Chapter 44

THE BEGINNINGS OF NATIONAL EDUCATION

I. NEW CONCEPTIONS OF THE EDUCATIONAL PURPOSE

THE STATE AS SERVANT OF THE CHURCH. With the rise of the Protestant sects we noted, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and for the first time since Christianity became supreme in the western world, the beginnings of a state connection with the education of the young. The Protestant reformers, obtaining the support of the Protestant princes and kings, had successfully used this support to assist them in the organization of church schools as an aid to the reformed faith. Luther, it will be recalled (p. 312), had made a strong appeal to the mayors and magistrates of all German lands to establish schools as a part of their civic duties (R. 156), and had contended that a solemn obligation rested upon them to do so. The Dutch Provinces had worked closely with the Dutch Protestant synods (p. 334) in ordering schools established and in providing for their financing; Calvin had organized a religious City-State at Geneva (p. 330), of which religion and learning had been the corner-stones; the Scottish Parliament, by the laws of 1633 and 1646 (p. 335), had ordered schools for Scottish children in connection with the churches; and in the Scandinavian countries and in Finland the beginnings of a connection with the State had also been made (p. 315). Finally, in the new Massachusetts Colony the laws of 1642 and 1647 (p. 366) had, for the first time in the English-speaking world, ordered that children be taught "to read and understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of the country" (p. 364), and that schools be established by the towns, under penalty if they refused to do so. In all Protestant lands we saw that the reformers appealed, from time to time, to what were then the servants of the churches--the rising civil governments and principalities and States--to use their civil authority to force the people to meet their new religious obligations in the matter of schooling.

The purpose of the schooling ordered established, however, was almost wholly religious. Massachusetts, in ordering instruction in the "capital laws of the country," as well as reading and religion, had formed a marked exception. In nearly all lands the rising state governments merely helped the Protestant churches to create the elementary vernacular religious school, and to make of it an auxiliary for the protection of orthodoxy and the advancement of the faith. Even in the new state school systems of the German States--Saxony, Würtemberg (p. 317), Brunswick, Weimar, Gotha--the elementary schools established were for religious rather than for state ends. This condition continued until well toward the middle of the eighteenth century.

THE NEW STATE THEORY OF EDUCATION. After about the middle of the eighteenth century a new theory as to the purpose of education, and one destined to make rapid headway, began to be advanced. This theory had already made marked progress, as we shall see, in the New England Colonies, and had also found expression, as we shall also see in a later chapter, in the organizing work of Frederick the Great in Prussia. It was from the French political philosophers of the eighteenth century, though, that its clearest definition came. They now advanced the idea that schools were essentially civil affairs, the purpose of which should be to promote the everyday interests of society and the welfare of the State, rather than the welfare of the Church, and to prepare for a life here rather than a life hereafter.

After about 1750 a critical and reformatory pedagogy rapidly began to take shape in France, and the second half of the eighteenth century became a period of criticism and discontent and reconstruction in education, as well as in politics and religion.

This criticism and discontent in France was greatly stimulated by the decline in character and influence of the Jesuit schools. Unwilling to change their instruction to meet the needs of a changing society, their schools had become formal in character (R. 146), and were now engaged chiefly in stilling thinking rather than in promoting it. In consequence the schools had fallen into disrepute throughout all France. The Society, too, in the eighteenth century, came to be a powerful political organization which strove to dominate the State. So bad had the situation become by 1762, that the different parliaments in the provinces and in Paris had formulated complaints against the Jesuits and their schools, [1] and, in 1764, the king was induced to suppress the Order. [2] This decline in influence and final suppression of the Society gave rise to some rather remarkable pedagogical literature, which looked to the creation of a system of state secondary schools in France to replace those of the Jesuits.

The outcome was the rise of a new national and individual conception of the educational purpose. This was destined in time to spread to other lands and to lead to the rise of complete state school systems, financed and managed by the State and conducted for state ends, and to the ultimate divorce of Church and State, in all progressive lands, in the matter of the education of the young. Teachers trained and certificated by the State were in time to supplant the nuns and brothers of the religious congregations in Catholic lands, as well as teachers who served as assistants to the pastors in Protestant lands and whose chief purpose was to uphold the teachings and advance the interests of the sect; citizens were to supplant the ecclesiastic in the supervision of instruction; and the courses of instruction were to be changed in direction and vastly broadened in scope to make them minister to the needs of the State rather than the Church, and to prepare pupils for useful life here rather than for life in another world.

