and the isolation of Japan from the rest of the
world was made the supreme policy of the government. Profound
peace lasted from the beginning of the seventeenth century to
1868. During this time, schools and colleges, literature and
learning, flourished. It was the period of scholastic, not of
creative, intellectual activity. The basis of education was
Chinese. What we consider the means of education, reading and
writing, were to them the ends. Of classified science there
was little or none. Mathematics was considered as fit only for
merchants and shop-keepers. No foreign languages were studied,
and their acquisition was forbidden. ... There was no
department of education, though universities were established
at Kioto and Yedo, large schools in the daimio's capitals, and
innumerable private schools all over the country. Nine-tenths
of the people could read and write. Books were very numerous
and cheap. Circulating libraries existed in every city and
town. Literary clubs and associations for mutual improvement
were common even in country villages. Nevertheless, in
comparison with the ideal systems and practice of the
progressive men of New Japan, the old style was as different
from the present as the training of an English youth in
mediæval times is from that of a London or Oxford student of
the present day. Although an attempt to meet some of the
educational necessities arising from the altered conditions of
the national life were made under the Sho-gun's regime, yet
the first attempt at systematic work in the large cities was
made under the Mikado's government, and the idea of a new
national plan of education is theirs only. In 1871 the Mom Bu
Sho, or department of education, was formed, of which the high
counselor Oki, a man of indomitable vigor and perseverance,
was made head. ... According to the scheme of national
education promulgated in 1872, the empire is divided into
eight Dai Gaku Ku, (Daigakku,) or great educational divisions.
In each of' these there is to be a university, normal school,
schools of foreign languages, high schools, and primary
schools. The total number of schools will number, it is
expected, over 55,000. Only in the higher schools is a foreign
language to be taught. In the lower schools the Japanese
learning and elementary science translated or adopted from
European or American text-books are to be taught. The general
system of instruction, methods, discipline, school-aids,
furniture, architecture, are to be largely adopted from
foreign models, and are now to a great extent in vogue
throughout the country."
_W. E. Griffis, Education in Japan (U. S. Bureau of
Education, Circulars of Information, 1875, no. 2)._
EDUCATION: Modern: America. A. D. 1619-1819.
Virginia.
College of William and Mary.
"In 1619--one year before the Pilgrim Fathers came to the land
named New England by Captain John Smith--Sir Edwin Sandys,
president of the Virginia Company in old England, moved the
grant of ten thousand acres of land for the establishment of a
university at Henrico. The proposed grant, which was duly
made, included one thousand acres for an Indian college; the
remainder was to be 'the foundation of a seminary of learning
for the English.' The very same year the bishops of England,
at the suggestion of the King, raised the sum of fifteen
hundred pounds for the encouragement of Indian Education. ...
Tenants were sent over to occupy the university lands, and Mr.
George Thorpe, a gentleman of His Majesty's Privy Chamber,
came over to be the superintendent of the university itself.
This first beginning of philanthropy toward the Indians and of
educational foundations for the Indians in America was
suspended by reason of the Indian massacre, in the spring of
1622, when Mr. Thorpe and three hundred and forty settlers,
including tenants of the university, were cut off by an
insurrection of savages. It was only two years after this
terrible catastrophe that the idea of a university in Virginia
was revived. Experience with treacherous Indians suggested
that the institution should be erected upon a secluded
sheltered site--an island in the Susquehanna River. ... The
plan was broken off by the death of its chief advocate and
promoter, Mr. Edward Palmer. But the idea of a university for
Virginia was not lost. ... In 1660, the colonial Assembly of
Virginia took into their own hands the project of founding
educational institutions within their borders. The motive of
the Virginians was precisely the same as that of the great and
general Court of Massachusetts, when it established Harvard
College, and grammar schools to fit youth 'for ye university.'
The Virginians voted 'that for the advance of learning,
education of youth, supply of the ministry, and promotion of
piety, there be land taken upon purchases for a college and
free schoole, and that there be, with as much speede as may be
convenient, housing erected thereon for entertainment of
students and schollers.'
{727}
It was also voted in 1660 that the various commissioners of
county courts take subscriptions on court days for the benefit
of the college, and that the commissioners send orders
throughout their respective counties to the vestrymen of all
the parishes for the purpose of raising money from such
inhabitants as 'have not already subscribed.' It appears from
the record of this legislation in Hening's Statutes of
Virginia that already in 1660, 'His Majestie's Governour,
Council of State, and Burgesses of the present grand Assembly
have severally subscribed severall considerable sumes of money
and quantityes of tobacco,' to be paid upon demand after a
place had been provided and built upon for educational
purposes. A petition was also recommended to Sir William
Berkeley, then governor of Virginia, that the King be
petitioned for letters patent authorizing collections from
'well disposed people in England for the erecting of colledges
and schooles in this countrye.' This action of the Virginians
in 1660 ought to be taken as much better evidence of an early
regard for education in that colony than the well-known saying
of Governor Berkeley would seem to indicate. In reply to an
inquiry by the lords commissioners of trades and plantations
respecting the progress of learning in the colony of Virginia,
Berkeley said, 'I thank God there are no free schools nor
printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years.'
This answer by a crusty old governor has been quoted perhaps
too often as an index of the real sentiments of colonial
Virginia toward the cause of education. Not only is the tone
of popular legislation entirely opposed to the current view,
but Berkeley's own acts should modify our judgment of his
words. He actually subscribed, with other gentlemen of the
colony, for 'a Colledge of students of the liberal arts and
sciences.' Undoubtedly Sir William did not believe in popular
education as it is now understood. If he had done so, he would
have been much in advance of his time. ... Some writers would
have us believe that the college was actually planted as early
as 1661, but this is highly improbable. Early educational
enactments in Virginia were like many of those early towns--on
paper only. And yet the Virginians really meant to have both
towns and a college. In 1688-'89, twenty-five hundred pounds
were subscribed by a few wealthy gentlemen in the colony and
by their merchant friends in England toward the endowment of
the higher education. In 1691 the colonial Assembly sent the
Reverend James Blair, the commissary or representative of the
Bishop of London, back to England to secure a charter for the
proposed college. Virginia's agent went straight to Queen Mary
and explained the educational ambition of her colony in
America. The Queen favored the idea of a college, and William
wisely concurred. The royal pair agreed to allow two thousand
pounds out of the quit-rents of Virginia toward building the
college. ... The English Government concluded to give not only
£2,000 in money, but also 20,000 acres of land, with a tax of
one penny on every pound of tobacco exported from Maryland and
Virginia, together with all fees and profits arising from the
office of surveyor-general, which were to be controlled by the
president and faculty of the college. They were authorized to
appoint special surveyors for the counties whenever the
governor and his council thought it necessary. These
privileges, granted by charter in 1693, were of great
significance in the economic history of Virginia. They brought
the entire land system of the colony into the hands of a
collegiate land office. Even after the Revolution, one-sixth
of the fees to all public surveyors continued to be paid into
the college treasury down to the year 1819, when this custom
was abolished."
_H. B. Adams, The College of William and Mary
(Circulars of Information of the Bureau of Education,
1887, no. 1)._
EDUCATION: Modern: America: A. D. 1635.
Massachusetts.
Boston Latin School.
"The Public Latin School of Boston enjoys the distinction of
being the oldest existing school within the bounds of the
United States. It was founded in the spring of 1635, thus
ante-dating Harvard College, and has been in continuous
existence ever since, with the interruption of a few months,
during the siege of Boston, 1775-1776." The two hundred and
fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the school was
celebrated April 23, 1885, on which occasion the Reverend Phillips
Brooks, D. D., delivered an address from which the following
passages are taken: "The colony under Winthrop arrived in the
Arabella and founded Boston in 1630. On the 4th of September,
1633, the Griffin brought John Cotton from the Lincolnshire
Boston, full of pious spirit and wise plans for the new colony
with which he had cast in his lot. It has been suggested that
possibly we owe to John Cotton the first suggestion of the
first town-school. ... However this may be, here is the town
record of the 13th of the second month, 1635. It is forever
memorable, for it is the first chapter of our Book of Genesis,
the very cradle of all our race: 'At a general meeting upon
publique notice ... it was then generally agreed upon that our
brother Philemon Pormort shall be entreated to become
scholemaster, for the teaching and nourtering of children
among us.' It was two hundred and fifty years ago to-day
[April 23, 1885] just nineteen years after the day when
William Shakespeare died, just seventy-one years after the day
when he was born. How simple that short record is, and how
unconscious that short view is of the future which is wrapped
up in it! Fifty-nine thousand children who crowd the Boston
public schools to-day--and who can count what thousands yet
unborn?--are to be heard crying out for life in the dry,
quaint words of that old vote. By it the first educational
institution, which was to have continuous existence in
America, and in it the public school system of the land, came
into being. Philemon Pormort, the first teacher of the Latin
School, is hardly more than a mere shadow of a name. It is not
even clear that he ever actually taught the school at all. A
few years later, with Mr. Wheelwright, after the Hutchinson
excitement, he disappears into the northern woods, and is one
of the founders of Exeter, in New Hampshire. There are rumors
that he came back to Boston and died here, but it is all very
uncertain. ... The name 'free school' in those days seems to
have been used to characterize an institution which should not
be restricted to any class of children, and which should not
be dependent on the fluctuating attendance of scholars for its
support. It looked forward to ultimate endowment, like the
schools of England. The town set apart the rent of Deer
Island, and some of the other islands in the harbor, for its help.
{728}
All the great citizens, Governor Winthrop, Governor Vane, Mr.
Bellingham, and the rest, made generous contributions to it.
But it called, also, for support from those who sent their
children to it, and who were able to pay something; and it was
only of the Indian children that it was distinctly provided
that they should be 'taught gratis.' It was older than any of
the schools which, in a few years, grew up thick around it.
The same power which made it spring out of the soil was in all
the rich ground on which these colonists, unlike any other
colonists which the world has ever seen, had set their feet.
Roxbury had its school under the Apostle Eliot in 1645.
Cambridge was already provided before 1643. Charlestown did
not wait later than 1636. Salem and Ipswich were, both of
them, ready in 1637. Plymouth did not begin its system of
public instruction till 1663. It was in 1647 that the General
Court enacted that resolve which is the great charter of free
education in our Commonwealth, in whose preamble and ordinance
stand the immortal words: 'That learning may not be buried in
the grave of our fathers, in church and Commonwealth, the Lord
assisting our endeavors, it is therefore ordered that every
township in this jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased
them to the number of fifty householders, shall then forthwith
appoint one within their town to teach all such children as
shall resort to him to write and read.' There can be no doubt,
then, of our priority. But mere priority is no great thing.
