American public schools : history and pedagogics

Front matter

AMERICAN

PUBLIC SCHOOLS

HISTORY AND PEDAGOGICS

Preface

This book is intended mainly for the great body of American public school teachers, and, incidentally, for library use in normal schools or in normal departments of other institutions of learning, both public and private.

The prominence now given to American educational history by the pedagogical departments of universities has led to a similar line of study in many state normal schools. Furthermore, these historical studies have been emphasized during the past decade by a long series of able and exhaustive papers on the history of our public school system, published in the annual reports of the United States Commissioner of Education, and in special Bulletins of Information.

But these reports, rich in historical treasures, reach only a small number of the five hundred thousand teachers in our country, and are not available for practical purposes in large classes of normal students. There seems to be room for a hand-book containing a series of studies on the vital points of public school history ; and also an outline of the psychological and pedagogical methods of instruction and management in American public schools. A knowledge of the history of public education in our own country is fast becoming an indispensable part of

PREFACE the educational equipment of every American teacher ; and it is to help along this new movement that the Part of this book has been written.

The Second Part relates to applied pedagogics in the common schools, and treats specifically of modern courses of study in primary and grammar grades ; of school management ; of professional reading and study for teachers ; and of common-sense applied to rural schools. In this part, as in the historical part, the author has made free use of quotations from the latest writings of American educational leaders in order to show the drift of modern pedagogical and psychological thought.

JOHN SWETT.

San FRANCibCo, 1899.

Part I. History of American Public Schools

CHAP. PAGE

I. Colonial Schools 7

II. Early American Schools ....... 34

III. Secondary and Higher Public Education . . . -73

IV. Public Schools after the Civil War 93

V. Common-School Courses of Study . . . . .118

VI. Studies on Common-School Text-Books . . , .130 VII. Educational Outlook for the Twentieth Century, . 164

Part II. Applied Pedagogics in American Public Schools. I, Management in School Government . . . . -173

II. Suggestions on Class-Room Management . . .179

III. Recitations and the Art of Using Text-Books . . ,188

IV. Professional Reading and Study . . . . .199 V. Pedagogics Applied to Reading, Writing, Spelling, and

Drawing, in Modern Graded Schools .... 206

VI. The Art of Teaching Language Lessons and Grammar . 230

VII. Pedagogical Principles applied to Arithmetic . . . 240

6 CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGB

VIII. Psychological Principles in Teaching Elementary History . 259

IX. Natural Methods in Teaching Geography . . . 269

X. The Natural Method in ]SIature Studies . . . .278

XI. Modern Views on Physical Culture . . * . . . 286

XII. Modem Training in Morals and Manners .... 292

XIII. Common-Sense Applied to Rural Schools . . . 303

PART I

Chapter I Colonial Schools

For typical studies we may begin with the four chief centers of early settlements in our country : New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

The Colonists at Plymouth did not open a public school until fifty years after the Pilgrim Fathers set foot on Plymouth Rock. But the little band of one hundred and two men, women, and children that came over in the Mayflower^ at once organized a civil government, and immediately set about paying off their indebtedness to the Plymouth Company by making shipments of fish, furs, and lumber. In thirteen years the freemen of this small settlement owned their homesteads free from debt. For half a century the few children in this colony of slow growth were taught at home or in dame schools to read the catechism and the Bible ; for so much instruction the Pilgrims held to be a religious duty. In due time, when children had increased in numbers, the freeholders of the town of Plymouth set up a "■ Latin Grammar School " of the English type (1670) ; and three years later (1673) they established, after the manner of the Netherlands, where the Pilgrims had sojourned for a time, a public school for teaching the children to read and write their mother

8 H/STORV OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

tongue. For .the public support of this school theyaj)ph'ed the profits of the Cape Cod fisheries.

The Puritans who settled around Massachusetts Bay in 1630 were stronger in numbers and richer in means than the Plymouth Pilgrims. It is estimated that at least 20,000 emigrants came over from England during the period of rapid settlement from 1630 to 1650. The Boston Latin School (1635-36) appears to have been the first public school opened in New England. It was started by subscriptions, was supported in the beginning partly by town appropriations ; afterwards entirely by the town. Sir Henry Vane headed the list of subscribers with a gift of ten pounds sterling.

" There is no notice of a school among the regular entries of Boston records until 1642," says Felt's ** Annals of Salem," '* but on the last leaf of the first volume is a list, dated 1636, of subscribers and their donations towards a school of this kind." This Latin School was exclusively designed to fit boys for college. It was the only public school in Boston for a period of more than thirty years. Harvard College was founded (1637-38) for the chief purpose of training up an educated ministry. One year later (1639), a printing press was set up at Cambridge.

