representing most of the States and Territories in the Union. Many of
these are entirely public, being supported by State appropriations;
some receive State aid; others were originally founded by private
endowment, but have become public in their management; some are
entirely private in both endowment and control. Most are non-sectarian,
but many require worship in accordance with the services of some
denomination. In general, all recognize their lofty function in society
and are anxious to discharge it properly. Originally aristocratic in
many ways,—prior to the Revolution some colleges classifying their
students in the catalogue according to the social rank of their
families,—they have become among the most popular institutions in the
educational world, largely because of the high worth of their graduates.
Universities, in the scientific sense of the term, did not exist prior
to 1800, except in the few medical and law schools and theological
seminaries. The American conception of the university has been very
largely moulded by the experience of Germany. The college does not
exist as a degree-conferring institution in Germany, but its place is
taken very largely by the _Gymnasium_. The German system comprises
three grades of schools: 1. _Volkschulen_ (primary schools), where
the elementary instruction is given. 2. _Gymnasia_ and _Real-Schulen_
(secondary schools), which provide a nine years’ course for the pupil,
usually covering the period from ten to nineteen years. The aim of
the first is to prepare for the university, while the _Real-Schulen_
fit their students for the ordinary business callings of life. 3.
Universities, in which the studies are arranged in four faculties;
theology, law, medicine, and philosophy. On account of the thoroughness
of the German teaching, many American students have gone to Germany for
their university course. A sincere effort has been made in America to
develop universities according to the German concept, with its detailed
study of particular topics based on a thorough general education. Johns
Hopkins University, Baltimore, opened in 1876, has done most along
these lines.
During the century a determined and successful effort has been made
to break down the old-fashioned college curriculum, with its absolute
and unvarying requirements from every student. Harvard University,
under the leadership of its brilliant executives, Thomas Hill and
especially Charles W. Eliot, has led the way by providing a series
of elective courses from which the student might select a sufficient
number to make up his roster. This has given scope to the exercise of
a freedom of choice that has been most wholesome in its effects upon
both the scholar and university. It has led to the neglect of the poor
courses and to the encouragement of the good ones; and it has promoted
individuality in the different students to a marked degree. The success
of the elective system, and the development of post-graduate courses in
the university, taken in connection with the very great interest in all
the phases of higher education, constitute the chief lines of advance
during the century.
It is evident, then, that the student of to-day has a tremendous
advantage over his fellow of one hundred years ago in the subjects
which he may study. The courses have been enriched, instruction has
been systematized, new subjects, more closely allied with popular
needs, have been developed. But a gain which transcends in importance
even these alterations in the curriculum, is that which has come
through the teacher.
We have seen that the teacher of our forefathers was a man of doubtful
attainments and uncertain character, and while there were golden
exceptions to any general criticism, yet it is beyond question that as
a class the teachership was not well esteemed. As a rule, there was no
stable salary,—the teachers “boarded around” at the homes of their
pupils or received payment in produce from the farmers. At the school
he was janitor as well as educator. Outside of New England, there was
little intelligent supervision of his efforts, and, on the whole,
very little effective home coöperation. Within the century, however,
there has been a marked increase in the esteem in which the teacher is
held, and in the popular appreciation of his work. Moreover, to-day,
the teacher better deserves esteem and respect. While the profession
still contains a vast floating element who look forward to a future
in other lines of work, yet on the whole its members possess a keen
interest in their work and a desire for professional improvement. A
most powerful means toward this end has been found in the various
teachers’ organizations. The Institute, with its annual assembly of all
teachers within a given district, who for two or three days discuss
school questions and listen to lectures upon educational topics, has
been introduced throughout the whole country with great success. The
teachers in the various States have organized State associations, and
there are innumerable voluntary organizations, whose meetings give
each teacher an opportunity for that free contact with others of his
own kind that is so helpful and so suggestive.
[Illustration: DR. CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT, PRESIDENT OF HARVARD
UNIVERSITY.
(Courtesy of The School Journal, New York.)]
