Part 2 — Chapter III. (These four articles abrogated by the four articles following them, 118-122.) Article 118. The Federal Constitution may at any time be amended. (continued 10)

G. G. Bush, Harvard, pages 12-15.

ALSO IN: J. Quincy, History of Harvard University.

S. A. Eliot, Sketch of the History of Harvard College.

EDUCATION: A. D. 1642-1732. New England and New York. Early Common Schools.

"New England early adopted, and has, with a single exception, constantly maintained the principle that the public should provide for the instruction of all the youth. That which elsewhere, as will be found, was left to local provision, as in New York; or to charity, as in Pennsylvania; or to parental interest, as in Virginia, was in most parts of New England early secured by law. … The act of 1642 in Massachusetts, whose provisions were adopted in most of the adjacent colonies, was admirable as a first legislative school law. It was watchful of the neglect of parents, and looked well after the ignorant and the indigent. But it neither made schooling free, nor imposed a penalty for its neglect. … Schools were largely maintained by rates, were free only to the necessitous, and in not a few of the less populous districts closed altogether or never opened. This led, five years later, to more stringent legislation. … As suggesting the general scope and tenor of the law, the following extract is made. … {729} 'It is therefore ordered by this Court and authority thereof 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 write and read; 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; provided that those who send their children be not oppressed by paying much more than they can have them taught for in the adjoining towns. And it is further ordered that where any town shall increase to the number of one hundred families or house-holders, they shall set up a grammar-school, the master thereof being able to instruct youths so far as they may be fitted for the university; and if any town neglect the performance hereof, above one year, then every such town shall pay five pounds per annum to the next such school, till they shall perform this order.' … Three years after the law just cited Connecticut passed a very similar one. … In Rhode Island there was no attempt at a school system prior to the efforts of John Howland about 1790. There were schools in both Providence and Newport; but the colony was small (with a population of less than ten thousand in 1700), broken into feeble settlements, and offering little opportunity for organization. … It is claimed that, at the surrender of the Dutch in New York (1664), so general was the educational spirit, almost every town in the colony had its regular school and more or less permanent teachers. After the occupation of the province by the English, little attention was given to education. … Thirteen years after the surrender, a Latin school was opened in the city; but the first serious attempt to provide regular schooling was in the work of the 'Society for the Propagation of the Gospel' (1704) in the founding of Trinity School. The society kept up an efficient organization, for many years, and at the opening of the Revolution had established and chiefly supported more than twenty schools in the colony. About 1732, also, there was established in New York city a school after the plan of the Boston Latin School, free as that was free, and which became, according to eminent authority, the germ of the later King's (now Columbia) College."

R. G. Boone, Education in the United States, chapter 3.

EDUCATION: A. D. 1683-1779. Pennsylvania. Origin of the University of Pennsylvania.

"Education had not been over-looked in the policy of Penn. In his Frame of Government we read: 'The governor and provincial council shall erect and order all public schools, and encourage and reward the authors of useful sciences and laudable inventions, in the said province. … And … a committee of manners, education and arts, that all wicked and scandalous living may be prevented, and that youth may be successively trained up in virtue and useful knowledge and arts.' The first movement to establish an educational institution of a high grade was in the action of the Executive Council which proposed, November 17, 1683, 'That Care be Taken about the Learning and Instruction of Youth, to wit: A School of Arts and Sciences.' It was not until 1689, however, that the 'Public Grammar School' was set up in Philadelphia. This institution, founded upon the English idea of a 'free' school,' was formally chartered in 1697 as the 'William Penn Charter School.' It was intended as the head of a system of schools for all, rather than a single school for a select few, an idea which the founders of the Charitable School, fifty years later, had also in mind—an idea which was never carried out in the history of either institution. The failure of Penn's scheme of government, and the turmoil during the early part of the eighteenth century arising from the conflicts between different political parties, for a time influenced very decidedly educational zeal in the province. The government, which at the outset had taken such high ground on the subject, ceased to exert itself in behalf of education, and the several religious denominations and the people themselves in neighborhood organizations took up the burden and planted schools as best they could throughout the growing colony. … Feeling the importance for some provision to supplement the education then given in the established schools, Benjamin Franklin as early as 1743 drew up a proposal for establishing an academy. … He secured the assistance of a number of friends, many of them members of the famous Junto, and then published his pamphlet entitled 'Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania.' … On all sides the paper met with great favor and generous support. The result was the organization of a board of trustees, consisting of 24 of those who had subscribed to the scheme of the Academy, with Franklin as president. This body immediately set about to realize the object of the pamphlet, and nourished by subscriptions, lotteries, and gifts the Academy was placed in a flourishing condition. … The Academy comprised three schools, the Latin, the English, and the mathematical, over each of which was placed a master, one of whom was the rector of the institution. … The English School was neglected. The other schools were favored, especially the Latin School. In the eyes of Franklin and many of the supporters of the Academy, the English School was the one of chief importance. What we would call a 'starving out' process was begun by which the English School was kept in a weak condition, most of the funds going to the Latin School. … The success of the Academy was so gratifying to all interested in it that it was determined to apply for a charter. This was granted to the trustees by Thomas and Richard Penn, the proprietors, on July 13, 1753. Desirous at the same time of enlarging the course of instruction, the trustees elected Mr. William Smith teacher of logic, rhetoric, natural and moral philosophy. Mr. Smith accepted the position and entered upon his duties at the Academy in May, 1754. The history of the institution from this date, whether known as the Academy or the College, to 1779 is the history of the life of William Smith."

J. L. Stewart, Historical Sketch of the University of Pennsylvania (United States Bureau of Education, Circular of Information, 1892, number 2: Benjamin Franklin and the University, chapter 4).

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EDUCATION: A. D. 1701-1717. Connecticut. Yale College.

"For sixty years the only school for higher education in New England had been Harvard College, at Cambridge. The people, and especially the clergy, of Connecticut naturally desired the benefit of a similar establishment nearer home. The three ministers of New Haven, Milford, and Branford first moved in the enterprise. Ten ministers, nine of them being graduates of Harvard College, met at Branford [1701] and made a contribution from their libraries of about forty volumes in folio 'for the founding of a college.' Other donations presently came in. An Act of Incorporation was granted by the General Court. It created a body of trustees, not to be more than eleven in number nor fewer than seven, all to be clergymen and at least forty years of age. The Court endowed the College with an annual grant, subject to be discontinued at pleasure, of one hundred and twenty pounds in 'country pay,'—equivalent to sixty pounds sterling. The College might hold property 'not exceeding the value of five hundred pounds per annum'; its students were exempted from the payment of taxes and from military service; and the Governor and his Council gave a formal approval of its application to the citizens for pecuniary id. … The first President was Abraham Pierson, minister of Killingworth, at which place he continued to reside, though the designated seat of the College was at Saybrook. Eight students were admitted, and arranged in classes. At each of the first two annual commencements one person, at the third three persons, received the degree of Bachelor of Arts. President Pierson was succeeded, at his death, by Mr. Andrew, minister at Milford, to which place the elder pupils were accordingly transferred, while the rest went to Saybrook, where two tutors had been provided to assist their studies. … For nearly twenty years the College of Connecticut … continued to be an unsatisfactory experiment. While the rector taught some youth at Milford, and two tutors had other pupils at Saybrook, and the few scores of books which had been obtained for a library were divided between the two places, there was small prospect of the results for which institutions of learning are created. Notwithstanding the general agreement that whatever facilities for the higher education could be commanded should be brought together and combined, the choice of the place was embarrassed by various considerations. … Saybrook, Wethersfield, Hartford, and New Haven competed with each other for the preference, offering such contributions as they were able towards the erection of a college building. The offer from New Haven, larger than that of any other town, was seven hundred pounds sterling. The plan of fixing the College there, promoted by the great influence of Governor Saltonstall, was adopted by the trustees; and with money obtained by private gifts, and two hundred and fifty pounds accruing from a sale of land given by the General Assembly, a building was begun [1717], which finally cost a thousand pounds sterling. … The Assembly gave the College a hundred pounds. Jeremiah Dummer sent from England a substantial present of books. Governor Saltonstall contributed fifty pounds sterling, and the same sum was presented by Jahleel Brenton, of Newport, in Rhode Island. But the chief patronage came from Elihu Yale,—a native of New Haven, but long resident in the East Indies, where he had been Governor of Fort St. George. He was now a citizen of London, and Governor of the East India Company. His contributions, continued through seven years, amounted to some four hundred pounds sterling; and he was understood to have made arrangements for a further bounty of five hundred pounds, which, however, through unfortunate accidents, never came to its destination. The province made a grant of forty pounds annually for seven years."

J. G. Palfrey, History of New England, book 4, chapter 11, and book 5, chapter 4 (volume 4).

EDUCATION: A. D. 1746-1787. New York. King's College, now Columbia College.

