Public secondary education

Front matter

Class -- i^__K ?::^0'l Book

CDFXRIGHT DEPOSIT

By CALVIN CLIN DAVIS

Chapter I

WHEN in 1629 and 1630 the Piiritan fathers began the colonization of the Massachusetts coast, they set up here the practices and the institutions of the old home, modifying them only so much as was necessary to make them conform to the ideals and exigencies demanded by the new life in America. Thus at the outset in Massachusetts Bay Colony the settlers sought privately to give their children the rudiments of the English language and the elements of writing and ciphering; simiiltaneously they set up, publicly, a school of higher learning — the town Latin or grammar school.

As the name implies, the school aimed to give youths a training in Latin grammar and literature, and thus fit them for college. But its ultimate fimction was to equip them for public service in either church positions or civil and political offices. Such a school was established in Boston in 1635, five years after its settlement — probably the first school of secondary education in America.^

It is true the Virginia Company and the West India Company had each made provisions for founding schools in America at a date somewhat earlier than 163 5, but there seems to be no evidence that any of these projected plans were ever carried into execution. It is quite certain, too, that as early as 1633 there was a school established in New

1 Brown, The Making of Our Middle Schools, p. 34.

2 I

Amsterdam.^ This, however, was not a real public school, nor did it aim to give secondary education. It was purely a private undertaking and a school of an elementary character.

From the Massachusetts Colony then, and from Boston in particular, dates the foundation of the American public schools of secondary education. The Boston Latin School was styled a "free school," but it was established and supported at the outset not by the whole body of legal voters, but by the mutual agreement and the voluntary contributions of the "richer inhabitants" of the town. Precisely what was meant, therefore, by the expression "free school" has been a question of much dispute. It is certain that the words did not, in colonial times, denote a school free from all tuition fees. Indeed, such fees were always exacted from every pupil, save, perchance, from the children of the very poorest families. Nor did "free school" signify a school maintained wholly or partially by public taxation, inasmuch as, at the outset at least, schools were not thus supported. Whatever be the exact import of the words, it suffices for oiu" purpose to bear in mind that a "free school" in colonial days was always a school of secondary grade. That is to say, it was a Latin or grammar school. -It is also well here to point out that secondary schools went imder various names almost down to our own day. Besides grammar schools and free schools they were not infrequently referred to as public schools, classical schools, Latin-grammar schools, or merely Latin schools — all these expressions being, so far as discoverable, only provincialisms or localisms, and therefore practically synonymous. Before the close of the seventeenth century nearly all the colonies possessed Latin schools; but, save

1 Dexter, History of Education in the United States, p. I3- in New England, these were, almost without exception, private undertakings privately supported. In New England this was not the case. In 1636 Harvard University was founded. In 1642 the General Court established a precedent by enacting a general school law which, though of little force at the time, became later of great historical significance.^ In 1647 the earlier law was strengthened by changing the permissive features into mandatory provisions. Instead of leaving education in the hands of local selectmen, the law of 1647 explicitly required every town of fifty families to maintain an elementary school, and likewise every town of one hundred families to support a Latin or grammar school. The' private or dame schools prepared for the Latin school; the Latin school prepared for the university; the university prepared for social leadership and social service. — Here then was the beginning in America of, a school system that recognized three grades of instruction and three types of educational institutions. These are (i) the elementary or primary school; (2) the secondary or college preparatory school; (3) the university or college. The first dealt with the school arts and the tools of education; the second dealt almost wholly with Latin, with slight attention to Greek, mathematics, and English; the last, theoretically at least, presented the sum total of higher learning. Massachusetts thus became the mother of the American school system. Her laws and institutions were adopted, with more or less change, by most of the other colonies. Wherever she led, other colonies followed. Whenever she halted, other colonies lagged behind. Thus matters stood well beyond Revolutionary days. We shall in subsequent pages return to

1 For the general history of education in Massachusetts see Martin's Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School System.

this phase of otir study. Meanwhile a more analytical investigation of the colonial secondary schools will be desirable.

