(_ ''"** SmUNnBPn^pjii, THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES .- book is DUE or i IIBPV*Y 104- SIAIE NORMAL SQ1UUL, THE FOUR GREAT AMERICANS SERIES BIOGRAPHICAL STORIES FOR YOUNG READERS Edited by JAMES BALDWIN, Ph.D. COMPLIMENTS AMERICAN BOOK 00. A F OONN, Geii'l Ag\ PIN E& BATTERY FRANCISCO. GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS The Four Great Americans Series Edited by JAMES BALDWIN, Ph.D. BIOGRAPHICAL STORIES OF GREAT AMERICANS FOR YOUNG AMERICAN READERS I. FOUR GREAT AMERICANS George Washington Benjamin Franklin Daniel Webster Abraham Lincoln By James Baldwin, Ph.D. Cloth. Illustrated. 246 pages. Price 500 II. FOUR AMERICAN PATRIOTS Patrick Henry Alexander Hamilton Andrew Jackson Ulysses S. Grant By Alma Holman Burton Author of "The Story of Our Country," "Lafayette," etc. Cloth. Illustrated. 256 pages. Price 500 III. FOUR AMERICAN NAVAL HEROES Paul Jones Oliver H. Perry David G. Farragut George Dewey By Mabel Barton Beebe Cloth. Illustrated. 254 pages. Price soc IV. FOUR AMERICAN POETS William Cullen Bryant Henry W. Longfellow John G. Whittler Oliver Wendell Holmes By Sherwin Cody Cloth. Portraits. ^ 254 pages. Price soc V. FOUR FAMOUS AMERICAN WRITERS Washington Irving Edgar Allan Poe James Russell Lowell Bayard Taylor By Sher-urin Cody Cloth. Portraits. 256 pages. Price 500 VI. FOUR AMERICAN PIONEERS Daniel Boone George Rogers Clark David Crockett Kit Carson By Frances M. Perry and Katherine Beebe Cloth. Illustrated. 256 pages. Price soc VII. GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS Horace Mann Mary Lyon David P. Page Henry Barnard, ei ul By A. E. Winship, Litt.D. OTHER VOLUMES IN PREPARATION GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS WITH CHAPTERS ON AMERICAN EDUCATION BY A. E. WINSHIP, LITT.D. COPYRIGHT, 1900 Bv WERNER SCHOOL BOOK COMPANY rijr Uakfsftr ])rtss R. R. DONNELLEY * SONS COMPANY CHICAGO Library i-A PREFACE CHILDREN do not often play that they are poets or inventors, soldiers or sailors, but they love to play school and church. One of the first aspirations of ordinary children is to teach or to preach. The teacher and the preacher are their early ideals of greatness. This results from what they see and know, and not from anything that they hear about these leaders. They are told of the acts of heroic soldiers and sailors, of great orators and inventors, of famous poets and artists. But teachers and preachers are rarely the subjects of stories; and they seldom in any way give an impression that there have been great leaders in either of these professions. Most teachers take pleasure in relating to their pupils inspiring stories of famous men and women who have made the world better by having lived in it. They err greatly if they neglect to tell about the lives and achievements 5 6 PREFACE of educational leaders. If they know so little about educators that they cannot make the story of their deeds interesting, then others have erred in not making that story more familiar. This book has been written to help teachers interest children in great educators. The men and women who have done so much for the improvement of the schools of this country, and have made it possible for every boy and girl to secure a thorough educa- tion, are worthy to be remembered among the " Great Americans," and the record of their lives should be as inspiring to our young people as the stories of patriots and heroes of war. Their example should help to the teaching of higher and better aims in human life, and to the encouragement of manly endeavor and heroic effort. It is earnestly hoped, also, that the brief biographies here presented will prove to be a source of inspiration and encouragement to many y?nng teachers. These examples of per- severance, of devotion to duty, and of ultimate success, illustrate the possibilities that are within PREFACE 7 the reach of faithful, earnest workers in the educational field, even when opposed by seem- ingly insurmountable difficulties. The brief sketch of the history of public- school education in America will be of especial interest to teachers and those preparing to teach. The story of the manner in which our present systems of instruction have been slowly developed and adopted is not without its lessons even to young readers. "BE ASHAMED TO DIE UNTIL YOU HAVE WON SOME VIC- TORY FOR HUMANITY." Horace Mann. . CONTENTS PAGE HORACE MANN, J 3 The Successful Leader, 15 His Birthplace, - i/ His Home, - - 18 His Boyhood, 19 His Love for his Mother, - 21 At School, - - 22 In College, - 24 College Fun, 25 Studying Law, In the Legislature, 2 9 Secretary of the Board of Education, 32 Mr. Mann's Reports, 35 Mr. Mann's Triumph, 41 As a Statesman, - 43 His Personality, 45 His Friends, 46 In the West, - 4$ MARY LYON, - 53 The Founder of Seminaries for Girls, 55 Her Birthplace, Childhood, ' - 59 School Life, 6 5 As a Teacher, - 68 A New Seminary, - 7 Development of Character, - 73 Mount Holyoke Seminary, 75 Teaching, Woman's Ideal, 76 Her Purpose in Life, - 78 Her Benevolence, - 79 Her Mottoes, 79 At Rest, - 80 10 CONTENTS PAGB DAVID P. PAGE, 81 "Theory and Practice of Teaching," 83 Childhood, 84 At School, 85 Newbury, - 87 Boarding Around, His Private School, 90 A Great Speech, - 92 A Normal School Principal, 95 The Gospel of the Profession, 96 Opposition, 97 "Succeed or Die," 99 HENRY BARNARD, - 101 His Boyhood, - - 104 At College, - 105 Choosing a Career, - - 106 ! School Work in Connecticut, - - - 107 \ In Rhode Island, 108 > Other Positions, - 109 Commissioner of Education, - - in As an Author, - 1 12 JOHN DUDLEY PHILBRICK, 115 His Birthplace, - - - 118 His Boyhood, - - 119 Making Maple Sugar, - - 120 Breaking Steers, 121 The Turning Point, - - 122 At College, - 123 A Boston Schoolmaster, - 124 In Connecticut, - 127 Superintendent in Boston, - 128 NEWTON BATEMAN, 131 Childhood, - 135 His Education, - - 136 The Years of Struggle, - - 138 Prosperity, - 140 CONTENTS I I PAGE State Superintendent, - - - 141 As College President, 143 The End, - - \ 144 EDWARD A. SHELDON, - 145 His Education, - - 149 His First School, 150 Superintendent of Schools, - - 151 Methods of Teaching, - 153 His School Reports, - 156 The Normal School, - 158* An Author, - 160 JAM*:S P. WICKERSHAM, - -163 Birthplace and Boyhood, - 166 The Friends' Meeting, - - 167 As a Teacher, - - 170 As State Superintendent, - - 171 Other Labors, - 172 FOUNDERS AND BENEFACTORS OF AMERICAN COLLEGES, 175 John Harvard, - - 177 Elihu Yale, - 182 Mark Hopkins, - - 187 Frederick A. P. Barnard, - 200 Charles G. Finney, 211 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF AMERICAN EDUCATION, - 223 1870-1900, - - 227 1840-1870, 229 1810-1840, - - 230 1780-1810, 230 1750-1780, - - 233 1700-1750, 234 1610-1700, - - 238 The Middle Colonies, 238 The New England Colonies, 241 Massachusetts, ... . 246 PORTRAITS PACK HORACE' MANN, 14 MARY LYON, aged 34, 54 MARY LYON, aged 50, - 77 DAVID P. PAGE, - 82 HENRY BARNARD, - 102 JOHN DUDLEY PHILBRICK, 116 NEWTON BATEMAN, - 132 EDWARD A. SHELDON, - 146 JAMES P: WICKERSHAM, 164 JOHN HARVARD, - 176 ELIHU YALE, - - 183 MARK HOPKINS, - - 189 FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD, - 201 CHARLES G. FINNEY, - 213 12 HORACE MANN AMERICA'S GREATEST EDUCATOR HORACE MANN AMERICA'S GREATEST EDUCATIONAL LEADER 1796-1859 THE SUCCESSFUL LEADER 2 104-4- HORACE MANN is by general consent the greatest educator that this Western hemi- sphere has produced. He was not the greatest scholar, was not the greatest teacher, was not the best beloved by the teachers of his day, yet he is everywhere known as the first among American educational leaders. A man in the army or the navy becomes a leader by gaining some great battle on land or sea, or by conduct- ing a successful campaign. A statesman be- comes a leader through the influence of some powerful speech, or by achieving success in law, or by winning the favor of a political party. An inventor becomes a leader by making a great discovery, or by developing some new scientific principle. Horace Mann had no such direct road to leadership as had Grant, Dewey, Webster, or Edison; and we must trace his progress to distinction as an educational re- 15 16 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS former more carefully and patiently. It is in- teresting to study the childhood and manhood of any famous person, whether he be a hero of the battlefield or of intellectual progress. Horace Mann was a leader because he suc- cessfully attacked old-fashioned ways at the right time. He was not a teacher, but he knew that the teachers of sixty years ago whipped children too often and too hard. He knew that too much time was spent teaching things that were of little account. He also knew that the schools ought to have superintendents, that the school year ought to be longer, and that more money ought to be spent for public education. Because of Mr. Mann's leadership, there are now better teachers and better schoolhouses all over the United States; there is less punishment in school; there have come to be superintend- ents everywhere; and much more money is ex- pended on the schools. When Mr. Mann began his reforms he was the only person in educational work who attracted more than local attention. He was the first man to make educational addresses outside of his own state; and the first American to write anything upon education that was read in Europe. Other men have since made educa- tional addresses in more states than he ever dreamed of; others have written educational HORACE MANN 17 books that have been translated into many lan- guages; but Horace Mann was the first in all lines of popular educational reform. HIS BIRTHPLACE Horace Mann was born at Franklin, Massa- chusetts, May 4, 1796. Franklin is now a beau- tiful and thrifty town, but one hundred years ago it was a small community in which most of the people were trying to get a living by culti- vating very poor sandy soil. It has now four thousand inhabitants, but then it had only about , four hundred. The town was organized in 1778, and named in honor of Benjamin Franklin, then the most emi- nent man in America. Some of the townspeople told Dr. Franklin that he had been remembered by the citizens, and that they would be pleased if he in turn would remember them with the gift of a bell. Dr. Franklin thanked them, and said that people who chose so good a name must care more for sense than for sound; and he therefore gave them a public library of five hundred volumes. If the town had not been named for him, Dr. Franklin would have had no occasion to show his generosity and good sense by the gift of a library. As this library furnished the only books that Horace Mann had in his boyhood and youth, 1 8 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS without it he would probably have developed no taste for scholarship, and the world would not have known this most brilliant American edu- cator. Mr. Mann was so much indebted to this library, that in speaking of it in later years, he said he would like to scatter libraries broadcast over the land as a farmer sows his wheat. Franklin is the birthplace of several other eminent men. The Rev. Dr. Nathaniel Em- mons, who was settled over the church of the town twenty-three years before Horace Mann was born, and continued to be its pastor until Mr. Mann was thirty-one, was one of the great preachers of New England. William M. Thayer of Franklin, who was thirty-eight years old when Mr. Mann died, lived until 1898. He was a popular writer of books for schools and for young people. The most eminent man ever born in the town, however, was Horace Mann. HIS HOME No picture is to be had of Horace Mann's birthplace, for the humble little farmhouse in which he was born was much altered by his elder brother, and has since been made into a large, awkward building, which retains none of the appearance of the home of his child- hood. His father died when the lad was thirteen HORACE MANN IQ years old. He was an industrious farmer, but the land was very poor, and he was unable to do more than to feed and clothe his family comfortably. He could not provide books or education for the children beyond what the schools of the town furnished. Horace's mother was a noble woman, but so reserved that she showed slight affection, and there was little joy in his home life. In later years Mr. Mann wrote that he regarded it as a misfortune that his childhood was not a happy one. In this home, and under these conditions of poverty and unhappiness, he remained until he was twenty-one. HIS BOYHOOD A hard life was that of the boy who became Dr. Mann in later life. He said in speaking of it afterwards that he never had a play-day till he was twenty; that the most he ever hoped for in childhood was a play-hour earned by extra exertions in getting work done ahead of time. So early in life did he begin to help his parents, that he said he could not remember the time when he did not work. In the spring, summer, and autumn he had to begin work about the farm very early in the day, and keep at it until it was time to be in bed. His work in the winter was braiding straw 20 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS for hats. In those days there were no machines for braiding straw; but now all the work, both of braiding and of sewing the braids together into hats, is done by machinery. Women used to make all the straw braid, and southeastern Massachusetts was a great section for this work. Men drove to Franklin and the neighboring towns once a week in large covered wagons loaded with bundles of straw, which they left with the farmers' wives in return for the braids they had made. Boys never liked to braid straw, and it was considered girls' work. But Horace worked with his mother braiding straw all the long winter days and evenings until he was nearly twenty years old. The people in Franklin thought he lacked pluck, and called him a girlish boy, because he did so much girls' work. He never had any of the common vices of childhood or youth. He never used a profane, vulgar, or indecent word; he never used tobacco or intoxicating liquors in any form. From early boyhood he fought against being the slave to any habit. He always thought that he owed his good habits to the fact that he spent so much time with his mother. The most impressive event in his early life was the death of his twelve-year-old brother, who was drowned. The charming little fellow HORACE MANN 21 was very dear to Horace, and his tragic death had a great influence upon him. Horace Mann never dreamed of being a famous man, as many boys do; but he built castles in the air about knowing a great deal and doing much to benefit his fellow-men. It is well to remember these conditions of his boyhood in reading of the many occasions when he had to choose between greatness and usefulness. HIS LOVE FOR HIS MOTHER Few boys ever loved a mother so devotedly as did Horace Mann. He says of her: " Principle, duty, gratitude, affection, have bound me so closely to that parent whom alone Heaven has spared me, that she seems to me rather a portion of my own existence than a separate and independent being. I can conceive no emotions more pure, more holy, more like those which glow in the bosom of a perfected being, than those which a virtuous son must feel towards an affectionate mother. I can truly say that the strongest and most abiding incen- tive to excellence by which I was ever animated sprang from that look of solicitude and hope, that heavenly expression of maternal tenderness, when, without the utterance of a single word, my mother has looked into my face, and silently 22 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS told me that my life was freighted with a two- fold being, for it bore her destiny as well as my own." AT SCHOOL Horace Mann had no good school privileges. There was a poor school in a little schoolhouse at the cross-roads in his part of the town, but it was in session only a few weeks in the summer and a few weeks more in the winter. He could not go in the summer because he was needed to work on the farm; and hence, until he was fifteen years old he never went to school more than ten weeks in the year. In those days neither drawing nor music was taught in school; there were no pictures on the walls or the blackboards. Often when the quiet little boy drew a picture on his slate because he loved to draw so much that he could not help it, the teacher would strike him across the knuckles with the ruler. There was no "nature study" in his child- hood, and no out-of-door study of geography or of botany. He was taught nothing except what was in the book, and he had to learn all that was there just as it was printed. He once said that the little school which he attended in his boyhood was " the smallest school in the poorest school- house with the cheapest teachers in the state." HORACE MANN 23 He had a great love for books, even at a very early age, and every book he owned was sacred to him. None was ever dog-eared, and he never scribbled on the fly-leaf or the margin of a page. Whatever books he had he earned by extra work, and he bought all his school- books with money earned by braiding straw. The first good school that he attended was a private school in the village of Franklin, which was taught by Samuel Barrett. This man rarely stayed in any place more than six months. He was an eccentric fellow, but one of the best teachers of the classics ever known in New England. When, at twenty years of age, Horace Mann began to study with Barrett he had never so much as seen a Greek or a Latin book. After a day or two, Barrett saw the power that might be developed in him, and said, " Horace, you must go to college." The young man smiled, and replied that it was useless to think of it; he could not do it, for he knew no Greek or Latin. "But you shall go," insisted Barrett; "I will prepare you for college." It seems incredible, but so enthusiastic were the teacher and the student of twenty years, that at the end of six months young Mann passed the examinations for Brown University and entered the Sophomore class. 24 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS In six months he mastered the Latin and Greek grammars, and read ^sop's Fables, the ^Eneid, Cicero's Select Orations, the four Gos- pels and most of the Epistles of the New Tes- tament in Greek, parts of the Georgics and Bucolics, and parts of Graeca Majorica and Minora. IN COLLEGE Few young men have done so much difficult work in the classics in six months as did Horace Mann in preparing for the Sophomore class. Despite this hurried preparation, which almost made him a physical wreck, and notwithstanding the fact that he had to teach a country school part of the time that he was pursuing his college studies, he graduated in three years at the head of his class, carrying off the highest honors. He had almost no money for college life. He never complained, but rather made light of his poverty. While at college he wrote his sister: " If the children of Israel were pressed for 'gear' half so hard as I have been, I do not wonder they were willing to worship a golden calf. It is a long, long time since my last nine- pence* bade good-bye to its brethren; and I suspect the last two parted on no very friendly *Twelve-and-a-half-cent piece. HORACE MANN 25 terms, for they have never since met together. Poor wretches! Never did two souls stand in greater need of mutual support and consola- tion." His mature age, earnest purpose, and lack of funds helped materially to aid his naturally vir- tuous and noble traits in college days. He was one of the most brilliant students in Greek and Latin in the history of the university. He translated with surprising facility, accuracy, and elegance. His English was that of a master. His taste and talent in this respect were much aided by his reading of the works of the great writers from the Franklin library in his early years. He was never good in mathematics or the sciences. His valedictory theme was "The Progressive Character of the Human Race." This is one of the great efforts of New England college graduations. COLLEGE FUN It must not be thought that Horace Mann was prosy because he was good and studied hard. Professor Edwards A. Park, of Andover Seminary, who was in Brown University with him, says he was one of the most mischievous fellows in college. He would never do a mean thing, or let any one else act meanly, but he had 26 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS more fun of the harmless kind in him than any other man in his class. One story that is told of him is, that the pres- ident came to his room one night when the boys were having a jolly time in a way that was entirely harmless. The president stood so near the door that no one could go out. Quick as a flash, Horace blew out the candle, made a dive for the president's feet, pushed them apart and crept through. The dignified president had all he could do to keep his balance, and so made no attempt to seize Mann or any of his companions. The whole performance was so funny that the president never referred to it, but he could not help smiling the first few times he saw Horace Mann afterwards. The students had long been in the habit of celebrating the Fourth of July in the college chapel. In his junior year the college authori- ties forbade the celebration because of some wildness the year before. The boys had made their arrangements before the refusal of the authorities became known, and Horace Mann had been chosen orator. The students were very indignant. Mann said that he thought the college authorities were in the right; but if the boys decided to have their celebration, he would do his part. He declared that it was bad enough to rebel against the col- HORACE MANN 27 lege authorities, but it was worse to rebel against one's classmates. The college faculty imposed a trifling fine upon Mr. Mann for acting as orator in defiance of their edict, but they never thought the less of him for it. When he was himself a college president, years afterwards, he remembered this bit of rebellion in his student days. STUDYING LAW After graduating from college Horace Mann entered a law office at Wrentham, Massachusetts, as a student of law; but he soon accepted an invitation to return to Brown University as a tutor in Latin and Greek. He was an excellent teacher, but after a little time he went to Litch- field, Connecticut, to study law again. This law school was large, and the best in the country. Mr. Mann was soon recognized as the best scholar and the best lawyer in the school. Many of the students had already been admitted to the bar, and were at Litchfield for further special study. One incident of the year is worth repeating. Professor Gould, the leading lecturer of the law school, held a moot court, a sort of mock trial, once a week, and the case to be tried was announced a week in advance. Professor Gould acted as judge, and the students elected the 28 prosecuting attorney. Mr. Mann was chosen for this position, and on one occasion he argued so brilliantly against the previous ruling of Judge Gould that the judge lost his temper and refused to allow Mr. Mann to proceed, for fear the students would think that his law was better than the professor's. AS A LAWYER Mr. Mann practiced law in Dedham and Boston for fourteen years. It is a matter of court record that in that time he gained four out of five of all the cases he tried in court. He was a brilliant lawyer, and had he de- voted himself to his profession he would cer- tainly have been classed with Webster and Choate. He enjoyed thinking out the line of argument for a case and pleading it in court, but he did not like the drudgery of looking up the law points. He had not the patience to sit in a law library day after day in search of precedents in a given case. He would not take any criminal case unless convinced that he was on the right side. This lost him the best paying practice. If a man knows he is in the wrong, he will pay a large sum to be cleared of the charge against him; but if he knows he is innocent, he is apt to think that it HORACE MANN 29 is not worth much to make a jury see he is right. Mr. Mann did not have large fees, though he had some important cases. As a lawyer, Mr. Mann was very convincing and magnetic. He did not try to argue the jury into a verdict as he wanted it, but tried to make them see the case as he did, to believe in his client as thoroughly as he himself did. He made them feel that he was a sincere and honest man, and that he believed his case to be a just one. Not only did he choose the least lucrative practice, but he also assumed many of the debts of his eldest brother, who had been very enter- prising and apparently very prosperous. This brother borrowed money from nearly every one in Franklin, and many loaned him large sums, because he was the brother of Horace Mann. After a time he proved to be unprincipled, and left town never to return. It was a great grief to Mr. Mann, and he set himself to paying off his brother's debts. Although he had a fair income from his practice, he lived on two meals a day and slept on a lounge in his Boston office, in order to save money to pay these debts. IN THE LEGISLATURE Horace Mann went to Dedham, Massachu- setts, as assistant in a law office, and before he had been in the town a year he was elected to 30 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS the legislature. He was kept there by annual re-election for ten years. It is quite out of the ordinary course of things for a man to be sent to the legislature before he has lived in a community long enough to render service to his party. Political prejudices are always aroused against any man who aspires to office soon after his arrival in a town. New England is very conservative in such matters. Mr. Mann's election was a remarkable instance of quick recognition of ability. His election was a great surprise to him, and it is said to have been due to his grand Fourth of July oration the year he became a resident of Dedham. This was considered the ablest address ever heard in that town, and the citizens de- manded that he should represent them in the legislature. It was the first public recognition of any kind that Mr. Mann had received. He was now thirty years of age, and had never pre- viously appeared before the public in any capacity. The enthusiastic reception of this Fourth of July speech was, therefore, very pleasing. It showed that he had power and popular talent. He had had no political aspira- tions, but he was much gratified at being sent to the legislature. He had simply been work- ing his way through college and law school, HORACE MANN 31 patiently waiting to get into the practice of law. The reward was