II. THE NEW STATE THEORY IN FRANCE

THE FRENCH POLITICAL THEORISTS. The leading French political theorists of the two decades between 1760 and 1780 now began to discuss education as in theory a civil affair, intimately connected with the promotion of the welfare of the State. The more important of these, and their chief ideas were:

1. _Rousseau._ The first of the critical and reformatory pedagogical writers to awaken any large interest and obtain a general hearing was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The same year (1762) that his _Social Contract_ appeared and attacked the foundations of the old political system (p. 483), his _Émile_ also appeared and attacked with equal vigor the religious and social theory as to education then prevailing throughout western Europe. For the stiff and unnatural methods in education, under which children were dressed and made to behave as adults, [3] the harsh discipline of the time, and the excessive emphasis on religious instruction and book education, he preached the substitution of life amid nature, childish ways and sports, parental love, and an education that considered the instincts and natural development of children.

Gathering up the political and social ideas of his age as to ecclesiastical and political despotism; the nature of the social contract; that the "state of nature" was the ideal one, and the one in which men had been intended to live; that human duty called for a return to the "state of nature," whatever that might be; and that the artificiality and hypocrisy of his age in manners, dress, religion, and education were all wrong--Rousseau restated his political philosophy in terms of the education of the boy, Émile. Despite its many exaggerations, much faulty reasoning, and many imperfections, the book had a tremendous influence upon Europe in laying bare the limitations and defects and abuses of the formal and ecclesiastical education of the time. [4] He may be regarded as the first important writer to sap the foundations of the old system of religious education, and to lay a basis for a new type of child training (R. 254). Though Rousseau's enthusiasm took the form of theory run mad, and the educational plan he proposed was largely impossible, he nevertheless popularized education, not only in France, but among the reading public of the progressive European States as well. After he had written, the old limited and narrow religious education was on the defensive, and, though time was required, the transition to a more secular type of education was inevitable as fast as nations and peoples could shake off the dominance of the Church in state affairs.

2. _La Chalotais._ The year following the publication of Rousseau's _Émile_ appeared La Chalotais's _Essai d'éducation nationale_ (1763). René de la Chalotais, a Solicitor-General for the Parliament of Bretagne, was one of the notable French parliamentarians of the middle of the eighteenth century. Unlike Rousseau's highly imaginary, exaggerated, sentimental, and paradoxical volume, La Chalotais produced a practical and philosophical discussion of the problem of the education of a people. Declaring firmly that education was essentially a civil affair; that it was the function of government to make citizens contented by educating them for their sphere in society; that citizen and secular teachers should not be excluded for celibates; [5] that the real purpose of education should be to prepare citizens for France; that the poor were deserving of education; and that "the most enlightened people will always have the advantage" in the struggles of a modern world, La Chalotais produced a work which was warmly approved by such political philosophers as Voltaire, Diderot, and Turgot, and which was translated into several European languages (R. 255). Though far less widely read than Rousseau's _Émile_, it was far more influential in shaping subsequent political theory and action regarding the relations of education to the State. Nearly every proposal for educational legislation during the days of the Revolution went back in idea to this philosophic discussion of the question by La Chalotais and to the practical proposals of Rolland and Turgot.

3. _Rolland._ In 1768 Rolland, president of the Parliament of Paris, presented to his colleagues a report in which he outlined a national system of education to replace both the schools of the Jesuits and those of the Brothers of the Christian Schools. La Chalotais had proposed a more modern system of state schools chiefly to replace those of the Jesuits, but Rolland went further and proposed the extension of education to all, and the supervision of all schools by a central council of the Government. By means of a centralized control, a central university to which the other universities of France were to be subordinate, a higher normal school to train teachers for the colleges (secondary schools), and universal education, [6] Rolland hoped to develop for France a national spirit, a national character, and a national government and code of laws, and to bring the youth of the provinces into harmony with the best of all French ideas.

