The American public school; a genetic study of principles, practices, and present problems

Front matter

v^

^^0^ tibe modern Ueacber's Series

Edited by WILLIAM C. BAGLEY

Preface

It is almost universally agreed that the history of education, as traditionally organized and presented, is of doubtful value in the normal school curriculum. The reasons for this it is not necessary to enumerate here ; they are familiar to all who have had to do with the training of teachers. It would be a distinct loss, however, to eliminate the subject entirely, because historical perspective is indispensable to an adequate comprehension of present-day education. This text has grown out of five years' experience in teaching the history of education to hundreds of normal school students ; and is an attempt to arrange the material, as set forth in the secondary sources, in such a way as to meet the needs of normal school students. A glance at the Table of Contents will reveal the plan. Attention is confined to the American public school system, in which the candidate is to teach. The usual descriptions of ancient and medieval schools are omitted entirely, and even modern European developments are discussed only in so far as their relevancy is easily discernible by the typical student in a normal school. The bearing of early movements in our educavi PREFACE

tional history upon current problems is explicitly pointed out. And the phenomenal developments of the past thirty years — usually omitted from the traditional type of history — are set forth at some length. The text is intended as a discussion of contemporaneous education from the genetic point of view.

For purposes of topical study cross references have been inserted in the text and a very complete index prepared.

Ross L. Finney

Table Of Contents

PAGE

Chapter I. The Colonial Period, 1607-1776 ... 1 The Outlines of colonial history — The European origin of

American institutions — The old aristocratic conception of

education — The new religious conception of education —

Schools in New England — New Amsterdam — Pennsylvania

— The support of schools — Local taxes — The three sections — Dame schools — Men teachers — Schoolhouses — The education of girls — The curriculum — The New England Primer — Other subjects — Apprenticeship — Bad methods of teaching — Origin of the school district — Higher education

— The disciplinary theory — Grammar schools.

Chapter II. Rousseau 22

Biographical sketch — The social situation — The unnatural education of the period — Rousseau's aim — The " Emile " — Naturalism the keynote of Rousseau's message — Basedow — Rousseau's disciples — Dewey quotes Rousseau

— Rousseau the mouthpiece of democracy.

Chapter III. The Period of Nationalization, 1776-1835 38 Educational ideals of the early statesmen — The educational transition — The new nationalism — The new school system — The rise of a free school system in New York state

— In New York City — In Pennsylvania — In the South — In the West — The tragedy of blindness to the signs of the times — Textbooks and methods — The Monitorial system

— The primary school — Colleges — The academies — Education abroad.

Chapter IV. Pestalozzi 64

The historic background — Early life of Pestalozzi — "Leonard and Gertrude" — Later life of Pestalozzi — Pesta-

vii

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lozzi's pedagogical principles — Educational experimentation

— Industrial training — Kindly discipline — The objective method — Its value to the teacher — The analytical method

— Pestalozzi's influence.

Chapter V. Herbart and Froebel . . . . .84 Herbart's biography — The aim of education — Subject matter — Arrangement of the curriculum — The recitation

— Apperception — Herbart's influence — Froebel's early life

— Froebel's first educational venture — The Blankenburg kindergarten — Disappointment and death — The kindergarten — Froebel's pedagogical principles — Mysticism — Self-activity — Social participation — Froebel's influence.

Chapter VI. The Great Educational Awakening, 1835- 1861 109

Territorial expansion — Industrial development — Humanitarian movements — Idealism — The educational awakening — The forerunners — Biographical sketch of Horace Mann — vSecretary of the Board of Education — Horace Mann's reforms — Henry Barnard — Other sections — Other leaders — "Little Men" — Pedagogical Hterature of the period — Calvin Stowe and the beginnings of teachers' associations — Rise of the grading system — State and county administration — Colleges and academies — Unfinished business — The district school — Consolidation — Three principles — Support by taxation — The "bachelor argument" — Secular control — The "Godless schools" argument — State and county supervision — The "local self-government" objection — Solidarity — Foreign education.