unexpected and welcome. If Mr. Mann had been shrewd, in the ordi- nary sense of the word, he would have taken advantage of his opportunities in the legislature to build up a law practice. He might have been a member of some committee that would have helped him in getting business; but instead, he unselfishly gave his time and thought to reforms. He did much for the insane, for the feeble-minded, for a school for the blind, and for education. These causes did not bring him paying practice, and they took his thoughts away from law. There has been no other instance in the history of Massachusetts, if indeed in any state, where a born leader, a man of great ability in law and politics, has devoted himself to legisla- tive life for ten years for the purpose of passing laws to benefit children, idiots, the insane, the deaf, and the blind. This is what Horace Mann did. After he had been in the Massachusetts house of representatives for eight years, he moved from Dedham to Boston. He was sent to the state senate the same year, and became presi- dent of that body. He was now in line for high political positions. He was the best political speaker in the state. Even Daniel Webster 32 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS could not make so popular a political speech as Horace Mann. He was in sympathy with all progressive measures. The people believed in him, and his friends looked forward to a great political future for him. SECRETARY OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION For fifteen years there had been much talk about educational reform in Massachusetts, but it had accomplished little. Every effort failed until Mr. Mann became president of the senate and leader of the legislature. Then he took charge of the educational reform bill, and it was made a law. The friends of the new movement wished him to become secretary of the State Board of Education. The salary was small. The position would take him out of politics and out of law. No one supposed he would give any thought to the offer, but he accepted it. It was a great surprise and disappointment to his friends, but their remonstrance did not keep him from his purpose. He announced that his law office was to let and his law library for sale, saying: "The next generation is to be my client. The bar is no longer my forum. I have betaken myself to the larger sphere of mind and morals Men are cast iron, but chil- dren are wax." The State Board of Education would not HORACE MANN 33 have been created at that time but for Mr. Mann's efforts, and he accepted the position of secretary largely because he drifted into such relation to the establishment of it that he was the only one who could make a success of the office. His friends were much chagrined that the title was Secretary of the Board of Educa- tion, instead of President. This title made him appear as a servant, they said, but the other would make him its master. His reply was, that he would prefer to make the title honor- able rather than have a title attempt to make him more honored. He said, " I will not be indebted to a title." He did, indeed, make the title honorable, and the position of state superintendent of schools is nowhere in the United States more honorable than that of secretary of the Massa- chusetts Board of Education. AN EDUCATIONAL LEADER For twelve years Horace Mann was at the head of the school interests of Massachusetts. Through him the first normal schools were opened in the United States, and to him pri- marily the country owes all of her normal schools. When Mr. Mann organized the State Board of Education, more money was being spent for 34 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS tuition in private schools in Boston than was paid by the city for public schools. Few parents would send a child to the public schools if they could afford to put him in a private school. Everywhere the private schools were for the rich, the public schools for the poor. The public schools were then called "common" schools. In twelve years Mr. Mann changed this. The public schools became good schools, and the rich were as proud of them as the poor. There were better schoolhouses, better teachers, better books used, and a greater interest in the schools everywhere because of his work. Mr. Mann's first effort was to interest the people by making educational addresses in the cities and towns. He was considered a great orator by so good a judge as John Quincy Adams, president of the United States. It was annoying to him that even the news- papers would give no attention to educational affairs. The local paper in the town of Barn- stable gave a few lines to his grand address, and more than a column to a political convention held to nominate a man for some small office. This politician was unknown fifty miles from the town, and would be known nowhere in a few years; but Mr. Mann was appreciated in Europe as well as in America, and was to be honored for centuries. Yet the newspapers could give HORACE MANN 35 only a few lines to him though they had columns for politics. There is a strange contrast between the way the newspapers estimated the educator and the politician, and the way Mr. Mann the educator overshadows Mr. Mann the politician in history. For twelve years he put the best of his thought into the cause of education. He was brilliant in many ways, but he lives in history as an educator. MR. MANN'S REPORTS Horace Mann's twelve Reports of the Massa- chusetts Board of Education are among the greatest educational writings in the history of our country. His Report in 1837 was the first publication of the kind in the United States. Now every state in the Union issues educational reports. Since 1837 nearly two thousand state reports have been written, but not one has been as good as Mr. Mann's First, Fifth, and Seventh reports. Here are a few sentences from his First Re- port : "I have attended educational conventions in every county in the state but one, and neither in convention nor in correspondence concerning them was there the slightest ingredient of par- tisan politics." That was written in 1837, and 36 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS since that time there has never been any par- tisan politics in state educational matters in Massachusetts. "The object of the common school system is to give to every child a free, straight, solid path- way by which he can walk directly up from the ignorance of an infant to a knowledge of the primary duties of a man, and can acquire a power and an invincible will to discharge them." Mr. Mann insisted that these ends could not be attained without numerous good school- houses, an intelligent and faithful school board, an interested public, and competent teachers. Most children spend a considerable portion of their time in schoolhouses, and the condition of the building connects itself closely with their love of study, proficiency, health, and length of life. The well-being of the children requires that careful attention be given to the school- houses, and this question has never been more ably discussed than by Mr. Mann in his First Report more than sixty years ago. THE FIFTH REPORT Mr. Mann's Reports attracted much attention outside of Massachusetts. The New York state assembly had eighteen thousand copies of the Fifth Report printed. In the London city council, after a vote had been taken against HORACE MANN 37 making an appropriation for the schools, a member asked the privilege of reading from Mr. Mann's Fifth Report. The reading made so great an impression that the vote was recon- sidered and the appropriation made. The British Parliament reprinted by special vote a large part of his Seventh Report. Both the Fifth and Seventh reports were translated, and large editions were printed by the German government. No other American educational documents ever received so much attention. This Fifth Report makes a grand argument for the advantages of common school education. Mr. Mann says that the movement of the sun to the south does not more certainly bring winter with its bleakness and sterility, nor his movement north bring summer with all its beauty and abundance, than does the want or the enjoyment of education degrade or elevate the condition of a people. He shows in this Report " the effect of edu- cation upon the worldly fortunes and estates of men, its influence upon property, upon human comfort and competence, upon the outward, visible, material interests or well-being of in- dividuals and communities." "The more educated a people are, the more will they abound in all those conveniences, com- forts, and satisfactions which money will buy." 38 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS "Education must enlighten mankind in the choice of pursuits, it must guide them in the selection and use of the most appropriate means, it must impart that steadiness of purpose which results from comprehending the connections of a long train of events, and seeing the end from the beginning, or all enterprises will terminate in ruin." These are samples of thirty-five pages of vigorous, noble utterances, every sentence of which carries conviction. It is no wonder that the New York assembly, the British Parliament, ana the German government republished such sentiments. The effect of that Fifth Report has not ceased to be felt throughout the length and breadth of the land. THE SEVENTH REPORT The Seventh Report, written in 1843, i s an account of his six months' study of the schools of England, Scotland, France, Prussia, Germany, and other European countries. It is the most readable educational document ever published in Europe or America. It is interesting from first to last, and is of almost as great interest to-day as when it first appeared. There is a spirit and snap in it that will never let it die. This Seventh Report made some criticisms of the Boston schools, which were resented by HORACE MANN 39 the thirty-one Boston masters, as the school principals were called, and they published a long and keen reply, called " Remarks upon the Seventh Report of Mr. Mann." He made a reply to these "Remarks," whereupon they sent a "Rejoinder." His "Answer to the Rejoinder to the Reply to the Remarks on the Seventh Report " closed the discussion. This discussion is the most interesting educa- tional controversy that the world has known. It was a sad chapter in Mr. Mann's career. It caused him much anxiety, yet but for this Con- troversy, his place in history would not have been as great as it now is. From the first, his ideal had been the Prussian schools, and his tour abroad revealed these schools to him under favorable conditions. He was lionized in Scotland, England, Ireland, Germany, Saxony, Holland, Belgium, France, and Prussia, and he wrote of their schools with high praise. Reading this report in the light of modern times, when criticism is freely indulged in, one cannot understand why any special exception should have been taken to it. He said : " I have visited countries where there is no national system of education, and countries where the minutest details of the schools are regulated by law. I have seen schools in which each word and process, in many lessons, was 40 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS almost overloaded with explanations and com- mentary; and many schools in which four or five hundred children were obliged to commit to memory, in the Latin language, the entire book of Psalms and other parts of the Bible, neither teachers nor children understanding a word of the language which they were prating. I have seen countries in whose schools all forms of cor- poral punishment were used without stint or measure; and I have visited one nation in whose excellent and well-ordered schools scarcely a blow has been struck for more than a quarter of a century. On reflection, it seems to me that it would be most strange if, from all this variety of system 'and of no system, of sound instruction and of babbling, of the discipline of violence and of moral means, many beneficial hints for our warning or our imitation could not be derived. " I do not hesitate to say that there are many things abroad which we, at home, should do well to imitate. ... If the Prussian school- master has better methods of teaching reading, writing, grammar, geography, arithmetic, etc., so that, in half the time, he produces greater and better results, surely we may copy his modes of teaching these elements, without adopting his notions of passive obedience to government, or of blind adherence to the articles of a church." HORACE MANN 41 The first reception of the report was the most enthusiastic given to any of his publications, but the private criticism greatly annoyed him, and he wrote, as early as April: "There are owls who, to adapt the world to their own eyes, would always keep the sun from rising. Most teachers amongst us have been animated to greater ex- ertions by the account of the best schools abroad. Others are offended at being driven out of the paradise which their own self-esteem had erected for them." This report was immediately construed by the Boston masters as a reflection upon their methods. For months, in every educational convention held throughout the state, some of the grammar masters were sure to attack the ideas presented by Mr. Mann. The "Remarks" in which they answered his criticisms were brilliant productions, very carefully prepared. They were widely read, and a bitter controversy was soon raging. MR. MANN'S TRIUMPH When the conflict with the Boston masters reached its height, Mr. Mann's friends took charge of affairs. It was seen that he was no better qualified to conduct his own case than a lawyer to plead his own cause or a physican to administer to himself in a high fever. Thirty of the most eminent men of Boston organized 42 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS themselves at once to withstand the attack of the Boston masters. They took in hand the election of school boards, the examination of the grammar schools, the removal of inefficient grammar masters four of whom were dis- missed within two years the management of the legislature, and all other matters of this kind. The masters thought their triumph was to be sure and speedy. Some of them had said, in the hour of over-confidence, "the Board of Education is already abolished, we only await the action of the legislature to record the fact." They soon found, however, that they were in conflict, not with Mr. Mann, but with the spirit of progress itself, with principalities and powers, with unseen forces, social and political. No men or body of men could have won in such a contest. Josiah Quincy, Charles Sumner, Edward Everett, John G. Whittier, Henry Wilson, Anson P. Burlingame, Theodore Parker, with mer- chants, bankers, and professional men, arrayed themselves with Mr. Mann. These thirty at once raised among themselves $5,000, and asked the legislature for a like sum, that thus $10,000 might be placed in the hands of the Board of Education for the improvement of the normal schools. Charles Sumner gave his bond for HORACE MANN 43 the payment of this sum. This was done as a vote of confidence in the board and its secretary, and it passed almost unanimously. AS A STATESMAN When Mr. Mann left law and politics for an educational career, he lost caste politically. His influence waned. He was not sought by cam- paign committees, and the legislature where he had served for many years heeded his pleadings little more than those of a stranger. Never- theless, before the echoes of the controversy had died away, Mr. Mann was selected from Daniel Webster's congressional district to take the seat in Congress made vacant by the sudden death of ex-President John Quincy Adams. Such honor has rarely come to an educator. From the first he attracted attention in Wash- ington because of his reputation and oratorical power. He had been in Congress but a little time when Mr. Webster delivered his famous many thought infamous seventh of March speech, in which he outraged the political senti- ment of Massachusetts. Mr. Mann seized the occasion for heroic action. He reasoned, as he afterwards admitted, that with the feeling against him because of this speech, Mr. Webster would not venture to be a candidate for re-election; if he did, defeat was certain. In view of these con- 44 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS ditions, Mr. Mann made a keen, severe attack upon Mr. Webster, which angered that statesman as nothing else in his experience had done. This was due partly to the fact that it came when he was unprepared to meet it, and partly because of the audacity, and as he thought, impropriety, of the junior congressman administering a rebuke to the senior senator. At this juncture President Taylor died, Mr. Filmore succeeded him, and Mr. Webster was made Secretary of State, with all the patronage for New England at his disposal. Nothing could have been more unfortunate for Mr. Mann. The condemnation was now directed to him, and criticisms, public and private, were showered upon him. When his term expired and he was up for re-election, Mr. Webster and the entire party machinery worked against him with such vigor that he lost the renomination by a single vote. He declared himself an independent can- didate, spoke in every village and hamlet in the district, and was elected over the regular nomi- nee by a large vote. This was a personal triumph for Mr. Mann, but for Mr. Webster it was a per- sonal rebuke which he felt keenly. Mr. Mann's congressional record was emi- nently creditable, and demonstrated his states- manlike qualities. At the close of the regulation term in Congress he was made the candidate of HORACE MANN 45 the new party of Sumner, Wilson, Burlingame, and others for governor. There was no possi- bility that year of his election, and he put no heart into the campaign. His nomination was made by Henry Wilson and seconded by Anson P. Burlingame, in speeches that were among the noblest tributes ever offered a candidate. With this defeat he retired from the political arena, where he had won laurels and had been of great service to humanity. The brilliancy of this ex- perience added a halo to his educational service, which gave it character and statesmanlike dignity. HIS PERSONALITY A general in the army, an'admiral in the navy, an inventor or a discoverer, maybe a leader with only one or two prominent characteristics, but an educational leader .needs many natural forces of character and many attainments. We have seen many sides of Horace Mann's nature his perseverance, his unselfishness, his uprightness and justice, his power as lawyer, statesman, and educator. His friends found him as delightful and as brilliant in conversation as in any other line. With equal ease he could entertain the Gay Head Indians in their rude cottages, and Edward Everett, Josiah Quincy, or Charles Sumner in 46 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS their elegant homes. His conversation abounded in sparkling repartee and spontaneous wit, and his merry laugh was as contagious as in college days. There was never any nonsense in his talk, never a story that was not suited to the most refined company. His originality was refreshing and his talk exciting. His droll sayings were irresistibly funny. Intellectually keen, widely read, a lover of nature, familiar with art, and animated by an intense purpose, he always shone in society. His strongest friends, were those whom he won in conversation. The teachers who came near enough to him to know these charms were devoted to him. Only those who did not know his delightful personality were prejudiced against him. HIS FRIENDS A man's character and career are largely influenced by his friendships. Educational peo- ple gain much power when they have great men and women for their friends. If Mr. Mann had not had many /influential friends, he could not have been so successful as the head of the school system of Massachusetts. Dr. Henry Barnard, one of the great Ameri- can educators, was one of Mr. Mann's warmest friends. The two worked together for many HORACE MANN 47 years, Mr. Barnard in Connecticut and Rhode Island, and Mr. Mann in Massachusetts. Another friend, Dr. Samuel G. Howe, of Boston, whom Dr. Barnard places second only to Horace Mann among American educators, had an international reputation. After gradu- ating from the Harvard Medical School, in 1824, he went to Greece, and in the revolution there held the position of surgeon -in -chief of the Greek army and navy. In 1827 he returned to America, raised $60,000 in New York and New England, and then went back to Greece to dis- tribute it personally among the sufferers. He was called " the Lafayette of the Greek Revo- lution." After his final return to the United States, in 1833, he devoted his life to developing institutions for the feeble-minded, the deaf, and the blind. Edward Everett, one of the most eloquent American orators, a national congressman and senator, governor of Massachusetts, and pres- ident of Harvard University, was as influential a friend as any man could have. He was only two years older than Mr. Mann. Their friend- ship began early and lasted through life. Josiah Quincy, mayor of Boston at the time of the controversy with the Boston schoolmas- ters, was a man of wealth and of high political and social standing. He was Mr. Mann's warm 48 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS friend for many years, and showed his con- fidence in him by giving him $1,500 to be used as he chose for public school education. Charles Sumner, the great senator from Massachusetts, was such a friend to Mr. Mann that he gave the state treasurer $5,000 to be used for normal schools. He was one of twenty men who contributed money to the state as a testimony of their faith in Horace Mann's edu- cational plans. IN THE WEST Two sad pictures in America are those of an educator without a position at fifty-six years of age, and a politician without a place at any time. Mr. Mann was in this double predicament when he left Congress and was defeated for governor. He was tired of politics, and was not happy in Massachusetts. He was physically an old man at fifty-six. He had injured his health when fitting for college, and the strain under which he always worked did not improve it. He was not thrifty, and money considerations played an unimportant part in his life. He never had a large income, and did not lay by much of what he received. Honest in every fiber of his being, self-sacrificing to a fault, he had subordinated his personal prosperity to every other consideration. To have no estab- HORACE MANN 49 lished income at his age was a serious matter. Had he waited a little while, he would have re- ceived high political honors from Massachusetts, or he might have had distinguished educational recognition. Waiting, however, was not one of Mr. Mann's characteristics. In 1852, Ohio was, to Horace Mann, the most attractive state in the Union. She was already the third largest state. Indiana, Illi- nois, and the states to the west had not risen to power. Men in Ohio like Joshua R. Giddings, Salmon P. Chase, and John Sherman were mak- ing a national reputation. The men whom Mr. Mann most admired in Congress were from this state. He saw Ohio's future; he believed in the West. To few men could it have been so much of a sacrifice to leave Massachusetts, her people and her institutions, but he had said years before that the next generation was to be his client. His work for the common schools in New Eng- land was finished. Now his thoughts turned to educational work in the Great West. In this state of mind he received an urgent re- quest to become president of Antioch College, a new denominational institution at Yellow Springs, Ohio, not far from Cincinnati. To accept this position was a mistake from the ordinary stand- point. The college was poor, with insufficient 50 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS means for paying even its president's salary. But Horace Mann had many times shown himself independent of the popular judgment of unprof- itable undertakings, and he was glad of the opportunity of influence offered him at Antioch. The trustees made things very uncomfortable for him. There were no comforts for himself and his family, and no companionships such as he had been accustomed to, but all these conditions were favorable to his greater usefulness. For more than twenty years he had been fighting opposition, and his victories had made him famous. Now opposition forced him to his best endeavors in training the young people to noble thought and effort. For more than twenty years he had been tearing down in order to build upon the ruins. He had antag- onized everything that he had found in the educational, religious, social, and political condi- tions of Massachusetts. He had, indeed, sug- gested something to take the place of whatever he condemned, but the tendency of his influence had been toward destruction. In the West there were no old things that needed tearing down, and he gave himself to the work of build- ing up. He strengthened the faith and inspired the devotion of the young men and women. His voice was heard everywhere, and always for the best things. HORACE MANN 51 In the six years that he inspired the educa- tional forces of the West from Antioch College, he influenced directly and indirectly thousands of youth. All through the West to-day are leaders of thought, men of character and force in every good endeavor, who owe their inspira- tion for scholarship and for noble living to Horace Mann. His death on August 2, 1859, closed a life of sixty-three years, full of unselfish, untiring en- deavor, whose influence has not yet ceased to be felt. The keynote to his whole life was given in his last public utterance, "BE ASHAMED TO DIE UNTIL YOU HAVE WON SOME VICTORY FOR HUMANITY." MARY LYON THE FOUNDER OF SEMINARIES FOR GIRLS MARY LYON AGE 34 MARY LYON THE FOUNDER OF SEMINARIES FOR GIRLS 1797-1849 Mary Lyon is the maiden mother of educa- tional privileges for American women. She is the queen among teachers. She is not distinguished because she had learning; for tens of thousands of women in the United States to-day have had better school advantages than she had. It is not because she wrote great books; for she never wrote a book or an article for magazine or paper, and thousands of women in the country are doing both better than she could have done them. It is not because she made great addresses; for many women now do more public speaking in a year than she did in her whole lifetime. Her salary was no gauge of her power as a teacher; for the highest sum she ever received was $260 a year, not a tenth of what many teachers receive now. It costs as much to support a pauper in most states. Why, then, was Mary Lyon such a remark- able and distinguished woman? 