Other towns in New England followed the example of Boston and established " Grammar Schools," chiefly designed to teach Latin grammar, but incidentally including a little instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic. In order of time these schools were set up as follows: Charlestown (1636); Dorchester and Newbury (1639); Salem (1641); New Haven (1639-41); Hartford (1642); Newport, R. 1.(1640); Dedham (1651); Ipswich (1642); Plymouth (1670).

COLONIAL SCHOOLS g

These grammar schools were supported in part by tuition fees and in part by town appropriations. Occasionally they received small grants of land or individual bequests. They were public schools entirely under control of the civil government, though they had strong church affiliations. They were designed to fit boys for college. The girls of this period either attended private schools or grew up without schooling. As the settlers were transplanted Englishmen, their schools, as a matter of course, were modeled upon the plan of the eighteen Latin grammar schools founded in England during the reign of Edward VI. It was not until two centuries after the settlement of New England that Old England took any measures for providing for the elementary instruction of the children of the common people, other than in charity schools in connection with the established church. Consequently the colonists did not inherit the '' common-school idea " from England.

The legal conditions of admission to all these primitive grammar schools read as follows : " No youth shall be sent to the grammar schools unless they shall have learned in some other way to read the English language by spelling the same." Consequently, for many years, children were taught to read at home, or in private schools, or dame schools, or were allowed to grow up illiterate. In due course of time most of these early grammar schools became free public schools supported by taxation, and, 150 years later, girls gained admission to them. Cotton Mather in his " Magnalia," says : " When scholars had so far profited at the grammar schools that they could read any classical author into English and readily make and speak true Latin, and write it in verse as well as in prose, and perfectly decline the paradigms of nouns and verbs in the lO HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Greek tongue, they were judged capable of admission to Harvard College."

RECORDS OF GRAMMAR SCHOOLS.

The student of educational history must not be misled by the colonial use of the terms, " free school," '' Latin school," " grammar school," and '' public school." They were all used, at times, to designate public schools supported in part by tuition fees, and were also applied to schools under church control. It is claimed, for instance, that the first '* free school " in America was established in 1621, by the Rev. Patrick Copeland, in Charles City, Virginia. This was evidently a parish school, supported by subscriptions.

Town of Dedham. — It was ordered in town meeting (165 1) ''that all such inhabitants in our town as have male children or servants in their families shall for each pay to the schoolmaster for the time being the sum of five shillings per annum ; and (2) that whatever these sums shall fall short of the sum of twenty pounds shall be raised by by way of rateing upon estates according to the usual manner."

The Dorchester School. — The history of the town of Dorchester (now a part of the city of Boston) is of special interest, as it contains a record of one of the earliest of town meetings in New England.

Town Records. — " Monday, Oct. 8, 1633. Imprimis. It is ordered that for the general good and well ordering of the affairs of the plantation, there shall be every Monday before the Court, by 8 o'clock A. M., and presently by the beating of the drum, a general meeting of the inhabitants of the plantation at the meeting-house, there to settle and set down such orders as may tend to the general good aforesaid, and every man to be bound thereby, without gainsaying or resistance,"

COLONIAL SCHOOLS IX

Other towns followed this example, and in 1636, three years later, the General Court of the Bay Colony passed an act regulating town government and establishing the town meeting as an institution of local civil government. The town meeting laid the foundation for the town school.

In 1635 the General Court of the Bay Colony granted to the inhabitants of Dorchester certain lands on " Thompson's Island/' and in 1639 the town meeting voted to levy a tax on the proprietors of said island for " the maintenance of a school in Dorchester." This was a grammar school for boys, and was supported in part by tuition fees. So far as public records show, this seems to have been the first direct tax voted in New England for the partial support of a public school.

School Committee. — In 1645 the Dorchester town meeting elected a special school committee of three, termed " wardens or overseers of the schools," and adopted *' rules and orders concerning the school," in part, as follows :

" 2ly. That from the beginning of the first moneth untill the end of the 7th, hee shall every day begin to teach at seaven of the Clock in the morning and dismisse his schollers at five in the afternoon, and for the other five months he shall every day begin at 8 of the Clock in the morning and end at 4 in the afternoon."

" 5ly. Hee shall equally and impartially receiue and instruct such as shalbe sent and Committed to him for that end, whither there parents bee poore or rich, not refusing any who have Right & Interest in the Schools."

" 61y. Such as shall be Committed to him he shall diligently instruct, as they shalbe able to learne, both in humane learning and good literature, & likewyse in Poynt of good manners and dutifuU behauior towards all, specially there superiors as they shall haue occasion to bee in there presence, whither by meeting them in the streete or otherwyse."