4. _Turgot._ In 1774 Turgot was appointed Minister of Finance (p. 481), and in 1775 he made a series of recommendations to the King in which he set forth ideas analogous to those of Rolland, and presented an eloquent plea for the formation of a national council of public instruction and the establishment of a system of civil and national education for the whole of France. In closing he wrote:

Your kingdom, Sir, is of this world. Without opposing any obstacle to the instructions whose object is higher, and which already have their rules and their expounders, I think I can propose to you nothing of more advantage to your people than to cause to be given to all your subjects an instruction which shows them the obligations they owe to society and to your power to protect them, and the interest they have in fulfilling those duties for the public good and their own. This moral and social instruction requires books expressly prepared, by competition, and with great care, and a schoolmaster in each parish to teach them to children, along with the art of writing, reading, counting, measuring, and the principles of mechanics. The study of the duty of citizenship ought to be the foundation of all the other studies.... There are methods and establishments for training geometricians, physicists, and painters, but there are none for training citizens.

5. _Diderot._ In 1776 Diderot, editor with D'Alembert of the _Encyclopaedia_ (1751-72), prepared, at the request of Catherine II (p. 477), under the title of _Plan of a University_, a complete scheme for the organization of a state system of public instruction for Russia. Though the plan was never carried out, it was printed and much discussed in France, and is important as coming from one of the most influential Frenchmen of his time. He commends as an example to be followed the work of the German States in the organization of popular instruction. For Russia he outlines first a system of people's schools, which shall be free and obligatory for all, and in which instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic, morals, civics, and religion shall be taught. "From the Prime Minister to the lowest peasant," he says, "it is good for every one to know how to read, write, and count." For the series of secondary schools to be established, he condemns the usual practice of devoting so much of the instruction to the humanities and a mediaeval type of logic and ethics, and urges instead the introduction of instruction in mathematics, in the modern sciences, literature, and the work of governments. Classical studies he would confine to the last years of the course. Science, history, drawing, and music find a place in his scheme.

All this instruction Diderot would place under the supervisory control of an administrative bureau to be known as the _University of Russia_, at the head of which should be a statesman, who should exercise control of all the work of public instruction beneath. Though never carried out in Russia, the University of France of 1808 is largely an embodiment of the ideas he proposed in 1776.

LEGISLATIVE PROPOSALS TO EMBODY THESE IDEAS. During the quarter of a century between the publication of Rousseau's _Émile_ and the summoning of the States-General to reform France (1762-88), the educational as well as the political ideas of the French reformers had taken deep root with the thinking classes of the nation. The _cahiers_ of 1789, of all Orders (p. 500), gave evidence of this in their somewhat general demand for the creation of some form of an educational system for France (R. 252). From the first days of the Revolution pedagogical literature became plentiful, and the successive National Assemblies found time, amid the internal reorganization of France, constitution-making, the troubles with and trial of the King, and the darkening cloud of foreign intervention, to listen to reports and addresses on education and to enact a bill for the organization of a national school system. The more important of these educational efforts were:

1. _The Constituent Assembly_ (June 17, 1789, to September 30, 1791). In the Constituent Assembly, into which the States-General resolved itself, June 17, 1789, and which continued until after it had framed the constitution of 1791, two notable addresses and one notable report on the organization of education were made. The Count de Mirabeau, a nobleman turned against his class and elected to the States-General as a representative of the Third Estate, made addresses on the "Organization of a Teaching Body" and on the "Organization of a National _Lycée_." In the first he advocated the establishment of primary schools throughout France. In the second he proposed the establishment of colleges of literature in each department, with a National _Lycée_ at Paris for higher (university) education, and to contain the essentials of a national normal school or teachers' college as well.

Mirabeau's proposals represent rather a transition in thinking from the old to the new, but the Report of Talleyrand (1791), former Bishop of Autun, now turned revolutionist, embodies the full culmination of revolutionary educational thought. Public instruction he termed "a power which embraces everything, from the games of infancy to the most imposing fêtes of the Nation." He definitely proposed the organization of a complete state system of public instruction for France, to consist of a primary school in every canton (community, district), open to the children of peasants and workmen--classes heretofore unprovided with education; a secondary school in every department (county); a series of special schools in the chief French cities, to prepare for the professions; and a National Institute, or University, to be located at Paris. Inspired by Montesquieu's principle that "the laws of education ought to be relative to the principles of government," Talleyrand proposed a bill designed to give effect to the provisions of the Constitution of 1791 relating to education (p. 501), and to provide an education for the people of France who were now to exercise, through elected representatives, the legislative power for France. Instruction he held to be the necessary counterpoise of liberty, and every citizen was to be taught to know, obey, love, and protect the new constitution. Political, social, and personal morality were to take the place of religion in the cantonal schools, which were to be free and equally open to all. As the Constituent Assembly was succeeded by the newly elected Legislative Assembly within three weeks after Talleyrand submitted his Report, no action was taken on his bill.

