THE CHRONICLES OF AMERICA SERIES ALLEN JOHNSON ITOR THE AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION EDWIN E. SLOSSON THE AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION AD,KK1 /I mi TEXTBOOK EDITION THE CHRONICLES OF AMERICA SERIES ALLEN JOHNSON EDITOR GERHARD R. LOMER CHARLES W. JEFFERYS ASSISTANT EDITORS FRANKLIN S BOOK SHOP, 1745 From the painting by Ferris. In the Ferris Collection of American Historical Paintings Copyright, J. L. (. Ferris THE AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION A CHRONICLE OF GREAT TEACHERS BY EDWIN E. SLOSSON NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS TORONTO: GLASGOW. BROOK & CO. LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD LA 205- Sc REPLACING *<+ PSfc Copyright, 1921, by Yale University Press CONTENTS I. SCHOOL DAYS IN EARLY NEW ENGLAND Page 1 II. SCHOOLS IN NEW NETHERLAND " 22 III. SCHOOLS OF THE MIDDLE AND SOUTHERN COLONIES " 34 IV. THE COLONIAL COLLEGE " 46 V. FRANKLIN AND PRACTICAL EDU CATION " 65 VI. JEFFERSON AND STATE EDUCATION " 78 VII. WASHINGTON AND NATIONAL EDU CATION " 94 VIII. SCHOOLS OF THE YOUNG REPUBLIC " 104 IX. HORACE MANN AND THE AMERICAN SCHOOL " 124 X. DE WITT CLINTON AND THE FREE SCHOOL " 141 XI. THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT " 155 XII. THE RISE OF THE STATE UNIVER SITY " 168 XIII. CATHOLIC EDUCATION IN AMERICA " 181 XIV. THE RISE OF TECHNICAL EDU CATION " 207 vii viii CONTENTS XV. THE MORRILL ACT AND WHAT CAME OF IT Page 221 XVI. WOMEN KNOCKING AT THE COL LEGE DOOR " 233 XVII. THE NEW EDUCATION " 253 XVIII. THE UNIVERSITY OF TODAY " 273 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE " 287 INDEX " 291 ILLUSTRATION FRANKLIN S BOOK SHOP, 1745 From the painting by Ferris. In the Ferris Collection of American Historical Paintings. Copyright, J. L. G. Ferris. Frontispiece THE AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION CHAPTER I SCHOOL DAYS IN EARLY NEW ENGLAND It being one chiefe project of that ould deluder Sathan to keepe men from the knowledge of the Scriptures ... It is therefore ordered that every township in this jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of 50 householders, shall ap point one within their towns to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and reade. Massachusetts School Law, 1647. THE origin of the American public school must be sought in New England, not because the schools of Massachusetts were the first in time for Vir ginia, if not New Netherland, may dispute that primacy but because New England has been the teacher of the nation s teachers. The legisla tors who framed the early school laws for the newer States of the South and the West found models in the codes of Massachusetts and Connecticut; i 2 AMERICAN SFIRIT IN EDUCATION and to a remarkable extent the first text-books used in every State and Territory of the Union came from New England publishers. Harvard and Yale and even the smallest colleges of New Eng land have attracted students not only from all parts of America but from all quarters of the globe. Scholars, teachers, divines, and college graduates by the thousand have been numbered among the sons of New England who joined the great tide of migration from the Atlantic seaboard to the fron tier. Whether the western limit of American settle ment was in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Kansas, or Colorado, the schoolmaster and the schoolma am from " down East " were there as true volunteers on the firing-line of civilization to see that the younger generation was not permitted to grow up without the knowledge considered essential in that day. Though the educational leadership of America is now held by no one section, the pioneer work of the men and women of New England can never lose its historical importance. In the story of the New England school may be read in brief the story of public education in America. A description of dis trict school, academy, or college in New England may stand with very little change for thousands of similar institutions throughout the country. EARLY NEW ENGLAND 3 Of the early settlers in America the colonists of Plymouth were second to none in their zeal for the education of their children, but their poverty and the arduous task of turning a wilderness into a commonwealth inevitably postponed for several years the establishment of schools. Children were at first commonly taught at home until the colo nists found themselves in a position to set up both elementary and grammar schools. There was no adequate public provision for instruction until 1670, when the General Court of the colony en acted a law "granting all such profits as may or shall accrue annually to the colony from fishing with nets or seines at Cape Cod for mackerel, bass, or herring, to be improved for and towards a free school in some town in this jurisdiction, for the training up of youth in literature for the good and benefit of posterity." The town of Plymouth promptly accepted this opportunity and built a schoolhouse which served also as a home for the teacher. Within a few years of the establishment of a system of public instruction in Plymouth the colony was merged with Massachusetts and became subject to the laws of the larger colony. Massachusetts Bay, although a later settlement than Plymouth, was the first New England colony to 4 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION make its schools a public charge. Compared with the scanty numbers and resources of the men of Ply mouth, the colony of Massachusetts seemed from the beginning strong and prosperous. Among its first settlers were men of some wealth and much learn ing. Such men were quick to see the need of teachers for their children and were equally prompt to supply it. In 1635 a town meeting in Boston voted to hire a schoolmaster and thus founded the Boston Latin School, which has brought an honorable record down to our own day. This institution was supported largely by the generosity of the wealthier citizens, but a few years later a school was established at Dorchester and maintained entirely by a public tax. Other Latin schools were soon built in the more progressive townships, and in 1642 an ordi nance of the colony made education compulsory. The law of 1642 called to public attention the failure of many parents and guardians to train the children in their charge in learning and labor. It gave the town authorities the power to punish by fines those who refused to give an account of the instruction received by their children, "especially of their ability to read and understand the prin ciples of religion and the capital laws of this coun try." In case a child s education were persistently EARLY NEW ENGLAND 5 neglected, the officials of the town had the right to apprentice him in some fit occupation where his improvement would be better looked after. If this ambitious ordinance could have been enforced to the letter, Massachusetts would never have had a boy or girl within her borders who could not read and write, pursue a useful trade, and pass an examination in civics. But it was one thing to require instruction and another to provide it. Not every parent could furnish the means for pri vate teaching, and not all the towns were equally forward in establishing free schools. To remedy the lack of adequate facilities for learning, the colony in 1647 made it obligatory on every township of fifty householders to employ some one competent to teach reading and writing. Every township of a hundred families was com pelled in addition to establish a grammar school capable of preparing boys for college. The schools thus established were not necessarily free, since fees were sometimes charged, nor were children compelled to attend if their parents preferred to give them private instruction. But three main principles were established by this early law which have characterized American education ever since : that the duty of public instruction is one which no 6 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION community, however small and poor, may be per mitted to evade; that the government of the public schools in matters of detail is lodged not in some dis tant central authority but in the immediate neigh borhood where the schools are situated ; and that the elementary schools are distinct from the secondary schools which prepare for college or university. Such promising beginnings, however, did not lead to rapid and continuous progress. Some towns found it cheaper to pay the fines imposed upon them for neglect of the law than to hire a schoolmaster and openly disregarded the ordinance of 1647. Many of the later immigrants to Massa chusetts had less of that zeal for learning which distinguished the first settlers; and, being busy practical men engaged in trade or agriculture, they did not see the need of Latin for their children. Apart from these discouragements within, Indian raids on the backwoods settlements proved to be an other obstacle to learning, the strength of which can readily be appreciated from the following pathetic petition from Dover, New Hampshire l : That whereas the said town is one of the most exposed towns in this Province to the insults of the Indian enemy, and also whereas by an act of the General As- 1 Walter H. Small, Early New England Schools (1914), p. 51. EARLY NEW ENGLAND 7 sembly of this Province the said town of Dover (amongst others) is obliged by said act to keep and maintain a grammar school, and whereas the circum stances and situation or settlements of the inhabitants of said town lying and being in such a manner as it is, the houses being so scattered over the whole township that in no one place six houses are within call, by which inconveniency the inhabitants of said town can have no benefit of such grammar school, for at the times fit for children to go and come from school, is generally the chief time of the Indians doing mischief, so that the inhabitants are afraid to send their children to school, and the children dare not venture; so that the salary to said schoolmaster is wholly lost to said town. Within a few years of the first settlements, all the New England colonies except Rhode Island made public provision for education. Newport and Providence gave generous donations of land for the establishment of town schools, but in Rhode Island before 1800 there was no general law author izing towns to maintain public schools. The back wardness of the little colony in matters of education was due largely to the fact that, since there was no union between Church and State, the Government was not concerned, as it was in Massachusetts, to sustain an educated ministry. Education was re garded in Rhode Island, just as it was in England and in most of the English colonies outside the 8 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION region of Puritan influence, as a need to be met by private initiative. New Hampshire followed the school system of Massachusetts, and Maine, as a part of Massachusetts throughout the colonial period, shared the same laws. In her Constitution of 1777 Vermont enjoined upon the Legislature the duty of establishing a school or schools in each town "for the convenient instruction of the youth." Connecticut has an educational record rival ing that of Massachusetts. Schools were well established in Hartford before the middle of the seventeenth century, and soon schools were made compulsory throughout the entire colony. The selectmen of each town were required to see that none "shall suffer so much barbarism in any of their families, as not to endeavor to teach by themselves or others their children and appren tices so much learning as may enable them per fectly to read the English tongue, and knowledge of the capital laws." Towns of fifty household ers were obliged to maintain teachers of reading and writing, and towns of a hundred household ers were required to establish a grammar school. New Haven colony, before it was united with the towns on the Connecticut, enacted similar laws. In 1672 six hundred acres of land were assigned to EARLY NEW ENGLAND 9 each county in Connecticut to endow a grammar school in the "county town." The common schools which taught pupils to read and write English early supplanted the "dame schools" and other private schools for primary instruction, and they were, on the whole, well kept up in all the English colonies where they had been established by public authority. But the Latin grammar schools were essentially exotic. In all features except their public support they were in tended to resemble the secondary schools of Eng land and as a result were strikingly ill adapted to frontier conditions. The general tendency of the rural townships to neglect the school laws affected the grammar schools much more adversely than the elementary schools. In many places only three or four youths cared to study Latin or prepare for college, and the taxpayers were consequently in dignant at having to support a schoolmaster of so little value to the community. Although the gram mar schools were not supposed to admit boys who could not already read and write English, public opinion often compelled the teacher to take pupils at a very early age and coach them for grammar school work by giving them the necessary elementary instruction. 10 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION The grammar schools prospered most in Mas sachusetts, especially in the towns within a con venient distance of Harvard College. But even in Massachusetts this type of school was ultimately replaced by the private academy or preparatory school. Today in the system of public education the public high school serves as the connecting link between the elementary school and the uni versity and thus occupies a place similar to that of the old Latin grammar school; but the old rigid classical course of study and the old paternal over sight of the pupils is now found only in certain private boarding schools. The Latin schools in their day gave very thor ough instruction in the limited field of classical learning. Boys were drilled for several hours a day in the complexities of Latin grammar and were encouraged, and frequently compelled, to speak Latin instead of English in the classroom. Some times the master was a scholar of distinguished attainments, a graduate of Harvard College or even of one of the English universities. Nothing is more surprising in the records of colonial times than the amount of conscientious, laborious, pro fessional service which a New England town could thus receive in exchange for a few pounds a year EARLY NEW ENGLAND 11 and the right to pasture a cow and live in a dilapi dated schoolhouse. Of course the Puritan school master found a certain compensation for his meager salary in the social prestige accorded to his pro fession and frequently enhanced in New England by its association with religion. Many teachers were also ministers, and all, whether clergy or lay men, were required to be "sound in the faith" and "of sober and good conversation." The fame of the more successful teachers of colonial times has come down to the present day. The Boston Latin School was fortunate enough to have as its head for thirty-eight years the famous Ezekiel Cheever, the friend and instructor of Cot ton Mather, who said of him after his death at the age of ninety-four : "He had been a skilful, painful, faithful schoolmaster for seventy years, and had the singular favor of heaven, that though he had usefully spent his life among children, yet he was not twice become a child, but held his abilities, in an unusual degree, to the very last." As principal of the Boston Latin School he received "sixtie pounds p. an. for his service in the schoole out of the towne rates, and rents that belong to the schoole and the possession and use of ye schoole house." He was the author of a text-book of 12 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION elementary Latin which came into general use in the colonies and was the first important school book published in America. Elijah Corlett made a re markable record as teacher at Cambridge. Here he taught both Indians and colonists, but his in come from fees was so small that on several occa sions the town authorities were compelled to come to his relief. Both these veteran teachers were celebrated by Cotton Mather in a couplet which shows that their work was at least appreciated even if it was almost unpaid: Tis Corlett s pains, & Cheever s, we must own, That thou, New England, art not Scythia grown. The school in Roxbury which, according to this same authority, eventually produced more scholars "than any town of its bigness, or, if I mistake not, of twice its bigness, in all New England," was es tablished by the efforts of the Reverend John Eliot, the Apostle to the Indians. The teachers of the elementary schools received in general even less for their labors than the school masters of the grammar schools. Often they were paid in commodities other than the scarce coined money, and the form of payment varied with the products of the town. In the country districts EARLY NEW ENGLAND 13 grain was the staple compensation; Maine teachers were often paid in lumber; Taunton at one time paid in pig iron; and the town of Hingham in pails. In some of the earliest contracts wampum, the Indian shell money, is mentioned. Yet these teachers who received their salaries in products having a market were more fortunate than a later generation forced to accept a depreciated paper currency at its face value. The nominal salary of the colonial teacher was increased by fees from parents, small grants of land for pasturing and gardening, exemption from taxation, and the right to board around among the families of the town. Lest the more penurious farmers begrudge the visiting teacher a good meal, the town sometimes paid a small sum to those who would agree to board him for a few weeks. The curriculum of the common schools may be summed up in the four R s: Reading, Riting, Rithmetic, and Religion. Many of the earliest school contracts do not mention arithmetic at all, but the practical necessities of the settlers soon forced this subject into the course of study. Writ ing involved learning to cut and manipulate the quill pen. Pupils provided the quills and brought tbeir ink from home, as its manufacture was one 14 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION of the many arts of the colonial household. Read ing and religion were combined in the school text book, and a knowledge of the catechism was a universal requirement. The first and simplest of the school-books was the horn-book, an English invention consisting of a small board with a handle attached. To the board was fastened a sheet of paper covered with transparent horn to prevent the paper from be coming soiled or torn. Through this necessary protection the pupil could read the letters of the alphabet, certain combinations of letters, such as "ab eb ib," called the "syllabarium," the Lord s prayer, and at the bottom the Roman numerals. For more advanced children the chief text-book down to the end of the colonial period was the New England Primer, originally adapted from English models but changing considerably in the nature of its contents as it passed from edition to edition. The New England Primer began, like the horn book, with the alphabet and syllabarium. Then followed words for spelling, short sentences for reading, and a series of rimed couplets illustrated with very crude woodcuts for each letter of the al phabet, beginning with the theological assertion, EARLY NEW ENGLAND 15 In Adam s fall We finned all, and closing with the scriptural statement, Zaccheus he Did Climb the Tree Our Lord to fee. The religious flavor introduced thus early into colonial education was further strengthened by the inclusion of several prayers and hymns, the Shorter Catechism, and another catechism bearing the title Spiritual Milk for American Babes drawn from the breasts of both Testaments for their soul s nourish ment. There was also a woodcut of John Rogers burning at the stake, with his wife and "nine small children and one at the breast" viewing the sad spectacle, to illustrate a poem written by that martyr to his children. The last feature of the Primer was an allegory of Youth yielding to the temptations of the Devil. This text-book was in use for a hundred and fifty years, and it is recorded that one firm of printers sold 37,000 copies within seven years. After the Revolution the New Eng land Primer was gradually driven from the market by Webster s more modern schoolbooks. The schoolhouse was almost always built of wood 16 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION and was likely to be in a ruinous condition. Some times it was only a log cabin with one room, in which the children were seated on long, unpainted benches, with nothing before them but bare walls and the teacher s desk. Usually the room was kept sufficiently heated only at the expense of ventila tion. A schoolmaster writing in 1681 thus de scribes his schoolhouse: "The confused and shat tered and nastie posture that it is in, the glass broke, and thereupon very raw and cold; the floor very much broken and torn up to kindle fires, the hearth spoiled, the seats some burned and others out of kilter, that one had well nigh as good keep school in a hog stie as in it." 1 The state of the schoolhouse, however, varied according to the lib erality of the town. In some places the schools were kept in excellent repair, though in none of them was there any suggestion of the modern idea of making the schoolroom beautiful. The schools were ungraded, although the lit tle children just learning their letters usually sat apart from the rest. The pupils studied at their seats but, when called upon to recite, came to the front of the room, gave the teacher the book, and 1 Clifton Johnson, Old- Time Schools and School-Books (1904), p. 9. EARLY NEW ENGLAND 17 rehearsed their lesson as well as possible from mem ory. If the recitation fell very much below the master s expectations, the usual result was a sound flogging. The colonial school inherited the English tradition of harsh discipline and even exceeded its inheritance. Hot-tempered instructors were not content with the traditional use of the ruler, birch, and strap, but exercised their ingenuity in invent ing new punishments. A disobedient or trouble some boy might be compelled to stand in the corner with a dunce s cap decorating his head, stay by the hot stove during recess, hold out a heavy book at arm s length until he was exhausted, have his nose pinched with a sort of wooden clothespin, or sit on the girls side of the room a punishment the severity of which depended upon the point of view. As a rule the more conscientious the teacher, the worse time his pupil had. There was no attempt to make study attractive, and most students followed the road to learning only under bitter compulsion. Girls were almost never admitted to grammar school, although it was not at all uncommon for a teacher to give them private instruction after school hours. In the small common schools of ru ral New England necessity often triumphed over prejudice, and boys and girls had to be taught in 18 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION the same room and at the same time. The teacher, however, was very careful in such cases to seat the girls and boys on opposite sides of the room. In spite of the fact that the laws recognized the rights of girls to at least elementary instruction, less than forty per cent of the women whose names appear on recorded deeds in Massachusetts during the early part of the eighteenth century were able to write their own signatures, the rest having to attest by marks. x Dame schools filled a useful place in providing the first instruction of boys and sometimes the only instruction of girls. In these very elementary pri vate schools taught by women in their own homes the little children learned to read from the horn book and sometimes to do sums by making figures on the sanded floor. Girls who remained long enough in the dame school might learn to read, write, cipher, sew, recite the catechism, and even spell. Sewing in the dame schools and in more ad vanced private schools was taught very largely by the making of samplers. Some of these were simply copies of the horn-book with decorated borders and show that the sampler could teach reading, writing, 1 G. H. Martin, Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School System (1894). EARLY NEW ENGLAND 19 sewing, and piety in the same piece of work. The smallest children might be given the letters of the alphabet made in gingerbread and be permitted as a reward to eat the letters which they could recog nize. Some dame schools taught nothing but the alphabet and were chiefly valued as safe places where a busy mother could leave her youngest children during part of the day. Although the dame schools were ordinarily supported by small fees from parents, in certain places the town paid something toward their upkeep as a cheaper alternative to establishing a common school. As the frontier pushed farther westward, it be came inconvenient for all the children in a spacious rural township to go long distances to a single school. The custom therefore grew up of moving the school, or rather the master, from one part of the township to another. The school would be taught several weeks in one place and then be moved on for the convenience of another group of children, sometimes staying in each part of the township for a length of time proportioned to what the neighborhood paid in taxes. In the latter part of the eighteenth century Connecticut and Massa chusetts empowered the towns to divide themselves into smaller districts for the purpose of managing 20 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION the schools. The intention of the law was good, for its aim was to secure educational facilities for every part of each township, but it made the schools more than ever dependent upon small neighborhoods and resulted in mismanagement. The law of 1789, which recognized in Massa chusetts the district school system already estab lished in fact by many of the towns, made other interesting changes in the school laws of the State. Towns of one hundred families were no longer compelled, as formerly, to maintain a grammar school. This requirement had, indeed, long been a dead letter, and the law recognized existing facts when it raised the limit to a hundred and fifty families for a part-time grammar school and re quired a full-time school only in towns of at least two hundred families. All teachers were required to have a college education or else present a cer tificate of learning and good character from a min ister of the gospel "well skilled in the Greek and Latin language." Ministers and town officials were authorized to inspect schools every six months to see that they were properly conducted. Ele mentary schools were required to teach arithmetic, spelling, and "decent behavior," in addition to reading and writing English. This law marks the EARLY NEW ENGLAND 21 definite triumph of experience over expectation: the common school system had firmly established itself and the grammar school, in which the found ers of New England placed their greatest hope amid frontier conditions, had now all but perished. es- CHAPTER II SCHOOLS IN NEW NETHERLAND You must urge upon the States-General that they should _ tablish free schools, where children of quality, as well as of poor families, for a very small sum, could be well and Christianly edu cated and brought up. This would be the greatest and most use ful work you could ever accomplish for God and Christianity, and for the Netherlands themselves. John of Nassau. WHEN the Dutch planted their colony in the valley of the Hudson, they were not constrained as were the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay to devise a sys tem of public instruction but found in the institu tions of their fatherland a ready model. Indeed, it is hardly too much to say that the Dutch colo nists themselves did not establish schools but merely accepted those provided by the authorities. So slight was the effective control of the British Gov ernment over the New England commonwealths that they were virtually so many independent republics allied to England by sentiment and tradi tion. The colonists of New Netherland, on the 22 SCHOOLS IN NEW NETHERLAND 23 other hand, were governed autocratically by offi cials of the Dutch West India Company, whose charter of 1629 required the patroons and colo nists to support a minister, a schoolmaster, and a "comforter of the sick." To maintain relig ion and learning every householder and inhabit ant was subject to tax, but the West India Com pany furnished the schoolmasters and sometimes contributed to their support. It would, however, be unjust to infer that the Dutch colonists were at all indifferent to the schools established in New Netherland. On the contrary, the records of the colony show how eager the settlers were to have schools built and kept sup plied with competent teachers. The Dutchmen, many of them educated in the public schools of the Netherlands, would have considered it criminal to allow their children to go without similar advan tages in their new home. But since most of the colonists were tradesmen seeking new commercial opportunities for themselves and their fellow- countrymen, the type of education in which they were most interested was a thorough ground ing in the bread and butter subjects. Unlike the settlers of Massachusetts and Virginia, the Dutch colonists never founded a college and even had 24 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION to wait for some twenty years after elementary schools had been started before they had a Latin grammar school. The city then called New Amsterdam was the first Dutch settlement to enjoy a public school. Adam Roelantsen, the first schoolmaster, opened school probably in 1633. It must be confessed that Roelantsen was far from being in all respects a credit to his profession. Little is known about his skill as a teacher, but it is a fact that he was con stantly involved in lawsuits and frequently accused of slander and disorderly conduct. After Roelant sen abandoned his position, the school was con tinued somewhat irregularly by a number of other schoolmasters. For want of an adequate building the teachers were often forced to keep school in private houses or in public buildings intended for other purposes. The pay which the teacher re ceived was frequently insufficient to maintain him. Sometimes the New Amsterdam school could find no one who would consent to undertake its charge, and the children were without schooling for months at a time, though a few struggling private schools shared with the public school the work of instructing the children of the city. New Amsterdam was not the only Dutch colonial SCHOOLS IN NEW NETHERLAND 25 town to support a public school. All of the other towns and villages of any importance in New Neth- erland established schools as soon as they were populous enough to warrant the expense. Even far-away New Amstel (now New Castle, Delaware) was supplied with a Dutch teacher, although at that time the majority of the townsmen were Swedes. Only in the country districts and in the poorer villages was public education not provided. In the outlying settlements the difficulty of obtain ing good schoolhouses and good teachers was even greater than in New Amsterdam, and in spite of every effort on the part of their parents many children grew up without any regular schooling. In 1652 a Latin school was started in what had earlier been the "city tavern" of New Amsterdam, but the experiment was very soon abandoned. The colonists thereupon petitioned the West India Company to send them some one competent to teach Latin and other advanced studies. In their appeal they pointed out that many of the citizens desired for their children the advantages of a Latin education, but that there was no place nearer than Boston where this want could be supplied. In 1659 the West India Company in response to their ap peal sent the learned Dr. Alexander Curtius to 26 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION the colony as Latin schoolmaster. He received a moderate salary, a house and garden, fees from his pupils, and permission to practice medicine. Not succeeding very well with his charge, however, Dr. Curtius was soon replaced by the Reverend ^Egidius Luyck. The Latin school was largely supported by the local authorities, although part of the teacher s salary was guaranteed by the Company. The Dutch elementary schools in America taught little except reading, writing, arithmetic, and the catechism. Sometimes, as in the New Eng land schools of the seventeenth century, even arith metic was omitted from the course of study. But religious instruction was never neglected; in fact, after the English conquest many of the old Dutch public schools continued their existence as private parochial schools, still giving instruction in the Dutch language to the descendants of the first settlers. The change was the more easily made because even under the Dutch regime these schools had been in part supported by fees from well-to-do parents who had children in attendance. A typical teacher s contract, with one Evert Pietersen, as signed him a salary of 36 florins a month. 1 125 1 A florin is about forty cents in our coinage. SCHOOLS IN NEW NETHERLAND 27 florins for board, free house, a school building, and free passage back to Holland at the conclusion of his service. Parents whose children were at school paid more or less according to whether the pupil studied reading, writing, and ciphering, or only reading and writing; but it was also stipulated that "the poor and needy, who ask to be taught for God s sake, he shall teach for nothing." 1 Most of the school-books were religious in character and, though arithmetics and primers were not unknown, the Bible, the catechism, and the psalm-book were the chief readers in use. Girls as well as boys went to the public school but sat apart from the boys or, if possible, were taught in another room. Nowhere in America did the schoolmaster com bine more offices in one than he did among the Dutch. The teacher was commonly both reader and precentor in the church; frequently he was also the sexton; sometimes he was the "comforter of the sick," a ministration which blended religion and medicine. Many of the school contracts specify in minutest detail the incidental duties of the schoolmaster even to the ringing of the church bell and the provision of water for the baptism of in fants. If these auxiliary occupations may have 1 KHpatrick, Dutch Schools of New Netherland, p. 68. 88 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION detracted a little from the scholarly dignity of the teacher, they nevertheless enriched his purse with much needed fees and increased his usefulness in the eyes of the community. If long hours deserve a good salary, the Dutch schoolmaster was cer tainly not overpaid, for the school day began at eight in the morning and lasted, with a noon recess for lunch, till four in the afternoon. There was no long vacation during the year, unless, of course, the school was unable to find a teacher. There were, however, festival holidays, and Wednesday and Saturday afternoons were usually free. Though the public school system of the Dutch colonists may have been imperfect and inadequate when judged by the standards of colonial Massa chusetts, it was superior to anything that the newly established English Government was ready to put in its place. The English settlers practically ig nored the Dutch establishment of public education and sent their own children to private schools or let them do without instruction the custom not only in England itself but in the majority of the English colonies. The people of New York, however, made a few attempts to obtain some measure of public sup port for the schools. In 1702 they passed a law SCHOOLS IN NEW NETHERLAND 29 authorizing the public support of a school teacher in New York City to instruct "male children of such parents as are of French and Dutch extraction as well as of the English." This school lasted, it is true, for only seven years, but in 1732 the income from licenses issued to hawkers and peddlers was granted by the Government to a school for teaching Latin, Greek, and mathematics, and free scholar ships were provided for twenty young men from different parts of the colony. But this school, also, had a brief existence. More important than such slight and temporary aid of popular education was the part which the colonial Government played in the supervision of private schools, even though this oversight was more in the interest of religion than in the cause of efficient instruction. No teachers might come from England to teach in New York without the con sent of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and no resi dent of New York might open a school without license from the Governor. These restrictions gave the Church of England a favored position of which it was not slow to take advantage. During the eighteenth century the instruction of the poor of New York came almost entirely under the care of an Anglican missionary association known as 30 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. The activities of this Society were by no means confined to New York but affected to some degree the educational life of all the colonies. In New England the strength of the Congregationalists left little room for Anglican missionary effort, and the completeness of the public school system dis couraged the foundation of private charity schools; but in spite of these handicaps some Church of England schools were organized. In other parts of America the Society had better fortune, particu larly in New York, where the rapidly increas ing and cosmopolitan population and the lack of common schools offered a unique opportunity for educational effort. But the establishment of schools was a second ary matter to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Its chief aim was evangelical; its main purpose, to convert the heathen Indians, to confirm in the faith the adherents of the Church of England, and to make headway against heresy and dissent. But, like the Jesuits of old and the modern mission aries to India or China, the missionaries of the S. P. G., as it is familiarly known, soon discovered that the only way to evangelize was to teach. In their SCHOOLS IN NEW NETHERLAND 31 charity schools they emphasized the catechism and a thorough knowledge of the Anglican ritual, but they also found it advisable to teach the children "to write a plain and legible hand in order to the fitting them for useful Employments; with as much Arithmetick as shall be necessary to the same Pur pose." The Society supported between five and ten schools in the colony of New York up to the time of the American Revolution and gave aid to many others. In New York City the Trinity Church charity school received help from the local authorities as well as from the Society and at one time held session in the City Hall. The officers of the Society exercised great care in selecting their missionaries. All had to be sound in the faith and well-affected toward the existing Government, and married schoolmasters usually were required to take their wives with them to America. Teachers were expected to send home two reports a year of the progress of their work, but this duty they frequently neglected, as ade quate supervision was impossible when the central organization was separated from its agents by the width of the Atlantic. The Society kept its schools supplied with generous donations of text-books, for the most part of a purely religious character. In 32 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION the early years of the eighteenth century the So ciety devoted no small share of its efforts to the instruction of the Iroquois Indians and the negro slaves, but, as the colony became more populous and settled, it shifted the emphasis more and more from purely missionary activities to ordinary school work. After an insurrection of the slaves in 1712 had been unjustly ascribed to the educational work of the Society, the colonists looked with some disfavor on the teaching of negroes, but the Society did not entirely abandon its work. The English made, on the whole, a creditable educational record in New York. As a result of private initiative and philanthropic effort, free elementary education was provided for many chil dren, some good secondary schools were established, and a flourishing college was founded. But the cardinal mistake of the English in not establishing a public school system had baneful effects that out lasted the colonial period. Free education became synonymous with charity education, and the school ing which the New England lad expected as a right, the New Yorker received as a privilege to be bought in the market by well-to-do parents or given as alms to the poor. Such prominent educators as Presi dent Johnson of King s College early advocated the SCHOOLS IN NEW NETHERLAND 33 public endowment of education, but it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that the battle for the free school system was finally won. Another obstacle which the friends of learning encountered in New York, and one which was only less formidable than the tradition that education was a private rather than a public concern, was the swamping of the commercial centers by incessant immigration in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen turies. Private educational agencies were quite un able to cope with the growing problem of illiteracy, especially when it was willful illiteracy. As early as 1713 Chaplain John Sharp of the royal army in New York complained that "the city is so conveniently Situated for Trade and the Genius of the people are so inclined to merchandise, that they generally seek no other Education for their children than writing and Arithmetick. So that letters must be in a manner forced upon them not only without their seeking but against their consent." x It was just this necessary element of compulsion that was lacking in the school system of colonial New York, and the results of this defect proved to be far-reaching. 1 W. W. Kemp, The Support of Schools in Colonial New York by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (1912), p. 68. CHAPTER III SCHOOLS OF THE MIDDLE AND SOUTHERN COLONIES We press their memory too soon, and puzzle, strain and load them with words and rules; to know grammar and rhetoric, and a strange tongue or two, that it is ten to one may never be useful to them; leaving their natural genius to mechanical and physical or natural knowledge uncultivated and neglected; which would be of exceeding use and pleasure to them through the whole course of their life. To be sure languages are not to be despised or neglected. But things are still to be preferred. William Penn. No colony was ever founded in a nobler spirit than was the Quaker settlement planned by William Penn in the wilderness of Pennsylvania. Religious toleration, fair dealing with the Indians, and the instruction of all children in godliness, industry, and learning were parts of the enlightened plan projected by the founder and first proprietor. The intentions of William Penn were seconded by the settlers, who passed a law that all children should be taught "so that they may be able to read the Scriptures and to write by the time they attain to 34 MIDDLE AND SOUTHERN COLONIES 35 twelve years of age; and that then they be taught some useful trade or skill, that the poor may work to live, and the rich if they become poor may not want: Of which every County Court shall take care." In 1683, the year in which this law was en acted, Enoch Flower opened a school in Philadel phia under the authority of the Provincial Council. Six years later a Latin grammar school, which still exists as the William Penn Charter School, gave the Philadelphia children an opportunity for higher education. To this school poor children were ad mitted free, but those who could afford to do so had to pay. The Friends, or Quakers, resembled the Dutch in their zeal for elementary education and their comparative indifference to the college, though not a few of the Quakers were themselves graduates of English universities. Yet in an age which valued the college chiefly as a means for training an edu cated ministry, the Quakers on account of their peculiar beliefs had less reason than others to set much value on higher education. They believed not that the clergy were an order of men set apart from the community by superior learning but that the word of God might come as readily from the lips of an ignorant man as from those of the scholar. 36 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION The Quakers founded no college in colonial times, and their schools tended to lose their public char acter and to become purely denominational. The very religious tolerance of the Quakers, which was so greatly to their credit, prevented the estab lishment of any general system of education in Pennsylvania. So many persons of every denomi nation flocked to this haven of liberty that no one church, not even that of the Friends, was able to dominate the colony and impose its own schools on the rest. In the eighteenth century Pennsylvania suffered the same fate as nearly all the other colonies. The educational impress of the first founders was oblit erated by the influx of immigrants of a new type, men frequently themselves as well educated as the original colonists but less concerned for the cause of education. The submergence of the Dutch schools in New Netherland and the lax enforce ment of the school laws in Massachusetts were paralleled by the fading out of William Penn s ideal of education in the colony which he had founded. In some respects Pennsylvania had to face greater difficulties than did the other colonies. Nowhere else in America, perhaps, was there so little unity in the population as here. Catholics, MIDDLE AND SOUTHERN COLONIES 37 Quakers, Dutch Reformed, Lutherans, Episcopa lians, Baptists, and Methodists all had their own church schools and refused to send their children to any other. In addition to the more powerful denominations, an unusual number of tiny sects, such as the Moravians, Mennonites, Amish, Schwenkfelders, Dunkers, and Seventh Day Bap tists, founded their settlements within the prov ince. There was, moreover, as little harmony of race as there was of religion. The Swedes and Dutch along the Delaware still clung desperately to their old language and customs; Germans, often referred to as "Pennsylvania Dutch" by their Eng lish neighbors, settled the country in large num bers; and the Scotch-Irish became a vanguard on the edge of the backwoods in the West. As the most numerous of the alien elements of the population, the Germans early attracted the benevolent interest of the English and to such a degree that in 1754 there was organized in London a "Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowl edge Among the Germans in America." The free schools founded by this missionary agency were unquestionably needed, but the Germans resented the patronizing implication that they were fit ob jects of charity, and they also feared that if their 38 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION children went to these schools they might forget their native language and abandon the religion of their fathers. Isolated by distance from the well-educated people of Germany and unwilling to enter heartily into what was to them a foreign cul ture, the Pennsylvania Germans too frequently grew indifferent to the schooling of their children, though their churches, notably the Moravian, la bored to keep alive to some extent the old love of learning. In consequence, though the educated were but few, they never wholly " ceased out of the land." Delaware, settled by the Swedes, is another ex ample of high colonial hopes disappointed. Swe den stood second to no country in Europe in the matter of elementary education. About the time the Delaware settlement was made, it is said, there was not a peasant child in Sweden who had not been taught to read and write. The instruc tions for the colony of New Sweden in 1640 re quired the patrons of the colony to support "as many ministers and schoolmasters as the number of inhabitants shall seem to require." But we find the colonists of a later date complaining that they were without regular schools, that the clergy who essayed to teach the children were unequal to their task, and that there was an almost complete dearth MIDDLE AND SOUTHERN COLONIES 39 of school-books. In spite of the fact that New Sweden was no longer a political dependency of the mother country, the Swedes responded to this appeal by sending over catechisms, primers, and various religious works. The colonists on their part supported itinerant schoolmasters who taught in private houses and combined the exercise of their profession with the various duties of reader, clerk, sexton, or precentor in the local church. Parish schools and a supply of catechisms from Sweden did not, however, suffice to keep alive a separate national culture in so small and isolated a community. The Swedish colony became at last but a part of an English-speaking community of very diverse origin, and its early experiments in education left no traceable mark on the later edu cational history of Delaware. The Dutch, during their brief occupation, and the Quakers, while Dela ware was still a part of Pennsylvania, encouraged free schools within the limits of the province; but in the eighteenth century education in Delaware fell into public neglect and became wholly a matter of private charity. New Jersey, for a time part of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, was the object of as much edu cational solicitude as the region east of the Hudson. 