Chapter VII. The Transition Period, 1861-1890 . . 146 Industrial development — Moral and religious changes — The South — Educational readjustments — The rise of the high school — Typical curriculums — Enrichment of the elementary curriculum — The grading system — Tlie demand for science teaching — Spencer's famous essay — The elective

TABLE OF CONTENTS IX

PAGE system — Teaching agriculture — The learned professions — Professionalizing teaching — Beginnings of the science of education — Pestalozzianism : E. A. Sheldon — The Oswego movement — The new normal schools and the Oswego idea

— The kindergarten — Colonel Parker and the Quincy movement — Colonel Parker at Chicago — The National Education Association — Pedagogical literature — The tendency toward centralization — TTie,_,Bi^eaii ofE^jiGa^ion -^ Development of State School Systems — Development of city and county units — Educational progress in the South

— The higher education of women — Extension work — Foreign education — Summary.

Chapter VIII. The Recent Period, 1890-1920. A, Educational Reorganization 186

The social situation — Economic developments — The spiritual side — International relations — A new education for a new age — Increase in the quantity of schooling -^ Improvement of quality — Investment and equipment — High school development — Higher education — College entrance — Internal changes : Adapting the school to the needs of the child — Making the grading system flexible

— The Cincinnati plan — The Gary system — The Junior High School — The tendency away from locaUsm : — (a) Consolidation — (6) The county unit — (c) State — (d) Federal — Educational extension — By correspondence — ** Moonlight schools" — The Y. M. C. A. — Chautauquas, libraries, etc.

— The professions — Law — Medicine — Engineering — Foreign education — The English Education Act of 1902

— China.

Chapter IX. The Recent Period. B. Enriching the Curriculum 226

The "common branches": Reading — Spelling — Language — Arithmetic — Geography — History — Hygiene — Social studies — Art — Music — The demand for industrial

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education — What the schools are doing — The Smith-Lever and Smith-Hughes Acts — Corporation schools — Army schools — Vocational Guidance — Extra-curricular activities

— Play — The Boy Scout movement — The wider use of the school plant — Religious education — The health movement

— The high school curriculum — Flexner's ''Modern School"

— Higher education — The function of education in a developing democracy.

Chapter X. The Recent Period. 1890-1917. C. Educational Theory and Science 263

Herbartianism — Pestalozzianism — The new Froebelianism : Colonel Parker — John Dewey — Appraisal of Dewey's theories — The extent of Froebehan practices — The kindergarten — Psychology and its applications — Child study — Educational psychology — Mental measurements — Standard tests — Psychology applied to classroom management — Psychology and the conduct of the recitation

— Formal discipline — The educational survey — The rise of a science of education — Scoring buildings — Costs — Age-grade distribution — Pupils' achievements — Standards

— Theories underlying curricular changes — Educational sociology — Popular demands — Teacher training — Teachers' voluntary associations — Pedagogical hterature.

Chapter XL The Present Outlook oOO

The significance of the war — War-time activities in the schools — School attendance in war-time — Lessons of the war — The schools make the nation — The extent of physical defects — Illiteracy — The need for Americanization — Vocational education — Applying the mental measurements

— Education as a cure for the social unrest — The plight of the rural school — The special needs of the South — The shortage of teachers — Shall teachers unionize ? — The program of the N. E. A. Commission — Education abroad —

V^nglartd — France — Germany — Russia — A glance into

TABLE OF CONTENTS xi

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the future — The new super-civihzation — The new schools of the new age : curriculum — Universal high school graduation — The new technique — The reason for federal aid — New professional standards — The noble calling of the teacher.