55 56 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS Fifty years ago there was not a college on this continent where a girl could obtain a liberal education; to-day there are almost as many young women as men in college. Sixty years ago there was only one. endowed seminary for girls, and no normal school on the continent; now there are hundreds of colleges, seminaries, and normal schools. That single seminary was established by Mary Lyon at South Hadley, Massachusetts, in the autumn of 1837. It was named Mount Holyoke Seminary, from the beautiful mountain a few miles away. Miss Lyon solicited about $60,000 with which to purchase the land, and to erect and furnish the buildings. With this endowment there was no rent to pay, and the cost of education was made as small as possible. Attempts had been made before to provide educational opportunities for young women. In the cities there were some good private schools for girls, the most noted of which was Mrs. Emma Willard's school at Troy, New York. In such schools the expense was so great that only the children of well-to-do people could attend. As early as 1790 four girls from the town were admitted to the academy at Atkinson, New Hampshire, and others were admitted to the Leicester academy in Massachusetts. In MARY LYON 57 1803 an academy was opened at Bradford, Massachusetts, and young women were admitted. After a long struggle for success, this academy, in 1836, excluded boys, and became a girls' school. This step was made practicable by the interest which Mary Lyon had aroused in the education of girls. There were other acad- emies, but none of them had any endowment or adequate equipment. They were neither per- manent nor successful. They were very ex- pensive, and their managers had no conception of the requirements for a liberal education. Miss Lyon's seminary made possible for the first time, the general, liberal education of girls. It is not too much to say, therefore, that the seminary life of young women, and their college life as well, dates from the opening of Mount Holyoke Seminary, November 8, 1837, and the beginning was due to Mary Lyon. HER BIRTHPLACE On February 28, 1797, Mary Lyon was born in the small town of Buckland, in western Massa- chusetts. So few people lived in that neighbor- hood that it went by the name of " No-town," even after it had been organized as the town of Buckland. The larger town of Ashfield was very near her home, and there the family went to church and had their friendships. 58 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS So far as can be learned, Mary Lyon is the only person born in Buckland who has attained eminence, but Ashfield has been the birthplace and residence of many prominent men. William Cullen Bryant and James Russell Lowell, the famous poets, and George William Curtis, the brilliant writer and speaker, were identified with this town. Charles Eliot Norton, of Harvard University, and President G. Stanley Hall, of Clark University, were born there. It is remarkable that Horace Mann and Mary Lyon, the greatest man and the greatest woman in the history of American education, were born within eight months of each other in the same state. It often happens thus. David P. Page and John D. Philbrick, two leaders in education, were born within a few miles of each other in southern New Hampshire. In statesmanship, we find George Washington and Patrick Henry born in the same state, and not far apart in point of time. In literature, Longfellow and Holmes were born within two years of Whittier, and within seventy miles of his birthplace. The farm of Aaron Lyon, Mary's father, was very hilly, and was situated near the foot of a small mountain. It was always called "the mountain farm," and through life Mary spoke of it as " My mountain home." Great men MARY LYON 59 and women almost always love their childhood home, and often write about it. This was especially true of Mary Lyon. CHILDHOOD Mary Lyon was the fifth among seven chil- dren, of whom only one was a boy. The mother was an earnest woman, and the father one of the gentlest of men. Their home, a very hum- ble place, was less than a mile and a half distant from the homes of both of the grandparents. Mary was a quiet little girl and was much petted. She was a great favorite with her father, who often joined in her plays. It was a terrible grief to her when, on December 21, 1802, before she was six years old, this kind father died. It was such a shock to the child, that she did not get over it for many years. To the mother this sad loss meant a struggle for a living. The grandparents were old, .and could not help her. Mr. Lyon left a little money that he had saved by years of hard work and careful economy. The widow did not use this, but put it at interest. She divided it into seven equal parts, so that each child, when twenty-one years old, might receive a share of the father's legacy. There was very little of this money, but the mother guarded it well. Mrs. Lyon, with her six girls and the one 60 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS boy, now thirteen years old, carried on the farm. She got up early and worked late, and each child had to work hard to help support the family. It was a wild, romantic farm, " made more to feast the soul than to feed the body." Their garden of pinks, peonies, and roses always looked neat and thrifty, for the mother said it cost only a little extra work to have a beautiful garden. They had fruit in abundance. There was never a cent for children's luxuries in this fatherless home. They had no candy and no store toys, but Mary said in later years: " No such strawberries ever grew anywhere else, never such rareripes, so large and so yellow, and never were peaches so delicious and so fair as grew on that favored farm." Children can be very happy without peanuts and pickled limes, if they know how to enjoy what they have, as the seven little Lyons did. Everything about the farm held attractions for them. Mary wrote long afterwards : ' The apples contrived to ripen before all others, so as to meet in sweet fellowship the peaches and plums, to entertain aunts and cousins. I can now see that mountain home with its sweet rivulet, finding its way among rocks and cliffs, and hillocks, and deep craggy dells." It was great sport to climb the steep hill back of the house, and to see who would first MARY LYON 6 1 plant foot on the high rock at the top. It is more fun to get toughened by racing up a hill than to be drawn about by a harnessed dog or goat. These little girls and their brother grew strong in their out-door life. Mary's sisters married, one by one, and left home. When she was thirteen, her mother married again and moved away, taking the two youngest children with her. Mary stayed on the farm and kept house for her brother, who was now twenty-three years old. She was paid one dollar a week. After a year he married, and Mary continued to live with him, when she was not teaching or going to school. She earned money by spinning and weaving. Two little girls were born in her brother's home, and Mary loved them dearly. When she was twenty-one, her brother and his family moved to western New York, and the loved home was given up* This was the greatest grief that had come to Mary since her father died. Her sisters, her mother, and now her brother and his dear little ' children had moved away. There was no tell- ing when she would see any of the family again. The beautiful, wild, romantic home was gone forever. Her feelings may be understood by this stanza from an old song, which she gave her brother's wife as they went away : -J-s c> a -a s s & a s< "S* "Bid ._ o ~. .c o o JU t=l * S Oi O w w s W O P-, O CO C8 W CJ CB A spider made a web. He tried to catch .a fly. What does a spider eat? What does a spider do? A spider has eight legs. The spider has eight eyes. Spiders have black dresses. Spiders have brown dresses. NOTE. The children will be greatly interested in being told of the habits of spiders, and in pictures of the trap-door spiders and mason spiders. A PAGE FROM A MODERN PRIMER 64 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS "Not one sigh shall tell my story, Not one tear my cheek shall stain; Silent grief shall be my glory, Grief that stoops not to complain." THE DISTRICT SCHOOL It was almost a century ago that Mary Lyon first went to school. Children did not learn much at school in those days. A child did not learn to write or to read easily by himself before he was ten or twelve years old. He learned to add, subtract, multiply, and divide, and to spell some hard words. He did not study geography and many other subjects that are taught every- where now. A child can read better now when he has been in school two years than one could then, after four or five years. There were never more than three books to read at school,' a primer, a reader, and a higher reader. The higher reader was as good as any that have been made since, but the lower ones were strange kind of reading books. The primer looks very queer now. Children did not learn to write well in the district schools. If they wished, they could take special lessons in a private writing school. Men went from town to town and taught writing in evening classes. Mary Lyon wrote so poorly MARY LYON 65 that she went to a writing school to improve her penmanship after she had been teaching several years. To-day the schools have language lessons to teach children to use good language while they are young, but Mary Lyon had no one to correct her when she pronounced words wrong and used expressions that were ungrammatical. It is very hard to learn to talk well if one uses incorrect expressions in youth, and Mary Lyon was twenty-five years old before she could stop using some ungrammatical phrases. SCHOOL LIFE The little country schoolhouse was a mile from the Lyon home. As soon as Mary could walk that distance she went to school with her sisters during the summer. When she was seven the schoolhouse was moved a mile farther away, and she could seldom go. When Mary was about ten years old she went to live with a family in Ashfield during term time. She worked for her' board, and in this way was able to go to school again. She was quick to learn, and did so well with her studies that the teachers always liked her. No other child in any of these schools committed the words of the book to memory so fast and so accurately as she. She learned in four days everything in 66 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS a grammar that the class was a term in learning. Arithmetic was as easy for her as grammar. When she was a child she used so many words to tell anything and talked so rapidly that it was often impossible to know what she said. It sometimes caused laughter in school to hear her rattling off words from which the scholars could get no meaning. Behind the schoolhouse in Ashfield stood an old beech tree, and from its low crooked limb she used to preach to her schoolmates at recess time. She could talk so interestingly that they left their play to listen to her. A favorite dialogue in school represented Moses in the bulrushes. Mary made a cradle of rushes for a little fellow in the school, and she played the mother and watched over him. Long years afterward, when she was fifty years old, at a dinner given in her honor in Spring- field, Massachusetts, a noted preacher surprised her and delighted the company by saying that he was the little Moses that Mary Lyon mothered so long before. At sixteen she began* teaching school near Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, for seventy-five cents a week and her board. School kept only twenty weeks in a year, so that her salary was not more than fifteen dollars for a year's teach- ing. She saved every cent of this, and managed MARY LYON 67 to earn more money by various kinds of work, such as spinning and weaving. When she was twenty years old she had saved enough money to enable her to enter the Sanderson Academy at Ashfield. This was the first good school that she attended. Her money was soon gone, but she would not give up school. She traded all the bedding, table linen, and other little things that her brother had left her when he moved to New York, to the boarding-house keeper for room and board. In this way she was able to stay at school a little longer. With all these hardships, she did not touch a cent of her share in the money left by her father until she was twenty- four years old. Then she used a part of it to complete her education. She thought it safe to spend the money then, because she knew she could earn her living by teaching. A girl who made such sacrifices for study wasted no time. She often slept only four hours a night, and she studied every wakeful moment except when eating. She knew always that her scant funds would quickly become ex- hausted and she must leave school. She did not know, however, that she ought to sleep longer and take more exercise, for she did not study physiology. Her health suffered for life because she studied too hard. 68 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS She was the most brilliant classical scholar ever in that academy, it is said, and every school in the country around wanted her for a teacher. AS A TEACHER It has already been said that Mary Lyon began teaching at sixteen. She taught just long enough each year to earn a term's ex- penses at some academy. In this way she taught every year until she had completed her course of study. When she was twenty-five years old she taught as assistant in the Ashfield Academy, and the next year in the Adams Female Academy at Derry, New Hampshire. She took special studies with the professor of chemistry at Amherst College, that she might be able to illustrate by experiments the lessons in chemistry and physics. This was an unusual thing to do in those days, but Miss Lyon was a genuine teacher. In the winter Miss Lyon taught a private school for girls at her childhood home in Buck- land. When she opened the school she expected only a few children, but to her surprise twenty- five girls appeared, and the number soon in- creased to fifty. The school was continued for six years. It met in the village hall, but the place was soon outgrown, and many of the recitations MARY LYON 69 were held in the teacher's rooms. The two leading features of this school were the slight expense to the pupils, and the remarkable influence exerted upon them. For the first time in the history of America there was a first- class school which girls of comparatively poor families could attend. There was still, at this time, a prejudice against schools for girls. Prominent' persons in every community thought it wrong for girls to have the same advantages in education as boys. The first seminaries for girls in this country were at Newbury, Massachusetts, and at Derry, New Hampshire. Mary Lyon studied at both of these institutions, and afterwards taught at Derry for about five years. In 1828 the school was given up. There were not enough girls in all New England who could be induced to go to a seminary, to make it Pay- The principal of the Derry school, Miss Grant, went to Ipswich, Massachusetts, and Miss Lyon taught with her there for the next six years. During two of those years she acted as principal. Such a school as this could not be kept up unless a sum of money was provided sufficient to pay for the rent of buildings. Miss Grant and Miss Lyon tried very hard to raise money 70 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS for their school, so that the teachers would not have to bear the extra expense of rent. Miss Lyon went to Boston, and made her first speech before a company of prominent men and women in a private parlor. Rufus Choate, an eloquent lawyer and statesman, was one of the audience. She told them of the great need of having a seminary for girls, like the academies for boys, where all the buildings should be paid for by friends of education. They were greatly interested, and thought something ought to be done. Butwhen Mr. Choate and the others tried to get their rich friends to give money for this purpose, they did not see the use of educating girls, and Miss Grant and Miss Lyon had to give up their school at Ipswich. A NEW SEMINARY While Miss Lyon was trying to get the wealthy people of eastern Massachusetts to raise money for Ipswich, the poor people of western Massachusetts were trying to get her to come back there. She had given up her winter private school at Buckland for the two years that she took Miss Grant's place at Ipswich, and the clergymen and the farmers were unhappy at its discontinuance. They did not know how important it was until it was closed. A move- ment was begun at once to bring Miss Lyon MARY LYON 71 back for a school all the year round. More than a hundred ministers began to talk and preach and pray about their school. When Miss Lyon saw how earnest they were, she began to make her plans. She never doubted that just such a school as she wanted could and would be es- tablished. Miss Lyon said it should not cost a girl more than sixty dollars a year at her school. This should pay for tuition, room, board, lights, fuel, and washing. She said that any girl who was bright and ambitious should have the chance to get as good an education for sixty dollars as could be had in any school in the country. Before this time it had cost girls almost twice as much as boys ; in her school it should cost but little more than half as much. How the other school people laughed at this idea! It was ridiculous to talk of giving a first- class education, board and all, for sixty dollars. It is no wonder that they laughed. Mary Lyon never forgot her own struggle for an education. She did not regret that she had to work hard, but that she had to stop going to school while she worked, and that it took her more than two months to earn money enough to go to school one month. Those might laugh who wished, but she was determined to carry out her plan. 72 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS With the help of the earnest men of western Massachusetts she raised over $60,000, mostly among people who were comparatively poor. They bought a beautiful hillside in South Had- ley, built a suitable and convenient building, and put into it as good helps for teaching as were in any boys' academy in the country. Miss Lyon said that all the teachers must make sacrifices for the girls. Her own salary should never be above two hundred dollars, with her board, and no teacher could expect more than she had. Could good teachers be secured for such a small salary? Indeed, any first-class teacher was ready to come. The girls, too, must help reduce the expenses. It would require much help to run a boarding-house for a hun- dred girls, but if each one took hold and did a part of the household work, a great expense could be saved. Miss Lyon announced that each girl, rich or poor, must do her share of the work. This idea was ridiculed. " No girls will go to school to do house- work," shouted the critics. Would they come? That remained to be seen. Mount Holyoke Seminary was opened, and Miss Lyon awaited the result. MARY LYON 73 DEVELOPMENT OF CHARACTER Through her girlhood Mary Lyon felt keenly that she had no good early education. She did not go to a really good school until she was twenty. Her home was broken up when she was fifteen, and she missed a mother's care and training. No one showed her how to dress neatly or to take care of her clothes. Much of the talk that she heard was ungrammatical. When she began to go to good schools the teachers were constantly correcting her for un- grammatical expressions, and complaining that she was a very poor writer. Her schoolmates made her unhappy by telling her that she did not know how to tie a bow or make her clothes look well. It is very trying to be told, all the time, of one's faults. No one ever told Mary Lyon that she used slang, that she had not a perfect lesson, or that she was lacking in goodness and gentleness. It was none the less unpleasant to be scolded about minor matters. As soon as she knew her failings she remedied them. She watched herself until she was rid of the," bad grammar " of her childhood country days. She looked after her wardrobe until she was a model of good taste. She gave one entire long vacation to lessons in penmanship, and 74 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS drilled herself until she could write well. No sacrifice was too great for perfecting herself in any good habit or work. When Miss Lyon had conquered her weak- nesses she had great respect for herself, and knew that she had accomplished more than the ordinary woman. She wanted to do for other girls what she had done for herself. Until she was thirty-seven years old, Miss Lyon leaned upon others. When one is told often of her failings, she either gives up trying to do anything or to be anybody, or else depends upon those who assert their superiority by cor- recting her. Miss Lyon was dependent upon those who were her superiors in habits and train- ing until she perfected herself. In all her teaching she had leaned upon Miss Grant, the principal at Derry and Ipswich. It was a great surprise to Miss Grant and to her other friends, when, at thirty-seven, she announced her inten- tion of establishing a large school which should be the best school for girls in the United States. They could not believe that timid Mary Lyon had been in conference with Rufus Choate, United States senator from Massachusetts, the Rev. Dr. Todd, the Rev. Dr. Blagdon, and other prominent men who were interested in educa- tion. It was not easy to realize that Mary Lyon MARY LYON 75 who used to go without her collar, and with a ribbon wrong side out, was meeting men and women of great wealth and high social standing in Boston, and was telling them how girls should be educated. When she won confidence in herself, Miss Lyon was convinced that her ideas of education were superior to a-11 others of her day. She spent three years in convincing other people of their superiority. Thus Mary Lyon developed character and power. MOUNT HOLYOKE SEMINARY In the autumn of 1837 the Seminary was opened. In three years Miss Lyon had secured all necessary funds $68,500 for the purchase of the beautiful site at South Hadley, and for buildings to accommodate eighty-five students. More than three hundred young women applied for admission. Miss Lyon resorted to all possi- ble means to accommodate one hundred and twenty-five, and then had to turn away more than two hundred who were begging to get in. After three years the buildings were en- larged to accommodate two hundred and fifty students. The young women were not from western Massachusetts alone. They came from twenty different states there were only about that 76 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS number of states in the Union then and from several foreign countries. Nor were they poor girls who knew nothing of more expensive and "better" schools. The first year there was a large class of seniors made up of girls who came from other seminaries and private schools. Many were from wealthy homes. The intel- lectual tone and social standing of the school were high. Its success was assured from the first day. In the twelve years that Miss Lyon was there, there were 2,324 young women in the Seminary. She was right in thinking that such a school was needed. TEACHING, WOMAN'S IDEAL Miss Lyon believed that every woman should be educated to teach. She said : 'Teaching is really the business of almost every useful woman. No woman is well educated who has not all the acquisitions necessary for a good teacher. She needs thorough mental culture, a well-balanced character, a benevolent heart, an ability to communicate knowledge and apply it to practice, an acquaintance with human nature, and the power of controlling the minds of others. Women teachers should not expect to be fully compensated for their services, unless it be by kindness and gratitude. There is a large MARY LYON AGE 50 78 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS number of educated women, who will make the best teachers, who can be allured much more by respectful attention, by kindness and gratitude, by suitable schoolrooms and apparatus, and other facilities for rendering their labors pleas- ant and successful, than they can be by the pros- pect of a pecuniary reward." It is not to be wondered that with these principles Miss Lyon and the Seminary were a success. HER PURPOSE IN LIFE We must not suppose that because Miss Lyon did not marry she had no opportunities to do so. As a girl she had no love affairs. When she was thirty years old, and a well-educated woman, a gentleman for whom she had the highest respect, a man of ability, of ample means, and of fine social standing, wished to marry her. She realized that if she were to marry she should choose this man. She did not marry because she felt that with her experi- ence and ability she could help other young women to be happy and useful in their homes. To all offers of marriage she had the same courteous, emphatic answer, that it was her duty to live for other women. MARY LYON 79 HER BENEVOLENCE Although Miss Lyon never earned much, she spent so little on herself that she had relatively much to give away. She gave the Seminary twelve hundred dollars when it was opened. She helped many of her family who were in need. Out of her two hundred dollars a year she gave to many benevolent causes. She left by will the only real estate she had a house she had bought for a niece when in financial trouble to the foreign missionary society. Out of her savings this society re- ceived more than two thousand dollars. MISS LYON'S MOTTOES Miss Lyon had a few principles which guided her thought and action. She expressed these ideas as follows: "Mind, wherever it is found, will secure respect." "There are controlling minds in all activities." "Leaders should have a good Christian education." "The country towns will always furnish the material out of which many leaders will be developed." "Influence exerted upon country girls will always be felt." 8o GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS "Educate the women, and the men will be educated." "New England influence has always been greater than its size and population would indicate; and if this is to continue, it must con- tinue to be the cradle of thought. Educated women must rock this cradle." It was for this ideal that Miss Lyon remained unmarried, and gave her life to the first great seminary for women in America. AT REST On February 21, 1849, Miss Lyon was taken suddenly ill with a heavy cold arid fever. There was no expectation of a serious sickness, but five days later erysipelas set in. On Monday, March 5th, she passed away. The Seminary was deeply affected by her death, and the whole of New England and New York mourned. At her funeral the noblest tribute was paid her un- selfish life. Upon her monument are inscribed these words, which she had spoken with great earnest- ness : "THERE is NOTHING IN THE UNIVERSE THAT* i FEAR BUT THAT I SHALL NOT KNOW MY DUTY, OR SHALL FAIL TO DO IT." DAVID P. PAGE THE NORMAL SCHOOL LEADER DAVID P. PAGE THE NORMAL SCHOOL LEADER 1810-1848 "THEORY AND PRACTICE OF TEACHING" No other book on the subject of education has been read by so many American teachers through so many years, as Page's "Theory and Practice of Teaching." No other book has had so great influence in helping teachers, and to this day it remains the best book of its kind ever written. And the author died when he was only thirty- seven years old. David P. Page, who did so much in so few years, and Henry Barnard, who has lived almost ninety years, to do much in many years, were both born in New England within one year of each other, Mr. Page in 1810, and Dr. Barnard in 1811. The one died in 1848, the other is living, in 1899. Mr. Page was born on the Fourth of July, and died on New Year's day. He was as patriotic as his birthday would indicate, and as progressive as New Year's day signifies. 