40 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION Later, under the rule of the "proprietors" of East and West Jersey, the English undertook the task of public education. In 1682 the Assembly of West Jersey granted to the town of Burlington the island of Matinicunk in the Delaware River for the sup port of schools ; and at different times several other generous land grants were made to important towns. The Assembly of East Jersey authorized the inhabitants of any town in the province to levy taxes for the establishment and support of schools; but, after New Jersey became a royal province in 1702, this attempt at founding a public school sys tem was not followed up. New Jersey in the eight eenth century became, like all its neighbors, a land of private schools. The Southern Colonies followed more closely the educational system of England, since they were not affected either by the Puritan zeal for public educa tion dominant in New England or by the Dutch, Swedish, German, or Quaker traditions of the parish school as an adjunct to the local church which in one form or another characterized the school systems of the Middle Colonies. English traditions favored the foundation of private second ary schools and colleges under public patronage but did not encourage a general system of free MIDDLE AND SOUTHERN COLONIES 41 elementary schools. There was, however, a trace of compulsion in the laws which required guardians to take care that orphan children received an edu cation suitable to their station in life, and in the apprentice laws which safeguarded the interests of those who were bound out to labor. One or two of the Southern Colonies advanced a little beyond English precedent. Maryland and South Caro lina experimented during the eighteenth century with a system of tax-supported county schools, and, though the law was not carried out in either colony to its full intent, the poor of the more im portant towns always had some opportunity for a free education. Maryland passed a law in 1696 creating a cor poration to establish and govern county schools, but King William s School at Annapolis was the only public school established under this central ized system. The Assembly in 1723 established a fund for the county schools and arranged for their government by boards of visitors in each county. These Latin grammar schools were free to the poor but required fees of those who were able to pay; they varied a great deal in merit; and they had difficulty in finding competent schoolmasters at the small salaries they offered. As late as 1797 there 42 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION was complaint that King William s was the only adequately endowed school in Maryland and that "two-thirds of the little education we receive are derived from instructors who are either indentured servants or transported felons/* 1 It gives the modern reader something of a shock to read of a reward offered for the return to his master of a run away "schoolmaster, of a pale complexion, with short hair. He has the itch very bad, and sore legs," and again "he is a great taker of snuff and very apt to get drunk." In the Carolinas special acts by the colonial legislatures permitted individual towns to estab lish schools, but sometimes a town failed to take advantage of this permissive law. South Carolina, by laws enacted in 1710 and 1712, founded a gram mar school at Charleston which was to be open to the poor and authorized the establishment of a general system of parish schools. The provisions of these laws were not effectively carried out except in the city of Charleston, but several county gram mar schools were later established on a basis similar to that of the Maryland schools. In both Carolinas the education of the poor was largely taken in hand 1 Bernard C. Steiner, History of Education in Maryland, U. S. Bureau of Education (1894), No. 19, pp. 34-38. MIDDLE AND SOUTHERN COLONIES 43 by the Church of England through the charity schools established by the Society for the Propaga tion of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Georgia was founded so late in the colonial period that it hardly requires any special notice except for the fact that the British Crown, when it took over the colony from its trustees, continued to support a minister and two schoolmasters. The distinction between schooling and education was particularly marked in the South. Some of the best educated men in America came from the South, and yet some of the best educated men of the South never saw the inside of a school building. Even before the Revolutionary War many planta tion owners hired as private tutors for their chil dren men who might have any degree of education from that of the indentured servant who could barely read and write to that of the cultured grad uate of Oxford or Cambridge. Plantation life itself was a liberal education in agriculture, business management, horsemanship, and the conventions of polite society subjects as essential in those days to a well-rounded career as any of the more academic branches. If a type of education is to have its value estimated by its products, the South ern plantation must rank as one of the best of 44 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION schools, since it supplied so many of the statesmen of the Revolution and of the early republic. The educational advantages of the plantation were, however, for the very few. The poor man rarely had an opportunity to advance his children beyond a knowledge of the three R s and could have them taught so much only by accepting charity. Well-to-do men in all the colonies, but especially in the South, frequently sent their boys to schools and colleges in England. Just as our great Eastern universities today draw students from the South and West, so in those earlier days did Oxford and Cambridge attract the ambitious youth of America. It was hard to establish colleges on the new con tinent when they had to compete with the prestige of such ancient and well-endowed institutions of learning in the Old World. If the voyage to Eng land had not then been so long, costly, and hazard ous, several of the colonial colleges might never have been founded. Some discerning Englishmen saw in this intellectual dependence on the mother country one of the surest bonds which kept the British Empire from disintegration, and they viewed with a mixture of sympathy and apprehen sion the rise of new academies and colleges. Said one William Eddis, a surveyor of customs at MIDDLE AND SOUTHERN COLONIES 45 Annapolis, in 1773 : " When the real or supposed ne cessity ceases of sending the youth of this continent to distant seminaries for the completion of their education, the attachment of the colonies to Great Britain will gradually weaken, and a less frequent intercourse will tend to encourage those sentiments of self-importance which have already taken too deep root, and which, I fear, the utmost exer tions of political wisdom will never be able wholly to eradicate." 1 Perhaps Cecil Rhodes had in mind the omen of this true prophecy when he established scholarships at Oxford for the youth of the British Dominions. When a colony makes its own laws and its own hardware, it may still be loyal to the mother coun try from motives of sentiment; but when it writes its own books and reads its own newspapers, it loses all sense of dependence and becomes either a new nation or an equal partner within a common federation. The schools and colleges of America, imperfect and inadequate though they were, sufficed even at an early date to create a separate "consciousness of kind" among the colonists and helped to make possible the establishment of the United States. 1 Steiner, op. cit., p. 32. CHAPTER IV THE COLONIAL COLLEGE After wee had builded our Louses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God s worship, and setled the Civill Government, one of the next things wee longed for and looked after was to advance Learning and to perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministery to the Churches, when our present Ministers shall lie in the Dust. And as wee were thinking and consulting how to effect this great Work, it pleased God to stir up the heart of one Mr. Harvard (a godly gentleman and a lover of Learning, there living amongst us) to give the one- half of his estate (it being in all about 1,700) towards the erect ing of a Colledge, and all his library. After him another gave 300; others after them cast in more, and the publique hand of the State added the rest. New England s First Fruits. COULD John Harvard revisit the university which bears his name and the town which bears that of his own Alma Mater, Cambridge, he would doubt less find much to surprise him, but he would find that America still combined the most munificent private generosity towards the cause of higher education with the unfailing aid of "the publique hand of the State." The colonial college, of which 46 THE COLONIAL COLLEGE 47 Harvard was the first example, is the parent not only of the modern private university but of the State supported institution as well. Even in the colonies outside New England where the Govern ment did little for the common schools, the college was never left wholly dependent upon fees and benefactions. The public authorities were always ready to do something, if it were only to hold a lottery in aid of the endowment. The bequest of the godly John Harvard came in the nick of time to save the struggling young col lege founded in 1636 at Newtown, later Cambridge. The 400 voted by the General Court of the Colo ny of Massachusetts Bay proved hardly sufficient to build a flourishing school, although it amounted to as much as all other public expenses of the colony for that year. John Harvard s bequest of two hundred and sixty books, mainly treatises on theology, was a bigger proportionate addition to the intellectual resources of the community than a gift of the million volumes now on the shelves of Harvard library would be today. It was an acci dent or, as Puritan Massachusetts would have said, a providence that the College ever received this bequest, for John Harvard, when he died in 1638, had been in the colony barely a year. 48 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION All the colonial colleges made an attempt to copy the English universities of Oxford and Cambridge, but they were at first too poor to become universi ties in the English sense of federations of many undergraduate colleges. Each college was wholly simple in its structure, with but one faculty and one course of study. The American system never, indeed, included under the nominal control of one examining body a number of coordinate colleges of independent foundation offering practically similar courses of study. When, in later years, new schools and departments were founded and the American college developed into the American university, there still remained but one general or academic college apart from the specialized pro fessional schools. The early colonial college itself was originally in one respect something of a pro fessional school, as its foremost aim was not to give "the education of a gentleman " to young men of means and leisure but to train a learned ministry. The formal education which was prevalent in Europe in the seventeenth century and which was transplanted to colonial America emphasized two subjects: the classics of Greece and Rome and the duties of the Christian to his Creator. In those days Latin was the language of culture, and theology THE COLONIAL COLLEGE 49 was queen of the sciences. The boy who had grad uated from a grammar school was expected to be able to read and write easy Latin and to know a little of Greek grammar. Did his knowledge ex tend to these points, he had satisfied the require ments for admission to Harvard. Nobody both ered to ask him whether he could add a column of figures twice and get the same answer both times, or name the principal rivers of New England, or even spell his native tongue correctly. Once ad mitted to the college, he spent little time in the formal study of Latin but he practiced its daily use in the classroom and in private conversa tion. Latin was the key to knowledge, and the storehouse of wisdom was the college. A somewhat varied mental diet was set before the student, but he was compelled to partake of whatever was given him. No broad elective sys tem of studies a la carte had yet been devised. The college youth of those days studied the Bible throughout his course and, for a year, "catecheti cal divinity." Mainly that he might be able to read the New Testament in the original he studied Greek, and that he might be able to read the Old Testament he took a year of Hebrew. At one time Chaldee and Syriac were also taught. On the other 50 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION hand, if the student wished to learn a little French or German, he could get no help from the college. Logic, ethics, and politics were each studied for two years, and a few lectures on physics, history, and botany were sometimes slipped into the course. The bachelor s degree was conferred upon every scholar "able to read the originals of the Old and New Testament into the Latin tongue, and to re solve them logically," provided he were "of Godly life and conversation." For the master s degree, the bachelor must present a thesis and defend it. In addition to the formal defense of the master s thesis, a number of "disputations" were intro duced into the college course. Sometimes these dealt with such profundities of metaphysics as, "Is the act of creation eternal?" Or they might involve more detailed theological problems such as, "When Balaam s ass spoke, was there any change in its organs?" Anon it would be such a scientific question as, for instance, "Were the aborigines of America descended from Abraham?" Occasion ally one strikes much more modern notes: "Is the voice of the people the voice of God? " " Is it law ful to sell Africans?" or, to choose an example from disputations at Yale, "Whether the Latin and Greek languages are studied too much in America." THE COLONIAL COLLEGE 51 In the seventeenth century, when Harvard was practically a Congregational theological seminary, this exercise in forensics was excellent training for the practice of the ministry, and a century later, when law and politics came to the fore, the same type of disputations brought out any talent for oratory that might be lurking in the young colle gian. Cotton Mather, who was admitted to Har vard College at the age of twelve, writes of his studies there: I composed Systems both of Logick and Physick, in Catachisms of my own, which have been since used by many others. I went over the use of Globes and pro ceeded in Arithmetic as far as was ordinary. I made Theses and Antitheses upon the main Questions that lay before me. For my Declamations I ordinarily took some Article of Natural Philosophy for my subject, by which contrivances I did Kill two birds with one Stone. Hundreds of books I read over, and I kept a Diary of my studies. My son I would not have mentioned these things, but that I may provoke your emulation. The more important of the early colleges add an interesting chapter to the story of the rise of mod ern American education. The first head of Har vard, Nathaniel Eaton, had a career that was brief and inglorious. In these days of committees on academic discipline, it is interesting to read 52 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION he was finally removed from office for beating a boy too severely. By the laws of the college, mis conduct might be punished as in the common school: "If any scholar shall transgress any of the laws of God, or the House . . . after twice ad monition, he shall be liable, if not adultus, to cor rection; if adultus, his name shall be given up to the Overseers of the College." But Eaton exceeded his privilege in this respect. What was worse, he and his wife neglected the material welfare of the students, who had to make their own beds or clean their own rooms if the work were to be done at all, and "their diet was ordinarily nothing but porridge and pudding, and that very homely." Complaints against the "commons" have been frequent in most colleges but rarely with better justification than during the early days of Harvard. Better days came when Henry Dunster took charge of Harvard in 1640, with the title of Presi dent. He was a vigorous and capable executive, whose energy placed the college for the first time on a secure and permanent basis. But he fell into the heresy of "antipaedobaptism," and Puritan Massachusetts which did not tolerate the Bap tists, as Roger Williams found to his cost put President Dunster out of his position. The one THE COLONIAL COLLEGE 53 concession granted to him on his dismissal was that he might be allowed to remain in the Presi dent s house until the winter was over. After his time Harvard became such a battleground for theologians that it soon became difficult to find an able man to take the presidency. Orthodox Cal vinism found a strong champion in President Increase Mather, and Liberalism one in President John Leverett. The latter was bitterly attacked by Cotton Mather, the son of Increase Mather and himself an unsuccessful candidate for the presi dency of the college. He complained that pious youths who went to Harvard graduated as sceptics and heretics, that the students filled their rooms "with books which may be truly called Satan s library," and he demanded an inquiry "whether the books mostly read among them are not plays, novels, empty and vicious pieces of poetry." The suspicion of too lax theology which thus early attached itselr to Harvard College was one cause for the establishment of Yale, the third college to be founded in the English colonies, and the first American instance of academic parent hood. Harvard had been founded by men edu cated in England, but Yale was the work of grad uates of Harvard. It is perhaps remarkable that, 54 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION considering the jealousies of different colonies and churches, Harvard remained for some two genera tions without a rival. Poverty, the French, and the Indians seem to have been the three leading causes for the educational monopoly so long en joyed by the Massachusetts college. In 1701 several devout Congregational ministers gave generously of their scanty hoard of books to wards the foundation of a college in Connecticut, rightly thinking that the way to begin a college was with a library. During the same year the General Assembly authorized the erection of a " collegiate school" to fit students for "Publick employment both in Church and Civil State," thus striking from the very beginning that note of state craft and public service which has ever since been the dominant ideal of Yale. For several years, however, Yale College lacked both a permanent local habitation and a name. For fifteen years the college was located at Say- brook, but the actual teaching was frequently done elsewhere. In 1717 a permanent home, the "College House," was begun in New Haven, and the following year it received the name of Yale College after Elihu Yale, one of its earliest and most munificent benefactors. THE COLONIAL COLLEGE 55 Elihu Yale was a child of Boston, though for the greater part of his active career he was in the In dian civil service and finally rose to be Governor of Fort St. George at Madras. But he always re tained an interest in the distant land of his birth and was easily persuaded to give books and money to the struggling little college at New Haven. Another benefactor of Yale who deserves to be mentioned in this connection was Bishop George Berkeley, the English philosopher, whose cher ished dream it had been to found a college in the New World. His first thought was to establish one in the Bermudas but, unable to realize this plan, he wisely turned to Yale instead. He gave his Rhode Island farm, still known as the Dean s farm, to the college and also presented it with a carefully selected library of nearly a thousand volumes. The roll of the Berkeleyan scholarship which he founded bears the names of twelve college presidents. His name is further commemorated in the seat of a still larger institution on the other side of the continent, the University of California. With the foundation of Harvard and Yale the needs of the Congregationalists were met. Those who considered Harvard too liberal could obtain a purer Calvinism from the sister college. But other 56 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION denominations were growing to importance and were demanding educational opportunities. The needs of the Presbyterian community were met by the organization of the College of New Jersey at Princeton ; the Dutch Reformed could go to Queens, now Rutgers; the Anglicans had King s, now Col umbia, and the Baptists, Brown. During the eighteenth century an increasing number of young men went to college who had no thoughts of enter ing the ministry, and they were usually made welcome regardless of any niceties of creed. In the charter of Brown University, for example, there was this provision: "Into this Liberal & Catholic Institution shall never be admitted any Religious Tests but on the Contrary all the Mem bers hereof shall for ever enjoy full free Absolute and uninterrupted Liberty of Conscience." Words could hardly be more emphatic, and the liberal intention of the Baptist founders was further demonstrated by another provision giving a cer tain number of Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Quakers, and Episcopalians places on the Board of Trustees. Yet the rules of Brown forbade any student to assert his disbelief in Christianity, ex cept "Young Gentlemen of the Hebrew Nation." Of all the colonial colleges the nearest to a complete THE COLONIAL COLLEGE 57 independence of denominational influences was the University of Pennsylvania, which was founded in the middle of the century. The eighteenth century witnessed not only a re laxation of strict doctrinal requirements in the col leges but the introduction of a broader curriculum. Hebrew took a minor place in the course of study, and more emphasis was placed upon the purely literary side of Greek and Latin. More attention began to be paid to mathematics and the sciences, and every college did its best to obtain a few physi cal and astronomical instruments with which to demonstrate to the pupils the wonders of nature and to the parents the fact that the institution was awake to the spirit of the times. Nothing could be more significant than these words from the prospectus issued in 1754 by Samuel John son, the first President of King s College, now Columbia University: And lastly, a serious, virtuous, and industrious Course of Life being first provided for, it is further the Design of this College to instruct and perfect the Youth in the Learned Languages, and in the Arts of reasoning ex actly, of writing correctly, and speaking eloquently; and in the Arts of numbering and measuring; of Surveying and Navigation, of Geography and History, of Husban dry, Commerce and Government, and in the Knowledge 58 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION of all Nature in the Heavens above us, and in the Air, Water and Earth around us, and the various kinds of Meteors, Stones, Mines and Minerals, Plants and Animals, and of every Thing useful for the Comfort, the Convenience and the Elegance of Life, in the chief Manufactures relating to any of these Things: And, finally, to lead them from the Study of Nature to the Knowledge of themselves, and of the God of Nature, and their Duty to Him, themselves, and one another, and every Thing that can contribute to their true Happiness, both here and hereafter. It may, indeed, be fairly questioned whether King s College or any other college of the time could even approximate the realization of such a comprehen sive ideal as this. But it is certain that no college or university since then has advanced beyond it, and it is equally certain that by the time of the Revolution all the American colleges were more or less actuated by a belief that education should include more than piety and grammar. The last thing to be modernized in the American college was its discipline. The rod was, indeed, finally expelled from the higher institutions of learning. But the undergraduate was bound to a fixed routine of life by a double system of laws, those of the college and those of the campus. The college authorities saw to it that the student arose THE COLONIAL COLLEGE 59 betimes, usually at six o clock, that he missed no lectures or recitations, that he kept regular hours of study, that he shunned all bad habits, and that on all occasions he showed due courtesy and subordination to his superiors. In Harvard, for example, it was ordered that No scholar shall take tobacco, unless permitted by the President, with the consent of their parents and guar dians, and on good reason first given by a physician, and then in a sober and private manner. To see that such rules were kept, the student was deprived of the right of privacy. A rather amus ing regulation at Brown reveals the existence of a system of " domiciliary visits " which today would be thought to verge on the intrusive: No student shall refuse to open the door when he shall hear the stamp of the foot or staff at his door in the en try, which shall be a token that an officer of instruction desires admission, which token every student is forbid to counterfeit, or imitate under any pretense whatever. And were these students too docile to require such rigid discipline or might the officer of instruction who banged on the floor outside the study expect to find some mischief within? To tell the truth, the colonial undergraduate at certain times and D laces was more unruly than his counterpart of the 60 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION present day. Let Philip Fithian relate from a page of his diary for 1770 how things then went in the good Presbyterian College of New Jersey. Among the amusements he specifies are: Strewing the entries in the Night with greasy Feathers; freezing the Bell ; Ringing it at late Hours of the Night . . . writing witty pointed anonymous Papers . . . Picking from the neighborhood now and then a plump fat Hen or Turkey . . . Darting Sunbeams upon the Town-People, Reconoitering Houses in the Town, & ogling Women with a Telescope Making Squibs, & other frightful compositions with Gunpowder, & light ing them in the Rooms of timorous Boys & new comers. Yet in the same college of which Mr. Fithian tells such mischievous deeds and at the same period, the faculty, ever solicitous for the good conduct of the students in their charge, prohibited the game of shinny because it sometimes resulted in acci dents and because there were "many amusements both more honorable and more useful in which they are indulged." An interesting glimpse of student life in those distant college days is given in the following letter: Written at Princeton, Jan. 13, Anno 1772. VERY DEAR, & MUCH RESPECTED FATHER, Through the distinguished Kindness of Heaven. I am in good Health, & have much Cause to be delighted THE COLONIAL COLLEGE 61 with my Lot. I would not change my Condition nor give up the Prospect I have before me, on any Terms almost whatever. I am not much hurried this Winter with my Studies; but I am trying to advance myself in an Acquaintance with my fellow-Creatures, & with the Labours of the "Mighty Dead." I am sorry that I may inform you, that two of our Members were expelled from the College yesterday; not for Drunkenness, nor Fighting, not for Swearing, nor Sabbath-Breaking. But, they were sent from this Sem inary, where the greatest Pains and Care are taken to cultivate and encourage Decency, & Honesty, & Honour, for stealing Hens! Shameful, mean, unmanly Conduct ! If a Person were to judge of the generality of Stu dents, by the Conduct of such earth-born, insatiate Helluo s; or by the detested Character of wicked In dividuals, (which is generally soonest & most exten sively propagated & known abroad,) how terrible an Idea must he have! Please to remember my kind Regards to my Brothers; Sister BECKA & the whole Family. I feel my Heart warm with Esteem for them! but can only further, at present, write myself, dear Father, Yours, P. FITHIAN It is hardly necessary to say that organized athletics had little place in the colonial college compared with their vogue in the modern Ameri can college and university. Even as recently as the Civil War an English observer, while 62 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION greatly praising the earnest zeal of the American undergraduate in his studies, had this to say: The utmost physical recreation seemed to consist in a country walk, and I doubt if even this was com mon. This absence of desire for physical sports seems more or less common throughout America, and is very strange in the eyes of those accustomed to the ex hibition of animal spirits in the English youth of both sexes. 1 But the current of youthful energy which was for bidden to flow freely in the path of athletics found its outlets elsewhere, and not only in miscellane ous mischief such as shocked the young Fithian. There were no Greek letter societies until Phi Beta Kappa was organized in 1776, but rival literary societies with long Greek names served equally well as centers of social life and generators of clan loyalty. Ritual functions accumulated around commencement and other college anniversaries. Special local customs, such as the burning of Euclid at the end of a mathematical course, took root and spread, and even before the advent of college jour nalism the poet and the satirist found opportunity to make known their talent to the campus. Sophia Jex Blake, A Visit to Some American Schools and Colleges (1867), p. 33. THE COLONIAL COLLEGE 63 However greatly the student may have resented the paternal oversight of his conduct which custom then required of the faculty, he submitted willingly to the no less exacting informal discipline imposed upon him by his older fellows, hoping perhaps to become a despot in his turn. The Freshman rules of today are but a survival of the iron code preva lent in colonial times. The English fagging system still obtained; Freshmen were compelled to perform "all reasonable errands for any superior," as the Yale rules of 1764 put it. To quote further from the Yale code, "A Senior may take a Freshman from a Sophomore, a Bachelor from a Junior, and a Master from a Senior." The Freshman must stand aside for upperclassmen at entrances or on stairways, must refrain from such boisterous conduct as running in the college yard or calling from a window, and must not sit in the presence of an upperclassman or other superior without special permission. These questions of college life are not so remote from the main purpose of education as they may seem. Just as the instructor made correctness and propriety of expression the aim of literary teaching and discouraged the original if it were also the un conventional, and just as the college President and 64 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION his assistants made the faith and morals of their charges their chief concern, so did the student body accept and impose its own discipline to curb the eccentric or nonconformist Freshman. Individu ality, in a word, was taken for granted, but it was something to be restrained rather than fos tered. Perhaps this was a wise course in a frontier commonwealth; perhaps this type of disciplinary education was necessary to give social cohesion to the young republic whose leaders and founders were trained by the colonial college. At all events, the education provided was, as far as it went, no sham. College was no excuse for idling, as too commonly was the case in eighteenth century Oxford and Cambridge. The American student obtained his degree only by hard intellectual work and, not infrequently, he remained in college only by supporting himself there by hard work of another kind America had yet to create a leisure class. CHAPTER V <yM?# )qi%W^pQ.mv$ : wjjnoijul FRANKLIN AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION Franklin s is the weightiest voice that has as yet sounded from across the Atlantic. Matthew Arnold. FRANKLIN S name is likely to occur in the first paragraphs of any history of American activities, whether the subject be diplomacy or printing, elec tricity or finance, literature or ventilation, religion or soap-making. Certainly it would be impossible to write of American education without mention of the various projects that originated in his ver satile and ingenious mind. Franklin was self- educated. His theory and practice of mental and moral education are given in his Autobiography. Franklin was sent to the Boston Grammar School when he was eight but was soon withdrawn for, as the youngest son of seventeen children, he was needed by his father to assist in molding tallow candles. At the age of twelve he was apprenticed to a brother who was a printer and thus was started 5 65 66 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION upon the path, since followed by many Americans, that leads through journalism to statesmanship. Giving his nights to the study of Addison by means of an odd volume of the Spectator purloined from a bookseller he taught himself a style quite un-Addisonian, a terse, brisk, businesslike, plain, matter-of-fact style that has since become charac teristic of American newspapers. The lucidity of his papers on electricity is in marked contrast with the bombastic and obscure style of contemporary savants. He even ventured to carry his clarity into the realms of diplomacy and philosophy, where it was still more of an innovation. His theory of conduct he was not afraid to put to the pragmatic test and it worked. Entering Philadelphia as a runaway apprentice at the age of seventeen, penniless and ragged, he was able, by the practice of the thrift and vigilance that he preached, to retire with a competency at the age of forty-two in order to devote himself to re searches in electricity, though the calls of pub lic service kept him busy throughout his long life. He found Philadelphia behind Boston in two respects, "there being no provision for de fense nor for a compleat education of youth; no militia nor any college." He promptly set about FRANKLIN AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION 67 remedying both defects and in the course of time was successful. His first step in the way of cooperative effort was the formation of the Junto, a sort of fraternity or debating society, somewhat after the plan of the Benefit Societies that Cotton Mather had started in the Congregational churches of Massachusetts. The dozen young men who composed it met every Friday evening to discuss political, scientific, and moral questions, and to consider ways of helping one another and the community. This may be regarded as the precursor of the American lyceum which was to exercise so powerful an influence over the thought and politics of the nation in the cen tury to come. Each member of the Junto, at Franklin s suggestion, agreed to put the few books he owned into a room where they could be used in common. He next obtained subscriptions from fifty persons and was able to send off to London an order for 45 worth of books. In this way a per manent circulating library was opened, with Frank lin as librarian to give out the books once a week. To the Junto we therefore owe the origin of the public library system which in America has at tained proportions unequaled anywhere else in the world. As Franklin says: 68 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION This was the mother of all the North American sub scription libraries, now so numerous. It is become a great thing in itself and continually increasing. These libraries have improved the general conversation of the Americans, made the common trades men and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries, and perhaps have contributed in some degree to the stand so generally made throughout the colonies in defense of their privileges. To estimate the value or trace the influence of the library movement started by Benjamin Frank lin is impossible here, but one of its many radia tions is of educational interest. Franklin s popu larity made him the godfather to seventy-two towns, and from one of the earliest a Massa chusetts town came in 1784 the announcement that it had taken the name of Franklin and the suggestion that he present it with a church bell. Franklin replied that, "sense being preferable to sound," he would give them a town library instead, and so he sent them sixty -eight works "such as are most proper to inculcate the principles of sound religion and just government." In this same little town of Franklin, Massachusetts, there was born a dozen years later a boy by the name of Horace Mann. He was educated, as he says himself, in "the smallest school in the poorest schoolhouse FRANKLIN AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION 69 with the cheapest teachers in the State," but he had access to one avenue leading to the world of letters, the library that Franklin had given to the town in lieu of a bell. Horace Mann, thus rescued from ignorance, became in time the promoter of the American public school for Massachusetts and for the nation. He used to say that he would like to scatter libraries broadcast over the land as a farmer sows his wheat, and this dream of his has been realized today by Andrew Carnegie. Franklin s plans for an Academy at Philadelphia are contained in the Proposals Relating to the Edu cation of Youth in Pensilvania which he drew up in 1749 and later printed in pamphlet form. This aged and neglected document reads like the pros pectus of some "modern school" desired by Charles W. Eliot and Abraham Flexner, or one of the "schools of tomorrow" described by John Dewey. It is based upon a psychology of learning whose principles have only recently come into recognition - that learning comes by doing, that the concrete should precede the abstract, that individual abili ties and vocational aims should be early recognized, and that the time to take up a particular study is when the desire for it has been awakened. History, for instance, which occupies a large 70 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION place in Franklin s scheme, he would have taught by the extensive reading of translations of the Greek and Roman historians, with the use of maps and prints of medals and monuments, "followed by the best modern histories, particularly of our mother country, then of these colonies." It is universal and comparative history that he wants, with special reference to customs, politics, religion, natural resources, commerce, and the growth of science. History, thus properly taught, would naturally lead to the study of ethics, logic, physics, oratory, debating, and journalism. A few passages will show what Franklin had in mind: History will show the wonderful effects of oratory in governing, turning and leading great bodies of man kind, armies, cities, nations. When the minds of youth are struck with admiration at this, then is the time to give them the principles of that art, which they will study with taste and application. Then they may be made acquainted with the best models among the ancients, their beauties being particularly pointed out to them. Modern political oratory being chiefly per formed by pen and press, its advantages over the an cients in some respects are to be shown; as that its effects are more extensive, more lasting, etc. . . . On historical occasions, questions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, will naturally arise, and may be put to youth, which they may debate in conversation FRANKLIN AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION 71 and in writing. When they ardently desire victory, for the sake of the praise attending it, they will begin to feel the want, and be sensible of the use of logic, or the art of reasoning to discover truth, and of arguing to defend it, and convince adversaries. This would be the time to ac quaint them with the principles of that art. . . . The history of commerce, of the invention of arts, rise of manufacture, progress of trade, change of its seats, with the reasons, causes, etc., may also be made entertaining to youth and will be useful to all. And this, with the accounts in other history of the prodi gious force and effect of engines and machines used in war will naturally introduce a desire to be instructed in mechanics and to be informed of the principles of that art by which weak men perform such wonders, labor is saved, manufactures expedited, etc. This will be the time to show them prints of ancient and modern ma chines, to explain them and let them be copied, and to give lectures in mechanical philosophy. Certain words have been italicized in the passage just quoted to show how clearly Franklin had con ceived of the Herbartian principle of the necessity of an " apperceptive basis" for the reception of knowledge nearly a hundred years before Herbart became known, and also that he advocated the "case-method" of teaching ethics now brought forward as a novelty. All intended for divinity should be taught the Latin and Greek; for physic [medical students] the Latin, 72 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION Greek and French; for law, the Latin and French; merchants, the French, German and Spanish; and though all should not be compelled to learn Latin, Greek or the modern foreign languages, yet none that have an ardent desire to learn them should be refused ; their English, arithmetic and other studies absolutely necessary, being at the same time not neglected. Franklin had acquired by his own exertions a prac tical acquaintance with French, Spanish, and Ital ian, and then had found Latin easier than he ex pected. From this experience he came to the con clusion that it would be better for any student to begin with the modern languages and then proceed to the ancient. If circumstances then prevented him from studying the ancient, he would be sure at least of having the more useful modern lan guages. Franklin pointed out that Latin and Greek were put into the European schools for utili tarian purposes, because all the science, law, and theology of an earlier day were to be obtained only in these languages, but, he said, they have be come "the chapeau bras of modern literature" the fashionable hat of the eighteenth cen tury, once useful but now degenerated to a mere honorific appendage. 4s Franklin attempted nothing less than a FRANKLIN AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION 73 change of the center of gravity from Latin to Eng lish, it is not to be wondered at that such heretical ideas failed of acceptance by his generation. He got the money for his projected Academy, with English nominally recognized as a language equal to Latin, but, as has so often happened, the "mod ern side" was starved out while the Latin school was fostered in spite of Franklin s protest against such a misapplication of funds. The institution thus started, however, developed into the University of Pennsylvania, of which Franklin was for forty years a trustee and which he could now commend for carrying out many of his ideas. The University of Pennsylvania was from the start free from the sectarian influences which prevailed in other colleges. Here was opened in 1765 the first school of medicine in America. History, politics, and economics, which formed the core of Franklin s scheme of education, have always been especially prominent in this institution. At the same time that Franklin was urging the establishment of an Academy he launched another movement of almost equal importance. His Pro posal for Promoting Useful Knowledge Among the British Plantations in America, published in 1743, called for a society to be formed "of virtuosi or 74 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION ingenious men residing in the several colonies," cor responding to, and to correspond with, the Royal Society of London and the Dublin Society. This proposal resulted in the formation of the American Philosophical Society, of which Franklin was presi dent until his death in 1790. In the Transactions of this Society many of the chief American contri butions to science have appeared. Here are to be found Franklin s paper on The Cause and Cure of Smoky Chimneys, in which he anticipates the modern system of ventilation and house-heating; Priestley s Experiments and Observations on differ ent kinds of Air, for the English discoverer of oxy gen had been mobbed out of Birmingham and had taken refuge in America, where he aided Franklin and Jefferson in their educational reforms; the re searches of Draper on the composition of the sun; Joseph Henry s experiments on electro-magnetic induction; and the paleontological investigations of Leidy, Cope, and Hay den. An institution, says Emerson, is but the length ened shadow of a great man, and there is not space enough here to do more than refer to some of the shadows of this sort which Franklin cast. The excellent manual training schools of Philadelphia; Girard College, founded through the bequest of FRANKLIN AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION 75 $2,000,000 by Stephen Girard in 1830 to give a practical, moral, and patriotic education to or phans; the Franklin Institute, founded in 1824 for the promotion of mechanic arts; the so-called Ger man College of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to which Franklin was the chief contributor and which was later named after him these are but some of the educational establishments that he instigated or inspired. One other scheme of Franklin s deserves atten tion, partly because it is characteristic of the man, and partly because of its economic interest. His bequest of 1000 to Boston and Philadelphia, to be lent out in small amounts at five per cent to young married artificers for the purpose of setting them up in business, would, he calculated, amount to 131,000 by the end of a century. He would then have 100,000 spent on objects of public utility and the remaining 31,000 again put out at interest for another hundred years, by the end of which time it would provide 4,061,000 to be spent by the city and State. Franklin seems to have also had the secondary object of illustrating how rapid ly money breeds but, as it turned out, the bequest illustrated rather the futility of attempting to an ticipate in detail the needs of the distant future. 76 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION The number of married artificers under twenty- five who wanted to borrow from $65 to $300 "for setting up their business" fell off in the course of years until, in 1890, the Philadelphia fund reached only $86,280 instead of the $655,000 which Frank lin had calculated. Of the Boston fund, after passing through the inevitable period of litigation, $400,000 was available in 1908. This amount was doubled by Andrew Carnegie, and with it there was erected the Franklin Union for evening courses in industrial education. Franklin s best work as an educator of the Ameri can people was, after all, not accomplished through these various institutions but directly through the medium of his pamphlets, newspapers, and al manacs. Poor Richard s Almanack was the only book in thousands of homesteads, and his prover bial philosophy became the common coin of con versation from which his image and superscription have long been obliterated through constant usage. Father Abraham s speech at the vendue on how to remedy hard times, a medley of Poor Richard s sayings, has been translated into all languages and reprinted four hundred times. Franklin was as much of an economist as a man could be before the science of economics was born^ FRANKLIN AND PRACTICAL EDUCATION 77 He anticipated Malthus in the law of the relation of population to sustenance and Adam Smith in the measure of value by the labor involved. Frank lin s experimental proof of the similar nature of lightning and the Leyden spark was a scientific discovery of the first order, and his "one-fluid" theory of electricity, his conception of positive and negative electrification, has not only served as a useful hypothesis ever since but is strikingly in keeping with the modern electron theory. But Franklin himself did not get so much gratification out of such contributions to science as he did from the thought that he had taught some millions of people such homely truths as these: He that goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing. Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn at no other. It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright. He who by the plow would thrive Himself must either hold or drive. CHAPTER VI JEFFERSON AND STATE EDUCATION A system of education which shall reach every description of citizen from the richest to the poorest, as it was the earliest, so will it be the latest of all public concerns in which I shall permit myself to take an interest. Nor am I tenacious of the form in which it shall be introduced. Thomas Jefferson (1817). THE founders of the Republic were men of long stride, and the United States has found it hard to keep up the pace they set. Certain phrases that Jefferson put into the Declaration of Independence as too obvious to need argument still arouse ad miration or despair when Americans listen to the reading of their political creed on the Fourth of July. What Jefferson actually accomplished in education was little; but what he aspired to and inspired others to was immense. The appraisal of his achievement depends upon whether the balance- sheet is drawn during his life or a hundred years later. In an aristocratic environment he cher ished a democratic ideal, and he converted to the 78 JEFFERSON AND STATE EDUCATION 79 principle of free schools and state support a people who had been committed to restricted education and individual responsibility. Jefferson said that he was not "tenacious of the form" in which his idea of universal education should be introduced and, indeed, the realiza tion of his project came about in a way very differ ent from his plan and much later than he had hoped. His native State was slow to follow his leadership. It was not until 1870 that a public school system was established in Virginia, and even at the beginning of the twentieth century 60 per cent of the children were not in the schools. The power of a personality, like the strength of an electric current, may be measured by the resist ance it can overcome. An appreciation of Jeffer son s achievement involves a brief review of the earlier history of education in Virginia which had a very different beginning from New England. The Mayflower in 1620 brought to the New World 53 men, 21 women, and 28 children. The three ships coming to Virginia in 1609 contained 100 "settlers," among whom there were 55 gentlemen and 12 servants, but no children. Ten years later, when it occurred to the London Company of Vir ginia that children were desirable in a colony, they 80 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION shipped over a batch of one hundred assorted "orphants" to be apprenticed to the planters on condition that they be taught some useful trade and the Christian religion. This was the origin of that apprentice system which, in Virginia and other colonies, was the first form of compulsory education for poor children. Later in the seventeenth century some "free" schools were established by bequests from philan thropic persons. Among these may be mentioned the Symms School, which received from its founder two hundred acres of land and an endowment of the calves and milk of eight cows. The Eaton Free School was more wealthy. It possessed five hundred acres of land, stocked with "two negroes, twelve cows, two bulls, and twenty hogs." But such efforts at the extension of education among the lower classes did not meet with much encouragement from the wealthier colonists. The planters employed private tutors or engaged the leisure of Church of England clergymen but did not think it wise to educate the poorer people above their proper station. The Lords Commissioners of Trades and Plantations inquired, in 1671: "What course is taken about instructing the people within your government in the Christian religion and JEFFERSON AND STATE EDUCATION 81 what provision is there for the paying of your min istry?" Governor Berkeley answered: "The same course that is taken in England out of towns; every man according to his ability instructing his chil dren. We have forty-eight parishes and our minis ters are well paid and by my consent should be better if they would pray oftener and preach less. . . . But, I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years, for learning has brought disobe dience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the best government. God keep us from both ! " The early efforts to start higher education in Virginia met with even more emphatic opposition. The London Company in 1619 granted a thousand acres of land at Henrico on the James River for a college for the Indians and nine thousand acres for a college for the English. The bishops of England raised $35,000 in money and obtained many gifts of books and plate. George Thorpe of the King s Privy Chamber, a gentleman "learned in scholar ship and zealous in piety," was chosen as head of the university, but the Indians soon put an end to the ambitious enterprise by scalping him and six teen of his tenants. As a result it was felt that the 82 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION Indians were not yet ripe for higher education, and when another movement was projected in 1624 to establish a university it was to be confined to the whites and located upon an island in the Susque- hanna River. Though Edwin Palmer of London drew up a fine plan for the grounds and buildings of the Academia Virginiensis et Oxoniensis and gave all his lands in America for the project, nothing came of this second attempt at colonial education in the South. In 1660 the Assembly of Virginia showed its realization of the need of higher education at least for the ministry by passing the following law: Whereas the want of able and faithful ministers in this country deprives us of these great blessings and mercies that allwaies attend upon the service of God which want by reason of our great distance from our native country cannot in probability be allwaies supply ed from thence, Bee itt enacted that for the advance of learning, educa tion of youth, supply of the ministry, and promotion of piety there be land taken upon purchases for a col- ledge and freeschoole and that there be with as much speede as may be convenient houseing erected thereon for entertainment of students and schollers. The Assembly having thus approved of the pro ject, contributions were called for, and the Bur gesses and government officials, including even JEFFERSON AND STATE EDUCATION 83 Governor Berkeley, "severally subscribed severall considerable sumes of money and quantityes of tobacco." But these donations were to be paid in only after the college had been started, and it was then discovered what solicitors of college funds have often noted since that "the subscribed money did not come in with the same readiness with which it had been underwritten." For thirty years the project languished, but in 1691 an ener getic young Scotch clergyman, the Reverend James Blair, took it in hand and went back to Eng land to get the necessary money. Tactfully plan ning his campaign, he went first to the bishops, then to the Queen, next to the King, and finally to the Attorney-General. Their Majesties, learn ing that a college in Virginia had been named after them, willingly agreed to contribute to its building two thousand pounds out of the quitrents of Vir ginia. But when Attorney-General Seymour was approached, he declared that the Government could not afford such expenditures until after the war. Blair explained that the purpose of the col lege as expressed in an act of the Virginia Assembly was to educate young men for the ministry and observed that Virginians had souls to be saved as well as Englishmen at home. Seymour did not see 84 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION the necessity. "Souls!" he exclaimed. "Damn your souls ! Make tobacco ! z But Blair persisted and not only got the royal grant but valuable donations from other sources, including since he had no qualms about tainted money three hundred pounds from pirates. Besides these endowments the College of William and Mary received twenty thousand acres of land, an export tax on tobacco of a penny a pound, and a monopoly of the land office business. Some years after the founding of the institution, taxes for the benefit of the College of William and Mary were imposed upon two other luxuries, liquors and furs. So founded, the College of William and Mary, chartered in 1693, was second only to Harvard in seniority and in its first century was not behind its New England rival in usefulness if tested, as a college should be tested, by the quality of the men it turned out. To this " Alma Mater of statesmen, * as it came to be called, belongs the honor of having trained three Presidents of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and John Tyler, also Peyton Randolph, the president of the Con tinental Congress, and John Marshall the great T This is one of the stories which Franklin loved to tell. Set* Sparks s Works of Benjamin Franklin, vol. x, p. 111. JEFFERSON AND STATE EDUCATION 85 interpreter of the Constitution, as well as governors and senators of Virginia too numerous to mention. In 1779, when Jefferson was on the Board of Trus tees, the College was made into a university, and such innovations in American education as lecture courses on political economy and on municipal, constitutional, and international law were intro duced and made elective. Here, too, was started, in the year of the Declaration of Independence, the patriotic and literary society known as Phi Beta Kappa, the first of the host of Greek-letter intercollegiate fraternities now flourishing. The College of William and Mary was the child of Church and State. Until after the Revolution the Bishop of London was its Chancellor and his commissary or deputy in Virginia its President. The Reverend James Blair, its indefatigable pro moter, served as President for its first half century. The college was represented in the Virginia House of Burgesses by a member elected by the faculty, a system that still survives in England where the universities are represented in the House of Com mons. But when the capital was removed from Williamsburg, the seat of the college, to Richmond in 1779, the close connection of William and Mary with the political life of the State was broken; and 86 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION when Jefferson established the University of Vir ginia in 1819, the older institution received a blow from which it never fully recovered. Williamsburg was a storm center in two wars in both of which the college suffered. Its buildings were burned while occupied by the French troops at the siege of Yorktown in 1781, and while occupied by the Federal troops in 1862. For seven years in the eighties the College of William and Mary was closed, but it has survived all vicissitudes. Such was Jefferson s point of departure in de veloping his plan of public education which has since then become characteristically American. William and Mary was a colonial Oxford, under the control of the Established Church and founded primarily for the education of its clergy. Jefferson broke with the traditional idea of a university when he asked Virginia to establish a free and secu lar university, supported and controlled by the State. A committee headed by Jefferson met in the tavern at Rockfish Gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains on August 1, 1818, to draw up a plan for the "Central College" of Virginia and followed closely the idea which Jefferson had vainly urged seventeen years before and which since has been carried out in almost every State in the Union. JEFFERSON AND STATE EDUCATION 87 According to this plan each locality should main tain its own elementary schools for the education of every boy and girl. Secondary education should be given in various parts of the State in academies and colleges supported by the State or by tuition fees. This mixed system of public high schools and private schools and endowed colleges has served very satisfactorily to reconcile the demand for different kinds of training. At the top there was to be a State University in which was to be given the most advanced instruction in all branches of knowledge. This institution was to be situated in "an academical village," in buildings connected by corridors and surrounding a lawn. Jefferson s architectural plan for the University of Virginia involved the employment of two Italian sculptors to cut the capitals for the columns in classical forms. The studies of the university were divided, according to the decimal fashion of the day, into ten groups "each of which are within the power of a single professor," as the Rockfish Gap commis sion said, though they evidently either overesti mated the power of a professor or underestimated the future expansion of the subjects. The ten groups were: (1) Ancient Languages; (2) Modern Languages, including French, Spanish, Italian, 88 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION German, and Anglo-Saxon; (3) Mathematics; (4) Phy sico-mathematics ; (5) Physics, including chem istry and mineralogy; (6) Botany and Zool ogy* (7) Anatomy and Medicine; (8) Government, Political Economy, and History; (9) Municipal Law; (10) Ideology, including rhetoric, ethics, belles-lettres and fine arts. This curious curriculum shows the hand of Jefferson in both its inclusions and omissions. Anglo-Saxon was put among the modern languages because Jefferson held that its study would "re cruit and renovate the vigor of the English lan guage, too much impaired by the neglect of its ancient constitution and dialects." He argued that the adoption of phonetic spelling would restore the historic continuity of the language now obscured by the accidents of the conventional spelling. x Under "Ideology," a term introduced by Count Destutt de Tracy of the French Institute, Jeffer son hoped for the development of a new philosophy free from the theological and metaphysical postu lates of the old and leading toward a democratic instead of a monarchical ideal of society. This 1 See Jefferson s Essay toward facilitating instruction in Anglo- Saxon and Modern Dialects of the English Language for the use of the University of Virginia. JEFFERSON AND STATE EDUCATION 89 ideal of Jefferson s has not yet been realized, al though we may discern an approach toward it in the pragmatism of William James and John Dewey, hotly opposed in the monarchical countries of Europe because of its democratic implications. The prominent place given to science in the Jeffersonian scheme was another novelty and ex cited popular hostility, particularly when Thomas Cooper, the first professor of chemistry chosen for the new university, was not without reason suspected of Unitarianism. The opposition to Cooper was indeed so strong that the call had to be canceled. * The unprecedented omission of the dominant department in the older universities, the theologi cal, was thus explained by the Commission: "We have proposed no professor of Divinity. This will be within the province of the professor of Ethics. We have thought it proper at this point to leave any sects to provide as they think fittest the means of further instruction in their own pe culiar tenets." This very sensible solution of the 1 Jefferson s difficulties in getting a faculty for his university are told in lively fashion by W. P. Trent in a paper on English Culture in Virginia, in the Johns Hopkins Studies (1889). See also Herbert B. Adams s Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia, published by the U. S. Bureau of Education (1888). 90 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION denominational difficulty has not yet been carried out as fully as it might be. What Jefferson hoped for may be seen from a letter of his to Thomas Cooper: "I think the invitation will be accepted by some sects from candid intentions, and by others from jealousy and rivalship. And by bring ing the rival sects together and mixing them with the mass of other students, we shall soften their asperities, liberalize and neutralize their prejudices, and make the general religion a religion of peace, reason, and morality." But for the greater part of the nineteenth cen tury "the rival sects" preferred to keep up a fight on the State Universities as "godless institutions," rather than attempt to supplement their deficien cies as Jefferson had suggested. Recently, however, some denominations have established residential halls or theological seminaries near to the State Universities and, by means of church clubs and student pastors, have sought to foster religious activities and study among the students. Thomas Jefferson was chosen as the first Rector of the University of Virginia and held that position until his death in 1826. Many of the innovations that he introduced or encouraged at William and Mary or at the University of Virginia have been JEFFERSON AND STATE EDUCATION 91 widely adopted and now form part of the spirit of American education. To those already mentioned should be added the elective system and vocational specialization, for it was Jefferson s idea that the students should have "uncontrolled choice in the lectures they shall choose to attend, and give ex clusive application to those branches only which are to qualify them for the particular vocations to which they are destined." The elective system, carried perhaps by George Ticknor to Harvard, 1 was extended under President Eliot s adminis tration to all studies and has been in some degree adopted by all American universities and by most colleges. Along with this principle of freedom of learning and teaching, Jefferson also followed the German universities in their system of rotation in office. According to his plan the chief executive was elected annually from among the members of the faculty. But in this respect since his day the tide has set in the other direction, and as the uni versities have become more extensive and complex their administration has become less democratic. As it more clearly appeared that a university gained in numbers, wealth, and renown when it 1 U. S. Bureau of Education, Circular of Information, No. 1. 1888, p. 127. 92 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION was under the leadership of a powerful personality, the tendency has been to concentrate the control in the hands of its president. Finally even the University of Virginia succumbed and, with a per manent president, has prospered unprecedentedly. Jefferson desired to apply to the university the same theory that he advocated for the State that the best government is the least government. He wished to do away with corporal punishment, espionage, and " useless observances which mere ly multiply occasions for dissatisfaction, disobe dience, and revolt." After Jefferson s death, how ever, the student on matriculating had to sign an eight-page pamphlet of regulations and penalties. Small wonder that the consequent "disobedience and revolt took the form of riots, in one of which a professor was shot. But the honor system, which was adopted in 1842 and by which the student s signed statement that he has received no assistance in his work is accepted without question, is decidedly Jefferso- nian. It has been quite generally adopted, although it is not everywhere so successful as it is in insti tutions like Virginia and Princeton which have a homogeneous student body with a strong and unified public sentiment. JEFFERSON AND STATE EDUCATION 93 Jefferson did not wish to have the university confer any degrees, titles, or honors. A simple cer tificate of graduation specifying the subject to which the student had devoted most attention would, he believed, answer the purpose. But here his country has failed to follow him. Degrees have multiplied amazingly and the ceremonies of conferring them have developed an academic pomp that would shock the early apostle of democratic simplicity. But no man can hope to make posterity adopt all his ideas. Jefferson was more fortunate than most in this respect. The three achievements in which he took most pride and which he wished to have engraved upon his tombstone are still re garded with reverence and gratitude by all Ameri cans. Few men in history have had a grander monument than the unpretentious stone bearing the legend: THOMAS JEFFERSON AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE OF THE STATUTE OF VIRGINIA FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM, AND FATHER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA. CHAPTER VII WASHINGTON AND NATIONAL EDUCATION The time is therefore come when a plan of universal education ought to be adopted in the United States. George Washington (1795}. IP Jefferson, the father of the party of State Rights, was content when he had founded the University of Virginia, it is clear that Washington, the leader of the Federalists, wanted nothing less than a national system of education. The dominant mo tive of both these statesmen was the same; the difference between them lay in the scope of their ideas. Jefferson wanted to unify the mind of the individual State; Washington, to unify the mind of the whole nation by educating the youth to gether. Both feared foreign influences: Washing ton, the evil influence of education in monarchical England; Jefferson, the evil influence of New Eng land teachers and preachers. Jefferson, in one of his pessimistic moods, wrote to Joseph C. Cabell 04 WASHINGTON AND EDUCATION 95 that, unless Virginia established her own univer sity, the State would have to send her children to Kentucky or to Massachusetts. If they went to Kentucky, they would stay there. If they went to Massachusetts, they would return fanatics and Tories. If, however, we are to go a-begging any where for our education I would rather it should be to Kentucky than any other state because she has more of the flavor of the old cask than any other. All the states but our own are sensible that knowledge is power, . . . while we are sinking into the barbarism of our Indian aborigines and expect like them to oppose by igno rance the overwhelming mass of light and science by which we shall be surrounded. It is a comfort I am not to live to sec this. Washington s reasons for desiring a national uni versity where youths from various parts of the country could complete their education in common are given in the following passage from his last will and testament: It has always been a source of serious regret with me, to see the youth of these United States sent to foreign countries for the purpose of education, often before their minds were formed, or they had imbibed any adequate ideas of the happiness of their own; contract ing too frequently, not only habits of dissipation and extravagance, but principles unfriendly to republican 96 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION government, and to the true and genuine liberties of mankind, which thereafter are rarely overcome; for these reasons it has been my ardent wish to see a plan devised on a liberal scale, which would have a ten dency to spread systematic ideas through all parts of this rising empire, thereby to do away local attach ments and State prejudices, as far as the nature of things would, or indeed ought to admit, from our na tional councils. Looking anxiously forward to the accomplishment of so desirable an object as this is (in my estimation), my mind has not been able to contemplate any plan more likely to effect the meas ure, than the establishment of a UNIVERSITY in a central part of the United States, to which the youths of fortune and talents from all parts thereof may be sent for the completion of their education, in all the branches of polite literature, in arts and sciences, in acquiring knowledge in the principles of politics and good government, and, as a matter of infinite impor tance in my judgment, by associating with each other, and forming friendships in juvenile years, be enabled to free themselves in a proper degree from those local prejudices and habitual jealousies which have just been mentioned, and which, when carried to excess, are never-failing sources of disquietude to the public mind, and pregnant of mischievous consequences to this country. These words remind one of the will of that later empire builder, Cecil Rhodes, who left a legacy that picked young men from Australia, New Zea land, Canada, South Africa, the United States, WASHINGTON AND EDUCATION 97 and Germany might be educated together at Ox ford with a view of reducing national antagonisms and local prejudices. That Washington cherished the idea even before the Revolutionary War is proved by a passage in Samuel Blodget s Economica: As the most minute circumstances are sometimes in structing for their relation to great events, we relate the first that we ever heard of a national university: it was in the camp at Cambridge, in October, 1775, when Major William Blodget went to the quarters of General Washington to complain of the militia quar tered therein. The writer of this being in company with his friend and relation, and hearing General Greene join in lamenting the then ruinous state of the eldest seminary of Massachusetts observed, merely to console the company of friends, that to make amends for these injuries, after our war, he hoped we should erect a noble national university, at which the youth of all the world might be proud to receive instructions. What was thus pleasantly said, Washington imme diately replied to, with that inimitably expressive and truly interesting look for which he was sometimes so remarkable: " Young man, you are a prophet! inspired to speak what I am confident will one day be realized." Washington then detailed his plans for a federal city and university to be built near the falls of the Potomac, speaking with such force that Blodget was thoroughly converted and subsequently copy- 98 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION righted his Economica for the "benefit of the free education fund of the university founded by George Washington in his last years." This fund began with about $25,000 in fifty shares in the Potomac River Navigation Company which Wash ington bequeathed to the Government for the pur pose of founding a national university. These shares had been given to Washington by Virginia, together with a hundred shares in the James River Company, as a reward for his services in the Revo lutionary War. The James River stock he gave to Liberty Hall Academy, a school in Virginia established by the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians be cause the College of William and Mary was too narrowly Episcopalian. Thus aided, Liberty Hall Academy developed into a college and later into a university which took the name of its benefactor. After the Civil War General Robert E. Lee became its president, and since his death the institution has been known as Washington and Lee University . But although Washington showed his interest in the educational institutions of his native State by this endowment as well as by serving as chan cellor of his Alma Mater, William and Mary, from 1788 until his death in 1799, he never relinquished his belief that national as well as State institutions WASHINGTON AND EDUCATION 99 of learning were needed. In his first speech to Congress on January 8, 1790, Washington em phasized education as a national duty and sug gested a university, and in his last speech to Con gress he again called attention to the need of a national university and a military academy. Part of his intention has been satisfactorily carried out in the Military Academy at West Point on the Hudson and in the Naval Academy at Annapolis on Chesapeake Bay. Perhaps because Washing ton had been untrained in military science when he was called upon to lead the Continental Army against the most powerful nation in the world, he fully appreciated the value of such training. " The art of war," he declared, "is at once comprehen sive and complicated; it demands much previ ous study," and he advocated preparedness by recommending to Congress that "however pacific the general policy of a nation may be, it ought never to be without an adequate stock of military knowledge for emergencies." The Military Academy at West Point was defi nitely opened on July 4, 1802, by President Jeffer son with ten cadets present. Since then it has been in continuous activity with the exception of the war year of 1812. It has furnished the regular 100 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION army with most of its officers in all American wars and further has given to the country many of its leading technicians and superintendents of public works, for it was, until the opening of the Rensse- laer Polytechnic Institute in 1825, the only en gineering school in the United States. West Point, during most of its existence, has received young men from each congressional district, and this dis tribution of students has made the American army a truly national and popular organization and has thus achieved one of the aims of Washington s ideal of education. When the United States en tered the Great War young men of draft age who were not needed for immediate service were placed at Government expense in the universities of their choice and received intensive military and naval training under West Point officers, supplemented by lectures on the causes of the war and on techni cal subjects by instructors from the regular faculty. It is already apparent that the experience gained from this Student Army Training Corps is des tined to modify American educational methods in the future. In this way Washington s desire for military education has been realized. The other part of his idea, a national university, came near being carried WASHINGTON AND EDUCATION 101 out by the aid of Jefferson. In 1794 t.here ajrose an opportunity to import en mews* a European uni versity. The faculty of Geneva, feeling uncom fortable in the Swiss Republic, proposed to emi grate in a body to the United States if a place could be found for them. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were much taken with the idea and urged it upon Washington in the hope of getting his Poto mac shares for that purpose, but this scheme of wholesale importation did not fall in with Wash ington s notion. He preferred to pick his pro fessors from various countries for instance, a Scotchman rather than a Frenchman for philos ophy instead of bringing over a body of foreign ers who would have to teach in French or Latin. So what might have proved an interesting experi ment in transplanting education was never tried, and it will never be known whether the famous university would have prospered on the Potomac as it has on the Rhone. Washington and Jefferson worked together on the educational problem with as much harmony as could be expected of men of such different tem peraments. There is no necessary conflict between State and national education. The State Uni versities have fought hard for a national university 102 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION at Washington. In 1890 John W. Hoyt, first President of the University of Wyoming, revived the agitation. President Andrew D. White of Cornell, President Edmund J. James of Illinois, and other equally prominent educators have worked for such an institution. It has been en dorsed by the National Association of State Uni versities and by the National Educational Asso ciation. The legislatures of Western States have petitioned for it. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Grant, Hayes, and later Presidents have urged it upon Congress, and Committees of the Senate and House have re ported favorably. But, as President James of Illinois remarked: "Private institutions, religious and secular, have opposed, thus far successfully, the movement." Western opinion has been dis posed to ascribe this opposition to the Eastern universities, which grew out of colleges modeled after the private schools of England. The West drew its inspiration from German and French sources and has come to regard all education, from the elementary to the graduate school, as a public function. From this point of view the educational system appears to need a national university to complete its symmetry. WASHINGTON AND EDUCATION 103 A dream may be fulfilled in various ways. The national university foreseen by Washington is still in the future. But the large endowed universities in the East fulfill Washington s ideal by drawing together students from all parts of the United States. The proportion of American students now going abroad for their education is not great enough to endanger the national ideals. Furthermore the Federal Government is carrying on many of the functions of such an institution in a way that would have pleased Washington and shocked Jefferson. Some sixty million dollars of national funds are now appropriated annually for agricul tural education and experimentation, for the naval and military academies, for Indian schools, and for departments that are largely occupied with scientific research and the diffusion of knowledge, such as the Bureaus of Education, Ethnology, Mines, Fisheries, Standards, the Library of Con gress, Naval Observatory, Public Health Service, National Museum, Zoological Park, Smithsonian Institution, and the Coast and Geodetic Survey, CHAPTER VIII SCHOOLS OF THE YOUNG REPUBLIC Be it remembered that Uncle Sam is an undoubted friend of public education, although so sadly deficient in his own. ... It was, therefore, democratically believed, and loudly insisted on, that as the State had freely received, it should freely give; and that "larnin, even the most powerfullest highest larnin," should at once be bestowed on everybody! and without a farthing s expense! Baynard Rush Hall (1821i). IT is impossible to understand anything about the American schools of the early half of the nineteenth century without bearing in mind the political con ditions and ideals which determined their organiza tion, standard, course of study, equipment, text books, and administration. The political revolu tion which abolished the colonial tie with Great Britain abolished also the colonial habit of mind and forced the American people henceforth to find in their own institutions the stimulus to popular education instead of depending upon the example of the mother country. The still more important peaceful revolution 104 SCHOOLS OF THE YOUNG REPUBLIC 105 which subsequently abolished property qualifica tions for the suffrage in the various States and made most offices within the gift of the people directly elective had also an influence on the schools of America. In the first place, it gave a stimulus to the ideal of universal education, be cause, if all men were to be voters, the common wealth must see that all children were instructed, unless it desired that illiterates should direct the destinies of the nation. Public schools, desirable in colonial days, became imperative in a wholly self-governing democracy. Another by-product of democracy, less of an unmixed blessing than the sentiment in favor of universal education, was the district school system, which originated in Massa chusetts and Connecticut and was copied in most of the States of the Union. A "district" was the neighborhood around a public school, and there were usually several such districts in each "town," although some towns were never subdivided. The school district is the smallest and therefore, from a democratic standpoint, the most important of po litical divisions. Its size is determined by the length of the children s legs, for it must be within walking distance of most of the pupils, not much over a mile. The school district averaged about 106 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION four square miles in area, and the number of pupils ranged from half a dozen to fifty or more. As the means of transportation improved, the district expanded into the township and county with State supervision and national aid, until now we have rural county high schools to which the pupils are brought in free motor omnibuses. The money raised by the town school tax was distributed among the districts in various ways according to the population, the number of children of school age, or the amount paid by the district in taxes, or on a basis of equality. In 1827 a Massachusetts law empowered district committeemen to care for the school property and select the teacher. This act, according to one writer, represented "the high-water mark of modern democracy, and the low- water mark of the public school system." It meant the passing of school control from the expert and the official to the parent and the neighbor. The faults of the district school system are ob vious. If a self-made man has a hard struggle to get an education, so has a self-made community. Nothing could be introduced into the curriculum that the district did not regard as "practical," and this usually meant only the three R s and spelling, grammar, and geography. Novel methods were SCHOOLS OF THE YOUNG REPUBLIC 107 viewed with as much dislike as new studies, and new text-books were regarded as out of the ques tion until the old ones had been worn out by decades of continuous use. To save the cost of a skilled teacher s wages, the district commonly hired, without regard to other considerations, the cheapest person who could produce a certificate, unless some man powerful in local politics had a relative for whom he desired the place. The very districts that needed good schools most were from their ignorance least conscious of the need. As a result the progressive districts raised the level of public instruction from generation to generation, while the schools in other districts went from bad to worse. This contrast was most marked in States where there was no general system of super vision. In Delaware, for example, an educational convention declared in 1843 that "the school of every district is in the power of its school voters; they can have as good a school as they please, or an inferior school, or no school." According to modern standards the school equip ment of those days was usually unspeakably bad. The schoolhouse was the same sort of wooden box which had done duty in colonial times; there was the same lack of globes, maps, pictures, 108 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION blackboards, and decorations; there were the same congested wooden benches; the same red hot stove kept the pupils in the front benches overheated while the children in the back of the room were shivering in the draft from the window some times broken but never open. One change there was : slates came into general use after the Revolu tionary War and became ideal instruments for formal exercises in arithmetic and quite informal ventures in portraiture. The harsh school discipline known to tradition was long retained in most American communities^ even after some European countries had largely abandoned the rod in favor of milder measures. But the teacher was not wholly to blame for this conservatism. The American boy began the prac^ tice of liberty and equality rather too early in life for the peace of mind of the old-time pedagogue. The strict bonds of social custom and an early training in reverence for rank and place made obedience natural to the German child and even to the boy of seventeenth century Massachusetts. But deference and decorum. were not the cardinal virtues of American democracy in the days of Jackson. In certain of the frontier settlements uo teacher was secure of his place until he had SCHOOLS OF THE YOUNG REPUBLIC 109 knocked down three or four overgrown, mischief- loving lads who had challenged his authority. Sometimes an unpopular teacher would find his schoolroom door barred, or the chimney stopped up, or an impromptu holiday enforced in some other ingenious fashion. Those who criticize the rule of the rod in the district school of a past gen eration sometimes forget with what conditions the teacher then had to contend. The best feature of the district system was not its influence on the children but its effect on the community. In other countries the public school has been regarded as a benevolent institution run by some far-off entity, the state, and the private school has been looked upon as a convenient place to send the son or daughter who was in the way at home. But the American public schools stood not only for education of the people but for education by the people. The very fact that the school stood on no higher level than the people it reached robbed education of that touch of aloofness and conscious condescension always irritating to the uneducated man who has instruction imposed upon him or his children. The election of a school board, the choice of a new teacher, the ceremonies of " quar ter days" and commencements, were red-letter 110 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION occasions to the village or farming region which supported the local school. The early schoolhouse served also as a sort of community center a " meeting-house " for church services, for political assemblies, and for "socia bles." Here the community gathered for any corporate action, and the women naturally took part in the deliberations as well as the men. Out of this school meeting grew the more complex po litical organization of the community, still preserv ing some of its original characteristics. Thus we find that women voted at school elections in many States long before they could vote for President. In the pioneer country school the pupils ranged from ABC children to girls who had been three times through the arithmetic or boys who were being coached for college, while the spelling-bees, singing-schools, and debating societies constituted what might be called the "extension department" of the country school. Parents visited the school at every convenient opportunity to see with their own eyes how their money was being spent and how their children were getting along. The spell ing-bee was not a mere drill to impress certain facts upon the plastic memory of youth. It was also one of the recreations of adult life, if recreation be the SCHOOLS OF THE YOUNG REPUBLIC 111 right word for what was taken so seriously by every one. The spectacle of a school trustee stand ing with a blue-backed Webster open in his hand while gray-haired men and women, one row being captained by the schoolmaster and the rival team by the minister, spelled each other down is one that it would be hard to reproduce under a more centralized and less immediately popular form of school government. Secondary education in America has undergone a curious development. During the colonial period the Latin grammar school dominated instruction beyond the primary grades, whereas in our time the public high school is the leading type. Both these institutions were public. But for a long period, which may roughly be indicated as lying between the Revolution and the Civil War, the Latin Grammar school remained as a survival of another age while the high school was gradually beginning to assume its place as part of the educa tional system of the nation. The private academy meanwhile provided the link between elementary school and college. The academy, the name of which is taken from the Athenian groves where Plato walked and 112 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION talked with his pupils, was developed in England in the seventeenth century to meet the needs of the nonconformists, who were not allowed to graduate at Oxford and Cambridge. The earliest American academies were also substitutes for college rather than preparatory schools for college. The first American academy to bear the name was char tered at Philadelphia in 1753 and became in later years the University of Pennsylvania. The Phil lips Academies at Andover, Massachusetts, and at Exeter, New Hampshire, on the other hand re mained secondary institutions; and still others be came "finishing schools" for those who required a rapid rounding off and polishing of their education. The great merit of the academies lay in adding breadth and variety to the course of study. The old Latin schools which they had largely displaced taught little but the classics and taught them as grammar rather than as literature. But in the early years of the nineteenth century an academy would offer "all the branches of English, classical, mathematical, and philosophical literature which are taught in the universities, together with the French language if required." The girls acade mies usually known by the atrocious title of " female seminaries " went even further and SCHOOLS OF THE YOUNG REPUBLIC 113 taught many subjects which no college of the day would have dreamed of providing any more than it would of admitting the girls themselves. In addi tion to rhetoric, elocution, history, logic, philoso phy, grammar, spelling, Latin, French, astronomy, and geography "with the use of the globes," the female seminaries gave instruction in needlework, drawing, painting, fancy embroidery, and music. In the latter half of the century girls were particu larly fond of botany, which consisted at first chiefly in gathering and pressing flowers and in running down their scientific names by means of the key in Gray or Wood. Boys were afforded an opportu nity to study such practical branches as surveying and bookkeeping. Such opportunities for obtaining pleasant and perhaps profitable learning as the academies offered did not leave the community indifferent. In Massachusetts there were 112 academies char tered by 1840, although a few of these existed only on paper. In Virginia at the opening of the Civil War there were thirteen thousand pupils enrolled in the academies of the State. Some academies maintained the highest standards of scholarship. Others were mere catch-penny enterprises that grew rich by retailing appetizing "extras," such 114 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION as instruction in Italian or in some special variety of decorative art. Many academies, including those attended by girls, were practically normal schools and offered the best training then available for those who intended to become teachers. On the whole, America owes much to the academy. It gave to many thousand young men and women an introduction to art, science, literature, and phi losophy that proved an inspiration to a life from which these elements would otherwise have been lacking. By its emphasis on the study of the Eng lish language the academy had much to do with making this a nation of fluent speakers and ready writers. Even its worst feature, the overcrowded curriculum, helped by its very multiplicity to in troduce the elective idea into secondary education. As private institutions the academies, though frequently subsidized from the "school fund" or "literary fund" of the State, were supported in part by students fees. This arrangement, how ever, restricted secondary education to those who could afford to pay tuition and was felt to be un democratic. Moreover, after the establishment of the State Universities, it was considered inconsist ent for the public to charge itself with the teach ing of children in the elementary schools and of SCHOOLS OF THE YOUNG REPUBLIC 115 men and women in the colleges while leaving the intermediate years wholly to private enterprise and benevolence. Somehow or other the State should provide free secondary education. The solution was finally reached in the establishment of the high school. Again Boston took the lead in a new educational movement. The English Classical School for Boys was opened in 1821 as an alternative to the old Latin Grammar school with its rigid and nar row course of study. Five years later a high school for girls was started in the same city. In 1826 the Massachusetts Legislature passed a law requir ing townships of five hundred or more households to provide instruction in American history, book keeping, geometry, surveying, and algebra. Thus there was established a system of high schools in the important towns of the State, although some towns evaded the requirement as long as they were able to do so. High schools were also started in New York and Philadelphia soon after the Boston experiment and independently of it. The academies looked upon the high schools as intruders and upon the new system as a socialistic invasion of the field of private enterprise. The taxpayers in many places objected to paying for 116 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION the education of other people s children beyond the elementary branches, and it was only through a maze of legal controversies that the high schools finally forced their way to public recognition and approval. After the Civil War the high schools increased very rapidly in numbers in all parts of the country until now they form an ineradicable and perhaps the most characteristic part of the American educational system. In the chief educational systems of Europe the secondary school is not placed on top of an eight years course in the elementary school but runs parallel to it above the primary grades, very much as our colonial Latin schools used to do. The German father, for example, who is ambitious for his son s career, transfers him at the end of three or four years from the elementary school to some school which will fit him for future success in in dustry or commerce or will prepare him after nine years study for the university. Each social class has its own type of school leading to a goal certain and definite from the start. But in the United States a secondary school has a double function : it must with the same curriculum prepare some of its students for higher education, but it must also prepare others for a life in which they may have SCHOOLS OF THE YOUNG REPUBLIC 117 no further formal schooling. That is why the high schools repeat much of the work of the elementary schools, why the colleges give courses already in cluded in the high school, and why there is an end less conflict between the colleges and the secondary schools as to the requirements for admission to the former. It is the price that Americans pay for their insistence that the children of the well-to-do shall be educated together with the children of the poor. Perhaps the social gain in the development of democratic sentiment is worth the educational loss in delaying the entrance to college of those who reach it by way of "the grades." The introduction of text-books which were neither imported from English publishing houses nor written in close imitation of trans-Atlantic models became a potent factor in Americanizing the school. Of these the works of Noah Webster were perhaps the most widely influential in mold ing the ideas of the first generations of children born under the flag of the Republic. Webster s famous speller was the offspring of the necessity of the Revolutionary War. "In the year 1782," wrote the author, "while the American army was lying on the banks of the Hudson I kept a classi cal school at Goshen, N. Y. The country was 118 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION impoverished : intercourse with Great Britain was interrupted, and schoolbooks were scarce and hardly attainable." His Grammatical Institute of the English Language, published the following year, was a combined reader, spelling-book, and grammar. The sale of the speller supplied him with enough to live on while he worked on his dic tionary. He brought out in 1806 the first edition of the dictionary and in 1828 appeared the work that became universally known as Webster 9 s Un abridged. There had been not a few text-book writers in the colonies but none had ventured so boldly upon innovations nor emphasized the pa triotic motive so constantly. His enemies have charged Noah Webster with creating an Ameri can language distinct from English, by simplify ing English spelling and recognizing changes in pronunciation. His friends replied that but for the use of his books by schools in every part of the country the nation might have been divided by dialects and there would have been not one American language but a dozen. There can certainly be no question as to the nature of Webster s intentions or the extent of his influence. The aim of his speller was, he said, "to diffuse an uniformity and purity of language in SCHOOLS OF THE YOUNG REPUBLIC 119 America, to destroy the provincial prejudices that originate in the trifling difference of dialect and produce reciprocal ridicule." In the advertise ment to his reader he declared: "I consider it a culpable fault in our books that the books gener ally used contain subjects wholly uninteresting to our youth; while the writings which marked the Revolution, which are, perhaps, not infe rior to the orations of Cicero and Demosthenes, and which are calculated to impress interesting truths upon young minds, lie neglected and for gotten." By 1818 Webster s speller alone had sold over five million copies; by 1847, twenty- four million. Its total sales by this time probably exceed seventy-five million and it is still selling by the hundred thousand a year in spite of a thousand competitors which have sprung up since its publication. The same patriotic purpose was evident in the geographies of Jedediah Morse and his contem poraries. Geography a hundred years ago did not have the narrow and special meaning now attached to it; it covered all sorts of information which it was thought interesting or useful for the child to know. According to an announcement of the time, a good geography would give an account of the 120 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION * religion, military strength, literature, curiosities, constitution, and history" of every country in the world. The United States received due considera tion, nor was the author ashamed to make its place a high one. Of the Americans he remarked that "the people generally are enterprising, indus trious, persevering, and submissive to government. They are also intelligent, brave, active, and benevo lent, and possess a strength and agility of body which are seldom united in so great a degree. . . . Upon the whole, the manners of the people of the United States . . . are, probably, a medium be tween an honest bluntness on the one hand, and a sickly delicacy on the other." 