The real interest of the beginning of the school is the large
idea and scale on which it started. It taught the children,
little Indians and all, to read and write. But there seems
every reason to suppose that it taught also the Latin tongue,
and all that then was deemed the higher knowledge. It was the
town's only school till 1682."
_The Oldest School in America, pages 5-24._
EDUCATION: A. D. 1636.
Massachusetts.
Harvard College.
"The first settlers in New England, recognizing the importance
of a higher education than could be given in the common
schools, began at once the founding of a university. The
avowed object of this university was the training of young men
for the ministry. Nothing could show clearer the spirit of
these early colonists. Though less than four thousand in
number, and scattered along the shores of Massachusetts Bay in
sixteen hamlets, they were, nevertheless, able to engage in
such an enterprise before adequate provision had been made for
food, raiment, shelter, a civil government, or divine worship;
at a time when soil and climate had disappointed them, and
their affairs were in a most critical condition; for, not only
were they called to face famine, disease, and death, but the
mother country and the surrounding savage tribes were
threatening them with war. ... It was near the close of 1636,
a little more than six years after the landing of the
Puritans, when this first step was taken by the General Court
of the Massachusetts Colony. At this assembly, presided over
by Sir Henry Vane, governor of the colony, the General Court
agreed to give £400 (a munificent sum for the time) towards
the founding of a school or college, but left the question of
its location and building to be determined by the Court that
was to sit in September of the following year. This, it is
said, was the first assembly 'in which the people by their
representatives ever gave their own money to found a place of
education.' At the next Court it was decided to locate the
college at Newtown, or 'the New Towne,' and twelve of the
principal magistrates and ministers were chosen to carry out
this design. A few months later, they changed the name of the
town to Cambridge, not only to tell their posterity whence
they came, but also, as Quincy aptly says, to indicate 'the
high destiny to which they intended the institution should
aspire.' Another year, however, passed before the College was
organized. The impulse given to it then was due to aid which
came from so unexpected a quarter that it must have seemed to
the devout men of New England as a clear indication of the
divine favor. The Reverend John Harvard, a Non-conformist
minister, was graduated, in 1635, from the Puritan college of
Emmanuel, at Cambridge, England, and came, two years later, to
America and settled in Charlestown, where he immediately took
a prominent part in town affairs. His contemporaries gave him
the title of reverend, and he is said to have officiated
occasionally in Charlestown as 'minister of God's word.' One
has recently said of him that he was 'beloved and honored, a
well-trained and accomplished scholar of the type then
esteemed,' and that in the brief period of his life in America
--scarcely more than a year--he cemented more closely
friendships that had been begun in earlier years. The project
of a college was then engrossing the thought of these early
friends and doubtless he also became greatly interested in it.
Thus it happened that, when his health failed, through his own
love of learning and through sympathy with the project of his
daily associates, he determined to bequeath one-half of his
estate, probably about £800, besides his excellent library of
three hundred and twenty volumes, towards the endowment of the
college. This bequest rendered possible the immediate
organization of the college, which went into operation 'on the
footing of the ancient institutions of Europe,' and, out of
gratitude to Harvard, the General Court voted that the new
institution should bear his name."
_G. G. Bush, Harvard, pages 12-15._
ALSO IN:
_J. Quincy, History of Harvard University._
_S. A. Eliot, Sketch of the History of Harvard College._
EDUCATION: A. D. 1642-1732.
New England and New York.
Early Common Schools.
"New England early adopted, and has, with a single exception,
constantly maintained the principle that the public should
provide for the instruction of all the youth. That which
elsewhere, as will be found, was left to local provision, as
in New York; or to charity, as in Pennsylvania; or to parental
interest, as in Virginia, was in most parts of New England
early secured by law. ... The act of 1642 in Massachusetts,
whose provisions were adopted in most of the adjacent
colonies, was admirable as a first legislative school law. It
was watchful of the neglect of parents, and looked well after
the ignorant and the indigent. But it neither made schooling
free, nor imposed a penalty for its neglect. ... Schools were
largely maintained by rates, were free only to the
necessitous, and in not a few of the less populous districts
closed altogether or never opened. This led, five years later,
to more stringent legislation. ... As suggesting the general
scope and tenor of the law, the following extract is made. ...
{729}
'It is therefore ordered by this Court and authority thereof
that every township within this jurisdiction, after the Lord
hath increased them to the number of fifty householders, shall
then forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such
children as shall resort to him, to write and read; whose
wages shall be paid, either by the parents or masters of such
children, or by the inhabitants in general, by way of supply,
as the major part of those who order the prudentials of the
town shall appoint; provided that those who send their
children be not oppressed by paying much more than they can
have them taught for in the adjoining towns. And it is further
ordered that where any town shall increase to the number of
one hundred families or house-holders, they shall set up a
grammar-school, the master thereof being able to instruct
youths so far as they may be fitted for the university; and if
any town neglect the performance hereof, above one year, then
every such town shall pay five pounds per annum to the next
such school, till they shall perform this order.' ... Three
years after the law just cited Connecticut passed a very
similar one. ... In Rhode Island there was no attempt at a
school system prior to the efforts of John Howland about 1790.
There were schools in both Providence and Newport; but the
colony was small (with a population of less than ten thousand
in 1700), broken into feeble settlements, and offering little
opportunity for organization. ... It is claimed that, at the
surrender of the Dutch in New York (1664), so general was the
educational spirit, almost every town in the colony had its
regular school and more or less permanent teachers. After the
occupation of the province by the English, little attention
was given to education. ... Thirteen years after the
surrender, a Latin school was opened in the city; but the
first serious attempt to provide regular schooling was in the
work of the 'Society for the Propagation of the Gospel' (1704)
in the founding of Trinity School. The society kept up an
efficient organization, for many years, and at the opening of
the Revolution had established and chiefly supported more than
twenty schools in the colony. About 1732, also, there was
established in New York city a school after the plan of the
Boston Latin School, free as that was free, and which became,
according to eminent authority, the germ of the later King's
(now Columbia) College."
_R. G. Boone, Education in the United States, chapter 3._
EDUCATION: A. D. 1683-1779. Pennsylvania.
Origin of the University of Pennsylvania.
"Education had not been over-looked in the policy of Penn. In
his Frame of Government we read: 'The governor and provincial
council shall erect and order all public schools, and
encourage and reward the authors of useful sciences and
laudable inventions, in the said province. ... And ... a
committee of manners, education and arts, that all wicked and
scandalous living may be prevented, and that youth may be
successively trained up in virtue and useful knowledge and
arts.' The first movement to establish an educational
institution of a high grade was in the action of the Executive
Council which proposed, November 17, 1683, 'That Care be Taken
about the Learning and Instruction of Youth, to wit: A School
of Arts and Sciences.' It was not until 1689, however, that
the 'Public Grammar School' was set up in Philadelphia. This
institution, founded upon the English idea of a 'free'
school,' was formally chartered in 1697 as the 'William Penn
Charter School.' It was intended as the head of a system of
schools for all, rather than a single school for a select few,
an idea which the founders of the Charitable School, fifty
years later, had also in mind--an idea which was never carried
out in the history of either institution. The failure of
Penn's scheme of government, and the turmoil during the early
part of the eighteenth century arising from the conflicts
between different political parties, for a time influenced
very decidedly educational zeal in the province. The
government, which at the outset had taken such high ground on
the subject, ceased to exert itself in behalf of education,
and the several religious denominations and the people
themselves in neighborhood organizations took up the burden
and planted schools as best they could throughout the growing
colony. ... Feeling the importance for some provision to
supplement the education then given in the established
schools, Benjamin Franklin as early as 1743 drew up a proposal
for establishing an academy. ... He secured the assistance of
a number of friends, many of them members of the famous Junto,
and then published his pamphlet entitled 'Proposals Relating
to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania.' ... On all sides
the paper met with great favor and generous support. The
result was the organization of a board of trustees, consisting
of 24 of those who had subscribed to the scheme of the
Academy, with Franklin as president. This body immediately set
about to realize the object of the pamphlet, and nourished by
subscriptions, lotteries, and gifts the Academy was placed in
a flourishing condition. ... The Academy comprised three
schools, the Latin, the English, and the mathematical, over
each of which was placed a master, one of whom was the rector
of the institution. ... The English School was neglected. The
other schools were favored, especially the Latin School. In
the eyes of Franklin and many of the supporters of the
Academy, the English School was the one of chief importance.
What we would call a 'starving out' process was begun by which
the English School was kept in a weak condition, most of the
funds going to the Latin School. ... The success of the
Academy was so gratifying to all interested in it that it was
determined to apply for a charter. This was granted to the
trustees by Thomas and Richard Penn, the proprietors, on July
13, 1753. Desirous at the same time of enlarging the course of
instruction, the trustees elected Mr. William Smith teacher of
logic, rhetoric, natural and moral philosophy. Mr. Smith
accepted the position and entered upon his duties at the
Academy in May, 1754. The history of the institution from this
date, whether known as the Academy or the College, to 1779 is
the history of the life of William Smith."
_J. L. Stewart, Historical Sketch of the University of
Pennsylvania (U. S. Bureau of Education,
Circular of Information, 1892, no. 2:
Benjamin Franklin and the University., chapter 4)._
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EDUCATION: A. D. 1701-1717.
Connecticut.
Yale College.
"For sixty years the only school for higher education in New
England had been Harvard College, at Cambridge. The people,
and especially the clergy, of Connecticut naturally desired
the benefit of a similar establishment nearer home. The three
ministers of New Haven, Milford, and Branford first moved in
the enterprise. Ten ministers, nine of them being graduates of
Harvard College, met at Branford [1701] and made a
contribution from their libraries of about forty volumes in
folio 'for the founding of a college.' Other donations
presently came in. An Act of Incorporation was granted by the
General Court. It created a body of trustees, not to be more
than eleven in number nor fewer than seven, all to be
clergymen and at least forty years of age. The Court endowed
the College with an annual grant, subject to be discontinued
at pleasure, of one hundred and twenty pounds in 'country
pay,'--equivalent to sixty pounds sterling. The College might
hold property 'not exceeding the value of five hundred pounds
per annum'; its students were exempted from the payment of
taxes and from military service; and the Governor and his
Council gave a formal approval of its application to the
citizens for pecuniary id. ... The first President was Abraham
Pierson, minister of Killingworth, at which place he continued
to reside, though the designated seat of the College was at
Saybrook. Eight students were admitted, and arranged in
classes. At each of the first two annual commencements one
person, at the third three persons, received the degree of
Bachelor of Arts. President Pierson was succeeded, at his
death, by Mr. Andrew, minister at Milford, to which place the
elder pupils were accordingly transferred, while the rest went
to Saybrook, where two tutors had been provided to assist
their studies. ... For nearly twenty years the College of
Connecticut ... continued to be an unsatisfactory experiment.