83 84 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS CHILDHOOD David P. Page was born at Epping, a small town in southeastern New Hampshire. Here the lad grew up on one of the best farms in the town. His father thought that the best thing a man could wish for was to own a comfortable farm, and this he could give David. The boy did not like farming. He thought it anything but interesting to look forward to owning a farm and working on it all his life. He wanted an education. He liked books, and never tired of studying and reading. The schools in Epping were poor. By the time he was fourteen, David had learned all that was taught in the little red schoolhouse, and he asked his father to let him go to the academy. This displeased the father, who said that the lad would know so much he would not be will- ing to stay on the farm. The father loved David very much, and it was because he loved him that he wanted to give him the farm. The boy loved his father, but he thought he could please him more by learning a great deal at school and entering upon an en- tirely different line of life. When David was sixteen years old he was taken very sick, and the doctor thought he would not recover. The father felt very badly. Then DAVID P. PAGE 85 the doctor said the boy might live if he had something to make him happy. This was a lucky thought. " David, if you get well you may go to the academy," the father said to him. This was the one thing in all the world that the lad wanted to do, and his father's promise helped him to get well. When the next term of the Hampton Academy opened David Page was among the new students. AT SCHOOL The Hampton Academy was not far from Epping. Of the New Hampshire academies it was nearest the important cities of Portland, Portsmouth, and Boston, and it was especially a place for rich men's sons, who cared more for fun than for knowledge. In those days the principal and the teachers of different academies, as well as all the students, vied with one another in telling of the rich men who sent their sons to their academy. Style was a more important factor in the school then than it is now; the dif- ference between the city boy and the farmer's son was greater. David Page wore clothes made by his mother from cloth that she had woven herself. He had never been away from home, was awkward in his movements, and did not know how to act in 86 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS company. The boys who had better clothes, who knew better how to behave at eating than at studying, made fun of him, and called him the most provoking names they knew. They thought this would annoy him "would make him mad," as they said, but it simply made him despise them. It led him to understand that a boy in homemade clothes who behaved well was much more of a man than a well-dressed fellow who was rude and unmannerly. The boys were not necessarily bad because they ridiculed his homespun clothes and home- cut hair. They were ready to admire him as soon as they saw what an able fellow he was. His manliness made them so thoroughly ashamed of themselves that they came to regard him as greatly their superior. David learned good lessons from these rich men's sons. No boy ever learned more quickly how to do things in the right way. It was as easy for him to be gentlemanly as for any city boy to be so, but he had seen nothing of etiquette until he came to Hampton. He despised the spirit that could ridicule a country boy, but he recognized the advantages of courtesy and good manners. Teachers and students alike saw the trans- formation in him. He took high rank in his DAVID P. PAGE 87 studies from the first, and became a leader in many ways. His coming proved as great an event to the academy as to himself. All rec- ognized that the new student was destined to become a prominent man. Contrary to all precedent, the principal ad- vised the young man, after he had been at the academy four months, to go out and teach a winter school. He was only seventeen years old, and at first he lacked confidence. He wanted more education, and not early experience in teaching. However, he acted upon the princi- pal's advice, and taught a New Hampshire coun- try school for the winter. He liked the work so much that he made up his mind to be a teacher. He went back to the academy for a few months more, and then began teaching in earnest, at the town of Newb'ury, in Massachusetts. NEWBURY David Page was nineteen years old when, in 1829, he went to Newbury to teach a country school in the proverbial little red schoolhouse. Newbury is a town with an early school history, and the records of its first schools are among the best in the United States. The first free classical school in New England the " free grammar school " was established here in 1763 88 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS by Governor William Dummer, a native of the town. Dummer Academy is still open, one hundred and thirty-six years old. In Newbury, also, was established the first "female seminary" in the United States, and there Mary Lyon received' her best education. In this seminary were educated, besides the founder of Mount Holyoke Seminary, Miss Grant, the founder of New Ipswich Female Seminary; Miss Hasseltine, the founder of Bradford Acad- emy; and Anna Judson and Harriet Newell, the first women foreign missionaries from the United States. Newbury has always been a small town, with- out manufacturing interests, but it has sent forth men and women of influence. It has taken a brave part in wars, and in King Philip's War, of colonial times, sixty-seven of the hundred and fifty men of the town were killed. To this town, in the days when Dummer Academy and the Female Seminary were at the height of their popularity, David Page came to teach one of the district schools. BOARDING AROUND It was no luxury to this youth of nineteen to teach school in Newbury. The salary was called wages then, and the sum paid was very small. He built the schoolhouse fire each morning, to DAVID P. PAGE 89 save expense to the district. Part of his pay he received in the form of board and lodgings with the different families. He went from house to house, staying a few days here, several days there, according to the number of pupils the family furnished him. Often the poorer families, with the least room and fewest conveniences for comfort, supplied the larger number of pupils, and there he must stay longest. He would have had an easier time that winter had he remained on the home farm at Epping. He would have been admired and petted by the household, and had his own comfortable feather bed to tumble into every night. David that winter never thought of his trials and self-denial, but of how much he was learn- ing. He learned, not from books but from observation, how to manage schools and parents. If David Page had not taught that little dis- trict school and boarded around, the teachers of America would probably have missed the help of his " Theory and Practice of Teaching." Without this experience he would never have made his speech upon "The Mutual Duties of Parents and Teachers," which Horace Mann said was the most important educational address ever delivered in America. QO GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS HIS PRIVATE SCHOOL Teaching in the country was not a profitable occupation, for the public school was open usu- ally only four months in the year. When his term ended, David -Page was the most popular teacher ever employed in that district. The older citizens looked upon him as a son, the young people regarded him as a chum, and to the little folk he was like a father. Every one was sorry, and none more than young Page himself, when the school closed. Some one suggested a private school. He liked the idea. The famous Dummer Academy had already celebrated its sixty-fifth anniversary, and the Female Seminary was prosperous, but these rivals had no terror for the young man. He opened a private school, with every reason to expect that nearly all the children of the dis- trict would attend. A sudden chill, however, had fallen upon the community. The friends of the Academy and the Seminary were feared, and only five pupils appeared at his school. Mr. Page showed no one his disappointment, but taught the five pupils with so much spirit and enthusiasm that soon more children came, and he had a large school. For nearly two years he remained in the DAVID P. PAGE 91 district, teaching the public school in winter and the private school the rest of the year. He was now twenty-one, and his salary was not large nor his outlook brilliant. All this time he was a great student. He taught not only grammar-school subjects, but the higher branches of the high school, and each day he learned more about the subjects he was teaching. By his own efforts he became an all-round scholar. A district schoolmaster in those days, if he was liked, was very popular. David Page was praised at every fireside, was talked about in every grocery store, and before and after church on Sunday the people had no more favorite theme than Master Page. The Newburyport people, a few miles away, heard of his success, and offered him a position in their high school. At twenty-one years of age he became assistant in the high school, in charge of the English department. He re- mained there twelve years. He was a good teacher, but he was never advanced above the position of assistant. He could never have been principal of a Massachu- setts high school, because he was not a classical scholar. 92 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS A GREAT SPEECH Mr. Page had been teaching in Newburyport six years when Horace Mann began his educa- tional career. Mr. Mann was quick to recog- nize a good teacher, and David Page was the first teacher that he discovered. He heard Mr. Page read an address in Lowell, Massachusetts, before the American Institute of Instruction, in August, 1838. This is the oldest educational association in the world. It was organized in 1830, and at its annual meetings were read the great educational addresses of the country. The paper by Mr. Page, on "Duties of Parents and Teachers," was the best of those read in eight years. This address was published in the annual issue of the association for the year 1838, but Mr. Mann was not willing to have its influence end there. He had the state print several thousand copies, and he sent one to every teacher in Massachusetts. It is not known that any other address was ever thus honored. It should be remembered that Page was at that time only twenty-eight years old, and an assistant high-school teacher in a town of less than 10,000 inhabitants. He showed his interest in his profession by always attending the teach- DAVID P. PAGE 93 ers' associations, and by writing for the "Com- mon School Journal." An extract will give some idea of the speech. It was clear, vigorous, wide-awake. "It is matter of deep regret that a profession which affords so extensive a field for usefulness as the teacher's should be so generally crowded with difficulties and discouragements, as to com- pel a large portion of talent which might other- wise be engaged in it to seek employment and distinction elsewhere. "In high hopes and flowing spirits many a young man enters upon the business of instruct- ing, carrying to the work a well-furnished mind, and a large share of zeal, when suddenly, and unaccountably to himself, he finds that he is sur- rounded by trials he had never foreseen troubles that have .come without his seeking, and of such a nature as to render his situation anything but desirable. He does what his ingenuity and his own warm, fresh heart suggest to remove the evils; but though he may change the place, he too often still keeps the pain. "The profession of the teacher is certainly an important one; it should be a happy one. The adverse influences should be removed, and the teacher should be left free to devise his own plans, and to find his enjoyment in witnessing Q4 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS the success attendant upon their execution. We would not ask for greater emolument; though, considering the fact that a teacher's best years are spent in his duties, and when his best years are passed away an enlightened com- munity usually judges him not only unfit for school-keeping, but unfit for everything else, we are constrained to believe that the mat- ter of compensation has been little enough thought of. " We would not ask for greater respect and attention; we believe that in New England the instructor has received his share of these, in proportion to his merits. But we would ask for sympathy for soul-cheering sympathy on the part of the parents of those we are called to instruct; we would plead for their aid, as far as they can assist us, and then we could go to the work at least with some gleamings of encouragement. "Let parents give their sympathy and co- operation to the teachers of their children, and the profession would soon be filled with devoted and talented men, who would be willing to live and die in their work; and when from their last pillow they should cast back a lingering look to the scene of their labors, the roses would amply conceal the sharpest thorns." DAVID P. PAGE 95 A NORMAL SCHOOL PRINCIPAL In 1844 the great state of New York estab- lished its first normal school, at Albany, by appro- priating $10,000 to make ready for it, and $10,000 a year, for five years, to support it. A committee of eminent men was appointed to find a person who would be sure to make a suc- cess of this school. There were many men in New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts who would have liked the position. There were eminent college professors, high-school and acad- emy principals, who were ready to take it; but the committee was unanimous in the choice of the young assistant in the Newburyport high school. He had never attended a normal school or college, and had studied only one year in a New Hampshire academy, where he was at first jeered at as the son of a farmer. The New York position was offered to him unsought, and he came near declining it. Rarely has such an honor come to a man of his years, to a man with such slight school advantage, to a man who had never been the principal of a large school. The Normal School at Albany opened on the eighteenth of December, 1844. Nothing was in readiness. There was no school building, and the carpenters were still at work hammering Q6 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS and sawing, in the building that had been secured for temporary use. Mr. Page opened the school that morning with sixteen young women and thirteen men. Mr. Page began with no suitable text-books, and no adequate plan of work. He studied the common school branches with his twenty-nine students, and told them how to teach them. The students found fault and said they knew all that before. Six weeks of this showed him that he was on the wrong track. Then he took up alge- bra and physiology, and the interest increased, and new students came. The first term passed, and no one knew so well as Mr. Page that the experiment was not a success. He announced that with the opening of the second term, in May, they would begin a practice school. Each student was to do actual teaching with a class. This plan was entirely new in America, if not in the world. The second term began with one hundred and seventy students enrolled, six times as many as at the opening of the first term. Now all promised well. THE GOSPEL OF THE PROFESSION Mr. Page delivered a formal address to his students each term, and these are collected in the volume known to teachers as " Page's Theory DAVID P. PAGE 97 and Practice of Teaching." It is as wise and helpful in 1 899 as in 1 849. This book is, indeed, the gospel of the profession, ever old and ever new. OPPOSITION No new movement ever faced a worse storm of popular opposition than this normal school. The newspapers ridiculed and denounced it. They invented all kinds of falsehoods about Mr. Page, and in many ways misrepresented the school and its work. The politicians were against it, and the teachers of the state had no love for the school or its Massachusetts principal. The teach- ers were arrayed against him for all kinds of reasons. They complained of what the new nor- mal school was, and of what it was not; of what it did to wrong them, and of what it failed to do to help them; of what it had not been, and of what it was not going to be. The state assembly was the first battle- ground where politicians and teachers united to overthrow the school and its principal. Mr. Page had known nothing of conflicts. His had been a quiet, uneventful life, in which he had met little opposition. Now he was suddenly thrown into a fierce fight, and he proved more than a match for the combined opposing forces. He met them in argument and in strategy, and 98 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS single-handed brought confusion to men who were not accustomed to defeat. Every year this battle was waged; every time his triumph was more glorious. The Albany Normal Col- lege, one of the great professional schools of the country, has been the pet of legislators for nearly fifty years, because this young man from Mas- sachusetts challenged their admiration. HIS TRIUMPH New York is a peculiarly constituted state. It has a great backbone, with many cities from Albany to Buffalo as vertebrae. When this great line of cities is won, the state is won. Mr. Page saw this, and when he knew of the criti- cisms of the teachers, he went out to these cities, one after another, to explain the purpose of the normal school. His presence carried conviction and won allegiance. His speeches turned the tide, and public sentiment favored the school. Large numbers of students came to him. They were inspired to glorious effort, and a new educa- tional life spread through the state. Mr. Page met with a series of personal and pro- fessional triumphs such as has been witnessed in the case of no other educator upon the platform. Mr. Mann and Mr. Barnard, who had much greater occasional triumphs, never won the teachers in a famous contest as did Mr. Page. DAVID P. PAGE 99 Mr. Mann antagonized the many, and won the few; he lost the masses of teachers, and won leaders, great men in many walks of life. Mr. Page was supported by the eminent Governor De Witt Clinton as loyally as Mr. Mann was supported by Sumner, Everett, and Quincy; he won the leaders in the assembly; and he won the rank and file of the teachers from Albany to Buffalo. He became the idol of the multitude, and the more the weakness of his school was attacked, the more sacred did he become in the eyes of his adherents. It was a grand triumph for the man and for the cause of education. His only Waterloo was on his deathbed. He exhausted his physical resources in his brave, ardent efforts. In the great hour of need he had no reserve physical force with which to do battle with the angel of death. "SUCCEED OR DIE" At the end of four years David Page's sue- cess was complete. At Christmas time he was taken suddenly ill, and died on New Year's Day of 1848. " Succeed or die," were the last words of Horace Mann to David Page, when the young man of thirty-three went to Albany to begin his normal school experiment. He did both; he 100 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS died at the moment that success was achieved. No one was so proud of his success as Mr. Mann, and no one so sincere a mourner because of his early death. HENRY BARNARD THE NESTOR OF AMERICAN EDUCATORS HENRY BARNARD HENRY BARNARD 1811- Dr. Henry Barnard is one of the most eminent of American educators. Although fifteen years younger than Horace Mann and Mary Lyon, he entered upon an educational career at about the same time that they did. He was only two years younger than Longfellow, Holmes, and Whittier, and he was a leader in the times of Webster, Clay, and Calhoun; yet he has lived to enjoy the professional companionship of even the young men of to-day. He witnessed the first coming of the ideals of Pestalozzi to America, and the educational reforms of Frobel. Thus has Dr. Barnard worked with every man whose name will be associated with education in the nineteenth century. No other man has had this privilege. When Dr. Barnard began his professional career there were no good school buildings except in a few cities. The schoolhouses were neither ventilated nor well heated; they had no good seats, no serviceable blackboards, and no apparatus of any kind. The few schoolbooks 103 104 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS used by the pupils were of the most inferior kind. Reading, writing, and arithmetic were the only subjects generally taught, and cruel flogging was witnessed daily in the schools. Dr. Barnard ad- vocated improvements in all these lines, and he has seen the changes as they have taken place. HIS BOYHOOD Henry Barnard is still living (in 1899) at Hartford, Connecticut, in the same house in which he was born, on January 24, 1811. It is a mansion of the old substantial style of architec- ture, and in his childhood must have been one of the finest houses in Hartford. His father was a prominent citizen, and. belonged to one of the first families of Connecticut. Henry went to the common schools from early boyhood, though most of the Hartford boys whose parents were well-to-do were sent to private schools. At twelve years of age he was sent to the academy at Monson, Massachu- setts, and afterwards to the Hopkins School, in Hartford, to prepare for college. His schoolmates have told many interesting stories of his brilliant scholarship, and his declamations and debates at school. He held high rank in his classes, could speak well, was a fine appearing lad, and was always looked up to as a leader. HENRY BARNARD 105 AT COLLEGE At fifteen years of age Henry Barnard entered Yale College, and at nineteen he graduated with honors. Young as he was, he was one of the ablest men in the literary societies, and was president of the Linonian, the leading debating society at Yale. He took prizes in English and in Latin composition. Such distinction meant much, for there were many able men in Yale with Henry Barnard. Horace Bushnell, one of the greatest preachers in the United States, was there; Francis Barnard, afterwards president of Columbia College; and Noah Porter, later president of Yale. Among his fellow-students, three became United States senators, nine members of Congress, one Secre- tary of War, five ministers to foreign countries, three governors of states, fifteen judges, six college presidents, and forty-three college pro- fessors. It was a proof of great ability for a lad in his teens to carry off honors among such talent. The year that he graduated from college, Daniel Webster delivered the great speech of his life the reply to Colonel Hayne in the United States senate. This made a profound impres- sion upon the young orator of Yale. At the same time William Lloyd Garrison 106 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS was at the height of his power as an enthusias- tic champion of the rights of the negro, and this appealed strongly to Mr. Barnard. He was resolved upon a public career, in which oratory was to play a leading part. In preparation for this he studied law after gradu- ating from college, and was duly admitted to the bar. Before, practicing law he went to Europe, where he visited all the principal countries, and became acquainted with Words- worth, Carlyle, De Quincey, and other noted writers. Thus, with study and travel, he secured the best equipment for a successful public career. CHOOSING A CAREER On his return from Europe, at scarcely twenty- five years of age, Mr. Barnard was elected to the Connecticut legislature from Hartford. This was quick recognition for a man who had ore- viously done nothing in politics. He became at once interested in the cause of education, and proposed a bill creating a State Board of Education. The legislature of Connecticut was very conservative. . Few people believed that it would accept any school bill, especially one so ideal and revolutionary as that offered by Mr. Barnard. Yet such was his influ- ence and magnetism, that after his eloquent sneech, the bill passed the house of representa- HENRY BARNARD 107 tives without a dissenting vote, and was adopted unanimously by the senate. The same year that Mr. Barnard entered political life, Horace Mann left the Massachu- setts legislature, to give himself to the work of education. Mr. Barnard's admiration for Horace Mann vied with his admiration for Webster and Garrison, and the choice between an educational and a political or legal career was a difficult one. In the law, a way was open to fame and for- tune, with every opportunity for the exercise of all the popular powers he possessed. One of the ablest lawyers of New York city, the attor- ney-general for the state, had invited him to become his law partner. Few young men of twenty-seven would decline such an offer for the sake of being an educator. Horace Mann was the only man in the coun- try who would have said, "Do it." Henry Bar- nard did it. For sixty years he has devoted his life to the schools, and