1 The same author goes on to speak of "the present manly ease of freemen," a quality to which Dickens and other European travelers preferred to give a different name. When the South attempted to establish its Con federacy, it declared at the same time its independ ence of the New England text-book. There was, for example, A Geography for Beginners, published in 1864 by the Reverend K. J. Stewart, which in cluded maps showing the Confederate States of 1 A History of the United States of America, by Chauncey A. Goodrich (1833), p. 523. SCHOOLS OF THE YOUNG REPUBLIC America and special articles on such topics as the flora and the scenery of the Confederate States. It shows little trace of the passions of the Civil War then raging, but it comments with amusing sharpness on the patronizing attitude adopted by Europeans to Americans of both North and South. Speaking of the upper classes of Great Britain, the author remarks that, "as a class of men, they are superior to any similar class of other nations, un less it be among men of the same race in the States of America, who, with the exception of titles, resemble them very much, and are not at all their inferiors." In considering the factors which gave the young republic a culture which affected all classes to a more uniform degree than was the case of any other civilized country of the time, the press must be regarded as the most important of text-books. This was recognized as early as 1740 by John Clarke in an Essay upon the Education of. Youth in Grammar Schools in which he advocated the teach ing of geography and history in addition to the classics. "By that time boys are fit to be entered in Greek or sooner," said he, "it may be convenient to bring them acquainted with the Public News, by making them read the Evening Post or some AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION other newspaper constantly. These the master may at first read along with them, explaining, as occasion offers, the Terms of War, and whatever else he apprehends they do not understand." This was an anticipation of one of the most recent inno vations in teaching. At the present time millions of copies of dailies, weeklies, and monthlies are used in American classrooms in the study of cur rent events, civics, and history. Yet then, as to day, there were critics of American journalism and its influence. One writer held that American mediocrity was due to "the unequaled circulation of newspapers and magazines of every possible description, as well as the variety and profusion of other productions that come daily and hourly reek ing from the press," 1 and drew the pessimistic inference that "in proportion as the facilities of learning and means of investigation are multiplied, in the same degree men seem to lose sight of more noble pursuits, and become continually more ab sorbed in those which only call into exercise their meaner faculties." The truth seems to have been about half-way between this harsh censure and the spread-eagleism of the writer of patriotic 1 Causes of the Backward State of Sound Learning of the United States, by Charles H. Lyon (1838). SCHOOLS OF THE YOUNG REPUBLIC 123 geographies. But all observers admitted the fact that no social class was so high or so low as to be outside the influence of the little red schoolhouse, the blue-backed speller, and the newspaper. CHAPTER IX HORACE MANN AND THE AMERICAN SCHOOL Horace Mann is by general consent the greatest educator that this western hemisphere has produced. A. E. Winship. HORACE MANN was the type of leader who so stamps his personality upon a great movement of reform that no one can think of it apart from him. He spent but a comparatively short period of his life in the actual work of teaching and, unlike such educational pioneers as Rousseau or Pestalozzi, he contributed no new theory or method to the science of pedagogy. Sometimes the need of the age is for a man of boundless energy, enthusiasm, and consecration who can make millions of men heed the truths already discerned by a small circle of special students. Horace Mann was the instiga tor, the promoter, one might almost say the press agent, of modern ideals of education. Horace Mann was born in 1796 at Franklin, Massachusetts, and dug the only really valuable 124 HORACE MANN 125 part of his early education out of the books in the town library founded by Benjamin Frank lin. Fortunately for him a private schoolmaster, Samuel Barrett, took an interest in the lad and encouraged him to go to college. Within six months he learned enough Latin and Greek to enter the sophomore class of Brown University, although up to that time he had never studied either language. This furious cramming, however, injured his health and compelled him to work for the rest of his life under a physical handicap. Indeed, it was always the habit of Mann to plunge into a, task with a reckless fury that left his nerves and his temper in rags by the time the work was completed. "Work," he once said, "has always been to me what water is to a fish. I have won dered a thousand times to hear people say, I don t like this business ; or, * I wish I could exchange for that ; for with me, whenever I have had anything to do, I do not remember ever to have demurred, but have always set about it like a fatalist; and it was as sure to be done as the sun is to set." After Horace Mann graduated from college, he remained for a short time as a tutor at Brown and then took up the study of law. He outdistanced his fellow lawyers by the same grim intensity of 126 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION effort that had awed his instructors in college, and in 1827 he entered the Massachusetts Legislature. A clear pathway to political fame lay before him, the more so as he had the gift of oratory which was then valued above all others as a key to public honors. Had his career not been deflected into other channels, Massachusetts might have had in him another Webster or another Sumner, though it is safe to say that as a statesman he would have been less of an opportunist than the former and of more balanced judgment than the latter. But in 1837, when President of the State Senate, he re signed all his political prospects to accept the post of secretary to the newly created State Board of Education. It is hard to say whether the friends of Horace Mann or the friends of the Board of Education were the more surprised and disappointed at his action. Horace Mann s friends, with few excep tions, tried to dissuade him from taking this humble office. To some who said that the position of Secretary to the Board was not one of sufficient dignity, he replied: "If the title is not sufficiently honorable now, then it is clearly left for me to ele vate it; and I had rather be creditor than debtor to the title." Others, more practical, urged that it HORACE MANN 127 was sheer madness for one of the best lawyers of Massachusetts to give his whole time in exchange for a beggarly $1500 a year. "Well, one thing is certain," said Mann. "If I live, and have health, I will be revenged on them; I will do them more than $1500 worth of good." On the other hand, some were displeased that Horace Mann had been selected for the office. They had nothing to say against him personally, except that he was not an educator by profession, but in their hearts they had hoped that James G. Carter, whose untiring devotion had established the principle of State supervision in Massachusetts, would become Secretary of the Board of Educa tion which he had virtually created. But Mann, who as a member of the Legislature had already shown much interest in legislation affecting the schools, took his new duties very seriously and read as much as he could on educational theory in the intervals of his practical work. The chief duty of the Secretary of the Board of Education at that time was to prepare an annual report on the schools of Massachusetts for the in formation of the Board and the Legislature. Mere ly the routine work of compiling an abstract of school returns was enough to keep one person 128 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION fairly busy, but Mann resolved to make each re port also a battle in the campaign for more ade quate teaching. His particular target was the dis trict system of school government, and his criti cisms did more than anything else to arouse the country to the need of central supervision of the local schools. In addition to preparing the twelve reports which he issued as Secretary, Mann aroused public interest in educational problems by lectures before teachers conventions and public meetings of all sorts. He toured every part of the State, arous ing and inspiring teachers with a sense of the op portunities before them for accomplishing great and enduring work. With the same object of ele vating the teacher s occupation he established the Common School Journal and encouraged the organization of teachers institutes. Even more significant was Horace Mann s work in behalf of teachers training. In 1838 Edmund Dwight, a friend of Horace Mann, offered ten thousand dollars towards a normal school on con dition that the Massachusetts Legislature would vote an equal sum. In the following year the first public normal school in America was opened at Lexington. Cyrus Pierce of Nan tucket, who was HORACE MANN 129 selected by Mann for its principal, bravely under took the new work, although at first only three students were in attendance. From such small beginnings grew the normal school system of the United States which now controls the standards of teaching throughout the country. But the voters viewed this innovation with a certain dis trust. It was then generally held that anybody who knew a fact could teach it, or that at least he could learn how to do so in the course of practice. The men of that generation were not perhaps al together \vrong in thinking that teaching was the best school for a teacher, but Horace Mann and his fellow reformers thought it wasteful to sacrifice the interests of the children in order that the schoolmaster might acquire through experience some inklings of the mistakes to avoid and the best methods to follow. Another innovation introduced by Horace Mann was the teaching of music in public schools. Pri vate instruction in singing and piano playing was, of course, nothing new, but it was something of an achievement to convince the taxpayer that public funds should be used for instruction in any thing so far removed from the "practical." All that Mann was able to contribute to the movement 130 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION for adding music to the course of study was his encouragement and championship, his influence with the authorities and the general public. The actual organization of musical teaching was due to his friend Lowell Mason, whose name is still re membered with gratitude by all lovers of music. "It is well worth walking ten miles to hear a lesson by Lowell Mason," said Horace Mann, and he saw to it that the teachers in the normal schools and institutes had the benefit of Mason s inspiring instruction. Horace Mann s attempts to introduce reforms into common school education and his unsparing attacks on existing conditions made enemies as well as friends. But it was not until the publica tion of his seventh report, in 1843, that the mur murs of conservative criticism swelled to a storm. The charge brought against him was lack of pa triotism because he held up European schools, particularly those of Germany, as models for America. Much unsympathetic European criti cism had made the young republic somewhat sensitive to comparisons drawn between the old world and the new unless they were wholly fa vorable. The men of Massachusetts were particu larly proud of their schools, which had a long and HORACE MANN 131 honorable tradition behind them and were still perhaps the best in the United States, and they were therefore little inclined to take hints from foreigners. Horace Mann well understood this sensitiveness, and he therefore attempted to fore stall hostile criticism by remarking in his report: "Wherever I have found the best institutions . . . there I have always found the greatest desire to know how similar institutions were administered among ourselves; and, where I have found the worst, there I have found most of the spirit of self- complacency, and even an offensive disinclination to hear of better methods." In order to gather the materials for his annual report Horace Mann took a five months "vaca tion." This he spent in studying foreign schools and philanthropic institutions, about which he prepared a veritable encyclopedia of facts. During that brief interval he "visited England, Ireland, and Scotland; crossed the German Ocean to Ham burg; thence went to Magdeburg, Berlin, Pots dam, Halle, and Weissenfels, in the Kingdom of Prussia; to Leipsic and Dresden . . . thence to Er furt, Weimar, Eisenach . . . thence to the Grand Duchy of Nassau, of Hesse-Darmstadt, and of Baden; and, after visiting all the principal cities 132 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION in the Rhenish Provinces of Prussia, passed through Holland and Belgium to Paris." Of all the schools which he visited while abroad Horace Mann found the Prussian schools the best. In the first place, the system of administration was sound. Attendance was compulsory and rigidly enforced; the schools were carefully graded, and each teacher had but one class in his room; the school inspectors were men of the type who in this country would be judges or college presidents; and each teacher received a thorough professional training. He noticed, also, improved methods of instruction. Reading was taught by the "word method" instead of by requiring the children first to learn the alphabet, then to combine letters in syllables, and finally to build up words from these elements, according to the usual American practice. Foreign languages were taught by being used in the classroom; geography and nature study were pre sented in a way that children could comprehend; and drawing was begun as early as writing. All these minor perfections, however, mattered little to him by comparison with the fine sympathy between teacher and pupil and the cordial delight which the teacher took in his work. The classroom was a place alive with activity. In Prussia, as also HORACE MANN 133 in Saxony and Scotland, Mann said, no teacher could hold his place unless he had the power to interest the children and attract their attention at all times. Speaking of his travels in Prussia and Saxony, he remarked: 1. During all this time, I never saw a teacher hearing a lesson of any kind (except a reading or spelling lesson) with a book in his hand. 2. I never saw a teacher sitting while hearing a recitation. 3. Though I saw hundreds of schools, and thousands I think I may say, within bounds, tens of thou sands of pupils, / never saw one child undergoing punishment, or arraigned for misconduct. Although Horace Mann mingled his praise of foreign schools with abundant criticism, a com mittee of thirty-one Boston grammar school teachers, conceiving that he had insulted the Massachusetts school system, prepared an elabo rate attack on his report. They accused Mann of ignorance of the schools of his own State and of neglecting his duties of inspection to follow his hobbies and impractical theories. They defended the use of corporal punishment, the old-fashioned method of teaching children to read, and most of the other practices of which he had spoken with disapproval. They objected chiefly to his insist- 134 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION ence on keeping the children interested in their studies, because, in their opinion, unless a child learned to work at dull or distasteful tasks "mental discipline" would be lost. These remarks on his report, and especially the offensive and deliberately insulting language in which they were couched, so infuriated Mann that he replied in another pamphlet which fairly flamed with indignation that helpless children should have such stupid instructors. To this Reply to the Remarks on his Report there came a Rejoinder, and to that again an Answer. It is not worth while following the long drawn out controversy further than to say that Mann s superiority as a debater was as evident throughout as his superior wisdom in educational matters. He not only was the victor, but the whole country was aware of it. In 1848 Horace Mann left his post. During the twelve years he was Secretary to the Board of Education the appropriation for public schools in the State had doubled; two million dollars had been spent to improve school buildings; the sala ries of teachers were increased by more than half; a month was added to the ordinary length of the school year; and three flourishing normal schools were founded. As a token of public appreciation, HORACE MANN 135 the Massachusetts Legislature voted Horace Mann a special compensation of two thousand dollars above his salary and also gave him a formal vote of thanks for the efficient manner in which he had filled the post of Secretary. During the same year he was elected to Congress from the constituency which had been represented by ex-President John Quincy Adams. His chief interest in the House of Representatives was the anti-slavery cause, and his political career is most widely known by his quarrel with Daniel Webster and the other con servative Whigs who were willing to compromise with the slavery interest. For the second time in his life Mann abandoned politics for education. After serving two terms in Congress he became President of Antioch College in Ohio and carried into the West the same message of educational reform that he had preached in Massachusetts. Antioch was one of the earliest experiments in higher education for both men and women and for students of all races. But the college did not greatly prosper, chiefly for lack of financial backing, and Horace Mann s death in 1859 was hastened by overwork and worry. Like all the great New Englanders of his genera tion, Horace Mann had many enthusiasms which 136 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION those who did not share them called fads. He hated with an equal hatred ignorance, slavery, drink, tobacco, war, and Calvinism. He believed firmly in phrenology. He was as interested in institutions for the insane, the blind, the deaf, and the criminal as he was in schools for normal chil dren. In a word, he was a universal educational reformer dominated at every moment of his life by a sleepless conscience. He was no fanatic or, more exactly, he was the most formidable kind of fanatic, for he could wait as well as strike. Wen dell Phillips denounced him for not joining the extreme abolitionists, and Theodore Parker ac cused him of concealing his Unitarian beliefs from his orthodox associates at Antioch. Parker re marked that Horace Mann did not know that in morals as well as in mathematics a straight line is the shortest distance between two points; but some of us would agree rather with Mann that the longest way around is frequently the shortest way home. Horace Mann was but one of the educational leaders of his day, and there is a limit to what one man, even the busiest, can accomplish. His real importance lies in his relation to other men whom be inspired to carry on and extend his task of HORACE MANN 137 reforming the schools. The excellent public schools of far-away Argentina, for instance, owe much to the fact that President Sarmiento had studied the work of Horace Mann during his travels in the United States. Sometimes, indeed, Sarmiento is spoken of as "the Horace Mann of South America." There is no more striking proof of the extent of Mann s influence than the number of persons who have been labeled " the Horace Mann of " whatever place may have been the scene of their labors. It is the usual biographer s distinguishing tag for a prominent American educator, just as people speak of "the Belgian Shakespeare" or "the Danish Shakespeare " in paying a supreme tribute to a man of letters. The man whose career most closely parallels that of Horace Mann and whose achievements were of at least equal importance in themselves, though not perhaps so widely influential, was Henry Barnard. After graduating at Yale, he traveled abroad and studied the schools of Ger many and Switzerland. Upon his return to Amer ica he was elected to the Connecticut Legislature, as Horace Mann was elected to that of Massachu setts. Like Mann, again, he deserted law and politics to become Secretary of the State Board of 138 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION Education. While occupying this position he or ganized the first teachers institutes held in Amer ica and edited the Connecticut Common School Journal. Rhode Island also owes a debt of grati tude to Barnard. The Connecticut Legislature in a moment of reaction abolished the Board of Edu cation (or, as it was called, the Board of Com missioners of Common Schools) and thus Henry Barnard lost his position. Rhode Island seized the opportunity to obtain his services to organize its public schools. Repentant Connecticut soon recalled him to his old position but not before he had worked a revolution in the Rhode Island school system. Like Horace Mann, he spent some years in the Middle West. For two years he was Chan cellor of the University of Wisconsin and, while there, did much to organize training for teachers throughout that State. After serving the cause of education in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Wiscon sin, and Maryland, where he was President of St. John s College at Annapolis, Barnard became the first United States Commissioner of Education. The great achievement of Henry Barnard, how ever, lay not in administration but in authorship. For more than thirty years he was editor of The American Journal of Education, which was really a HORACE MANN 139 serial encyclopedia of educational theory and prac tice. In it were included a large proportion of the most important articles and monographs ever written about education. But the expense of the undertaking was so great that Barnard, after losing more than $40,000 on it, was compelled to abandon it, and the costly plates would have been melted into type metal if William T. Harris had not organized a corporation to save the series. The work accomplished by Horace Mann in Massachusetts and by Henry Barnard in Connecti cut and Rhode Island was typical of that done by hundreds of other men of the same generation who served the interests of education not as teachers but as the statesmen of the schools. It was an age when the expert, the superintendent, the administrator first found a distinctive place in the common task of combating ignorance. The in dividual commander, such as the college president or school principal, was now aided by a "general staff" or boards of education, school inspectors, and normal school directors. Many a small boy sitting in a bright, well-aired, warm room at his individual desk, with an attractively illustrated geography open before him, and pleasant memo ries of the school garden or the camera club in his 140 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION thoughts, owes the best features of his education not to his teacher but to some busy superintendent who could not have made a success in teaching even a district school but who could and did de vote his life to perfecting the school system. The best of these men, however, like Horace Mann, never made the machinery of education an end in itself, but kept steadily in mind the boys and girls for whose benefit it was all called into being. CHAPTER X DE WITT CLINTON AND THE FREE SCHOOL Ten years of the life of a child may now be spent in a common school. In two years the elements of instruction may be acquired and the remaining eight years must now be spent in repetition or idleness, unless the teachers of the common schools are competent to instruct in the higher branches of knowledge. The outlines of geography, algebra, mineralogy, agriculture, chemistry, mechani- pal philosophy, surveying, geometry, astronomy, political econ omy and ethics might be communicated by able preceptors with out essential interference with the calls of domestic industry. De Witt Clinton. MASSACHUSETTS is typical of those States which, having a democratic system of public instruction, sought to make it efficient; New York is a good example of those States which, having a sys tem of public instruction that recognized class distinctions, sought to make it democratic. In New England the chief battleground was the ques tion of expert supervision over the district school; in the Middle Atlantic States and in some parts of the South the great issue was the abolition of the distinction between "pay" pupils and 141 142 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION those who, by a kind of charity, were given their tuition free. Of course, the question of expert supervision has also been an important one in New York, but in one sense it may be said that the supervision was older than the schools. Nowhere in America had the Revolutionary War more thoroughly un settled what little had been accomplished for the younger generation in colonial days. True public schools did not exist, although a few parish schools and academies had weathered the stormy time, and even King s College, with its honorable record of public service, was forced to close its doors for several years. The revival of education under the republic began at the top. In 1784 King s College was reopened under the name of Columbia and was made the center of a State educational system. Young De Witt Clinton was the first student ma triculated in Columbia College, and he graduated in 1786 with the first class to receive degrees from the institution. By the act of 1784 a "University of the State of New York" was created. This was not a univer sity in the American sense of a single institution, but in the French sense of a governing body placed over all the colleges and schools that might be es- CLINTON AND THE FREE SCHOOL 143 tablished. A Board of Regents was "empowered to found Schools and Colleges in any such part of the State as may seem expedient to them and to endow the same . . . directing the manner in which such Colleges are to be governed." Georgia had already founded a "university" of this type and Michigan (when still a Territory) later ex perimented even more boldly on the same lines. But the systematic organization of all schools into a "university" has not been widely adopted in the United States and is nowhere fully carried out. Even in New York, the Regents at first confined their attention largely to Columbia College and permitted the lesser schools to shift for themselves. Governor George Clinton, uncle of De Witt Clinton, did not find the educational situation satisfactory. He praised the good work done by the private academies but, as he told the Legisla ture, "it cannot be denied that they are principally confined to the children of the opulent," and he recommended the establishment of public schools throughout the State. The legislators somewhat unwillingly untied the public purse strings and granted an annual appropriation to aid towns which started common schools. After five years the plan was abandoned, but in 1812 a new law 144 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION established a general system of public, schools under a State Superintendent, which was in part supported by local tax, in part by State aid, and in part from "rate bills" on the parents whose children attended the schools. In 1805, before the final establishment of a gen eral school system for the State, a number of pub lic-spirited citizens of New York City organized a Free School Society to care for the poor children who had no other means of education. In this thriving city of more than seventy-five thousand persons, thousands of children were growing up without any instruction because they could not pay to enter the private schools and because their parents did not wish to send them to the charity schools maintained by some of the churches. The schools founded by the Society were, barring one very brief and unhappy trial of the rate bill, free to all children and not bound to any creed, but their control remained in the hands of the Trustees of the Society. For nearly half a century the educa tion of the children of the most important city in America was in charge of a private corporation. The Free School Society, later known as the Public School Society, was the masterpiece of De Witt Clinton. He was the first President of its CLINTON AND THE FREE SCHOOL 145 Board of Trustees and he was the largest sub scriber towards its objects. While a member of the New York Legislature he obtained an appro priation for the Society and opposed all attempts to scatter among church schools the share which belonged to New York City. No one knew better than Clinton that the citizens should support and control their own schools; but New York was not yet awake to this necessity, and he therefore did the next best thing in supporting free schools open to every one without the taint of charity to offend the sensitive pride of the poor. New York might long have remained a city of illiterates if De Witt Clinton had not been one of its citizens, and it is but a just recognition of his services that the largest high school in the city now bears his name. Clinton had also much to do with the method of teaching in the schools of the Society. He studied the English system of pupil teaching, sometimes called the Bell-Lancaster system from the two men who claimed the invention of it, and favored its adoption in American schools. The basic idea of this system was to turn the routine of teaching over to the older children who could teach what they themselves had recently learned. The teacher himself was like the superintendent of a factory: 146 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION his chief duty was to police the establishment and see that everything went smoothly. By this ar rangement one man sometimes took charge of five hundred children. No quicker and cheaper method of varnishing a large class with a knowledge of the three R s can well be imagined; and the schoolboy monitors, though they were not competent to give expert instruction, were hardly expected to do so. In those days even the "regular" teacher of the district school was little more than a drillmaster to keep the children in order and to hear their lessons; and why could not a monitor do as much? Many ingenious ideas were introduced as part of the sys tem, such as teaching the children to read from wall charts and to write by making letters in sand. After Clinton s death the Public School Society found itself more and more out of touch with the times. The growing Irish-Catholic population of the city demanded a share of the State funds for their own schools, and, when met by the answer that public money should not be used to support sectarian schools, argued that the Public School Society was a private organization dominated by a Protestant atmosphere. They added their voices and votes to complaints from other sources against permitting a private legal monopoly of CLINTON AND THE FREE SCHOOL 147 public instruction. Governor Seward at last ex pressed the popular discontent in his Annual Message in 1842 and urged "the expediency of vesting in the people of the City of New York, what I am sure the people of no other part of the State would, upon any consideration, relinquish the education of their children." The Public School Society did not take its death sentence quietly. Professing to fear "the blighting influ ence of party strife and sectarian animosity" if the schools were transferred to public control, the Society continued for ten years to support its own free schools in spite of the organization of public schools known as the "ward schools." When the two systems were finally combined into one, each contributed several buildings and a nearly equal number of pupils. The present city public school system which grew out of this union is on as com prehensive a scale as that of the largest States. There is even a public university, the College of the City of New York, the largest municipal col lege in America, with a history covering seventy years of service to the community. De Witt Clinton s interest in education was not confined to his work for the Public School Soci ety. As Governor he succeeded in securing liberal 148 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION appropriations from the State Legislature, but his programme of educational statesmanship, outlined in his annual messages, far outranged the imagina tion of his generation. He desired, by establishing monitorial high schools, to develop into a corps of professionally trained teachers the monitors who taught under the Lancaster plan. He advocated the higher education of women. He favored special provision for the education of Indians and negroes. He advised the creation of a State Board of Agri culture to correspond with the county societies and suggested "a professorship in agriculture con nected with the board or attached to the univer sity." Clinton laid special emphasis on the less formal educational agencies libraries, lyceums, county agricultural associations, mechanics in stitutes, and all manner of literary, historical, and philosophical societies. The educational progress of New York has in the main followed the path blazed by Clinton. x Clinton did not live to see free common schools under public control established throughout the State. After many years of agitation the New York Legislature passed an act in 1849 providing 1 See The Educational Views and Influence of De Witt Clinton by Edward A. Fitzpatrick. CLINTON AND THE FREE SCHOOL 149 for the abolition of all school fees and for the sup port of all common schools by local taxation with aid from the State fund, and on referendum the people approved the change by an overwhelming majority. But opposition to the free school was not yet dead. The following year the question of repeal was submitted to the State, and the vote was so close that the Legislature ventured to set aside the twice repeated verdict of the majority of citi zens and enact a compromise bill whereby a State tax was levied on all property for the support of the schools, retaining the rate bill to make up any local deficit. Parents unable to pay might send their children to school free, but this fact only em phasized the social chasm between the rich and the poor. Not until 1867, nearly forty years after the death of De Witt Clinton, were the public schools free to all. The fight for free schools was one of the great landmarks in the history of American democracy. Public-spirited men urged that the interests of the commonwealth demanded that education be uni versal. "We hold," said The Tribune in 1850, "that our present school tax is not imposed on the rich for the benefit of the poor; but imposed on the whole State for the benefit of the State." One 150 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION advocate of tax-supported education declared that " property can better afford to educate four chil dren in the schoolhouse than one in the street." The workingmen of the cities strongly favored any change that would abolish the stigma of charity from public education, the more so that New York City was already accustomed to the free schools founded by the Public School Society. Many of the other cities shouldered the burden of taxation so willingly that there was no deficit to be made good from the pocketbook of the parent. In the rural districts both conditions and ideas were different. On the referendum of 1850 forty- two counties out of fifty-nine favored the repeal of the law providing free schools, and nearly all these were purely rural. The New York farmer was not indifferent or averse to education, but he had no experience of the free school system. " The right of the parent" to care for his own children s education and "the right of property" not to be taxed for the benefit of other people prevented him from seeing "the right of the child." The farmer viewed with some disapproval the "fads and frills" with which the old-time district school was being contaminated. Resolutions voted by one rural district, for instance, ran thus: "We are in favor of CLINTON AND THE FREE SCHOOL 151 a simple and plain system of popular education, without Normal Schools, teachers institutes, dis trict school journals, supported by the State, or hordes of school officers." There were also the par tisans of the private school who were opposed to free schools; and one Roman Catholic organ in New York professed to fear the coming of "state monopoly, state despotism, and state socialism" in this once free country if public schools became universal. Neither the example of New England nor the arguments of Clinton could convert the whole of New York to the benefits of the free school. Time and experience were needed. The free school had an even harder struggle for existence in the Keystone State than in the Em pire State, for in Pennsylvania the principle that the parent should pay for the schooling of his chil dren was reinforced by jealousies of race and creed which were rooted in the traditions of colonial times. The Germans in particular clung to their own private schools, for through them they were enabled to keep alight the flame of their ances tral culture, which, they feared, might too easily be extinguished by the "Anglo-Saxon" influences of the public school. Thus in Pennsylvania, in the early years of the nineteenth century, was seen the 152 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION curious paradox of people whose kinsmen in Ger many at that time enjoyed the best public school system in the world working zealously to keep the free school out of the State in which they lived. In 1834 there was enacted in Pennsylvania the first law providing throughout this State schools that were free to all as well as to those who could not afford to pay. Private education and "pau per" schools had left ominous gaps in the instruc tion of the rising generation, and it has been esti mated that in Pennsylvania alone there were in the third decade of the century a quarter of a million children of school age not attending any kind of school. 1 As was later the case in New York, the law was passed without much difficulty; but when the time came to put it into effect and taxes consequently threatened to increase, there was a strong agitation for its repeal. The cause of free education was saved by Thaddeus Stev ens, who fought for it in the Legislature with an eloquence and fiery earnestness that at once turned the tide of public opinion and made him a national figure. The law of 1834 permitted districts, if they pre ferred going without their share of the State fund 1 Wickersham, History of Education in Pennsylvania- CLINTON AND THE FREE SCHOOL 153 to paying local taxes for free schools, to stand out side of the new system. The northern counties of the State, settled largely from New York and New England, quickly adopted the free school, and the workingmen of the big towns were en thusiastic. On the other hand, the German settle ments, many rural districts, and places where sec tarian influence was strong and private schools were many and good, refused for many years to take advantage of the law. It was, of course, unfortunate that the American school had to make its way against the prejudices and narrow views of economy that could not see why a rich bachelor should be taxed to keep all the children of the district at school. But a slow con version is often the most lasting. No one in any State could be found today to write in all serious ness such an appeal as was addressed to the North Carolina Legislature by an opponent of public education in 1829: "Gentlemen, I hope you do not conceive it at all necessary, that everybody should be able to read, write, and cipher. If one is to keep a store or a school, or to be a lawyer or physi cian, such branches may, perhaps, be taught him; though I do not look upon them as by any means indispensable : but if he is to be a plain farmer, or a 154 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION mechanic, they are of no manner of use, but rather a detriment." 1 In spite of this persuasive plea, North Carolina was converted to a belief in the public school even before the Civil War, and most of the other Southern States followed its example immediately after the close of the conflict. The wealthy and populous States of the middle Atlantic seaboard achieved free education earlier, but only against the strong obstacles of the well-endowed private schools for the rich and the charity schools for the poor which, between them, seemed to leave little room for a democratic education. But beyond the Ohio and the Mississippi there were new commu nities where the free school was as much a mat ter of course in the days of the sod hut as in the days of the skyscraper. These frontier folk could have little comprehension of the task that had confronted such pioneers of democracy as De Witt Clinton in awakening the conscience of conservative and tradition bound communities. 1 Knight, Public School Education in North Carolina. CHAPTER XI THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good gov ernment and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged. Ordinance of 1787. I doubt whether one single law of any lawgiver, ancient or modern, has produced effects of a more distinct, marked and last ing character than the Ordinance of 1787. Daniel Webster. As each new State emerged from the western wil derness, there ensued a period of local competi tion in which rival towns strove for the possession of the various governmental institutions. It was commonly conceded that in the long run a uni versity would be preferable to a penitentiary and a normal school to an insane asylum. But as first aid to a pioneer town struggling for existence the choice was debatable, for a penal or charitable in stitution was from the start sure of inmates and state support while an educational institution was not so certain of getting either. Both of the former institutions would be a steady source of income to the community while the latter usually required 155 156 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION local subsidies for its establishment. But a college of any sort had the advantage in that it gave a certain prestige to a town and attracted a superior class of settlers. In order so far as possible to satisfy these local demands the university was sometimes given to one town, the agricultural col lege or colleges to another, with perhaps several experimental stations or farms in various places and one or more normal schools elsewhere. Never in the history of the country were colleges so sought for as in the settlement of the great Mississippi Valley. The various religious de nominations, all eager to secure "strategic points," were ready to meet the demand. Sometimes it happened that two or three "universities" were started simultaneously in the same town. The tourist may still see from his car window a stately building standing solitary and deserted and on inquiry may learn that it was a university built to boom a certain suburb in the vain hope of pulling the town in that direction. The rival denomina tional colleges joined in denouncing the State } University as an "atheistic institution" where chapel was not compulsory and the professors were suspected not always without reason of teaching evolution and practicing vivisection. THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 157 But out of this chaos, in which religious zeal, educational aspirations, local pride, political wire pulling, and the real estate interests were inextri cably commingled, have grown the fine institutions which appeal everywhere to State pride. Secta rian animosities have died out. Doctrinal ortho doxy no longer serves to conceal educational in efficiency. The State Universities, though non- sectarian, count between seventy and eighty per cent of church adherents among their students. As an institution the college is becoming differen tiated from the university, though there are still misnomers on both sides of the line. The college presidents who went about the State "drumming up " students in order to make a good showing to conference or synod inspired an ambition for higher education in the minds of boys and girls who otherwise would never have thought of such a thing. This early collegiate competition is doubtless one reason why now a much larger pro portion of the population goes to college in the West than in the East. The scheme of endowing education by land grants, never elsewhere carried so far as in America, was an ingenious one. From a theoretical stand point it seems perfect, for it meant the absorption 158 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION for public purposes of what Henry George called "the unearned increment." A newly organized State was rich in land but in nothing else. The Government could afford to be generous in dona tions of land which cost it nothing and which would rise in value as the country became settled, automatically keeping pace with the prosperity of the community. The income from this landed endowment might be expected to increase at least as rapidly as the number of children to be educated. Actually the scheme did not work out so well as it promised. The land at first did not cost any thing but neither did it at first bring in any thing. The institutions dependent upon it were in the position of the heir to a dukedom who might expect to be master of a magnificent fortune some fifty years hence but in the meantime had not a penny. Having turned over to the State Univer sity the township set aside for it by Congress, the Legislature was prone to think that it had done enough and to expect the university to run itself on such a grant. But a university cannot live on land alone, especially when it cannot lease it. It was in truth a royal domain, but professors sala ries cannot be paid out of prospective valuations. THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 159 So it is no wonder that regents sometimes suc cumbed to temptation and sold at $1.25 an acre land that is now worth $125. If the colleges of the United States had been able to hold on to all the real estate that they received in the last three hundred years, they would be the wealthiest of their kind in the world. The total land grants for the common schools, which amount to 81,064,300 acres and are equal to the combined area of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, are now worth $500,000,000. x The colonial colleges were aided in their early days by land grants, but the most extensive ces sions of this sort were those made by the Federal Government. When the States claiming land in the Northwest Territory, between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes and east of the Mississippi, agreed to surrender their claims to the Govern ment of the United States, the Land Ordinance of 1785 was passed by the Congress of the Confedera tion providing for a system of rectangular surveys in the new domain. In this ordinance was the provision that "there shall be reserved the lot No. 16 of every township for the maintenance of public schools within the said township." In this same year Congress sold 1,500,000 acres of land to the 1 Monroe s Cyclopedia of Education, vol. iv, p. 375. 