While the rector taught some youth at Milford, and two tutors
had other pupils at Saybrook, and the few scores of books
which had been obtained for a library were divided between the
two places, there was small prospect of the results for which
institutions of learning are created. Notwithstanding the
general agreement that whatever facilities for the higher
education could be commanded should be brought together and
combined, the choice of the place was embarrassed by various
considerations. ... Saybrook, Wethersfield, Hartford, and New
Haven competed with each other for the preference, offering
such contributions as they were able towards the erection of a
college building. The offer from New Haven, larger than that
of any other town, was seven hundred pounds sterling. The plan
of fixing the College there, promoted by the great influence
of Governor Saltonstall, was adopted by the trustees; and with
money obtained by private gifts, and two hundred and fifty
pounds accruing from a sale of land given by the General
Assembly, a building was begun [1717], which finally cost a
thousand pounds sterling. ... The Assembly gave the College a
hundred pounds. Jeremiah Dummer sent from England a
substantial present of books. Governor Saltonstall contributed
fifty pounds sterling, and the same sum was presented by
Jahleel Brenton, of Newport, in Rhode Island. But the chief
patronage came from Elihu Yale,--a native of New Haven, but
long resident in the East Indies, where he had been Governor
of Fort St. George. He was now a citizen of London, and
Governor of the East India Company. His contributions,
continued through seven years, amounted to some four hundred
pounds sterling; and he was understood to have made
arrangements for a further bounty of five hundred pounds,
which, however, through unfortunate accidents, never came to
its destination. The province made a grant of forty pounds
annually for seven years."
_J. G. Palfrey, History of New England,
book 4, chapter 11, and book 5, chapter 4 (volume 4)._
EDUCATION: A. D. 1746-1787.
New York.
King's College, now Columbia College.
"The establishment of a college in the city of New York was
many years in agitation before the design was carried into
effect. At length, under an act of Assembly passed in
December, 1746, and other similar acts which followed, moneys
were raised by public lottery 'for the encouragement of
learning and towards the founding a college' within the
colony. These moneys were, in November, 1751, vested in
trustees. ... The trustees, in November, 1753, invited Dr.
Samuel Johnson, of Connecticut, to be President of the
intended college. Dr. Johnson consequently removed to New York
in the month of April following, and in July, 1754, commenced
the instruction of a class of students in a room of the
school-house belonging to Trinity Church; but he would not
absolutely accept the presidency until after the passing of
the charter. This took place on the 31st of October in the
same year, 1754; from which period the existence of the
college is properly to be dated. The Governors of the college,
named in the charter, are the Archbishop of Canterbury, and
the first Lord Commissioner for Trade and Plantations, both
empowered to act by proxies; the Lieutenant-governor of the
province, and several other public officers; together with the
rector of Trinity Church, the senior minister of the Reformed
Protestant Dutch Church, the ministers of the German Lutheran
Church, of the French Church, of the Presbyterian
Congregation, and the President of the college, all ex
officio, and twenty-four of the principal gentlemen of the
city. The college was to be known by the name of King's
College. Previously to the passing of the charter, a parcel of
ground to the westward of Broadway, bounded by Barclay,
Church, and Murray streets and the Hudson River, had been
destined by the vestry of Trinity Church as a site for the
college edifice; and, accordingly, after the charter was
granted, a grant of the land was made on the 13th of May,
1755. ... The part of the land thus granted by Trinity Church,
not occupied for college purposes, was leased, and became a
very valuable endowment to the college. The sources whence the
funds of the institution were derived, besides the proceeds of
the lotteries above mentioned, were the voluntary
contributions of private individuals in this country, and sums
obtained by agents who were subsequently sent to England and
France. In May, 1760, the college buildings began to be
occupied. In 1763 a grammar school was established. In March,
1763, Dr. Johnson resigned the presidency, and the Reverend Dr.
Myles Cooper, of Oxford, who had previously been appointed
Professor of Moral Philosophy and assistant to the President,
was elected in his place. ... In consequence of the dispute
between this and the parent country, Dr. Cooper returned to
England, and the Reverend Benjamin Moore was appointed praeses pro
tempore during the absence of Dr. Cooper, who, however, did
not return. On the breaking out of the Revolutionary War the
business of the college was almost entirely broken up, and it
was not until after the return of peace that its affairs were
again regularly attended to.
{731}
In May, 1784, the college, upon its own application, was
erected into a university; its corporate title was changed
from King's College to Columbia College, and it was placed
under the control of a board termed Regents of the University.
... The college continued under that government until April,
1787, when the Legislature of the State restored it to its
original position under the present name of Columbia College.
... At the same time a new body was created, called by the
same name, 'The Regents of the University,' under which all
the seminaries of learning mentioned in the act creating it
were placed by the legislature. This body still exists under
its original name."
_Columbia College Handbook, pages 5-9._
EDUCATION: A. D. 1776-1880.
New England and New York.
State School Systems.
"It was not until over thirty years after the close of the war
of 1776 that a regular system of schools at the public expense
was established. New England boasted with pride of being the
first in education, as she had been in war. Her example was
closely followed by the other States. In New York, in 1805,
many gentlemen of prominence associated for the purpose of
establishing a free school in New York City for the education
of the children of persons in indigent circumstances, and who
did not belong to, or were not provided for by, any religious
society. These public-spirited gentlemen presented a memorial
to the Legislature, setting forth the benefits that would
result to society from educating such children, and that it
would enable them more effectually to accomplish the objects
of their institution if the schools were incorporated. The
bill of incorporation was passed April 9, 1805. This was the
nucleus from which the present system of public schools
started into existence. Later on, in the year 1808, we find
from annual printed reports that two free schools were opened
and were in working order. ... It was the intention of the
founders of these schools--among whom the names of De Witt
Clinton, Ferdinand de Peyster, John Murray, and Leonard
Bleecker stand prominent as officers--to avoid the teachings
of any religious society; but there were among the people many
who thought that sufficient care was not being bestowed upon
religious instruction: to please these malcontents the
literary studies of the pupils were suspended one afternoon in
every week, and an association of fifty ladies of
'distinguished consideration ·in society' met on this day and
examined the children in their respective catechisms. ... To
read, write, and know arithmetic in its first branches
correctly, was the extent of the educational advantages which
the founders of the free-school system deemed necessary for
the accomplishment of their purposes."
_A. H. Rhine, The Early Free Schools of
America. (Popular Science Monthly, March, 1880)._
EDUCATION: A. D. 1785-1880.
The United States.-
Land-grants for Schools.
"The question of the endowment of educational institutions by
the Government in aid of the cause of education seems to have
met no serious opposition in the Congress of the
Confederation, and no member raised his voice against this
vital and essential provision relating to it in the ordinance
of May 20, 1785, 'for ascertaining the mode of disposing of
lands in the Western Territory.' This provided: 'There shall
be reserved the lot No. 16 of every township for the
maintenance of public schools within said township.' This was
an endowment of 640 acres of land (one section of land, one
mile square) in a township 6 miles square, for the support and
maintenance of public schools' within said township.' The
manner of establishment of public schools thereunder, or by
whom, was not mentioned. It was a reservation by the United
States, and advanced and established a principle which finally
dedicated one thirty-sixth part of all public lands of the
United States, with certain exceptions as to mineral, &c., to
the cause of education by public schools. ... In the
Continental Congress, July 13, 1787, according to order, the
ordinance for the government of the 'Territory of the United
States northwest of the river Ohio' came on, was read a third
time, and passed [see NORTHWEST TERRITORY: A. D.1787]. It
contained the following: 'Art. 3. Religion, morality, and
knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness
of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever
be encouraged.' The provision of the ordinance of May 20,
1785, relating to the reservation of the sixteenth section in
every township of public land, was the inception of the
present rule of reservation of certain sections of land for
school purposes. The endowment was the subject of much
legislation in the years following. The question was raised
that there was no reason why the United States should not
organize, control, and manage these public schools so endowed.
The reservations of lands were made by surveyors and duly
returned. This policy at once met with enthusiastic approval
from the public, and was tacitly incorporated into the
American system as one of its fundamental organic ideas.
Whether the public schools thus endowed by the United States
were to be under national or State control remained a
question, and the lands were held in reservation merely until
after the admission of the State of Ohio in 1802. ... To each
organized Territory, after 1803, was and now is reserved the
sixteenth section (until after the Oregon Territory act
reserved the thirty-sixth as well) for school purposes, which
reservation is carried into grant and confirmation by the
terms of the act of admission of the Territory or State into
the Union; the State then becoming a trustee for school
purposes. These grants of land were made from the public
domain, and to States only which were known as public-land
States. Twelve States, from March 3, 1803, known as
public-land States, received the allowance of the sixteenth
section to August 14, 1848. ... Congress, June 13, 1812, and
May 26, 1824, by the acts ordering the survey of certain towns
and villages in Missouri, reserved for the support of schools
in the towns and villages named, provided that the whole
amount reserved should not exceed one-twentieth part of the
whole lands included in the general survey of such town or
village. These lots were reserved and sold for the benefit of
the schools. Saint Louis received a large fund from this
source. ... In the act for the organization of the Territory
of Oregon, August 14, 1848, Senator Stephen A. Douglas
inserted an additional grant for school purposes of the
thirty-sixth section in each township, with indemnity for all
public-land States thereafter to be admitted, making the
reservation for school purposes the sixteenth and thirty-sixth
sections, or 1,280 acres in each township of six miles square
reserved in public-land States and Territories, and confirmed
by grant in terms in the act of admission of such State or
Territory into the Union. From March 13, 1853, to June 30,
1880, seven States have been admitted into the Union having a
grant of the sixteenth and thirty-sixth sections, and the
same area has been reserved in eight Territories."
_T. Donaldson, The Public Domain, chapter 13._
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EDUCATION: A. D. 1789.
The United States.
"The Constitution of the United States makes no provision for
the education of the people; and in the Convention that framed
it, I believe the subject was not even mentioned. A motion to
insert a clause providing for the establishment of a national
university was voted down. I believe it is also the fact, that
the Constitutions of only three of the thirteen original
States made the obligation to maintain a system of Free
Schools a part of their fundamental law."
_H. Mann, Lectures and Annual Reports on
Education, lecture 5._
EDUCATION: A. D. 1793.-Massachusetts.
Williams College.