his eminence and service in his chosen field more than justify the choice. SCHOOL WORK IN CONNECTICUT Mr. Barnard accepted the position of secre- tary of the Connecticut Board of Education, which is practically that of state superintendent of schools. He was very active in arranging educational conventions in every county, and in 108 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS visiting schools. He corresponded with more than two thirds of the teachers in the state, and addressed many public meetings. He established the Connecticut School Jour- nal, and wrote annual reports, second in value only to those which Horace Mann was writing in Massachusetts. Kent, in his famous "Com- mentaries on American Law," speaks of Mr. Barnard's first report as a " bold and startling document," which " contains a minute, accurate, comprehensive, and instructive exhibition of the condition and operation of the common school system." Mr. Barnard continued this work for four years. Then the baser politicians, for political purposes, succeeded in abolishing the office he held. Most men would have returned to law in discouragement, but Henry Barnard persevered in the cause he had made his own. IN RHODE ISLAND The Rhode Island legislature, at about this time, did what has rarely been done in America for any educator. It adjourned all business and met in joint session to listen to an address from Mr. Barnard upon the subject of education. This speech was one of the grandest efforts of his life. In consequence of it, the legislature passed a law much like the school law of Con- HENRY BARNARD IOQ necticut, and Mr. Barnard became the first Com- missioner of Education for Rhode Island. He did not wish to accept the position when the governor offered it to him. He had begun to prepare a work on the history of education. He yielded, however, when the governor said, " Isn't it better, Barnard, to make history than to write it? " During the five years that he was in Rhode Island he made history of education very fast. He put the schools into good condition, and for the first time secured public taxation for their support. Through his efforts more than sixteen thousand educational pamphlets were distributed gratuitously, and libraries of at least five hun- dred volumes were established in all but three towns of the state. Mr. Barnard left this work because his health failed. The teachers of the state gave him a testimonial of their regret, and the legislature unanimously extended to him a vote of "thanks for the able, faithful, and judicious manner in which he had fulfilled the duties of his office." OTHER POSITIONS While Rhode Island was moving forward rapidly under the lead of Mr. Barnard, Con- necticut became very much ashamed of the way she had treated him. When his health was HO GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS restored, in 1850, he was invited to become prin- cipal of the new state normal school, and super- intendent of Connecticut schools. He carried on this work in a successful and popular manner for four years, until ill-health necessitated his resigning both positions. After three years of freedom from care, and several months of travel through the South and West, he accepted the presidency of the Uni- versity of Wisconsin. He remained there two years, and gave much time and attention to the school work of that state. In 1866 he was elected president of St. John's College, in Maryland. He worked there until he was appointed by the President, in 1867, to organize a national Bureau of Education, and then he became the first United States Com- missioner of Education. In other ways Mr. Barnard had been honored. In 1851 both Yale and Union College bestowed upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. The next year Harvard gave him the same honor, and later Columbia bestowed the degree of L. H. D. No other man, as an educator simply, ever received such honors from four such institu- tions. They were earned and bestowed by the time he was forty years old. HENRY BARNARD III COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION The Bureau of Education is now recognized as one of the important departments of govern- ment, but when Dr. Barnard was appointed the first Commissioner of Education, on March 14, 1867, the scope of the department was yet to be determined. Dr. Barnard's acquaintance with all educators, and with most of the public men of this country and of Europe, at once gave the bureau a wide influence. Without a week's delay, he began to gather statistics regarding all classes of schools, colleges, and professional institutions, in their organiza- tion, equipment, instruction, and management. He also looked up the facts about school funds, educational associations, school laws, and school- houses. In a few weeks he developed the plans upon which most of the valuable educational information of the past thirty years has been gathered. His own library became the nucleus from which a national educational library has grown. When we view the vast, grand work that has been accomplished by this department, and is being done now by Commissioner William T. Harris and his corps of experts, we appreciate how much we owe to the man whose energy established the office and whose scholarship set its high standard. 112 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS AS AN AUTHOR Dr. Barnard began, in 1855, the publication of a series of annual volumes on education, known as the "American Journal of Education," and continued it until 1893. These volumes give a vast amount of information upon education in the different countries of the world informa- tion such as can be found in no other place. No greater series of books on education has ever been published. The "Journal" cost Dr. Barnard $50,000 more than he received from it, and his fortune was ultimately lost in the great enterprise. Yet it will be his lasting monument. These volumes and his reports of the Bureau of Education prove beyond all question that he has mastered the history of education in the nineteenth century in a thorough, comprehen- sive, and critical way as no other man has ever done. No one can ever write about American or European educational affairs from 1820 to 1875, without drawing most of his information and inspiration from the writings of Henry Barnard. He has all the instincts of the scientist, the patience of an historian, the poise of a statesman, and the zeal of a reformer. HENRY BARNARD 113 CONCLUSION Dr. Henry Barnard retired from the office of Commissioner of Education, and from all active educational work, on March 15, 1870, at the age of sixty. When he began his career as an educator, Connecticut had no system of free public schools. During the previous two hundred years, there had been many good schools in the state, but education could not become general until the schools were free and public. Dr. Bar- nard's first work was to develop a public school system, and to -place the schools on a. firm finan- cial and professional basis. Through his efforts they have ranked for more than fifty years among the best schools in the country. In Rhode Island he did equally good service. That state, also, had had no free public school system worthy the name until Dr. Barnard organized and developed one. She has been justly proud of the rank of her schools for fifty years, and it is largely due to Dr. Barnard. No other man has been so closely allied with the organization of two almost perfect school systems in two important states. In his eminence as orator and author, in his personal acquaintance with the eminent literary and scholarly men and women in both hemi- 114 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS spheres, in the length of time he has served the cause of education, as the promoter of the edu- cational systems of two states, and as the father of the national Bureau of Education, which is the most perfect department of the kind in the world, Dr. Barnard has enjoyed a great com- bination of opportunities and successes as an educator. A thorough scholar, a brilliant orator, a forci- ble writer, a skillful administrator, he has devoted his talents, his time, and his wealth to the cause of education for sixty-five of the eighty-eight years of his life. JOHN DUDLEY PHILBRICK A FAMOUS SUPERINTENDENT OF CITY SCHOOLS JOHN DUDLEY PHILBRICK A GREAT CITY SUPERINTENDENT 18181886 John Dudley Philbrick came of the most eminent stock of any of the great educators. He was a direct descendant of Governor Thomas Dudley, one of the early leaders of Massachu- setts, whose name is perpetuated in an important street, and in one of the best schools of Boston. Among his ancestors were several judges and officials. There is a tradition that his grand- father read six thousand books in forty years. He was certainly a great reader, and John D. Philbrick inherited a love for books. He was born May 27, 1818, on the New Hampshire farm which had been cleared and built upon by his great-grandfather, when the pioneers came up from Massachusetts and made a new settlement in the wilds of the hill country. The pioneer blood was in his veins. Many of the family had done new things, had opened up new ways, and he was as active in this as any of them. All his life he was putting new ideas to the test, and proving that they were good. 117 Il8 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS HIS BIRTHPLACE Deerfield, where John D. Philbrick was born, is a secluded New Hampshire town that has never had a railroad anywhere near it, nor even a stage line connecting it with important towns. It is a farming town, and the Philbrick home was such a one as Whittier's, which is de- scribed in "Snow- Bound." Deerfield is thirty miles from the seacoast, among the hills of southern New Hampshire. It was a good place for a farmer's boy to work hard all the year round, and young Philbrick liked hard work. He was better able to work than were Horace Mann, David P. Page, and James P. Wickersham, and he enjoyed the farm life more than they did. John Philbrick grew up in the atmosphere of generous hospitality that has ever pervaded the great farmhouses of New Hampshire. The Philbricks always had an open door, an open fire, a well-spread table, and a spare bed. Visi- tors and wayfarers were sure of a warm welcome and royal good cheer. Kindliness and a desire to make other people happy were prominent traits of the family. This spirit characterized the youngest son, John, through life, and no one who enjoyed his hospitality will forget it. JOHN DUDLEY PHILBRICK 1 19 HIS BOYHOOD It is not. often that a farmer's boy is in haste to get to work; but John Philbrick was always hurrying up his father and elder brother to get into the fields and pastures early in the spring, and put the fences and stone walls in order. Every rod of fence and wall had to be looked over every season. The shiftless farmer waits till a comfortable day comes, and the snow is gone, and then he fixes the fence on the very day that he ought to be plowing and planting, when the cattle should be out in the sunny pas- tures. John was a thrifty lad, and he had every wall and fence in good condition by the time the cattle were ready to go out, and the fields could be plowed. Picking stones is an occupation that a farm- er's boy rarely likes, but John Philbrick liked it. Not that he enjoyed the work more than other boys, but he kept thinking how much easier it would be to hoe weeds out of the crops when there were but few stones in the way. He was always the first to suggest that it was time to pick up stones from the fields and use them in fixing the walls. He was always getting ready for the next thing, making everything easy for the next job. In this way nothing was hard for him. Even 120 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS picking stones was pleasant, because he was thinking how much easier it would make the other work. MAKING MAPLE SUGAR The Philbrick farm had a fine sugar bush on it. The grove of maple trees from which the sap is taken to make maple syrup is called, in New Hampshire, a sugar bush. As soon as the snows of winter began to melt under the first hot midday sun of spring, John stirred the whole household to activity. He seems to have been the first person there- abouts to appreciate the importance of getting the first sap from the trees. The farmers had a way of waiting for the right kind of weather, and would discuss whether to-morrow would not be better than to-day; but John Philbrick learned that the sap does not make good syrup unless it is taken before the buds begin to " set " or swell. The first sap is much better and is worth more than a larger quantity taken when it is strong or bitter. The Philbrick maple sugar was the best in town, because John had the good sense to be in the bush early and get the first sap that came up from the roots. This was like John Philbrick when he became a man. He was always doing things early. JOHN DUDLEY PHILBRICK 121 41 BREAKING STEERS Farm work made John Philbrick rugged, healthy, and strong. When he was still a mere lad he was the best fellow in town to break steers. It took a man of tact, courage, and strength to yoke up a pair of wild steers and train them to go in the road, to " haw " and "gee," to stop and back when they were told. Oxen were worth more when they were well broken than when they were poorly trained. John Philbrick added several dollars to the value of any oxen if he had the breaking of them. A few years later he enjoyed teaching wild boys a lesson as much as he had enjoyed taming steers. One evening, in his first year at college, a company of mischievous sophomores came to the room of this farmer's son, and told him that he must prepare to do several disagree- able things. Before the spokesman had finished his orders, John seized a chair with one hand and swinging it like a dumb-bell, started for the crowd. Like a flash they bolted for the stairs, rushed down, literally tumbling over one another; and several of them carried bruises from chair and stairs. The dormitory was aroused, and indeed the whole college, and the president sent for the 122 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS freshman who had caused such commotion. Young Philbrick told his story, and the pres- ident said: "You did just right. If more fresh- men had your pluck and strength there would be an end to college hazing." With equally effective means Mr. Philbrick met opposition throughout his life. In conven- tions, on the school board, or on the State Board of Education, if he thought any one was pre- paring an underhanded attack, he seized the first opportunity to drive him into the open field for a fair contest. He put many a crowd to rout in his professional career. THE TURNING POINT The turning point in the life of Page was at sixteen. So it was with John Philbrick. It was a mellow April day. The maple syrup had been made, the stones picked from the fields, and the fences and walls put in order. John was now worth more than any farm hand. He had never been so valuable as this spring. He was in the field plowing with his father. They were getting a good start, when an uncle, not much older than John, from a neighboring town, drove up, and stopped beside the fence. " I am going to the Pembroke Academy to take up my studies again, Peter," he said to John's father, " and I am going to board myself. JOHN DUDLEY PHILBRICK 123 I wish you would let John come along and keep house with me." The boy was all attention. It had never occurred to him that he could have an education. " Can't spare him," said the father. But they talked the matter over. Although John had never thought of going to the academy, the first remark of his uncle showed him his opportunity and instantly fixed his purpose. " Better go up and see mother," said John; " for if I am going away she will want Miss - to make me some clothes, and she is at the house to-day." The oxen stood in the furrow, the plow was left in the sod, and Peter, John, and the uncle went up to talk it over with mother. In a few minutes everything was settled, and arrange- ments were made for the seamstress to make John a suit of clothes for the academy. AT COLLEGE For four years John Philbrick attended the academy a term or two each year, and at twenty years of age he was fitted for college, and entered Dartmouth. The expense of going to college was not great in those days. The admission fee was only twenty-five cents, the tuition was about thirty cents a week, or $4.25 a term. If John 124 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS had paid his board instead of boarding himself, it would have cost him only $1.25 a week more. At twenty-four, he was graduated from col- lege, with the class of 1842, which was the largest in the history of Dartmouth up to the year 1899. One hundred and one men entered, thirty others ioined later, and eighty-seven were graduated. As freshmen, the class was so large, and so strong physically, that the sophomores never succeeded in "rushing" them. We have already seen how John Philbrick disposed of the sopho- mores who planned to haze him. The members of this class won many dis- tinctions in later life. One was a distinguished general in the Civil War, one a member of President Grant's cabinet, and another was gov- ernor of Louisiana. Five became judges, and many others were eminent as lawyers, physicians, and clergymen. Mr. Philbrick in his sphere was as highly honored as any of his classmates. A BOSTON SCHOOLMASTER Mr. Philbrick went from college to teach in a school at Roxbury, Massachusetts, which after- wards became a part of Boston. After a few months, he became an assistant in the English High School of Boston. Next he was appointed one of the two head teachers in the Mayhew JOHN DUDLEY PHILBRICK 125 school, and in this position he made his reputa- tion as a teacher. The grammar schools at this time were con- ducted on the double-headed plan adopted at the Boston town meeting in 1789. One depart- ment of the school was called a "writing school," and in it were taught writing and arithmetic; the other department was a "reading school," where reading, spelling, and grammar were taught. Each pupil attended the writing school half a day, and the reading school the other half. The pupils of each department, about two hundred boys, were seated in one large hall. At one end of each room was a head master, at the other end another man, called an usher, and on each side about midway sat a woman teacher. At times the women teachers could take a few pupils into a side room for recitation. It was very confusing, having so many pupils and so much going on in the large room. These were called men's schools. The lower and smaller schools were women's schools; and girls, in those days, could go to school only from April 2Oth to October 2Oth. When Mr. Philbrick had been in Boston about two years, a school called the "Quincy" was organized on an entirely new plan. Instead of two head teachers, there was to be only one 126 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS master in the school. The four hundred boys of the old reading and writing departments were divided into classes of about fifty pupils, each class occupying a separate room. Mr. Philbrick was appointed principal of this school. The new plan met with great opposition; but he made his school so successful that all the schools in Boston were soon changed to this plan. Mr. Philbrick was the first to use single desks in the schoolroom in place of the old ones for two pupils. Whipping in school was reduced to one fourth what it had been before, when he started the first great grammar school with one master. Later he became one of the first champions of drawing and music in the schools; and they are much better taught in the schools of America to-day because of the way he insisted upon having them taught. His pioneer blood was showing itself. John D. Philbrick was in every sense a teacher. No one gets so good a test of his power to teach as a grammar-school master. He has to know more than other teachers about boys and girls, and he has to do more for them. Mr. Philbrick is the only educational leader whose reputation was made as a grammar-school master. Mr. Mann was a lawyer, and not a teacher. He was a reformer a born leader of men. Miss Lyon was a private-school teacher, JOHN DUDLEY PHILBRICK 127 and a seminary principal. Mr. Barnard was not a teacher so much as an educational official, editor, and orator. Mr. Page was- a high-school teacher, and a normal-school principal. Mann, Barnard, Wickersham, and Bateman made their reputations largely as state superintendents. IN CONNECTICUT Mr. Philbrick had had five years of success in the Quincy School, when it was decided to have a city superintendent of schools. He de- sired the position, but the school board chose Mr. Bishop, then superintendent at Providence, Rhode Island, the first city in the country to have a superintendent of schools. Mr. Philbrick felt this defeat keenly, and a little later accepted a position as principal of the Connecticut State Normal School, at New Britain. He was so successful there that he was soon chosen State Superintendent of Schools in Connecticut. THE SALARY QUESTION Mr. Philbrick never refused a position because the salary was too low, and never accepted one merely because it offered an increase in salary. He always scorned the idea of a teacher's being largely influenced by salaries, yet he gave much of his effort to getting them increased. In his 128 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS time occurred the great increase in Boston sal- aries. There has been little change since then, and for a long time before there had been al- most no increase. During his term in Boston many positions had the salary doubled, and all other cities were influenced by this action. Here is tangible proof of his devotion to the teachers. SUPERINTENDENT IN BOSTON Mr. Bishop was neither happy nor successful as superintendent in Boston, and he soon resigned his position. Mr. Philbrick was invited to the place by a unanimous and hearty vote. He was then only thirty-eight years of age. For twenty-five years after he came to Bos- ton as superintendent of schools, he was one of the four leading public-school men of the coun- try. Henry Barnard alone had greater promi- nence, and the fact that in those years Mr. Bar- nard's labors were not concentrated in one place or in one direction, but were partly in Wisconsin, partly in Maryland, and partly at Washington, gave Mr. Philbrick greater relative distinction. Mr. Wickersham of Pennsylvania and Dr. Emer- son E. White of Ohio were prominent in educa- tion at this time, but neither occupied one emi- nent position for so long a period as Mr. Philbrick. For ten years Mr. Philbrick was a member of the Massachusetts State Board of Education. JOHN DUDLEY PHILBRICK 129 He was a trustee of Bates College at Lewiston, Maine, and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for several years. He was president of the National Educational Association, and of many other educational bodies. He was Educa- tional Commissioner from Massachusetts to the Vienna World's Exposition, in 1873, and Com- missioner of the United States, member of the international jury at the World's Exposition at Paris, in 1878. He was the author of more than forty valuable school reports, and of an impor- tant volume on "The School Systems of the United States." He was the first American city superintend- ent to win international distinction, and his reputation abroad has rarely been equaled among educators. He received the degree of LL. D. from Bates College in 1872, and the same degree from a university in Scotland in 1879. He was made an honorary officer of the Legion of Honor in France, and was given the Gold Palm of the University of France, with the title, Officer of Public Instruction, in 1878. Thus was Dr. Philbrick highly honored by Massachusetts, by Maine, by the United States, by Scotland, and by France. 