160 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION Ohio Company, reserving Section 16 in every township for schools, Section 29 for religion, and granting two townships for a university. Ohio was thus the first State to receive the educational land grant and the only one to receive the religious land grant. Of these townships one went to the founding of the University of Ohio at Athens in 1804 and another to the founding of Miami Uni versity at Oxford in 1809. Ohio State University at Columbus came into existence in 1870 when the Legislature complied with the terms of the Morrill land grant. Besides these three State institutions Ohio has thirty-seven other universities and col leges, mostly established by various denominations. Of these Oberlin and Antioch are mentioned else where. Western Reserve, now at Cleveland, was founded in 1826 at Hudson by the Presbyterians in part to counteract the Congregational College of Oberlin which they regarded as too radical. The chief formative influence of the Ohio public school system was the association of teachers, the first of its kind, known as the Western Literary Institute, organized at Cincinnati in 1829. One of its founders, Calvin E. Stowe, was commissioned by the Legislature to study the schools of Europe. He came back enthusiastic for the Prussian system THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 161 and inspired Horace Mann of Massachusetts and Henry Barnard of New York with the same ideals. The Ohio Legislature in 1838 printed ten thousand copies of his report, and it was largely through their influence that the educational system of Ohio and other States was reformed and strengthened. Not to be outdone by Ohio the first General Assembly of the Territory of Indiana in 1806 passed an act establishing Vincennes University signed by Governor William Henry Harrison, afterwards President of the United States. The preamble is worth quoting as illustrating not only the educational ideals of the pioneer community, but also the style of legislative rhetoric: Whereas, the independence, happiness, and energy of every republic depend (under the influence of the des tinies of Heaven) upon the wisdom, effort, talents, and energy of its citizens and rulers; and Whereas science, literature, and the liberal arts contribute to an emiment degree to improve these qualities and requirements; and Whereas learning hath ever been found the ablest ad vocate of genuine liberty, the best supporter of ra tional religion, and the source of the only solid and imperishable glory which nations can acquire. . . . In order to support "rational religion" a de partment of theology was authorized in Vincennes 162 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION University, but it was stipulated that "no particu lar tenets of religion " should be taught. The trus tees were instructed by the Act of 1806 "to establish an institution for the education of females" as soon as their funds should permit. But Vincennes University did not thrive, and in 1822 the State Legislature transferred the un sold land to the seminary that had been estab lished at Bloomington. The trustees of Vincennes brought suit for the restoration of the lands, and thirty years later obtained from the United States Supreme Court a decision in their favor. But the long litigation had consumed a large part of the disputed fund, and by that time the rival institu tion at Bloomington was firmly established as the University of Indiana. The Morrill Act in 1862 gave to Indiana land scrip to 390,000 acres which realized over $300,000. This was devoted to the establishment of a separate agricultural college, later named Purdue University in honor of John Purdue of La Fayette who endowed it with $150,- 000. It is now one of the largest of all State engineering schools. That the early legislators of Indiana had a complete conception of the educational theory which has been since worked out in the Western THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 163 States is shown from this clause in the constitu tion of 1816: "It shall be the duty of the Gen eral Assembly, as soon as circumstances permit, to provide by law for a general system of education, ascending in regular gradation from township schools to a state university, wherein tuition shall be gratis and equally open to all." All fines for breaches of the penal laws and "the money which shall be paid as an equivalent by persons ex empt from militia duty, except in time of war" were to be applied to the support of the county seminaries. But circumstances did not very soon permit the application of this aspiring programme, even with the aid of criminals and "slackers," and it was more than fifty years before all the gradations were in place. Illinois, the third of the States carved out of the old Indiana Territory, was slower than the other in developing her institutions of higher education, but in recent years she has splendidly atoned for earlier deficiencies. The State received a town ship in 1818 as a birthday present from the nation and inherited another township from its parent, the land district of Kaskaskia. But the Illinois legislators, for reasons best known to themselves, kept the funds from the sale of these lands in the 164 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION State treasury for nearly forty years instead of using them for the support of a college, university, or "seminary of learning." In 1857 the accumu lated funds with part of the accrued interest were turned over to the State Normal University. The University of Illinois originated in a plan for an industrial university proposed in a speech at a farmers convention at Granville in 1851 by Professor J. B. Turner, who, if not the father, was at least the furtherer of the Morrill Act. The Illinois Industrial University was established at Urbana by aid of the Morrill land scrip. The institution subsequently dropped the "Industrial" but not the industry and is now one of the most prosperous of the State Universities. In Wisconsin the federal land grants for higher education were even worse mismanaged than in Illinois, yet the State University at Madison, founded in 1848, has now some eight thousand students and has become renowned throughout the world for its active cooperation with the people and the Government of the State in the promotion of its agricultural interests and in the solution of its administrative problems. To go through the history of each of the States in turn to show how they utilized the federal land THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 165 grants would be tedious; their early mistakes and final achievements are much the same, differing chiefly in degree. But an exception must be noted in the case of Texas which, entering the union as an independent republic, retained its public lands and so was enabled to make more generous provision for its schools and university than the Federal Government had done in the other new States. The University of Texas has received grants of over two million acres. According to Huxley, "no system of public edu cation is worth the name of national unless it creates a great educational ladder, with one end in the gutter and the other in the university." Such a ladder now exists in all of the States outside the original thirteen. The ascent is practically free and in most cases open to all on equal terms with out regard to creed, race, or sex. Yet the aspiring student is not confined to this ladder, but may climb others if he prefers. The State does not fear competition and has permitted and encouraged rival institutions of all grades to be established. Private elementary and secondary schools are not so com mon in the West as in the East, but there are many independent colleges and universities in all the Western States. Though founded chiefly by the 166 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION various denominations, these institutions make no sectarian discrimination among the students and frequently not even in the faculty, and their charge for tuition is almost as low as in the State institutions. Old animosity has died down, and nowadays the denominational colleges are usually on friendly terms with the State. The State Uni versity is usually willing to concede that many of these colleges can give as good an undergraduate education as it can, and the denominational college on its part is usually willing to concede that it cannot compete with the State institutions in the facilities for technical, professional, and graduate training. So in one way or another all of the Western and Southern States, and some of the Northeastern, have established their own universities as well as normal schools and agricultural colleges, some times combined and sometimes in different places. These institutions differ widely in size and stand ing. Some are small and weak, doing work of a low order and being periodically upset by political disturbances ; others rival the largest endowed uni versities in income, numbers, and the work of their graduate and professional schools. They are much alike, however, in their general character istics. As a rule, the State Universities charge no THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT 167 tuition except perhaps a moderate fee in the pro fessional schools and for students from outside the State. They usually provide professional courses in law, medicine, engineering, and the like, but none in theology. The residence halls or dormi tories which form a prominent feature of the en dowed colleges are not so common and sometimes altogether absent in the State Universities. These institutions are responsive to the needs of the people and quick to provide new forms of voca tional training. They extend their influence widely beyond their walls and often carry on scientific, legislative, and financial investigations for the State Government. They form the crown of the public school system and admit to some de partments graduates from any reputable high school, giving equal opportunities to rich and poor, to men and women. The American State University may justly be regarded as constituting a distinct type not to be found anywhere else in the world. CHAPTER XII THE RISE OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY Where the State has bestowed education the man who accepts it must be content to accept it merely as a charity unless he re turns it to the State in full, in the shape of good citizenship. . . . Only a limited number of us can ever become scholars . . . but we can all be good citizens. We can all lead a life of action, a life of endeavor, a life that is to be judged primarily by the effort, somewhat by the result, along the lines of helping the growth of what is right and decent and generous and lofty in our several communities, in the State, in the Nation. Theodore Roosevelt. THE idea of a State University is older than the States themselves, though the institution was slow in developing and in differentiating itself as a dis tinct type. At first most of the colonial universi ties received public funds and were under govern mental control. The first constitutions of Penn sylvania, North Carolina, and Vermont, in the days of the Revolution, provided for universities. The University of Georgia was organized in 1785 and the University of Tennessee in 1794. Any of these early beginnings might have developed into the typical State University; but the honor of being 168 RISE OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY 169 called "the mother of the State Universities" was reserved for Michigan. The germ of the State University came from France, but it grew up under German influences. The revolution that severed the political bonds connecting America with the mother country also broke the thread of educational traditions, and American educators turned from their English enemies to their French friends. French began to be taught in the colleges. John Adams, coming back from Paris full of enthusiasm for French edu cational ideals, embodied them in the Massachu setts Constitution of 1780 and founded the Ameri can Academy of Arts and Sciences. Chevalier Quesnay de Beaurepaire, who came over in 1778 to fight for American independence, remained to lay the corner-stone of an Academic des Sciences et Beaux Arts des Etats-Unis d Amerique at Rich mond in 1786 under the patronage of Jefferson and many other distinguished men of Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, and France. Quesnay s academy comprised a graduate school, a museum, a press, and commissions to cooperate with the Government in the investigation of the flora and fauna of the country and in the development of its mineral resources. Nothing came of this 170 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION scheme, although the desired objects are now be ing attained in a similar way through the State Universities and the national bureaus of mining, geology, fisheries, agriculture, and ethnology. In France the constructive genius of the Ency clopedists was supplemented and actualized by the practical genius of Napoleon. The University of France as established in 1808 included all the colleges and schools of the country above the elementary. This, as we have seen, was the idea which Jefferson had in mind for the University of Virginia but was not able to carry out in its en tirety. It was the idea Jefferson was seeking to realize when he invited Dupont de Nemours to visit him at Philadelphia and Monticello and to draw up a plan of public education. 1 The idea was brought to New York by John Jay and was carried out by Alexander Hamilton in the "Uni versity of the State of New York," which corre sponds most nearly to the French cbnception of a university, as it is not a teaching body but rather the central educational office of the State. 1 Dupont s plan Sur I Education Nationale dans les Etats-Unis, published in 1800, provides for a University of North America to embrace primary and secondary schools, colleges, and profes sional schools of medicine, mining, social science, law, and higher mathematics. RISE OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY 171 But of all the seeds from the French tree wafted across the Atlantic that which fell in the forests of Michigan brought forth most abundantly. There were only five or six thousand people, French and English, scattered over this vast territory when in 1817 the Acting Governor and two Supreme Court Judges authorized the establishment of a system of education modeled after Napoleon s University of France. Judge Woodward drew up the plan for it and invented the nomenclature. It was to be called "The Catholepistemiad or University of Michigania." There were to be thirteen didaxia or professorships, to wit: the didaxia of Catholepis- temia (universal science), of Anthropoglossica (languages and literatures), of Mathematica, of Physiognostica (natural history), of Physiosophica (physics), of Astronomia, of Chymia, of latrica (medicine), of (Economica (economics), of Ethica, of Polemitactica (military tactics), of Diegetica (history), and of Ennceica (philosophy and reli gion) . This institution, according to the custom of the time, was to be supported by lotteries as well as by public taxation. Instruction was to be free to those not having adequate means . The Catho lepistemiad" or university was to maintain branch schools or academies in various parts of the territory 172 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION and some of these were actually established. The delicate question of the relations of the rival races and religions was neatly adjusted by giving seven of the chairs to the Reverend John Mon- teith, a Scotch Presbyterian minister of Detroit, and the other six to Father Gabriel Richard, a French Catholic priest. The act of 1821 relieved the institution of its fantastic nomenclature and rigid constitution and it seemed likely to lapse into a college of the con ventional type. But in the thirties a wave of Ger man influence swept over America and started what is known as "the educational renaissance." The French influence had prevailed for about half a century but accomplished very little except to start the Universities of Virginia, New York, and Michigan. The German influence lasted a century and was much more powerful; in the East it trans formed the colleges into universities and in the West it shaped the State Universities and the school system connected with them. The stream of American graduates to German universities which continued without cessation up to the Great War may be said to have started in 1815 when George Ticknor went to Gottingen. Ticknor was a Dartmouth man living in Boston when the read- RISE OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY 173 ing of Madame de StaeTs work on Germany opened his eyes to the opportunities afforded by the uni versities of that country, and he determined to go there. But how could he learn the language? There were few German books to be had in Massa chusetts, and he could not even find a native Ger man competent to instruct him. He heard that there was a German dictionary in New Hampshire and sent for it. With such equipment he went to Gottingen. He was followed by Edward Everett, who found the facilities there far superior to those of Oxford and Cambridge and wrote back to Har vard to send on a scholar. In response to this sug gestion the university sent George Bancroft. Dr. J. G. Cogswell, who went to Gottingen in 1815, also visited the school of Pestalozzi at Yverdun and the school of Fellenberg at Hofwyl, and when he came home he started a school on their prin ciples at Round Hill near Northampton, Mas sachusetts. Bancroft, finding that his alma mater, Harvard, would not allow him to lecture on his tory although he had that privilege at Gottingen and Berlin, joined Cogswell in launching the Round Hill School, which ran for sixteen years. Ticknor on his return took a chair at Harvard and tried to introduce the German elective system, but 174 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION the time was not yet ripe and nobody listened to him. As a result of his persistency some slight freedom in the choice of studies was allowed to the students, but many years passed before Harvard was made completely elective. Jefferson, on the other hand, was much taken with Ticknor s ideas and tried to get him to come to the University of Virginia, where the elective system was established at the start. Up to 1850 about a hundred Americans had studied at German universities, 1 among them Henry W. Longfellow, John Lothrop Motley, and Theodore Dwight Woolsey, President of Yale. After that date there was a rapid increase in the numbers of American students at German universi ties, where they were more hospitably received than in the British universities and were provided with better opportunities for graduate study and research. The influence of German literature and philosophy upon New England thought was strong, but the New England colleges were too set in their ways to be radically reshaped. In the West the State Universities were young when the German 1 The complete list is published in B. A. Hinsdale s "Notes on the History of Foreign Influences upon Education in the United States" in the Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1898. See also Thwing s History of Higher Education in America, p. 320. RISE OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY 175 influence began to prevail, and they were largely molded by it. The chief instrumentality was the report on the Prussian school system made by Victor Cousin to the French Minister of Public Instruction in 1837. This report Sir William Hamilton took as the basis of his plea for university reform in Great Britain, but he failed to accom plish his purpose. At a later day the efforts of Matthew Arnold to introduce German ideas into English schools likewise proved ineffectual. But in America, through the medium of Horace Mann, President Tappan of Michigan, President Way- land of Brown, W. T. Harris, the Commissioner of Education, President White of Cornell, and others, the German system helped to effect a radical trans formation of the schools and colleges in the greater part of the United States. Let us return, for a concrete illustration, to the University of Michigan. The Act of 1837 com pletely reorganized the public school system on the Prussian plan, coordinated elementary, secondary, and university education, and brought it under governmental control. It stipulated that the fee for admission to the University should never exceed ten dollars and that no tuition should be charged to Michigan students. High schools and 176 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION minor colleges, corresponding to the German gymnasia, were to be established as branches of the University in various parts of the State, and there were to be institutions for the education of women, for the training of teachers, and for instruction in agriculture. Under th:s system a normal school on the Prussian plan was opened at Ypsilanti in 1850, following in this field Massachusetts (1839) and New York (1844). The agricultural college founded at Lansing in 1857 was the first of its kind in this country. Today every State has one or more of these institutions. But in one respect the University of Michigan, like the University of Virginia, followed the Ger- man model too closely: it had no president. The rectoral plan, though apparently the more demo cratic, does not seem to work in America, and it was not until 1851, when the University of Mich igan got a president and a somewhat autocratic one that the institution became securely pros perous. Henry P. Tappan left the chair of philoso phy in the College of the City of New York to accept the call to Michigan because he wanted a chance to work out the ideas he had acquired in Germany. The first catalogue issued under his administration contains the announcement of bold RISE OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY 177 departures in the direction of freedom of choice and graduate study: An institution cannot deserve the name of a university which does not aim in all the material of learning, in the professorships it establishes, and in the whole scope of its provisions, to make it possible for every student to study what he pleases and to any extent he pleases. Nor can it be regarded as consistent with the spirit of a free country to deny to its citizens the possibilities of the highest knowledge. To appreciate the daring of this step it must be remembered that at that time Harvard had only three graduate students and that the first graduate school in America had been started at Yale in 1847, only five years before. Forty-one years after President Tappan had declared that the people had a right to free graduate instruction at public expense we find President Eliot of Harvard argu ing against State support of higher education of any sort. 1 That this is the prevailing opinion in the East today is shown by the fact that the State Universities are mostly confined to the West. President Tappan s proposed reforms were too ambitious for complete accomplishment; but he 1 In the famous debate before the National Educational Asso ciation in 1893 when John W. Hoyt urged a national university. 178 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION introduced lectures and research work and ex tended the elective system which had been started at Michigan in 1837. The State Legislature in 1851 passed an act requiring the regents of the University to provide instruction for those who did not want to take the ancient languages. This was carried out by establishing a modern course leading to the degree of Bachelor of Science, which had been granted for the first time at the Law rence Scientific School of Harvard the year before. The German seminar method of teaching history was later adopted at Michigan University by Charles Kendall Adams and Andrew D. White, both afterwards presidents of Cornell University. The plan for the coordination of the high schools and university, though foreshadowed in the scheme of 1817, was not worked out until 1870. In their present form the high schools are independent of the universities as far as administration is con cerned and are not supported by them; but the high schools are inspected by university officers and the diplomas of accredited schools are ac cepted in lieu of entrance examinations. The final examinations of the accredited high schools thus correspond to the Abiturientenexamen of Germany and the passage to the university is made as easy RISE OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY 179 and natural as the passage from the seventh to the eighth grade. The diploma system has been adopted by all the State Universities and has ex tended to all the endowed colleges except a few in the East. The admission of women remains as one other step to be considered in the evolution of the State University system. This innovation, like other educational reforms, was instigated by the people rather than by the authorities. As early as 1858 the Michigan Legislature had declared that the high objects for which the university was organized could never be fully attained until women were admitted, but it was not until 1870 that the regents decided that no person of requisite literary and moral qualifications should be excluded from the State University. By that time the Universities of Iowa, Kansas, Indiana, and Minnesota were co educational; those of Illinois, California, and Missouri adopted the system in the same year as Michigan. All the State Universities except those of Georgia, Florida, and Virginia are now co educational. Ezra Cornell, in accordance with his Quaker principles, was anxious to give equal privi leges to women in the university that he founded in 1865, but for a time he was overruled, and it 180 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION was not until 1872 that coeducation was intro duced there by President White, formerly of the University of Michigan. The State Universities and other institutions have imitated one another until now they are in most respects very much alike. Nor can any sharp distinction be drawn between them on the grounds that one class is supported by the State and the other by endowments and tuition. Cor nell University, for instance, receives the Federal and State funds for agriculture and mechanic arts and is a State University in type though on a pri vate foundation. The University of Michigan, which is here used as a type of the State Univer sity, did not receive a penny from the State until 1867, fifty years after its foundation. On the other hand, the appropriations of the General Court of Massachusetts to Harvard College from its founding in 1636 to 1786 reached a total of $115,797, an amount equal to half a million dollars at the present time. CHAPTER CATHOLIC EDUCATION IN AMERICA The greatest religious fact in the United States today is the Catholic School System, maintained without any aid except from the people who love it. Archbishop Spalding. A SEPARATE chapter in this survey of American education must be devoted to the training carried on by the Roman Catholic Church, for its history has been distinct and its course of development in one respect the opposite from that of the rest of the country. Most American colleges were started under the auspices of some particular religious de nomination. Those that were Protestant, how ever, have in the majority of cases become free from church control and usually retain little to distinguish them from those of other sects or from government institutions. The elementary and secondary education of Protestant children is now almost wholly carried on by public schools or by private institutions having no sectarian affiliations. But while this change has taken place the Roman 181 182 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION Catholics have been developing in the last fifty years an independent school system of their own, entirely under ecclesiastical control and covering all grades from the kindergarten to the university and professional schools. The Catholic population of the United States, scanty at first, has been largely increased by annexation and by immigration. When Father Jogues, the illustrious French Jesuit of Canada, visited Manhattan Island in 1644, he found only two Catholics an Irishman and a Portuguese woman. In 1789, when the hierarchy was con stituted in the United States by the consecration of the Right Reverend John Carroll as Bishop of the See of Baltimore, there were about 15,800 Catho lics in Maryland, 7,000 in Pennsylvania, and a few thousand scattered among the other Sta/tes. But the territories subsequently annexed Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Califor nia, Porto Rico, and the Philippines were Cath olic in so far as they had been settled or christian ized at all. Of the immigrants who poured into the country in a swelling stream up to the out break of the Great War the Irish, Germans, Poles, Italians, Czechs, Croats, and Lithuanians were largely Catholic. In 1919, according to the CATHOLIC EDUCATION IN AMERICA 183 Official Catholic Directory, the Catholic popu lation of the United States numbered 17,549,324. Catholic education in America antedates Protes tant. Before schools were opened in New Eng land, the Franciscans had missions in Florida and New Mexico. The Florida church dates back to 1565, almost to the time of the Council of Trent. By 1634 there were 35 Franciscan priests conduct ing 44 missions, with 30,000 Indian converts, some of whom were taught reading and writing. There is some record of a classical school for Spanish children at St. Augustine as early as 1606. But the Apa- lachees went on the warpath in 1703 and wiped out the missions. In 1736 Bishop Tejada reopened the seminary at St. Augustine, but again there came Indian wars, and at the time when Florida was annexed by the United States there was little left of the Catholic colony. The Indians of New Mexico were of a more tractable type than those in Florida. They were already settled in pueblos when the white man entered and had developed simple forms of agri culture and domestic arts. With the expedition of Don Juan de Onate in 1598 into what is now the State of New Mexico went several Franciscan friars. Others followed, settling in the pueblos 184 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION and teaching the natives to sing and to pray and to work. Under such direction they developed not a little skill at brickmaking and carpentry, and built their own churches with curiously carved roofs and painted walls. By 1630 missions had been estab lished in 90 pueblos comprising a population of 60,000. There were fifty Franciscans in New Mexico, and many of their convents had schools attached where the sacristan of the church served as schoolmaster. But in 1680 the Indians re volted, determined to root out the Spanish civili zation. They massacred the friars and demolished the churches and schools. Ten years later there was not a Spaniard left within the limits of New Mexico* In the north the Catholic missionaries were no less courageous and enterprising. As early as 1635 the Jesuits at Quebec had founded a college which the great Bishop Laval a few years later declared to be almost the equal of similar institutions in France. Soon other schools followed, among which the Ursuline convent was particularly note worthy for devotion and efficiency. Laval sought to civilize the Indians by educating their children with those of the French. With this end in view he founded the Quebec Seminary in 1663. Besides CATHOLIC EDUCATION IN AMERICA 185 the Jesuit priests and the Ursuline nuns, there were the Sulpicians and the Recollets to care for the spiritual welfare and education of the northern colonists. It is interesting to note that at the time when Harvard was being established by Protes tants in New England, the foundations of Laval University were being laid by Catholics at Quebec. Out of these two institutions, so founded and so courageously nurtured, there grew up in time two radically different systems of education, both of far-reaching influence in the later development of the two countries. In California the Franciscans were more suc cessful than in Florida because they adopted the Jesuit system of segregation. So long as the In dian converts remained in contact with the hea then population of their native villages they could not be kept constant to the requirements of the new life, for the power of the medicine man counteracted the persuasion of the priest. The Jesuits of Paraguay, in order to overcome the evil influence of the environment, formed separate industrial colonies where they could train the Indians under their exclusive guidance and control. In Lower California the Jesuits had started mission work as early as 1697, but in 1767, when 186 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION Charles III ordered the expulsion of the Jesuits from all the Spanish dominions, they were re placed by Franciscan friars. The Franciscans in their turn relinquished the peninsula to the Do minicans and entered upon the new field of Upper California, where Father Junipero Serra estab lished a mission at San Diego in 1769. The mis sions so multiplied and prospered that at the time of their suppression in 1834 there was a chain of them stretching north for 700 miles and sheltering more than 30,000 converts. Under direction of the padres the Indians constructed the mission buildings and furniture now so much admired and imitated. In these Catholic colonies the Indian children and converts were taught to recite in their own tongues the prayers, creeds, and command ments, and what was much more difficult they were taught to work. Whatever their incli nations may have been, the Indians worked to such good effect that ere long these little communities grew wealthy. The annual output of cattle and crops at the time the missions were seized by the State was worth more than $2,000,000. At first the friars, being more anxious to make Christians than Spaniards out of the Indians, confined their instruction to the native languages CATHOLIC EDUCATION IN AMERICA 187 and paid little attention to orders issued by Gov ernor Borica in 1795 that they teach Spanish exclusively in the missions. Borica therefore de termined to start a public school system independ ent of the clergy. He opened the first of these schools in the public granary at San Jose with a retired sergeant as schoolmaster. 1 It was not easy, however, to find teachers, for at that time the Spanish population of California numbered less than a thousand souls, and few of the soldiers could read or write. When Mexico threw off the Spanish yoke, the missions in California as well as in Mexico were declared secularized. San Miguel, the last of the California missions, was sold out by the last of the governors on July 4, 1846, only three days before the American flag was raised over Monterey. "The flag of the United States appeared ten years too late to save the mission property from the rapacity of unscrupulous greed and the Indians from dispersion. What remained was restored to the Church by order of the United States Courts." 2 The missions in the Californias had been started 1 Bancroft s History of California, vol. i, p. 643. 2 Catholic Educational Work in Early California, by the Reverend Zephyrin Engelhardt, O. F. M., in Proceedings of the Catholic Educational Association (1918). I 188 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION and continuously aided by a financial foundation known as the Pious Fund, for which the Jesuits had collected the first contributions in 1697. When Mexico became independent, however, its Government appropriated the Pious Fund, which then amounted to about two million dollars, and promised to pay interest at six per cent. But after Upper California was taken over by the United States, Mexico refused to pay anything on that part of the fund which belonged by right to the Church in Upper California. For fifty years the United States pressed this claim against Mexico and finally referred it to the Permanent Court of Ar bitration at The Hague, which in 1902 decided in favor of the United States. Mexico was ordered by the court to pay annually $43,050.99 and interest in arrears to the amount of $1,420,682.67. In New Orleans under French rule elementary education was begun by Father Cecil, a Capuchin, who opened a parish school for boys in 1722, and five years later ten Ursuline Sisters started a con vent school for girls. The transfer of the Louisi ana Territory to the United States in 1804 excited alarm in the minds of the Sisters, especially since Jefferson was supposed to share the political and religious views of the French revolutionists. But CATHOLIC EDUCATION IN AMERICA 189 when the Mother Superior wrote to President Jef ferson to ask protection, she received the following reassuring reply: "Whatever diversity of shade may appear in the religious opinions of our fellow citizens, the charitable objects of your Institution cannot be indifferent to any; and its furtherance of the wholesome purposes of society by training up its younger members in the way they should go. can not fail to insure it the patronage of the Government it is under. Be assured it will meet with all the protection my office can give it." These schools established in the Spanish and French possessions for the Indians or for the children of the colonists were, however, quite apart from the main stream of Catholic education. This had its real origin in Maryland. With the first colonists sent out by Lord Baltimore in 1634 came Father Andrew White, a learned Jesuit who set himself to study the Indian language and prepared a grammar and catechism. But after the Clai- borne-Ingle rebellion ten years later the Jesuits were deported in chains. A school which had been started in 1640 among the Catholics of Newtown, Maryland, was in 1653 endowed by the will of Edward Cotton, a rich planter, with all his "female Cattle and their 190 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION Increase for Ever" and with "one thousand pounds Weight of good sound Merchantable leaf Tobacco and Cask." This school was, in 1677, developed into a Jesuit "school for humanities" in order "to bring those regions, which foreigners have unjustly called ferocious, to a higher state of virtue and civilization." The Jesuits also opened a school in New York City in 1684 near the corner of Broadway and Wall Street, or the site of Trinity Church. A few years later these schools at New York and Newtown were suppressed. This period of persecution lasted a century until the overthrow of British rule. In 1704 a law was passed in Mary land providing that if any persons professing to be of the Church of Rome should keep school, or take upon themselves the education, government, or boarding of youth, at any place in the province, upon conviction, such offenders should be trans ported to England to undergo the penalties pro vided there by Statutes 11 and 12, William III, "for the further preventing the growth of Popery." Rich Catholics nevertheless tried to maintain the faith in their families by the sub rosa employ ment of Jesuit tutors although this subjected them to a fine of 40 shillings a day and by send ing their sons abroad under aliases to the Belgian CATHOLIC EDUCATION IN AMERICA 191 College of St. Omer, although this made them liable to a penalty of 500 pounds. Even the im portation of an "Irish Papist servant" involved a duty of 40 shillings which went to the support of schools exclusively under the control of the Church of England. In 1706 the Jesuits founded a preparatory school at Bohemia Manor, in the most remote corner of Maryland, close to the Pennsylvania line. This institution developed into a classical college, but it was closed in 1765 and today its very site is in question. Yet among the pupils enrolled in this wilderness school were "Jacky" Carroll, after wards Archbishop of Baltimore, and his cousin, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, whom every school boy knows as the best penman among the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The Revolution inaugurated a new era of reli gious freedom. John Carroll, who had become prefect of the Jesuit College of Bruges, returned to the United States and became in 1789 the first bishop of the Roman Catholic Church in America. In 1791 he founded Georgetown College, which became the leading Jesuit university of the United States. The second Catholic college in America was Mount St. Mary s at Emmitsburg, Maryland, 192 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION which was founded by the Sulpicians in 1808. America has been the gainer by every outburst of intolerance in Europe and has often found its most valuable men among those who were thought unfit to live in their native land. The outcast dissenters of England founded New England. The Hugue nots from France have given to America many of her foremost men of science. So likewise, when the Catholic churches and schools were suppressed by the French Revolution, the expelled clergy gave a great impetus to Catholic education in the United States. The Society of St. Sulpice, which had been founded in Paris in 1642 for the education of ecclesiastics, was among the victims of the French Revolution. Four of the Sulpicians came to Balti more in 1791. One of them, Father Flaget, later became the first bishop in Kentucky. Another, Father Richard, went to Detroit, where he set up the first press there, printed the first newspaper, and took part in the founding of the University of Michigan, the " Catholepistemiad " already described. A third, the Reverend William Du- bourg, became president of Georgetown Academy, founded St. Mary s Seminary at Baltimore, and, when he became Bishop of Louisiana in 1815 CATHOLIC EDUCATION IN AMERICA 193 brought over six religious orders for pioneer educational work west of the Mississippi. St. Mary s, Baltimore, was at first a failure. In 1791 it started with five students but in a few years the attendance fell to none. When Napo leon restored the Church, Father Emery, Supe rior General of the Sulpicians, determined to call all the fathers back to France. But Bishop Carroll begged him to allow them to remain. The ques tion was therefore referred to Pope Pius VII. The Pope in his wisdom said to Father Emery: "My son, let that seminary remain. It will bear fruit in its own time." The Pope s faith was eventu ally fulfilled, for St. Mary s became the largest and most influential of Catholic seminaries and by 1910 had supplied over 1800 priests and 30 bishops to the Church in America. The founder of St. Mary s, Father Dubourg, while on a visit to New York met Mrs. Elizabeth Ann Seton, a widow who had been converted to Catholicism and was zealous for service in her new faith. Father Dubourg induced her to come to Maryland to start a school for girls. Joined by other pious women, she formed in 1809 an organization of Sisters of Char ity on a farm near Emmitsburg. Later on it was decided to affiliate with the French Sisters of 13 194 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. The order grew rapidly and by 1850 had established fifty-eight schools in various States. The Sisters of the Visitation, another widespread teaching order of women, started in America at about the same time and place. A young Irish lady, Miss Alice Lalor, came with two widows to Georgetown in 1799 at the invitation of Father Neale, President of Georgetown College, to open a school for girls which subsequently developed into a convent and academy of the Visitation Order of St. Francis de Sales. Next to Maryland, Pennsylvania had the largest Catholic population in colonial days, for the Quak ers were more tolerant than the Episcopalians or the Puritans. While the Catholics met with per secution in Maryland, they found full religious freedom and even sympathy on the Pennsylvania side of the line. Protestants aided in building Father Schneider s first church at Goshenhoppen and sent their children to the school that he opened in 1741 in a two-story frame house. It was indeed an opportunity not to be neglected, for there was no other school in the settlement and it is not every child who can learn his A B C s from a former Rector Magnificus of Heidelberg University, as CATHOLIC EDUCATION IN AMERICA 195 was the Reverend Theodore Schneider. In Phila delphia in 1781 St, Mary s parish bought an old Quaker schoolhouse and opened therein the mother school of all the Catholic parochial schools in the English-speaking States. One of the four French Sulpicians who came to Baltimore in 1791 was Stephen Theodore Badin, the first priest to be ordained within the thirteen original States. He was sent immediately after ward to the "dark and bloody ground" of Ken tucky, although he was only twenty-five years old and knew but a few words of English. Here he labored alone for fourteen years, an austere and indefatigable priest, living largely in the saddle as he visited the widely scattered families. He was joined in 1806 by the saintly Father Nerinckx who had been educated at the Belgian universities of Louvain and Malines and had been driven out by the Revolution. Father Nerinckx was a true mystic from the Land of Mystics but withal practi cal, and he found in the Kentucky wilderness a fertile field. He was strong enough to roll logs for his own churches and to master a bully single- handed. He and Father Badin built at Bardstown the log cabin, sixteen feet square, which served in 1811 as the episcopal palace for the reception of 196 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION Bishop Flaget, whose see embraced the whole northwestern territory of the United States al though it contained only a thousand Catholic families. In 1812 Father Nerinckx got together a group of women willing to devote their lives to the Christian training of girls and he organized them at Little Loretto as "The Society of the Friends of Mary Sorrowing at the Foot of the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ." The order is commonly known as the "Sisters of Loretto," from the Santa Casa or Holy House in Nazareth where the Virgin Mary was born and which, according to tradition, had been carried away by angels in 1291 and placed first in Dalmatia and later at Loretto, Italy. Miss Anne Rhodes, the first superioress of the com munity, provided the funds for its establishment by the donation of a slave who was sold by Father Nerinckx for $450. The Lorettines, inspired by the zeal of their founder, increased their numbers and colonized until within a dozen years they had six schools containing 250 girls. Two other teaching communities of women origi nated in Kentucky at this time. Father David, a Sulpician who came with Bishop Flaget, organized the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth near Bards- town. The Dominican Father Wilson organized CATHOLIC EDUCATION IN AMERICA 197 the Sisters of St. Dominic at St. Rose. These three communities spread rapidly through Kentucky, Missouri, and Arkansas. As the country became more settled, they established convent schools for girls in other Western States. In New York up to 1822 the Catholic schools of the parishes of St. Peter s and St. Patrick s re ceived, like the schools of other denominations, a part of the public school funds. After that the Public School Society took charge of the distribu tion of the funds and stopped the appropriation to sectarian schools. In 1840 Bishop Hughes of New York made a hard fight for a share in the public funds, but he was beaten. He then declared that "the days have come and the place in which the school is more necessary than the church" and set out to establish an independent school system under church control. In this he was so successful that, before his death, nearly every church in New York had been provided with a parish school. These were the days of the "no Popery" agi tation when "Native Americans" and Irish fought in the streets of New York and Philadelphia over the relative merits of the Douay and King James s versions of the Bible, although many of the bel ligerents doubtless could not have told the two 198 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION books apart. The Catholics objected to the cus tom of holding devotional exercises in the Protes tant form at the opening of school sessions. The Protestants, on the other hand, were alarmed at the rapid influx of large numbers of Irish and Ger man Catholics and feared the overthrow of the free public school system which was their country s pride. The outcome of the conflict was a clean-cut separation of public and sectarian schools. Bible- reading, hymns, and prayers have been almost altogether eliminated from the public schools. This exclusion, however, does not make the schools acceptable to the Catholics and Lutherans who believe that religious training cannot safely be di vorced from secular education. Wherever possible, therefore, they have established their own schools. The First Provincial Council of Baltimore de clared in 1829 : "We deem it entirely necessary that schools should be established, in which the young, while they be taught letters, should also be taught the principles of faith and morals." But this and subsequent recommendations had no very marked effect, and Catholic schools were not common until after 1884, when the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore ordered a parochial school to be erected near each church within two years and threatened CATHOLIC EDUCATION IN AMERICA 199 with removal any priest who neglected this com mand. The Council further decreed that "all Catholic parents are bound to send their children to the parochial schools, unless either at home or in other Catholic schools they may sufficiently and evidently provide for the Christian education of their children or unless it be lawful to send them to other schools on account of a sufficient cause ap proved by the bishop and with opportune cautions and remedies." The Pastoral Letter of the Third Plenary Coun cil declared that "the public school system is controlled absolutely by Protestants, conducted on Protestant principles and made an instrument for debauching the faith of Catholic children who enter the walls of state institutions." Many Catholics of that period went so far as to deny the right of the State to any share in education. They asserted, for instance, that "education is none of the state s business," and referred to "this infidel, dishonest, oppressive and un-American system of state education." They declared that "education itself is the business of the spiritual society alone, not of secular society. The instruction of children and youth is included in the Sacrament of Orders 1 American Catholic Quarterly, April, 1884, p. 245. 200 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION and the State usurps the functions of the spiritual society when it turns educator." 1 But this extreme view received a heavy blow in 1891 from the Reverend Thomas Bouquillon, Professor of Moral Theology in the Catholic Uni versity at Washington, in a pamphlet entitled Education: To Whom Does It Belong? In this he established by abundant citations from the church authorities themselves that "education belongs to individuals isolated and collected, to the family, to the state, to the church: to these four together, to none of them exclusively. Such is the theoreti cal doctrine. The practical application of it de mands the combination, more or less harmonious, of these four interested parties in the work of the schools." Though Dr. Bouquillon s contention that the State had some rights in education raised a storm of opposition from more rigorous Catholics, his view gradually gained ground. In consequence the earlier attitude of intolerance and hostility toward the public school has become much amelio rated. In spite of the rapid growth of the parish school system, about half of the Catholic children now attend the public schools, and sometimes more The Tablet; quoted in Putnam s Magazine, December, 1869. CATHOLIC EDUCATION IN AMERICA 201 than half of the teachers in the public schools are Catholic women. In one of our great cities the percentage of Catholic teachers has risen as high as 85 per cent. x Two notable attempts known as the "Pough- keepsie Plan" and the "Faribault Plan" have been made to throw part of the burden of the sup port of the Catholic schools upon the State. At Poughkeepsie, New York, the city school board in 1873 took over two Catholic schools for a nominal rental and employed the same nuns as teachers. The arrangement lasted till 1899, when it was decided to be unconstitutional. In 1891 a similar plan, devised by Archbishop Ireland, was put into effect at Faribault and Stillwater, Minnesota. The parish school buildings were leased for a year to the state authorities. The same teachers, belonging to the order of St. Dominic, were retained and received $50 a month from the public school board in place of their former small compensation. After hear ing mass in the parish church, the children were marched into the classrooms. After school closed in the afternoon they were instructed in the cate chism for one hour. No text-books to which the Archbishop objected were to be used. 1 Proceedings, Catholic Educational Association (1917), p. 234. 202 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION But the Faribault attempt at compromise was attacked from both the Protestant and Catholic sides as virtual surrender to the opposition. The German Catholic press was virulent in its criticism of Archbishop Ireland, I and his opponents carried the question up to Rome. The decision, Tolerari potest, of the Pope and Propaganda, delivered on April 21, 1892, declared that, "while the decrees of the Baltimore Councils on parochial schools are maintained in full vigor, the arrangement entered into by the Most Reverend John Ireland as to the schools of Faribault and Stillwater, all things con sidered, can be tolerated." This decision gave little satisfaction to either party and did not en courage the continuation of such efforts to combine the parochial and public school systems. After the two organizations agreed to keep apart they got on better together. The habit of the sisterhoods is now commonly seen on the campus of State Universities or institutions of Protestant foundation, and the convent schools contain many girls from Protestant or Hebrew families. The Cath olic high schools voluntarily submit to inspection 1 For instance the Buffalo Christliche Welt of October 9, 1891, said: "If the Devil and his grandmother can enjoy themselves at all they must have danced a real Irish jig when the parochial school at Faribault was given over to the State." CATHOLIC EDUCATION IN AMERICA 203 from the State University authorities in order to qualify as accredited schools which have the privilege of sending their graduates to the State Universities without examination at entrance. About half of the graduates of Catholic high schools who enter college go to non-Catholic insti tutions. About two-thirds of the Catholic girls who seek secondary education are in non-Catholic institutions. 1 The official Catholic Directory for 1919 reports 5788 parish schools with 1,633,599 children attending. There are 215 Catholic col leges for boys and 674 academies for girls. But in considering these figures it is necessary to note that "many of these so-called colleges have never had a single college student" and only 84 have any students above the high school grade. 2 The rivalry between the different dioceses and teaching orders has had the same effect as the rivalry be tween the different towns and Protestant sects in leading to an excessive multiplication of weak and inadequate colleges. The efforts of Catholic educators are now be ing directed toward raising the standard of their 1 Burns, Catholic Education, 1917. 2 Reverend W. J. Bergin in Proceedings of the Catholic Educa tional Association, 1917. p. 62. 