"Williams College, at Williamstown, Berkshire County, Mass.,
was chartered in 1793. The town and the college were named in
honor of Colonel Ephraim Williams, who had command of the forts
in the Hoosac Valley, and was killed in a battle with the
French and Indians, September 8, 1755. By his will he
established a free school in the township which was to bear
his name. The most advanced students of this free school
became the first college class, numbering 4, and received the
regular degree of bachelor of arts in the autumn of 1795. The
small amount left by the will of Colonel Williams was
carefully managed for 30 years by the executors, and they then
obtained permission from the State legislature to carry out
the benevolent purposes of the testator. The fund for building
was increased by individual subscriptions, and by the avails
of a lottery, which the general court granted for that
purpose. The building which is now known as West College was
then erected for the use of the free school and was finished
in 1790. ... The free school was opened in 1791, with Reverend
Ebenezer Fitch, a graduate of Yale College, as preceptor, and
Mr. John Lester as assistant. ... The success of the school
was so great that the next year the trustees asked the
legislature to incorporate the school into a college. This was
done, and a grant of $4,000 was made from the State treasury
for the purchase of books and philosophical apparatus. The
college was put under the care of 12 trustees, who elected
Preceptor Fitch the first president of the college."
_E. B. Parsons (U. S. Bureau of Education,
Circular of Information, 1891, no. 6:
History of Higher Education in Massachusetts, chapter 9)._
EDUCATION: A. D. 1795-1867.
The United States.
State School Funds.
"Connecticut took the lead in the creation of a permanent fund
for the support of schools. The district known as the Western
Reserve, in Northern Ohio, had been secured to her in the
adjustment of her claims to lands confirmed to her by the
charter of King Charles II. The Legislature of the State, in
1795, passed an act directing the sale of all the land
embraced in the Reserve, and setting apart the avails as a
perpetual fund for the maintenance of common schools. The
amount realized was about $1,120,000. ... New York was the
next State to establish a common school fund for the aid and
maintenance of schools in the several school districts of the
State. The other Northern States except New Hampshire,
Vermont, Pennsylvania, and one or two others, have established
similar funds. ... In all the new States, the 500,000 acres,
given by act of Congress, on their admission into the Union,
for the support of schools, have been sacredly set apart for
that purpose, and generally other lands belonging to the
States have been added to the fund. ... Prior to the war the
Slave States had made attempts to establish plans for popular
education, but with results of an unsatisfactory character. In
Virginia a school system was in force for the education of the
children of indigent white persons. In North Carolina a large
school fund, exceeding two millions of dollars, had been set
apart for the maintenance of schools. In all of these States
common schools had been introduced, but they did not flourish
as in the North and West. ... There was not the same
population of small and independent farmers, whose families
could be united into a school district. ... A more serious
obstacle was the slave population, constituting one-third of
the whole, and in some of the States more than half, whom it
was thought dangerous to educate."
_V. M. Rice, Special Report on the Present State of
Education, 1867, pages 19-23._
EDUCATION: A. D. 1804-1837.
Michigan.
The University.
"In 1804, when Michigan was organized as a Territory, Congress
granted a township of land for a seminary of learning, and the
university to be established in 1817 was to be in accordance
with this grant. The Territorial government committed the
interests of higher education to the care of the Governor and
the Judges, and it is supposed that through the exertions of
Honorable A. B. Woodward, then presiding Judge of the Supreme Court
of the Territory of Michigan, that the act establishing a
university was framed. A portion of this most curious document
of the early History of Michigan will be given. It is entitled
'An act to establish the Catholepistemiad or University
Michigania.' 'Be it enacted by the Governor and Judges of the
Territory of Michigan, That there shall be in the said
Territory a catholepistemiad or university denominated the
Catholepistemiad or University Michigania. The
Catholepistemiad or University of Michigania shall be composed
of thirteen didaxum or professorships; first, a didaxia or
professorship catholepistemia, or universal science, the
dictator or professor of which shall be president of the
institution; second, a didaxia or professorship of
anthropoglassica, or literature embracing all of the
episternum or sciences relative to language; third, a didaxia
or professorship of mathematica or mathematics; fourth, a
didaxia or professorship of physiognostica or natural history,
etc.' The act thus continues through the whole range of the
'thirteen didaxum'; the remaining nine are as follows: Natural
philosophy, astronomy, chemistry, medical sciences, economical
sciences, ethical sciences, military sciences, historical
sciences, and intellectual. The university was to be under the
control of the professors and president, who were to be
appointed by the Governor, while the institution was to be the
center and controlling power of the educational system of the
State.
{733}
It was to be supported by taxation by an increase of the
amount of taxes already levied, by 15 per cent. Also power was
given to raise money for the support of the university by
means of lotteries. This remarkable document was not without
its influence in shaping the public school policy of Michigan,
but it was many years before the State approximated its
learned provisions. Impracticable as this educational plan
appears for a handful of people in the woods of Michigan, it
served as a foundation upon which to build. The officers and
president were duly appointed, and the work of the new
university began at once. At first the university appeared as
a school board, to establish and maintain primary schools
which they held under their charge. Then followed a course of
study for classical academies, and finally, in October, 1817,
an act was passed establishing a college in the city of
Detroit called 'The First College of Michigania.' ... The
people contributed liberally to these early schools, the sum
of three thousand dollars being subscribed at the beginning.
... An act was passed on the 30th of April, 1821, by the
Governor and Judges establishing a university in Detroit to
take the place of the catholepistemiad and to be called the
'University of Michigan.' In its charter nearly all the powers
of the former institution were substantially confirmed, except
the provision for taxes and lotteries. ... The second
corporation, known as the 'University of Michigan,' carried on
the work of education already begun from 1821 to the third
organization, in 1837. The education was very limited,
consisting in one classical academy at Detroit, and part of
the time a Lancasterian school. The boards of education kept
up and transmitted the university idea to such an extent that
it may be said truly and legally that there was one University
of Michigan, which passed through three successive stages of
development marked by the dates 1817, 1821, and 1837," at
which time it was removed to Ann Arbor.
_F. W. Blackmar, Federal and State Aid to Higher
Education (U: S. Bureau of Education. Circular of
Information, 1890, no. 1), pages 239-241._
ALSO IN:
_E. M. Farrand, History of the University of Michigan._
_A. Ten Brook, American State Universities._
EDUCATION: A. D. 1818-1821.
Massachusetts.
Amherst College.
"Amherst College originated in a strong desire on the part of
the people of Massachusetts to have a college near the central
part of the State, where the students should be free from the
temptations of a large city, where the expenses of an
education should not be beyond the means of those who had but
little money, and where the moral and religious influences
should be of a decidedly Christian character. ... The
ministers of Franklin County, at a meeting held in Shelburne
May 18, 1815, expressed it as their opinion that a literary
institution of high order ought to be established in Hampshire
County, and that the town of Amherst appeared to them to be
the most eligible place for it. Their early efforts for a
literary institution in Hampshire County resulted in the first
place in the establishment of an academy in Amherst, which was
incorporated in the year 1816. ... In the year 1818 a
constitution was adopted by the trustees of Amherst Academy,
for the raising and management of a fund of at least $50,000,
for the classical education of indigent young men of piety and
talents for the Christian ministry. ... This charity fund may
be said to be the basis of Amherst College, for though it was
raised by the trustees of Amherst Academy it was really
intended to be the foundation of a college, and has always
been a part of the permanent funds of Amherst College, kept
sacredly from all other funds for the specific object for
which it was given. ... This was for many years the only
permanent fund of Amherst College, and without this it would
have seemed impossible at one time to preserve the very
existence of the college. So Amherst College grew out of
Amherst Academy, and was built permanently on the charity fund
raised by the trustees of that academy. ... Although the
charity fund of $50,000 had been received in 1818, it was not
till 1820 that the recipient felt justified in going forward
to erect buildings for a college in Amherst. Efforts were made
for the removal of Williams College from Williamstown to
Hampshire County, and to have the charity fund used in
connection with that college; and, if that were done, it was
not certain that Amherst could be regarded as the best
location for the college. But the legislature of Massachusetts
decided that Williams College could not be removed from
Williamstown, and nothing remained but for the friends of the
new institution to go on with their plans for locating it at
Amherst. ... This first college edifice was ready for
occupation and dedicated on the 18th of September, 1821. In
the month of May, 1821, Reverend Zephaniah Swift Moore, D. D., was
unanimously elected by the trustees of Amherst Academy
president of the new institution."
_T. P. Field (U. S. Bureau of Education, Circular' of
Information, 1891, no. 6: History of Higher Education
in Massachusetts), chapter 11._
EDUCATION: A. D. 1837.
Massachusetts.
Horace Mann and the State System.
"When Massachusetts, in 1837, created a Board of Education,
then were first united into a somewhat related whole the more
or less excellent but varied and independent organizations,
and a beginning made for a State system. It was this massing
of forces, and the hearty co-operation he initiated, in which
the work of Horace Mann showed its matchless greatness.
'Rarely,' it has been said, 'have great ability, unselfish
devotion, and brilliant success, been so united in the course
of a single life.' A successful lawyer, a member of the State
Legislature, and with but limited experience as a teacher, he
has left his impress upon the educational sentiments of, not
only New England, but the United States."
_R. G. Boone, Education in the U. S., page 103._
EDUCATION: A. D. 1840-1886.
The United States.
Proportion of College Students.
"It is estimated that in 1840 the proportion of college
students to the entire population in the United States was 1
to 1,540; in 1860, 1 to 2,012; in 1870,1 to 2,546; in 1880, 1
to 1,840; and in 1886, 1 to about 1,400, Estimating all our
combined efforts in favor of higher education, we fall far
short of some of the countries of the Old World."
_F. W. Blackmar, Federal and State Aid to Higher
Education in the U. S. (U. S. Bureau of Education,
Circulars of Information, 1890, no. 1), page 36._
{734}
EDUCATION: A. D. 1844-1876.
Canada.
Ontario School System.
"From the earliest settlement of Ontario, schools were
established as the wants of the inhabitants required. The
Legislature soon recognized the needs of the country, and made
grants of land and money in aid of elementary, secondary, and
superior education. Statutes were passed from time to time for
the purpose of opening schools to meet the demands of the
people. The sparsely settled condition of the Province delayed
for a while the organization of the system. It was not until
1844 that the elementary schools were put on a comprehensive
basis. In that year the Reverend Egerton Ryerson, LL. D., was
appointed Chief Superintendent of Education, and the report
which he presented to the House of Assembly sketched in an
able manner the main features of the system of which he was
the distinguished founder, and of which he continued for
thirty-three years to be the efficient administrator. In 1876
the office of chief superintendent was abolished, and the
schools of the Province placed under the control of a member
of the Government with the title of Minister of Education. ...