130 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS TRIBUTES Dr. Philbrick died in Danvers, Massachusetts, February 2, 1886. He had been superintendent of the Boston schools for more than twenty years. At the funeral, Oilman H. Tucker spoke of "his noble, illumined face, his frank and winning manner, his hearty clasp of the hand, his serious words lighted up with flashes of pleasantry the warm welcome of his whole soul. I see in all, his generous and sympathetic spirit, thoughtful of all but himself, constantly planning some in- dividual or public benefit, like the free public library which he established in his native town." Of the many grand tributes paid him, none was better than that of John G. Whittier, the Quaker poet, who was a neighbor of Dr. Phil- brick. He said: "He was a busy student, deeply interested in the cause to which his life had been devoted, but at the same time a gen- ial, unpretending gentleman, and a very pleas- ant addition to our social circle A good and true man, who served his generation faithfully and successfully, he deserves to be held in grateful remembrance." NEWTON BATEMAN THE PIONEER AMONG WESTERN EDUCATIONAL LEADERS NEWTON BATEMAN NEWTON BATEMAN THE PIONEER OF THE WEST 1822-1897 Newton Bateman is a magical name in the great state of Illinois. To his classmates in the college at Jacksonville he remained always "Newt Bateman"; to his co-workers in the in- terest of public education for nearly twenty years he was simply "Bateman"; to the gradu- ates of Knox College, who wellnigh idolized him for eighteen years, he was "Little Prexy"; and to the educators of the country, who view the results of his great work, he is Dr. Bateman. Illinois is one of the greatest states in the Union. It is nearly four hundred miles long, and more than two hundred miles wide, and of all the states it is the most uniform in soil and surface. On all her borders are mighty rivers, which have contributed to her commercial and agricultural wealth, and on the northeast is Lake Michigan, which has helped to make Chicago the second city in size and importance on the continent. Her yield in mineral and agricul- tural products is fabulous. '33 134 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS A century ago the total population of this vast region of more than 55,000 square miles was less than 2,500 people. Forty years later it was less than half a million. Then came a rapid growth, until at the end of the century the population of Illinois numbered five and a half millions. But the real grandeur of Illinois is in her men and in the noble quality of manhood which she produces; and two of the most important forces in her growth and progress have been the public schools and the colleges. In both of these the name that stands highest in influence is that of Newton Bateman, who was for four- teen critical years the State Superintendent of Schools, and for eighteen years president of Knox College. There are in the state now one million three hundred thousand children of school age, and in the public schools there are twenty-six thou- sand teachers. The public school property is valued at $45,000,000, and the total cost of the schools each year is more than $16,000,000. Every child in the public schools is better taught because Newton Bateman was state super- intendent. The work of the thirty-one colleges ,in Illinois is better because Dr. Bateman was president of one of them. NEWTON BATEMAN 135 CHILDHOOD Newton Bateman was born in Bridgeton, in southern New Jersey, July 27, 1822. His father was a weaver, and the opportunities for earning a living at the trade grew less and less each year. Inventions and the introduction of ma- chinery superseded weaving by hand, and threw many men out of employment. It was hard for the Bateman family, and they became very poor. In 1833, Bergin Bateman gave up the struggle to get a living by weaving, and with his wife and five children traveled nearly a thousand miles to the western plains. It was a terrible journey. The mother was taken sick with Asiatic cholera on the way, and as there was no place to stop, they kept traveling. She died, and it was a sad little family that stopped at Meredosia, on the Illinois River, to make a new home. They had no money with which to build a home, and life was very hard for them. They had little to eat and to wear, and a miserable place in which to live. It was a hard experience for Newton, who was the youngest of the family and only ten years old. He had been at school very little in New Jersey, and during his first years' on the frontier there was no chance for schooling. After a few years he became an errand boy 136 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS in the family of a lawyer at Jacksonville. This lawyer was one of the well-to-do men of central Illinois and had a fine house for those days. He had also a beautiful daughter, and his errand boy, hardly fourteen years old and almost a dwarf in appearance, became very much in love with her. This feeling inspired the lad with a desire to be something more than a poor ignorant errand boy. He resolved to learn something, to go to college, and to study for a profession. It did not seem ridiculous to him to plan to go to college, although he must spend at least three years in preparation, and had not a dollar in the world with which to pay his expenses. HIS EDUCATION Newton Bateman never told much about those first years in the preparatory school. He did any work he could to earn a few cents, and he lived on almost nothing. He once said that he had often chopped wood on cold winter days, with nothing to eat but a handful of corn meal at noon. At seventeen years of age he entered Illinois College at Jacksonville. This was the first col- lege in the state to form regular classes and have a graduation. The first class was gradu- ated in 1835, the year that the little errand boy was in love with the lawyer's daughter. Four NEWTON BATEMAN 137 years later he entered the college in a class of ten, all poor boys. In college and preparatory school together, there were fewer than seventy students. Newton Bateman always boarded himself. He was living high when his food cost ten cents a day, and at one time his food for two weeks cost less than two cents a day. He bought corn, beat it into meal himself, and ate this for two weeks without milk, butter, sugar, or molasses. There was rarely a time from his early child- hood until after he graduated from college when he had enough good food to eat. The only light he had to study by was made by burning lard in a saucer, with a twisted rag hanging over the side for a wick. He never had a penny for luxury, or for the common comforts of life. With all his hardships, he was the wit and humorist of his class. His good nature and jol- lity were irrepressible. At times, when he could see no possibility of getting through college, and still less of winning the social position that he wanted, he would be despondent. This was only for a brief season, and then he would be brighter and more full of fun than ever. Dr. Thomas K. Beecher, a talented brother of Henry Ward Beecher, was a classmate of Mr. Bateman's in college, and he says that his "ex- uberance of the comic was a relief to his super- 138 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS sensitive nature, and lightened many a load which others would have carried with clenched teeth and knitted brow." He was a youth of rare good spirits and self-control. This was the way " Newt Bateman" got his education. He graduated in the class of 1843, at the age of twenty-one. It seems incredible that a youth with his late start and uninterrupted hardships could have completed his college course by the time he was twenty-one. It was a tribute to his scholarship and manliness that in his senior year he was chosen to take charge, for the year, of a class in Latin in the prepara- tory department. THE YEARS OF STRUGGLE Mr. Bateman wanted to teach after graduat- ing, but he could not get a school. He could not wait in idleness for something to do, and the only work he could find was that of a book agent. For two years he traveled through Ohio, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania trying to sell an Historical Chart. This was from the summer of 1843 to the summer of 1845, a period of very hard times in those states, and no one wanted historical. charts. A book of fads, a household physician, or a universal letter - writer might have sold better; but as it was, he had a fright- fully hard time. He was often shabbily treated, and sometimes he was almost starving, so that he feared he would have to beg. His love of fun served him many a good turn. It made him friends and kept his courage up. He was not a success, however, as a book agent. At the age of twenty-three he decided that if no school came to him, he must make one of his own; and in 1845 he established a private school in St. Louis. The next two years were as hard a struggle as those which had gone before. The little money that he received had to go to keeping up appearances. The story of these years would make inter- esting reading, but Mr. Bateman has told us nothing about them. Remembering his abhor- rence of all pretense and his sense of humor, we can picture the young man, poor but plucky, making the best of what he had before the students and their parents, and then laughing right heartily about it when alone. His school was not successful financially, any more than anything else he had ever done. But his teaching was a success. Having a private school brought him into company with bright educational men, and soon his prospects im- proved. 140 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS PROSPERITY After he had taught a private school two years, Newton Bateman was elected professor in the University of Missouri. Now, for the first time, he had a fair start; but he was safer in adversity than in prosperity. His vivacity, wit, and social spirit made him welcome everywhere, especially in convivial circles, where temptations abounded. Those who loved him best thought for a time that he was going over the perilous verge of dissipation. But he was wise enough to see his danger, and to avoid it. He had long since abandoned all hope of winning the lawyer's daughter and had out- grown his early fancy; and she had married another man. When he realized the danger of the life he was leading, he wanted a home. He married a noble young woman, and settled down at the college. After he had been four years at the University of Missouri, he was invited to take charge of the first free school in Jacksonville, Illinois. This was in 1851. He had been away from Illinois and from the town of his college life for eight years, and he was glad to go back. The state then had a population of little more than 850,000. It had no free-school law, no normal school, no state college, no state super- NEWTON BATEMAN 141 intendent, and no effective state teachers' asso- ciation. Mr. Bateman was under thirty years of age, but he was old in battling with hardships. His vivacity had become brilliancy, his wit was trans- formed into power, his expectancy of reverses into faith in his every effort. Brilliancy, power, and faith gave him a mighty influence from the first. He soon became the county superintendent. He was one of the leaders in establishing the state normal school at Bloomington. He was active in founding the University of Illinois, at Champaign, and he became a prominent factor in making the state teachers' association the power that it has continued to be in educational progress. STATE SUPERINTENDENT In 1859, Mr. Bateman became State Superin- tendent of Schools in Illinois. The state free- school law had been in operation only four years, and there was a great work to be done in carry- ing it out. He was now thirty-seven years old, and he put heart and soul into his work. In- telligently and affectionately he occupied this position until 1875, with two years interim in 1863 and 1864. In these sixteen years he organ- ized and developed the school system of Illinois, 142 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS as Horace Mann had done in Massachusetts, and Henry Barnard in Connecticut. Those were great years for education through- out the land. Henry Barnard was a national figure; Dr. Sheldon was leading New York state a noble race in educational progress; Dr. Philbrick was giving Boston an international reputation educationally; Dr. Wickersham was bringing Pennsylvania to the front; and John Swett was establishing the school system of California. Times make men, but it takes a great man to get in step with an epoch-making period. Few men in the United States have had their hand on the educational system of a state for so many years as did Dr. Bateman, and aside from Horace Mann, no other man has had so influential a part in maturing a great educational system. He had a genius for being on the right side of every question, and for commanding the loyalty of all educational forces. Where Mr. Mann was weak, Mr. Bateman was strong. He always had the teachers as a loyal body-guard. Mr. Bateman, like Horace Mann, will live in educational history because of his school reports for the sixteen years that he was state superin- tendent. He wrote two more reports than Mr. Mann, and, like his, each presented some great phase of education. They will always be the NEWTON BATEMAN 143 original sources to which students will go for light and inspiration, when studying American education from 1859 to 1875. I n every line they have the ring of a great leader. Besides these reports as superintendent of public in- struction, he published " School Laws of Illi- nois as Amended in 1865," and in 1888 a valu- able compendium of "School Laws and Common School Decisions of the State of Illinois." Dr. Bateman's motto was : " Education should be true in its conception, wise in its adaptation, and sound in its methods." AS COLLEGE PRESIDENT In 1875, with a remarkable record as state superintendent, he accepted the presidency of Knox College, one of the oldest institutions in the state of Illinois. He was the man for the place and the college took a leading position at once. Money came freely from the wealthy. The standard of scholarship rose. Students came in large numbers, and the graduates won early and substantial success. For eighteen years Dr. Bateman was a power, not only in the college, but through Illinois and the adjoining states. He held this position until the year of the Columbian Exposition, 1893. Then, having passed the age of three score years and ten, he insisted upon yielding the administra- 144 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS tion to younger hands, while he remained as a professor, doing class work with as much effec- tiveness as ever. THE END Soon after his seventy-fifth birthday, on October 21, 1897, the life of Newton Bateman came to a peaceful end. Dr. Bateman has been called the Horace Mann of the West, and the Abraham Lincoln among educators. He came to know Abraham Lincoln, the greatest son of Illinois, when the latter was nominated for the presidency in 1860. Mr. Bateman' s front office at the state house was used as a reception room for the candidate after the nominating convention, and through the campaign Lincoln and Bateman were often to- gether. The respect and admiration of the two men developed into affection; and this friendship was greatly prized as a memory by Mr. Bateman through life. Those who knew Newton Bateman best, who knew of his early struggles and his ultimate success, were wont to liken him to Abraham Lincoln. No higher tribute could be paid a school man than to characterize him, either as the Horace Mann of the West, or as the Abra- ham Lincoln among educators. How great the honor of being styled both! EDWARD A. SHELDON THE FOUNDER OF THE OSWEGO TEACHERS' TRAINING SCHOOL EDWARD A. SHELDON EDWARD A. SHELDON 1823-1897 As nearly as anything in human progress can be accidental, Dr. Sheldon as an educational leader was an accident. The purpose of his life up to the time he left college was to be a law- yer, and a good success he would have ~made of it. Breaking down in health, he was forced to leave college at the end of his third year, and to give up his plans for the law. At twenty- four years of age he obtained employment in a nursery at Oswego, New York, attracted to the growing of trees and plants by his love for the growth and development of life. Mr. Sheldon was a religious and philanthropic man, and no business could take all his thought. The neglected children in the poor districts of Oswego interested him. This was in 1848 and 1 849. A large number of immigrants had recently arrived from Europe, and had settled in one section of Oswego. They came to this country without money, and as they knew nothing of our ways and our language, they could earn very little at first. The children were poorly clothed, and did not go to school. 148 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS Mr. Sheldon, going to and from the nursery, became interested in these poor children. He knew they would become the strength of our civilization if they were rightly used. First of all, they must be educated. How? There was no public school for them, and no parochial school. He talked about it to his friends, and succeeded in forming an " Orphan and Free School Association." They planned a school which was to be free for these children; but they could not find the right teacher. The first one was a failure, and the second was no better. There were in the school one hundred and twenty untamed foreigners, from five to twenty- one years of age, none of whom had before been in an American school. They could not sit still, did not know how to study, and were always ready for a fight. It is no wonder that two ex- perienced teachers refused to stay when they saw the situation. The school needed two or three teachers, but the new association could not afford to hire them. The officers knew that a single teacher could not control such a mob, and so they voted to give up the school. Then it was that the young nurseryman, twenty-five years old, who had never thought of such a thing as teaching, offered to try it rather than to see the school fail. EDWARD A. SHELDON 149 HIS EDUCATION Mr. Sheldon's father and mother were New England people, who had settled on a farm in Genesee county, in New York; and there he was born in October, 1823. It is noticeable how many of the educational leaders came from New England; Horace Mann and Mary Lyon were born in New England, and so were Henry Barn- ard, David P. Page, Mark Hopkins, John D. Phil- brick, and William T. Harris. Mr. Sheldon was of New England stock. New York is, indeed, an Empire State with her vast area and population; and in her enter- prises, her institutions, and her philanthropies, she is wellnigh imperial. But her country schools seventy years ago were very, very poor, and the boy Sheldon got little education in his early years. So unattractive was the school- house, and so uninteresting were the teaching and studying, that he remarked afterward that he had "gone to school to an ash heap." He was seventeen years old when he first went to a good school. This was an academy in a neighboring town; and there he studied Greek and Latin, algebra, and sciences. He was very happy in this work, and in four years was fitted for college. He entered Hamilton College in 1844, with 150 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS the purpose of studying law after he had com- pleted the college course. It was a great dis- appointment to him that, after three years, his health gave out, and he had to leave college and give up the thought of becoming a lawyer. HIS FIRST SCHOOL Mr. Sheldon knew nothing about good public schools, or about methods of teaching. He had no theories or plans when he stood face to face with that school of one hundred and twenty-five children from the slums, but he was confident that he could do them some good. He pro- claimed no rules, but met emergencies as they arose. When two boys got into a rough-and-tumble fight, he did not rush at them as if ready to take a hand in it, nor did he shout at them. The master merely spoke to them quietly, in a tone that held their attention, and told them that the school was no place for fighting, and that if they were to fight at all they must wait until they were away from the school and from other children. More than once when several boys became restless, he sent them out to run to a certain place and back to see who could get into school first. He never punished a pupil, or spoke one scolding word to those children. He pitied EDWARD A. SHELDON 151 them and loved them. On Saturdays, he visited their homes to see where and how they lived, and to learn what could be done to make life pleasanter and happier for them. As he went on his way to school these girls and boys swarmed about him. Some caught him by a finger, and some by his coat-tail, all anxious to be near him. The storekeepers stood in their doorways and laughed at the strange sight. He was happy in their devotion to him, and his school was a success. He received only three hundred dollars a year" for teaching this school, and that was twenty- five dollars more than he asked to be paid. SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS No one knew so well as Mr. Sheldon that his school did little for the real education of the children of the slums, and that all the children of the city needed good schools. He knew that the orphans needed a home, and in two years he had one started for them. At the same time he arranged for a system of graded schools in Oswego, so that a teacher should have only fifty or sixty pupils in a room, and all children could go to school free. After two years of teaching in Oswego, dur- ing which time lie had married and made a home for himself, he became superintendent of 152 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS schools at Syracuse. There he graded the schools, improved them in many other ways, ' and laid the plans for a fine high school. He also wrote the first annual report of the work of city schools. In two years he was considered one of the leaders in public school work in that part of the state; and four years from the time that he left the nursery business to experiment with a school of one hundred and twenty wild foreigners, he was urged to come back to Oswego as superin- tendent, to organize first-class schools. It was in 1853 that he returned to Oswego, and there he remained in school work until he died, in August, 1897. During these forty-four years he was often invited to other places, at much larger salaries; but he remained faithful to his work at Oswego. When Troy wanted him for superintendent of schools, when Albany asked him to become president of her great nor- mal school, and when a state university offered him a professorship, he said " No," promptly. He went to Oswego to do a life work, and there he lived and died. He was superintend- ent for seven years, and then, in 1860, he started the Oswego Normal School, which has been, in many respects, the grandest of all the American normal schools. EDWARD A. SHELDON 153, METHODS OF TEACHING Mr. Sheldon was not satisfied with the way his teachers taught when he became superin- tendent of schools at Oswego. He was now thirty years old. He had never seen a really good public school, he had read very little about school work, and he only knew that he was dis- satisfied with all the teaching he saw. He knew that the schools ought to be taught better, but he did not blame the teachers, for, he said, they had nothing with which to teach. He was thinking of preparing some books and charts himself, when he found what he wanted at Toronto, Canada. These new things were in a museum, and no one had used them. They had been sent over from London, and had been carefully put in show cases. Mr. Sheldon was not long in getting them out, and in finding a way to buy or borrow them. He went back to Oswego with charts, new books, balls, cards, pictures of animals, building blocks, cocoons of silkworms, cotton balls, samples of grain, and specimens of pottery and of glassware. These were the first samples of such helps for teaching in the United States. There were ten state normal schools and ten private normal schools in the country, but none of them had such an equipment. This was in 1858, twenty 154 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS years after Horace Mann began to talk and write about the new ideas in education. Henry Barnard had been actively at work for as many years. David P. Page had established the great Albany normal school, and had been dead ten years. Yet none of these school helps, that had been in use in Europe for fifty years, were known in the United States. Mr. Sheldon did not bring all these things from Toronto to put them in a museum. He wanted to use them in school. A new world was open before him. For the first time he knew what he wanted for his schools; he knew that some one knew how to teach. The Oswego teachers became as enthusiastic as he was, and eagerly asked how these new things were to be used. He could not tell them, and he could not find any one in America who knew about them. He tried to get the school board of Oswego to send to Germany for a pupil of Pestalozzi, who had originated this method of teaching. They had no money for it, but they said he might do whatever he wished, provided it did not cost the city anything. ' Not a teacher in Oswego received more than $500 a year, and many only $300; yet these teachers gave one half of their whole year's salary to have some one come from Europe to EDWARD A. SHELDON 155 teach them how to use these new things. In no other body of city teachers in the history of the United States has there ever been such an enthusiasm to learn how to teach. Many a teacher, of her own free choice, lived for a year on a hundred and fifty dollars that she might learn how to teach according to the principles of Pestalozzi, who had died thirty years before. It was a grand sacrifice which they made under the leadership of Mr. Sheldon. The names of those teachers should be engraved on a tablet, that they may be remembered. As a result of these efforts Mr. Sheldon se- cured the services of Miss M. E. M. Jones, of London. Hermann Kriisi, a pupil of Pestalozzi, was so encouraged by her success that he came to America soon afterwards, and made his head- quarters at Oswego with Mr. Sheldon. None of the teachers learned so much, or won so much honor from the coming of Miss Jones and Hermann Krusi, as did Mr. Sheldon. But for this event he would probably have remained the superintendent of that small city all his life. Under this impetus a normal school that was to become famous was started the next year. The self-sacrifice of the teachers of Oswego in 1859, marks the beginning of a new order of things in education in the United States. What 156 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS Mr. Mann, Mr. Page, and Mr. Barnard had not accomplished resulted from the enthusiastic contributions of the teachers of Oswego, under the inspiration of Mr. Sheldon. HIS SCHOOL REPORTS A study of Mr. Sheldon's early school reports at Oswego shows him to be a master of every detail. He was, to all intents and purposes, the first professional school superintendent in the country. He had never seen a system of schools; had never been a student in a good public school; had read few books on education; yet his early reports are as practical as the multi- plication table, and as good in theoretical work and in methods as if he had been trained in the best normal schools. In discussing the question of salaries, he says: "The principal item of expense is, as it must ever be, the payment of teachers' salaries. This includes something more than half of the entire expenditure, and may seem large to a casual observer; but a careful investigation and a little practical experience in endeavoring to obtain good teachers will dissipate all such impressions. The truth is, it is impossible to employ good teachers, those who will make our schools what they are, with less salaries than are now paid. EDWARD A. SHELDON 157 The board pay no more than they have found it necessary to offer in order to induce teachers to come and take charge of our schools. If they cannot receive these prices in Oswego, they will go to other cities, where they can receive as much or more." It is interesting to know that the highest salaries paid were, to one man $1,000; to three, $800; to one, $600; and to two, $400. Of the women teachers, three received $325, the largest salary, a few $300, and the others $275 and $225. Low as were these salaries, Mr. Sheldon had to fight for them each year. To fortify his position and to show that the salaries were not extravagant, Mr. Sheldon printed the salaries paid in other cities in 1859. St. Louis paid men from $750 to $2,500 for teaching; Chicago's highest salary was $1,800; and New York city and Cincinnati each paid what seemed the enormous salary of $1,500. Many other cities paid more than $1,000, which was Oswego' s highest salary, although Albany and Detroit, at that time, paid only $900, and Troy $700. In contrast with these salaries are the highest paid to women teachers, in St. Louis, $900; Cincinnati, $800; New York city, $750; Chicago and