2. _The Legislative Assembly_ (October 1, 1791, to September 21, 1792). This new legislative body was far more radical in character than its predecessor, and far more radical than was the sentiment of France at the time. Among other acts it abolished (1792) the old universities and confiscated (1793) their property to the State. To it was submitted (April 20-21, 1792) by the mathematician, philosopher, and revolutionist, Marquis de Condorcet, [7] on behalf of the Committee on Public Instruction and as a measure of reconstruction, a Report and draft of a Law for the organization of a complete democratic system of public instruction for France (R. 256). It provided for the organizing of a primary school for every four hundred inhabitants, in which each individual was "to be taught to direct his own conduct and to enjoy the plenitude of his own rights," and where principles would be taught, calculated to "insure the perpetuation of liberty and equality." The bill also provided, for the first time, for the organization of higher primary schools in the principal towns; colleges (secondary schools) in the chief cities (one for every four thousand inhabitants); a higher school for each "department"; _Lycées_, or institutions of still higher learning, at nine places in France; and a National Society of Sciences and Arts to crown the educational system at Paris. The national system of education he proposed was to be equally open to women, as well as men, and to be gratuitous throughout. Teachers for each grade of school were to be prepared in the school next above. Sunday lectures for workingmen and peasants were to be given by teachers everywhere. Public morality, political intelligence, human progress, and the preservation of liberty and equality were the aims of the instruction. The necessity for education in a constitutional government he saw clearly. "A free constitution," he writes, "which should not be correspondent to the universal instruction of citizens, would come to destruction after a few conflicts, and would degenerate into one of those forms of government which cannot preserve the peace among an ignorant and corrupt people." Anarchy or despotism he held to be the future for peoples who become free without being enlightened. He held it to be a fundamental principle that:

The order of nature includes no distinctions in society beyond those of education and wealth. To establish among citizens an equality in fact, and to realize the equality confirmed by law, ought to be the primary object of national instruction.

The bill proposed by Condorcet, while too ambitious for the France of his day, was thoroughly sound as a democratic theory of education, and an accurate prediction of what the nineteenth century brought generally into existence. Condorcet's Report was discussed, but not acted upon.

3. _The National Convention_ (September 21, 1792, to October 26, 1795). The Convention was also a radical body, deeply interested in the creation of a system of state schools for the people of France. To higher education there was for a time marked opposition, though later in its history the Convention erected a number of important higher technical institutions and schools, among the most important of which was the Institute of France. There was also in the Convention marked opposition to all forms of clerical control of schools. The schools of the Brothers of the Christian Schools were suppressed by it, in 1792, and all secular and endowed schools and colleges were abolished and their property confiscated, in 1793. The complete supremacy of the State in all educational matters was now asserted. Great enthusiasm was manifested for the organization of state primary schools, which were ordered established in 1793 (R. 258 a), and in these:

Children of all classes were to receive that first education, physical, moral, and intellectual, the best adapted to develop in them republican manners, patriotism, and the love of labor, and to render them worthy of liberty and equality.

The course of instruction was to include: "to speak, read, and write correctly the French language; the geography of France; the rights and duties of men and citizens; [8] the first notions of natural and familiar objects; the use of numbers, the compass, the level, the system of weights and measures, the mechanical powers, and the measurement of time. They are to be taken into the fields and the workshops where they may see agricultural and mechanical operations going on, and take part in the same so far as their age will allow."

What a change from the course of instruction in the religious schools just preceding this period!

A multiplicity of reports, bills, and decrees, often more or less contradictory but still embodying ideas advanced by Condorcet and Talleyrand, now appeared. Whereas the preceding legislative bodies had considered the subject carefully, but without taking action, the Convention now acted. The nation, though, was so engrossed by the internal chaos and foreign aggression that there was neither time nor funds to carry the decrees into effect.

The most extreme proposal of the period was the bill of Lepelletier le Saint-Fargeau to create a national system of education modeled closely after that of ancient Sparta. The best of the proposals probably was the Lakanal Law, of November 17, 1794, which ordered a school for every one thousand inhabitants, with special divisions for boys and girls, and which provided for instruction in:

1. Reading and writing the French language. 2. The Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the Constitution. 3. Lessons on republican morals. 4. The rules of simple calculation and surveying. 5. Lessons in geography and the phenomena of nature. 6. Lessons on heroic actions, and songs of triumph.