" 7ly. Euery 6 day in the weeke at 2 of the Clock in the after noone, hee shall Catechise his SchoUers in the principles of Christian religion, either in some Catechism wch the Wardens shall provide and present, or in defect thereof in some other."

Schools in Boston.— In 1682, half a century after the settlement of the town, it was ordered in town meeting : '' That a committee with the selectmen consider and provide for the teaching of children to write and cipher within this town." Accordingly, grammar schools were soon opened, with one department for teaching '' writing and ciphering," and another department for teaching *' reading and spelling." These unique schools, English in type, are explained by George H. Martin in his " Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School System," as follows : '* These grammar schools were double-headed affairs, divided into a writing department and a reading department, and with a master and an assistant, the two masters having original and concurrent jurisdiction over the pupils. In the writing schools, arithmetic and penmanship were taught to all, while algebra, geometry, and bookkeeping were optional. In the reading schools, reading and spelling, with definitions, grammar, and geography were req^tired studies, with history, astronomy, and natural philosophy optional. The pupils spent the morning in one school and the afternoon in the other."

These grammar schools of 1682, however, were open to boys only. It was not until 1789, a century later, that girls were allowed to enter them, and then only from April to October in each year, and only at hours when the boys were not in attendance.

It was not until 181 8 that Boston opened primary schools for teaching both boys and girls to read and write the English language. The town of Northampton voted in 1792 to admit girls into the grammar schools from May 1st to October 31st.

In this connection it is worth noting that in 1696 the Scottish Parliament enacted a law which established a school in every parish and provided for its support partly by parish tax and partly by rate bills. The way had been opened for this law by the work of John Knox, more than a century before, in establishing parish schools in connection with the Scotch Kirk.

Town of Salem. — This town, one of the first settlements in the Bay Colony (1629), ranked for a long period next to Boston in wealth and commerce. It held to English customs and educational ideas with peculiar tenacity. It established a British "Latin grammar school" in 1641 ; but made no public provision for teaching girls to read and write the English language until a hundred and fifty years later, and did not place girls on an equal footing with boys until 18 12, one hundred and seventy-one years after the first Latin school was founded. It is historically interesting as the center of the witchcraft delusion in New England. Its school records, complete from the beginning, afford the pedagogical student a striking illustration of the slow evolution of the common school idea. These town records are made available by Felt's *' Annals of Salem" (1845). In the first volume of this book there are eighty pages of pubhc school history, made up largely of quotations from town records. The following extracts mark a few of the successive stages of school development.

Records.- " 1641. March 30. Co]. Endecot moved about the ffences and about a ffree skoole and therefore wished a whole towne meeting about it ; therefore, that Goodman Auger warne a towne meeting the second day of the weeke." The town meeting established a Latin Grammar School (1641) in accordance with the call.

1644. "Ordered that if any poore body hath children or a child to be put to school and not able to pay for their schooling, that the towne will pay for it by rate." This " free skoole " was a Latin grammar school, free only to those too poor to pay for instruction. " Such was the practice to a limited degree in the metropolis " (Boston), says the historian of Salem, " and, to a considerable degree, in other places of the Commonwealth. This continued, more or less so, among our population till 1768."

1657. " A bill came to hand to make a rate for the Coledge [Harvard]

LS 6s."

1680, Apr. 5. "Concerning the Colledge money. For building : amount raised by subscription ;^ 130-2-3."

1716. "John Swinnerton began, 25th ult. to keep the English school by the town house." [First mention of an English grammar school].

1733, Jan. 4. " The Grammar School had 36, and the English school 30 scholars."

1743, May II. "Voted that the Latin and English schools be united under a master and usher. Each Latin scholar paid 5s a quarter, and each English scholar 2s. 6d. a quarter."

1764, May 16. Order for ^10, " to pay for learning the poorest children to read at women's schools " [dame schools].

1767, March 9. Committee of the English school are empowered to spend the same sum for a like purpose.

1793, March 11. School committee authorized to provide for the tuition of girls in writing schools or elsewhere, " in reading, writing, and ciphering."

1796, July 19. Statement that schools for young girls had been opened. [Primary schools. J

1801, April 13. "Notice is published, that writing, arithmetic, English grammar, composition, and geography are to be taught in the grammar school, besides Latin and Greek."

1 801, May 2. Notice is published that three public schools for children of both sexes, and not less than live years old, are opened. [Primary sciiools.]

RURAL " COMMON SCHOOLS " IN NEW ENGLAND.