The system of education in Ontario may be said to combine the
best features of the systems of several countries. To the Old
World it is indebted for a large measure of its stability,
uniformity and centralization; to the older settled parts of
the New World for its popular nature, its flexibility and its
democratic principles which have given, wherever desirable,
local control and individual responsibility. From the State of
New York we have borrowed the machinery of our school; from
Massachusetts the principle of local taxation; from Ireland
our first series of text books; from Scotland the co-operation
of parents with the teacher, in upholding his authority; from
Germany the system of Normal Schools and the Kindergarten; and
from the United States generally the non-denominational
character of elementary, secondary, and university education.
Ontario may claim to have some features of her system that are
largely her own. Among them may be mentioned a division of
state and municipal authority on a judicious basis; clear
lines separating the function of the University from that of
the High Schools, and the function of the High Schools from
that of the Public or elementary schools; a uniform course of
study; all High and Public Schools in the hands of
professionally trained teachers; no person eligible to the
position of inspector who does not hold the highest grade of a
teacher's certificate, and who has not had years of experience
as a teacher; inspectors removable if inefficient, but not
subject to removal by popular vote; the examinations of
teachers under Provincial instead of local control; the
acceptance of a common matriculation examination for admission
to the Universities and to the learned professions; a uniform
series of text books for the whole Province; the almost entire
absence of party politics in the manner in which school
boards, inspectors and teachers discharge their duties; the
system national instead of sectarian, but affording under
constitutional guarantees and limitations protection to Roman
Catholic and Protestant Separate Schools and denominational
Universities."
_J. Millar, Educational System of the Province of Ontario._
EDUCATION: A. D. 1862.
The United States.
Land-grant for industrial Colleges.
"Next to the Ordinance of 1787, the Congressional grant of
1862 is the most important educational enactment in America.
... By this gift forty-eight colleges and universities have
received aid, at least to the extent of the Congressional
grant; thirty-three of these, at least, have been called into
existence by means of this act. In thirteen States the
proceeds of the land scrip were devoted to institutions
already in existence. The amount received from the sales of
land scrip from twenty-four of these States aggregates the sum
of $13,930,456, with land remaining unsold estimated at nearly
two millions of dollars. These same institutions have received
State endowments amounting to over eight million dollars. The
origin of this gift must be sought in local communities. In
this country all ideas of national education have arisen from
those States that have felt the need of local institutions for
the education of youth. In certain sections of the Union,
particularly the North and West, where agriculture was one of
the chief industries, it was felt that the old classical
schools were not broad enough to cover all the wants of
education represented by growing industries. There was
consequently a revulsion from these schools toward the
industrial and practical side of education. Evidences of this
movement are seen in the attempts in different States to found
agricultural, technical, and industrial schools. These ideas
found their way into Congress, and a bill was introduced in
1858, which provided for the endowment of colleges for the
teaching of agriculture and the mechanical arts. The bill was
introduced by Honorable Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont; it was
passed by a small majority, and was vetoed by President
Buchanan. In 1862 the bill was again presented with slight
changes, passed and signed, and became a law July 2, 1862. ...
It stipulated to grant to each State thirty thousand acres of
land for each Senator and Representative in Congress to which
the States were respectively entitled by the census of 1860,
for the purpose of endowing 'at least one college where the
leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific
and classical studies, and including military tactics, to
teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture
and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the Legislatures of
the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the
liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in
the several pursuits and professions of life.' ... From this
proposition all sorts of schools sprang up, according to the
local conception of the law and local demands. It was thought
by some that boys were to be taught agriculture by working on
a farm, and purely agricultural schools were founded with the
mechanical arts attached. In other States classical schools of
the stereotyped order were established, with more or less
science; and, again, the endowment in others was devoted to
scientific departments. The instruction of the farm and the
teaching of pure agriculture have not succeeded in general,
while the schools that have made prominent those studies
relating to agriculture and the mechanic arts, upon the whole,
have succeeded best. ... In several instances the managers of
the land scrip have understood that by this provision the
State could not locate the land within the borders of another
State, but its assignees could thus locate lands, not more
than one million acres in any one State. By considering this
question, the New York land scrip was bought by Ezra Cornell,
and located by him for the college in valuable lands in the
State of Wisconsin, and thus the fund was augmented. However,
the majority of the States sold their land at a sacrifice,
frequently for less than half its value. There was a lull in
the land market during the Civil War, and this cause, together
with the lack of attention in many States, sacrificed the gift
of the Federal Government. The sales ranged all the way from
fifty cents to seven dollars per acre, as the average price
for each State."
_F. W. Blackmar, Federal and State Aid to Higher
Education (U. S. Bureau of Education,
Circulars of Information, 1890, no. 1), pages 47-49._
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EDUCATION: A. D. 1862-1886.
New York.
Cornell University.
"On the second of July, 1862, ... [President Lincoln] signed
the act of congress, donating public lands for the
establishment of colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts.
This act had been introduced into congress by the Honorable Justin
S. Morrill. ... The Morrill act provided for a donation of
public land to the several states, each state to receive
thirty thousand acres for each senator and representative it
sent to congress. States not containing within their own
borders public land subject to sale at private entry received
land scrip instead. But this land scrip the recipient states
were not allowed to locate within the limits of any other
state or of any territory of the United States. The act
laconically directed 'said scrip to be sold by said states.'
The proceeds of the sale, whether of land or scrip, in each
state were to form a perpetual fund. ... In the execution of
this trust the State of New York was hampered by great and
almost insuperable obstacles. For its distributive share it
received land scrip to the amount of nine hundred and ninety
thousand acres. The munificence of the endowment awakened the
cupidity of a multitude of clamorous and strangely unexpected
claimants. ... If the princely domain granted to the State of
New York by congress was not divided and frittered away, we
owe it in great measure to the foresight, the energy, and the
splendid courage of a few generous spirits in the legislature
of whom none commanded greater respect or exercised more
influence than Senator Andrew Dickson White, the gentleman who
afterwards became first president of Cornell University. ...
But the all-compelling force which prevented the dispersion
and dissipation of the bounty of congress was the generous
heart of Ezra Cornell. While rival institutions clamored for a
division of the 'spoils,' and political tricksters played
their base and desperate game, this man thought only of the
highest good of the State of New York, which he loved with the
ardor of a patriot and was yet to serve with the heroism of a
martyr. ... When the legislature of the State of New York was
called upon to make some disposition of the congressional
grant, Ezra Cornell sat in the senate. ... Of his minor
legislative achievements I shall not speak. One act, however,
has made his name as immortal as the state it glorified. By a
gift of half a million dollars (a vast sum in 1865, the last
year of the war!) he rescued for the higher education of New
York the undivided grant of congress; and with the united
endowments he induced the legislature to establish, not merely
a college of applied science but a great modern
university--'an institution,' according to his own admirable
definition, 'where any person can find instruction in any
study.' It was a high and daring aspiration to crown the
educational system of our imperial state with an organ of
universal knowledge, a nursery of every science and of all
scholarship, an instrument of liberal culture and of practical
utility to all classes of our people. This was, however, the
end; and to secure it Ezra Cornell added to his original gift
new donations of land, of buildings, and of money. ... But one
danger threatened this latest birth of time. The act of
congress donating land scrip required the states to sell it.
The markets were immediately glutted. Prices fell. New York
was selling at an average price of fifty cents an acre. Her
princely domain would bring at this rate less than half a
million dollars! Was the splendid donation to issue in such
disaster? If it could be held till the war was over, till
immigration opened up the Northwest, it would be worth five
times five hundred thousand dollars! So at least thought one
far-seeing man in the State of New York. And this man of
foresight had the heart to conceive, the wisdom to devise, and
the courage to execute--he alone in all the states--a plan for
saving to his state the future value of the lands donated by
congress. Ezra Cornell made that wonderful and dramatic
contract with the State of New York! He bound himself to
purchase at the rate of sixty cents per acre the entire right
of the commonwealth to the scrip, still unsold; and with the
scrip, thus purchased by him as an individual he agreed to
select and locate the lands it represented, to pay the taxes,
to guard against trespasses and defend from fires, to the end
that within twenty years when values had appreciated he might
sell the land and turn into the treasury of the State of New
York for the support of Cornell University the entire net
proceeds of the enterprise. Within a few years Ezra Cornell
had located over half a million acres of superior pine land in
the Northwestern states, principally in Wisconsin. Under bonds
to the State of New York to do the state's work he had spent
about $600,000 of his own cash to carry out the trust
committed to him by the state, when, alas, in the crisis of
1874, fortune and credit sank exhausted and death came to free
the martyr-patriot from his bonds. The seven years that
followed were the darkest in our history. ... Ezra Cornell was
our founder; Henry W. Sage followed him as wise masterbuilder.
The edifices, chairs and libraries which bear the name of
'Sage' witness to [his] later gifts: but though these now
aggregate the princely sum of $1,250,000, [his] management of
the university lands has been [his] greatest achievement. From
these lands, with which the generosity and foresight of Ezra
Cornell endowed the university, there have been netted under
[Mr. Sage's] administration, not far short of $4,000,000, with
over 100,000 acres still to sell. Ezra Cornell's contract with
the state was for twenty years. It expired August 4, 1886,
when a ten years' extension was granted by the state. The
trust will be closed in 1896."
_J. G. Schurman, Address at Inauguration to the
Presidency of Cornell University, November 11, 1892._
EDUCATION: A. D. 1866-1869.
The United States.
Bureau of Education.
"Educators, political economists, and statesmen felt the need
of some central agency by which the general educational
statistics of the country could be collected, preserved,
condensed, and properly arranged for distribution. This need
found expression finally in the action taken at a convention
of the superintendence department of the National Educational
Association, held at Washington February, 1866, when it was
resolved to petition Congress in favor of a National Bureau of
Education. ...
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The memorial was presented in the House of Representatives by
General Garfield, February 14, 1866, with a bill for the
establishment of a National Bureau on essentially the basis
the school superintendents had proposed. Both bill and
memorial were referred to a committee of seven members. ...
The bill was reported back from the committee, with an
amendment in the nature of a substitute, providing for the
creation of a department of education instead of the bureau
originally proposed. Thus altered, it was passed by a vote of
nearly two to one. In the Senate it was referred to the
Committee on the Judiciary ... who the following winter
reported it without amendment and with a recommendation that
it pass, which it did on the 1st of March, 1867, receiving on
the next day the approval of the President. By the act of July
28, 1868, which took effect June 30, 1869, the Department of
Education was abolished, and an Office of Education in the
Department of the Interior was established, with the same
objects and duties. ... The act of March 2, 1867, ...
established an agency 'for the purpose of collecting such
statistics and facts as shall show the condition and progress
of education in the several States and Territories, and of
diffusing such information respecting the organization and
management of school systems and methods of teaching as shall
aid the people of the United States in the establishment and
maintenance of efficient school systems and otherwise promote
the cause of education.' It will be perceived that the chief
duty of the office under the law is to act as an educational
exchange. Exercising and seeking to exercise no control
whatever over its thousands of correspondents, the office
occupies a position as the recipient of voluntary information
which is unique."