Lakanal also carefully prescribed the method of instruction, and advocated the founding of a national normal school (Latin _norma_; a rule), which idea the Convention adopted in 1794, the school opening [9] in January, 1795. Supplementing this was the law of February 25, 1795, ordering central or higher schools established to replace the former colleges, [10] one for every three hundred thousand of the population, which were to offer instruction from twelve to eighteen. The course was to include:

12 to 14--Drawing, natural history, ancient and living languages. 14 to 16--Mathematics, natural philosophy, experimental chemistry. 16 to 18--Grammar, literature, history, legislation.

Organized on a soviet principle, each professor declared the equal of every other, and lacking any effective administration or discipline, these institutions soon fell into disrepute and were displaced when Napoleon reorganized secondary education in France.

The law of October 25, 1795, closed the work of the Convention. This made less important provisions for primary education (R. 258 b) than had preceding bills, but was the only permanent contribution of this period to the organization of primary schools. It placed greater emphasis than had the legislative Assembly on the creation of secondary and higher institutions (R. 258 a), of more value to the bourgeois class. This bill of 1795 represents a reaction from the extreme republican ideas of a few years earlier, and the triumph of the conservative middle-class elements in the nation over the radical republican elements previously in control.

The Convention also, in the latter part of its history, created a number of higher technical institutions of importance, which were expressive alike of the French interest in scientific subjects which arose during the latter part of the eighteenth century, and of the new French military needs. Many of these institutions have persisted to the present, so well have they answered the scientific interests and needs of the nation. A mere list of the institutions created is all that need be given. These were:

Museum or Conservatory of Arts (Jan. 16, 1794). Conservatory of Arts and Trades (Oct. 10, 1794). New medical schools (_Schools of Health_) ordered (Dec. 4, 1794). Museum of Natural History (Dec. 11, 1794). Central Schools to succeed the former Colleges (secondary schools) (Feb. 25, 1795). School of Living Oriental Languages (March 30, 1795). Veterinary Schools (April 21, 1795). Course in Archaeology, National Library (June 8, 1795). Bureau of Longitude (June 29, 1795). Conservatory of Music (Aug. 3, 1795). The National Library (Oct. 17, 1795). Museum of Archaeological Monuments (Oct. 20, 1795). Polytechnic Schools (R. 257); School of Civil Engineering; School of Hydrographic Engineers; and School of Mining (Oct. 22, 1795).

The Convention also adopted the metric system of weights and measures; enacted laws under which the peasants could acquire title to the lands they had tilled for so long; and began the unification of the laws of the different parts of the country into a single set, which later culminated in the _Code Napoléon_.

4. _The Directory_ (1795-99) _and the Consulate_ (1799-1804). The Revolution had by this time largely spent itself, the Directory followed, and in 1799 Napoleon became First Consul and for the next sixteen years was master of France. The Law of 1795 for primary schools (R. 258 b) was but feebly administered under the Directory, as foreign wars absorbed the energies and resources of the Government. Napoleon's chief educational interest, too, was in opening up opportunities for talent to rise, in encouraging scientific work and higher specialized institutions, and in developing schools of a type that would support the kind of government he had imposed upon France. The secondary and higher schools he established and promoted cost him money at a time when money was badly needed for national defense, and primary education was accordingly neglected during the time he directed the destinies of the nation. His educational organizations and work we shall refer to again in a later chapter.

The Revolutionary enthusiasts had stated clearly their theory of republican education, but had failed to establish a permanent state school system according to their plans. This now became the work of the nineteenth century. In the meantime, in the new United States of America the same ideas were taking shape and finding expression, and to the developments there we next turn.

III. THE NEW STATE THEORY IN AMERICA

WANING OF THE OLD RELIGIOUS INTEREST. As early as 1647 Rhode Island Colony had enacted the first law providing for freedom of religious worship ever enacted by an English-speaking people, and two years later Maryland enacted a similar law. Though the Maryland law was later repealed, and a rigid Church-of-England rule established there, these laws were indicative of the new spirit arising in the New World. By the beginning of the eighteenth century a change in attitude toward the old problem of personal salvation had become evident. Frontier conditions; the gradual rise of a civil as opposed to a religious form of town government; the rising interests in trade and shipping; the beginnings of the breakdown of the old aristocratic traditions and customs transplanted from Europe; the rising individualism in both Europe and America--these all helped to weaken the hold on the people of the old religious doctrines.