204 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION institutions to make them true to their name and better able to meet the demands of modern life. In this movement the Catholic University of America at Washington has taken a leading part. This institution was established in 1887 by Pope Leo XIII in the Apostolic Letter Magni nobis gaudii and includes a School of Science with en gineering courses, as well as Schools of Sacred, Philosophical, and Social Sciences. Located near it and affiliated with it are houses of the Paulist Fathers, Marists, Franciscans, Sulpicians, Domin icans, and other orders. The University conducts a summer school for Catholic women teachers and corrects the examination papers of the 160 Catholic high schools accepting its standard curriculum. In establishing and supporting its independent educational system from the primary school to the graduate university, the Catholic Church has had the advantage of being able to command the serv ices of some forty thousand men and women of religious orders who devote themselves to teaching on less than half the salary of public school teachers. Nine-tenths of the teachers in the Catholic schools and colleges belong to religious orders or institutes. The Jesuits have the most colleges, the Benedictines CATHOLIC EDUCATION IN AMERICA 205 next, and the Christian Brothers third. The last named, the Institute of Brothers of the Chris tian Schools, is a society of teachers not taking Holy Orders, founded at Rheims in 1680 by St. Jean Baptiste de La Salle. In order not to come into competition with the Jesuits the Christian Brothers were forbidden to teach Latin. This restricted them to a less fashionable and less profit able field, but the whirligig of time has tended to reverse the advantage, for today in the United States classical education is less in demand than English and engineering courses. The segregation of the sexes above the elemen tary grades is a feature of Catholic education that distinguishes it from the prevailing American practice. The Reverend Francis Cassilly, S. J., of St. Xavier College, Cincinnati, says 1 : "Co education and female teaching in boys high schools are radically wrong from a pedagogical, a civil, and a religious standpoint." An important field of the Catholic schools in the past has been in the education of the children of immigrants, and for this reason the instruction has often been given in foreign tongues and by 1 Bulletin Catholic Educational Association, February, 1912, p. 30. 206 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION European teachers. But the Great War, by slack ening the tide of immigration and accelerating the process of Americanization, has tended to obliterate this characteristic of Catholic education CHAPTER XIV THE RISE OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION We believe that in the schools of applied science and technology as they are carried on today in the United States, involving the thorough and most scholarly study of principles directed imme diately upon useful arts, and rising, in their higher grades, into original investigation and research, is to be found almost the per fection of education for young men. Francis A. Walker. AGRICULTURE and fishing were at first the principal industries of the American colonies, and the mother country discouraged rather than favored efforts to establish others. American enterprise was re stricted by the navigation and trade laws enacted early in the reign of Charles II and supplemented by later measures, and it was also limited by re strictions on the right to manufacture freely. The iron and beaver-hat industries, if not destroyed by British legislation, were held down within narrow limits. To restrictions on colonial trade and in dustry were added irritating taxation and prohibi tions on paper money. It was such arbitrary in terference with their economic independence that 207 208 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION led the colonists to turn to the idea of political independence. Besides the artificial and legislative restrictions imposed upon manufactures and commerce by the mother country, the natural impediments in the way of establishing industries in a new land were often insurmountable. Resources were undevel oped, and the population was scanty and scattered. Skilled mechanics were hard to get, even when there was capital to employ them. Colonists who possessed some degree of knowledge of industrial processes had little chance to exercise their tech nical ability and so to transmit it to the next generation. It was because the ministers of New England were appalled by the thought that their flocks would be left to an unlettered ministry that they established colleges for the education of their suc cessors. It was also perceived that the younger generation was likely to grow up idle and ignorant for lack of training in the trades. The first public school law, the Massachusetts Ordinance of 1642, deals with the training of children "in learning and labor." It insists that they be taught " to read and understand the principles of religion and the capi tal laws of this country," and it also stipulates that THE RISE OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION 209 they be provided with hemp and flax and "the tools and implements for working out the same." The early educational laws of the other colonies also lay stress upon the importance of training in the crafts, but all relied, as was the custom in Eng land, upon the apprentice system to carry it out. Where the educational needs of the apprentice conflicted with the financial interests of the master, however, the latter were likely to receive first con sideration. For the master the educational system provided no substitute. The world was slow to bridge the gap between pure science and applied science, and there were few who realized in the eighteenth century that the university professor might teach the crafts without lowering his dignity. Jefferson was one of the few. His ambitious design for a State University included "a school of tech nical philosophy" with a very comprehensive kind of university extension. Jefferson believed that: To such a school will come the mariner, carpenter, shipwright, pump maker, clock maker, mechanist, op tician, metallurgist, founder, cutler, druggist, brewer, vinter, distiller, dyer, painter, bleacher, soap maker, tanner, powder maker, salt maker, glass maker to learn as much as shall be necessary to pursue their art understandingly of the sciences of geometry, mechan ics, statics, hydrostatics, hydraulics, hydrodynamics, 210 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION navigation, astronomy, geography, optics, pneumatics, acoustics, physics, chemistry, natural history, botany, mineralogy, and pharmacy. But Jefferson did not live to see such a school es tablished, and indeed it would be hard to find one even today which the mariner, the carpenter, and their kind could attend with the assurance of finding the needed instruction. For professor of agriculture in the university of which he was the founder or, as he preferred to be called, the "father," Jefferson picked out Arthur Young. It was a pity that he could not get this excellent man to serve, for the observant author of Travels in France and Annals of Agriculture might have done a great deal for the American farmer. The sage of Monticello also tried to start the sys tematic acclimatization of useful plants, and during the last twenty-three years of his life he regularly received from his friend Thonin, superintendent of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, a box of exotic seeds which he distributed to various public and private gardens. Both Jefferson and Franklin during their resi dence in France became imbued with the doctrines of the physiocratic school, which held that agricul ture was the only real productive industry and that THE RISE OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION 211 manufacture and commerce were of secondary importance to a nation. Franklin believed that sciences could be best learned by practicing them. Accordingly, in his project for the "Publick Academy" in Philadelphia, he suggested the importance of field-work in agriculture: While they are reading natural history, might not a little gardening, planting, grafting and inoculating be taught and practiced; and now and then excur sions made to the neighboring plantations of the best farmers, their methods observed and reasoned upon for the information of youth; the improvement of agriculture being useful to all, and skill in it no disparagement to any? Notwithstanding the diffident way in which Frank lin introduces this revolutionary suggestion, we may infer that he was quite positive about its value and very determined to put it through, for in his Autobiography he has told us why he found it politic to modify the dogmatic manner of his youth and to state a proposal tentatively in order to secure its acceptance. Franklin in his Academy at Philadelphia and Jefferson in the University of Virginia tried to attract public attention to industrial and especially agricultural education* but both failed. Other men of foresight renewed the effort. In 1819 Simeon 212 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION DeWitt, who was for fifty years Surveyor General of New York State, published a pamphlet entitled Considerations on the Necessity of Establishing an Agricultural College and having more of the Children of Wealthy Citizens educated for the Profession of Farming, in which he puts the situation clearly: There are now thousands of wealthy citizens in this state who do not know what to do with their sons. In the first place, without any determinate object in view, they give them a liberal education, or rather, they send them for four years to a college to obtain the reputation of having a graduate s diploma, and so much instruction in the dead languages and the ordi nary sciences as they are compelled or disposed to at tend to; after that there are only three professions from which ordinarily they are to choose their means of living and rising into consequence law, physic, and divinity; but so great are the numbers of young gentlemen destined for these professions, that their prospects are truly dismal; but what other provision can their fathers make for them? Turn them to some mechanic employment? that is considered too degrad ing; To manufacturing? it has been tried and proved ruinous; To mercantile business? that too is over stocked; To the army and navy? there is little room there, and many reasons against it. To farming? nothing, it is said, cart be made by it. The author then proposes a good sensible plan for an agricultural college, with farm work for the THE RISE OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION 213 students and what some such institutions have tried to get along without a "Professor of Prac tical Agriculture," besides the professor of chem istry, botany, and other sciences. DeWitt was more than fifty years ahead of his time, for it was not until after the Civil War that the necessity for educating for "the profession of farming" was generally recognized. But his alma mater, Queens College, then a classical and sectarian institution under the control of the Dutch Reformed Church, has now been transformed into Rutgers College, the agricultural college of New Jersey, and much the sort of an institution he desired. One of the first acts of the new State of Maine was to incorporate in 1822 the Gardiner Lyceum "to give mechanics and farmers such an education as will enable them to become skilled in their pro fessions." 1 Although the Gardiner Lyceum lived only ten years, it did not live in vain. Its second principal, John H. Lathrop, served later as presi dent of three State Universities in the West Missouri, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Its first "per manent instructor in agriculture," Ezekiel Holmes, only a week before his death in 1865, managed to persuade the Maine Legislature to pass an act 1 Journal of I he Franklin Institute. 1895. AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION establishing the College of Agriculture and Me chanic Arts, which became the University of Maine, the first State University in New England. One is reminded of the parable of the sower. How many seeds fall by the wayside and upon the rocky places ! How many times the ground has to be seeded before a crop comes up ! It seems that only one idea bears fruit out of a million of the same sort. Among the few that did not perish but visibly took root at once was the report of President Wayland to the Corporation of Brown University in 1850. After showing that the twelve colleges of New England had fewer students than ten years before, although endowments had in creased and fees had been reduced, the report proceeded to give the reason for this state of affairs : Our colleges are not filled because we do not furnish the education desired by the people. . . . We have produced an article for which the demand is diminish ing. We sell it at less than cost and the deficiency is made up by charity. We give it away and still the demand diminishes. We have in this country one hundred and twenty colleges, forty-two theological seminaries, and forty-seven law schools, and we have not a single institution designed to furnish the agri culturist, the manufacturer, the mechanic, or the merchant with the education that will prepare him for the profession to which his life will be devoted. THE RISE OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION Trustees of colleges were not accustomed to being talked to in that tone. Great was the indignation aroused by Wayland s arraignment. But the fault was now pointed out so clearly that it could not be ignored. It was one of omission rather than of commission. The university in medieval times was started with the practical and proper purpose of training for the three learned professions theol ogy, law, and medicine. It had continued to per form this service with increasing efficiency but had not observed that with the advance of science there had arisen a new learned profession called, for lack of a better name, engineering. This required as long and systematic training as the older profes sions and was not devoid of a cultural value of its own, but no adequate facilities had as yet been provided for it. So long as nine-tenths of the graduates became preachers, lawyers, and doctors, the college had no reason to pay much attention to the rest. But when this proportion was re versed, evidently the institution was being run in the interests of the minority. The first branch of this new profession to demand attention was naturally land surveying, and the surveyors were usually among the foremost in urg ing the extension of education to include applied 216 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION science, especially agriculture. To Washington and DeWitt, already mentioned, another surveyor must now be added Stephen Van Rensselaer, a descendant of the Dutch patroon of that name who was granted a wide domain in the Hudson Valley. It was Stephen Van Rensselaer who first proposed the Erie Canal and, as State Commissioner, made the first survey for it in 181 1. He offered to donate land for a college of agriculture and mechanic arts on the Fellenberg plan if the State would establish such an institution. x When the New York Legisla ture refused, he took it upon himself to found at Troy a school "for the purpose of instructing per sons who may choose to apply themselves in the application of science to the common purposes of life." The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, which was thus opened in 1825, developed only twenty- five years later into a full four-year school of en gineering. The principal object of the founder was rather a training school for teachers for what today would be called the "short course" or "extension work " in agricultural and domestic science. Rens- selaer s idea of how the sciences should be taught 1 A brief but excellent survey of the early efforts at the educa tion of engineers will be found in Columbia University Quarterly, December, 1916. THE RISE OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION 217 is interesting: "These are not to be taught by see ing experiments and hearing lectures according to the usual methods. But they are to lecture and experiment by turns, under the immediate direc tion of the professor or competent assistant. Thus, by a term of labor, like an apprentice to a trade, they are to become operative chemists." The "Rensselaer plan" of student demonstrations spread rapidly to other schools and may be re garded as the precursor of the modern laboratory methods and of the close connection between school and shop which has been established in recent times at Cincinnati, Gary, and elsewhere. But the idea has a longer genealogy than that, and we must here consider influences emanating from Switzerland and Germany which had much to do with the development of industrial education in the United States. Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, inspired by Rousseau s theory of natural educa tion, conceived a method of teaching by means of "object lessons" in place of the traditional verbal instruction and tried to combine manual with mental labor. Pestalozzi in turn inspired three other great educators who in the early years of the nineteenth century worked out different sides of his doctrine. Froebel devoted himself to the 218 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION training of children and developed the kindergarten, which was introduced into the United States about 1870. Herbart developed the psychological prin ciples of the new education in Germany which, when brought to America in the nineties, effected a thorough reformation of methods of instruction. The third of the disciples of Pestalozzi was a rich Swiss aristocrat, Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg, who seized upon the idea of a democratic and prac tical system of education in which the children of rich and poor should study and work together and develop all their faculties through useful labor. With this object he started a "farm-school" at Hofwyl, near Bern, in 1806, and before many years similar industrial institutions had sprung up in Switzerland and Germany. The movement was taken up enthusiastically and spread in the United States by the Society for Promoting Manual Labor in Literary Institutions. Theological seminaries, following the lead of Andover in 1826, introduced manual labor "for invigorating and preserving health, without any reference to pecuniary profit." Robert Dale Owen, trained at Hofwyl, made it a feature of his communistic colony at New Har mony, Indiana. But as manual labor was ex tensively adopted in charitable and reformatory THE RISE OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION 219 institutions, this addition to the curriculum natu rally did not tend to remove the prejudice pre vailing in academic circles against the use of the hands. As a result of these various attempts to found Fellenberg schools in America, it was soon realized that the expectation of making the institutions self-supporting by student labor was fallacious. The kind and amount of work that the unskilled youth could do in time spared from his studies proved too insufficient to be profitable. The school either failed altogether or, if it prospered, the irk some manual labor was gradually eliminated until only an academy or college of the traditional liter ary type remained. In cases where the vocational aspect gained the predominance, an engineering or trade school resulted. Manual training with a purely educational aim has been retained in city schools and is a common feature of the upper grades. The Swedish sloyd and the Russian sys tem have had their day and left their traces. The Tuskegee Institute for negroes, founded in Ala bama in 1881 by Booker T. Washington, perhaps most nearly approaches the type toward which the Fellenberg movement pointed. Wayland s arraignment of higher education was 220 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION not much overdrawn. Up to the middle of the nineteenth century the educational needs of the farmer, the mechanic, and the engineer had been very poorly provided for. But the experiments which had failed were not altogether fruitless, and the efforts of the agricultural and industrial classes were soon to be crowned with success through the munificence of the Federal Government. To the new era inaugurated by the Morrill Act a chapter must be devoted. CHAPTER XV THE MORRILL ACT AND WHAT CAME OF IT The endowment, support and maintenance of 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 in life. The Morrill Act of 1862. THESE seventy-five words are among the most important in the history of American education, for in every State they established institutions of a new type upon which are now expended more than $36,000,000 of public funds every year. No other country has provided so extensive a system of in dustrial education or has endowed it so liberally. It is interesting to note that in general the party favoring the protection of American industries has done most to promote the research and education upon which those industries depend. The Tariff Act of 1861 was drawn up by the same hand that 221 222 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION drafted the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 for the benefit of industrial education; and the Morrill Bill, which had been vetoed by the Democratic President Buchanan, was signed three years later by Abraham Lincoln. In an address before the Wisconsin State Agri cultural Society at Milwaukee in 1859, Lincoln thus expressed his idea of industrial education : The old general rule was that educated people did not, perform manual labor. They managed to eat their bread, leaving the toil of producing it to the unedu cated. . . . But free labor says "No." Free labor argues that as the Author of man makes every indi vidual with one head and one pair of hands, it was prob ably intended that heads and hands should cooperate as friends, and that that particular head should direct and control that pair of hands. As each man has one mouth to be fed and one pair of hands to furnish food, it was probably intended that that particular pair of hands should feed that particular mouth, that each head is the natural guardian, director, and protector of the hands and mouth inseparably connected with it: and that being so, every head should be cultivated and improved by whatever will add to its capacity for performing its charge. In one word, free labor insists on universal education. Agricultural societies such as Lincoln was address ing had existed for a hundred years and had long THE MORRILL ACT 223 been urging upon the deaf ears of the colleges the necessity for agricultural education. Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin were members of the Phila delphia Society for Promoting Agriculture. As early as 1799 this society, whose seal bore the motto "Venerate the Plough," considered plans for teaching the science and art of agriculture in the colleges and common schools. Half a century later a New York society, the Mechanics Mutual Protection, started a movement for a "People s College for the purpose of promot ing literature, science, arts, and agriculture" and, after ten years of agitation in which the powerful aid of Horace Greeley s Tribune was enlisted, ob tained a charter from the Legislature in 1853. The People s College proposed to give an education more liberal than those which hitherto had mo nopolized the "liberal arts." The old-fashioned colleges as a rule paid scant attention to science and ignored agriculture; but the trustees of the People s College were more generously directed to "make ample provision for instruction in the clas sics." So, too, the Morrill Act itself expressly dis claims antagonism to the older education by the words, "without excluding classical studies." The People s College, however, could not raise 224 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION enough money to open its doors, and until it did so the State refused help. President Brown of the People s College accordingly went to Washington to lobby for the Morrill bill. The national funds which were finally obtained through this measure went to Cornell University, which has in most respects more than fulfilled the expectations of the People s College and which was situated appro priately at Ithaca, the home of Simeon DeWitt. Another force working toward the Morrill Act came from Illinois. Jonathan B. Turner, a pro fessor of Illinois College, Jacksonville, presented "A Plan for an Industrial University," which was printed in the United States Patent Office Report of 1852; and next year the General Assembly of Illinois memorialized Congress to grant land to each State for the establishment of at least one college for agriculture and mechanic arts. The bill which was introduced by Morrill in 1857 and passed by Congress but vetoed by President Buchanan followed closely the Illinois memorial. After the bill had been vetoed by the President, Turner continued to work for it and, in the next presidential contest, obtained the promises of both Lincoln and his rival Douglas to sign the bill if it were to come before them. Lincoln was the one THE MORRILL ACT 225 to whom the opportunity came on July 2, 1862, one of the darkest days of the Civil War. Justin S. Morrill, Vermont farmer and Congress man, was transferred to the Senate in 1867 and remained in office long enough to see the fruition of his work. The Morrill Act of 1862 gave to each State for educational purposes 30,000 acres of land for each Senator and Representative in Congress. The second Morrill Act, signed by President Harri son in 1890, gave to each State $25,000 a year from land sales though, to prevent diversion of the funds, it limited the expenditure to instruction in agriculture, the mechanic arts, the related sciences, and the English language. The Hatch Act of 1887 gave $15,000 a year to each State for an agricul tural experiment station, and the Adams Act of 1906 doubled this appropriation. The Smith- Lever Act of 1914 appropriated funds amounting to $4,580,000 a year to the several States on the condition of their providing equal amounts "to aid in diffusing among the people of the United States useful and practical information relating to agriculture and home economics." Under the first Morrill Act about 13,000,000 acres of the public domain, an area nearly twice as large as Belgium, have been distributed to the 226 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION States. The total value of the nation s gifts to this form of education up to the present amounts to more than a quarter of a billion dollars. The land- grant colleges and experiment stations now num ber sixty-nine, for there is one or more in every State and also in the Philippines, Hawaii, and Porto Rico, and they give instruction to more than 100,000 students. Besides these colleges there are 1426 agricultural high schools. The Morrill Act wisely left each State to decide how it should employ the land scrip bestowed upon it. In consequence the most diverse institutions sprang up. In twenty-six States new colleges of agriculture and mechanics were established. In nearly half of the States, on the other hand, the funds were turned over to an existing institution, usually the State University where there was one. In Michigan the agricultural college provided by the State Constitution of 1850 had been opened at Lansing in 1857. Maryland and Pennsylvania had each started one in 1859. These were the only State agricultural colleges established before the Morrill Act. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology at Boston, incorporated in 1861, re ceived two-thirds of the Morrill fund of Massa chusetts, while the other third went to the Agri- THE MORRILL ACT 227 cultural College opened at Amherst. Massachu setts is the only State where "agriculture and the mechanic arts" are separated. Since the Morrill Act was passed in the midst of the Civil War it was natural that it should contain the phrase "including military tactics." These three words have had momentous consequence. The old-time "training days" had long fallen into desuetude and, except for the private military academies and West Point, there was practically no military training given to the young men of America up to the time of the Civil War. But at the outbreak of the war with Spain in 1898 the graduates of the land-grant colleges volun teered promptly, and over a thousand of them ob tained commissions. By the time the United States next engaged in war there were over 25,000 such trained men. Reference to the clause from the Morrill Act quoted at the head of this chapter will show that "agriculture and the mechanic arts" are stated to be joint objects of educational endeavor. This connection is historically correct, for the two were usually combined in movements to establish indus trial schools. But the success of the movement was due to the farmers rather than to the mechanics, 228 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION for the farmers, more numerous and in the ear* Her years of the republic better organized, were able to exert greater political influence. Such agrarian movements as the Grange of 1867 and the People s Party of 1892, which were deeply con cerned with education, aroused little sympathy among the laboring classes of the cities; on the other hand the modern labor and socialistic move ment, now well organized and powerful, has so far done little for industrial education. Some labor men, in fact, have shown a disposition to look with suspicion upon trade schools, especially when founded by their employers, as a capitalistic scheme to make skilled labor cheap and plentiful. The modern trade-unionist would at any rate be strongly opposed to the idea of the older mechanic societies that students should be employed at productive labor. The institutions that received the Morrill funds were at first quite uncertain how to spend them. It was a long time before the problem of education in "agriculture and the mechanic arts" was solved if, indeed, it may be said to be solved yet. The land scrip, which was sometimes sold at less than its par value of $1.25 an acre in order to realize on it at once, brought the various States sums ranging THE MORRILL ACT 229 from $50,000 to $750,000. This money was often wasted in unprofitable work or was spent on educa tion other than the kind intended. To a small de nominational classical college it came as a welcome windfall, yet the academic faculty were apt to fear the Federal Government as it came bearing gifts, and the students were disposed to show open con tempt for the "base mechanicals" and the "cow colleges." The institution sometimes considered that it had satisfied the requirements of the law when it had hired a professor of agriculture, bought or borrowed a demonstration farm, and fitted up a shop. The rest of the money could then be used where it was most needed to pay the salaries of the academic professors, most of whom could be made to figure in some capacity on the faculty list of the so-called "agricultural course." That bona fide agricultural students were sometimes few or none was not surprising and, in the minds of some of the colleagues of the professor of agriculture, not greatly to be regretted. Where the agricultural and mechanical college was distinct from the State University and even situated in another place, many of its students showed a preference for the ordinary literary and scientific courses rather than for the vocational; and, since the State University 230 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION was likely also to offer courses in engineering, the two institutions tended to overlap and become rivals. Although the land-grant colleges were founded primarily in the interests of agriculture, yet in their early days the mechanical or engineer ing courses attracted more students because the instruction they provided was better organized and led to more profitable positions. The com plaint in consequence was made that the agricul tural colleges were educating not for the farm but from the farm. They certainly did not serve to elevate the status of agriculture so long as they took the brightest boys from the farm and trained them for city occupations. But these early defects of agricultural education have gradually been removed. The Department of Agriculture at Washington began to take a fatherly interest in the colleges and experiment stations and, by good counsel and an occasional threat of cutting off the appropriation, directed the funds into their proper channels. As the colleges developed their own methods of instruction, they gained confidence in their calling and won the respect of educators in other fields. The gap be tween the chemist and the botanist who were igno rant of farming and the practical farmer who was THE MORRILL ACT 231 contemptuous of "book-learning" was bridged by a new order of men with a grasp of both theory and practice. When the experiment stations demon strated as for instance by the milk testing and bacteriology of the dairy, by the breeding of new varieties of crops and animals, by the destruction of insect pests, and by the elimination of tubercu losis that the endowment of scientific research paid the community in concrete coin, they had no further trouble about getting funds. Through agri cultural institutions, university extension lectures, short winter courses, demonstration trains, lending libraries, correspondence courses, and franked bul letins, the land-grant colleges now reach two or three million people a year. They have come to realize that they have a wider function than train ing a few expert managers of big farms; they have to educate a community for country life. The influence exerted by the Morrill Act is well set forth in the words of Liberty Hyde Bailey of Cornell, one of the first to perceive its spiritual significance and one of the largest contributors to its realization: The Land-Grant Act is probably the most important single specific enactment ever made in the interest of education. It recognizes the principle that every 232 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION citizen is entitled to receive educational aid from the government and that the common affairs of life are proper subjects with which to educate or train men. Its provisions are so broad that the educational de velopment of all future time may rest upon it. It ex presses the final emancipation from formal, traditional and aristocratic ideas and it imposes no methods or limitations. It recognizes the democracy of education and then leaves all the means to be worked out as time goes on. x This beneficent legislation, passed by Congress in the darkest hour of the republic, carried into effect and combined in a practical way Washington s idea of national aid and control, Jefferson s physio- cratic theory of the fundamental importance of agriculture, Franklin s plans for vocational train ing, and Lincoln s plea for the education of labor. 1 The Rise of the State Colleges of Agriculture in Cyclopedia of American Agriculture, vol. iv. CHAPTER XVI WOMEN KNOCKING AT THE COLLEGE DOOR Educate the women and the men will be educated. Mary Lyon. FOR more than two hundred years after the first colleges were established in America their doors were barred against women. Even the rudiments of education were grudgingly granted in colonial days; and, if any women were bold enough to claim the privilege of learning the things that men were encouraged to know, it was at the peril of social disapprobation. In the dame schools the little girls were taught to learn the letters from horn books as well as from their samplers, and penman ship was more highly esteemed as a fine art than it is in these days of typewriters and dictaphones. We must remember, however, that in the manifold industries of the household cooking, preserving, brewing, dairying, soap-making, gardening, spin ning, dyeing, weaving, millinery, and dressmaking 33 234 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION the girls of the colonial period had advantages for "laboratory practice" in the fundamental in dustries such as our million-dollar technological institutes do not afford. It was found desirable in the interests of domestic economy that they should also be taught elementary arithmetic. In the Massachusetts Ordinance of 1642, the corner-stone of the public school system of the United States, we see the authorities grappling with the problem of coeducation, for they held "that boys and girls be not suffered to converse together, so as may occasion any wanton, dis honest or immodest behaviour." But for the first century and a half after the settlement of the coun try doors of the grammar schools were kept pretty tightly closed to the weaker sex. The Hopkins School of New Haven ruled in 1684 that "all girls be excluded as improper and inconsistent with such a grammar school as ye law injoines and as is the Designe of this settlement." In the early part of the eighteenth century three-fourths of the women who were called upon to sign legal documents had to make their mark. After the Revolution, how ever, a different spirit began to prevail, and the girls were allowed to receive instruction after school. Gloucester in 1790 passed an eight-hour law for its WOMEN AT THE COLLEGE DOOR 235 schoolmaster in order that he might give two hours a day "to the instruction of females as they are a tender and interesting branch of the community but have been much neglected in the public schools of this town." The selectmen of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, opened in 1773 a school where girls were taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and geog raphy. David McClure, the Portsmouth school master, writes in his diary that he had seventy or eighty misses from seven to twenty years of age, so that he was obliged to take half of them in the fore noon and half in the afternoon, and he adds: "This is, I believe, the only female school (supported by the town) in New England and is a wise and useful institution." We find Franklin as a boy arguing with his chum in favor of the "propriety of educating the female sex in learning and their abilities for study" and later in life recommending "the knowledge of accounts . . . for our young females, as likely to be of more use to their children, in case of widow hood, than either music or dancing, by preserving them from losses by imposition of crafty men and enabling them to continue perhaps a profitable mer cantile house." But even the far-sighted Frank lin could not have foreseen the modern business 236 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION office with a large part of its work done by "young females," who, in spite of their clerical duties, manage somehow to find time for "music and dancing." New Orleans claims priority over New England in the matter of girls schools, on the ground that in 1727 ten Ursuline sisters from Rouen established a convent school in that French colony. This school is still in existence and now gives instruction in English as well as French. Before 1750 the Mo ravian missionaries had maintained a school for girls in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, and in 1802 they opened a Female Academy at Salem, North Caro lina. The bill that Jefferson introduced into the Virginia Assembly in 1779 provided for the free training of all free children, girls as well as boys, for three years in the three R s, but this bill did not pass. Ten years later Boston opened elementary schools for girls and in 1826 a girls grammar school. But for the most part and for many years after this, women had to be content with such crumbs of learning as fell from the master s table. Here and there a bright ambitious girl might borrow her brother s books and rival him in his preparatory studies, but when he went off to college she could not follow him. Before the end of the eighteenth WOMEN AT THE COLLEGE DOOR 237 century Lucinda Foot was certificated as qualified for entrance to Yale but was debarred from enter ing. The feminine mind was thought incapable of the serious learning and logical thought involved in the study of the ancient languages, higher mathe matics, and natural sciences. This belief could be held only so long as no opportunity was afforded to demonstrate the contrary. After it was found not impossible for women to acquire higher education, such a course was still held to be undesirable. In the coeducational seminaries of New York and New England all studies were theoretically open to both sexes, but a girl who insisted upon taking Greek was regarded, even down to the Civil War, much as a girl would nowadays who insisted upon playing baseball. She might do it after a fashion, but she would be looked upon as offensively mas culine, and the better she did it the worse for her reputation. In the course of time the situation has been curiously reversed, and now in some of our coeducational colleges a boy who studies Greek is regarded as effeminate. The studies that in the early days were regarded as proper for young ladies were the English and French languages, with a cautious selection of polite literature in these languages, a little history, 238 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION or rather biography, devotional and moral reading, and such ornamental arts as music, sketching, and dancing. In science astronomy was preferred as less demoralizing than zoology or botany and less hard on the hands and nose than chemistry. The astronomy taught was sometimes and quite prop erly called "Geography of the Heavens," since it consisted largely of learning to call the constella tions by their mythological names. But when Vassar, the first college for women, was opened in 1865, it could boast of possessing the second largest telescope in the United States and the greatest woman astronomer, Maria Mitchell. The first General Assembly of Alabama in 1820 passed a bill to establish a common school in every district, an academy in every county, and a State University with a branch for "female education"; but this ambitious project was never carried out. To provide for the needs of the women of the South many seminaries, institutes, and colleges were started in the first half of the nineteenth century by Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, "Christians," Presbyterians, Masons, Odd Fellows, and private individuals. 1 Some of these institutions were for 1 A full list of these are given in I. M. E. Blandin s History of Higher Education of Women in the South (1909). WOMEN AT THE COLLEGE DOOR 239 girls only, and some were coeducational. Of these Elizabeth Academy, established by the Methodists in 1818 at Old Washington, Mississippi, and char tered as a college two years later, claims to have been the first in the United States to provide col lege training for women. Georgia Female College, chartered in 1836 and now known as the Wesley an Female College of Macon, files a conflicting claim to be the "oldest regularly chartered institution for conferring degrees upon w r omen in America, if not in the entire world." Three years later the Judson Female Institute was established at Marion, Ala bama, by the Reverend Milo P. Jewett, afterwards President of Vassar College. While the South was thus striving to open edu cational opportunities to women, the North was making similar efforts and ultimately achieved greater success. In 1818 Mrs. Emma Hart Willard, wife of a college professor of Middlebury, published an Address to the Public outlining A Plan for Im proving Female Education which was at once bold and practical. Though, as she said, "the absurd ity of sending ladies to college may, at first thought, strike every one to whom this subject shall be proposed," there were some men to whom the idea did not seem an "absurdity." Adams of 240 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION Massachusetts and Jefferson of Virginia favored the idea, and a bill appropriating $2000 was intro duced into the New York Legislature. This meas ure passed the Senate but failed in the Assembly. But the city of Troy raised $4000 and established in 1821 the institution that is today known as the Emma Willard Seminary. In 1822 Catherine Esther Beecher founded the Hartford Female Seminary, which was for many years the leading school for the higher education of women in America. The daughter of Lyman Beecher and sharing the brilliant gifts of his unique family, Catherine did not lack the enthusiasm, ini tiative, and originality necessary to a pioneer in unpopular enterprises. She organized a Female Seminary in Cincinnati, lectured in the South and West on the subject of education, especially for women, and wrote several stimulating and sugges tive books. One of her hobbies was training in domestic science in order "that women may be healthful, intelligent, and successful wives, mothers, and housekeepers." But nowadays this specialized study of "household engineering" is common in all coeducational institutions and is being introduced into the colleges for women. But neither Mrs. Willard nor Miss Beecher was WOMEN AT THE COLLEGE DOOR so successful as a young teacher associated with them in these pioneer enterprises, a lively, good- humored, fast talking, untidy, red-headed, rosy cheeked, pious country girl named Mary Lyon. None knew better than she the value of an educa tion, for few had worked so hard for one. Mary Lyon was born in Buckland, Massachusetts, in 1797. Her father died when she was six, leaving the widow to run the mountain farm with the aid of her six daughters and one son aged thirteen. When she was ten years old, Mary got a chance to work for her board at Ashfield and attend school. At sixteen she was teaching school for seventy-five cents a week and board a good teacher, although not quite secure in her position because she laughed too easily. But she saved all her salary and by the time she was twenty she had earned enough more by spinning, dyeing, and weaving to pay for her tuition at Sanderson Academy in Ashfield. "No one could study like Mary Lyon and no one could clean the schoolroom with such dispatch," said a fellow-student. When she applied for instruction in Latin, the teacher tried to discourage her by putting into her hands a Latin grammar as she left the school on Friday night, but Mary turned up Monday morning with much of it learned by heart 16 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION and with a troubled conscience for having infringed the fourth commandment. She proved to be the most brilliant classical scholar of the academy, and although she worked night and day, often with only four hours sleep, nothing weakened her health and enthusiasm. She put herself through a rigor ous process of self-training to correct the defects of her childhood and to learn to speak grammati cally, dress neatly, and avoid eccentricities in order that she might achieve the aim of her life, the es tablishment of an institution where women could get a higher education than had been hitherto open to them. She was quick to catch and apply new ideas in education. The Pestalozzian principle of engaging the active interest of the pupil by con crete and objective methods appealed particularly to her, and she adopted it while teaching at Buck- land. History she taught as a living thing. Men tal arithmetic was her hobby. The experimental method of teaching chemistry she acquired at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy where, as we have seen, the founder insisted upon it from the start. Rensselaer, founded to give instruction to boys and girls in agriculture and mechanic arts, subsequently dropped both the agriculture and the girls but fortunately not before it had educated WOMEN AT THE COLLEGE DOOR 243 Mary Lyon. For further knowledge of chemistry and physics she was indebted to Professor Edward Hitchcock of Amherst College. Thus equipped as a teacher, but without money or influential friends and in the face of popular and professional prejudice, she started upon the ap palling task of raising money for an unprecedented undertaking. In three years she had raised $68,- 500 and had put up buildings at South Hadley, Massachusetts. Though she was told that no girls would come to such an institution, she provid ed accommodations for eighty-five. On opening the doors in 1837 she took in over a hundred girls and had to turn away many more. The infant institution was christened "Mount Holyoke Fe male Seminary" in preference to "The Pangynse- kean" as Professor Hitchcock proposed to call it. W. S. Tyler, a trustee of Mount Holyoke Seminary and later of Smith, says of the criticism it encountered : "It was unnatural, unphilosophi- cal, unscriptural, unpractical and impracticable, unfeminine and anti-Christian, in short all the epi thets in the dictionary that begin with un- and in- and anti- were hurled against it and heaped upon it." Mary Lyon was not deceived by the prevailing 244 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION fallacy of the day that an institution could be made self-supporting by employing the students at productive labor but, being a believer in the gospel of work, she planned to have the necessary house work of the establishment done by the girls them selves in order that they might reduce expenses, get exercise, and, when they later became mistresses of their own home, be free "from servile dependence on common domestics." The work required of students at Mount Holyoke, however, was grad ually reduced to the care of their own rooms, and now even this requirement has been dropped. For a dozen years after Mount Holyoke was opened, Miss Lyon remained to manage its affairs, inspire its teachers, and give the girls the benefit of her sensible philosophy of life. She used to warn them that it is " the mark of a weak mind to be con tinually comparing the sexes and disputing and making out the female sex as something great and superior." And again she said: "Never teach the immortal mind for money. If money-making is your object, be milliners or dressmakers, but teach ing is a sacred, not a mercenary employment." What she preached she practiced. She never re ceived more than $260 a year for teaching. She never wrote a book or even an article on educa- WOMEN AT THE COLLEGE DOOR 246 tional methodology. Yet she is accounted one of the great American educators. Although Mount Holyoke Seminary was a great step in advance, it did not yet offer women the opportunity for collegiate education. It was not chartered as a college until 1888, and it was five years after that before it was fully prepared to carry on collegiate instruction. For the first true colleges open to women we must turn to the West and especially to an institution which, though widely different from the New England seminary in most respects, was yet founded in the same spirit of democracy, economy, piety, and industry. Ober- lin Collegiate Institute, named after the Alsatian pastor and founder of infant schools, Jean Fred eric Oberlin, was started in the wilderness of Ohio by two Congregational home missionaries, John J. Shipherd and Philo P. Stewart, who planned a novel kind of collegiate community with many of the advantages of individual land ownership. The colonists signing the "Oberlin Covenant" agreed "to hold and manage our estates personally but pledge a perfect community of interest as though we held a community of property." Like others, the institution was intended to be self-supporting through the manual labor of the students for four 246 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION hours a day; and, like others, it failed in this respect. The community farm, sawmill, flour- mill, and workshop were later sold, and the colony idea was abandoned, but the institute nevertheless survived all vicissitudes. Few if any colleges have had so much opposition to contend with, because few if any have so radically opposed the prevailing ideas of their day. The intentions of the founders are set forth in their first report as follows: The grand object is the diffusion of useful science, sound morality, and pure religion among the growing multitudes of the Mississippi valley. It aims also at bearing an important part in extending these bless ings to the destitute millions that overspread the earth. For this purpose it proposes as its primary ob ject the thorough education of ministers and pious