Historically considered, the story of secondary education in America falls into three more or less clearly recognized divisions. First is the Colonial Period, with its Latin or gramjiiar school; second, the Middle Period, extending from Revolutionary days down to the time of the Civil War, in which period the characteristic secondary school was the academy; and, third, the Contemporary Period, or period since the Ci\dl War, with the public high school as the typical school of secondary scope. The first period imitates closely the institutions, ways, and ideas of Europe; the last period is typically American; while the intervening period of a hundred years exhibits the characteristics of both the other periods, being largely imitative in the earlier years and gradually developing an independence and an originality of its own in later times.

From the very first, as Dr. Brown conceives the situation, there were thus two opposing influences affecting the higher life of the people of America. These influences were a tendency to and spirit of imitation and an equally strong tendency to and spirit of protest.^ Everywhere in the institutional life of early America are seen the effects of these mingling forces, but perhaps in no field are they more noticeable than in the field of education and of educational practices. The evidence goes to show that the social ideals and the educational practices of all v/estem Europe exerted considerable indirect influence on the American colonists, but that the great direct stream of formative power flowed in from England, Holland, Scotland, and Germany. All contributed largely to the ideals and organization of American elementary schools,

The Colonial Latin Scliool 5

but the great prototypes of the early American secondary school were the English Latin or grammar schools.^ And yet the Calvinistic influences common in England at the time, and more especially among the Puritans who migrated to America, served here to modify the older types from the outset. Hence from their very birth the American Latin schools conformed more closely to the social needs — or to the ideals conceived to be social needs — of the new settlements, than to the social demands of old England.

There is no doubt, too, that the extensive system of schools established by the Jesuits in Europe and elsewhere had an indirect influence on American schools, but since the territory from Maine to Florida was settled chiefly by Protestants, and largely by English Protestants, and since, too, Catholicism — and consequently the . Jesuits — was debarred from England for many years, the direct influence of the Jesuit schools was indeed small or even nil.

In consequence of this natural but excessive English influence, the first schools that sprang up in New England took, as we have seen above, a form that was typical at home. The Boston Latin School was first styled a "free school," but was voted and supported not by the town as a whole but by the "richer inhabitants thereof."^ It was thus a purely cooperative undertaking, — the members volimtarily agreeing to meet the expense of the school by voltmtary contributions. Evidence seems to point, however, to the belief that children of

1 An excellent account of the early schools of England is found in Leach's English Schools of ike Reformation. For later schools see de Montmorency's Progress of Education in England. For the present-day conditions see Balfour's Educational Systems in Great Britain and Ireland.

2 Clews, Educational Legislation and Administration, p. 6i. For accounts of the schools of Boston see Quincy's Municipal History of Boston; Jenk's Boston Latin School; early catalogues of the Boston Latin School; Bush's Early Education in New England; Boone's Education in the United States, and other similar writings.

non-contributors who were not of the "richer" class were also admitted to this school. Indeed, this may be the true significance of the expression "free school," though there is no proof of the theory. Within six years, however, it is certain that the school had become a recognized town school, for we read that in 1641 the town voted to devote to the partial support of this school all the revenues accruing from the rental of lands on Deer Island. Here then was another important step in the history of education in America, — a step no less significant than the decision to establish the school in the first place. This act of the town meeting not only established a precedent for Boston, but also for the whole of Massachusetts and America. It set up the principle that schools are contributory to the social and political welfare of the whole people, and that the establishment and support of schools is, therefore, a legitimate function of government.