_C. Warren, Answers to Inquiries about the
U. S. Bureau of Education, chapters 2-3._
EDUCATION: A. D. 1867.
New York.
Public Schools made entirely free.
The public schools of the State of New York were not entirely
free until 1867. In his report to the Legislature made in
February of that year, the State Superintendent of Public
Instruction, Honorable Victor M. Rice, said: "The greatest defect
in our school system is, as I have urged in previous reports,
the continuance of the rate bill system. Our common schools
can never reach their highest degree of usefulness until they
shall have been made entirely free. ... To meet this public
demand, to confer upon the children of the State the blessings
of free education, a bill has already been introduced into
your honorable body. ... The main features of the bill are the
provisions to raise, by State tax, a sum about equal to that
raised in the districts by rate bills, and to abolish the rate
bill system; to facilitate the erection and repair of school
houses." The bill referred to was passed at the same session
of the Legislature, and in his next succeeding report,
Superintendent Rice gave the following account of the law and
its immediate effects: "While the general structure of the
school law was not disturbed, a material modification was made
by the Act (chap. 406, Laws of 1867), which took effect on the
first day of October of the same year, and which, among other
things, provided for the abolishment of rate-bills, and for
increased local and State taxation for school purposes. This
was primarily a change in the manner of raising the requisite
funds; not an absolute increase of the aggregate amount to be
raised. It involved and encouraged such increase, so far as
the inhabitants in the several school districts should
authorize it, by substituting taxation exclusively on
property, for a mixed assessment which, in part, was a tax on
attendance. Thus relieved of an old impediment, and supplied
with additional power and larger resources, the cause of
public instruction, during the last fiscal year, has wrought
results unequaled in all the past. ... The effect of this
amendment has not been confined to the financial policy
thereby inaugurated. It is distinctly traceable in lengthened
terms of school, in a larger and more uniform attendance, and
in more liberal expenditures for school buildings and
appliances."
_Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State
of New York, Annual Report, 1869, pages 5-6._
EDUCATION: A. D. 1867.
Maryland.
Johns Hopkins University.
"By the will of Johns Hopkins, a merchant of Baltimore, the
sum of $7,000,000 was devoted to the endowment of a university
[chartered in 1867] and a hospital, $3,500,000 being
appropriated to each. ... To the bequest no burdensome
conditions were attached. ... Just what this new university
was to be proved a very serious question to the trustees. The
conditions of Mr. Hopkins's bequest left the determination of
this matter open. ... A careful investigation led the trustees
to believe that there was a growing demand for opportunities
to study beyond the ordinary courses of a college or a
scientific school, particularly in those branches of learning
not included in the schools of law, medicine and theology.
Strong evidence of this demand was afforded by the increasing
attendance of American students upon the lectures of the
German universities, as well as by the number of students who
were enrolling themselves at Harvard and Yale for the
post-graduate courses. It was therefore determined that the
Johns Hopkins should be primarily a university, with advanced
courses of lectures and fully equipped laboratories; that the
courses should be voluntary, and the teaching not limited to
class instruction. The foundation is both old and new. In so
far as each feature is borrowed from some older university,
where it has been fairly tried and tested, it is old, but at
the same time this particular combination of separate features
has here been made for the first time. ... In the ordinary
college course, if a young man happens to be deficient in
mathematics, for example, he is either forced to lose any
advantage he may possess in Greek or Latin, or else is obliged
to take a position in mathematics for which he is unprepared.
In the college department of the Johns Hopkins, this
disadvantage does not exist; the classifying is specific for
each study. The student has also the privilege of pushing
forward in any one study as rapidly as he can with advantage;
or, on the other hand, in case of illness or of unavoidable
interruption, of prolonging the time devoted to the course, so
that no part of it shall be omitted. As the studies are
elective, it is possible to follow the usual college course if
one desires. Seven different courses of study are indicated,
any of which leads to the Baccalaureate degree, thus enabling
the student to direct and specialize his work. The same
standard of matriculation and the same severity of
examinations are maintained in all these courses.
{737}
A student has the privilege of extending his study beyond the
regular class work, and he will be credited with all such
private and outside study, if his examiners are satisfied of
his thoroughness and accuracy."
_S. B. Herrick, The Johns Hopkins University
(Scribner's Monthly, December 1879)._
EDUCATION: A. D. 1867-1891.
The United States.
The Peabody Education Fund.
"The letter announcing and creating the Peabody endowment was
dated February 7, 1867. In that letter, after referring to the
ravages of he late war, the founder of the Trust said: 'I feel
most deeply that it is the duty and privilege of the more
favoured and wealthy portions of our nation to assist those
who are less fortunate.' He then added: 'I give one million of
dollars for the encouragement and promotion of intellectual,
moral, and industrial education among the young of the more
destitute portions of the Southern and Southwestern States of
the Union.' On the day following, ten of the Trustees selected
by him held a preliminary meeting in Washington. Their first
business meeting was held in the city of New York, the 19th of
March following, at which a general plan was adopted and an
agent appointed. Mr. Peabody returned to his native country
again in 1869, and on the 1st day of July, at a special
meeting of the Trustees held at Newport, added a second
million to the cash capital of the fund. ... According to the
donor's directions, the principal must remain intact for
thirty years. The Trustees are not authorized to expend any
part of it, nor yet to add to it any part of the accruing
interest. The manner of using the interest, as well as the
final distribution of the principal, was left entirely to the
discretion of a self-perpetuating body of Trustees. Those
first appointed had, however, the rare advantage of full
consultation with the founder of the Trust while he still
lived, and their plans received his cordial and emphatic
approbation. ... The pressing need of the present seemed to be
in the department of primary education for the masses, and so
they determined to make appropriations only for the assistance
of public free schools. The money is not given as a charity to
the poor. It would be entirely inadequate to furnish any
effectual relief if distributed equally among all those who
need it, and would, moreover, if thus widely dissipated,
produce no permanent results. But the establishment of good
public schools provides for the education of all children,
whether rich or poor, and initiates a system which no State
has ever abandoned after a fair trial. So it seemed to the
donor as well as to his Trustees, that the greatest good of
the greatest number would be more effectually and more
certainly attained by this mode of distribution than by any
other. No effort is made to distribute according to
population. It was Mr. Peabody's wish that those States which
had suffered most from the ravages of war should be assisted
first."
_American Educational Cyclopædia, 1875, pages 224-225._
The report made by the treasurer of the Fund in 1890, showed a
principal sum invested to the amount of $2,075,175.22,
yielding an income that year of $97,818. In the annual report
of the U. S. Commissioner of Education made February 1, 1891, he
says: "It would appear to the student of education in the
Southern States that the practical wisdom in the
administration of the Peabody Fund and the fruitful results
that have followed it could not be surpassed in the history of
endowments."
_Proceedings of the Trustees of the Peabody
Education Fund, 1887-1892._
EDUCATION: A. D. 1884-1891.
California.
Leland Stanford Junior University.
"The founding at Palo Alto of 'a university for both sexes,
with the colleges, schools, seminaries of learning, mechanical
institutes, museums, galleries of art, and all other things
necessary and appropriate to a university of high degree,' was
determined upon by the Honorable Leland Stanford and Jane Lathrop
Stanford in 1884. In March of the year following the
Legislature of California passed an Act providing for the
administration of trust funds in connection with institutions
of learning. November 14, 1885, the Grant of Endowment was
publicly made, in accordance with this Act, and on the same
day the Board of Trustees held its first meeting in San
Francisco. The work of construction was at once begun, and the
cornerstone laid May 14, 1887. The University was formally
opened to students October 1, 1891. The idea of the
university, in the words of its founders, 'came directly and
largely from our son and only child, Leland, and in the belief
that had he been spared to advise as to the disposition of our
estate, he would have desired the devotion of a large portion
thereof to this purpose, we will that for all time to come the
institution hereby founded shall bear his name, and shall be
known as The Leland Stanford Junior University.' The object of
the University, as stated in its Charter, is 'to qualify
students for personal success and direct usefulness in life';
and its purposes, 'to promote the public welfare by exercising
an influence in behalf of humanity and civilization, teaching
the blessings of liberty regulated by law, and inculcating
love and reverence for the great principles of government as
derived from the inalienable rights of man to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.' The University is located on
the Palo Alto estate in the Santa Clara valley, thirty-three
miles southeast of San Francisco, on the Coast Division of the
Southern Pacific Railway. The estate consists of over eight
thousand acres, partly lowland and partly rising into the
foothills of the Santa Cruz range. On the grounds is the
residence of the Founders, and an extensive and beautiful
arboretum containing a very great variety of shrubs and trees.
The property conveyed to the University, in addition to the
Palo Alto estate, consists of the Vina estate, in Tehama
County, of fifty-five thousand acres, of which about four
thousand acres are planted in vines, and the Gridley estate,
in Butte County, of twenty-two thousand acres, devoted mainly
to the raising of wheat. ... The founders of the Leland
Stanford Junior University say: 'As a further assurance that
the endowment will be ample to establish and maintain a
university of the highest grade, we have, by last will and
testament, devised to you and your successors additional
property. We have done this as a security against the
uncertainty of life and in the hope that during our lives the
full endowment may go to you. The aggregate of the domain
thus dedicated to the founding of the University, is over
eighty-five thousand acres, or more than one hundred and
thirty-three square miles, among the best improved and most
valuable lands in the State."
_Leland Stanford Junior University,
Circulars of Information, numbers 6 and 1-2._
{738}
EDUCATION: A. D. 1887-1889.
Massachusetts.
Clark University.
"Clark University was founded [at Worcester] by ... a native
of Worcester County, Massachusetts. It was 'not the outcome of
a freak of impulse, or of a sudden wave of generosity, or of
the natural desire to perpetuate in a worthy way one's
ancestral name. To comprehend the genesis of the enterprise we
must go back along the track of Mr. Clark's personal history
20 years at least. For as long ago as that, the idea came home
with force to his mind that all civilized communities are in
the hands of experts. ... Looking around at the facilities
obtainable in this country for the prosecution of original
research, he was struck with the meagerness and the
inadequacy. Colleges and professional schools we have in
abundance, but there appeared to be no one grand inclusive
institution, unsaddled by an academic department, where
students might pursue as far as possible their investigation
of any and every branch of science. ... Mr. Clark went abroad
and spent eight years visiting the institutions of learning in
almost every country of Europe. He studied into their history
and observed their present working.' ... It is his strong and
expressed desire that the highest possible academic standards
be here forever maintained; that special opportunities and
inducements be offered to research; that to this end the
instructors be not overburdened with teaching or examinations.