Columbus, Ohio, $500; and so on, down to $300 in Albany and Troy. Mr. Sheldon's publication of figures regard- 158 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS ing educational expenses did much toward start- ing the movement which resulted in a general increase in the salaries of teachers. There has been much controversy among superintendents as to what city first established unclassified classes for pupils not fitting the regular grades. They have assumed that the first of these classes was formed since 1890; but Mr. Sheldon, in his reports, writes of the estab- lishment of such classes in Oswego in 1858. In another matter he anticipated present school men. In 1898 there was great dis- cussion among superintendents in regard to classifying and promoting pupils in such a way that bright ones may not suffer by going too slow, and dull ones by being forced to go too fast. All this was discussed by Mr. Sheldon in one of his school reports, before 1860. THE NORMAL SCHOOL The school which Mr. Sheldon started in 1 86 1, for the purpose of teaching the new Pesta- lozzian principles ,was at first called the Oswego Training School. The teachers of the city schools went there to study, and students came also from other cities and other states. Mr. Sheldon was principal of the school, and at the same time continued in his office of city super intendent. EDWARD A. SHELDON 159 In 1866, the state of New York made this a state institution, naming it a normal school; and soon after, Mr. Sheldon resigned as super- intendent, to give all his time to the school. For almost forty years he remained at its head. This is the only case in which the founder of one of the early normal schools was its prin- cipal for many years. The New England normal schools changed principals early and frequently. Mr. Page died after four years at Albany; and the New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Illinois normal schools did not long retain their founders. The graduates of this school have spread its methods throughout the country. When it was the city training school, the graduates of its second class taught in twelve states besides New York as far away as Kansas, Georgia, and Mississippi. Scarcely a normal school in the country has not counted one or more of the graduates of Oswego among its best teachers. Many of the best school books have been written by them ; and many of the leading principals and city superintendents received their training at Oswego. In the later years of Mr. Sheldon's life, many cities had come up to the high standard of Oswego in educational matters, and many normal schools were practically on the same level as his; hence it is not easy for the men of the last quarter of 160 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS the century to appreciate how completely Dr. Sheldon led the educational world in methods and in plans during the previous twenty-five years. AN AUTHOR Mr. Sheldon was honored with the degree of Ph. D. by the Regents of the University of New York. This was largely because of his pro- fessional literary work. As soon as he knew the details of the new methods of teaching, he wished others to know of their merit. He in- vited the leading educators of the country to visit Oswego, to make a thorough observation and inquiry regarding the work. By speaking on many public occasions he created a general desire to know about the new ideas. This led to his preparation of the first books printed in America upon the adaptation of Pesta- lozzian principles to our school work. These books marked an era in American education. At once the Oswego method was transformed from a local affair into a national, and even an international interest. His books had a large sale in America, and a good sale in England. This was really the birth of educational litera- ture in America. It is not easy for a man to get a place in history who remains in active life after his EDWARD A. SHELDON 161 great work has been done. Garrison's place in history will be greater than that of Wendell Phillips, because he died nearer the time of his great service to the cause of humanity. Lin- coln's place in history will be relatively greater than that of Grant, because he died as soon as his special work was accomplished. Mr. Page will have a place relatively higher than Mr. Sheldon in professional annals, because he. died at the height of his victories. In the details of Mr. Page's professional work in New York state there were many mistakes, which he himself pointed out, but in the work of Mr. Sheldon there were practically none. Mr. Page was a genius, Mr. Sheldon was a master. A genius never suffers from an ex- periment, a master never experiments. A gen- ius wins admiration, a master commands it. JAMES P. WICKERSHAM PENNSYLVANIA'S FAMOUS EDUCATOR JAMES P. WICKERSHAM PENNSYLVANIA'S FAMOUS EDUCATOR 1825-1891 Pennsylvania has had much that is romantic in her educational history. Educational legis- lation never occasioned a more thrilling scene than that on the state house hill in Harrisburg, on an April day in 1835. In the previous year, the state legislature established a public school system, and provided for the support of the schools by taxation. The next legislature was elected to repeal this law. Thaddeus Stevens, by a splendid speech, changed the votes so that the law was saved. " His speech, delivered in the central aisle of the house of representa- tives at Harrisburg, in April, 1835, in front of the speaker's chair, swept everything before it, and went sounding down the corridors of time like the trumpet of the resurrection, waking the common-school cause to newness of life, and creating in the popular mind a sentiment in favor of public-school education that had never before existed, and that has not died out to this day." The women of Reading, Pennsylvania, were 165 1 66 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS so much pleased, that they had the entire speech printed on a silk banner, which they presented to Mr. Stevens. He said, late in life, that the two things of which he was the most proud were that speech, and the printing of it on the silk banner. BIRTHPLACE James P. Wickersham was a lad of ten years when Thaddeus Stevens made his great fight for the common schools. It was good to be at school when people were beginning to realize the need of public education. He was born in Chester county, Pennsyl- vania, March 5, 1825. Chester is one of the best counties in the country. -In soil and climate it is almost ideal, and its people have been of the best class, from the days of its settlement until now. In 1700, the lad's great-grandfather, Thomas Wickersham, built the first house west of the Brandywine River, in what was then the wilderness of Chester. All that was best in the the spirit and wisdom of William Penn had been in this people for over a century when James Wickersham was born. BOYHOOD James Wickersham was the oldest of many children. Through his boyhood he worked on the farm in summer, and went to the district JAMES P. WICKERSHAM 167 school in winter. .He was content to work in the potato patch, among the rows of corn, and in the hay-field a part of the year, so long as he could look forward to going to school the rest of the time. Things changed, however, when he was six- teen. The district school could teach him no more. His father could not send him away to school, so he had to work on without the prospect of further education. Must he always stay with the potatoes, corn, and hay? He wanted to know something more. He wanted to know the best books and the best educated people. This could never happen, if at sixteen he settled down as farm-hand at home. Aspi- ration and poverty are a hard combination, and James Wickersham is not the only boy who has been unhappy because he must settle down to a life of toil. THE FRIENDS' MEETING The boy's family were Friends, or, as they are sometimes called, Quakers. James was not in the habit of going to meeting, but one autumn Sunday when he was unusually despondent, he walked to a neighboring town, to a meeting of Quakers. The principal of an academy, Jona- than Cause, was the head of the meeting, as the Friends call their leader. James thought 168 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS this man would surely say something that would do him good. The Friends had no singing at their meetings, and they did not talk unless they had something to say. Neither Friend Cause nor any one else spoke at this meeting. After more than an hour ot silence, the head of the meeting shook hands with the Friend who sat nearest to him, and the meeting was ended. It had been very dull and very disappointing to the sixteen-year-old boy. He could scarcely restrain his tears as he crossed the yard and started homeward. He had walked but a little way when some one laid a hand on his shoulder and said: "James, I have been thinking of thee all the morning, and that was the reason I had nothing to say. I wonder what brought thee to the meeting. Something must be troubling thee. Tell me about it." It was Jonathan Cause, the head of the meet- ing and principal of the academy. James told him of his desire to go to school. They walked on together, and talked for a longer time than they had sat in silence at the meeting. " Now, James," said Friend Cause, as they parted, " come to the academy this autumn and stay as long as it pleases thee." He told him that he need pay nothing until he could earn money by teaching school, or he JAMES P. WICKERSHAM 169 might pay as he went along by helping about the place and teaching part of the time. It was like a dream to the lad. He could hardly believe that it was true. He seemed to be walking on air as he hastened home to tell father and mother, brothers and sisters, the good news that he could go to the academy. When did a sermon ever do more good to any one than the silence of the head of that meeting, who was thinking about a lad and wondering why he came to meeting. FURTHER EDUCATION This was the turning point in the life of James Wickersham. He went to the academy for six terms, and this was all the educational training he had, except earlier, in the little dis- trict school. He was always a student, and he became a scholarly man. Washington College honored his scholarship by conferring upon him the degree of Master of Arts, and Lafayette College made him a Doctor of Laws. His scholarly writings showed that he was in every way entitled to these honors, even though he never went to college. Jonathan Cause did well to keep silent that morning, and plan to give the world one of America's educational leaders. 1 70 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS AS A TEACHER While still in his teens, young Wickersham taught three country schools in his native county of Chester. In the first, the school board voted that his was the best school under their charge; in the second, he was awarded a premium of four dollars for the best teaching; and in the third, he received four dollars a month more than any other teacher in the township. At the age of twenty, he took charge of a new academy at Marietta, Pennsylvania. The first year there were only twenty pupils, and the " Susquehanna Institute," as it was named, occu- pied but one room. The third year he had seventy-nine pupils, of whom thirty-five were boarders. This young man of twenty-three hen purchased a beautiful site in town, and erected a large boarding-house and a building for class rooms. He also started a library with five hundred volumes. Teachers from all the country about came there as pupils. He re- mained at this academy nine years. In 1854, at the age of twenty-nine, he was made the first superintendent of schools in Lan- caster county, at a salary of $1,500. His energy, tact, ability, and popularity did much to make the county superintendency in Pennsylvania a permanent success. JAMES P. WICKERSHAM 171 Mr. Wickersham insisted that he could not make the schools of Lancaster county as good as they ought to be unless his teachers were educated in a normal school. In his second year as superintendent, 1855, he had a normal school started at Millersville, four miles from Lancaster. In 1856 he resigned his position to become principal of this normal school, the first in the state. The next year a state normal school law was passed, and on December 2, 1859, the state board adopted the Millersville school, which had been enlarged. Mr. Wickersham did a great work there, and he remained its principal until he became state superintendent of public schools, in 1866. AS STATE SUPERINTENDENT For fifteen years Dr. Wickersham was state superintendent of Pennsylvania, which was in all those years the second state in the Union in population and influence. Few men have had such an opportunity to mold a school system. Dr. Wickersham's personality was a large factor in his success in the normal school, and the same personality impressed itself upon the state while he was superintendent. All the schools of the state were better because he was state superintendent. Many good laws were 172 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS made and many bad practices were abolished by him. A million children in Pennsylvania each year have better schoolhouses, better schoolbooks, and better teachers than the children had before Mr. Wickersham was state superintendent. The teachers have many advantages that they would not have had but for him. No state superin- tendent in the United States has had clearer or higher ideals of what the superintendent, the teachers, the school directors, and the people should do for the schools. OTHER LABORS The "History of Education in Pennsylvania," which Mr. Wickersham wrote, is one of the best educational histories ever published in America. His book on "School Management" was prob- ably the best professional work issued up to that time, and it remained a standard for a quarter of a century. This is the only American pro- fessional book ever translated into Japanese and used by the government of Japan as the official book for teachers to study. In 1882, Dr. Wickersham was appointed by the President to represent this government at the court of Denmark, and he honored his country and his profession in this position. After his return he served the public in many JAMES P. WICKERSHAM 173 ways, and at the time of his death, in 1891, he was a member of ten important boards of trustees of state, collegiate, county, and city institutions. Dr. Wickersham was a natural leader. He was always much respected by the best men in the state; and to the people of the United States he was the best known of the educators of Pennsylvania for forty years. He made educa- tional addresses in many states, North and South, and had great influence in all parts of the country. All this great work of James P. Wickersham was made possible by the thoughtful, silent head of the meeting in the Friends' meeting-house, on a Sunday morning in 1841. Mr. Cause was well repaid for giving the sixteen-year-old lad a chance to go to school. Mr. Wickersham paid for his schooling with money earned by teach- ing, and by the great good he did in teaching, talking, and writing on education for fifty years. He paid for his own education in other ways. He, in turn, helped hundreds of young teachers; and a large number of prominent men in Penn- sylvania to-day owe more to his friendship and help than the world will ever know. Those whom he helped are constantly passing along the good work. FOUNDERS AND BENEFACTORS OF AMERICAN COLLEGES STATUE OF JOHN HARVARD HARVAI D UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE, MASS. FOUNDERS AND BENEFACTORS OF AMERICAN COLLEGES JOHN HARVARD JOHN HARVARD has the post of honor among American college men. He was not the most learned ; indeed, the student in Harvard Univer- sity to-day knows more and has had better train- ing than John Harvard dreamed of. Men in the United States have given ten thousand times as much money to a college as he did ; yet John Harvard- achieved a distinction that none other has equaled. This is because he was the first of the educational givers of the New World, and because of the mighty work that has grown from his modest beginning. His CAREER. Of the history and personality of John Harvard very little is known. His father was a butcher in London, where he was born in November, 1607. When about twenty years old he was sent to the Puritan college of Emanuel in the University of Cambridge, where he received the degree of A.B. in 1631, and 177 178 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS that of A.M. in 1635. He was soon ordained a dissenting minister, and after marrying, he sailed for New England in 1637. He was made a freeman of the Massachu- setts Bay Colony in November of that year, and was awarded a grant of land in Charles- town, where the Harvard church and the Har- vard school now stand. He was only thirty years old and in feeble health, but his personality and abilities seem to have made him prominent. He took part in public affairs, and preached occa- sionally, until his life was cut short by consump- tion, September 26, 1638, less than fourteen months after he came to New England. His contemporaries spoke of him as "reverend," "a godly gentleman and a lover of learning." THE SCHOOL AT NEWTOWN. Two or three miles from where John Harvard lived, a school was just being started. As soon as the settlers about Boston had built their houses and churches they began to plan for schools, and particularly they wanted a college. The General Court, or legislature, voted on September 8, 1636, to give ^400, or $2,000, toward a college, ^200 to be paid in 1637, and the remainder when the work of building was finished. This was as much as the colony voted for all other expenses that year. Without waiting for the college building to be completed, a school was opened in 1637, with JOHN HARVARD 179 Nathaniel Eaton as master. He had just come to America with a high reputation for learning and piety, and he was at once intrusted with the money for the support of the school, and with the supervision of the buildings. So well satisfied were the authorities with his manage- ment, that in 1639 the General Court voted him five hundred acres of land, provided he would hold the office for life. The schoolboys, on the other hand, held an indignation meeting, and complained of ill- treatment. They declared that the food was not good, and that he looked after his own in- terests more than those of the boys or the col- lege. Six months after he was hired for life, the master was tried on the charges preferred by the boys, found guilty of beating his assistant and of other offenses, and was dismissed in dis- grace. He is never reckoned among the presi- dents of the college which grew out of his school. How it came to bear the name of Harvard remains to be told. HARVARD'S BEQUEST. The " godly gentleman and lover of learning" in Charlestown, who died when only thirty-one years old, left one half his estate and all his library to the new college that was being started. The property amounted to about $4,250, and the library consisted of two hundred and sixty well-chosen volumes from l8o GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS classical and theological writers. This gift was a great help, and it put new activity into the project for a college. It made it possible to open the college at once on the basis of the ancient institutions of England. In recognition of this help, and in gratitude, the General Court ordered, on March 13, 1639, that the college be called Harvard College. The name of the town had been changed ten months before from Newtown to Cambridge, in honor of the English university town. John Harvard's gift was supplemented by fif- teen hundred dollars from another New Eng- lander, and by lesser gifts, so that the college opened in 1640 in good condition, with Henry Dunster as the first president. The college funds were insufficient for its running expenses, and all New England was called upon to help in its support. The Connecticut authorities, in 1644, ordered the elders of every community to secure, by voluntary contribution if possible, "one peck of corn, or twelve pence money, or other commodity," from every family to help poor scholars in the college at Cambridge. This contribution of college corn was kept up for several years. New Haven, in 1644, sent forty bushels of wheat to Harvard College. In Mas- sachusetts they gave what they could best spare, sometimes a cow or sheep, corn or salt, a piece JOHN HARVARD 181 of cloth or silver plate, or some treasured heir- loom of the family. The first president was a profound scholar and master of the ancient languages. Latin and Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, and Chaldee were in- cluded in the course of study. From the first the college was acknowledged to furnish an education " not inferior to that of the distin- guished schools in Europe," and so great was its fame that young men were sent over from England to be educated. Since that time Harvard has grown to be a mighty university, with scientific, dental, medi- cal, theological, and law schools. Its gradu- ates number twenty-three thousand, more by far than can be claimed by any other university in the United States; and in 1899 it had 3,829 students. The library contains more than half a million volumes, and since many of these books are extremely rare, it is more valuable even than its size would indicate. The univer- sity now has more than fifteen million dollars' worth of property and securities. The name that stands for all this wealth of funds, of literature, and of honor is that of a man who gave the college only $4,250 and a small library. Not often have a few books and a little money brought so much glory to a name as these have brought to the name of Harvard. 182 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS ELIHU YALE Yale University is second only to Harvard in its grand record of two thousand five hundred students a year, and a total of nineteen thou- sand graduates. It makes famous, the world over, the name of a man to whom the honor came even more easily than the similar one came to John Harvard. Elihu Yale Eli for short had neither the college education nor the devotion to learning which distinguished the founder of Harvard College. It is to be hoped that his literary taste is not indicated by the lines on his tomb- stone at Wrexham, Wales : " Born in America, in Europe bred, In Africa traveled, in Asia wed," His CAREER. Elihu Yale was born in or near Boston, April 5, 1649. His father moved to New Haven the same year, and two years later went back to England, taking with him the three-year-old boy, who never saw the land of his birth again. At twenty-one Elihu went to India to seek his fortune. He entered the service of the East India Company, prospered, and was promoted, until at thirty-eight years of * age he became governor of one of the East India settlements. ELIHU YALE 1 84 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS He married in Asia, but whether he ever trav- eled in Africa, as the legend on his tombstone says, is unknown. Governor Yale, in 1699, returned to England with a "prodigious estate," and no heir to his fortune. Some years later he began to look for an heir, and, under the impression that he had a relative in Connecticut, he sent to Rev. James Pierpont, of New Haven, for information. Mr. Pierpont had a better heir to suggest than an unknown relative ; and how his words bore fruit even to this day shall be told later. THE CONNECTICUT COLLEGE. As early as 1656 the men of the Connecticut colony were talking of a college at New Haven, but the Har- vard authorities remonstrated, declaring that a second college in New England would jeopard- ize Harvard. The Connecticut people, however, still thought that Harvard was too far away, and too liberal in religious matters. In 1701, the Rev. Mr. Russell, of Branford, a graduate of Harvard, invited to his home ten other Connecticut pastors, nine of whom were graduates of Harvard, to consider the advisa- bility of asking for a charter for a college. On the appointed day each man came, bringing a few of the best books from his own small library, and as he placed them on the table in Mr. Rus- sell's study, said solemnly and reverently: "I ELIHU YALE 185 give these books for the founding of a college in this colony." It must have been an impressive scene. The legislature received the petition for a charter on October gth, but it showed no incli- nation to act. A few second-hand theological books did not seem much of an argument for a college charter. Then Major James Fitch surprised the legis- lature with a proposal to give six hundred and thirty-seven acres of wild land in a remote part of the colony, and to furnish without cost the glass and nails for a college house. The land was of little value, but free glass and nails were a weighty argument, and the legislature on that very day, October 16, 1701, granted the charter. The colony also granted a sum equal to three hundred dollars in good money for the use of the college, and exempted the students from paying taxes and from military service. The college was nominally located at Say- brook, but as there was only one student the first year, he went to Killingworth, nine miles away, to the home of the rector, Rev. Abraham Pierson, who had been chosen to open the col- lege. In September the first commencement was held at the private house of Mr. Lynde, in Saybrook. Strange to say, with only one student in college, five degrees were conferred 186 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS at that commencement, and this lone student did not receive one of them. Four graduates of Harvard were given the degree of A.M., and the same degree was conferred upon a young man who had never been to Harvard or any other college, but had been studying privately. Such a commencement would be im- possible now. The next year more students came, and they were taught by a tutor at Saybrook, while the seniors studied at the rector's house. The col- lege library was kept at Killingworth. After six years Mr. Pierson died, and the new rector, who lived at Milford, several miles distant, took the seniors, never more than two or three in number, to his home. He went to Saybrook only once a year for commencement, and at other times officiated by letter. In 1716 the legislature voted to establish the college at New Haven ; but four students re- mained at Saybrook with one professor, fourteen went to Wethersfield, and were provided with two professors, and thirteen were at New Haven. The president was still at Milford carrying on his duties as pastor of a large