By 1750 the change in religious thinking in the American Colonies had become quite marked. [11] Especially was this change evidenced in the dying-out of the old religious fervor and intolerance, and the breaking-up of the old religious solidarity. While most of the Colonies continued to maintain an "established Church," other sects had to be admitted to the Colony and given freedom of worship. The Puritan monopoly in New England was broken, as was also that of the Anglican faith in the central Colonies. The day of the monopoly of any sect in a Colony was over. New secular interests began to take the place of religion as the chief topic of thought and conversation, and secular books began to dispute the earlier predominance of the Bible. A few colonial newspapers had begun (seven by 1750), and these became expressive of the new colony interests.

CHANGING CHARACTER OF THE SCHOOLS. These changes in attitude toward the old religious problems materially affected both the support and the character of the education provided in the Colonies. The Law of 1647, requiring the maintenance of the Latin grammar schools, had been found to be increasingly difficult of enforcement, not only in Massachusetts, but in all the other New England Colonies which had followed the Massachusetts example. With the changing attitude of the people, which had become clearly manifest by 1750, the demand for relief from the maintenance of this school in favor of a more practical and less aristocratic type of higher school, if higher school were needed at all, became marked. By the close of the colonial period the new American Academy (p. 463), with its more practical studies, had begun to supersede the old Latin grammar school.

The elementary school experienced something of the same difficulties. Many of the parochial schools died out, while others declined in character and importance. In Church-of-England Colonies all elementary education was left to private initiative and philanthropic and religious effort (p. 373). In the southern Colonies the classes in society and the character of the plantation life made common schools impossible, and the feeling of any need for elementary schools almost entirely died out. In New England the eighteenth century was a continual struggle on the one hand to prevent the original religious town school from disappearing, and on the other to establish in its place a series of scattered and inferior district schools, while either church or town support and tuition fees became ever harder to obtain. Among other changes of importance the reading school and the writing school now became definitely united, in all the smaller places and in the rural districts, as a measure of economy, to form the American school of the "3 Rs." New textbooks, too, containing less of the gloomily religious than the _New England Primer_, and secular rather than religious in character (p. 443), appeared after 1750 and began to be used in the schools. After 1750, too, it was increasingly evident that the old religious enthusiasm for schools had largely died out; that European traditions and ways and types of schools no longer completely satisfied; and that the period of the transplanting of European educational ideas and schools and types of instruction was coming to an end. Instead, the evolution of a public or state school out of the original religious school, and the beginnings of the evolution of distinctly American types of schools, better adapted to American needs, became increasingly evident in the Colonies as the eighteenth century progressed.

RISE OF THE CIVIL OF STATE SCHOOL. As has been stated earlier, the school everywhere in America arose as a child of the Church. In the Middle Colonies, where the parochial-school conception of education was the prevailing type, the school remained under church control until after the foundation of our national government. In New England, though--and the New England evolution in time became the prevailing American practice--the school passed through a very interesting development during colonial times.

As we have seen (p. 360), each little New England town was originally established as a little religious republic, with the Church in complete control. The governing authorities for church and civil affairs were much the same. When acting as church officers they were known as Elders and Deacons; when acting as civil or town officers they were known as Selectmen. The State, as represented in the colony legislature or the town meeting, was clearly the servant of the Church, and existed in large part for religious ends. It was the State acting as the servant of the Church which enacted the Massachusetts laws of 1642 and 1647 (Rs. 190, 19l), requiring the towns to maintain schools for religious ends. Now, so close was the connection between the religious town, which controlled church affairs, and the civil town, which looked after roads, fences, taxes, and defense--the constituency of both being one and the same, and the meetings of both being held at first in the meeting-house--that when the schools were established the colony legislature placed them under the civil--as involving taxes, and being a public service--rather than under the religious town. The interests of one were the interests of both, and, being the same in constituency and territorial boundaries, there seemed no occasion for friction or fear. From this religious beginning the civil school and the civil school-town and school-township, with all their elaborate school administrative machinery, were later evolved.

