The History Of Education by Ellwood P. Cubberley (little red riding hood read aloud .txt) π
The civilization which we now know and enjoy has come down to us from four main sources. The Greeks, the Romans, and the Christians laid the foundations, and in the order named, and the study of the early history of our western civilization is a study of the work and the blending of these three main forces. It is upon these three foundation stones, superimposed upon one another, that our modern European and American civilization has been developed.
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There was thus quietly added another new section to the American educational ladder, and the free public-school system was extended farther upward. Though the great period of state university foundation came after 1860, and the great period of state university expansion after 1885, the beginnings were clearly marked early in our national history. Of the sixteen States having state universities by 1860 (see Figure 208), all except Florida had established them before 1850. For a long time small, poorly supported by the States, much like the church colleges about them in character and often inferior in quality, one by one the state universities have freed themselves alike from denominational restrictions on the one hand and political control on the other, and have set about rendering the service to the State which a state university ought to render. Michigan, the first of our state universities to free itself, take its proper place, and set an example for others to follow, opened in 1841
with two professors and six students. In 1844 it was a little institution of three professors, one tutor, one assistant, and one visiting lecturer, had but fifty-three students, and offered but a single course of study, consisting chiefly of Greek, Latin, mathematics, and intellectual and moral science (R. 331). As late as 1852 it had but seventy-two students, but by 1860, when it had largely freed itself from the incubus of Baptist Latin, Congregational Greek, Methodist intellectual philosophy, Presbyterian astronomy, and Whig mathematics, and its remarkable growth as a state university had begun, it enrolled five hundred and nineteen.
THE AMERICAN FREE PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM NOW ESTABLISHED. By the close of the second quarter of the nineteenth century, certainly by 1860, we find the American public-school system fully established, in principle at least, in all our Northern States (R. 332). Much yet remained to be done to carry into full effect what had been established in principle, but everywhere democracy had won its fight, and the American public school, supported by general taxation, freed from the pauper-school taint, free and equally open to all, under the direction of representatives of the people, free from sectarian control, and complete from the primary school through the high school, and in the Western States through the university as well, was established permanently in American public policy. It was a real democratic educational ladder that had been created, and not the typical two-class school system of continental European States. The establishment of the free public high school and the state university represent the crowning achievements of those who struggled to found a state-supported educational system fitted to the needs of great democratic States. Probably no other influences have done more to unify the American People, reconcile diverse points of view, eliminate state jealousies, set ideals for the people, and train leaders for the service of the States and of the Nation than the academies, high schools, and colleges scattered over the land. They have educated but a small percentage of the people, to be sure, but they have trained most of the leaders who have guided the American democracy since its birth.
[Illustration: FIG. 209. THE AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL LADDER
Compare this with the figure on page 577, and the democratic nature of the American school system will be apparent.]
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Explain the theory of βvested rightsβ as applied to private and parochial schools.
2. Does every great advance in provisions for human welfare require a period of education and propaganda? Illustrate.
3. Explain just what is meant by βthe wealth of the State must educate the children of the State.β
4. Show how the retention of the pauper-school idea would have been dangerous to the life of the Republic.
5. Why were the cities more anxious to escape from the operation of the pauper-school law than were the towns and rural districts?
6. Why were the pauper-school and the rate-bill so hard to eliminate?
7. Explain why, in America, schools naturally developed from the community outward.
8. State your explanation for the older States beginning to establish permanent school funds, often before they had established a state system of schools.
9. Show the gradual transition from church control of education, through state aid of church schools, to secularized state schools.
10. Show why secularized state schools were the only possible solution for the United States.
11. Show that secularization would naturally take place in the textbooks and the instruction, before manifesting itself in the laws.
12. Show how the American academy was a natural development in the national life.
13. Show how the American high school was a natural development after the academy.
14. Show why the high school could be opposed by men who had accepted tax-supported elementary schools. Why has such reasoning been abandoned now?
15. Explain the difference, and illustrate from the history of American educational development, between establishing a thing in principle and carrying it into full effect.