It was outside of Boston and its surrounding group of ^' grammar school " towns, in the outlying rural settlements of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, that conditions were most favorable to the development of the colonial " common school." These pioneer settlers were a homogeneous people from the Puritan counties of England. They had no paternal government and no chartered companies to care for them ; but they were well fitted to look out for themselves. The earnestness of their religious convictions held them up to high standards. They had no bitter contentions arising from differences in race, language, or religion ; consequently, it was possible for them to act together in establishing town government and common schools. Like the Pilgrims, they were determined that their children should be able to read the Bible, the catechism, and the laws.

Driven by the " land hunger " characteristic of English pioneers, small groups of settlers pushed out into the forest wilderness of New England, and, in the face of Indians, secured home-farms, erected meeting-houses, and built schoolhouses. Presently the people, assembled in town meeting, elected a teacher, and started a school, supported in part from a scanty town treasury and in part eked out by voluntary subscriptions or tuition fees. The children were instructed in reading, spelling, writing, arithmetic, and good manners. The school was open to boys and girls on equal terms. The co-education of the sexes was not a theory ; it was a condition of necessity. Pupils entered school at five years of age, and were allowed to attend up to the age of twenty-one. In these rural schools the main purpose was to teach the English Ianl6 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

guage, not the Latin. Rude and primitive schools they were, as befitted the pioneer conditions of a people fighting for survival among Indians, and wringing a scantysubsistence from a stubborn soil under a harsh sky.

These schools have an accurately recorded history written in town records of civil government. They were organized directly by the common people for the free public education of all children, without distinction of class, or caste, or sex. Of free charity schools for teaching the children of the poor, the history of the world is full. Of schools established for the higher classes by centralized paternal governments, there are numerous examples. But these rural schools were not copies of European schools. They were planned neither by educational theorists nor by speculative metaphysicians. Plato had taught, centuries ago, that in a commonwealth the working classes had no need of any education whatever. These Puritan farmers and mechanics had never read Plato in the original Greek ; but they had faith in God and themselves, and guided by hard common-sense, they saw to it that their children learned to read and write their mother tongue, and to cipher. Their schools were rightly named *' common schools," because they brought together all the children of each little democratic community, on one common level of equal legal rights to an elementary education in the English language.

Many favorable conditions were combined to lead up to the organization of these schools. For defense against attacks of Indians the early settlers were grouped in villacres surrounded bv stockades. There was no established Church of England to monopolize education. Each little Congregationalist church was an independent organization, governed by its own members. For more than a century i the ministers as well as the teachers in rural towns were elected in town meeting. Consequently the ministers were strong in their support of free schools.

" These were the first lawgivers," said James Russell Lowell, "who saw clearly and enforced practically, the simple, moral, and political truth, that knowledge was not an alms to be dependent on the chance charity of private men, or the precarious pittance of a trust-fund, but a sacred debt which the commonwealth owed to every one of her children. The opening of the first grammar school was the opening of the first trench against monopoly in Church and State ; the first row of trammels and pothooks which the little Shearjashubs and Elkanahs blotted and blubbered across their copy-books, was the preamble to the Declaration of Independence."

" The arts, sciences, and literature of England," said Daniel Webster, " came over with these settlers. That great portion of the common law which regulates the social and personal relations and conduct of men, came over also. The jury came ; the habeas corptis came ; the testamentary power came ; and the law of inheritance and descent came also. But the monarchy did not come, nor the aristocracy, nor the church, as an estate of the realm. Political institutions were to be framed anew, such as should be adapted to the state of things."

It may be added to the preceding statements that the Pilgrims at Plymouth as soon as they organized civil government adopted the written ballot and the law which prevailed in Holland, but not in England, requiring a public record of land titles, deeds, and mortgages, as a protection against fraud, and for facilitating the transaction of business. The same rule was followed a little later by the Puritans of the Bay Colony. The Dutch settlers in New Netherlands adopted similar laws, which they brought with them from the republic of Holland.

The published records and special histories of several hundred towns in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Maine are now to be found in the state, city, and town libraries of New England. To the student of l8 HISTOR Y OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

educational history they furnish an account of the beginnings of the free American rural common school, — the most democratic institution known on the face of the earth, — a school under the control of the civil power, free to boys and girls alike, supported by a direct property tax voted by the people assembled in town meeting. The limits of this chapter will not admit of many extracts from original town records in proof of the preceding statements, but a few quotations will make luminous the origin of common schools.

HISTORICAL RECORDS OF COMMON SCHOOLS.