"The establishment of a college in the city of New York was many years in agitation before the design was carried into effect. At length, under an act of Assembly passed in December, 1746, and other similar acts which followed, moneys were raised by public lottery 'for the encouragement of learning and towards the founding a college' within the colony. These moneys were, in November, 1751, vested in trustees. … The trustees, in November, 1753, invited Dr. Samuel Johnson, of Connecticut, to be President of the intended college. Dr. Johnson consequently removed to New York in the month of April following, and in July, 1754, commenced the instruction of a class of students in a room of the school-house belonging to Trinity Church; but he would not absolutely accept the presidency until after the passing of the charter. This took place on the 31st of October in the same year, 1754; from which period the existence of the college is properly to be dated. The Governors of the college, named in the charter, are the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the first Lord Commissioner for Trade and Plantations, both empowered to act by proxies; the Lieutenant-governor of the province, and several other public officers; together with the rector of Trinity Church, the senior minister of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church, the ministers of the German Lutheran Church, of the French Church, of the Presbyterian Congregation, and the President of the college, all ex officio, and twenty-four of the principal gentlemen of the city. The college was to be known by the name of King's College. Previously to the passing of the charter, a parcel of ground to the westward of Broadway, bounded by Barclay, Church, and Murray streets and the Hudson River, had been destined by the vestry of Trinity Church as a site for the college edifice; and, accordingly, after the charter was granted, a grant of the land was made on the 13th of May, 1755. … The part of the land thus granted by Trinity Church, not occupied for college purposes, was leased, and became a very valuable endowment to the college. The sources whence the funds of the institution were derived, besides the proceeds of the lotteries above mentioned, were the voluntary contributions of private individuals in this country, and sums obtained by agents who were subsequently sent to England and France. In May, 1760, the college buildings began to be occupied. In 1763 a grammar school was established. In March, 1763, Dr. Johnson resigned the presidency, and the Reverend Dr. Myles Cooper, of Oxford, who had previously been appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy and assistant to the President, was elected in his place. … In consequence of the dispute between this and the parent country, Dr. Cooper returned to England, and the Reverend Benjamin Moore was appointed praeses pro tempore during the absence of Dr. Cooper, who, however, did not return. On the breaking out of the Revolutionary War the business of the college was almost entirely broken up, and it was not until after the return of peace that its affairs were again regularly attended to. {731} In May, 1784, the college, upon its own application, was erected into a university; its corporate title was changed from King's College to Columbia College, and it was placed under the control of a board termed Regents of the University. … The college continued under that government until April, 1787, when the Legislature of the State restored it to its original position under the present name of Columbia College. … At the same time a new body was created, called by the same name, 'The Regents of the University,' under which all the seminaries of learning mentioned in the act creating it were placed by the legislature. This body still exists under its original name."

Columbia College Handbook, pages 5-9.

EDUCATION: A. D. 1776-1880. New England and New York. State School Systems.

"It was not until over thirty years after the close of the war of 1776 that a regular system of schools at the public expense was established. New England boasted with pride of being the first in education, as she had been in war. Her example was closely followed by the other States. In New York, in 1805, many gentlemen of prominence associated for the purpose of establishing a free school in New York City for the education of the children of persons in indigent circumstances, and who did not belong to, or were not provided for by, any religious society. These public-spirited gentlemen presented a memorial to the Legislature, setting forth the benefits that would result to society from educating such children, and that it would enable them more effectually to accomplish the objects of their institution if the schools were incorporated. The bill of incorporation was passed April 9, 1805. This was the nucleus from which the present system of public schools started into existence. Later on, in the year 1808, we find from annual printed reports that two free schools were opened and were in working order. … It was the intention of the founders of these schools—among whom the names of De Witt Clinton, Ferdinand de Peyster, John Murray, and Leonard Bleecker stand prominent as officers—to avoid the teachings of any religious society; but there were among the people many who thought that sufficient care was not being bestowed upon religious instruction: to please these malcontents the literary studies of the pupils were suspended one afternoon in every week, and an association of fifty ladies of 'distinguished consideration ·in society' met on this day and examined the children in their respective catechisms. … To read, write, and know arithmetic in its first branches correctly, was the extent of the educational advantages which the founders of the free-school system deemed necessary for the accomplishment of their purposes."

A. H. Rhine, The Early Free Schools of America. (Popular Science Monthly, March, 1880).

EDUCATION: A. D. 1785-1880. The United States. Land-grants for Schools.

"The question of the endowment of educational institutions by the Government in aid of the cause of education seems to have met no serious opposition in the Congress of the Confederation, and no member raised his voice against this vital and essential provision relating to it in the ordinance of May 20, 1785, 'for ascertaining the mode of disposing of lands in the Western Territory.' This provided: 'There shall be reserved the lot No. 16 of every township for the maintenance of public schools within said township.' This was an endowment of 640 acres of land (one section of land, one mile square) in a township 6 miles square, for the support and maintenance of public schools' within said township.' The manner of establishment of public schools thereunder, or by whom, was not mentioned. It was a reservation by the United States, and advanced and established a principle which finally dedicated one thirty-sixth part of all public lands of the United States, with certain exceptions as to mineral, &c., to the cause of education by public schools. … In the Continental Congress, July 13, 1787, according to order, the ordinance for the government of the 'Territory of the United States northwest of the river Ohio' came on, was read a third time, and passed [see NORTHWEST TERRITORY: A. D.1787]. It contained the following: 'Art. 3. Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.' The provision of the ordinance of May 20, 1785, relating to the reservation of the sixteenth section in every township of public land, was the inception of the present rule of reservation of certain sections of land for school purposes. The endowment was the subject of much legislation in the years following. The question was raised that there was no reason why the United States should not organize, control, and manage these public schools so endowed. The reservations of lands were made by surveyors and duly returned. This policy at once met with enthusiastic approval from the public, and was tacitly incorporated into the American system as one of its fundamental organic ideas. Whether the public schools thus endowed by the United States were to be under national or State control remained a question, and the lands were held in reservation merely until after the admission of the State of Ohio in 1802. … To each organized Territory, after 1803, was and now is reserved the sixteenth section (until after the Oregon Territory act reserved the thirty-sixth as well) for school purposes, which reservation is carried into grant and confirmation by the terms of the act of admission of the Territory or State into the Union; the State then becoming a trustee for school purposes. These grants of land were made from the public domain, and to States only which were known as public-land States. Twelve States, from March 3, 1803, known as public-land States, received the allowance of the sixteenth section to August 14, 1848. … Congress, June 13, 1812, and May 26, 1824, by the acts ordering the survey of certain towns and villages in Missouri, reserved for the support of schools in the towns and villages named, provided that the whole amount reserved should not exceed one-twentieth part of the whole lands included in the general survey of such town or village. These lots were reserved and sold for the benefit of the schools. Saint Louis received a large fund from this source. … In the act for the organization of the Territory of Oregon, August 14, 1848, Senator Stephen A. Douglas inserted an additional grant for school purposes of the thirty-sixth section in each township, with indemnity for all public-land States thereafter to be admitted, making the reservation for school purposes the sixteenth and thirty-sixth sections, or 1,280 acres in each township of six miles square reserved in public-land States and Territories, and confirmed by grant in terms in the act of admission of such State or Territory into the Union. From March 13, 1853, to June 30, 1880, seven States have been admitted into the Union having a grant of the sixteenth and thirty-sixth sections, and the same area has been reserved in eight Territories."

T. Donaldson, The Public Domain, chapter 13.

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EDUCATION: A. D. 1789. The United States.

"The Constitution of the United States makes no provision for the education of the people; and in the Convention that framed it, I believe the subject was not even mentioned. A motion to insert a clause providing for the establishment of a national university was voted down. I believe it is also the fact, that the Constitutions of only three of the thirteen original States made the obligation to maintain a system of Free Schools a part of their fundamental law."

H. Mann, Lectures and Annual Reports on Education, lecture 5.

EDUCATION: A. D. 1793. Massachusetts. Williams College.

"Williams College, at Williamstown, Berkshire County, Mass., was chartered in 1793. The town and the college were named in honor of Colonel Ephraim Williams, who had command of the forts in the Hoosac Valley, and was killed in a battle with the French and Indians, September 8, 1755. By his will he established a free school in the township which was to bear his name. The most advanced students of this free school became the first college class, numbering 4, and received the regular degree of bachelor of arts in the autumn of 1795. The small amount left by the will of Colonel Williams was carefully managed for 30 years by the executors, and they then obtained permission from the State legislature to carry out the benevolent purposes of the testator. The fund for building was increased by individual subscriptions, and by the avails of a lottery, which the general court granted for that purpose. The building which is now known as West College was then erected for the use of the free school and was finished in 1790. … The free school was opened in 1791, with Reverend Ebenezer Fitch, a graduate of Yale College, as preceptor, and Mr. John Lester as assistant. … The success of the school was so great that the next year the trustees asked the legislature to incorporate the school into a college. This was done, and a grant of $4,000 was made from the State treasury for the purchase of books and philosophical apparatus. The college was put under the care of 12 trustees, who elected Preceptor Fitch the first president of the college."

E. B. Parsons (United States Bureau of Education, Circular of Information, 1891, number 6: History of Higher Education in Massachusetts, chapter 9).

EDUCATION: A. D. 1795-1867. The United States. State School Funds.