During the succeeding ten years Boston voted grants of considerable portions of land, and in 1660 these local town efforts were supplemented by a grant of a thousand acres of land made by the General Court of Massachusetts Colony for the support of schools in Boston. Though this grant was not the first made by the General Court (it had in 1659 voted a like amount of land to each of the three towns of Dorchester, Charlestown, and Cambridge), it served to strengthen the precedent and to fix permanently in our governmental policy the idea that local effort of great social importance may be supported and supplemented by funds from the central treasury. What a mighty role the custom thus inaugurated has played in the history of education in the United States ! What vast tracts of land has the Federal Government dedicated to schools of all kinds during the century and a quarter! In many parts of America the elementary schools, the colleges, and the agricultural and technical schools owe their very existence to the generosity of the central government in appropriating lands for their foundation. The Massachusetts law of 1659 had consequences more far-reaching than the uttermost stretch of the imagination of the time could have comprehended. At the time, too, these early central appropriations must have come as welcome benefactions to the struggling little towns whose treasuries were being drawn upon for so many other needs. It is not, however, until 1679^ that the Boston records make mention of any specific tax being levied by the town upon the town's inhabitants for school purposes, though it is possible such tax was raised at a considerably earlier date.

In the meantime in other portions of Massachusetts Bay Colony other grammar schools were being established. Within the short period of sixteen years after the first extensive settlements in Massachusetts in 1629 eight Latin schools were founded. These were: Boston, in 1635; Charlestown, in 1636; Ipswich, in 1636; Salem, in 1637; Dorchester, in 1639; Newbury, in 1639; Cambridge, in 1643 ; 3J^d Roxbiiry, in 1645.^ Each of these was a school of secondary education, and the aims, scope, and instruction given in all were almost precisely the same as those of the Boston school.

On the other hand, the organization, administration, and support of these schools varied slightly with each town in accordance and harmony with the good old Anglo-Saxon doctrine of local self-government. Indeed, throughout the whole history of Massachusetts, even to the present day, the custom has prevailed of allowing local or individual initiative at the outset to take its own

1 Dexter, op. cit., p. 26.

2 Brown, op. cit., pp. 34-42.

course in the administration and execution of political or civic functions. Then, after this "cut and try" method has produced a fairly acceptable procedure, and other towns and communities, likewise experimenting, have developed a kindred method or standard, the state has stepped in and legitimatized the practices by incorporating into a permissive law the common and salient featiires of all the local regulations. The provisions of this act have later been extended, optionally, to other towns of similar rank and, finally, when the great majority of the towns have adopted the permissive legislation, the state has closed the gaps by making the law mandatory on aU alike. This has been the general course of the history of education throughout Massachusetts; and, since many of the other states of the Union have copied their school systems and legislation from this Commonwealth, it is the common practice in vogue throughout a large portion of the United States.^ In fact, the procedure may not unjustly be regarded as the distinctive feature of Anglo-Saxon governmental practice.

So at the outset of our colonial history each town regulated its school matters as it saw fit, without regard to what other towns were doing — save that in particular matters there was a more or less conscious imitation of the practices thought to be working well in other commimities. Sometimes the peculiar local conditions or temporary needs led to the employment of new and hitherto imtried methods. In the earliest days school matters, as well as all other town affairs, were discussed and provided for by the whole body of enfranchised citizens of the town, gathered together in town meeting. Then when the town's growth made the town meeting

1 For a complete elaboration of the view set forth above — 'especially as the j)ractice has affected educational history in Massachusetts — see that most readable little book, Martin's Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School System.

The Colonial Latin School g

unwieldy and inconvenient, and the town's affairs were largely turned over to selectmen, school functions were in most places left to this new body. Executive duties, such as employing the teacher and overseeing the school's needs and the school's work, led soon to the appointment, from among the selectmen, of temporary committees charged with these specified functions. Inasmuch, however, as these or similar duties recurred annually or oftener, the situation gave rise to permanent school committees. Ordinarily, it seems, these were chosen from among the selectmen themselves, but sometimes they were selected from the non-office-holding class. Particularly was this the case in respect to school visitation and inspection — this function, until early in the nineteenth century, being performed either solely by the Christian ministers of the community or conjointly by them and one or more of the selectmen or the school committee.