The oldest educational association in America, maybe in the world,
is the American Institute of Instruction, organized in 1830. During
its nearly seventy years of life it has been a vast inspiration to
thousands of teachers. It has drawn its support chiefly from the
New England States and recently from Canada, but its influence is
widespread. Annual meetings have been held regularly. Among its
leading spirits, it has numbered such men as W. E. Sheldon, Francis
Wayland, Henry Barnard, etc. Out of the success of the various State
associations, and perhaps suggested by the necessity for more general
action, grew the National Educational Association, founded in 1857,
with the objects “to elevate the character and advance the interest
of the profession of teaching and to promote the cause of popular
education in the United States.” Its first president was Zalmon
Richards, and his successors have been the foremost educators of the
country, including James P. Wickersham, Emerson E. White, William T.
Harris, Albert G. Lane, Nicholas Murray Butler, Charles R. Skinner,
etc. Its membership has grown from 80 in 1857 to 10,654 (1898), and
it has been estimated that some of its conventions have brought
twenty-five thousand people in their train. In spirit it is thoroughly
national, meeting in every section of the country in turn, so helping
to promote uniformity in school ideas. As the Association grew larger,
and its work became more complicated, its organization became involved.
To-day it consists of seventeen departments, each of which devotes
itself to one phase of education, usually reporting at the annual
meeting.
Since 1892 the National Educational Association (N. E. A., as it
is popularly called) has appointed three committees to investigate
special lines of work in separate departments of the school system.
The Committee of Ten, whose chairman, Charles W. Eliot, was the
distinguished President of Harvard University, submitted a most useful
report in 1893 on Secondary School Studies. In 1895 the Committee of
Fifteen, of which Superintendent Wm. H. Maxwell was chairman, then of
Brooklyn but since chosen to be the first Superintendent of Schools of
“Greater New York,” made a valuable report on elementary education,
including reports of sub-committees on the Training of Teachers,
Correlation of Studies, and the Organization of City School Systems.
In 1897 came the report of the Committee of Twelve on Rural Schools,
Superintendent Henry Sabin, of Iowa, as chairman. These documents
have been epoch-making; they have accumulated a mass of trustworthy
information; they have procured opinion upon a wide variety of topics,
and their influence upon the general systematization of the school
system has been enormous. Their additional value lies in the fact
that they have been prepared by teachers who thoroughly understood
the topics which were being considered, and they have furnished to
educators generally that consensus of professional opinion which has
been so badly needed in America.
In this work of gathering and disseminating information, a most potent
part has been played by the national government. The limitations of
the Constitution left education as a State interest, to be worked
out by each commonwealth as it should think best. There had always
been a general desire among teachers for some national organization,
and at last, after the Civil War, Congress established a department,
and then later made a Bureau of Education in the Department of the
Interior. In 1867 Hon. Henry Barnard was appointed the first United
States Commissioner of Education. A wiser choice could not have been
made. Dr. Barnard’s career in education covers a period from 1830, when
he was appointed Secretary of the Board of School Commissioners in
Connecticut, down to the present. Beyond question, his greatest work
has been the organization of the National Bureau of Education, which
to-day is a grand educational clearing-house, sending forth in its
excellent reports an account of ideas and work of each State to the
others. Its high efficiency has been due, in a large measure, to the
character of its commissioners: Henry Barnard, from 1867 to 1870; John
Eaton, 1870–1886; Nathaniel H. R. Dawson, 1886–1889; William T. Harris,
1889 to date. The present incumbent has had the satisfaction of the
knowledge that his position has been removed from the list of partisan
appointments. By his tactful prudence and genuine scholarship, Dr.
Harris has brought his office into touch with every good educational
work for a decade, and has made his name a synonym for genial wisdom
throughout the whole country.
The teacher has been aided in his work by his professional
associations. It is, moreover, true that to-day the teacher enters
upon his work better equipped for his duties. The normal-school system
has spread over the whole country, and every year thousands of young
men and women are sent forth with a preparation that fifty years ago
was not even dreamed of. Since the teacher better deserves respect,
he has commanded it the more readily. Gradually the barbarisms of
the schoolroom have disappeared. As the sympathy with education
increased, the necessity for excessive flogging passed away. To-day
there is a wide variety in opinion as to the efficiency of this mode of
discipline. In one State, New Jersey, corporal punishment in schools
is forbidden by law; but in most of the others it is permitted in
special cases, as a general part of the teacher’s power when _in loco
parentis_. The teacher is now paid a regular salary, but unfortunately
it is the lowest paid in any profession for which formal preparation
is required. In 1896–97 the average monthly wages of teachers was, for
males, $44.62, and for females, $38.38. In comparison with the standard
of life throughout the country, this is poor pay. Superintendent
N. C. Schaeffer, of Pennsylvania, in a recent annual report, states
that “one superintendent found that there were teachers in his county
teaching for four dollars less per year than it cost the county on
an average to keep one pauper.” This is an exceptional case, but it
illustrates the general truth.