Index 325

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

The young teacher, entering upon the service of the pubHc schools to-day, needs three types of professional equipment. In the first place, he must be supplied with his '^ stock in trade"; he must be firmly and broadly grounded in the skills, knowledges, and ideals which it will be his business to transmit to the coming generation. In the second place, he must have an initial mastery of the technique of his art, — an initial skill in adapting his materials to the widely varying needs and capacities of children. In the third place, he must have some notion of the structure and purpose of the organization of which he will form a part, to the end both that his own practice may be intelligent and that he may participate intelligently with his fellowworkers in the progressive improvement of the school system.

It is to this third type of equipment that a book like this will chiefly contribute. And this phase of teacher-preparation is particularly important to-day. It is becoming increasingly evident that the best way to build a strong educational structure is to work from the bottom up rather than from the top down. Very rapidly during the past few years the practice of having school policies and programs worked out cooperatively

XIV EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

by the teachers themselves has been replacing the older practice of leaving to the administrative heads of the schools the sole responsibility for this important task of constructive educational thinking. This movement is so clearly both salutary and inevitable that it would be the height of unwisdom not to have it amply reflected in the professional schools that prepare teachers.

Mr. Finney^s treatment of the American Public School is well adapted to introduce the prospective teacher to this broader study of his profession. It is a sound principle that complicated problems are best understood in the light of their genesis. Few problems are more complicated or more significant than are those that modern education presents. Probably in no other group of social problems will the genetic approach yield larger returns^ provided it leaves with the student a clear and comprehensive picture of the gradual transition from simplicity to complexity.

The author of this book has had a long and successful experience in preparing recruits for the public-school service. He knows intimately his clientele. In addition, he brings to the interpretation of school problems a thoroughgoing acquaintance with the broader field of the social sciences. We are sure that the chapters which follow will abundantly prove the happiness of this combination.

William C. Bagley.

Chapter I

The Outlines of Colonial History. — It will be remembered that the first English settlement in what is now the United States was made at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, and the next at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620. The New Amsterdam colony was planted by the Dutch in New York in 1623, though it was taken by the English in 1664. Penn founded the settlement at Philadelphia in 1682 ; but meantime several other colonies had been started between Philadelphia and Jamestown, and also in New England and in the South. During the century and three quarters between 1607 and 1776 the colonists were busy with their small beginnings, — fighting the Indians, clearing the forests, and subduing the soil, taking their part in the European struggles for the control of this continent, starting their infant industries in mining, manufacturing, shipping, and trade, and laying the foundations of their social institutions. At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War there were about three million people in the English colonies, scattered along the coast from Maine to Georgia, and for the most part, between the Appalachian Mountains and the sea.

The European Origin of American Institutions. —

During the middle of the seventeenth centnry, while tfie English colonies in America were being settled, all Europe was disturbed by religious wars. In England the dispute was political as well as religious. It was the question of the divine right of kings. On the one side were the King, the English Church, and a social system based upon the ascendency of the aristocratic classes. On the other side were the Parliament and the people, the dissenters in religion, and all those who demanded more democracy in all phases of life.

The Old Aristocratic Conception of Education. — Each of these groups took a characteristic, and perfectly logical, attitude toward popular education. The royalist party, which favored authority in political and religious life, felt little or no interest in the instruction of the common people. They believed that the business of the poor was to work and not to think. " To make society happy," they said, '^ it is requisite that great numbers should be ignorant as well as poor." This point of view was maintained throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and even the early nineteenth centuries. It was vigorously urged against the democratic extension of education a century ago, and has some more or less conscious adherents to the present day. Virginia and almost the whole South were settled by English royalists. Southern society was laid out, therefore, on the aristocratic basis. The plantation type of farming sprang up as a result, and was greatly favored by climatic conditions. Plantation farming in turn reinforced the aristocratic social system. No organized attempt was made^ therefore, toward public elementary education. This function was left wholly to the family ; which meant that the rich employed tutors, and that the poor grew up illiterate, except as occasional mothers taught their own, and perhaps also their neighbors', children to read. It is not surprising then to find Governor Berkeley writing in 1671 : ^^ I thank God there are no free schools nor printing presses, and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years." His hope was realized, and more too ; for no system of public schools really worthy of the name developed in Virginia before the middle of the nineteenth century.