The erection of a town hall, separate from the meeting-house, was a first step in the process. School affairs now were discussed at the town hall, instead of in the church. The town authorities now appointed committees to locate and build schoolhouses, select and certificate the teachers, and visit and examine the school. Next a regular town school committee was provided for. To this was given the management of the town school, and town taxes, instead of church taxes, were voted for buildings and maintenance. The minister continued to certificate the grammar-school master until the close of the colonial period, but the power to certificate the elementary-school teachers passed to the town authorities early in the eighteenth century. By the close of the century all that the minister--as the only surviving representative of church control--had left to him was the right to accompany the town authorities in the visitation of schools. Thus gradually but certainly did the earlier religious school in America pass out from under the control of the Church and come under the control of the State. When our national government and the different state governments were established, the States were ready to accept, in principle at least, the theory gradually worked out in New England that schools are state institutions, and should be under the control of the State.

THE EARLY STATE CONSTITUTIONS AND LAWS. In framing the Federal Constitution, in 1787, education, then being regarded largely as a local matter, was left to the States to handle as they saw fit; so we turn to the early state constitutions and laws to see how far the new American States had, by the close of the eighteenth century, advanced toward the conception of education as an affair of the State.

During the period from the Declaration of Independence to the close of the eighteenth century (1776-1800), all the States, except Rhode Island and Connecticut, which considered their colonial charters as satisfactory, formulated and adopted new state constitutions. Three new States--Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee--were admitted to the Union before 1800, and these framed constitutions also. Of the sixteen States forming the Union by 1800, seven had incorporated into their constitutions a clause setting forth the State's duty in the matter of education (R. 259). As in the earlier period of American education, it was Calvinistic New England which incorporated into the constitutions the best provisions regarding learning. In the parochial-school central Colonies the mention was much less emphatic, while the old Anglican-Church Colonies and the new States of Kentucky and Tennessee remained silent on the subject. Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire, in particular, incorporated strong sections directing the encouragement of learning and virtue, the protection and fostering of school societies, and the establishment of schools. The Massachusetts provision, afterwards copied by New Hampshire, is so explicit in the matter of state duty that it is worth quoting in full.

Chap. V, Sec. 2. Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties; and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of the people, it shall be the duty of the legislatures and magistrates, in all future periods of this Commonwealth, to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them; especially the university at Cambridge, public schools, and grammar schools in the towns; to encourage private societies and public institutions, by rewards and immunities, for the promotion of agriculture, arts, sciences, commerce, trades, manufactures, and a natural history of the country; to countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and frugality, honesty and punctuality in their dealings; sincerity, good humor, and all social affections and generous sentiments among the people.

Though the Federal Constitution made no provision for education or aid to schools, when the Congress of the Confederation, in 1787, adopted the Ordinance for the organization and government of the Northwest Territory, out of which the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin were later carved, it prefixed to this Ordinance the following significant provision:

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 [in the States to be formed from this Territory].

By the time the first State formed from this western territory was ready to be admitted to the Union (Ohio, 1802), the theory that education is a function of the State had come to be so thoroughly accepted, in principle at least, by the new American people that Congress now began a policy, ever since continued, of aiding each new State to establish and maintain a state system of schools. To this end Congress gave the new State for this purpose a generous endowment of national land, and in addition three townships of land to endow a state university. We also find that the constitutions of the first States created from this new Northwest Territory (Ohio, 1802; Indiana, 1816 [12]) contain for the time good provisions relating to public education. The Ohio provisions (R. 260) are noteworthy for the strong stand for religious freedom and against any discrimination in the schools between rich and poor, while the Indiana provisions (R. 261) are marked for their broad and generous conception of the scope and purpose of a state system of public instruction.

Many of the older States enacted general state school laws early in their history (R. 262). Connecticut continued the general school laws of 1700, 1712, and 1714 unchanged, and in 1795 added $1,200,000, derived from land sales, to a permanent state school endowment fund, created as early as 1750. Vermont enacted a general school law in 1782. Massachusetts and New Hampshire enacted new general school laws, in 1789, which restated and legalized the school development of the preceding hundred and fifty years. All these required the maintenance of schools by the towns for a definite term each year, ordered taxation, and fixed the school studies required by the State. New York, in 1784, created an administrative organization, known as the University of the State of New York, to supervise secondary and higher education throughout the State--an institution clearly modeled after the centralizing ideas of Condorcet, Rolland, and Diderot (p. 477), and very similar to the ideas proposed by Talleyrand and Condorcet and later (1808) embodied in the University of France by Napoleon. In 1795 New York also provided for a state system of elementary education. Georgia created a state system of academies, as early as 1783. Delaware created a state school fund, in 1796, and Virginia enacted an optional school law the same year. North Carolina created a state university, as early as 1795.