school teachers; as a secondary object the eleva tion of female character. And as a third general de sign, the education of the common people with the higher classes in such a manner as suits the nature of republican institutions. This was an ambitious programme for a little wooden building in a clearing of the backwoods of Ohio, but the most remarkable thing about it is that the programme has been carried out. In 1833 Oberlin opened with twenty-nine men and fifteen women. Thus was started the first coeducational WOMEN AT THE COLLEGE DOOR 247 college in the world. By 1839 it challenged com parison with the best colleges by publishing in its catalogue the Yale curriculum in parallel column with its own. Seventy-nine women had received the A.B. degree at Oberlin before 1865 when Vassar, the first women s college, opened; and two hundred and ninety had passed through the ladies seminary course there. The radicalism of Oberlin did not stop with the admission of women: it admitted negroes as students. In the same year, 1834, when Oberlin opened its doors to freedmen, Miss Prudence Crandall was indicted and imprisoned in Canterbury, Connecticut, for maintaining a "school for colored misses" contrary to a special act of the Legislature. Oberlin also, because of its abolition principles, was in danger of destruction by mob violence, and its funds were for a time cut off. But the first president of Oberlin, the Rever end Asa Mahan, a graduate of Hamilton College and Andover Theological Seminary, was an un compromising champion of free speech and equal rights. He had been a trustee in Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati but seceded from that in stitution with four-fifths of the students because they were forbidden to discuss the question of slavery. The second president of Oberlin, the 248 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION Reverend Charles G. Finney, was in his way no less radical. He was a converted lawyer, "per manently retained by Jesus Christ" as he put it, and one of the foremost evangelists of his day. After building the Broadway Tabernacle in New York, he went West to become professor of theol ogy in Oberlin and later president. There he had to meet a double opposition from the church because of his heretical views, and from the popu lace because of his teetotalism. But in spite of everything Oberlin stuck to its principles and thrived on persecution. Today it is a prosper ous college of some two thousand students and since the world has caught up with it scarcely distinguishable from neighboring institutions. Other colleges in Ohio and adjacent States fol lowed the path that Oberlin had broken. Horace Mann adopted coeducation when he founded An- tioch College, Ohio, in 1853. Other pioneer insti tutions which deserve honorable mention for their admission of women are, without reference to their disputed claims of priority: Lawrence College at Appleton, Wisconsin (opened 1849); Cornell Col lege at Mount Vernon, Iowa (1857); Baker Uni versity at Baldwin, Kansas (1858); and Lombard University at Galesburg, Illinois (1851). Nearly WOMEN AT THE COLLEGE DOOR 249 all of the State Universities were coeducational from the start: Iowa, 1856, Washington, 1862, Kansas, 1866, Minnesota, 1868; and the others one by one adopted this system before the end of the century. In all the Western States women now have access to higher education on practically the same terms as men. In the East, however, it was different. The old colleges refused to open their doors to women, and many of them are still closed. It was therefore found to be necessary and deemed to be desirable to open separate colleges for women. To Mat thew Vassar, a millionaire brewer of Poughkeep- sie, New York, it occurred or was suggested by his friend, the Reverend Milo P. Jewett "that woman, having received from her Creator the same intellectual constitution as man, has the same right as man to intellectual culture and develop ment. * This right the most important because the most fundamental of woman s rights was denied almost everywhere in 1850, but today nearly every State affords full and free opportunities for collegiate and university education. It was Vassar s intention " to build and endow a college for women that shall be to them what Yale and Harvard are to young men," and he carried 250 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION out this intention. "Vassar Female College" was chartered in 1861 and opened in 1865. In the words of Miss M. Carey Thomas, president of Bryn Mawr, 1 "in Vassar we have the legitimate parent of all future colleges for women which were to be founded in such rapid succession in the next period." These, like Vassar, owe their existence mainly to the beneficence of some wealthy philan- thopist. Wellesley College, founded near Boston by Henry F. Durant "for the glory of God by the education and culture of women," was opened in 1875. Smith College at Northampton, Massachu setts, founded by the bequest of half a million by Miss Sophia Smith, was also opened in 1875. Bryn Mawr College, founded by Joseph W. Taylor at Bryn Mawr, near Philadelphia, and chartered in 1880, was in operation five years later. Wells College at Aurora, New York, was founded by Henry Wells and E. R. Morgan and was chartered as a college in 1870. In spite of these and other separate colleges for women, the demand for the admission of women to the opportunities of the great universities became so great that some provision had to be made for 1 Education of Women in Butler s Monographs on Education in the United States. WOMEN AT THE COLLEGE DOOR 251 them. A women s "Annex " to Harvard which was started in 1879 developed by 1894 into Radcliffe College, affiliated with Harvard University. Bar nard College for women, which forms a part of Columbia University, began its work in 1889. In various ways, according to the social condi tions and ideals prevailing in different localities, the need for the higher education of women has been met. Coeducation is not popular, or at least not fashionable, in the East; but there are in New York State alone three coeducational universities of over six thousand students each Cornell, Syracuse, and New York. All the leading univer sities of the country, East or West, with the excep tion of Princeton and some Catholic institutions, admit women to summer schools or make other provision for them. At Columbia and Yale women are admitted to the regular graduate course on the same terms as men. Of the 563 colleges and universities listed in the 1916 Report of the United States Commissioner of Education about sixty per cent are coeducational, twenty-five per cent are for men only, and fifteen per cent are for women only. Of the institutions that exclude women more than a third are Roman Catholic, and many of the others are technical 252 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION schools or theological seminaries. Coeducational schools now provide about ninety-six per cent of the elementary education and ninety per cent o* the secondary education in the United States. The attendance of women at institutions of higher education has more than doubled since 1893. The trend for three decades is shown by the following figures : ENROLLMENT OF WOMEN In women s In coeducational colleges colleges 1893 12,300 13,058 1903 16,744 26,990 1913 19,142 55,564 If we regard the high schools as giving a liberal education and some of them are better than the colleges of a hundred years ago more women than men are being liberally educated. The appre hensions formerly entertained of physical, mental, and moral injury to women through college work have been proved illusory by a half century of ex perience, and the only questions now under dis cussion concern the place and the character of such education. CHAPTER XVII THE NEW EDUCATION The democracy which proclaims equality of opportunity as its ideal requires an education in which learning and social applica tion, ideas and practice, work and recognition of the meaning of what is done, are united from the beginning and for all. John Dewey. WHAT is "the new education?" And why is it called "new"? The second question is perhaps harder to answer than the first. The new educa tion is distinguished by the broadness of its course of study. It is probable that the boy or girl of ten in a good city school is now learning a greater variety of interesting and important things than the average university student of a century ago. Public education began with what may be called the "tool" subjects reading, writing, and arith metic because they are chiefly important as instruments in the acquisition and use of informa tion rather than bodies of knowledge in themselves. Then in the early days of the republic there were added "information" or "content" subjects, such 253 254 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION as geography, history, and natural science. In very recent years what may be called "self -expres sion" subjects, including music, drawing, cooking, carpentry, and calisthenics, were introduced into the schools as fast as public opinion would permit. All these have their practical side and in a sense are "tool" subjects as truly as the three R s, but they are also designed to provide an opportunity for a motor response which would balance the ab stract and bookish studies and give the child who thinks in concrete terms a chance to show practical ability and constructive skill. More significant than the change in the curricu lum is the alteration which took place in the rela tion between teacher and pupil. The attempt to reduce an active child to a state of passive obe dience in which he would offer the least resistance to the information poured into him has largely given place to an attempt on the part of the teacher to entice the dull or shy youngster into activity. The old schoolroom motto was: "Don t speak until you are spoken to!" The new motto might well be: "Tell me what your thought s like." Finally, the new education postpones the in troduction of a new subject until the child can understand its use in his own life. There can be no THE NEW EDUCATION 255 question of the soundness of the principle that the form in which instruction is given should always take into consideration the age of the child and his interests at that age, although once in a while the teacher is disconcerted by finding a pupil who ad vances too rapidly in the scale of evolution and who wants to read Alexander Pope when he "ought" to be enraptured with Indian life as depicted in Hiawatha. To a great extent the new education is new only in the sense that the school now teaches what once was learned outside its walls. The twentieth cen tury lad who learns at school to swim, to play ball, to build bird-houses, to care for a vegetable garden, or to mend a broken lock, and the girl who studies cooking, sewing, housework, first aid to the injured, and piano practice, may graduate no wiser than the children of a past generation who did all these things on the farm and went to school for a few weeks in winter to learn spelling and copper-plate penmanship. The new methods in education are largely based on principles that have been the com monplaces of educational theorists for generations. But it is not often that the theorist and the practi cal teacher are one. In America, especially, the new education has come into existence from the 256 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION actual experience of teachers who had a genuine love of children and an experimental habit of mind but very little educational tradition behind them. America has produced several great school organ izers and many great teachers but less than her share of distinguished educational philosophers. The little republic of Switzerland, which was the birthplace of Rousseau and Pestalozzi and which gave to this country our most inspiring teacher of zoology, Louis Agassiz, and the man who revolu tionized the teaching of geography in our schools, Arnold Guyot, has made a greater proportionate contribution to educational science than the United States. America has achieved distinction chiefly in the realization of educational reforms in current practice. And this we owe not only to such leaders as Mann, Barnard, and Clinton, but to the faith ful work of the rank and file of teachers in school and college. Very rarely have even the ablest teachers risen to a place in history, unless they came into promi nence by their public activities or their productive scholarship or after leaving the profession. When they have become famous as teachers it is usually because their genius has been reflected in the repu tation attained by their pupils in more spectacular THE NEW EDUCATION 257 fields. While Mark Hopkins, to select but one example, was President of Williams College, there were graduated men later prominent in varied fields: Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field; David A. Wells, the economist; William Keith Brooks, the zoologist; James H. Canfield, the librarian ; Senator John J. Ingalls of Kansas ; Gen eral Samuel C. Armstrong, founder of Hampton Institute; and President James A. Garfield. Gar- field paid to his old college president the famous tribute that a student on one end of a log and Mark Hopkins on the other would make a university any where. We might also include in this list of Wil liams men two popular authors, Eugene Field and E. P. Roe, although they did not stay to take their degrees. The mention of General Armstrong sug gests another good example of what one might term "educational heredity," for it was at Hamp ton Institute that Booker T. Washington received his education, and he in turn taught in Tuskegee Institute many of the leaders of the negro race and the educators of yet another generation. From the American teachers who have intro duced new methods into the schools it seems an injustice to select any, because there is no State in the Union and probably no large community that 858 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION cannot remember the coming of a teacher whom pupils and parents recognized as "different," who turned courses of study upside down, introduced novel methods, and broke down the barriers which custom had erected between the teacher and the taught. The careers of very few must be taken as typical of the lives and work of many, equally devoted and equally successful. One of the names that comes most easily to mind is that of Edward Austin Sheldon, who founded the normal school at Oswego, New York. He did not begin his career, however, by teaching educational method but by teaching the children of the slums to read and write. While living in Oswego he was much affected by the misery of the city poor and even more so by their ignorance. He helped to found a "Free School Association" and was re warded for his efforts by being chosen as school master at three hundred dollars a year. What the youngsters thought of his teaching may best be summarized in the words of his daughter: "As my father went to work of a morning his warm-hearted Irish children trooped about him, seizing him by the fingers or the coat-tails, wherever they could best catch hold, to the great amusement of the storekeepers and the passers-by." THE NEW EDUCATION 259 So well did the free school in Oswego prosper that Sheldon was called to be superintendent of schools in the city of Syracuse and later in Oswego. As superintendent in these two cities, he made the school system a means to the education of the teachers as well as the children. His great reform was in decreasing the use of the text-book and in creasing the use of object lessons. No teacher could longer shelter incompetence with the speller and the geography and reduce the art of instruction to routine question and answer. From behind the fallen breastworks of the book emerged a human being, the teacher, who entered into a personal relationship with the children and taught from his own knowledge and with his own skill. Using the experience he had gathered as a teacher and a school superintendent, Edward Sheldon started a normal school in 1861. The new methods of instruction had one disadvantage as compared with the old; they were not fool-proof. Anybody could teach geology or botany from a book, but to teach such subjects from specimens required skill to prevent instruction from degen erating into the presentation of a mere assortment of unrelated scraps of fact. Therefore school masters who were simply told by a superintendent 260 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION that the time had come to introduce the "object method" in their classes were often wholly at a loss how to set about doing it. To meet this need the Oswego normal school was founded. It was not the first normal school in the country, but it was for its time the most influential, not only because of the new methods introduced but even more from the inspiring presence of Sheldon and the able corps of assistants whom he brought to the school from different parts of the country and from foreign nations. Edward Sheldon remained head of the school until his death in 1897. One of the most radical innovators who ever taught in an American school was the gentle New England philosopher, Amos Bronson Alcott. Al- cott was born on a Connecticut farm, but he spent much of his youth peddling books through the South. Returning to Connecticut in 1823, he took up school teaching the usual trade in those days for a bookish Yankee who did not know just what use he could make of his talents. In his school at Cheshire he forthwith began to try various experi ments. He abolished the old long benches and gave a separate seat and desk to every scholar, introduced the use of blackboards, and started a school library. He gave gymnastics and nature THE NEW EDUCATION 261 study a far more prominent place in the course of study than had been the custom even in the best schools. Perhaps the greatest change he intro duced was in the method of discipline. He shared the task of keeping order with his pupils by in stituting school "juries" to try offenses against the rules. Definite offices were assigned to the children, such as superintendent, recorder, librarian, and conservator. Within a few years from the begin ning of his pedagogical career Alcott had attained the distinction of teaching what was called "the best common School in this State, perhaps in the United States." In return for his labors, Alcott received nation-wide fame and twenty-seven dollars a month. But such prosperity could not continue. So many reforms at once aroused the fears of anxious parents that Alcott was using his school to try out pet theories on their children while neglecting the fundamentals of sound knowledge and strict dis cipline. Forced to resume his travels, Alcott under took teaching in Boston, in Philadelphia, and in several smaller cities, but his obstinate refusal to compromise with the kind of education which par ents usually expected made it impossible for him to hold one position for any great length of time. 262 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION Emerson said of this "American Pestalozzi," as he was sometimes called: "Alcott declares that a teacher is one who can assist the child in obeying his own mind. ... He measures ages by leaders and reckons history by Pythagoras, Plato, Jesus and Pestalozzi. In his own school in Boston when he had made the schoolroom beautiful he looked on the work as half done." What sort of education Alcott had in mind when he opened his school at the Masonic Temple at Boston may be seen in quotations from his diary of 1835: In addition to the statuary and painting at the school room I added today a fine cast of Silence. It will aid me in the work of discipline. ... I have sent to England for copies of Pilgrim s Progress and Fairy Queen, since fine copies of neither could be found in Boston. . . . Except in my own school, I know of no provision for the culture of the imagination by specific tuition anywhere in our country ; I seldom hear anyone speak of the importance of cultivating it. And yet, if any fact be settled by history, it is that imagination has been the guiding impulse of society. If Alcott had lived to attend the normal schools and teachers institutes of the twentieth century he would have heard no lack of talk of the "impor tance of cultivating the imagination," and he might THE NEW EDUCATION 263 even have found schools where the child who can write a fairy story receives more commendation than an unimaginative classmate whose fancy does not soar beyond the multiplication table. But in Alcott s day repression rather than self-expression was the road to learning, and few understood his daring paradox: "The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence." But in fitting up his school so handsomely Alcott had broken not only precedents but pocketbook. After five years the Temple School came to an end, chiefly because he had offended the community by admitting a colored girl to his class and by writing Conversations with Children on the Gospels, a So- cratic dialogue which strayed too widely from the path of orthodoxy and conventionality. A distinguished Harvard professor was quoted as saying that "one-third of Mr. Alcott s book was absurd, one-third blasphemous, and one- third obscene." Discouraged by these repeated failures, Alcott abandoned teaching in the formal sense of the word and devoted the rest of his life to lecturing, writing, and conversation. At one time he experimented with a communistic colony, "Fruitlands," where philosophic discourse might be combined with 264 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION outdoor life and a strict vegetarian diet. Lowell well summed up his friend Alcott in the lines: For his highest conceit of a happiest state is Where they d live upon acorns and hear him talk gratis; And indeed, I believe, no man ever talked better. His daughter, Louisa May Alcott, made use of these scholastic and communistic experiences in her Little Men and Transcendental Wild Oats. x An equally radical but much more influential and practical teacher was Colonel Parker. Like many other educational reformers, Francis Way- land Parker was himself educated in a country dis trict school and began his teaching career on the lowest rung of the educational ladder, when a lad of only sixteen, in the schools of his native State of New Hampshire. A few years later he was called to be a principal in Carrolton, Illinois, where the schools were reputed to be unusually "tough." Here he showed himself to be the very man for the place, but his career was interrupted by the out break of the Civil War. Parker enlisted as a pri vate and left the army as a brevet colonel with a brilliant war record. 1 A. Branson Alcott. His Life and Philosophy, by F. B. Sanborn and W. T. Harris (1893;. THE NEW EDUCATION 265 After the war, Colonel Parker returned to his old profession and taught in New Hampshire and in Dayton, Ohio. In 1872 he went to Germany, then the fountain-head of educational lore, and on his return he became superintendent of schools at Quincy, Massachusetts. Here he found oppor tunities which any school reformer might envy, for the local school board, under the leadership of Charles Francis Adams, one of the most distin guished and influential of New England statesmen, gave Parker unlimited power and unhesitating support. He dropped the speller, the reader, the grammar, and the copy-book from the schools, and had the use of the English language taught by means of ordinary books and papers. Natural history, with classes both indoors and out, he made a leading part of the school work even in the lowest grades. But Parker s most striking innovation was the encouragement which he gave to the teachers of Quincy to make experiments on their own ac count. Too frequently the reforming superintend ent is a martinet who uses his authority to force others to carry out his plans blindly and who re sents any self-assertion from the teacher as dis loyalty. Superintendent Parker, however, was a welcome visitor to teacher and pupil alike when 266 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION he entered a classroom, crayon in hand, to give a demonstration lesson. He sometimes told a teacher who had ventured on school reforms that awoke resentment among the conservative: "If they get after you, they must take me first." It was not long before Quincy became the most interesting town in the country to students of edu cation, and for a time some six thousand visitors came every year to Quincy to study the schools and the methods of teaching. Popularity at last became too much of an interruption to the regular work, the teachers and pupils felt that they were on exhibition all day long, and the school board was obliged to limit the number of visitors. After five years in Quincy, Colonel Parker went to Bos ton and then to Chicago, where he was principal of the Cook County Normal School. Parker once again found himself the storm-center of a great controversy. He insisted upon excluding from en trance to the normal school persons without a good high school education and this step, though in line with the demand of the times for a higher standard in the teaching profession, was widely resented. There were many, also, who were suspicious of the attempts to teach without the text-book in the lower grades. It was not forgotten that a principal THE NEW EDUCATION 267 had once asked Colonel Parker: "Do you mean to say that, if the school board made the children buy spelling books and take them to school, you wouldn t use them?" "Oh, yes," said the genial Colonel, "I d use them; of course I would; I d put em into the stove and heat the house with them. * After some years of agitation and debate the city of Chicago took over the Cook County Nor mal School, and soon thereafter Colonel Parker became head of the Chicago Institute, which later became part of the University of Chicago. The School of Education of that University soon be came famous through the work of John Dewey, who has perhaps done more to spread the ideals of the new education among the teachers of America than any other living educator. Dewey brought to the task what most of the earlier reformers had lacked, a thorough knowledge of the science of psychology upon which educational theory and practice must be based and a full realization of the social importance of education. x The value of the changes made in recent years in the subjects and methods of teaching in Ameri can schools must await the verdict of the final 1 For a sketch of the life and educational ideals of John Dewey see the author s Six Major Prophets (1917). 268 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION court of public opinion, and this opinion must be based upon experience. Some of the critics of modern education have expressed the fear that, by overloading the curriculum and laying less empha sis on memory drill, the teachers of today permit their pupils to enter business life or college with very shaky ideas as to the multiplication table and incapable of writing a correctly spelled letter with out the aid of a dictionary. The charge of dete rioration is plausible, but the evidence to prove it is Jacking. Indeed, an interesting experiment carried out a few years ago at Springfield, Massachusetts, seems to indicate the contrary. A set of old ex amination papers, grades and all, was unearthed and used for the examination of a large class of school children. The marks given on the test to the twentieth century children in such "fundamen tal" studies as spelling, arithmetic, and geography showed a great improvement over the grades made by their forefathers. Another charge brought against the school of today is that it is wholly "feminized," owing to coeducation and the almost universal employment of women teachers in the elementary grades. In the four decades from 1870 to 1910 the number of male teachers in the common schools increased by THE NEW EDUCATION 269 41 per cent and the number of female teachers by 190 per cent. This change has been due in part to the disappearance of the prejudices which kept women from professional life and in part to the failure of the school authorities to raise salaries rapidly enough to attract competent men to teach in the primary and elementary grades. One mem ber of the British Mosely Commission, which visited the United States to study the schools, declared that the low average of attainment in our high schools could be traced to "the preponder ance of women teachers," and that to the same cause might be attributed the deplorable fact that "the boy in America is not being brought up to punch another boy s head or to stand having his own punched in a healthy and proper manner." Without questioning this British standard of man liness, one may nevertheless note that, during this period of "feminization," athletics have had a phenomenal growth and that the world s cham pionship in most of the sports has passed into American hands. More serious than the complaints of a too elabo rate course of study and of too much femininity in the school is the charge that the modern school permits the machinery of a "system" to eclipse 70 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION the common sense of the classroom. Thus the plan so well worked out by William A. Wirt in Gary, Indiana, for a school day which combined study, play, and work, can be made a mere device for keeping every part of the school building in use and so avoiding the expense of new construction. The idea of education for citizenship by an active study of the industries upon which our civilization depends for its existence, rightly advocated by such educational leaders as Charles W. Eliot and John Dewey, may easily in mechanical hands de generate into children s polytechnics. We all know how much educational malpractice can go on behind such impressive names as Froebel and Mon- tessori! But all this simply emphasizes the fact, as true of the old education as of the new, that edu cation is at bottom simply an affair of the interest ing teacher and the interested pupil, and that the libraries, laboratories, costly equipment, text-books, school laws, and school methods are but so many opportunities for the two to get together. On the whole, it is beyond question that teacher and pu pil now understand each other more quickly and can benefit each other more completely because of the good work done by such men as Sheldon, Alcott, Parker, Dewey, and their fellow reformers. THE NEW EDUCATION 271 The United States has been throughout its his tory an educational experiment station on a con tinental scale. The diversity of local control, the parallel systems of public and private institutions from kindergarten to university, and the freedom of the frontier communities from tradition have given opportunity for that variation which is es sential to all evolution. Visiting educators from countries such as France and Germany, where the schools are strictly regulated and centrally con trolled, are amazed and amused to find some schools far in advance of their own in equipment and ideals, while others are using crude and primi tive methods elsewhere abandoned. But this differentiation has made it possible to compare the working of various plans in a way that would be impossible in a country where greater uniformity is enforced. Education, since it consists largely in transmitting to the rising generation the accumu lated wisdom of the past, is essentially a process of conservation, and therefore educators have a natural tendency to become conservative. But American educators have been comparatively free from this tendency and have, indeed, sometimes erred on the other side. They are quick to adopt at least in name new methods from overseas AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION and to borrow bright ideas from one another. If a school superintendent introduces some educational novelty, though it may not be altogether original or very revolutionary, the fame of it speedily spreads through the land, and other cities take it up in their eagerness to be in the van of progress, The voluminous educational literature, the fre quent teachers meetings, the county institutes^ and the educational associations afford oppor tunity for this rapid contagion of ideas. Such a readiness to change plans sometimes leads to con fusion and loss of energy. A child who has to alter the style of his handwriting two or three times is not likely to leave school a good penman. It has been found necessary to check by legislation the disposition to change text-books every year on the theory that the latest must be the best. But al though mutability may be a defect of the American temperament, it is also one of the main factors in the national progress. If education is to keep pace with material advance, the teacher must be as ready as the manufacturer to scrap a piece of antiquated machinery. CHAPTER XVIII THE UNIVERSITY OF TODAY Popular education is necessary for the preservation of those conditions of freedom, political and social, which are indispen sable to free individual development. Woodrow Wilson. THE development of educational institutions in America has come in part through the normal growth and multiplication of earlier foundations. In some instances a transformation so complete has been effected as to make the old institution unrecognizable in the new. This is especially the case with the university. There were "universi ties" from the beginning of American nationality, yet the word in its European and modern sense could hardly be applied to any American institu tion until ten years after the Civil War, when graduate and professional work of a high order began to be undertaken. The German degree of Doctor of Philosophy was granted for the first time in America at Yale in 1861. Harvard adopted this 18 273 274 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION degree in 1872 and Columbia in 1884. The Ameri can colleges formerly followed the custom of the English in granting the degree of Master of Arts "in course" to almost anybody who was willing to pay for it three years after graduation. But in 1874 Yale established the requirement of at least one year of graduate study, and this has since be come the general rule. The degree of Doctor of Philosophy now stands for several years of gradu ate work including original research. In 1916 American universities granted this degree to 607 persons; and more than half of these degrees were conferred in the sciences that is, in subjects which were not fully received into the curriculum until the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The Centennial Year, 1876, which celebrated the breaking of the political bonds with England, may well serve as the date when the American colleges definitely threw off their subservience to the English collegiate tradition. This turning point is marked by the establishment of Johns Hopkins University, which was chiefly devoted, after the model of the German university, to gradu ate study and research and which admits the newer physical and political sciences to equal rank with the older linguistic subjects. The leading Eastern THE UNIVERSITY OF TODAY 275 colleges set about developing their graduate de partments, and one by one they began to call them selves "universities," while the State Universities of the West strove to live up to their names. By far the greater part of the graduate work of the country is done in the endowed universities such as Columbia, Chicago, Harvard, Yale, Johns Hop kins, Cornell, Pennsylvania, and Clark, though some of the State Universities such as Wisconsin, Illinois, California, and Michigan are sharing largely in this training. The era of splendid generosity that set in during the later eighties transformed the older institutions and added such new ones as Clark University of Worcester, Massachusetts, founded by Jonas G. Clark; the University of Chicago, founded by John D. Rockefeller; and Leland Stanford, Junior, Uni versity, founded by Senator Leland Stanford of California. These three universities, opened be tween 1889 and 1892, were so well endowed by their founders that from the start they took equal rank with institutions a century or more older. As patrons of the universities usually preferred to have their donations take the tangible form of buildings, there soon arose new classrooms, labora tories, chapels, libraries, and dormitories that quite 276 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION outshone the more primitive and utilitarian struc tures of earlier days. Formerly buildings had been put up one by one at long intervals as the needs of the institution demanded and its funds permitted. The campus of an old college thus became a sort of architectural museum with specimens of the chang ing fashions of a century. But when gifts of millions came in at one time it was possible to plan harmonious groups. The University of Chicago adopted for all its buildings the English collegiate Gothic in gray limestone and Stanford University an Hispanic Romanesque style in red and yellow with mosaic inlays. Harvard erected a unified group of five marble buildings for its medical school, and the Massachusetts Institute of Tech nology in 1916 moved to a new site on the Cam bridge bank of the Charles River, where a group of buildings in classic style has been erected. The imitation of Oxford and Cambridge models as shown in the new buildings of Princeton, Chi cago, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere is indicative of a tendency to turn again to England for educa tional ideals. Residential halls and common rooms were established in many places in order to get something of the English college atmosphere, and Princeton introduced a preceptorial system of per- THE UNIVERSITY OF TODAY 277 sonal instruction in small groups suggested by the tutorial system of the older British universities. With increasing wealth and luxury on the part of the universities came a desire for ceremonial display. Commencement ceremonies which had dropped into desuetude were revived and elabo rated. Academic costumes of the medieval style were introduced or invented. The fashion spread like wildfire from East to West, and in a few years mortar-board caps and gorgeous gowns were to be seen on almost every campus in the country. Coincident and connected with the rise of cere monial was the development of athletics. In the early days colleges were disposed to frown upon student sports and in some cases, as at Princeton, tried to prohibit them; but in the latter part of the nineteenth century public games became recog nized by the college authorities as the most effec tive form of advertising and by the students as the quickest road to fame. A gymnasium came to be considered as necessary as a library, and more money was spent on a single football game or boat race than would formerly have sufficed to run the college for a year. In the modern American uni versity the stadium has assumed an importance 278 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION and popularity such as it has not enjoyed since the fall of Rome and Byzantium. The dominant power in undergraduate social life of today is the fraternity, a unique feature of the American college, though it corresponds in a way to the corps of the German universities. We have already noted the founding, at old William and Mary in the Year of Independence, of the first Greek-letter society, Phi Beta Kappa, as a philo sophical and patriotic organization. In conse quence of the anti-masonic agitation of 1826 Phi Beta Kappa abandoned its ritualism and secrecy and is now simply an honorary fraternity admitting about a tenth of the seniors, men and women alike, on the ground of scholarship. But in 1826-27, even when the popular opposition to secret societies was most fierce, three fraternities Kappa Alpha, Sigma Phi, and Delta Phi were founded at Union College, and from this center the movement spread rapidly though secretly to the New York and New England colleges. Since then the fra ternities have continued to thrive and multiply, although at times college authorities, State Legis latures, and "barbarian" students have tried to suppress them. At the present time there are over two hundred fraternities and sororities, some THE UNIVERSITY OF TODAY 279 academic and some professional, some local and some national, certain of which have as many as seventy- five local chapters. These societies which were once outlaws now receive practically official status in the college organization and, instead of meeting in woods and cellars, are allowed to have their hand some chapter-houses on the campus. A few insti tutions like Princeton retain the old prohibition, but at Princeton upper-class dining clubs have grown up which have a strong resemblance to the Greek-letter fraternities. During the last quarter of a century the membership of the national fra ternities has risen from 72,000 to about 270,000, of whom 30,000 are women. They own or rent 1100 chapter-houses valued at $8,000,000. The chief characteristics of the recent period of American education are expansion and diversifica tion. Higher education has burst through the four walls and four years that formerly confined it and has overflowed the land. The number of students studying the classics increases year by year, but the number studying new subjects increases much more rapidly. The older colleges in the country are thriving and doing better work than ever, but the city institutions have expanded more rapidly. The rigid requirements for entrance to college 280 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION and the prescribed course afterwards were broken down, and the elective system provided a place for new studies. The efforts of Jefferson to introduce election into Virginia and of George Ticknor to do the same for Harvard had been, as we have seen, unsuccessful; but, when Charles William Eliot, a chemist with radical ideas in education, became President of Harvard in 1869, he was able in the course of the next twenty-five years to provide for a completely elective system. The example of Harvard was followed somewhat hesitatingly by almost all the others. Another university president of similar initiative, William Rainey Harper, had the opportunity in the University of Chicago of creating a new institu tion instead of reforming an old one and was thus able to introduce many innovations that have been generally adopted. One of these, the continuation of college work throughout the summer, enables the ambitious student to complete a four years* course in three and gives teachers from other in stitutions an opportunity to carry on graduate work. The university of Chicago imported the idea of extension courses from Oxford and also es tablished correspondence courses. Other agencies for making education accessible to the largest THE UNIVERSITY OF TODAY 281 possible number of students Harper derived from the Chautauqua Institution, in which he had long been active. The Chautauqua movement started in a camp-meeting of Sunday School teachers at Chautauqua Lake, New York, in 1874. Similar assemblies were established in other States and not only served to stimulate interest in systematic reading but afforded a platform for the free dis cussion of public questions that has had as great an influence over politics as the earlier lyceum move ment. From the platform of the Chautauqua as semblies held every year it is possible to speak to five million people. It is usual now for the city universities to give public lecture courses, provide evening classes, and otherwise extend their privileges to those not enrolled as regular students. Through the initia tive of the late Dr. Henry M. Leipziger, the City of New York has established a system in the school buildings of free evening lectures which are at tended by a million adult auditors a year. Besides stimulating and satisfying the educa tional demands of the American people, the uni versities have extended their influence to foreigners, both by drawing them to this country and by es tablishing schools in other lands. As the home 282 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION missionary movement started most of the colleges west of the Alleghanies, so the foreign missionaries carried the American college around the world. In China there are eighteen colleges and univer sities established by American missionaries. In Turkey the American schools accommodate five thousand collegiate students. Such institutions as Robert College and the American College for Girls at Constantinople and the Syrian Protestant Col lege at Beirut have trained the leaders of the new nationalities emerging from the chaos of the Great War. The sudden extension of American sovereignty in 1898 over eight million Filipinos, mostly illiter ate, brought a new demand upon the American school system to which it has nobly responded. The Government undertook the unprecedented task of teaching the whole of the rising generation a new language. Before the cannon were cool, schools had been opened with soldier teachers. The first Philippine Commission called for a thou sand schoolmasters to be sent from America, and these volunteer teachers followed closely behind the volunteer army as it progressed in the pacifica tion of the archipelago. More than $3,000,000 a year is now spent on education in the Philippines. THE UNIVERSITY OF TODAY 283 This is seven times as much in proportion to the population as the Dutch spend in Java and six times as much as the British spend in India for that purpose. When Japan was opened to the world by Com modore Perry in 1854, American missionaries and teachers took ah active part in the work of regen eration during the Era of Meiji or Enlightenment. The mission schools soon began to send back stu dents who often beat the American boys in their own field. The Japanese were later followed by Chinese in still larger numbers, owing in part to the remis sion of $12,700,000 of the Boxer indemnity on the understanding that the Chinese Government would employ it in sending Chinese students to America. There are now about 2000 Chinese in American preparatory schools and colleges taking chiefly engineering and the industrial sciences. More recently students from India began to come in large numbers. They are not usually, like the Japanese and Chinese, sent with the aid or en couragement of the Government but on the con trary are largely nationalists opposed to the British rule. Naturally many young people come from Hawaii, the Philippines, Porto Rico, and Cuba to be educated in the States, and more than formerly 284 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION are coming from South America, especially Brazil. Owing again to mission schools, Armenian, Syrian, Turk, Persian, and Bulgarian students are here by the hundreds. These divers nationalities are usu ally organized, together with a limited number of American students, into Cosmopolitan Clubs, and this association during the period of life when friendships are formed most easily has done much to cultivate what President Butler calls "the international mind" in American universities. The Great War proved what had sometimes been questioned that the United States was a united people. In spite of the diversity of racial elements and family connections with all the belligerent nationalities in Europe, the youth of this country responded with little hesitation to the call to arms. Few European countries showed such unanimity of opinion in this crisis. The process of Americaniza tion had been more complete than even the optimis tic had hoped; and the chief credit for this belongs to the public school system. Americans had a double duty laid upon them. They had to educate not only their own children but also the immigrants. Though the latter might not be illiterate, they had usually to be taught the THE UNIVERSITY OF TODAY 285 English language and American ideals. No people ever had such a task as this before to assimilate a million foreigners a year and it is perhaps the finest thing which could be said of the American school that it has with almost incredible complete ness accomplished this gigantic feat of naturaliza tion through education. The pay-roll of an American coal mine or steel works today reads like an ethnological map of the Balkans, yet the children of the workmen are thor oughly Americanized. Feuds two thousand years old, based on racial, religious, and linguistic differ ences, are here wiped out in a single generation. The tourist traveling a thousand miles across the United States will observe less contrast in costume and custom, in dialect and mode of thought, than he would while traveling a hundred miles in many parts of Europe. Yet the American school is not a leveling machine. Its aim is not the suppression but rather the cultivation of natural diversity. The "melting-pot" metaphor does not mean that sometime there is to be poured out a homogeneous alloy to solidify like the nations of the Old World. The melting-pot is to be kept melting. The Ameri can idea is to maintain the mass constantly fluid so that individual particles may rise and fall accord- 286 AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION ing to their specific gravity. Americanization means the obliteration of the nationalistic, tradi tional, and class distinctions of Europe in order that the real and personal distinctions may develop. Equality, in the American sense of the word, is not an end but a beginning. It means that, so far as the State can do it, all children shall start in the race of life on an even line. The chief agency for this purpose is the public school system; and this aim has already been so far accomplished that in a large part of the country a youth of sufficient abil ity to profit by the opportunity can get any educa tion he needs, up to the highest professional train ing, without spending any money other than what he can make by his own exertions during his course BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE THE most useful single work of reference on education in America is the Cyclopedia of Education (1911-13), 5 vols., edited by Paul Monroe, Professor of the His tory of Education in Columbia University. The ar ticles by more than a thousand individual contribu tors give a list of the best books on each topic which may be used as a guide to further reading. The annual Report of the United States Commissioner of Education (usually obtainable from Washington for the asking) is now issued in two volumes : the first contains reports of all important movements in education here and abroad, with accounts or abstracts of conventions, surveys, legislation, books, and similar matter; the second volume contains the statistics of schools of all grades. These volumes really form an annual ency clopedia and current history of education. Besides this work, the Bureau of Education publishes various historical monographs in the form of circulars and bulletins and a monthly bibliography of educational literature. The series of twenty brief monographs on Education in the United States (1900), 2 vols., prepared under the editorship of Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, for the Paris Exposition of 1900, gives a survey of the field at that date with some 287 288 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE historical background. Those who wish to explore more thoroughly the byways of educational history will find of