"Connecticut took the lead in the creation of a permanent fund for the support of schools. The district known as the Western Reserve, in Northern Ohio, had been secured to her in the adjustment of her claims to lands confirmed to her by the charter of King Charles II. The Legislature of the State, in 1795, passed an act directing the sale of all the land embraced in the Reserve, and setting apart the avails as a perpetual fund for the maintenance of common schools. The amount realized was about $1,120,000. … New York was the next State to establish a common school fund for the aid and maintenance of schools in the several school districts of the State. The other Northern States except New Hampshire, Vermont, Pennsylvania, and one or two others, have established similar funds. … In all the new States, the 500,000 acres, given by act of Congress, on their admission into the Union, for the support of schools, have been sacredly set apart for that purpose, and generally other lands belonging to the States have been added to the fund. … Prior to the war the Slave States had made attempts to establish plans for popular education, but with results of an unsatisfactory character. In Virginia a school system was in force for the education of the children of indigent white persons. In North Carolina a large school fund, exceeding two millions of dollars, had been set apart for the maintenance of schools. In all of these States common schools had been introduced, but they did not flourish as in the North and West. … There was not the same population of small and independent farmers, whose families could be united into a school district. … A more serious obstacle was the slave population, constituting one-third of the whole, and in some of the States more than half, whom it was thought dangerous to educate."

V. M. Rice, Special Report on the Present State of Education, 1867, pages 19-23.

EDUCATION: A. D. 1804-1837. Michigan. The University.

"In 1804, when Michigan was organized as a Territory, Congress granted a township of land for a seminary of learning, and the university to be established in 1817 was to be in accordance with this grant. The Territorial government committed the interests of higher education to the care of the Governor and the Judges, and it is supposed that through the exertions of Honorable A. B. Woodward, then presiding Judge of the Supreme Court of the Territory of Michigan, that the act establishing a university was framed. A portion of this most curious document of the early History of Michigan will be given. It is entitled 'An act to establish the Catholepistemiad or University Michigania.' 'Be it enacted by the Governor and Judges of the Territory of Michigan, That there shall be in the said Territory a catholepistemiad or university denominated the Catholepistemiad or University Michigania. The Catholepistemiad or University of Michigania shall be composed of thirteen didaxum or professorships; first, a didaxia or professorship catholepistemia, or universal science, the dictator or professor of which shall be president of the institution; second, a didaxia or professorship of anthropoglassica, or literature embracing all of the episternum or sciences relative to language; third, a didaxia or professorship of mathematica or mathematics; fourth, a didaxia or professorship of physiognostica or natural history, etc.' The act thus continues through the whole range of the 'thirteen didaxum'; the remaining nine are as follows: Natural philosophy, astronomy, chemistry, medical sciences, economical sciences, ethical sciences, military sciences, historical sciences, and intellectual. The university was to be under the control of the professors and president, who were to be appointed by the Governor, while the institution was to be the center and controlling power of the educational system of the State. {733} It was to be supported by taxation by an increase of the amount of taxes already levied, by 15 per cent. Also power was given to raise money for the support of the university by means of lotteries. This remarkable document was not without its influence in shaping the public school policy of Michigan, but it was many years before the State approximated its learned provisions. Impracticable as this educational plan appears for a handful of people in the woods of Michigan, it served as a foundation upon which to build. The officers and president were duly appointed, and the work of the new university began at once. At first the university appeared as a school board, to establish and maintain primary schools which they held under their charge. Then followed a course of study for classical academies, and finally, in October, 1817, an act was passed establishing a college in the city of Detroit called 'The First College of Michigania.' … The people contributed liberally to these early schools, the sum of three thousand dollars being subscribed at the beginning. … An act was passed on the 30th of April, 1821, by the Governor and Judges establishing a university in Detroit to take the place of the catholepistemiad and to be called the 'University of Michigan.' In its charter nearly all the powers of the former institution were substantially confirmed, except the provision for taxes and lotteries. … The second corporation, known as the 'University of Michigan,' carried on the work of education already begun from 1821 to the third organization, in 1837. The education was very limited, consisting in one classical academy at Detroit, and part of the time a Lancasterian school. The boards of education kept up and transmitted the university idea to such an extent that it may be said truly and legally that there was one University of Michigan, which passed through three successive stages of development marked by the dates 1817, 1821, and 1837," at which time it was removed to Ann Arbor.

F. W. Blackmar, Federal and State Aid to Higher Education (United States Bureau of Education. Circular of Information, 1890, number 1), pages 239-241.

ALSO IN: E. M. Farrand, History of the University of Michigan.

A. Ten Brook, American State Universities.

EDUCATION: A. D. 1818-1821. Massachusetts. Amherst College.

"Amherst College originated in a strong desire on the part of the people of Massachusetts to have a college near the central part of the State, where the students should be free from the temptations of a large city, where the expenses of an education should not be beyond the means of those who had but little money, and where the moral and religious influences should be of a decidedly Christian character. … The ministers of Franklin County, at a meeting held in Shelburne May 18, 1815, expressed it as their opinion that a literary institution of high order ought to be established in Hampshire County, and that the town of Amherst appeared to them to be the most eligible place for it. Their early efforts for a literary institution in Hampshire County resulted in the first place in the establishment of an academy in Amherst, which was incorporated in the year 1816. … In the year 1818 a constitution was adopted by the trustees of Amherst Academy, for the raising and management of a fund of at least $50,000, for the classical education of indigent young men of piety and talents for the Christian ministry. … This charity fund may be said to be the basis of Amherst College, for though it was raised by the trustees of Amherst Academy it was really intended to be the foundation of a college, and has always been a part of the permanent funds of Amherst College, kept sacredly from all other funds for the specific object for which it was given. … This was for many years the only permanent fund of Amherst College, and without this it would have seemed impossible at one time to preserve the very existence of the college. So Amherst College grew out of Amherst Academy, and was built permanently on the charity fund raised by the trustees of that academy. … Although the charity fund of $50,000 had been received in 1818, it was not till 1820 that the recipient felt justified in going forward to erect buildings for a college in Amherst. Efforts were made for the removal of Williams College from Williamstown to Hampshire County, and to have the charity fund used in connection with that college; and, if that were done, it was not certain that Amherst could be regarded as the best location for the college. But the legislature of Massachusetts decided that Williams College could not be removed from Williamstown, and nothing remained but for the friends of the new institution to go on with their plans for locating it at Amherst. … This first college edifice was ready for occupation and dedicated on the 18th of September, 1821. In the month of May, 1821, Reverend Zephaniah Swift Moore, D. D., was unanimously elected by the trustees of Amherst Academy president of the new institution."

T. P. Field (United States Bureau of Education, Circular of Information, 1891, number 6: History of Higher Education in Massachusetts), chapter 11.

EDUCATION: A. D. 1837. Massachusetts. Horace Mann and the State System.

"When Massachusetts, in 1837, created a Board of Education, then were first united into a somewhat related whole the more or less excellent but varied and independent organizations, and a beginning made for a State system. It was this massing of forces, and the hearty co-operation he initiated, in which the work of Horace Mann showed its matchless greatness. 'Rarely,' it has been said, 'have great ability, unselfish devotion, and brilliant success, been so united in the course of a single life.' A successful lawyer, a member of the State Legislature, and with but limited experience as a teacher, he has left his impress upon the educational sentiments of, not only New England, but the United States."

R. G. Boone, Education in the United States, page 103.

EDUCATION: A. D. 1840-1886. The United States. Proportion of College Students.

"It is estimated that in 1840 the proportion of college students to the entire population in the United States was 1 to 1,540; in 1860, 1 to 2,012; in 1870,1 to 2,546; in 1880, 1 to 1,840; and in 1886, 1 to about 1,400, Estimating all our combined efforts in favor of higher education, we fall far short of some of the countries of the Old World."

F. W. Blackmar, Federal and State Aid to Higher Education in the United States (U. S. Bureau of Education, Circulars of Information, 1890, number 1), page 36.

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EDUCATION: A. D. 1844-1876. Canada. Ontario School System.

"From the earliest settlement of Ontario, schools were established as the wants of the inhabitants required. The Legislature soon recognized the needs of the country, and made grants of land and money in aid of elementary, secondary, and superior education. Statutes were passed from time to time for the purpose of opening schools to meet the demands of the people. The sparsely settled condition of the Province delayed for a while the organization of the system. It was not until 1844 that the elementary schools were put on a comprehensive basis. In that year the Reverend Egerton Ryerson, LL. D., was appointed Chief Superintendent of Education, and the report which he presented to the House of Assembly sketched in an able manner the main features of the system of which he was the distinguished founder, and of which he continued for thirty-three years to be the efficient administrator. In 1876 the office of chief superintendent was abolished, and the schools of the Province placed under the control of a member of the Government with the title of Minister of Education. … The system of education in Ontario may be said to combine the best features of the systems of several countries. To the Old World it is indebted for a large measure of its stability, uniformity and centralization; to the older settled parts of the New World for its popular nature, its flexibility and its democratic principles which have given, wherever desirable, local control and individual responsibility. From the State of New York we have borrowed the machinery of our school; from Massachusetts the principle of local taxation; from Ireland our first series of text books; from Scotland the co-operation of parents with the teacher, in upholding his authority; from Germany the system of Normal Schools and the Kindergarten; and from the United States generally the non-denominational character of elementary, secondary, and university education. Ontario may claim to have some features of her system that are largely her own. Among them may be mentioned a division of state and municipal authority on a judicious basis; clear lines separating the function of the University from that of the High Schools, and the function of the High Schools from that of the Public or elementary schools; a uniform course of study; all High and Public Schools in the hands of professionally trained teachers; no person eligible to the position of inspector who does not hold the highest grade of a teacher's certificate, and who has not had years of experience as a teacher; inspectors removable if inefficient, but not subject to removal by popular vote; the examinations of teachers under Provincial instead of local control; the acceptance of a common matriculation examination for admission to the Universities and to the learned professions; a uniform series of text books for the whole Province; the almost entire absence of party politics in the manner in which school boards, inspectors and teachers discharge their duties; the system national instead of sectarian, but affording under constitutional guarantees and limitations protection to Roman Catholic and Protestant Separate Schools and denominational Universities."

J. Millar, Educational System of the Province of Ontario.

EDUCATION: A. D. 1862. The United States. Land-grant for industrial Colleges.

"Next to the Ordinance of 1787, the Congressional grant of 1862 is the most important educational enactment in America. … By this gift forty-eight colleges and universities have received aid, at least to the extent of the Congressional grant; thirty-three of these, at least, have been called into existence by means of this act. In thirteen States the proceeds of the land scrip were devoted to institutions already in existence. The amount received from the sales of land scrip from twenty-four of these States aggregates the sum of $13,930,456, with land remaining unsold estimated at nearly two millions of dollars. These same institutions have received State endowments amounting to over eight million dollars. The origin of this gift must be sought in local communities. In this country all ideas of national education have arisen from those States that have felt the need of local institutions for the education of youth. In certain sections of the Union, particularly the North and West, where agriculture was one of the chief industries, it was felt that the old classical schools were not broad enough to cover all the wants of education represented by growing industries. There was consequently a revulsion from these schools toward the industrial and practical side of education. Evidences of this movement are seen in the attempts in different States to found agricultural, technical, and industrial schools. These ideas found their way into Congress, and a bill was introduced in 1858, which provided for the endowment of colleges for the teaching of agriculture and the mechanical arts. The bill was introduced by Honorable Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont; it was passed by a small majority, and was vetoed by President Buchanan. In 1862 the bill was again presented with slight changes, passed and signed, and became a law July 2, 1862. … It stipulated to grant to each State thirty thousand acres of land for each Senator and Representative in Congress to which the States were respectively entitled by the census of 1860, for the purpose of endowing 'at least one college where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the Legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions of life.' … From this proposition all sorts of schools sprang up, according to the local conception of the law and local demands. It was thought by some that boys were to be taught agriculture by working on a farm, and purely agricultural schools were founded with the mechanical arts attached. In other States classical schools of the stereotyped order were established, with more or less science; and, again, the endowment in others was devoted to scientific departments. The instruction of the farm and the teaching of pure agriculture have not succeeded in general, while the schools that have made prominent those studies relating to agriculture and the mechanic arts, upon the whole, have succeeded best. … In several instances the managers of the land scrip have understood that by this provision the State could not locate the land within the borders of another State, but its assignees could thus locate lands, not more than one million acres in any one State. By considering this question, the New York land scrip was bought by Ezra Cornell, and located by him for the college in valuable lands in the State of Wisconsin, and thus the fund was augmented. However, the majority of the States sold their land at a sacrifice, frequently for less than half its value. There was a lull in the land market during the Civil War, and this cause, together with the lack of attention in many States, sacrificed the gift of the Federal Government. The sales ranged all the way from fifty cents to seven dollars per acre, as the average price for each State."

F. W. Blackmar, Federal and State Aid to Higher Education (United States Bureau of Education, Circulars of Information, 1890, number 1), pages 47-49.

{735}

EDUCATION: A. D. 1862-1886. New York. Cornell University.

"On the second of July, 1862, … [President Lincoln] signed the act of congress, donating public lands for the establishment of colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts. This act had been introduced into congress by the Honorable Justin S. Morrill. … The Morrill act provided for a donation of public land to the several states, each state to receive thirty thousand acres for each senator and representative it sent to congress. States not containing within their own borders public land subject to sale at private entry received land scrip instead. But this land scrip the recipient states were not allowed to locate within the limits of any other state or of any territory of the United States. The act laconically directed 'said scrip to be sold by said states.' The proceeds of the sale, whether of land or scrip, in each state were to form a perpetual fund. … In the execution of this trust the State of New York was hampered by great and almost insuperable obstacles. For its distributive share it received land scrip to the amount of nine hundred and ninety thousand acres. The munificence of the endowment awakened the cupidity of a multitude of clamorous and strangely unexpected claimants. … If the princely domain granted to the State of New York by congress was not divided and frittered away, we owe it in great measure to the foresight, the energy, and the splendid courage of a few generous spirits in the legislature of whom none commanded greater respect or exercised more influence than Senator Andrew Dickson White, the gentleman who afterwards became first president of Cornell University. … But the all-compelling force which prevented the dispersion and dissipation of the bounty of congress was the generous heart of Ezra Cornell. While rival institutions clamored for a division of the 'spoils,' and political tricksters played their base and desperate game, this man thought only of the highest good of the State of New York, which he loved with the ardor of a patriot and was yet to serve with the heroism of a martyr. … When the legislature of the State of New York was called upon to make some disposition of the congressional grant, Ezra Cornell sat in the senate. … Of his minor legislative achievements I shall not speak. One act, however, has made his name as immortal as the state it glorified. By a gift of half a million dollars (a vast sum in 1865, the last year of the war!) he rescued for the higher education of New York the undivided grant of congress; and with the united endowments he induced the legislature to establish, not merely a college of applied science but a great modern university—'an institution,' according to his own admirable definition, 'where any person can find instruction in any study.' It was a high and daring aspiration to crown the educational system of our imperial state with an organ of universal knowledge, a nursery of every science and of all scholarship, an instrument of liberal culture and of practical utility to all classes of our people. This was, however, the end; and to secure it Ezra Cornell added to his original gift new donations of land, of buildings, and of money. … But one danger threatened this latest birth of time. The act of congress donating land scrip required the states to sell it. The markets were immediately glutted. Prices fell. New York was selling at an average price of fifty cents an acre. Her princely domain would bring at this rate less than half a million dollars! Was the splendid donation to issue in such disaster? If it could be held till the war was over, till immigration opened up the Northwest, it would be worth five times five hundred thousand dollars! So at least thought one far-seeing man in the State of New York. And this man of foresight had the heart to conceive, the wisdom to devise, and the courage to execute—he alone in all the states—a plan for saving to his state the future value of the lands donated by congress. Ezra Cornell made that wonderful and dramatic contract with the State of New York! He bound himself to purchase at the rate of sixty cents per acre the entire right of the commonwealth to the scrip, still unsold; and with the scrip, thus purchased by him as an individual he agreed to select and locate the lands it represented, to pay the taxes, to guard against trespasses and defend from fires, to the end that within twenty years when values had appreciated he might sell the land and turn into the treasury of the State of New York for the support of Cornell University the entire net proceeds of the enterprise. Within a few years Ezra Cornell had located over half a million acres of superior pine land in the Northwestern states, principally in Wisconsin. Under bonds to the State of New York to do the state's work he had spent about $600,000 of his own cash to carry out the trust committed to him by the state, when, alas, in the crisis of 1874, fortune and credit sank exhausted and death came to free the martyr-patriot from his bonds. The seven years that followed were the darkest in our history. … Ezra Cornell was our founder; Henry W. Sage followed him as wise masterbuilder. The edifices, chairs and libraries which bear the name of 'Sage' witness to [his] later gifts: but though these now aggregate the princely sum of $1,250,000, [his] management of the university lands has been [his] greatest achievement. From these lands, with which the generosity and foresight of Ezra Cornell endowed the university, there have been netted under [Mr. Sage's] administration, not far short of $4,000,000, with over 100,000 acres still to sell. Ezra Cornell's contract with the state was for twenty years. It expired August 4, 1886, when a ten years' extension was granted by the state. The trust will be closed in 1896."

J. G. Schurman, Address at Inauguration to the Presidency of Cornell University, November 11, 1892.

EDUCATION: A. D. 1866-1869. The United States. Bureau of Education.

"Educators, political economists, and statesmen felt the need of some central agency by which the general educational statistics of the country could be collected, preserved, condensed, and properly arranged for distribution. This need found expression finally in the action taken at a convention of the superintendence department of the National Educational Association, held at Washington February, 1866, when it was resolved to petition Congress in favor of a National Bureau of Education. … {736} The memorial was presented in the House of Representatives by General Garfield, February 14, 1866, with a bill for the establishment of a National Bureau on essentially the basis the school superintendents had proposed. Both bill and memorial were referred to a committee of seven members. … The bill was reported back from the committee, with an amendment in the nature of a substitute, providing for the creation of a department of education instead of the bureau originally proposed. Thus altered, it was passed by a vote of nearly two to one. In the Senate it was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary … who the following winter reported it without amendment and with a recommendation that it pass, which it did on the 1st of March, 1867, receiving on the next day the approval of the President. By the act of July 28, 1868, which took effect June 30, 1869, the Department of Education was abolished, and an Office of Education in the Department of the Interior was established, with the same objects and duties. … The act of March 2, 1867, … established an agency 'for the purpose of collecting such statistics and facts as shall show the condition and progress of education in the several States and Territories, and of diffusing such information respecting the organization and management of school systems and methods of teaching as shall aid the people of the United States in the establishment and maintenance of efficient school systems and otherwise promote the cause of education.' It will be perceived that the chief duty of the office under the law is to act as an educational exchange. Exercising and seeking to exercise no control whatever over its thousands of correspondents, the office occupies a position as the recipient of voluntary information which is unique."

C. Warren, Answers to Inquiries about the United States Bureau of Education, chapters 2-3.

EDUCATION: A. D. 1867. New York. Public Schools made entirely free.

The public schools of the State of New York were not entirely free until 1867. In his report to the Legislature made in February of that year, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Honorable Victor M. Rice, said: "The greatest defect in our school system is, as I have urged in previous reports, the continuance of the rate bill system. Our common schools can never reach their highest degree of usefulness until they shall have been made entirely free. … To meet this public demand, to confer upon the children of the State the blessings of free education, a bill has already been introduced into your honorable body. … The main features of the bill are the provisions to raise, by State tax, a sum about equal to that raised in the districts by rate bills, and to abolish the rate bill system; to facilitate the erection and repair of school houses." The bill referred to was passed at the same session of the Legislature, and in his next succeeding report, Superintendent Rice gave the following account of the law and its immediate effects: "While the general structure of the school law was not disturbed, a material modification was made by the Act (chap. 406, Laws of 1867), which took effect on the first day of October of the same year, and which, among other things, provided for the abolishment of rate-bills, and for increased local and State taxation for school purposes. This was primarily a change in the manner of raising the requisite funds; not an absolute increase of the aggregate amount to be raised. It involved and encouraged such increase, so far as the inhabitants in the several school districts should authorize it, by substituting taxation exclusively on property, for a mixed assessment which, in part, was a tax on attendance. Thus relieved of an old impediment, and supplied with additional power and larger resources, the cause of public instruction, during the last fiscal year, has wrought results unequaled in all the past. … The effect of this amendment has not been confined to the financial policy thereby inaugurated. It is distinctly traceable in lengthened terms of school, in a larger and more uniform attendance, and in more liberal expenditures for school buildings and appliances."

Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State of New York, Annual Report, 1869, pages 5-6.

EDUCATION: A. D. 1867. Maryland. Johns Hopkins University.

"By the will of Johns Hopkins, a merchant of Baltimore, the sum of $7,000,000 was devoted to the endowment of a university [chartered in 1867] and a hospital, $3,500,000 being appropriated to each. … To the bequest no burdensome conditions were attached. … Just what this new university was to be proved a very serious question to the trustees. The conditions of Mr. Hopkins's bequest left the determination of this matter open. … A careful investigation led the trustees to believe that there was a growing demand for opportunities to study beyond the ordinary courses of a college or a scientific school, particularly in those branches of learning not included in the schools of law, medicine and theology. Strong evidence of this demand was afforded by the increasing attendance of American students upon the lectures of the German universities, as well as by the number of students who were enrolling themselves at Harvard and Yale for the post-graduate courses. It was therefore determined that the Johns Hopkins should be primarily a university, with advanced courses of lectures and fully equipped laboratories; that the courses should be voluntary, and the teaching not limited to class instruction. The foundation is both old and new. In so far as each feature is borrowed from some older university, where it has been fairly tried and tested, it is old, but at the same time this particular combination of separate features has here been made for the first time. … In the ordinary college course, if a young man happens to be deficient in mathematics, for example, he is either forced to lose any advantage he may possess in Greek or Latin, or else is obliged to take a position in mathematics for which he is unprepared. In the college department of the Johns Hopkins, this disadvantage does not exist; the classifying is specific for each study. The student has also the privilege of pushing forward in any one study as rapidly as he can with advantage; or, on the other hand, in case of illness or of unavoidable interruption, of prolonging the time devoted to the course, so that no part of it shall be omitted. As the studies are elective, it is possible to follow the usual college course if one desires. Seven different courses of study are indicated, any of which leads to the Baccalaureate degree, thus enabling the student to direct and specialize his work. The same standard of matriculation and the same severity of examinations are maintained in all these courses. {737} A student has the privilege of extending his study beyond the regular class work, and he will be credited with all such private and outside study, if his examiners are satisfied of his thoroughness and accuracy."

S. B. Herrick, The Johns Hopkins University (Scribner's Monthly, December 1879).

EDUCATION: A. D. 1867-1891. The United States. The Peabody Education Fund.

"The letter announcing and creating the Peabody endowment was dated February 7, 1867. In that letter, after referring to the ravages of he late war, the founder of the Trust said: 'I feel most deeply that it is the duty and privilege of the more favoured and wealthy portions of our nation to assist those who are less fortunate.' He then added: 'I give one million of dollars for the encouragement and promotion of intellectual, moral, and industrial education among the young of the more destitute portions of the Southern and Southwestern States of the Union.' On the day following, ten of the Trustees selected by him held a preliminary meeting in Washington. Their first business meeting was held in the city of New York, the 19th of March following, at which a general plan was adopted and an agent appointed. Mr. Peabody returned to his native country again in 1869, and on the 1st day of July, at a special meeting of the Trustees held at Newport, added a second million to the cash capital of the fund. … According to the donor's directions, the principal must remain intact for thirty years. The Trustees are not authorized to expend any part of it, nor yet to add to it any part of the accruing interest. The manner of using the interest, as well as the final distribution of the principal, was left entirely to the discretion of a self-perpetuating body of Trustees. Those first appointed had, however, the rare advantage of full consultation with the founder of the Trust while he still lived, and their plans received his cordial and emphatic approbation. … The pressing need of the present seemed to be in the department of primary education for the masses, and so they determined to make appropriations only for the assistance of public free schools. The money is not given as a charity to the poor. It would be entirely inadequate to furnish any effectual relief if distributed equally among all those who need it, and would, moreover, if thus widely dissipated, produce no permanent results. But the establishment of good public schools provides for the education of all children, whether rich or poor, and initiates a system which no State has ever abandoned after a fair trial. So it seemed to the donor as well as to his Trustees, that the greatest good of the greatest number would be more effectually and more certainly attained by this mode of distribution than by any other. No effort is made to distribute according to population. It was Mr. Peabody's wish that those States which had suffered most from the ravages of war should be assisted first."

American Educational Cyclopædia, 1875, pages 224-225.

The report made by the treasurer of the Fund in 1890, showed a principal sum invested to the amount of $2,075,175.22, yielding an income that year of $97,818. In the annual report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education made February 1, 1891, he says: "It would appear to the student of education in the Southern States that the practical wisdom in the administration of the Peabody Fund and the fruitful results that have followed it could not be surpassed in the history of endowments."

Proceedings of the Trustees of the Peabody Education Fund, 1887-1892.

EDUCATION: A. D. 1884-1891. California. Leland Stanford Junior University.

"The founding at Palo Alto of 'a university for both sexes, with the colleges, schools, seminaries of learning, mechanical institutes, museums, galleries of art, and all other things necessary and appropriate to a university of high degree,' was determined upon by the Honorable Leland Stanford and Jane Lathrop Stanford in 1884. In March of the year following the Legislature of California passed an Act providing for the administration of trust funds in connection with institutions of learning. November 14, 1885, the Grant of Endowment was publicly made, in accordance with this Act, and on the same day the Board of Trustees held its first meeting in San Francisco. The work of construction was at once begun, and the cornerstone laid May 14, 1887. The University was formally opened to students October 1, 1891. The idea of the university, in the words of its founders, 'came directly and largely from our son and only child, Leland, and in the belief that had he been spared to advise as to the disposition of our estate, he would have desired the devotion of a large portion thereof to this purpose, we will that for all time to come the institution hereby founded shall bear his name, and shall be known as The Leland Stanford Junior University.' The object of the University, as stated in its Charter, is 'to qualify students for personal success and direct usefulness in life'; and its purposes, 'to promote the public welfare by exercising an influence in behalf of humanity and civilization, teaching the blessings of liberty regulated by law, and inculcating love and reverence for the great principles of government as derived from the inalienable rights of man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' The University is located on the Palo Alto estate in the Santa Clara valley, thirty-three miles southeast of San Francisco, on the Coast Division of the Southern Pacific Railway. The estate consists of over eight thousand acres, partly lowland and partly rising into the foothills of the Santa Cruz range. On the grounds is the residence of the Founders, and an extensive and beautiful arboretum containing a very great variety of shrubs and trees. The property conveyed to the University, in addition to the Palo Alto estate, consists of the Vina estate, in Tehama County, of fifty-five thousand acres, of which about four thousand acres are planted in vines, and the Gridley estate, in Butte County, of twenty-two thousand acres, devoted mainly to the raising of wheat. … The founders of the Leland Stanford Junior University say: 'As a further assurance that the endowment will be ample to establish and maintain a university of the highest grade, we have, by last will and testament, devised to you and your successors additional property. We have done this as a security against the uncertainty of life and in the hope that during our lives the full endowment may go to you. The aggregate of the domain thus dedicated to the founding of the University, is over eighty-five thousand acres, or more than one hundred and thirty-three square miles, among the best improved and most valuable lands in the State."

Leland Stanford Junior University, Circulars of Information, numbers 6 and 1-2.

{738}

EDUCATION: A. D. 1887-1889. Massachusetts. Clark University.

"Clark University was founded [at Worcester] by … a native of Worcester County, Massachusetts. It was 'not the outcome of a freak of impulse, or of a sudden wave of generosity, or of the natural desire to perpetuate in a worthy way one's ancestral name. To comprehend the genesis of the enterprise we must go back along the track of Mr. Clark's personal history 20 years at least. For as long ago as that, the idea came home with force to his mind that all civilized communities are in the hands of experts. … Looking around at the facilities obtainable in this country for the prosecution of original research, he was struck with the meagerness and the inadequacy. Colleges and professional schools we have in abundance, but there appeared to be no one grand inclusive institution, unsaddled by an academic department, where students might pursue as far as possible their investigation of any and every branch of science. … Mr. Clark went abroad and spent eight years visiting the institutions of learning in almost every country of Europe. He studied into their history and observed their present working.' … It is his strong and expressed desire that the highest possible academic standards be here forever maintained; that special opportunities and inducements be offered to research; that to this end the instructors be not overburdened with teaching or examinations. … A charter was granted early in 1887. Land and other property that had been before secured by the founder was transferred to the board, and the erection of a central building was begun. In the spring of 1888 G. Stanley Hall, then a professor at the Johns Hopkins University, was invited to the presidency. … The plans of the university had so far progressed that work was begun in October, 1889, in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and psychology."

G. G. Bush, History of Higher Education in Massachusetts (United States Bureau of Education, Circular of Information, 1891, number 6), chapter 18.

EDUCATION: A. D. 1889-1892. Illinois. Chicago University.

"At its Annual Meeting in May, 1889, the Board of the American Baptist Education Society resolved to take immediate steps toward the founding of a well-equipped college in the city of Chicago. At the same time John D. Rockefeller made a subscription of $600,000 and this sum was increased during the succeeding year by about $600,000 more in subscriptions representing more than two thousand persons. Three months after the completion of this subscription, Mr. Rockefeller made an additional proffer of $1,000,000. The site of the University consists of three blocks of ground—about two thousand feet long and three hundred and sixty-two feet wide, lying between the two South Parks of Chicago, and fronting on the Midway Plaisance, which is itself a park connecting the other two. One-half of this site is a gift of Marshall Field of Chicago, and the other half has been purchased at a cost of $132,500. At the first meeting of the Board after it had become an incorporated body, Professor William R. Harper, of Yale University, was unanimously elected President of the University. … It has been decided that the University will begin the work of instruction on the first day of October, 1892. … The work of the University shall be arranged under three general divisions, viz., The University Proper, The University-Extension Work, The University Publication Work."

University of Chicago, Official Bulletin no. 1, January, 1891.

EDUCATION: A. D. 1890. United States. Census Statistics.

The following statistics of education in the United States are from the returns gathered for the Eleventh Census, 1890. In these statistics the states and territories are classed in five great geographical divisions, defined as follows: North Atlantic Division, embracing the New England States, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; South Atlantic Division, embracing the States of the eastern coast, from Delaware to Florida, together with the District of Columbia; North Central Division, embracing Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas; South Central Division, embracing Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma; Western Division, embracing all the remaining States and Territories. The total taxation for public schools in the United States, as reported by this census, was $102,164,796; of which $37,619,786 was raised in the North Atlantic Division, $5,678,474 in the South Atlantic Division, $47,033,142 in the North Central Division, $5,698.562 in the South Central Division, and $6,134,832 in the Western Division. From funds and rents there were raised for school purposes a total of $25,694,449 in the United States at large, of which $8,273,147 was raised in the North Atlantic Division, $2,307,051 in the South Atlantic Division, $8,432,593 in the North Central Division, $3,720,158 in the South Central Division, and $2,961,500 in the Western Division. The total of all "ordinary" receipts for school support in the United States, was $139,619,440, of which $49,201,216 were in the North Atlantic Division, $8,685,223 in the South Atlantic Division. $61,108,263 in the North Central Division, $10,294,621 in the South Central Division, and $10,330,117 in the Western Division. The total "ordinary expenditures" were $138,786,393 in the whole United States; being $47,625,548 in the North Atlantic Division, $8,630,711 in the South Atlantic Division, $62,815.531 in the North Central Division, $9,860,050 in the South Central Division, and $9,854,544 in the Western Division. For teachers' wages there was a total expenditure of $88,705,992, $28,067,821 being in the North Atlantic Division, $6,400,063 in the South Atlantic Division, $39,866,831 in the North Central Division, $8,209,509 in the South Central Division, and $6,161,768 in the Western Division. The total expenditure for Libraries and Apparatus was $1,667,787, three-fourths of which was in the North Atlantic and North Central Divisions. The expenditure reported for construction and care of buildings, was $24,224,793, of which $10,687,114 was in the North Atlantic Division, $884,277 was in the South Atlantic Division, $9,869,489 in the North Central Division, $770,257 in the South Central Division, and $2,013,656 in the Western Division. Reported estimates of the value of buildings and other school property are incomplete, but $27,892,831 are given for Massachusetts, $41,626,735 for New York, $35,435,412 for Pennsylvania, $32,631,549 for Ohio, $26,814,480 for Illinois, and these are the States that stand highest in the column. {739} The apparent enrollment in Public Schools for the census year, reported to July, 1891, was as follows: North Atlantic Division, 3,124,417; South Atlantic Division, 1,758,285; North Central Division, 5,032,182; South Central Division, 2,334,694; Western Division, 520,286; Total for the United States, 12,769,864 being 20.39 per cent. of the population, against 19.84 per cent. in 1880. The reported enrollment in Private Schools at the same time was: North Atlantic Division, 196,173; South Atlantic Division, 165,253; North Central Division, 187,827; South Central Division, 200,202; Western Division, 54,749; Total for the United States, 804,204. The reported enrollment in Parochial Schools was: North Atlantic Division, 311,684; South Atlantic Division, 30,869; North Central Division, 398,585; South Central Division, 41,115; Western Division, 17,349; Total for the United States, 799,602. Of this total, 626,496 were enrolled in Catholic and 151,651 in Lutheran Parochial Schools; leaving only 21,455 in the schools of all other denominations. Total enrollment reported in all schools 14,373,670. The colored public school enrollment in the Southern States was 1,288,229 in 1890, against 797,286 in 1880,—an increase of more than 61 per cent. The enrollment of whites was 3,358,527, against 2,301,804,—an increase of nearly 46 per cent. The approximate number of Public School-houses in the United States, for the census year 1890 is given at 219,992, being 42,949 in the North Atlantic Division, 32,142 in the South Atlantic Division, 97,166 in the North Central Division, 38,962 in the South Central Division, 8,773 in the Western Division. The largest number reported is 14,214 in Pennsylvania. Of 6,408 school-houses in Virginia 4,568 are for white, and 1,840 for colored children; in North Carolina, 3,973 white and 1,820 colored. The above statistics are taken in part from the Compendium of the Eleventh Census, published in 1894, and partly from tables courteously furnished from the Census Bureau in advance of their publication.

EDUCATION: Modern: Reforms and Movements.

EDUCATION: A. D. 1638-1671. Comenius.

"To know Comenius [born in Moravia, 1592] and the part he played in the seventeenth century, to appreciate this grand educational character, it would be necessary to begin by relating his life; his misfortunes; his journeys to England [1638], where Parliament invoked his aid; to Sweden [1642], where the Chancellor Oxenstiern employed him to write manuals of instruction; especially his relentless industry, his courage through exile, and the long persecutions he suffered as a member of the sect of dissenters, the Moravian Brethren; and the schools he founded at Fulneck, in Bohemia, at Lissa and at Patak, in Poland."

G. Compayré, The History of Pedagogy, chapter 6 (section 137).

"Comenius's inspiring motive, like that of all leading educationalists, was social regeneration. He believed that this could be accomplished through the school. He lived under the hallucination that by a proper arrangement of the subject-matter of instruction, and by a sound method, a certain community of thought and interests would be established among the young, which would result in social harmony and political settlement. He believed that men could be manufactured. … The educational spirit of the Reformers, the conviction that all—even the humblest—must be taught to know God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent, was inherited by Comenius in its completeness. In this way, and in this way only, could the ills of Europe be remedied, and the progress of humanity assured. While, therefore, he sums up the educational aim under the threefold heads of Knowledge, Virtue, and Piety or Godliness, he in truth has mainly in view the last two. Knowledge is of value only in so far as it forms the only sound basis, in the eyes of a Protestant theologian, of virtue and godliness. We have to train for a hereafter. … By knowledge Comenius meant knowledge of nature and of man's relation to nature. It is this important characteristic of Comenius's educational system that reveals the direct influence of Bacon and his school. … It is in the department of Method, however, that we recognise the chief contribution of Comenius to education. The mere attempt to systematise was a great advance. In seeking, however, for foundations on which to erect a coherent system, he had to content himself with first principles which were vague and unscientific. … In the department of knowledge, that is to say, knowledge of the outer world, Comenius rested his method on the scholastic maxim, 'Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu.' This maxim he enriched with the Baconian induction, comprehended by him only in a general way. … From the simple to the complex, from the particular to the general, the concrete before the abstract, and all, step by step, and even by insensible degrees,—these were among his leading principles of method. But the most important of all his principles was derived from the scholastic maxim quoted above. As all is from sense, let the thing to be known be itself presented to the senses, and let every sense be engaged in the perception of it. When it is impossible, from the nature of the case, to present the object itself, place a vivid picture of it before the pupil. The mere enumeration of these few principles, even if we drop out of view all his other contributions to method and school-management, will satisfy any man familiar with all the more recent treatises on Education, that Comenius, even after giving his precursors their due, is to be regarded as the true founder of modern Method, and that he anticipates Pestalozzi and all of the same school. … Finally, Comenius's views as to the inner organisation of a school were original, and have proved themselves in all essential respects correct. The same may be said of his scheme for the organisation of a State-system—a scheme which is substantially, mutatis mutandis, at this moment embodied in the highly-developed system of Germany. When we consider, then, that Comenius first formally and fully developed educational method, that he introduced important reforms into the teaching of languages, that he introduced into schools the study of Nature, that he advocated with intelligence, and not on purely sentimental grounds, a milder discipline, we are justified in assigning to him a high, if not the highest, place among modern educational writers."

S. S. Laurie, John Amos Comenius, pages 217-226.

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EDUCATION: A. D. 1681-1878. The Christian Brothers.

"Any description of popular education in Europe would be incomplete, which should not give prominence to the Institute of the Christian Brothers—or the Brothers of the Christian Doctrine—including in that term the earliest professional school for the training of teachers in Europe; one of the most remarkable body of teachers devoted exclusively and without pay to the education of the children of the poor that the world has ever seen. … The Institute was established as a professional school in 1681, and to Abbe John Baptist de la Salle, belongs the high honor not only of founding it, but of so infusing into its early organization his own profound conviction of the Christ-like character of its mission among the poor, that it has retained for nearly two centuries the form and spirit of its origin. This devoted Christian teacher was born at Rheims on the 30th of April, 1651. … He was early distinguished for his scholarly attainments and maturity of character; and at the age of seventeen, before he had completed his full course of theological study, he was appointed Canon in the Cathedral church of Rheims. From the first, he became interested in the education of the young, and especially of the poor, as the most direct way of leading them to a Christian life;—and with this view before he was twenty-one years old, he assumed the direction of two charities, devoted to female education. From watching the operation of these schools, conducted by teachers without professional training, without plan and without mutual sympathy and aid, he conceived the design of bringing the teachers of this class of schools from the neighboring parishes into a community for their moral and professional improvement. For this purpose, he invited them first to meet, and then to lodge at his house, and afterwards, about the year 1681, he purchased a house for their special accommodation. Here, out of school hours and during their holy days, they spent their time in the practice of religious duties, and in mutual conferences on the work in which they were engaged. About this period, a large number of free schools for the poor were established in the neighboring towns; and applications were constantly made to the Abbe for teachers formed under his training, care, and influence. To meet this demand, and make himself more directly useful in the field of Christian education, he resigned his benefice, that he might give his whole attention to the work. To close the distance between himself, having a high social position and competence from his father's estate, and the poor schoolmasters to whom he was constantly preaching an unreserved consecration of themselves to their vocation—he not only resigned his canonry, with its social and pecuniary advantages, but distributed his patrimony, in a period of scarcity, in relieving the necessities of the poor, and in providing for the education of their children. He thus placed himself on a footing of equality—as to occupation, manner of life, and entire dependence on the charity of others—with the schoolmasters of the poor. The annals of education or religion show but few such examples of practical self-denial, and entire consecration to a sense of duty. … Having completed his act of resignation and self-imposed poverty, he assembled his teachers, announced to them what he had done, and sung with them a Te Deum. After a retreat—a period set apart to prayer and fasting-continued for seventeen days, they devoted themselves to the consideration of the best course to give unity, efficiency, and permanence to their plans of Christian education for the poor. They assumed the name of 'The Brothers of the Christian Doctrine,' as expressive of their vocation—which by usage came to be abbreviated into 'Christian Brothers.' They took on themselves vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience for three years. They prescribed to themselves the most frugal fare, to be provided in turns by each other, They adopted at that time some rules of behavior, which have since been incorporated into the fundamental rules of the order. … In 1702 the first step was taken to establish an Institute at Rome, under the mission of one of the brothers, Gabriel Drolin, who after years of poverty, was made conductor of one of the charitable schools founded by Pope Clement XI. This school became afterwards the foundation of the house which the brothers have had in Rome since the pontificate of Benedict XIII., who conferred on the institute the constitution of a religious order. In 1703, under the pecuniary aid of M. Chateau Blanc, and the countenance of the archbishop, M. de Gontery, a school was opened at Avignon. … In 1789, the National Assembly prohibited vows to be made in communities; and in 1790, suppressed all religious societies; and in 1791, the institute was dispersed. At that date there were one hundred and twenty houses, and over one thousand brothers, actively engaged in the duties of the school room. The continuity of the society was secured by the houses established in Italy, to which many of the brothers fled. … In 1801, on the conclusion of a Concordat between the Pope and the government, the society was revived in France by the opening of a school at Lyons; and in 1815, they resumed their habit, and opened a novitiate, the members of which were exempt from military service. At the organization of the university in 1808, the institute was legally reorganized, and from that time has increased in numbers and usefulness. … In 1842, there were 390 houses (of which 326 were in France), with 3,030 brothers, and 585 novices. There were 642 schools with 163,700 children, besides evening schools with 7,800 adults in attendance, and three reformatory schools with 2,000 convicts under instruction."

Henry Barnard, National Education in Europe, pages 435-441.

"In 1878 their numbers had increased to 11,640; they had 1,249 establishments, and the number of their scholars was 390,607."

Mrs. R. F. Wilson, The Christian Brothers, their Origin and Work, chapter 21.

EDUCATION: A. D. 1762. Rousseau.

"Rousseau, who had educated himself, and very badly at that, was impressed with the dangers of the education of his day. A mother having asked his advice, he took up the pen to write it; and, little by little, his counsels grew into a book, a large work, a pedagogic romance ['Emile']. This romance, when it appeared in 1762, created a great noise and a great scandal. The Archbishop of Paris, Christophe de Beaumont, saw in it a dangerous, mischievous work, and gave himself the trouble of writing a long encyclical letter in order to point out the book to the reprobation of the faithful. This document of twenty-seven chapters is a formal refutation of the theories advanced in 'Emile.' … In those days, such a condemnation was a serious matter; its consequences to an author might be terrible. Rousseau had barely time to flee. His arrest was decreed by the parliament of Paris, and his book was burned by the executioner. … As a fugitive, Rousseau did not find a safe retreat even in his own country. {741} He was obliged to leave Geneva, where his book was also condemned, and Berne, where he had sought refuge, but whence he was driven by intolerance. He owed it to the protection of Lord Keith, governor of Neufchâtel, a principality belonging to the King of Prussia, that he lived for some time in peace in the little town of Motiers in the Val de Travers. … The renown of the book, condemned by so high an authority, was immense. Scandal, by attracting public attention to it, did it good service. What was most serious and most suggestive in it was not, perhaps, seized upon; but the 'craze' of which it was the object had, notwithstanding, good results. Mothers were won over, and resolved to nurse their own infants; great lords began to learn handicrafts, like Rousseau's imaginary pupil; physical exercises came into fashion; the spirit of innovation was forcing itself a way. … Three men above all the rest are noted for having popularized the pedagogic method of Rousseau, and for having been inspired in their labors by 'Emile.' These were Basedow, Pestalozzi, and Froebel. Basedow, a German theologian, had devoted himself entirely to dogmatic controversy, until the reading of 'Emile' had the effect of enlarging his mental horizon, and of revealing to him his true vocation. … Pestalozzi of Zurich, one of the foremost educators of modern times, also found his whole life transformed by the reading of 'Emile,' which awoke in him the genius of a reformer. … The most distinguished among his disciples and continuators is Froebel, the founder of those primary schools … known by the name of 'kindergartens,' and the author of highly esteemed pedagogic works. These various attempts, these new and ingenious processes which, step by step, have made their way among us, and are beginning to make their workings felt, even in institutions most stoutly opposed to progress, are all traceable to Rousseau's 'Emile.' … It is true that 'Emile' contains pages that have outlived their day, many odd precepts, many false ideas, many disputable and destructive theories; but at the same time we find in it so many sagacious observations, such upright counsels, suitable even to modern times, so lofty an ideal, that, in spite of everything, we cannot read and study it without profit. … There is absolutely nothing practicable in his [Rousseau's] system. It consists in isolating a child from the rest of the world; in creating expressly for him a tutor, who is a phœnix among his kind; in depriving him of father, mother, brothers, and sisters, his companions in study; in surrounding him with a perpetual charlatanism, under the pretext of following nature; and in showing him only through the veil of a factitious atmosphere the society in which he is to live. And, nevertheless, at each step it is sound reason by which we are met; by an astonishing paradox, this whimsicality is full of good sense; this dream overflows with realities; this improbable and chimerical romance contains the substance and the marrow of a rational and truly modern treatise on pedagogy. Sometimes we must read between the lines, add what experience has taught us since that day, transpose into an atmosphere of open democracy those pages, written under the old order of things, but even then quivering with the new world which they were bringing to light, and for which they prepared the way. Reading 'Emile' in the light of modern prejudices, we can see in it more than the author wittingly put into it; but not more than logic and the instinct of genius set down there. To unfold the powers of children in due proportion to their age; not to transcend their ability; to arouse in them the sense of the observer and of the pioneer; to make them discoverers rather than imitators: to teach them accountability to themselves and not slavish dependence upon the words of others; to address ourselves more to the will than to custom, to the reason rather than to the memory; to substitute for verbal recitations lessons about things; to lead to theory by way of art; to assign to physical movements and exercises a prominent place, from the earliest hours of life up to perfect maturity; such are the principles scattered broadcast in this book, and forming a happy counterpoise to the oddities of which Rousseau was perhaps most proud."

J. Steeg, Introduction to Rousseau's 'Emile.'

EDUCATION: A. D. 1798-1827. Pestalozzi.

In Switzerland, up to the end of the eighteenth century, the state of primary instruction was very bad. "The teachers were gathered up at hazard; their pay was wretched; in general they had no lodgings of their own, and they were obliged to hire themselves out for domestic service among the well-off inhabitants of the villages, in order to find food and lodging among them. A mean spirit of caste still dominated instruction, and the poor remained sunk in ignorance. It was in the very midst of this wretched and unpropitious state of affairs that there appeared, towards the end of the eighteenth century, the most celebrated of modern educators. … Born at Zurich in 1746, Pestalozzi died at Brugg in Argovia in 1827. This unfortunate great man always felt the effects of the sentimental and unpractical education given him by his mother, who was left a widow with three children in 1751. He early formed the habit of feeling and of being touched with emotion, rather than of reasoning and of reflecting. The laughing-stock of his companions, who made sport of his awkwardness, the little scholar of Zurich accustomed himself to live alone and to become a dreamer. Later, towards 1760, the student of the academy distinguished himself by his political enthusiasm and his revolutionary daring. At that early period he had conceived a profound feeling for the miseries and the needs of the people, and he already proposed as the purpose of his life the healing of the diseases of society. At the same time there was developed in him an irresistible taste for a simple, frugal, and almost ascetic life. To restrain his desires had become the essential rule of his conduct, and, to put it in practice, he forced himself to sleep on a plank, and to subsist on bread and vegetables."

G. Compayré, The History of Pedagogy, chapter 18.

"In spite … of Pestalozzi's patent disqualifications in many respects for the task he undertook; in spite of his ignorance of even common subjects (for he spoke, read, wrote, and cyphered badly, and knew next to nothing of classics or science); in spite of his want of worldly wisdom, of any comprehensive and exact knowledge of men and of things; in spite of his being merely an elementary teacher,—through the force of his all-conquering love, the nobility of his heart, the resistless energy of his enthusiasm, his firm grasp of a few first principles, his eloquent exposition of them in words, his resolute manifestation of them in deeds,—he stands forth among educational reformers as the man whose influence on education is wider, deeper, more penetrating, than that of all the rest—the prophet and the sovereign of the domain in which he lived and laboured. … {742} It was late in life—he was fifty-two years of age—before Pestalozzi became a practical school-master. He had even begun to despair of ever finding the career in which he might attempt to realize the theories over which his loving heart and teeming brain had been brooding from his earliest youth. … At fifty-two years of age, then, we find Pestalozzi utterly unacquainted with the science and the art of education, and very scantily furnished even with elementary knowledge, undertaking at Stanz, in the canton of Unterwalden, the charge of eighty children, whom the events of war had rendered homeless and destitute. … The house in which the eighty children were assembled to be boarded, lodged, and taught, was an old tumble-down Ursuline convent, scarcely habitable, and destitute of all the conveniences of life. The only apartment suitable for a schoolroom was about twenty-four feet square, furnished with a few desks and forms; and into this were crowded the wretched children, noisy, dirty, diseased, and ignorant, with the manners and habits of barbarians. Pestalozzi's only helper in the management of the institution was an old woman, who cooked the food and swept the rooms; so that he was, as he tells us himself, not only the teacher, but the paymaster, man-servant, and almost the housemaid of the children. … 'My wishes [he writes] were now accomplished. I felt convinced that my heart would change the condition of my children as speedily as the springtide sun reanimates the earth frozen by the winter. Nor,' he adds, 'was I mistaken. Before the springtide sun melted away the snow from our mountains, you could no longer recognise the same children.' … 'I was obliged,' he says, 'unceasingly to be everything to my children. I was alone with them from morning to night. It was from my hand they received whatever could be of service both to their bodies and minds. All succour, all consolation, all instruction came to them immediately from myself. Their hands were in my hand; my eyes were fixed on theirs, my tears mingled with theirs, my smiles encountered theirs, my soup was their soup, my drink was their drink. I had around me neither family, friends, nor servants; I had only them. I was with them when they were in health, by their side when they were ill. I slept in their midst. I was the last to go to bed, the first to rise in the morning. When we were in bed I used to pray with them and talk to them till they went to sleep. They wished me to do so.' … 'I knew,' he says, 'no system, no method, no art but that which rested on the simple consequences of the firm belief of the children in my love towards them. I wished to know no other.' … Gradually … Pestalozzi advanced to the main principles of his system of moral education. … He says:—'Nature develops all the human faculties by practice, and their growth depends on their exercise.' 'The circle of knowledge commences close around a man, and thence extends concentrically.' 'Force not the faculties of children into the remote paths of knowledge, until they have gained strength by exercise on things that are near them.' 'There is in Nature an order and march of development. If you disturb or interfere with it, you mar the peace and harmony of the mind. And this you do, if, before you have formed the mind by the progressive knowledge of the realities of life, you fling it into the labyrinth of words, and make them the basis of development.' 'The artificial march of the ordinary school, anticipating the order of Nature, which proceeds without anxiety and without haste, inverts this order by placing words first, and thus secures a deceitful appearance of success at the expense of natural and safe development.' In these few sentences we recognise all that is most characteristic in the educational principles of Pestalozzi. … To set the intellectual machinery in motion—to make it work, and keep it working; that was the sole object at which he aimed; of all the rest he took little account. … He relied upon a principle which must be insisted on as cardinal and essential in education. He secured the thorough interest of his pupils in the lesson, and mainly through their own direct share in it. … Observation, … according to Pestalozzi (and Bacon had said the same thing before him), is the absolute basis of all knowledge, and is therefore the prime agent in elementary education. It is around this theory, as a centre of gravity, that Pestalozzi's system revolves."

J. Payne, Lectures on the History of Education, lecture. 9.

"During the short period, not more than a year, which Pestalozzi spent among the children at Stanz, he settled the main features of the Pestalozzian system. Sickness broke out among the children, and the wear and tear was too great even for Pestalozzi. He would probably have sunk under his efforts if the French, pressed by the Austrians, had not entered Stanz, in January, 1799, and taken part of the Ursuline Convent for a military hospital. Pestalozzi was, therefore, obliged to break up the school, and he himself went to a medicinal spring on the Gurnigel in the Canton Bern. … He came down from the Gurnigel, and began to teach in the primary schools (i. e., schools for children from four to eight years old) of Burgdorf, the second town in the Canton. Here the director was jealous of him, and he met with much opposition. … In less than a year Pestalozzi left this school in bad health, and joined Krüsi in opening a new school in Burgdorf Castle, for which he afterward (1802) obtained Government aid. Here he was assisted in carrying out his system by Krüsi, Tobler, and Bluss. He now embodied the results of his experience in a work which has obtained great celebrity—'How Gertrude Teaches her Children' [also published in England under the title of 'Leonard and Gertrude]. In 1802 Pestalozzi, for once in his life a successful and popular man, was elected a member of a deputation sent by the Swiss people to Paris. On the restoration of the Cantons in 1804. the Castle of Burgdorf was again occupied by one of the chief magistrates, and Pestalozzi and his establishment were moved to the Monastery of Buchsee. Here the teachers gave the principal direction to another, the since celebrated Fellenburg, 'not without my consent,' says Pestalozzi, 'but to my profound mortification.' He therefore soon accepted an invitation from the inhabitants of Yverdun to open an institution there, and within a twelvemonth he was followed by his old assistants, who had found government by Fellenburg less to their taste than no-government by Pestalozzi. {743} The Yverdun Institute had soon a world-wide reputation. Pestalozzian teachers went from it to Madrid, to Naples, to St. Petersburg. Kings and philosophers joined in doing it honor. But, as Pestalozzi himself has testified, these praises were but as a laurel-wreath encircling a skull. The life of the Pestalozzian institutions had been the love which the old man had infused into all the members, teachers as well as children; but this life was wanting at Yverdun. The establishment was much too large to be carried on successfully without more method and discipline than Pestalozzi, remarkable, as he himself says, for his 'unrivalled incapacity to govern,' was master of. The assistants began each to take his own line, and even the outward show of unity was soon at an end. … Thus the sun went down in clouds, and the old man, when he died at the age of eighty, in 1827, had seen the apparent failure of all his toils. He had not, however, failed in reality. It has been said of him that his true fortune was to educate ideas, not children, and when twenty years later the centenary of his birth was celebrated by school-masters, not only in his native country, but throughout Germany, it was found that Pestalozzian ideas had been sown, and were bearing fruit, over the greater part of central Europe."