In some few towns at an early date special officers other than the selectmen or committee of the selectmen were chosen to take complete charge of the schools. Dorchester, Massachusetts, probably enjoys the distinction of being the first town in this country to provide such a body. In 1645 this town voted in town meeting "that three able and sufficient men of the Plantation shall be chosen to be wardens or overseers of the school, who shall have the charge, oversight, and ordering thereof and of all things concerning the same."^ Dorchester also claims the honor (with how much justice documentary evidence is not able to decide) of being the first mimicipality in the world to support a public school "by direct taxation or assessment on the inhabitants of the tovm."^

1 Town records. See Brown, op. cit., p. 39.

2 Brown, ihid., quotes this from the "Dorchester celebration," then adds: "A competent public commission appointed some years ago in Massachusetts to set at rest the question where the first free public school came into being, was unable to arrive at any final answer, for lack of clear documentary evidence."

lo Public Secondary Education

At best, the accuracy or inaccuracy of the boast is of little value or importance, save as a source of satisfaction to local pride. The important point to note is that from the very first settlement of towns in New England, attention was given to founding and maintaining schools — many of them of secondary grade and all of them directly or indirectly supported by the town or the "better part" thereof.

As above indicated, no two of these schools were organized, administered, or supported in precisely the same way. In some towns, even as late as the eighteenth century, school questions were decided in town meetings by the qualified voters of the town. In others the selectmen, collectively, controlled. In still others we find committees of the selectmen or, as in Dorchester, special school committees who had complete supervision of all school matters.

Likewise, too, in respect to the means of maintaining the schools, there was a variety of sources of revenue. Tuition fees from all who attended, save from the very poorest children, were common in every town. Rentals from public properties and payments for public monopolies were also not infrequent or insignificant sources of school funds. Among these were revenues from lands, weirs, fisheries, and markets — all specifically dedicated to the support of education. In addition, many gifts, bequests, and endowments helped often to swell the funds, and after 1659 occasional grants from the colonial treasury were made.

It is thus seen that from the earliest days the Puritan settlers fostered a spirit and interest in education which have been of vital importance in the history of our country. Strange as it may seem, this interest was not directed primarily to public elementary schools and

The Colonial Latin School ii

education so much as it was to public secondary schools. It was the Latin school that was first founded in Boston in 1635. It was the Latin school that first arose in Charlestown, Dorchester, Roxbury, and the other New England towns. Nor are the explanations of this fact difficult to find. They are discoverable partly in the general traditions of education and educational institutions; partly in the customs immediately current, in England at the time of the migrations to America; and partly in the character of the settlers themselves.

In all times and among all peoples, education and literary instruction have been very closely bound up with religious and ecclesiastical matters.^ Among primitive men the shaman, or familiar, acted not only as priest of the tribe but as the teacher of the youth. He it was who, knowing the mysteries of life, was able to transmit them to the adolescent boys. So, too, among the Orientals, the Greeks, and the Romans, education took its rise as a fimction of the priesthood. With the development of Christianity and the spread of churches, the cathedral and the monastic schools throughout Christendom came to be dominated almost solely by the ecclesiastical authorities. Schools were, therefore, erected and maintained almost completely to the end that reHgion might be perpetuated, the powers of the Church enhanced, and pious and godly men and women reared. The guide to the religious life, it was conceived, was the Scriptures, and since these for a thousand years had been locked up in the Latin language, the study of the Latin language and literature became paramount. Following the enthusiastic revival of study in the Renaissance and Himianistic movements of the fifteenth and sixteenth

1 This statement and the following are based on the more common views of the various histories of education, such as Brown's, Monroe's, Davidson's, and Laurie's.

centuries there was added to the Latin a study of the Greek and the Hebrew tongues. The end and aim of literary study was the knowledge of Holy Writ. The means to this knowledge were the Latin schools. Consequently educational traditions and educational practices alike tended to promote this type of school in America.