The New Religious Conception of Education. — As for the other party in England, their ideas about education grew more out of religious than out of political considerations. The Puritans, and those of kindred religious beliefs throughout Europe, held that the Bible is the guide of life, and the right to read and interpret it the test of religious liberty. Each person must therefore learn to read it for himself. Hence the necessity for schools. This religious motive is quaintly expressed in the preamble to the Massachusetts law of 1647 : '^ It being one chief project of that old deluder Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scripture," etc. New England and the Middle Colonies were settled by this type of people : the Pilgrims and

Puritans in Massachusetts^ the Quakers in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, the Dutch at New Amsterdam, the French Huguenots at New Rochelle, the Swedes in Delaware, and the Germans in Pennsylvania. The religious motive led to the early establishment of schools in all these colonies. There is record that the Boston town meeting in 1635 officially requested ^' Brother Philemon Purmont to become schoolmaster, for the teaching and nourturing of children." Provision was made for the teacher's salary. The records show that schools were established in Dorchester in 1640, in Ipswich and Salem in 1641, in Cambridge in 1642, in Weymouth in 1643, in Roxbury in 1645, and in Plymouth in 1650.

Schools in New England. — In 1647 the Colonial Court (the legislature) of the Massachusetts Bay Colony enacted the famous law whose preamble was just quoted. It provided

*' 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 read and write, 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. And it is further ordered that where any town shall increase to the number of one hundred families or householders, they shall set up a grammar school, the master thereof being able to instruct youths so far as they shall be fitted for the university."

In 1650 Connecticut passed a law embodying the provisions of this Massachusetts law.

These early New England laws are of immense importance, since they mark the beginning of our American system of that free, secular, universal education which we now understand to be so necessary to democracy. We realize that one hundred million people cannot be fused in a common culture and assured equal opportunity without such schools. The early New Englanders did not realize this, nor did they foresee how great were the foundations that they were laying. They transferred the control and support of education from the church to the state by a sort of providential accident. It happened purely because church and civil government were not sharply distinguished in their minds. Such a law could never have been passed had not all the people of the colony been of the same religious faith. Thus came into existence the first system of state education in America, one of the first in the western world.

New Amsterdam. — The Dutch West India Company was required by the States General of Holland to maintain a clergyman and a schoolmaster. The schoolmaster^s expenses are entered in early estimates of the company's expenses. The first schoolmaster, Adam Roelandsen, arrived in 1633. With his advent a school tax was levied. The schoolmaster was also grave-digger, court bellringer, and precentor.

Pennsylvania. — When William Penn arrived in the New World in 1682 at least one school was in operation among the Swedes, who had crossed over from Delaware. Provision was immediately enacted in Penn's ^^ Frame of Government/' and by the Assembly, for the education of all children. Parents and guardians were required, under penalty, to see that all children were taught a useful trade, and to read and write. The Penn Charter of 1701, however, made no mention of schools ; the colony failed to maintain schools, the responsibility devolved principally upon the churches, and education in Pennsylvania consequently made a slow growth during the eighteenth century. However, the colony produced one remarkable genius in educational reform, Christopher Dock, whose ^' Schuleordnung '' (School Organization) anticipated some of the reforms of Pestalozzi.

The Support of Schools. — Contributions, tuitions, ^' rates," and local taxes were the most important sources of the support of colonial schools. It is interesting to note that a load of wood was often included in the tuition charge. The rate, or rate bill, was a per capita tax levied on the children attending school. That is, parents were taxed in proportion to the number of children they sent to school. The plan, which was borrowed from England, was in general use not only throughout the colonial period, but in some states down to the middle of the nineteenth century.

Local Taxes. — The growth of the local tax idea during the colonial period was very significant because out of it eventually grew our system of free public schools. Mention was just made of local taxes in the case of the first school in New Amsterdam. It was only in New England^ however, that the idea took root and developed ; elsewhere it eventually died out. The following are typical extracts from New England town records. New Haven, 1651 : " For the encouragement of Mr. James in teaching school; the Court ordered that he should have £10 for the year, to be paid out of the town treasury ; the year to begin when he begins teaching. The rest he is to take of the parents of the children that he teacheth, by the quarter, to make him up a full recompense for his pains." Boston, 1683 : " That the town shall allow £25 per annum for each school for the present, and that such persons as send their children to school (that are able) should pay something to the master for his better encouragement in his work." The laws of both Massachusetts and Connecticut, as we have seen, required each town to maintain a town school. The fine that the town had to pay if it did not do so was almost enough to maintain the school. The town school had to compete with private elementary schools which charged tuition. Hence the town schools gradually dropped the tuition charge ; naturally if the people in any case had to pay taxes they did not care to pay tuitions also. As practically all the people were of the same religion, that reHgion could be taught in the town school. Religious differences were therefore no obstacle to tax-supported schools. By the middle of the eighteenth century, Boston had firmly established the principle and practice of tax support. Eventually free, tax-supported town schools became

the rule throughout New England, though the rate bill persisted quite generally as one form of local taxation.

Private schools gradually became the exception, although " dame schools '^ for very young children continued.

Thus it was in New England that the local tax system had its chief development.

The Three Sections.

— For purposes of educational history the colonial region may conveniently be divided into three parts : New England, the Middle Colonies, and the South, as indicated on the accompanying map. A different institution took charge of education in each of these sections. In New England, as we have seen, the state early assumed the control, and to a large extent the support, of the schools. In

The Three Sections the Middle Colonies schools were maintained by the church ; while in Virginia and the South education was left to the family. The reason for this has already been explained : each colony transplanted from England the type of school that corresponded to its own social system. It was only in New England , as we have seen, that a new institution developed, — ■ namely, the free, tax-supported public school, which was destined eventually to crowd the other two systems almost entirely out of existence. This, however, did not occur until the nineteenth century, when civic rather than religious reasons began to necessitate universal enlightenment. As for New York City, the British seized that colony in 1664, while the royalists were temporarily in the ascendency at home. As a result there grew up in New York City a combination of the parochial and private systems. Due to this influence. New York was seriously handicapped in her later educational development, as we shall see.

Dame Schools. — The " dame school " was a characteristic institution of the entire colonial period. It grew out of the responsibility each mother felt to teach her own children to read. Mothers who for any reason wished to be relieved of the responsibility sent their children to a neighbor who taught her own children the rudiments, often busying herself meantime with her house work. Often, too, such a school was conducted by elderly women in straitened circumstances. Record exists of one of these dame schools ill New Haven as early as 1651. In the Indian attack on Deerfield in 1694^ '' Mrs. Hannah Beaman, the school dame^ with her young flock on the home lot next northward; started for the fort. It was a race for life; the dame with her charge up the street, the enemy up the parallel swamp on the east to intercept them before they should reach the gate. Fear gave

A Dame School

wings to the children ; the fort was reached in safety and the gate shut.'^ Th-e following quotations describe the dame schools of the eighteenth century :

''An old maiden lady was employed occasionally a short time to teach children their letters and to spell out words. Her school was kept one month in my barn. She did what she could to teach the young ideas how to shoot, but was quite incompetent. I visited her school on one occasion and she had a small class advanced to words of three syllables in the spelling book, and when they came to the word ' anecdote/ she called it ' a-neck'dote ' and defined it to be 'a food eaten between meals.'"

''When I was three years old, I began to attend a child's school in the immediate neighborhood of my father's house. I recollect distinctly holding to my sister's apron as a protection against the cattle in the road. I also remember the appearance of my primer, from one corner of which the blue paper covering had been torn. . . . My patient and faithful instructress taught me to read before I could speak plain; considerately mingling the teacher and the nurse, she kept a pillow and a bit of carpet in the corner of the schoolroom where the little heads throbbing from a premature struggle with the tall double letters and ampersand, with Korah's troops and Vashti's pride, were permitted, nay, encouraged to go to sleep."

The '^ dame school " persisted till the early part of the nineteenth century^ when as the primary school^ it was gradually merged into the public school system (see p. 57).

Men Teachers. — The dame school was for small children. During the winter months, when older children attended school, it was customary to employ a man. Too often such men were ignorant and incompetent ; sometimes they were manual laborers who supplemented their summer's wages by a few w^eeks' teaching in the winter.

Schoolhouses. — At first there were no schoolhouses. Schools were held in kitchens, garrets, barns, or any other available space. The meeting house was often used for school purposes. Often old meeting houses were made over for school purposes. Gradually, however, schoolhouses were erected ; though it was not unusual throughout the period to utilize other buildings, especially for dame schools.

The Education of Girls. — There is no very satisfactory evidence as to the education of girls. It is certain that some town schools provided for them; but it is probable that some did not. In many localities the education of girls, at least before the Revolution, must have been confined to the dame schools. Before the close of the eighteenth century, ^^ most New England towns had made some provision for the education of girls, either in short summer terms, or at the noon hours, or other interval, of the town (boys') school. But no such opportunity was afforded girls to make the most of themselves, as had been forced upon most boys for a half-dozen generations." Private schools for ^^ misses " were rare.

The Curriculum. — Life in New England during the colonial period was characterized by an extreme moral and religious seriousness, and from this seriousness has come a * most important contribution to our whole American civilization. But, unfortunately, religion practically monopolized the spiritual and cultural sides of life. While it is true that many of the first settlers of Massachusetts were of an exceptionally high intellectual type, their culture was limited to theology and the classical literature and philosophy. After the first generation passed away there was, due to various causes, a distinct decline in intellectual interests. Especially during the eighteenth century, New England became almost unbelievably destitute of art, science, music, and secular literature. This poverty of culture was reflected in the curriculum of elementary schools. The course of study consisted almost entirely of reading and writing.

The New England Primer. — The famous New England Primer was in very general use. This is a book of about eighty pages. It contains, first, the alphabet, then a page of easy syllables, and next, five short word lists, the first of one syllable, the last of five syllables. Then follows an illustrated alphabetical rhyme, beginning

"In Ac^am's Fall We sinned all.'^

and ending

"Zacheus he Did climb the tree His Lord to see."

Next come a page of " The Dutiful Child's Promises,'' beginning : "I will fear God and honour the King " ; then " An Alphabet of Lessons for Youth," consisting of scripture texts. After these are the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed, and the Ten Commandments. . The next page is devoted to pious doggerel ; then the books of the Old and New Testaments are listed. The numerals up to one hundred are printed in three cokinms, Roman, Arabic, and the words. The last page of this has '' Mr." in large type in the lower right-hand corner. The next page is occupied with a wood cut appropriate to the inscription: " Mr. John Rogers, Minister of the Gospel in London, was the first Martyr in Q.

His wife, with nine small Children, and one at her Breast, following him to the stake, with which sorrowful sight he was not in the least daunted, but with wonderful Patience died courageously for the Gospel of Jesus Christ.'

The Martyrdom of John Rogers. From

Webster's New England Primer.

Then follow seven pages of admonitions, in homely verse, to his children, '^ writ " some days before his death. There can be no doubt that these verses were well selected to impress the youth of that period with a profound reverence for the moral seriousness and personal heroism of the men who fought the battles of religious liberty and laid the moral foundations of modern society. The last forty pages of the book are given over to the Shorter Catechism.