The History Of Education by Ellwood P. Cubberley (little red riding hood read aloud .txt) 📕

[Illustration: FIG. 162. THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743-1826)]

In 1779, then, as a member of the Virginia legislature, Jefferson tried unsuccessfully to secure the passage of a comprehensive bill, after the plan of the French Revolutionary proposals, for the organization of a complete system of public education for Virginia. The essential features of the proposed bill (R. 263) were that every county should be laid off into school districts, five to six miles square, to be known as “hundreds,” and in each of these an elementary school was to be established to which any citizen could send his children free of charge for three years, and as much longer as he was willing to pay tuition; that the leading pupil in each school was to be selected annually and sent to one of twenty grammar (secondary) schools to be established and maintained at various points in the State; after two years the leaders in each of these schools were to be selected and further educated free for six years, the less promising being sent home; and at the completion of the grammar-school course, the upper half of the pupils were to be given three years more of free education at the State College of William and Mary, and the other half were to be employed as teachers for the schools of the State.

[13]

Though the scheme failed of approval, Jefferson never lost interest in the education of the people for intelligent participation in the functions of government. Writing from Monticello to Colonel Yancey, in 1816, after his retirement from the presidency, he wrote: If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization it expects what never was and never will be…. There is no safe deposit (for the functions of government) but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information.

In 1819 the founding of the University of Virginia crowned Jefferson’s efforts for education by the State. This institution, the Declaration of Independence, and the statute for religious freedom in Virginia stand today as the three enduring monuments to his memory. [14]

Other of the early American statesmen expressed similar views as to the importance of general education by the State. John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States, in a letter to his friend, Dr. Benjamin Rush, wrote:

I consider knowledge to be the soul of a Republic, and as the weak and the wicked are generally in alliance, as much care should be taken to diminish the number of the former as of the latter. Education is the way to do this, and nothing should be left undone to afford all ranks of people the means of obtaining a proper degree of it at a cheap and easy rate.

James Madison, fourth President of the United States, wrote: A satisfactory plan for primary education is certainly a vital desideratum in our republics.

A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or, perhaps, both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

John Adams, with true New England thoroughness, expressed the new motive for education still more forcibly when he wrote: The instruction of the people in every kind of knowledge that can be of use to them in the practice of their moral duties as men, citizens, and Christians, and of their political and civil duties as members of society and freemen, ought to be the care of the public, and of all who have any share in the conduct of its affairs, in a manner that never yet has been practiced in any age or nation. The education here intended is not merely that of the children of the rich and noble, but of every rank and class of people, down to the lowest and poorest. It is not too much to say that schools for the education of all should be placed at convenient distances and maintained at the public expense.

The revenues of the State would be applied infinitely better, more charitably, wisely, usefully, and therefore politically in this way than even in maintaining the poor. This would be the best way of preventing the existence of the poor….

Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower classes of people, are so extremely wise and useful that, to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.

Having founded, as Lincoln so well said later at Gettysburg, “on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” and having built a constitutional form of government based on that equality, it in time became evident to those who thought at all on the question that that liberty and political equality could not be preserved without the general education of all. A new motive for education was thus created and gradually formulated in the United States, as well as in revolutionary France, and the nature of the school instruction of the youth of the State came in time to be colored through and through by this new political motive. The necessary schools, though, did not come at once. On the contrary, the struggle to establish these necessary schools it will be our purpose to trace in subsequent chapters, but before doing so we wish first to point out how the rise of a political theory for education led to the development of a theory as to the nature of the educational process which exercised a far-reaching influence on all subsequent evolution of schools and teaching.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What do the proposals of La Chalotais, Rolland, and Turgot indicate as to the degree of unification of France attained by the time they wrote?

2. What new subjects did Diderot add to the religious elementary school of his time?

3. Show how the decline in efficiency of the Jesuits was a stimulating force for the evolution of a system of public instruction in France.

4. Show the statesman-like character of the proposals made in the legislative assemblies of France for the organization of national education.

5. Assuming that there had been enough funds to carry out the law (1793) of the Convention for primary instruction, what other difficulties would have been met that would have been hard to surmount?

6. Compare the Lakanal school with an American elementary school of a half-century ago.

7. Show that many of the important educational reforms of Napoleon were foreshadowed in the National Convention.

8. Was Napoleon right in his attitude toward education and schools?

9. Explain the lack of success of the revolutionary theorists in the establishment of a state system of education.

10. Explain why the breakdown of the old religious intolerance came earlier in the American Colonies than in the Old World.

11. Show the great value of the Laws of 1642 and 1647 in holding New England true to the maintenance of schools during the period of decline.

12. What might have been the result in America had the New England Colonies established the school as a parish institution, as did the central Colonies?

13. Analyze the Massachusetts constitutional provision for education, and show what it provided for.

14. Show the similarity of the University of the State of New York to the proposals for governmental control in France.

15. Explain why the French revolutionary ideas as to education were realized so easily in the new United States, whereas France did not realize them until well into the nineteenth century.

16. Compare Jefferson’s proposed law with the proposals of Talleyrand for France.

17. Just what type of educational institutions did Washington have in mind in the quotation from his Farewell Address? John Jay? John Adams?

SELECTED READINGS

In the accompanying Book of Readings the following selections are reproduced:

254. Dabney: The Far-Reaching Influence of Rousseau’s Writings.

255. La Chalotais: Essay on National Education.

256. Condorcet: Outline of a Plan for Organizing Public Instruction in France.

257. Report: Founding of the Polytechnic School at Paris.

258. Barnard: Work of the National Convention in France.

(a) Various legislative proposals.

(b) The Law of 1795 organizing Primary Instruction.

259. American States: Early Constitutional Provisions relating to Education.

260. Ohio: Educational Provisions of First Constitution.

261. Indiana: Educational Provisions of First Constitution.

262. American States: Early School Legislation in.

263. Jefferson: Plan for Organizing Education in Virginia.

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

1. Explain the conditions of society under which the emotional writings of a man of the type of Rousseau could have made such a deep impression (254) on the nation.

2. In how far do nations to-day accept the theories of La Chalotais (255)?

3. What type of administrative organization was proposed by Condorcet (256)?

4. What does the founding of the Polytechnic School (257) indicate as to the French interest in science?

5. What real progress was made by the National Convention (258 a), and to what degree did it fail? 6. Explain the type of school system proposed and the conception of education lying behind the early constitutional provisions (259) for education in each of the American States.

7. In what respects were the educational provisions of the first Ohio constitution (260) remarkable?

8. In what respects were the educational provisions of the first Indiana constitution (261) remarkable?

9. Characterize the early school legislation reproduced (262).

10. Just what type of educational system did Jefferson propose to organize in Virginia (263)?

SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

Barnard, Henry. American Journal of Education, vol. 22, pp.

651-64.

Compayr�, G. History of Pedagogy, chapters 15, 16, 17.

Cubberley, E. P. Public Education in the United States, chapter 3.