[Illustration: WILLIAM T. HARRIS.
(The Perry Pictures, Copyright, 1898, by E. A. Perry, Malden, Mass.)]
One consequence of this low pay has been to accent a tendency which
is fast removing education from the list of those professions in
which men will engage. From 1870–71 to 1896–97 the percentage of male
teachers decreased from 41.0 to 32.6; especially is this true in the
older States. This is in striking contrast with one hundred years ago,
when, except in infant schools, teachers were almost universally of
the male sex. A variety of causes may be given for this change. The
preëminent fitness of women for guiding the child during certain ages
is acknowledged. Again, the decline of the rod and the introduction of
a happy sympathy between teacher and pupil have helped the tendency.
But of all the forces which have contributed to this change, none
has been more potent than the great increase of opportunities for
the higher education of women. At the beginning of the century the
United States was not behind European nations in its provision for the
education of young women. No one thought of making anything like the
same provision for both sexes. Women were refused admission to the
colleges, and were obliged to content themselves with an elementary
education or else meet the expense of private tutorage. Gradually, in
protest against this state of things, girls’ seminaries were opened
and girls’ high schools were established in the large cities. The idea
of a seminary, “which should be to young women what the college is to
young men,” was first given definite shape by Mary Lyon, who collected
funds for that purpose, and in 1837, two hundred years after Harvard,
Mount Holyoke Female Seminary was opened. Its success was complete; it
offered the regular English and classical course, and its graduates
entered generally into the teaching profession. Presently, colleges for
women were incorporated, of which to-day the best known are Vassar,
Wellesley, Smith, and Bryn Mawr. As the demand for the higher education
of women increased, presently it was queried, why may not the two sexes
be trained in the same institution? Is there any real necessity for a
duplication of plants with the consequent weakening of resources? The
West has advanced far beyond the East toward co-education. Oberlin
College, founded in 1833, opened its doors to both sexes from the
first, and most of the institutions that derive their spirit from the
West have followed the same plan. As a result, some of the city systems
are trying co-education in their high schools and elementary grades,
and thus far, while there are many opponents, the general verdict is
favorable.
[Illustration: IDEAL SCHOOLHOUSE AND GROUNDS. (Courtesy of Agricultural
Department, Cornell University.)]
But the women were not content with a general collegiate training or
a normal course that fitted only for teaching. Within recent years
they have entered into the other professions with a keen enthusiasm.
They are allowed, in a few institutions, to take theological courses
fitting for the ministry. The first woman physician was graduated in
1849 from the school at Geneva, N. Y.; since that time special medical
schools for women have been opened and some colleges have decided to
admit women on the same terms as the other sex. In most law schools,
women may be admitted, and in several States there are women practicing
at the bar. While the influence of tradition has been strong, yet there
is to-day no reason why an American woman should not receive as full an
education and as complete a training as her brother.
[Illustration: SUGGESTION FOR PLANTING A SCHOOLGROUND.
(Courtesy of Agricultural Department Cornell University.)]
In considering the changes in school-life, the improvement in buildings
and equipment must not be overlooked. With the appreciation of the
value of education, there has come an attention to the environment of
the pupil that manifests itself in the provision of text-books, in
the erection of larger and better ventilated buildings, and in the
adornment of school grounds. School architecture, especially where
populations are dense, has become an important science, involving
problems of light, heat, ventilation, etc., together with questions
of furniture, fire-proof construction and playgrounds. There was a
time when the most interest was aroused by the exterior, that the
school might be an adornment to its neighborhood. To-day the important
problems of arrangement receive the most attention, and deservedly
so. We give two suggestive pictures of modern schoolhouses. Professor
Liberty H. Bailey of Cornell University, in a pamphlet which has been
extensively circulated, has advocated a judicious arrangement of
shrubbery around a schoolhouse, as space permitted, with a view to the
elimination of all bare and cheerless features from the landscape. This
is especially adapted to country districts. As a comparison, the new
Central High School of Philadelphia is given as one of the best types
of a complete city schoolhouse. It has been erected at a total cost of
over one million dollars.
The furnishing of a school has undergone characteristic development.
The hard bench, upon which our forefathers sat, has in a large measure
disappeared, and in its place has come a variety of desks patterned
with chairs fitted to each curve of the back, etc. Blackboards came
into general use about the middle of the century. In certain studies,
maps, charts, models, etc., seem indispensable, and the modern
schoolroom contains all these. Moreover, as soon as science teaching
had won a place in the curriculum, the cry went up for laboratories,
that a higher grade of work might be done with the more advanced pupil.
It is rather a singular fact that in many places the public high
school led in this demand, rather than the more conservative college.
To-day no high school would count itself able to do its work without
one or more laboratories where each pupil might work for himself. In
the new high school of Philadelphia there are physical, chemical, and
biological laboratories, as well as a completely equipped astronomical
observatory.
Text-books were just coming into use at the close of the eighteenth
century. The “Child’s Guide” was being superseded by such works as Noah
Webster’s Spelling Book, Grammar, and Reader (1792). Within a few years
came Lindley Murray’s “English Grammar,” the work of a Quaker merchant
who wrote his famous text-book primarily for a young ladies’ school
in his immediate neighborhood. The instant success of these books
demonstrated what a need there was for such a class of literature.
The writing and publication of text-books has become one of the most
flourishing industries of the country. On account of hard usage, a
text-book does not last more than a few years, and this gives continual
opportunity for a new book more nearly up to date than its predecessor.
Within recent years, less stress has been laid on the text-book,
and its influence is being minimized. In the elementary schools the
teacher explains the lesson, and in the higher schools the professor
lectures upon his subject. Consequently, the text-book is relatively
less important. This does not mean that less reading is being done,
but it does mean that the reading covers a wider ground. Particularly
is this true where libraries have been established. The public library
system is a most valuable auxiliary to the school system, and is fast
becoming indispensable. This is one of the great advantages which city
pupils have over those whose home is in the country, and it will lead
in the end to district libraries. In some States, as in New York, a
successful effort has been made to inaugurate a system of traveling
libraries, whereby a case of fifty or one hundred volumes, relating to
a particular topic, will be lent for a time to any circle of readers.
Massachusetts has best developed a library system, since there are
but nine towns in the State that have not free libraries. The growth
of the universities has led to the accumulation of great collections
for special research and study. In 1800 there were but eleven college
libraries in America worth mentioning; to-day there are almost five
hundred, of which the largest, Harvard, contains a half million
volumes. Libraries are of use, not only for pupils, but also for adults
as well. They have aided materially in solving the great question of
adult education.
[Illustration: THE NEW HIGH SCHOOL, PHILADELPHIA.]
In the New England towns of the middle part of the century, the lyceum
lecture was exceedingly popular. University extension has recently
come to the front as the latest form of the lyceum system. The idea of
lectures to the people by university teachers came from England, where
it was suggested just after an extension of the suffrage had attached
a new value to the education of adults. Societies for the extension of
university teaching have been formed in Oxford, Cambridge, and London.
Their methods are on the whole identical,—university men are sent to
town or village centres to give a course of lectures upon some general
topic; after each lecture a voluntary class is held where questions may
be asked and answered; at the conclusion of the course an examination
based upon the course and collateral reading is given to those who care
to take it; and sometimes a certificate or testimonial may be given.
The method has been transplanted to America and generally adopted by
the universities, with greatest success, perhaps, in the Middle States,
where the American Society for the Extension of University Teaching has
organized the field. During the period 1890–99, 862 courses of lectures
were given under the auspices of the American Society to audiences
aggregating 952,068. Another movement of equal importance is that
done by the Chatauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, which prepares
lists of books for home reading, with a view to encouraging system
in one’s use of spare time. Perhaps the most interesting public work
for adults is being done in New York city, where a lecture department
has been organized by the Board of Education, by which free lectures
are given in schoolhouses to the people. In 1898, 1866 lectures were
given to 698,200 people, and the president of New York’s School Board
has declared that “these lectures have contributed more than any other
agency to the distribution of general intelligence among the masses.”
These forces have supplemented very well the work that is being done
by the public night schools, which are established in most large
cities, with a view to providing elementary, and sometimes technical,
instruction to those adults who care for it.
[Illustration: DR. WM. H. MAXWELL, SUPERINTENDENT “GREATER NEW YORK”
SCHOOLS.
(Courtesy of The School Journal, New York.)]