16. Was the early argument as to the influence of higher education on the State a true argument? Why?
17. What would have been the probable results had the Dartmouth College case been decided the other way?
18. Show how the opening of collegiate instruction to women was a phase of the new democratic movement.
19. Show how college education has been a unifying force in the national life.
SELECTED READINGS
In the accompanying Book of Readings the following illustrative selections are reproduced:
316. Mann: The Ground of the Free-School System.
317. Governor Cleveland: Repeal of the Connecticut School Law.
318. Mann: On the Repeal of the Connecticut School Law.
319. Gulliver: The Struggle for Free Schools in Norwich.
320. Address: The State and Education.
321. Michigan: A Rate-Bill, and a Warrant for Collection.
322. Mann: On Religious Instruction in the Schools.
323. Michigan: Petition for a Division of the School Fund.
324. Michigan: Counter-Petition against a Division.
325. Connecticut: Act of Incorporation of Norwich Free Academy, 326. Boston: Establishment of the First American High School.
327. Boston: The Secondary-School System in 1823.
328. Massachusetts: The High School Law of 1827.
329. Gulliver: An Example of the Opposition to High Schools.
330. Michigan: The Kalamazoo Decision.
331. Michigan: Program of Studies at University, 1843.
332. Tappan: The Michigan State System of Public Instruction.
QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS
1. Do Mannβs three propositions (316) hold equally true to-day?
2. Of what type of person is the reasoning of Governor Cleveland (317) typical?
3. Assuming Mannβs description of Connecticut progress (318) to be correct, how do you account for the legislature following Governor Clevelandβs recommendations so readily?
4. Did the leaders in Norwich (319) use good diplomacy?
5. Point out the essential soundness of the reasoning of the New Jersey Report (320).
6. Explain the willingness of people seventy-five years ago to conduct the school business on such a small basis (321) as the rate-bill indicates.
7. Show that, as Mr. Mann points out (322), sectarian schools and a State Church are near together.
8. Point out the weakness in the argument in the Michigan petition (323).
9. State the purpose and nature of the first American high school (326), and contrast it with the earlier academy.
10. Contrast the English Classical School (High School) of Boston of 1823, with the older Latin School (327), as to purpose and instruction.
11. Just what did the Massachusetts Law of 1827 (328) require?
12. Has such opposition as that described in 329 completely died out even now?
13. State the line of reasoning and the conclusions of the Court in the Kalamazoo Case (330). Point out how this decision might influence development elsewhere.
14. Compare the University of Michigan of 1843 (331) with a present-day high school.
15. Show that Michigan (332) had perfected an American educational ladder.
SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES
* Brown, E. E. The Making of our Middle Schools.
* Brown, S. W. The Secularization of American Education.
Cubberley, E. P. Public Education in the United States.
Dexter, E. G. A History of Education in the United States.
* Hinsdale, B. A. Horace Mann, and the Common School Revival in the United States.
* Inglis, A. J. The Rise of the High School in Massachusetts.
Martin, George H. The Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School System.
* Mead, A. R. The Development of Free Schools in the United States, as Illustrated by Connecticut and Michigan.
Taylor, James M. Before Vassar Opened.
* Thwing, Charles F. A History of Higher Education in America.
EDUCATION BECOMES A NATIONAL TOOL
I. SPREAD OF THE STATE-CONTROL IDEA
THE FIVE TYPE NATIONS. We have now traced, in some detail, the struggles of forward-looking men to establish national systems of education in five great world nations. In each we have described the steps by means of which the State gradually superseded the Church in the control of education, and the motives and impulses which finally led the State to take over the school as a function of the State. The steps and impelling motives and rate of transfer were not the same in any two nations, but in each of the five the political necessities of the State in time made the transfer seem desirable. Time everywhere was required to effect the change. The movement began earliest and was concluded earliest in the German States, and was concluded last in England. In the German States, France, and Italy the change came rapidly and as a result of legislative acts or imperial decrees. In England and the United States the transfer took place, as we have seen, only in response to the slow development of public opinion.
This change in control and extension of educational advantages was essentially a nineteenth-century movement, and a resultant of the new political philosophy and the democratic revolutions of the later eighteenth century, combined with the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century. A new political impulse now replaced the earlier religious motive as the incentive for education, and education for literacy and citizenship became, during the nineteenth century, a new political ideal that has, in time, spread to progressive nations all over the world.
The five great nations whose educational evolution has been described in the preceding chapters may be regarded as having formed types which have since been copied, in more or less detail, by the more progressive nations in different parts of the world. The continental European two-class school system, the American educational ladder, and the English tendency to combine the two and use the best parts of each, have been reproduced in the different national educational systems which have been created
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