... A charter was granted early in 1887. Land and other
property that had been before secured by the founder was
transferred to the board, and the erection of a central
building was begun. In the spring of 1888 G. Stanley Hall,
then a professor at the Johns Hopkins University, was invited
to the presidency. ... The plans of the university had so far
progressed that work was begun in October, 1889, in
mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and psychology."
_G. G. Bush, History of Higher Education in
Massachusetts (U. S. Bureau of Education,
Circular of Information, 1891, no. 6), chapter 18._
EDUCATION: A. D. 1889-1892.
Illinois.
Chicago University.
"At its Annual Meeting in May, 1889, the Board of the American
Baptist Education Society resolved to take immediate steps
toward the founding of a well-equipped college in the city of
Chicago. At the same time John D. Rockefeller made a
subscription of $600,000 and this sum was increased during the
succeeding year by about $600,000 more in subscriptions
representing more than two thousand persons. Three months
after the completion of this subscription, Mr. Rockefeller
made an additional proffer of $1,000,000. The site of the
University consists of three blocks of ground--about two
thousand feet long and three hundred and sixty-two feet wide,
lying between the two South Parks of Chicago, and fronting on
the Midway Plaisance, which is itself a park connecting the
other two. One-half of this site is a gift of Marshall Field
of Chicago, and the other half has been purchased at a cost of
$132,500. At the first meeting of the Board after it had
become an incorporated body, Professor William R. Harper, of
Yale University, was unanimously elected President of the
University. ... It has been decided that the University will
begin the work of instruction on the first day of October,
1892. ... The work of the University shall be arranged under
three general divisions, viz., The University Proper, The
University-Extension Work, The University Publication Work."
_University of Chicago,
Official Bulletin no. 1, January, 1891._
EDUCATION: A. D. 1890.
United States.
Census Statistics.
The following statistics of education in the United States are
from the returns gathered for the Eleventh Census, 1890. In
these statistics the states and territories are classed in
five great geographical divisions, defined as follows: North
Atlantic Division, embracing the New England States, New York,
New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; South Atlantic Division,
embracing the States of the eastern coast, from Delaware to
Florida, together with the District of Columbia; North Central
Division, embracing Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan,
Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North and South Dakota,
Nebraska, and Kansas; South Central Division, embracing
Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas,
Arkansas, and Oklahoma; Western Division, embracing all the
remaining States and Territories. The total taxation for
public schools in the United States, as reported by this
census, was $102,164,796; of which $37,619,786 was raised in
the North Atlantic Division, $5,678,474 in the South Atlantic
Division, $47,033,142 in the North Central Division,
$5,698.562 in the South Central Division, and $6,134,832 in
the Western Division. From funds and rents there were raised
for school purposes a total of $25,694,449 in the United
States at large, of which $8,273,147 was raised in the North
Atlantic Division, $2,307,051 in the South Atlantic Division,
$8,432,593 in the North Central Division, $3,720,158 in the
South Central Division, and $2,961,500 in the Western
Division. The total of all "ordinary" receipts for school
support in the United States, was $139,619,440, of which
$49,201,216 were in the North Atlantic Division, $8,685,223 in
the South Atlantic Division. $61,108,263 in the North Central
Division, $10,294,621 in the South Central Division, and
$10,330,117 in the Western Division. The total "ordinary
expenditures" were $138,786,393 in the whole United States;
being $47,625,548 in the North Atlantic Division, $8,630,711
in the South Atlantic Division, $62,815.531 in the North
Central Division, $9,860,050 in the South Central Division,
and $9,854,544 in the Western Division. For teachers' wages
there was a total expenditure of $88,705,992, $28,067,821
being in the North Atlantic Division, $6,400,063 in the South
Atlantic Division, $39,866,831 in the North Central Division,
$8,209,509 in the South Central Division, and $6,161,768 in
the Western Division. The total expenditure for Libraries and
Apparatus was $1,667,787, three-fourths of which was in the
North Atlantic and North Central Divisions. The expenditure
reported for construction and care of buildings, was
$24,224,793, of which $10,687,114 was in the North Atlantic
Division, $884,277 was in the South Atlantic Division,
$9,869,489 in the North Central Division, $770,257 in the
South Central Division, and $2,013,656 in the Western
Division. Reported estimates of the value of buildings and
other school property are incomplete, but $27,892,831 are
given for Massachusetts, $41,626,735 for New York, $35,435,412
for Pennsylvania, $32,631,549 for Ohio, $26,814,480 for
Illinois, and these are the States that stand highest in the
column.
{739}
The apparent enrollment in Public Schools for the
census year, reported to July, 1891, was as follows:
North Atlantic Division, 3,124,417;
South Atlantic Division, 1,758,285;
North Central Division, 5,032,182;
South Central Division, 2,334,694;
Western Division, 520,286;
Total for the United States, 12,769,864
being 20.39 per cent. of the population, against 19.84 per
cent. in 1880. The reported enrollment in Private Schools at
the same time was:
North Atlantic Division, 196,173;
South Atlantic Division, 165,253;
North Central Division, 187,827;
South Central Division, 200,202;
Western Division, 54,749;
Total for the United States, 804,204.
The reported enrollment in Parochial Schools was:
North Atlantic Division, 311,684;
South Atlantic Division, 30,869;
North Central Division, 398,585;
South Central Division, 41,115;
Western Division, 17,349;
Total for the United States, 799,602.
Of this total, 626,496 were enrolled in Catholic and 151,651
in Lutheran Parochial Schools; leaving only 21,455 in the
schools of all other denominations. Total enrollment reported
in all schools 14,373,670. The colored public school
enrollment in the Southern States was 1,288,229 in 1890,
against 797,286 in 1880,--an increase of more than 61 per
cent. The enrollment of whites was 3,358,527, against
2,301,804,--an increase of nearly 46 per cent. The approximate
number of Public School-houses in the United States, for the
census year 1890 is given at 219,992, being 42,949 in the
North Atlantic Division, 32,142 in the South Atlantic
Division, 97,166 in the North Central Division, 38,962 in the
South Central Division, 8,773 in the Western Division. The
largest number reported is 14,214 in Pennsylvania. Of 6,408
school-houses in Virginia 4,568 are for white, and 1,840 for
colored children; in North Carolina, 3,973 white and 1,820
colored. The above statistics are taken in part from the
Compendium of the Eleventh Census, published in 1894, and
partly from tables courteously furnished from the Census
Bureau in advance of their publication.
EDUCATION: Modern: Reforms and Movements.
EDUCATION: A. D. 1638-1671.
Comenius.
"To know Comenius [born in Moravia, 1592] and the part he
played in the seventeenth century, to appreciate this grand
educational character, it would be necessary to begin by
relating his life; his misfortunes; his journeys to England
[1638], where Parliament invoked his aid; to Sweden [1642],
where the Chancellor Oxenstiern employed him to write manuals
of instruction; especially his relentless industry, his
courage through exile, and the long persecutions he suffered
as a member of the sect of dissenters, the Moravian Brethren;
and the schools he founded at Fulneck, in Bohemia, at Lissa
and at Patak, in Poland."
_G. Compayré, The History of Pedagogy, chapter 6 (section 137)._
"Comenius's inspiring motive, like that of all leading
educationalists, was social regeneration. He believed that
this could be accomplished through the school. He lived under
the hallucination that by a proper arrangement of the
subject-matter of instruction, and by a sound method, a
certain community of thought and interests would be
established among the young, which would result in social
harmony and political settlement. He believed that men could
be manufactured. ... The educational spirit of the Reformers,
the conviction that all--even the humblest--must be taught to
know God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent, was inherited by
Comenius in its completeness. In this way, and in this way
only, could the ills of Europe be remedied, and the progress
of humanity assured. While, therefore, he sums up the
educational aim under the threefold heads of Knowledge,
Virtue, and Piety or Godliness, he in truth has mainly in view
the last two. Knowledge is of value only in so far as it forms
the only sound basis, in the eyes of a Protestant theologian,
of virtue and godliness. We have to train for a hereafter. ...
By knowledge Comenius meant knowledge of nature and of man's
relation to nature. It is this important characteristic of
Comenius's educational system that reveals the direct
influence of Bacon and his school. ... It is in the department
of Method, however, that we recognise the chief contribution
of Comenius to education. The mere attempt to systematise was
a great advance. In seeking, however, for foundations on which
to erect a coherent system, he had to content himself with
first principles which were vague and unscientific. ... In the
department of knowledge, that is to say, knowledge of the
outer world, Comenius rested his method on the scholastic
maxim, 'Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in
sensu.' This maxim he enriched with the Baconian induction,
comprehended by him only in a general way. ... From the simple
to the complex, from the particular to the general, the concrete
before the abstract, and all, step by step, and even by
insensible degrees,--these were among his leading principles
of method. But the most important of all his principles was
derived from the scholastic maxim quoted above. As all is from
sense, let the thing to be known be itself presented to the
senses, and let every sense be engaged in the perception of
it. When it is impossible, from the nature of the case, to
present the object itself, place a vivid picture of it before
the pupil. The mere enumeration of these few principles, even
if we drop out of view all his other contributions to method
and school-management, will satisfy any man familiar with all
the more recent treatises on Education, that Comenius, even
after giving his precursors their due, is to be regarded as
the true founder of modern Method, and that he anticipates
Pestalozzi and all of the same school. ... Finally, Comenius's
views as to the inner organisation of a school were original,
and have proved themselves in all essential respects correct.
The same may be said of his scheme for the organisation of a
State-system--a scheme which is substantially, mutatis
mutandis, at this moment embodied in the highly-developed
system of Germany. When we consider, then, that Comenius first
formally and fully developed educational method, that he
introduced important reforms into the teaching of languages,
that he introduced into schools the study of Nature, that he
advocated with intelligence, and not on purely sentimental
grounds, a milder discipline, we are justified in assigning to
him a high, if not the highest, place among modern educational
writers."
_S. S. Laurie, John Amos Comenius, pages 217-226._
{740}
EDUCATION: A. D. 1681-1878.
The Christian Brothers.
"Any description of popular education in Europe would be
incomplete, which should not give prominence to the Institute
of the Christian Brothers--or the Brothers of the Christian
Doctrine--including in that term the earliest professional
school for the training of teachers in Europe; one of the most
remarkable body of teachers devoted exclusively and without
pay to the education of the children of the poor that the
world has ever seen. ... The Institute was established as a
professional school in 1681, and to Abbe John Baptist de la
Salle, belongs the high honor not only of founding it, but of
so infusing into its early organization his own profound
conviction of the Christ-like character of its mission among
the poor, that it has retained for nearly two centuries the
form and spirit of its origin. This devoted Christian teacher
was born at Rheims on the 30th of April, 1651. ... He was
early distinguished for his scholarly attainments and maturity
of character; and at the age of seventeen, before he had
completed his full course of theological study, he was
appointed Canon in the Cathedral church of Rheims. From the
first, he became interested in the education of the young, and
especially of the poor, as the most direct way of leading them
to a Christian life;--and with this view before he was
twenty-one years old, he assumed the direction of two
charities, devoted to female education. From watching the
operation of these schools, conducted by teachers without
professional training, without plan and without mutual
sympathy and aid, he conceived the design of bringing the
teachers of this class of schools from the neighboring
parishes into a community for their moral and professional
improvement. For this purpose, he invited them first to meet,
and then to lodge at his house, and afterwards, about the year
1681, he purchased a house for their special accommodation.
Here, out of school hours and during their holy days, they
spent their time in the practice of religious duties, and in
mutual conferences on the work in which they were engaged.
About this period, a large number of free schools for the poor
were established in the neighboring towns; and applications
were constantly made to the Abbe for teachers formed under his
training, care, and influence. To meet this demand, and make
himself more directly useful in the field of Christian
education, he resigned his benefice, that he might give his
whole attention to the work. To close the distance between
himself, having a high social position and competence from his
father's estate, and the poor schoolmasters to whom he was
constantly preaching an unreserved consecration of themselves
to their vocation--he not only resigned his canonry, with its
social and pecuniary advantages, but distributed his
patrimony, in a period of scarcity, in relieving the
necessities of the poor, and in providing for the education of
their children. He thus placed himself on a footing of
equality--as to occupation, manner of life, and entire
dependence on the charity of others--with the schoolmasters of
the poor. The annals of education or religion show but few
such examples of practical self-denial, and entire
consecration to a sense of duty. ... Having completed his act
of resignation and self-imposed poverty, he assembled his
teachers, announced to them what he had done, and sung with
them a Te Deum. After a retreat--a period set apart to prayer
and fasting-continued for seventeen days, they devoted
themselves to the consideration of the best course to give
unity, efficiency, and permanence to their plans of Christian
education for the poor. They assumed the name of 'The Brothers
of the Christian Doctrine,' as expressive of their
vocation--which by usage came to be abbreviated into
'Christian Brothers.' They took on themselves vows of poverty,
celibacy, and obedience for three years. They prescribed to
themselves the most frugal fare, to be provided in turns by
each other, They adopted at that time some rules of behavior,
which have since been incorporated into the fundamental rules
of the order. ... In 1702 the first step was taken to
establish an Institute at Rome, under the mission of one of
the brothers, Gabriel Drolin, who after years of poverty, was
made conductor of one of the charitable schools founded by
Pope Clement XI. This school became afterwards the foundation
of the house which the brothers have had in Rome since the
pontificate of Benedict XIII., who conferred on the institute
the constitution of a religious order. In 1703, under the
pecuniary aid of M. Chateau Blanc, and the countenance of the
archbishop, M. de Gontery, a school was opened at Avignon. ...
In 1789, the National Assembly prohibited vows to be made in
communities; and in 1790, suppressed all religious societies;
and in 1791, the institute was dispersed. At that date there
were one hundred and twenty houses, and over one thousand
brothers, actively engaged in the duties of the school room.
The continuity of the society was secured by the houses
established in Italy, to which many of the brothers fled. ...
In 1801, on the conclusion of a Concordat between the Pope and
the government, the society was revived in France by the
opening of a school at Lyons; and in 1815, they resumed their
habit, and opened a novitiate, the members of which were
exempt from military service. At the organization of the
university in 1808, the institute was legally reorganized, and
from that time has increased in numbers and usefulness. ... In
1842, there were 390 houses (of which 326 were in France),
with 3,030 brothers, and 585 novices. There were 642 schools
with 163,700 children, besides evening schools with 7,800
adults in attendance, and three reformatory schools with 2,000
convicts under instruction."
_Henry Barnard, National Education in Europe, pages 435-441._
"In 1878 their numbers had increased to 11,640; they had 1,249
establishments, and the number of their scholars was 390,607."
_Mrs. R. F. Wilson, The Christian Brothers,
their Origin and Work, chapter 21._
EDUCATION: A. D. 1762.
Rousseau.
"Rousseau, who had educated himself, and very badly at that,
was impressed with the dangers of the education of his day. A
mother having asked his advice, he took up the pen to write
it; and, little by little, his counsels grew into a book, a
large work, a pedagogic romance ['Emile']. This romance, when
it appeared in 1762, created a great noise and a great
scandal. The Archbishop of Paris, Christophe de Beaumont, saw
in it a dangerous, mischievous work, and gave himself the
trouble of writing a long encyclical letter in order to point
out the book to the reprobation of the faithful. This document
of twenty-seven chapters is a formal refutation of the
theories advanced in 'Emile.' ... In those days, such a
condemnation was a serious matter; its consequences to an
author might be terrible. Rousseau had barely time to flee.
His arrest was decreed by the parliament of Paris, and his
book was burned by the executioner. ... As a fugitive,
Rousseau did not find a safe retreat even in his own country.
{741}
He was obliged to leave Geneva, where his book was also
condemned, and Berne, where he had sought refuge, but whence
he was driven by intolerance. He owed it to the protection of
Lord Keith, governor of Neufchâtel, a principality belonging
to the King of Prussia, that he lived for some time in peace
in the little town of Motiers in the Val de Travers. ... The
renown of the book, condemned by so high an authority, was
immense. Scandal, by attracting public attention to it, did it
good service. What was most serious and most suggestive in it
was not, perhaps, seized upon; but the 'craze' of which it was
the object had, notwithstanding, good results. Mothers were
won over, and resolved to nurse their own infants; great lords
began to learn handicrafts, like Rousseau's imaginary pupil;
physical exercises came into fashion; the spirit of innovation
was forcing itself a way. ... Three men above all the rest are
noted for having popularized the pedagogic method of Rousseau,
and for having been inspired in their labors by 'Emile.' These
were Basedow, Pestalozzi, and Froebel. Basedow, a German
theologian, had devoted himself entirely to dogmatic
controversy, until the reading of 'Emile' had the effect of
enlarging his mental horizon, and of revealing to him his true
vocation. ... Pestalozzi of Zurich, one of the foremost
educators of modern times, also found his whole life
transformed by the reading of 'Emile,' which awoke in him the
genius of a reformer. ... The most distinguished among his
disciples and continuators is Froebel, the founder of those
primary schools ... known by the name of 'kindergartens,' and
the author of highly esteemed pedagogic works. These various
attempts, these new and ingenious processes which, step by
step, have made their way among us, and are beginning to make
their workings felt, even in institutions most stoutly opposed
to progress, are all traceable to Rousseau's 'Emile.' ... It
is true that 'Emile' contains pages that have outlived their
day, many odd precepts, many false ideas, many disputable and
destructive theories; but at the same time we find in it so
many sagacious observations, such upright counsels, suitable
even to modern times, so lofty an ideal, that, in spite of
everything, we cannot read and study it without profit. ...
There is absolutely nothing practicable in his [Rousseau's]
system. It consists in isolating a child from the rest of the
world; in creating expressly for him a tutor, who is a phœnix
among his kind; in depriving him of father, mother, brothers,
and sisters, his companions in study; in surrounding him with
a perpetual charlatanism, under the pretext of following
nature; and in showing him only through the veil of a
factitious atmosphere the society in which he is to live. And,
nevertheless, at each step it is sound reason by which we are
met; by an astonishing paradox, this whimsicality is full of
good sense; this dream overflows with realities; this
improbable and chimerical romance contains the substance and
the marrow of a rational and truly modern treatise on
pedagogy. Sometimes we must read between the lines, add what
experience has taught us since that day, transpose into an
atmosphere of open democracy those pages, written under the
old order of things, but even then quivering with the new
world which they were bringing to light, and for which they
prepared the way. Reading 'Emile' in the light of modern
prejudices, we can see in it more than the author wittingly
put into it; but not more than logic and the instinct of
genius set down there. To unfold the powers of children in due
proportion to their age; not to transcend their ability; to
arouse in them the sense of the observer and of the pioneer;
to make them discoverers rather than imitators: to teach them
accountability to themselves and not slavish dependence upon
the words of others; to address ourselves more to the will
than to custom, to the reason rather than to the memory; to
substitute for verbal recitations lessons about things; to
lead to theory by way of art; to assign to physical movements
and exercises a prominent place, from the earliest hours of
life up to perfect maturity; such are the principles scattered
broadcast in this book, and forming a happy counterpoise to
the oddities of which Rousseau was perhaps most proud."
_J. Steeg, Introduction to Rousseau's 'Emile.'_
EDUCATION: A. D. 1798-1827.
Pestalozzi.
In Switzerland, up to the end of the eighteenth century, the
state of primary instruction was very bad. "The teachers were
gathered up at hazard; their pay was wretched; in general they
had no lodgings of their own, and they were obliged to hire
themselves out for domestic service among the well-off
inhabitants of the villages, in order to find food and lodging
among them. A mean spirit of caste still dominated
instruction, and the poor remained sunk in ignorance. It was
in the very midst of this wretched and unpropitious state of
affairs that there appeared, towards the end of the eighteenth
century, the most celebrated of modern educators. ... Born at
Zurich in 1746, Pestalozzi died at Brugg in Argovia in 1827.
This unfortunate great man always felt the effects of the
sentimental and unpractical education given him by his mother,
who was left a widow with three children in 1751. He early
formed the habit of feeling and of being touched with emotion,
rather than of reasoning and of reflecting. The laughing-stock
of his companions, who made sport of his awkwardness, the
little scholar of Zurich accustomed himself to live alone and
to become a dreamer. Later, towards 1760, the student of the
academy distinguished himself by his political enthusiasm and
his revolutionary daring. At that early period he had
conceived a profound feeling for the miseries and the needs of
the people, and he already proposed as the purpose of his life
the healing of the diseases of society. At the same time there
was developed in him an irresistible taste for a simple,
frugal, and almost ascetic life. To restrain his desires had
become the essential rule of his conduct, and, to put it in
practice, he forced himself to sleep on a plank, and to
subsist on bread and vegetables."
_G. Compayré, The History of Pedagogy, chapter 18._