Finally the very genius and spirit of the early colonists led them to cherish education for noble ends. Man^ of the settlers of Massachusetts were well educated gentlemen for whom the highest ideals of life were a free Church and a free State in which pious, godly, and learned men were to play equal and active parts. They had come to America to seek to realize those ideals, and the first and foremost means to the end sought was the public school — that is to say, the Latin or grammar school which should fit the youth for college. The ideal evidently was that every boy in the colony should receive a college education. Everywhere among the early political and religious doctmients of these Puritans one finds reference to the religious, civil, and moral aims that lay at the basis of all activity and all institutional life. For example, in the annals of Roxbury of 1645 one reads: "Whereas the inhabitants of Roxbury, in consideration of their religious care of posterity, have taken into consideration how necessary the education of their children in Literature will be to fit them for public service, both in Church and Commonwealth, in succeeding years. They therefore unanimously have consented and agreed to erect a free school in the said town of Roxbury."^ Again and again in the New England town docimients do we find repeated the thought that life is best lived when it is devoted to the

1 Annals of Roxbury, quoted by Brown, op. cil., p. 40. See also Dillav/ay's History of the Grammar School in Roxbury; and Parker's Skaich of Ike History of the Grammar School in Roxbury.

Church and the Commonwealth, and that the best preparation for such a life is the training given by the Latin school and college.

Thus motives of rehgious and public service dominated the entire life of the times, and in so doing set the ideals for the schools. The theoretical and ultimate aims and ideals were, therefore, for the most part general and primary; but the immediate and practical ends were not wholly lacking. For example, the law of 1642 provided that the various towns and their selectmen should, among other duties, see that there was furnished "learning and labor and other emplo}n.Tients which may be profitable to the Commonwealth." So, too, in 1645, the General Court decreed that boys from ten to sixteen years of age should be trained in the "art and practice of arms" — the instruction to be given "by some one of the officers of the band."^ Kindred, too, to the religious and civil motives for education was foimd the philanthropic and missionary motive. Schools were to be open free of charge to the poor children of the town, and express provision was also made, in some of the annals, for the gratuitous instruction of Indian youths.

It is thus to be observed that the leading motive back of all efforts to establish schools was, in the early colonial times, the religious motive. It determined largely the aim, scope, and administration of all educational imdertakings. Closely allied with it, however, were the civic and the philanthropic ideals. Though the Renaissance and the Reformation had swept over Europe more than a hundred years earlier, there was still left in Christendom much of the old spirit of medievalism. Asceticism; rigidity of morals and manners; unquestioning faith within the somewhat enlarged, yet still narrow, limits

1 Clews, op. cil., p. 60.

which an individualism partially enthroned had set; the conceptions of the words "God" and "the Bible" as the most awful that the mind possessed; the view which placed the real goal of life beyond the grave; the contempt for the physical, the natural, the aesthetic, because of the belief that these are evil or at least invite to evil; — all these were characteristics of the foiu"teenth century, but they are also characteristics that were more or less prominent in New England in the early years of the seventeenth century. To the people of that day, to live at all was a most serious and awful affair; to live a godly life, unselfishly to serve one's fellow men through the state, was the height and depth of human perfection and the noblest pursuit the individual could follow.

Hence the Christian minister took social rank above all others. His ideals became the ideals of the town; his advice became the accepted creed of his flock. From his exalted station he was regarded as ex officio a member of every public organization and every administrative body. Consequently his power was enormous, and he exerted it with a feeling that he was divinely directed. The schools therefore were shaped to approximate a youth to the ministerial ideal. The aim was, therefore, at least nominally democratic, in that it was hoped and expected that every boy would receive a thorough education, — that he would become past-master of Latin, and perchance have a good command of Greek and Hebrew.