THE NEW POLITICAL MOTIVE FOR SCHOOLS. We thus see, in the new United States, the theories of the French revolutionary thinkers and statesmen actually being realized in practice. The constitutional provisions, and even the legislation, often were in advance of what the States, impoverished as they were by the War of Independence, could at once carry out, but they mark the evolution in America of a clearly defined state theory as to education, and the recognition of a need for general education in a government whose actions were so largely influenced by the force of public opinion. The Federal Constitution had extended the right to vote for national officers to all, and the older States soon began to remove their earlier property qualifications for voting and to extend general manhood suffrage to all citizens.

This new development in government by the people, which meant the passing of the rule of a propertied and educated class and the establishment of a real democracy, caused the leading American statesmen to turn early to general education as a necessity for republican safety. In his Farewell Address to the American people, written in 1796, Washington said:

Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.

Jefferson spent the years 1784 to 1789 in Paris, and became a great propagandist in America for French political ideas. Writing to James Madison from France, as early as 1787, he said:

Above all things, I hope the education of the common people will be attended to; convinced that on this good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due sense of liberty.

In 1779, then, as a member of the Virginia legislature, Jefferson tried unsuccessfully to secure the passage of a comprehensive bill, after the plan of the French Revolutionary proposals, for the organization of a complete system of public education for Virginia. The essential features of the proposed bill (R. 263) were that every county should be laid off into school districts, five to six miles square, to be known as "hundreds," and in each of these an elementary school was to be established to which any citizen could send his children free of charge for three years, and as much longer as he was willing to pay tuition; that the leading pupil in each school was to be selected annually and sent to one of twenty grammar (secondary) schools to be established and maintained at various points in the State; after two years the leaders in each of these schools were to be selected and further educated free for six years, the less promising being sent home; and at the completion of the grammar- school course, the upper half of the pupils were to be given three years more of free education at the State College of William and Mary, and the other half were to be employed as teachers for the schools of the State. [13]

Though the scheme failed of approval, Jefferson never lost interest in the education of the people for intelligent participation in the functions of government. Writing from Monticello to Colonel Yancey, in 1816, after his retirement from the presidency, he wrote:

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization it expects what never was and never will be.... There is no safe deposit (for the functions of government) but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information.

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

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

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

James Madison, fourth President of the United States, wrote:

A satisfactory plan for primary education is certainly a vital desideratum in our republics.

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

John Adams, with true New England thoroughness, expressed the new motive for education still more forcibly when he wrote:

The instruction of the people in every kind of knowledge that can be of use to them in the practice of their moral duties as men, citizens, and Christians, and of their political and civil duties as members of society and freemen, ought to be the care of the public, and of all who have any share in the conduct of its affairs, in a manner that never yet has been practiced in any age or nation. The education here intended is not merely that of the children of the rich and noble, but of every rank and class of people, down to the lowest and poorest. It is not too much to say that schools for the education of all should be placed at convenient distances and maintained at the public expense. The revenues of the State would be applied infinitely better, more charitably, wisely, usefully, and therefore politically in this way than even in maintaining the poor. This would be the best way of preventing the existence of the poor....

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

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

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SELECTED READINGS

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

254. Dabney: The Far-Reaching Influence of Rousseau's Writings. 255. La Chalotais: Essay on National Education. 256. Condorcet: Outline of a Plan for Organizing Public Instruction in France. 257. Report: Founding of the Polytechnic School at Paris. 258. Barnard: Work of the National Convention in France. (a) Various legislative proposals. (b) The Law of 1795 organizing Primary Instruction. 259. American States: Early Constitutional Provisions relating to Education. 260. Ohio: Educational Provisions of First Constitution. 261. Indiana: Educational Provisions of First Constitution. 262. American States: Early School Legislation in. 263. Jefferson: Plan for Organizing Education in Virginia.

QUESTIONS ON THE READINGS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES

Barnard, Henry. _American Journal of Education_, vol. 22, pp. 651-64. Compayré, G. _History of Pedagogy_, chapters 15, 16, 17. Cubberley, E. P. _Public Education in the United States_, chapter 3.