Town of Hampton (N. H.). — " On the 2 of the 2 mo., 1649. The selectmen of this Towne of Hampton have agreed with John Legat for this present yeare insueing — To teach and instruct all the children of or belonging to our Towne both fnayle a7idfeniaile (wch are capiable of learning) to write and read and cast accountes (if it be desired) as dilegently and as carefully as he is able to teach and instruct them ; And so dilegently to follow the said imploymentt at all such time and times this yeare insueing, as the wether shall be fitting for the youth to com together to one place to be instructed ; And also to teach and instruct them once in a week, or more, in some Arthodox catechise provided for them by their parents or masters. — And in consideration hereof we have agreed to pay or cause to be payd unto the said John Legat the som of Twenty pounds, in corne and cattle and butter att price current, as payments are made of such goods in this Towne, and this to be payd by us quarterly, paying ^5 every quarter of the yeare after he has begun to keep school.^ " This record was made ten years after the settlement of the town (1639). In 1670 the town record runs as follows : " That the Schoolemaster's Rate for this year shall bee Raised by Estates of the Inhabitants as other Towne Rates are." Hampton Academy was incorporated in 18 10.

Town of Plymouth (Mass.). — 1673. Ordered in town meeting " that the charge of the free scools which is three and thirty pounds a year shall be defrayed out of the profits arising by the fishing at the Cape."

1 Dow's " History of Hampton " (1893), Vol. I.

COLONIAL SCHOOLS lo

Town of Sanbornton (N. H.). — This town, settled in 1764, voted in 1774 " to hire a school teacher part of this year and raise $30 for that purpose." Capt. Eben Sanborn, the teacher, was paid $5.00 a month. He taught in a barn, and many of his pupils used birch bark as writing paper.

Town of Pittsfield (N. H.).— This town was settled in 1768, largely by emigrants from the* town of Hampton. The following extracts from the manuscript records show that the custom of electing the teacher in town meeting had been kept up in parts of New England for more than a century. This record also illustrates the manner of electing ministers, which was common in parts of New England for more than a century. It further shows the natural development of the academy.

"1782. — Voted. To hire Jonathan Brown to teach a school for six months at nine dollars a month."

" Voted. To build a meeting-house of the same bigness of Hampton Falls meeting-house, except the posts to be one foot shorter."

" Voted. To raise some money this year for preaching, to be paid in corn, grain, and other produce."

1789. — Voted, Mr. Christopher Paige a salary of sixty-six pounds yearly, the one-third part in cash, and one-third part in corn at three shillings per bushel, and a third part in good beef at twenty shillings per hundred, during his ministry in said town."i

Forty years after the preceding record the farmers of this small town of less than a thousand inhabitants contributed labor, lumber, and money ; erected a building ; and established an undenominational academy. This institution had no endowments, no apparatus, and no library. The successive preceptors of the school were young graduates of Dartmouth College, who were study-

^ Original unpublished records of the town of Pittsfield.

ing law, medicine, or theology. But this almost unknown academy, typical of many others, made a good record. It sent many students to college. Of its farmer-boy students, one became a United States senator from his native state ; another a judge of the Supreme Court ; a third, a judge in the Supreme Court of Minnesota. A large number studied law, many became teachers, and still more became successful business men in the various pursuits of life. More than half of the young men moved West, and a few reached California. Half a century after its foundation the academy was transformed into a town high school.

Dame Schools, — These schools, both in England and New England were small private schools set up by women, generally in their own homes, for teaching young children to read in the primer or catechism. In most of the grammar-school towns the dame schools, for a century or more, fitted the boys for admission to the Latin schools, that is to say, taught them *' to read the English language by spelling the same." It was in such schools , that the little girls learned to read ; but girls were not allowed in the sacred precincts of the grammar school until about the beginning of the nineteenth century. In the course of time, some of the towns began to aid these private dame schools by small subsidies as an encouragement to continue their good work. Next, one town after another began to employ teachers at a regular salary. This innovation was the beginning of the modern primary school.

The town of Woburn (1641) agreed to pay Mrs. Walker ten shillings for the first year. In 1673 the town records show that two " dame teachers " were paid a total sum of ten shillings, or five shillings each, for the year, But these '* dame teachers " undoubtedly collected the conventional tuition-fee for supplementary support.

Town of Springfield (Mass.) — 1682. "The Selectmen agreed with Goodwife Mirick, to encourage her in the good work of training up of children and teaching children to read, that she should have 3d. a week for every child that she takes to perform this good work for."

Town of Hadley (Mass.). — 1749, March 13. It was voted that the committee should " hire three School Dames for three or four months in the Summer season to learn children to read." In 1752 it was voted that " 30 pounds be improved to hire a scool master all the fall of the year ; and that the other 30 pounds be improved to hire Scoole Dames in the Summer."