Nor does the ambition appear so strange when one recalls that, at the very time the Piuitans were settling in America, ecclesiastical and civil authority and lay influence in Europe were strenuously seeking to preserve Latin intact as the universal language. It was at this time that Comenius brought forth his Janua linguarum reserata and promised that his method would not only enable one in a brief period to conquer fully the Latin language, but would give a complete and full comprehension of all the knowledge of the world. The optimism and egoism of the teachers and the educational reformers of the age knew no limits; nor is it strange that this peculiar infection respecting the powers of the schools, and of Latin within the schools, should have extended to America. The Latin school was indeed regarded as the very servant of the Lord.

Exactly what was the program of studies in these early schools is not determinable. Certain it is, however, that the ideals were to teach only Latin and Greek and Hebrew, and to inculcate precepts and habits of morals, manners, and religion. If other and more elementary subjects were admitted, it was to make them serve as a foundation for the advanced subjects; they had no merit or worth in their own right or name. Theology was the noblest branch of learning; the classics were the way thereto.

Dr. Brown thinks that the most representative of all the English grammar schools, and therefore the one that best furnishes the ideal of our colonial Latin schools, was that founded by Dean Colet about 1508,^ and known as St. Paul's School, London.^ Certain it is that there was great similarity among all the grammar schools, so that a study of one of them ought to give a fairly accurate notion of all. Moreover, the first master of St. Paul's was William Lilly, the author of the famous Latin grammar that became the standard authority in the schools of England and America. It is therefore very probable that the work in the early colonial schools differed little

1 It is doubtful whether this school was established in 1508, 1509, 1510, or 1512. See Knight's Life of Colet, pp. 102-109.

from that of St. Paul's. Respecting the requirements of admission to this school one reads: "If your childe can rede and wryte latyn and Englisshe sufficiently soo that he be able to rede and wryte his owne lessons, then he shal be admytted unto the scole for a scholar." "If your childe after reasonable season proved be founde here tmapte and tmable to lemynge, than ye warned thereof shal take hym awaye, that he occupye not here rowme in vayne." "If he be apte to lerne, ye shal be content that he contynue here tyl he have some competent literatiu-."^

Respecting the subjects to be taught, the account continues as follows: "I would that they [the pupils] were taught all way in good literature both laten and greke, and good auctors suych as have the veray Romayne eliquence joyned withe wisdome." Later follows a list of these authors, and it includes both the classical and the Christian. Unless the youth had a fair foundation in the rudiments of learning (which most frequently was apparently not the case) the first work in the grammar school consisted of a study of the alphabet and of simple sentences in English, and the memorizing of the catechism, the Psalms, and the Testament. Then the study of Latin was begun and as proficiency in this subject increased, attention to English diminished. The pupil passed successively through the stages of accidence, grammar, construing, and the making of Latin letters, verses, declamations, and themes. Then followed the study of the selections of the classical literature itself — the works of .^sop, Caesar, Tiilly (Cicero), Ovid, Vergil, Horace, Eutropius, Juvenal, Persius, Terence, Sallust, Nepos, Corderius, and Erasmus.^

1 Lupton, Life of Colet, Appendix B.

2 Meriwether, Ouf Colonial Curriculum, pp. 74 Jf.

These and others furnished the literary study, while Priscian, Donatus, and Lilly were the standard authorities in grammar.

All texts used in our colonial schools were brought from England until Cheever's Accidence appeared in 1644. This then became the stock primer of Latin for the colonial days.

The Accidence was a little book of scarcely a hundred pages and, as the name implies, served as a guide and introduction to the rudiments of the Latin language. It was written in English but was lacking in all illustrative material, both for etymology and for syntax. To master it was a dead lift of the memory. To the scriptural injunction of presenting "line upon line, precept upon precept" was added the massing of fact upon fact, and exception upon exception. No effort was made to elicit the spontaneous interests of the boy, or to make the abstract text connect with the reaHties of boy Hfe. In fact, the very remoteness of the thought from the worldly matters of the day, the very difficulties that were involved in mastering the language, were considered to be proof sufficient of the value of classical study. Cheever's Accidence became very popular and was used in the schools well down into the nineteenth century. It passed through eighteen editions,^ the last one appearing in 1838.