interest the special studies in the volumes of Henry Barnard s American Journal of Education (1855-1882), 32 vols. Richard G. Boone s Education in the United States (1889) and Edwin G. Dexter s History of Educa tion in the United States (1904) are detailed chronicles in the general field of American education. But for later and more adequate studies the reader should consult the monographs in the Columbia University Contributions to Philosophy, Psychology, and Educa tion; and Columbia University, Teachers College, Contributions to Education. A valuable special study on land grants and other public endowments is Frank Blackmar s History of Federal and State Aid to Higher Education (1890). Three useful works by Frank Pierrepont Graves of the University of Pennsylvania The History of Edu cation in Modern Times (1913), A Student s History of Education (1915), and Great Educators of Three Cen turies (1912) relate American education with the educational history of Europe. In this connection should also be mentioned Will S. Monroe s important History of the Pestalozzian Movement in the United States (1907). The History of Higher Education in America (1906), by Charles F. Thwing of Western Reserve University, is a good narrative of college and university development made especially interesting by quotations from contemporaries and by accounts of college life. For those interested in the relation of American education to the strife of political par ties and social classes no better book could be re commended than Frank Tracy Carlton s Economic BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 289 Influences upon Educational Progress in the United States, 1820-1850 (1908). For contemporaneous records and pictures of school life the reader can find what he wants in such books as W. H. Small s Early New England Schools (1914), Clifton Johnson s Old Time Schools and School Books (1904), and Emily N. VanderpoeFs Chronicles of a Pioneer School (1903). A. E. Winship s Great American Educators (1900), a volume of brief biographies for school reading, will be found by adults quite as profitable as less interest ing books. Those who care to study more closely the lives of leading educators will find available abundant material impossible to list in this place. Few educators of note have gone without their Boswell, and some, such as Horace Mann, have become the theme of a veritable library. There are also special histories for every important college and university. Great Ameri can Universities (1909), by Edwin E. Slosson, gives journalistic impressions of fourteen leading American institutions. On Catholic education the reader should consult The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907-12), 15 vols.; the works of the Reverend James A. Burns, The Catholic School System in the United States (1908), Catholic Education (1917), and Growth and Development of the Catholic School System in the United States (1912); and also the History of the Catholic Church in the United States by J. G. Shea (1886-92), 4 vols. The fascinating story of the Kentucky pioneer priests may be found in Sketches of the Early Catholic Missions in Kentucky (1844) by M. J. Spalding and in the lives of Nerinckx by Hewlett and Maes. 290 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE For a more detailed account of the Catholic teach ing communities, founded and organized by remark able women, the reader should consult: M. A. McCann, The History of Mother Seton s Daughters (1917); Mary Aloysia Hardey, Religious of the Sacred Heart (1910); Anna B. McGill, The Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Kentucky (1917); George Parsons Lathrop, A Story of Courage (1894); M. J. Brunowe, The College of Mt. St. Vincent (1917). In the footnotes to the body of this volume the atten - tive reader will have found several references to other books dealing with various special topics. In addition to the biographies of educators and chronicles of schools and colleges, there are monographs on educa tional history for most parts of the Union and even on the school systems of important towns and cities. Will S. Monroe s Bibliography of Education (1897) will help the conscientious student to find his way through the forest of earlier educational literature, and the current files of educational periodicals will enable him to keep abreast with the incessant output of new works in the same field. INDEX Academia Virginiensis et Oxon- iensis, name for proposed college in Virginia (1624), 82 Academies, 111-15; attitude toward high schools, 115; George Clinton on, 143 Adams, C. K., adopts German seminar method, 178 Adams, H. B., Thomas Jeffer son and the University of Virginia, cited, 89 (note) Adams, John, 101; and French educational ideals, 169; and education of women, 239-40 Adams, J. Q., and national university, 102; Mann suc ceeds in Congress, 135 Adams Act (1906), 225 Agassiz, Louis, 256 Agricultural colleges, first at Lansing (Mich.), 176; Jeffer son s plan, 209-10, 211; DeWitt s plan, 212-13; Queens College becomes agricultural, 213; Maine College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, 213-14; under Morrill Act, 226-27; see also Morrill Act Alabama, school legislation, 238 Alcott, A. B., 260-64, 270 Alcott, Louisa May, daughter of A. B., 264 American Academy of Arts and Sciences founded, 169 American Catholic Quarterly, cited, 199 (note) American College for Girls, Constantinople, 282 American Journal of Education, 138-39 American Philosophical So ciety, 74 Americanization through pub lic school system, 284-86 Amherst Agricultural College, 226-27 Amish in Pennsylvania, 37 Annapolis, King William s School, 41; Naval Academy at, 99 Antioch College, 160; Mann president of, 135, 136; co education, 248 Apprentice system, 209 Argentina, schools influenced by Horace Mann, 137 Arizona, Catholic, 182 Arkansas, teaching communi ties of women in, 197 Armenia, students from, 284 Armstrong, General S. C., 257 Arnold, Matthew, tries to introduce German methods into English schools, 175 Athletics, 61-62, 269, 277-78 B Badin, Father S. T., first priest ordained in United States, 195 291 292 INDEX Bailey, L. H., on influence of the Morrill Act, 231-32 Baker University, Baldwin (Kan.), admits women, 248 Baltimore, First Provincial Council, recommendations on religious education (1829), 198; Third Plenary Council orders parochial schools (1884), 198-99 Bancroft, George, sent to Got- tingen, 173 Bancroft, H. H., History of California, cited, 187 (note) Baptist Church, in Pennsyl vania, 37; and Brown Uni versity, 56; education of women in South, 238 Barnard, Henry, 256; life, 137- 138; edits Connecticut Com mon School Journal, 138; as college president, 138; first United States Commissioner of Education, 138; edits The American Journal of Educa tion, 138-39; Stoweand, 161 Barnard College, 251 Barrett, Samuel, teacher of Horace Mann, 125 Beaurepaire, Chevalier Ques- nay de, 169 Beecher, Catherine Esther, 240 Beecher, Lyman, 240 Bell-Lancaster system, 145-46, 148 Benedictines, colleges, 204-05 Berkeley, Bishop George, benefactor of Yale, 55 Berkeley, Sir William, Gover nor of Virginia, 81, 83 Blair, Rev. James, and found ing of College of William and Mary, 83-84; president of William and Mary, 85 Blake, Sophia Jex, A Visit to Some American Schools and Colleges, cited, 62 (note) Blandin, I. M. E., History of the Higher Education of Women in the South, cited, 238 (note) Blodget, Samuel, Economica, quoted, 97 Blodget, Major William, 97 Bohemia Manor (Md.), Jesuit school, 191 Borica, Governor, orders Span ish taught in missions, 187 Boston, Franklin bequeaths fund to, 75-76; English Classical School for Boys. 115; schools for girls, 115, 236; Alcott s Temple School, 262, 263 Boston Grammar School, Franklin at, 65 Boston Latin School, founded (1635), 4; Cheever as head of, 11 Bouquillon, Rev. Thomas, Education: To Whom Does It Belong ?, 200 Brazil, students from, 284 British Mosely Commission, 269 Broadway Tabernacle, New York City, Finney builds, 248 Brooks, W. K., 257 Brown, President of People s College, 224 Brown University, Baptists found, 56; tolerance, 56; Mann at, 125; Wayland s report (1850), 214-15 Bryn Mawr College, 250 Buchanan, James, vetoes Mor rill Bill, 222, 224 Buffalo, Christliche Welt, quoted, 202 (note) Bulgaria, students from, 284 Butler, N. M., 284; Mono graphs on Education in the United States, cited, 250 (note) Cabell, J. C., Jefferson writes to, 94-95 INDEX California, Catholic, 182; Franciscans in, 185, ISO- IS? California, Lower, missions in, 185-86 California, University of, at Berkeley (Cal.)> 55; becomes coeducational (1870), 179; graduate work, 275 Cambridge University, Ameri can youth attracted to, 44; American university build ings modeled after, 276 Canfield, J. H., 257 Carnegie, Andrew, 69, 76 Carolinas, school laws, 42-43; see also North Carolina, South Carolina Carroll, Charles, of Carrollton, 191 Carroll, John, Bishop of Balti more, 182, 191, 193; at Jesuit college, 191 Carter, J. G., 127 Cassilly, Rev. Francis, on coeducation, 205 Catholic education in America, 181 et seq.\ bibliography, 289-90 Catholic Educational Associ ation, Proceedings (1918), cited, 187 (note); Proceed ings (1917), cited, 201 (note) Catholic University of America, Washington, 204 Catholics, in Pennsylvania, 36-37; and Public School Society, 146-47, 197; popu lation, 182-83; education of women in South, 238; colleges non-coeducational, 251; see also Catholic edu cation Cecil, Father, starts school in New Orleans (1722), 188 "Central College of Virginia," Jefferson s plan, 86-90 Charleston (S. C.), schools, 42 Chautauqua Institution, 281 Cheever, Ezekiel, 11-12 Chicago, city takes over Cook County Normal, 267 Chicago Institute, 267 Chicago, University of, School of Education, 267; graduate work, 275; founded by Rockefeller, 275; archi tecture, 276; Harper and, 280 China, colleges established by American missionaries, 282; Boxer indemnity students, 283 m Christian Brothers, Colleges, 205 Christian Church, education of women in South, 238 Church of England, position with reference to education in colonies, 29; see also Society for the Propagation of the Gospel; in Pennsyl vania, 37; and King s College, 56; and College of William and Mary, 86 Cincinnati, Catherine Beecher organizes Female Seminary in, 240 Claiborne-Ingle rebellion, 189 Clark, J. G., 275 Clark University, graduate work, 275; founded, 275 Clarke, John, Essay upon the Education of Youth in Gram mar Schools, 121-22 Classics, Latin grammar schools in New England, 9- 12; in schools of New Netherlands, 29; in colonial colleges, 48-49; Franklin and, 72-73; attitude toward study of Greek, 237; increase in number of students, 279 Clinton, DeWitt, 256; and the free school, 141 et seq.\ quoted, 141; first student at Columbia, 142; and Public 294 INDEX Clinton, DeWitt Continued School Society, 144-46; as Governor of New York, 147-48; educational inter ests, 147-48 Clinton, George, 143 Coeducation, in New England, 17-18, 234; in State Univer sities, 179-80; Catholic view of, 205; in colleges (1916), 251-52; in schools, 252; see also Girls, Women Cogswell, Dr. J. G., 173 Colleges, Dutch colonists and, 23; Friends indifferent to, 35-36; American boys sent to English, 44; colonial, 46 et seq.; growth of American system, 48; curriculum, 49- 50, 57-58; college life and discipline, 58-64; Catholic, 203-04; in New England, 208; entrance requirements, 49, 279-80; see also names of colleges, State Universities, Universities Colorado, school teachers from East, 2 Columbia University, King s College becomes Columbia College, 142; Regents and, 143; Barnard College forms part of, 251; degrees, 274; graduate work, 275; see also King s College Commencement ceremonies, 62, 277 Common School Journal, 128 Congregational Church in New England, 30 Connecticut, school law as model, 1; education in, 8-9, 19-20, 105; Barnard s work in, 137-38, 139 Connecticut Common School Journal, 138 Cook County Normal School, Parker principal of, 266, 267 Cooper, Thomas, at Univer sity of Virginia, 89; Jeffer son s letter to, 90 Cope, E. D., paleontological investigations in Trans actions of American Philo sophical Society, 74 Corlett, Elijah, 12 Cornell, Ezra, and coeducation, 179-80 Cornell College, Mount Ver- non (la.), 248 Cornell University, coedu cation, 179-80, 251; State University in type, 180; obtains national funds, 224; graduate work, 275 Cosmopolitan Clubs, 284 Cotton, Edward, endows Catholic school of Newtown (Md.), (1653), 189-90 Cousin, Victor, report on Prus sian school system, 175 Crandall, Prudence, impris oned for maintaining school for negroes, 247 Cuba, students from, 283 Curtius, Dr. Alexander, 25-26 D Dame schools, 18-19, 233 David, Father, organizes Sis ters of Charity of Nazareth, 196 Degrees, 50, 273-74 Delaware, early schools, 38-39; independence of districts, 107 Delaware River, Swedes and Dutch on, 37 Dewey, John, 69, 89, 270; quoted, 253; at University of Chicago, 267 DeWitt, Simeon, 216, 224; and agricultural education, 211-13 Discipline, in colonial schools, 17; at Harvard, 51-52; in INDEX 295 Discipline Continued American colleges, 58-61; Jefferson and, 92; in district schools, 108-09 District school system, 105- 111 Domestic science, Catherine Beecher and, 240 Dominicans, in Lower Cali fornia, 186; and Catholic University of America, 204 Dorchester (Mass.), public school established, 4 Dover (N. H.), petition from, 6-7 Draper, researches in Trans actions of American Philo sophical Society, 74 Dubourg, Rev. William, Sul- pician, 192 Dunkers in Pennsylvania, 37 Dunster, Henry, President of Harvard, 52-53 Durant, H. T., founds Welles- ley College, 250 Dutch on the Delaware, 37, 39; see also New Nether- land Dutch Reformed Church, in Pennsylvania, 37; and Queens College, 56 Dutch West India Company, 23, 25 Dwight, Edmund, and Lexing ton normal school, 128 E East Jersey, school law, 40; see also New Jersey Eaton, Nathaniel, first Presi dent of Harvard, 51-52 Eaton Free School, 80 Eddis, William, quoted, 44-45 Elective system, Jefferson and, 91, 174; Ticknor and, 91, 173-74; spread of, 91; in secondary education, 114; Eliot and, 280 Elementary schools, teachers salaries, 12-13; curriculum, 13-14, 26; text-books, 14- 15; schoolhouses, 15-16; recitations, 16-17; discipline, 17; see also District school system, Public schools Eliot, C. W., 69, 177, 270, 280 Eliot, Rev. John, 12 Elizabeth Academy, Old Washington (Miss.), 239 Emerson, R. W., quoted, 74; on Alcott, 262 Emery, Father, Superior Gen eral of the Sulpicians, 193 Emma Willard Seminary, Troy (N. Y.), 240 Engelhardt, Rev. Zephyrin, Catholic Educational Work in Early California, cited, 187 (note) Engineering, in State Univer sities, 167; a new learned profession, 215; land survey ing, 215-16; see also Techni cal education England, educational ideals from, 276 Episcopalian Church, see Church of England Erie Canal, Van Rensselaer proposes, 216 Everett, Edward, at Got- tingen, 173 Experiment stations, 226, 230 Extension work, University of Chicago, 280; Chautauqua Institution, 281; New York City lectures, 281 "Faribault Plan," 201-02 Fellenberg, P. E. von, 218 Fellenberg movement, 218-19 "Female seminaries," 112-13 Field, Eugene, 257 Field, Justice S. J., 257 296 INDEX Finney, Rev. C. G., second President of Oberlin, 247- 248 Fithian, Philip, account of student life at College of New Jersey, 60-61 Fitzpatrick, E. A., The Edu cational Views and Influence of DeWitt Clinton, cited, 148 (note) Flaget, Father, Sulpician, 192, 196 Flexner, Abraham, 69 Florida, Catholic, 182; Fran ciscan missions, 183 Florida, University of, not coeducational, 179 Flower, Enoch, 35 Foot, Lucinda, debarred from entering Yale, 237 France, and State University, 169; opinion of American schools, 271 France, University of, 170 Franciscans, in Florida, 183; in New Mexico, 183-84; in California, 185, 186-87; in Lower California, 186; and Catholic University of America, 204 Franklin, Benjamin, and practical education, 65 et seq.\ early life and education, 65-67; establishes the Junto, 67; circulating library, 67- 68; Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania, 69-72; Proposal for Promoting Useful Know ledge Among the British Plantations in America, 73- 74; American Philosophical Society, 74; The Cause and Cure of Smoky Chimneys, 74; Boston and Philadelphia funds, 75-76; Poor Richard s Almanack, 76; as an econo mist, 76-77; and electricity, 77; quoted, 77; fond of telling Seymour s retort to Blair, 84 (note); and the physio- cratic school, 210-11; mem ber of Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, 223; and vocational training, 232; on education of women, 235-36 Franklin (Mass.), named for Benjamin Franklin, 68; Hor ace Mann born in, 68, 124 Franklin College, German Col lege of Lancaster (Penn.) becomes, 75 Franklin Institute, 75 Franklin Union, 76 Fraternities, 278; see also Phi Beta Kappa "Free School Association," Sheldon helps found, 258 Free School Society, 144; see also Public School Society French Revolution and the Sulpicians, 192 Friends, and education, 35-36; effect of religious tolerance on education, 36-37 Froebel, F. W. A., 217-18 "Fruitlands," Alcott s com munistic colony, 263-64 G Gardiner Lyceum, 213 Garfield, J. A., 257 Gary (Ind.), Wirt s system of education, 217, 270 Geneva, University of, pro posal to transplant to United States, 101 Georgetown University, 191 Georgia, education in, 43; "university," 143 Georgia Female College (Wes- leyan Female College of Macon), 239 Georgia, University of, organ ized (1785), 168; not coedu cational, 179 INDEX 297 German College of Lancaster (Penn.), 75 Germans, in Pennsylvania, 37- 38, 151-52 Germany, Horace Mann and schools of, 130, 131-32; influence on State Univer sities, 172 et seq.\ American students in, 172-74; opinion of American schools, 271 Girard, Stephen, 75 Girard College, 74-75 Girls, education in early New England, 17-18; in New Netherland, 27; academies, 112-13, 114; see also Coedu cation, Women Gloucester (Mass.), eight- hour law for schoolmaster, 234- 235 Goodrich, C. A., A History of the United States of America, cited, 120 (note) Graduate work, 273-75 Grammar schools, see Latin grammar schools Grange movement, 228 Grant, U. S., and national university, 102 Great War proves Americani zation of United States people, 284 Greek, see Classics Greek-letter fraternities, see Fraternities, Phi Beta Kappa Greene, General, and national university, 97 Guyot, Arnold, 256 Hall. B. R., quoted, 104 Hamilton, Alexander, and " University of the State of New York," 170 Hamilton, Sir William, plea for British university reform, 175 Hampton Institute, Armstrong founder of, 257; Booker T. Washington at, 257 Harper, W. R., President of University of Chicago, 280- 281 Harris, W. T., 139, 175; A. Branson Alcott, His Life and Philosophy, cited, 264 (note) Harrison, Benjamin, signs sec ond Morrill Act, 225 Harrison, W. H., signs act establishing Vincennes Uni versity, 161 Hartford (Conn.), schools established, 8 Hartford Female Seminary, 240 Harvard, John, 46, 47 Harvard University, cosmo politan, 2; grammar schools near, 10; Harvard s bequest to, 46-47; early entrance requirements, 49; curricu lum, 49-50; degrees, 50, 274; "disputations," 50-51; early presidents, 51-53; theological battleground, 51-53; and Yale, 53; edu cational monopoly, 54; Will iam and Mary second to, 84; and elective system, 91, 280; State appropriations to, 180; Radcliffe College affili ated with, 251; graduate work, 275; medical school buildings, 276 Hatch Act (1887), 225 Hawaii, land-grant college, 226; students from, 283 Hayden, F. V., paleontological investigations in Trans actions of American Philo sophical Society, 74 Hayes, R. B., and national university, 102 Henrico (Va.), plan for college for Indians at, 81 298 INDEX Henry, Joseph, experiments in Transactions of American Philosophical Society, 74 Herbart, J. F., 218 High schools, establishment of, 111, 115-17; coordination with university, 178; see also Secondary education Hingham (Mass.) teachers salaries, 13 Hinsdale, B. A., Notes on the History of Foreign Influences upon Education in the United States, cited, 174 (note) Hitchcock, Edward, 243 HofwyJ, "farm-school" at, 218 Holmes, Ezekiel, 213 Honor system, 92 Hopkins, Mark, 257 Hopkins School, New Haven, 234 Horn-books, 14 Hoyt, J. W., President of Wyoming, 102; urges na tional university, 177 (note) Hughes, Bishop of New York, 197 Huxley, T. H., quoted, 165 I Illinois, teachers from East, 2; land grants for common schools, 159; development of colleges, 163-64 Illinois College, Jacksonville, Turner a professor in, 224 Illinois Industrial University, see Illinois, University of Illinois State Normal Univer sity, 164 Illinois, University of, origin, 164; becomes coeducational (1870), 179; graduate work, 275 Immigration, effect on edu cation in New York, 33; effect in Pennsylvania, 36; Catholic, 182; Catholic edu cation of children of immi grants, 205-06 India, students from, 283 Indiana, land grants for com mon schools, 159; establish ment of colleges, 161-63 Indiana, University of, Vin- cennes University becomes, 162; coeducational, 179; Lathrop, President of, 213 Indians, raids an obstacle to learning, 6-7; Society for the Propagation of the Gos pel and, 30, 32; London Company makes grant for college for, 81-82; Clinton favors education of, 148; and Florida missions, 183; and Franciscans in New Mexico, 183-84; in Califor nia, 185, 186-87 Industrial education, Lincoln s idea of, 222; see also Techni cal education Ingalls, J. J., 257 Institute of Brothers of the Christian Schools, 205 Iowa, University of, coedu cational, 179, 249 Ireland, Archbishop John, devises "Faribault Plan," 201; appeals to Rome, 202 James, E. J., President of University of Illinois, 102; James, William, 89 James River Company, Wash ington gives shares to Lib erty Hall Academy, 98 Japan, students from, 283 Jay, John, and Jefferson s plan of public education, 170 Jefferson, Thomas, Priestley and, 74; and State edu cation, 78 et seq., 94-95; at College of William and Mary, 84; and University of INDEX 299 Jefferson, Thomas Continued Virginia, 87-93, 170; Essay toward facilitating instruction in Anglo-Saxon and Modern Dialects of the English Lan guage, cited, 88 (note); epi taph, 93; and national uni versity, 100-01, 102; and Washington, 101; and Ques- nay de Beaurepaire, 169; French influence, 170; and elective system, 174, 280; and Ursuline school, 188-89; technical education, 209-10, 232; member of Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agri culture, 223; introduces bill providing education for girls and boys, 236; and educa tion of women, 240 Jesuits, found college at Que bec, 184; industrial colonies in Paraguay, 185; in Lower California, 185-86; expelled, 186; deported from Mary land, 189; school in New- town (Md.), 190; school in New York City, 190; employed as tutors in Maryland, 190; preparatory school at Bohemia Manor, 191; Georgetown College, 191; colleges, 204 Jewett, Rev. M. P., 239, 249 Jogues, Father, Jesuit, visits Manhattan (1644), 182 John of Nassau, quoted, 22 Johns Hopkins University, established, 274; graduate work, 274, 275 Johnson, Clifton, Old- Time Schools and School- Books, cited, 16 (note) Johnson, Samuel, first Presi dent of King s College, 32; quoted, 57-58 Judson Female Institute, Mar ion (Ala.), 239 Junto, 67 Kansas, teachers from East, 2 Kansas, University of, coedu cation, 179, 249 Kemp, W. W., The Support of Schools in Colonial New York by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, cited, 33 (note) Kentucky, Virginia and, 95; Catholics in, 195-97; teach ing communities of women, 196-97 Kilpatrick, Dutch Schools of New Netherland, cited, 27 (note) King William s School, Annap olis (Md.), 41 King s College, Johnson as President of, 32, 57-58; Anglican, 56; renamed Co lumbia, 142; see also Colum bia University Knight, Public School Edu cation in North Carolina, cited, 154 (note) Lalor, Alice, opens school for girls at Georgetown, 194 Lancaster (Penn.), German College, 75 Lancaster plan of teaching, see Bell-Lancaster system Land grants, in New Jersey, 40; federal, 157 et seq.; see also Morrill Act Land Ordinance of 1785, 159 Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, Mahan and, 247 Lansing (Mich.), agricultural college, 226 La Salle, St. Jean Baptiste de, founder of Christian Broth ers, 205 300 INDEX Lathrop, J. H., 213 Latin grammar schools, 111; in New England, 9-10; in New Netherland, 24; in Maryland, 41-42 Laval, Bishop, 184 Laval University, 185 Lawrence College, Appleton (Wis.), 248 Legislation, Alabama, 238; Connecticut, 1, 19-20; Maine, 213-14; Maryland, 41; Massachusetts, 1, 4-6, 19-21, 115, 208-09, 234; Michigan, 171, 172, 175, 178; New York, 28-29, 143- 144, 148-49; North Carolina, 42; Pennsylvania, 34-35, 152-53; South Carolina, 41, 42; training in crafts, 209; Virginia, 82-83; see also Morrill Act Leidy, Joseph, paleontological investigations in Trans actions of American Philo sophical Society, 74 Leipziger, Dr. H. M., and New York lecture system, 281 Leland Stanford, Junior, Uni versity, founded, 275; archi tecture, 276 Leo XIII, Pope, establishes Catholic University of America, 204 Leverett, John, President of Harvard, 53 Lexington (Mass.), first nor mal school in America, 128 Liberty Hall Academy be comes Washington and Lee University, 98 Libraries, Franklin and, 67-69 Lincoln, Abraham, and Morrill Acts, 222, 224-25; on indus trial education, 222, 232 Lombard University, Gales- burg, (111.), 248 London Company of Virginia, 79-80, 81 Longfellow, H. W., student in Germany, 174 Lorettines, see Sisters of Lo- retto Louisiana, Catholic, 182 Louisiana Purchase, 188 Lowell, J. R., on Alcott, 264 Lutheran Church in Penn sylvania, 37 Luyck, Rev. ^Egidius, 26 Lyon, C. H., Causes of the Backward State of Sound Learning of the United States, cited, 122 (note) Lyon, Mary, quoted, 233; life and education, 241-43; and Mount Holyoke, 243-45 M McClure, David, on education of girls, 235 Macon, Wesleyan Female Col lege of, 239 Madison, James, and national university, 102 Magazines as text-books, 121- 122 Mahan, Rev. Asa, first Presi dent of Oberlin, 247 Maine, teachers salaries, 13; and agricultural education, 213-14 Maine, University of, 214 Mann, Horace, 256; life and education, 68-69, 124-26; and the American school, 124 et seq.\ secretary of Massachusetts Board of Education, 126-34; Com mon School Journal, 128; and teachers training, 128-29; and teaching of music, 129-30; criticism of. 130-31, 133-34; German in fluence, 131-33, 175; elected to Congress, 135; President of Antioch College, 135, 248; death (1859), 135; INDEX 301 Mann, Horace Continued interests, 135-36; estimate of, 136-37; inspired by Stowe, 161 Manual training, 217-19 Marion (Ala.), Judson Female Institute, 239 Marists and Catholic Univer sity of America, 204 Marshall, John, at College of William and Mary, 84-85 Martin, G. H., Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School System, cited, 18 (note) Maryland, public schools, 41- 42; number of Catholics in (1789), 182; origin of Catho lic education in, 189; agri cultural college, 226 Mason, Lowell, and music teaching, 130 Masons, education of women in South, 238 Massachusetts, school law (1647), 1, 5-6; school law (1642), 4-5, 208-09, 234; grammar schools, 10-12; school law (1789), 19-20; district schools, 105-06; see also District school system; law of 1827, 106; academies, 113; high school law, (1826), 115; Horace Mann in, 139; contrasted with New York in methods of education, 141; see also Boston, Har vard University Massachusetts Bay, first col ony to establish public schools, 3-4 Massachusetts Institute of Technolcgy, 226, 276 Mather, Cotton, 11, 12, 51, 53, 67 Mather, Increase, 53 Mayflower, the (ship), 79 Mechanics Mutual Protection Society, 223 Medicine, first school in Amer ica at University of Penn sylvania, 73; in State Uni versities, 167; architecture of Harvard school of, 276 Mennonites in Pennsylvania, 37 Methodist Church, in Penn sylvania, 37; education of women in South, 238; Eliza beth Academy, 239 Mexico, secularizes missions, 187; appropriates Pious Fund, 188 Miami University, 160 Michigan, "university" ex periment, 143; agricultural college, 226 Michigan, University of, "mother of the State Uni versities," 169; modeled after University of France, 171; German influence, 175- 176; rectoral plan, 176; ad mits women (1870), 179; State support, 180; graduate work, 275. Military education, 99-100, 227 Minnesota, University of, co educational, 179, 249 Mississippi Valley, colleges established, 156 Missouri, teaching communi ties of women, 197 Missouri, University of, be comes coeducational, 179; Lathrop as President of, 213 Mitchell, Maria, 238 Monroe, James, at College of William and Mary, 84; and national university, 102 Monroe, Paul, Cyclopedia of Education, cited, 159 (note) Monteith, Rev. John, at Uni versity of Michigan, 172 Moravians in Pennsylvania, 37, 38; schools for girls, 236 302 INDEX Morgan, E. B., founder of Wells College, 250 Merrill, J. S., 225 Morrill Act, 164, 220, 221 et seq. Morse, Jedediah, 119 Motley, J. L., student in Ger many, 174 Mount Holyoke College, " Mount Holyoke Female Seminary," 243-45; char tered as college (1888), 245 Mount St. Mary s, Emmits- burg (Md.), 191-92 Music, Horace Mann intro duces into public schools, 129-30 N Napoleon and University of France, 170 National Association of State Universities endorses na tional university, 102 National Educational Associ ation endorses national uni versity, 102 National University, Wash ington and, 95 et seq.; Hoyt urges, 177 (note) Nazareth (Penn.), Moravian school for girls, 236 Neale, Father, President of Georgetown College, 194 Negroes admitted to Oberlin, 247 Nemours, Dupont de, Jefferson and, 170 Nerinckx, Father, in Ken tucky, 195, 196 New Amstel (New Castle, Del.), Dutch teacher at, 25 New Amsterdam, public school, 24; Latin school started (1652), 25 "New education, the," 253 et New England, schools of early, 1 et seq.; Church of England schools in, 30; colleges established, 208; state of colleges (1850), 214; frater nities in colleges of, 278 New England Primer, 14-15 New England s First Fruits, quoted, 46 New Hampshire follows school system of Massachusetts, 8 New Harmony (Ind.), com munistic colony, 218 New Haven, school laws, 8; Yale College moved to, 54 New Jersey, College of (Prince ton), 56, 60-61; see also Princeton University New Jersey, schools, 39-40 New Mexico, Catholic, 182; Franciscan missions, 183 New Netherland, schools in, 22 et seq. New Orleans, elementary edu cation begun (1722), 188; girls schools, 236 New Sweden, schools, 38-39 New York, English edu cational work in, 28 et seq.; Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in, 30-31; tries to make schools demo cratic, 141; public school system established, 144; bill for education of women, 240; coeducational univer sities, 251; fraternities in colleges, 278; see also New Netherland New York City, law to provide public support of teacher in (1702), 28-39; Trinity Church Charity school, 31; high schools, 115; Public School Society, 144-47, 197; debt to DeWitt Clinton, 145; Jesuit school (1684), 190; Catholic schools, 197; "no Popery" agitation in. INDEX 303 New York City Continued 197-98; free lecture system, 281 New York, College of the City of, 147 New York University, 251 New York, University of the State of, 142-43, 170 Newport (R. I.) establishes town schools, 7 Newspapers as text-books, 121-22 Newtown (Md.), Catholic school, 189-90 Normal schools, 128-29, 176, 258, 259-60, 268, 267 North Carolina, appeal to Legislature against general education, 153-54; public schools established, 154; Constitution provides for university, 168; see also Carolinas O Oberlin, J. F., 245 Oberlin College, 160; Oberlin Collegiate Institute founded, 245-46; first coeducational college, 246-47 "Oberlin Covenant," 245 Odd Fellows, education of women in South, 238 Ohio, teachers from East, 2; land grants for common schools, 159; colleges of, 160 Ohio Company, 159-60 Ohio State University, 160 Ohio, University of, 160 Oftate, Juan de, expedition in to New Mexico (1598), 183 Ordinance of 1787, quoted, 155 Oswego (N. Y.), normal school, 258, 259-60 Owen, R. D., 218 Oxford University, American youth attracted to, 44; Rhodes scholarships, 45; American college buildings modeled after, 276 Palmer, Edwin, plans univer sity in Virginia, 82 Parker, Colonel F. W., 264-67, 270 Parker, Theodore, and Hor ace Mann, 136 Paulist Fathers and Catholic University of America, 204 Penn, William, quoted, 34; settlement planned by, 34 Pennsylvania, teachers from East, 2; schools, 34-38, 151- 153; school laws, 34-35; 152- 153; Constitution provides for university, 168; Catho lics in, 182, 194; agricultural college, 226 "Pennsylvania Dutch," 37 Pennsylvania, University of, independent of denomina tional influence, 57; Frank lin s Academy develops in to, 73, 112; graduate work, 275; architecture, 276 People s College, 223-24 People s party (1892), 228 Perry, Commodore, opens ports of Japan, 283 Persia, students from, 284 Pestalozzi, J. H., 217 Phi Beta Kappa, 62, 85, 278 Philadelphia, Flower opens school in, 35; William Penn Charter School, 35; Franklin in, 66; Franklin and schools of, 74-75; Franklin be queaths fund to, 75-76; high schools, 115; first Catholic parochial school, 195; "no Popery" agitation, 197-98; Franklin s project for "Pub- lick Academy," 211 304 INDEX Philadelphia Society for Pro moting Agriculture, 223 Philippine Islands, Catholic, 182; land-grant college, 226; education in, 282-83; stu dents from, 283 Phillips, Wendell, 136 Phillips Academy at Andover (Mass.), 112 Phillips Academy at Exeter (N.H.), 112 Pierce, Cyrus, 128-29 Pietersen, Evert, 26 Pious Fund, 188 Plymouth (Mass.), provides instruction (1670), 3; merged with Massachusetts, 3 Porto Rico, Catholic, 182; land-grant college, 226; students from, 283 Portsmouth (N. H.), school for girls, (1773), 235 Potomac River Navigation Company, Washington gives shares to found national university, 93 " Poughkeepsie Plan," 201 Presbyterian Church, College of New Jersey, 56; education of women in South, 238 Priestley, Joseph, Experiments and Observations on different kinds of air, 74 Princeton University, honor system at, 92; buildings, 276; personal instruction, 276-77; and Greek-letter fraternities, 279; see also New Jersey, College of Providence (R. I.), establishes town schools, 7 Public School Society, 144-47, 97 Public schools, origin of Amer ican, 1 et seq.\ arguments against in New York, 150- 151; Catholic teachers in, 200-01; curriculum, 253-54; complaints against, 267-70; see also, District school sys tem, Elementary schools. High schools, Rural schools. Secondary schools Pupil teaching, 145-46 Purdue, John, 162 Purdue University, 162 Q Quakers, see Friends Quebec, Jesuits found college at (1635), 184; Laval Uni versity, 185 Quebec Seminary founded (1663), 184 Queens College (Rutgers), 56; becomes agricultural college, 213 Quincy (Mass.), Parker in, 265-66 R Radcliffe College, 251 Randolph, Peyton, at College of William and Mary, 84 Recollets in northern colonies, 185 "Rensselaer plan" of student demonstration, 216-17 Rensselaer Polytechnic Insti tute, opened (1825), 100, 216; Mary Lyon at, 242- 243 Rhode Island, lack of public provision for education in, 7; debt to Barnard, 138, 139 Rhodes, Anne, 196 Rhodes, Cecil, 45, 96-97 Richard, Father Gabriel, and University of Michigan, 172, 192 Richmond (Va.), capital removed to, 85 Robert College, Constanti nople, 282 Rockefeller, J. D., founds University of Chicago, 275 INDEX 305 Rockfish Gap, committee meets to draw up plan for "Central College," 86 Roe, E. P., 257 Roelantsen, Adam, 24 Rogers, John, 15 Roosevelt, Theodore, quoted, 168 Round Hill School, 173 Roxbury, Eliot establishes school at, 12 Rural schools, conditions in New York, 150 S S. P. G., see Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts St. Augustine, classical school (1606), 183 St. John s College, Barnard as President of, 138 St. Mary s Seminary, Balti more, Dubourg founds, 192, 193 St. Omer, College of, Catholic sons sent to, 190-91 Salaries of teachers 12-13, 26- 27, 204 Salem (N. C.), Moravian Female Academy, 236 Sanborn, F. B., and Harris, W. T., A. Branson Alcott, His Life and Philosophy, cited, 264 (note) Sanderson Academy, Ashfield, Mary Lyon at, 241 San Diego, mission established (1769), 186 San Jose, Borica opens school in, 187 San Miguel, mission sold (1846), 187 Sarmiento, "the Horace Mann of South America," 137 Saybrook (Conn.), Yale Col lege at, 54 Schneider, Rev. Theodore, 194-95 School laws, see Legislation Schoolhouses, in early New England, 15-16; district schools, 107-08; community center, 110 Schwenkfelders in Penn sylvania, 37 Scotch-Irish establish Liberty Hall Academy, 98 Secondary education, 111-17; see also Academies, High schools, Latin grammar schools Serra, Father Junipero, estab lishes mission at San Diego (1769), 186 Seton, Mrs. Elizabeth Ann, 193 Seventh Day Baptists in Penn sylvania, 37 Seward, Governor of New York, Annual Message (1842) quoted, 147 Seymour, Attorney-General, and founding of College of William and Mary, 83 Sharp, Chaplain John, quoted, 33 Sheldon, E. A., 258-59, 270 Shipherd, J. J., 245 Sisters of Charity, Mrs. Seton organizes, 193 Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, 196 Sisters of Charity of St. Vin cent de Paul, 193-94 "Sisters of Loretto," 196 Sisters of St. Dominic, 196- 197 Sisters of the Visitation, 194 Slaves, work of Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among, 32 Slosson, E. E., Six Major Pro phets, cited, 267 (note) Small, W. IL, Early New Eng land School*, cited, 5 (note) 306 INDEX Smith, Sophia, 250 Smith College, 250 Smith-Lever Act (1914), 225 Society for Promoting Manual Labor in Literary Institu tions, 218 "Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge Among the Germans in America," 37 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 29-32, 43 "Society of the Friends of Mary Sorrowing at the Foot of the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ," 196 Society of St. Sulpice, see Sul- picians South, distinction between schooling and education, 43; sends boys to England, 44; education of women in, 238- 239 South America, students from, 284 South Carolina, tax-supported county schools, 41; school laws, 42 South Hadley (Mass.), Mount Holyoke at, 243 Sparks, Works of Benjamin Franklin, cited, 84 (note) Spaulding, Archbishop, quoted, 181 Springfield (Mass.), experi ment at, 268 Stanford, Leland, 275 Stanford University, see Leland Stanford, Junior, University State Universities, religion in, 157; and land grants, 158; and denominational colleges, 166; general characteristics, 166-67; rise of, 168 et seq.; and Catholic high schools, 202-03; coeducation, 248- 249; see also Colleges, names of colleges and universities, Universities Steiner, B. C., History of Edu cation in Maryland, cited, 42 (note), 45 (note) Stevens, Thaddeus, 152 Stewart, Rev. K. J., A Geog raphy for Beginners, 120-21 Stewart, P. P., 245 Stowe, C. E., 160-61 Student Army Training Corps, 100 Sulpicians, in North, 185; Mount St. Mary s College, 191-92; fugitives from France, 192-93; work in America, 192-94; and Catholic University of America, 204 Surveying, see Engineering Sweden, education in, 38 Swedes, at New Amstel, 25; on the Delaware, 37, 38 Switzerland, contribution to educational science, 256 Symms School, 80 Syracuse (N. Y.), Sheldon in, 259 Syracuse University, 251 Syria, students from, 284 Syrian Protestant College, Beirut, 282 Tappan, H. P., President of Universitv of Michigan, 175, 176-77 Taunton, (Mass.), teachers salaries, 13 Taylor, J. W., 250 Teachers, educational require ments in New England, 20; salaries, 12-13, 26-27, 204; in New Netherland, 27-28; in Maryland, 41-42; changed relations with pupil, 254 Technical education, 207 et seq. INDEX 307 Tejada, Bishop, reopens semi nary at St. Augustine (1736), 183 Tennessee, University of, 168 Texas, land grants in, 165; Catholic, 182 Texas, University of, 165 Text-books, of New England, 1-2, 14-15; of Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 31; American, 117-21; Web ster s, 117-19; newspapers and magazines as, 121-23 Thomas, M.Carey, quoted, 250 Thonin, superintendent of the Jardin des Plantes, sends seeds to Jefferson, 210 Thorpe, George, 81 Thwing, C. F., History of Higher Education in Amer ica., cited, 174 (note) Ticknor, George, 91, 172-73, 280 Tracy, Count Destutt de, introduces term " Ideology, " 88 Trent, W. P., English Culture in Virginia, cited, 89 (note) Tribune, New York, quoted, 149; aids agitation for People s College, 223 Troy (N. Y.), Van Rensselaer founds technical school at, 216; see also Rensselaer Poly technic Institute; Emma Willard Seminary, 240 Turkey, American schools in, 282; students from, 284 Turner, J. B., 164, 224 Tuskegee Institute, 219, 257 Tyler, John, at College of Wil liam and Mary, 84 Tyler, W. S., trustee of Mount Holyoke, quoted, 243 Union College, fraternities founded at, 278 United States, government educational agencies, 103; an educational experiment station, 271-72 United States Bureau of Edu cation, Circular of Infor mation, No. 1, cited, 91 (note) Universities of today, 273 et seq.; see also Colleges, names of colleges, State Univer sities Ursuline nuns, in North, 184, 185; convent school in New Orleans, 188, 236 Van Rensselaer, Stephen, 216 Vassar, Matthew, 249 Vassar College, opened (1865), 238, 247; astronomy at, 238; Jewett President of, 239; chartered as " Vassar Female College" (1861), 250 Vermont, school establishment in, 8; Constitution provides for university, 168 Vincennes University, 161-62; see also Indiana, University of Virginia, disputes school pri macy with New England, 1; public school system estab lished, 79; early history of education in, 79 et seq.; gift of shares to Washington as reward for services, 98; academies, 113 Virginia, University of, Jeffer son s plan for, 86-88, 170; curriculum, 87-88; has per manent president, 92; honor system at, 92; French in fluence, 172; elective system, 174, 280; follows German model, 176; not coeduca tional, 179; agriculture at, 210, 211 308 INDEX Visitation Order of St. Francis de Sales, convent and acad emy, 194 Vocational specialization, Jef ferson and, 91; see also Tech nical education W Walker, F. A., quoted, 207 Washington, B. T., 219 Washington, and national edu cation, 94 et seq., 232; na tional university, 95-96, 97- 98, 102; on need of military academy, 99; and agri cultural education, 216, 223 Washington and Lee Univer sity, 98 Washington, University of, coeducation, 249 Wayland, President of Brown University, 175, 214-15 Webster, Daniel, and Horace Mann, 135; quoted, 155 Webster, Noah, text-books, 15, 117-19 Wellesley College, 250 Wells, D. A., 257 Wells, Henry, 250 Wells College, 250 Wesleyan Female College of Macon (Ga.), 239 West, establishment of col leges, 156; collegiate compe tition, 157 West India Company, see Dutch West India Com pany West Jersey, education in, 40; see also New Jersey West Point, Military Acad emy at, 99-100 Western Literary Institute, 160 Western Reserve University, 160 White, Father Andrew, 189 White, A. D., President of Cor nell, 102, 175, 178, 180 Willard, Mrs. Emma Hart, A Plan for Improving Female Education, 239 William and Mary, College of, founding of, 82 et seq.; Phi Beta Kappa founded at, 85, 278; represented in Virginia House of Burgesses, 85; closed for seven years, 86; Episcopalian, 98; Washing ton and, 98 William Penn Charter School, 35 Williams, Roger, 52 Williamsburg, capital removed from, 85; in Revolutionary and Civil Wars, 86 Wilson, Father, 196-97 Wilson, Woodrow, quoted, 273 Wirt, W. A., 270 Wisconsin, federal land grant, 164 Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Lincoln s address before, 222 Wisconsin, University of, Bar nard as Chancellor of, 138; founded (1848), 164; Lath- rop as President of, 213; graduate work, 275 Women, Clinton favors higher education for, 148; admis sion to State Universities, 179-80; Catholic teaching communities, 196-97; Catho lic University of America conducts summer school for, 204; higher education for, 233 et seq.; early curriculum for, 237-38; teachers in ele mentary grades, 268-69; col lege attendance (1893-1913), 252; see also Coeducation, Girls Woodward, Judge, plans Uni versity of Michigan, 171 Woolsey, T. D., 174 INDEX 309 Yale, Elihu, 55 Yale University, cosmopolitan, 2; founding of (1701), 53-54; degrees, 273, 274; graduate work. 275 Young, Arthur, chosen pro fessor of agriculture by Jefferson, 210 Ypsilanti (Mich.), normal school, 176 AN OUTLINE OF THE PLAN .OF THE CHRONICLES OF AMERICA The fifty titles of the Series fall into eight topical sequences or groups, each with a dominant theme of its own I. The Morning of America TIME: 1492-1763 theme of the first sequence is the struggle of nations for the possession of the New World. The mariners of four European king doms Spain, Portugal, France, and England are intent upon the discovery of a new route to Asia. They come upon the American continent which blocks the way. Spain plants colonies in the south, lured by gold. France, in pursuit of the fur trade, plants colonies in the north. Englishmen, in search of homes and of a wider freedom, occupy the Atlantic seaboard. These Englishmen come in time to need the land into which the French have penetrated by way of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, and a mighty struggle between the two nations takes place in the wilderness, ending in the expulsion of the French. This sequence comprises ten volumes: I. THE RED MAN S CONTINENT, by Ellsworth Huntington 1. THE SPANISH CONQUERORS, by Irving Berdine Richman 3. ELIZABETHAN SEA-DOGS, by William Wood 4. CRUSADERS OF NEW FRANCE, by William Bennett Munro 5. PIONEERS OF THE OLD SOUTH, by Mary Johnston 6. THE FATHERS OF NEW ENGLAND, by Charles M. Andrews 7. DUTCH AND ENGLISH ON THE HUDSON, by Maud Wilder Goodwin 8. THE QUAKER COLONIES, by Sydney G. Fisher 9. COLONIAL FOLKWAYS, by Charles M. Andrews IO. THE CONQUEST OF NEW FRANCE, by George M. Wrong II. The Winning of Independence TIME: 1763-1815 The French peril has passed, and the great territory between the Alta ghanies and the Mississippi is now open to the Englishmen on the seaboard, with no enemy to contest their right of way except the Indian. But the question arises whether these Englishmen in the New World shall submit to political dictation from the King and Parliament of England. To decide this question the War of the Revolution is fought; the Union is born: and the second war with England follows. Seven volumes: 11. THE EVE OF THE REVOLUTION, by Carl Becker 12. WASHINGTON AND HIS COMRADES IN ARMS, by George M. Wrong 13. THE FATHERS OF THE CONSTITUTION, by Max Farrand 14. WASHINGTON AND HIS COLLEAGUES, by Henry Jones Ford 15. JEFFERSON AND HIS COLLEAGUES, by Allen Johnson 16. JOHN MARSHALL AND THE CONSTITUTION, by Edward S. CoriDltt 17. THE FIGHT FOR A FREE SEA, by Ralph D. Paine III. The Vision of the West TIME: 1750-1890 The theme of the third sequence is the American frontier the conquest of the continent from the Alleghanies to the Pacific Ocean. The story covers nearly a century and a half, from the first crossing of the Alleghanieo by the backwoodsmen of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas (about 1750) to the heyday of the cowboy on the Great Plains in the latter part of the nineteenth century. This is the marvelous tale of the greatest migra tions in history, told in nine volumes as follows: 1 8. PIONEERS OF THE OLD SOUTHWEST, by Constance Lindsay Skinner 19. THE OLD NORTHWEST, by Frederic Austin Ogg 20. THE REIGN OF ANDREW JACKSON, by Frederic Austin Ogg 21. THE PATHS OF INLAND COMMERCE, by Archer B. Hulbert 22. ADVENTURERS OF OREGON, by Constance Lindsay Skinner 23. THE SPANISH BORDERLANDS, by Herbert E. Bolton 24. TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN WAR, by Nathaniel W. Stephenso* 25. THE FORTY-NINERS, by Stewart Edward White l6. THE PASSING OF THE FRONTIER, b J Emerson Hough IV. The Storm of Secession TIME: 1830-1876 The curtain rises on the gathering storm of secession. The theme of the fourth sequence is the preservation of the Union, which carries with it the extermination of slavery. Six volumes as follows: 27. THE COTTON KINGDOM, by William E. Dodd 28. THE ANTI-SLAVERY CRUSADE, by JeSSC Macy 29. ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE UNION, by Nathaniel IV. Stephenson 30. THE DAY OF THE CONFEDERACY, by Nathaniel W. Stephenson 31. CAPTAINS OF THE CIVIL WAR, by William Wood 32. THE SEQUEL OF APPOMATTOX, by Walter Lynwood Fleming V. The Intellectual Life Two volumes follow on the higher national life, telling of the nation s great teachers and interpreters: 33. THE AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION, by Edwin E. SloSSOIt 34. THE AMERICAN SPIRIT IN LITERATURE, by BUSS Perry VI. The Epic of Commerce and Industry The sixth sequence is devoted to the romance of industry and business, and the dominant theme is the transformation caused by the inflow of immigrants and the development and utilization of mechanics on a great scale. The long age of muscular power has passed, and the era of mechanical power has brought with it a new kind of civilization. Eight volumes: 35. OUR FOREIGNERS, by Samuel P. Orth 36. THE OLD MERCHANT MARINE, by Ralph D. Paine 37. THE AGE OF INVENTION, by Holland Thompson 38. THE RAILROAD BUILDERS, by John Moody 3f. THE AGE OF BIG BUSINESS, by BurtOrt J. HfttdHfk 40. THE ARMIES OF LABOR, by Samuel P. Orth 41. THE MASTERS OF CAPITAL, by John Moody 42. THE NEW SOUTH, by Holland Thompson VII. The Era of World Power The seventh sequence carries on the story of government and diplomacy and political expansion from the Reconstruction (1876) to the present day, in six volumes: 43. THE BOSS AND THE MACHINE, by Samuel P. Or/A 44. THE CLEVELAND ERA, by Henry Jones Ford 45. THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE, by Solon J. Buck 46. THE PATH OF EMPIRE, by Carl Russell Fish 47. THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND HIS TIMES, by Harold Howland 48. WOODROW WILSON AND THE WORLD WAR, by Charles Seymour VIII. Our Neighbors Now to round out the story of the continent, the Hispanic peoples on the south and the Canadians on the north are taken up where they were dropped further back in the Series, and these peoples are followed down to the present day: 49. THE CANADIAN DOMINION, by Oscar D. Skelton 50. THE HISPANIC NATIONS OF THE NEW WORLD, by William R. Shepherd The Chronicles of America is thus a great synthesis, giving a new projec tion and a new interpretation of American History. These narratives are works of real scholarship, for every one is written after an exhaustive examination of the sources. Many of them contain new facts; some of them such as those by Rowland, Seymour, and Hough are founded on inti mate personal knowledge. But the originality of the Series lies, not chiefly in new facts, but rather in new ideas and new combinations of old facts. The General Editor of the Series is Dr. Allen Johnson, Chairman of the Department of History of Yale University, and the entire work has been planned, prepared, and published under the control of the Council* Committee on Publications of Yale University. YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 143 ELM STREET, NEW HAVEN 522 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY BERKELEY Return to desk from which borrowed. This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. safll LU 3Jun 6llE JUN 6 196 I3May 63BB JUL 1 8 1963 CD 9 196520 JUN 9 1965 fcEC DLD NO/ 2 9 - 6 5 - 8 AM LD 21-100m-7, 52(A2528sl6)476 Y.B 63980 M84933 --1 w THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY