The History Of Education, Ellwood P. Cubberley [motivational novels .TXT] 📗
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2. Taxation of all property in the taxing district permitted.
3. State aid to such districts, at first from the income from permanent endowment funds, and later from the proceeds of a small state appropriation or a state or county tax.
4. Compulsory local taxation to supplement the state or county grant.
[3] Concerning the system, “The Philadelphia Society for the Establishment and Support of Charity Schools,” in an “Address to the Public,” in 1818, said:
“In the United States the benevolence of the inhabitants has led to the establishment of Charity Schools, which, though affording individual advantages, are not likely to be followed by the political benefits kindly contemplated by their founders. In the country a parent will raise children in ignorance rather than place them in charity schools. It is only in large cities that charity schools succeed to any extent. These dispositions may be improved to the best advantage, by the Legislature, in place of Charity Schools, establishing Public Schools for the education of all children, the offspring of the rich and the poor alike.”
[4] In 1821 the counties of Dauphin (Harrisburg), Allegheny (Pittsburg), Cumberland (Carlisle), and Lancaster (Lancaster) were also exempted from the state pauper-school law, and allowed to organize schools for the education of the children of their poor.
[5] Some 32,000 persons petitioned for a repeal of the law, 66 of whom signed by making their mark, and “not more than five names in a hundred,”
reported a legislative committee which investigated the matter, “were signed in English script.” It was from among the parochial-school Germans that the strongest opposition to the law came.
[6] For Stevens’s speech in defense of the Law of 1834, see Report of the United States Commissioner of Education, 1898-99, vol. I, pp. 516-24.
[7] By 1836 the new free-school law had been accepted by 75 per cent of the districts in the State, by 1838 by 84 per cent, and by 1847 by 88 per cent.
[8] This State had enacted an experimental school law, and made an annual state grant for schools, from 1795 to 1800. Then, unable to re�nact the law, the system was allowed to lapse and was not re�stablished until the New England element gained control, in 1812.
[9] By his vigorous work in behalf of schools the first appointee, Gideon Hawley, gave such offense to the politicians of the time that he was removed from office, in 1821, and the legislature then abolished the position and designated the Secretary of State to act, ex officio, as Superintendent. This condition continued until 1854, when New York again created the separate office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.
[10] When Connecticut sold its Western Reserve, in 1795, and added the sum to the Connecticut school fund, it was stated to be for the aid of “schools and the gospel.” In the sales of the first national lands in Ohio (1,500,000 acres to The Ohio Company, in 1787; and 1,000,000 acres in the Symmes Purchase, near Cincinnati, in 1788), section 16 in each township was reserved and given as an endowment for schools, and section 29 “for the purposes of religion.”
[11] The Public School Society continued to receive money grants, it being regarded as a non-denominational organization, though chartered to teach “the sublime truths of religion and morality contained in the Holy Scriptures” in its schools. In 1828 the Society was even permitted to levy a local tax to supplement its resources, it being estimated that at that time there were 10,000 children in the city with no opportunities for education.
[12] The question may be regarded as a settled one in our American States.
Our people mean to keep the public-school system united as one state school system, well realizing that any attempt to divide the schools among the different religious denominations (the World Almanac for 1917 lists 49 different denominations and 171 different sects in the United States) could only lead to inefficiency and educational chaos.
[13] The movement gained a firm hold everywhere east of the Missouri River, the States incorporating the largest number being New York with 887, Pennsylvania with 524, Massachusetts with 403, Kentucky with 330, Virginia with 317, North Carolina with 272, and Tennessee with 264. Some States, as Kentucky and Indiana, provided for a system of county academies, while many States extended to them some form of state aid. In New York State they found a warm advocate in Governor De Witt Clinton, who urged (1827) that they be located at the county towns of the State to give a practical scientific education suited to the wants of farmers, merchants, and mechanics, and also to train teachers for the schools of the State.
[14] The new emphasis given to the study of English, mathematics, and book-science is noticeable. New subjects appeared in proportion as the academies increased in numbers and importance. Of 149 new subjects for study appearing in the academies of New York, between 1787 and 1870, 23
appeared before 1826, 100 between 1826 and 1840, and 26 after 1840.
Between 1825 and 1828 one half of the new subjects appeared. This also was the maximum period of development of the academies.
[15] The existence of a number of colleges, basing their entrance requirements on the completion of the classical course of the academy, and the establishment of a few embryo state universities in the new States of the West and the South, naturally raised the further question of why there should be a gap in the public-school system. The increase of wealth in the cities tended to increase the number who passed through the elementary course and could profit by more extended education; the academies had popularized the idea of more advanced education; while the new manufacturing and commercial activities of the time called for more training than the elementary schools afforded, and of a different type from that demanded by the small colleges of the time for entrance.
[16] For an interesting table showing the simple entrance requirements of Harvard in 1642, 1734, 1803, 1825, 1850, 1875, and 1885, see Report of the United States Commissioner of Education, 1902, vol. I, pp. 930-33.
[1] In Spain, for example, the percentage of illiteracy in 1860 was 75.52; in 1870 70.01 per cent; in 1887, 68.01 per cent; in 1890, 63.78 per cent; and in 1910, 59.35 per cent. The percentage for 1920 will probably not be less than for 1910, due to the closing of many schools for lack of teachers during the World War. In 1916 ten provinces had an illiteracy of over 70 per cent, and but five had less than 40 per cent. In Madrid and Barcelona, cities as large as Baltimore and Cleveland, the illiteracy approaches a third of the population in Madrid, and a half in Barcelona.
[2] While an exile from the Argentine, Dr. Sarmiento was commissioned by Chili to visit, study, and report on the state school systems of the United States and Europe. While in the United States he became intimately acquainted with Horace Mann. Later he was Minister from the Argentine to the United States, being recalled, in 1868, to assume the presidency of the Republic. He was deeply impressed with the type of educational opportunity provided in the schools of the United States and, through an appointed Minister of Education, impressed his ideas on the Argentine nation.
[3] In 1910 only about 3 per cent of the total population was in any type of school.
[4] The Mikado still retained, through his ministers, very large powers, while the parliament was a consultative assembly rather than a legislative one. The form of government has been much like that of the German Empire before the World War.
[5] The Japanese Government has so far been a military autocracy, and the Japanese have been the Prussians of the Orient. The two-class school system has accordingly met the needs of a benevolent autocracy fairly well. With the rise of a liberal party in Japan, and the beginning of some democratic life, we may look for progressive changes in their schools which will tend to produce a more democratic type of educational organization.
[6] “The idea of education for all classes, the aim of all educators and statesmen of western countries, scarcely entered the minds of the leaders of China under the traditional system of education. With the introduction of the new educational system, however, the problem of universal education suddenly came into prominence. Indeed, it is the stated goal of the new educational policy.” (Ping Wen Kuo, The Chinese System of Public Education, p. 149.)
[7] Education in China has been common, for a class, for over four thousand years. The schools were private, but a detailed national system of examinations was provided by the State, and all who expected any state preferment were required to pass these state examinations. The system was based on the old Confucian classics. Under it schools existed in all the chief towns, and the examination system exerted a strong unifying influence on the nation. In 1842 China opened five treaty ports to the ships and commerce of western nations, and from 1842 to 1903 a process of gradual transition from the ancient examination system to modern conditions took place.
[8] “A nation that has preserved its identity by peaceful means for three milleniums; that has made the soil produce subsistence for a multitudinous population during that long period, while Western peoples have worn out their soil in less than that many centuries; that has produced many of the most influential of modern inventions, such as printing, gunpowder, and the compass; that has developed such mechanical ingenuity and commercial ability as are shown in its everyday life, undoubtedly possesses the ability to accomplish results by the use of methods worked out by the Western world. When modern scientific knowledge is added by the Chinese to the skill which they already have in agriculture, in commerce, in industry, in government, and in military affairs, results will be achieved, on the basis of their physical stamina and moral qualities, which will remove the ignorance, the indifference, and the prejudice of the Western world regarding things Chinese.” (Monroe, Paul, Editorial introduction to Ping Wen Kuo’s The Chinese System of Public Education.) [9] Though appearing small on the map, Siam is a nation of six millions of people and an area over three and a half times that of the six New England States.
[10] “Through metaphysics first; then through alchemy and chemistry, through physical and astronomical spectroscopy, lastly through radio-activity, science has slowly groped its way to the atom.” (Soddy, F., Matter and Energy.)
[11] Adams in England, and Leverrier in France. The planet Uranus had for long been known to be erratic in its movements, and Adams and Leverrier concluded, working from Newton’s law for gravitation, that it must be due to the pull of an unknown planet. Both calculated the orbit of this unknown body, Adams sending his calculations to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, and Leverrier to the observatory at Berlin. At both observatories the new planet—later named Neptune—was picked up by the telescope at the position indicated.
[12] This theory of “catastrophes” held that at a number of successive epochs, of which the age of Noah was the latest, great revolutions or disasters had taken place on the earth’s surface, in which all living things were destroyed. Later the world was restocked, and
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