church. So great was the excitement over the location that two commencements were held the next year, eight students graduating at New Haven and five at Wethersfield. MARK HOPKINS 187 THE OPPORTUNE GIFT. Sixteen years after the charter was secured for a college in Con- necticut it was still a nameless, homeless waif. At just this time came a letter to Elihu Yale in England, saying, "If what is forming at New Haven might wear the name of Yale College, it would be better than a name of sons and daughters." The suggestion pleased him, and he sent, in 1718, a cargo of presents "for the benefit of the collegiate school at New Haven." They included some rare books, a portrait of George I., and a quantity of East India goods. He valued these at about one thousand dollars, but they were sold at auction in Boston for $2,810. A few years later he gave a little more, making the entire amount something over three thousand dollars. With this opportune help a college building in New Haven was completed, and the question of location was settled. A name was decided upon, and the thousands of graduates of Yale College have since made that name universally honored. MARK HOPKINS Mark Hopkins is by general consent regarded as the typical American college president. James A. Garfield, the second martyr President of the United States, and at one time a pupil of Mark 1 88 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS Hopkins, is reported to have said that a student on one end of a log and Mark Hopkins on the other would make a university anywhere. No other American leader has been so closely identified with a college for sixty-two years as was Mark Hopkins with Williams College a student for four years, professor for twenty-two years, president for thirty-six years. President Hopkins was an accurate scholar, a great thinker, a remarkably able administrator, a noble man. As a writer, as an orator, as a teacher, he was eminently successful. In char- acter and influence he was as nearly ideal as can be expected of a man. President Barnard of Columbia suffers in the total estimate of his force and standing because his life was divided between two different sections of the country, and his talent and influence were scattered in several places and occupations. If his time and thought could have been concentrated on Co- lumbia College for a longer period his influence might have paralleled that of Mark Hopkins. President Hopkins stands matchless in single- ness of purpose and in the length of time he had for maturing his purpose and power. WILLIAMS COLLEGE. In the middle of the eighteenth century, at Fort Massachusetts, near the foot of Hoosac Mountain, lived one Ephraim Williams, a captain in the French and Indian MARK HOPKINS 1 90 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS wars, and now in command of a line of forts west of the Connecticut River. On the reopen- ing of hostilities in 1755, he received a commis- sion as colonel, and was sent on an expedition against Crown Point. When he reached Albany, July 22d, having a presentiment that something might go wrong, he made his will. He left his property for the founding of a school among the settlers about Fort Massachusetts, with whom his military life had been mostly passed. He went into battle on September 8th in command of one thousand white men and two hundred Mohawk Indians, and at the first shot he was killed. His property was allowed to increase in value until 1791, when a school was opened with a good endowment, and two years later it was chartered as a college, taking, like the town, the name of its benefactor. To this college came the young student Mark Hopkins twenty-eight years later. MARK HOPKINS'S BOYHOOD. Mark Hopkins had the best of New England blood in his veins. Since John Hopkins settled at Cambridge, in 1634, the family had produced men of influence and distinction in each generation. Samuel Hopkins in the eighteenth century was one of the great and celebrated preachers of New England. The grandfather for whom Mark was named was a colonel in the Revolutionary MARK HOPKINS 191 War, and the ablest lawyer of his day in west- ern Massachusetts. The grandmother was the daughter of the man who founded the Indian missionary school at Stockbridge, and half-sis- ter to Ephraim Williams, whose money went to establish the college at Williamstown. His mother was a genuine descendant of the Puri- tans, a woman of intelligence and forceful char- acter. President Hopkins came naturally by his ability and character. Mark Hopkins was born at Stockbridge, Feb- ruary 4, 1802. When he was four years old he was sent to the district school. The teacher called the boy to the desk, and taking up the reading-book, asked, " Where can you read, my little fellow ? " "Just where you please, sir," was his prompt reply. This was true ; he could read easily at four years of age, and was from the first at the head of his class. He fitted for college partly at the Stock- bridge academy, where he was the friend and rival of Frederick Barnard. A schoolmate writing of them says : " In all our intellectual contests, debating societies, and spelling classes, the two future college presidents, Dr. Hopkins and Dr. Bar- nard, were always pitted against each other as leaders of the contending forces. Our conten- IQ2 GREAT* AMERICAN EDUCATORS tions were vigorous and earnest, but amiable and good-natured, resulting in a pleasant esprit de corps among the boy students. "The two leaders were congenial spirits; both were born educators, and they were pure and lovable boys. With fine physiques, personally attractive, amiable in temper, genial in inter- course, refined in sentiment, dignified in manner, firm in their convictions of right and duty, and unfaltering in the pursuit of high ideals, they disarmed envy and prejudice and made only friends. Their lives were pure in every way. They indulged in no profane, vulgar, or harsh language ; much less were they guilty of any low or unkind conduct. Tobacco in all its forms they eschewed instinctively. " While keenly appreciating wit and humor, and both relishing and telling good stories, they had no tolerance for any of a coarse or offensive character. They were equally intolerant of jokes that could pain or mortify another. They saw neither humor nor smartness in crushing a comrade's hat over his eyes, or throwing his cap into a puddle, or pulling his hair ' on the sly,' or pinning absurd labels on his back. If he was weak in the attic, they tried to help and en- courage him ; if he was intrusive, conceited, or overbearing, they would play the part of Soc- rates with him, and lead him into some intellec- MARK HOPKINS 193 tual quagmire from which he could escape only by admitting that he did not know everything." AT COLLEGE. After teaching school for a short time, Mark Hopkins entered Williams Col- lege as a sophomore, in 1821, at the age of nineteen. A classmate says that "he came into the class with the reputation of being a bright scholar, and continued to maintain that repu- tation. He seemed as remarkable for his mod- esty and unassuming manners as for his excel- lence in scholarship. He was studious in his habits and scrupulous in the discharge of his duties, kind and obliging, and always ready to bestow favors. This he often did by way of aiding the inefficient of his class in acquiring their lessons, and in writing the essays required gf them as class exercises. " He was a deep thinker, and acknowledged to be the best literary writer in his class. He never indulged in sports or frolics so common among college students, but in whatever he did or said he always observed the proprieties of life. In matters of serious import he was con- siderate, and in his religious observances rever- ent and sincere. Yet he appreciated humor and witticism, and enjoyed a hearty laugh. He was quick in his perceptions, logical in his conclu- sions, and could make a fine point and see a fine point without spectacles. 194 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS " In the recitation-room he often put questions arising out of our lessons to the learned pro- fessor which perplexed him, and then would answer the questions himself with becoming deference. In his course of reading while in college he manifested little or no relish for novels, but seemed to prefer standard authors in literature and science. He soon evinced a de- cided love for the study of metaphysics, and read all the books on that subject which he could find in the college library, and took great pleasure in discussing the different theories advanced by different authors." He graduated in 1825 as the valedictorian of his class, and his oration was admired for its beauty of language and the elevation of its thought. FURTHER STUDY. After graduation, Mark Hopkins remained at the college as tutor for two years. Then for three years he studied medicine, and received the M.D. degree. Part of this time he was also teaching to help pay his expenses. He made his plans to settle in New York as a physician, with every qualification for success and usefulness, but before he entered upon this profession he was recalled to Williams as professor of moral philosophy. He was then twenty-eight years old. Although he abandoned the practice of medi- MARK HOPKINS 195 cine, his knowledge of that subject was of great service to him through life. He used this knowledge to good purpose in his moral phi- losophy. During the next three years at college he gave considerable attention to theology. In 1833 he was licensed to preach, and for more than fifty years he delivered mighty ser- mons. As A TEACHER. That Mark Hopkins was a great teacher is testified by a multitude of stu- dents besides President Garfield. We will let one of these students speak for the impression he made: " No opinion of his army of pupils, oral or written, however eulogistic, can adequately por- tray the actual man, the living instructor, in his recitation-room. So apt in illustration, so fertile in collateral resource, so ready on occasion with his spice of humor, so tactful in the adaptation of his questions to the caliber of his respondent, so original and independent in his ideas of the topic under discussion, so skillful in drawing out the thoughts and queries of his pupils, he woke interest in the sluggish and provoked at- tention in the thoughtless and indifferent. Per- haps all his rare abilities in this regard may be summed up in the expression he made men think." 196 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS He showed great wisdom and tact in his deal- ings with the students, ruling them by reason, kindness, and love. His attitude was that of affection rather than of authority, and respect for his lovable qualities and his mental ability secured almost universal obedience. "Indeed, perhaps he never appeared at less advantage than in the management of a fractious, incor- rigible pupil, utterly unapproachable by moral suasion. Punishment was truly with him 'a strange work,' and seemed to cost the inflicter more than the recipient. But rare was the in- stance when his quiet influence and paternal counsel proved unavailing." As PRESIDENT. For fifty-eight years Mark Hopkins was so closely allied with Williams College as a directing force that the college must always be very largely what he made it. No other college has been more fully the em- bodiment of the highest New England ideal; and this is because Mark Hopkins had his hand upon it for more than half a century and be- cause his association with it began when the college was less than thirty years old. In the days when Williams College was founded there was no theological seminary, no law school, and but one medical school in the United States. The colleges trained men directly for the ministry and for law, except so MARK HOPKINS 197 far as they studied in the offices of eminent lawyers. In those days religious families more generally sent their sons to college, and these institutions were primarily religious. No man ever had a clearer ideal as to college life and work than Mark Hopkins. He stood for liberal rather than technical education, for the enlargement and expansion of the entire man, for the harmonious use of all his powers. He believed that education should give a man "concentration, general power, ability to enjoy society and the thoughts of God, manliness and gentlemanliness." He always regarded his students as persons and not as people. He was interested in each individual, and had a sense of responsibility for each; and he inspired his professors with the same feeling. The students in return loved and revered him with a devotion that few men can win and hold. No man ever more genuinely loved young men. He would never willingly endanger a boy's moral life for the purpose of enhancing the intellectual. He preferred that a young man should be good rather than great. To him a college must be first safe, then stimulating. He worked out his plan of administration, his scheme of philosophy, his theories of the humanities with his thought always on the best 1 98 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS good, rather than on the greatest success of the institution. He resigned the presidency in .1872, but he kept up his teaching to the very end. After he passed his eightieth birthday the students watched apprehensively lest he should give up teaching before they reached the senior year and could enter his classes. It would have been easy to say that teaching was too great a tax on his strength, that he needed time for reading and writing. But he regarded his life as con- secrated to the college; he knew that personal influence and instruction counted more for good, if not for fame, than any books he might write. He might have been recognized in England, Germany, and France as a great thinker and an illustrious writer, but he chose to be remembered by his pupils; and the many graduates of the college have been a stronger force for good in the world for having known Mark Hopkins. He lived his active life until he was eighty- five years old, and then, on June 17, 1887, with the quiet dawn came death. CONNECTION WITH MISSIONS. Every great man, however varied his labors, stands ulti- mately for some one thing. President Barnard stood for applied scholarship, President Finney for devout evangelistic effort, and President Hopkins for missionary force and wisdom. MARK HOPKINS 199 Modern missionary zeal was born at Williams College. The famous American Board of Com- missioners for Foreign Missions was the result of a prayer meeting held by a few students be- side a haystack at Williams College. President Hopkins was the grand presiding genius of that organization from 1857, when he was chosen president, to the time of his death. It has been given to no other man to serve the cause of mis- sions so wisely and so well as did Mark Hopkins. LECTURER AND AUTHOR. The circumstance that started Mark Hopkins as a lecturer is a significant one. For his classes in anatomy and physiology he wanted an illustrating physical manikin, such as had just been imported from France for a medical college. The price was several hundred dollars, and the college could not afford it. His salary was only eleven hun- dred dollars, but he purchased the apparatus and gave his note for six hundred dollars in payment. Then he set out through the neigh- boring towns to give lectures, with the manikin as the drawing card, in hopes it would help pay for itself. The lectures were successful so far as interesting the audience was concerned ; but the opportunities were few,, and the pay was small. In 1842 the board of trustees paid the balance on the note, but did not offer to make up what he had paid already. 200 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS Later in life he had all the invitations to lec- ture that he desired, and he was well paid for whatever he did. He was offered many honor- able and lucrative positions, but he uniformly refused to leave or neglect Williams Col- lege. He wrote eighty-two books, pamphlets, and articles of very considerable merit, but the two which were most widely used and most influen- tial were the " Outline Study of Man " and " The Law of Love and Love as a Law." These are great works, which reveal the vigor of his thought and the force of his character. FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. Columbia is one of the largest of American universities, having more than three hundred professors and instruc- tors, more than two thousand students, and more than seventeen thousand graduates. Its growth and development are due in no small measure to the leadership of Dr. Frederick A. P. Bar- nard, its tenth president. Columbia, had as interesting a beginning as any of the colleges. When first started in New York city, in 1754, it was styled King's College, and it retained that name until after the war of the Revolution. In 1784 its title was changed FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD 202 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS to Columbia College in order to adapt it to the new order of things. Its origin, in view of the. present condemna- tion of lotteries, seems peculiar. In 1746 an act was passed by the colonial assembly of New York which provided for the raising of money by public lotteries " for the encouraging of learn- ing and towards the founding of a college" within the colony. The sum to be raised was fixed at $11,250, but by November, 1751, the managers of the enterprise had realized through a series of lotteries $17,215. The Rev. Dr. Samuel Johnson, one of the first tutors at Yale in the days before that institution had a name or a home, was secured as president of the pro- posed college, and arrangements were made for its early opening. Although the governors of the college did not formally take their oath of office until May, 1755, eight students had presented themselves in July of the previous year, and these, with two other students, had been under the instruc- tion of President Johnson. At the first com- mencement of King's College, held June 21, 1758, five students received the degree of A.B. This degree was also conferred on three men who had been educated elsewhere, while twelve men received the degree of A.M. Of the five original members of the first class FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD 203 who did not graduate the college record says : "One in his third year went to Philadelphia, one about the middle of the second year went into the army, a third after three years went to merchandise, a fourth after two years went to privateering, and a fifth after three years went to nothing." These appear to be rather inter- esting examples of the outcome of college edu- cation. During the troubled period which followed the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, people had little time or thought to devote to colleges, and for eleven years King's College was inac- tive. When it resumed its work in November, 1787, it bore the name of Columbia. Thirty- nine students were enrolled, and ten of them had rooms in the college. With an income of $6,650 the mangers were able to secure the services of a president, three professors, and a medical faculty of three. Five years later the legis- lature gave the college about $39,500, and pro- vided for an annual appropriation of $3,750 for five years. With this liberal aid from the state the college was well established and started on a career of progress. BOYHOOD OF BARNARD. Frederick Barnard was born at Sheffield, Mass., May 5, 1809. It was the year in which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Edgar Allan Poe, and Abraham Lincoln were 204 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS born in America, and in England Charles Dar- win, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alfred Tenny- son, and William E. Gladstone. It was, indeed, a notable year for the birth of great men and women. The village of Sheffield, where Barnard's boy- hood was passed, is in a beautiful region which in those days was almost completely isolated from the rest of the world. "Only one slight link," Dr. Barnard wrote, "attached us to outside humanity the mail-wagon, called for euphony's sake the stage, connecting Albany on the west with Hartford on the east, which passed daily through the village. In my later boyhood, when this ramshackle old vehicle was replaced by a dashing yellow-painted, four-horse post-coach, a galvanic thrill seemed to run through the whole sluggish community, and it was felt with pride that we were rising in the world." Almost as soon as he was able to walk young Frederick was sent to the village school with his sister. That first morning at school was a won- derful event to the little boy. He was uncere- moniously set down among the younger pupils, who, "with small books in their hands, were rocking themselves to and fro and rapidly mov- ing their lips. I was told that they were ' study- ing their lessons,' and I wondered what that could be." FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD 205 He says further : " I could read before I went to school. How it happened I did not know. I supposed it was natural to do so. Probably I had acquired that accomplishment from the same source from which I derived almost everything else in me that is good from my mother's care- ful training. I read and spelled as the others did ; it was a very wearying and meaningless business, and I found school life very trying." The one thing that he remembered having learned at this district school was the difference between his right hand and his left. Some of the pleasantest hours of his boy- hood were spent at the workshop of a friendly carpenter, and in using tools at home. He made kites, sleds, barrows, windmills, water-mills, and trip-hammers for his own play before he was ten years old. He also made the desk at which he studied in his father's office. A little later he became acquainted with some printers, and was soon intensely interested in learning to set type. For months he devoted to this occupation all his hours out of school ; and by the time he was twelve years old he had become familiar with all branches of the art. Such was his skill, he says, that if at any time in his life he had been obliged to depend upon the labor of his hands, he could easily have earned a living as a practical printer. 206 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS These mechanical occupations of his boyhood aided him in acquiring habits of concentration and persevering industry, and afforded valuable mental discipline, which contributed to his suc- cess all through life. EARLY EDUCATION. Dr. Barnard in later life had no very pleasant memories of his early schools. The trouble seems to have been chiefly with the methods of instruction which were then in vogue. He says : " If by education is meant the result of influ- ences exerted by other minds acting on and giving shape to my own, I should find it difficult to point out when, where, and to what extent such influences have produced such an effect on me. Not that I had not teachers enough; I had probably more than my share ; but their per- sonal relations to me, as I recall them, seem to have consisted chiefly in 'setting' me lessons, in listening to my ' recitations,' which was a verbal repetition of the text, correcting my blunders by giving me the right word when I used the wrong one, and telling me I 'had better mind' when I was restless or disorderly." His first lessons in geography, at four years of age, were interesting because the teacher, a graduate of Williams College, used objects for illustration. This was an unusual thing in 1813. This teacher had a globe of his own making, a FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD 207 wooden ball eight inches in diameter, with the equator, tropics, and polar circles traced on it. Frederick Barnard began to study Latin at six, and he was made to learn by heart the whole grammar rules and exceptions, etymology, syn- tax, and prosody word for word, without under- standing a syllable of it. Naturally he hated Latin, but when he read Virgil at ten years of age, he began to enjoy it. He read a transla- tion of the yEneid, and found the story so fasci- nating that he was glad to read it in the original. An important feature of his early education was his miscellaneous reading at home. His father put Shakespeare's comedies into his hands when he was only six years old. He read every- thing he could get ; and since he had access to the writings of Cowper, Burns, Goldsmith, Addi- son, Burke, and Shakespeare, his reading con- tributed largely to his intellectual development. Books of voyages and travel were his special joy- When nine years old he went to live with his grandfather at Saratoga Springs, where he attended the academy for three years. Soon afterward he went to the academy at Stock- bridge, Mass., to prepare for Yale. There he became the classmate of Mark Hopkins, and the two spent many a happy hour together. AT COLLEGE. Young Barnard entered Yale 208 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS College at fifteen. Although the youngest member of a strong class, he took high rank from the first. Mathematics and the exact sciences interested him most, and after two years he was recognized as the leader of the whole college in these studies. The professors liked him for his diligence, and at the same time he was popular with the students. According to the usages at Yale in those days a student scarcely came into mental con- tact with a professor before his senior year. Every class at entrance was broken up into divisions of about forty students each, and the tutor assigned to each division remained its sole instructor in all branches of study whatsoever to the end of the junior year. The practice in entrance examinations was similar. Applicants for admission were examined orally, in squads of about ten, and one officer put the questions in all subjects. Barnard, fortunately, had for tutor a man of marked ability. An important part of his training came from the college literary society, of which he was an active member. They had enthusiastic debates, which, he says, for interest and brilliancy were equal to any he heard later in assemblies of much superior dignity. Here he received his best practice in speaking and writing. In September, 1828, at nineteen years of age, FREDERICK A. P. BARNARD 209 he received his A.B. degree, and five days after the commencement he began teaching. TEACHING. Frederick Barnard's first posi- tion as teacher was in the Hartford Grammar School, where he prepa-red boys for Yale. He was sincerely interested in his pupils, won their good-will by joining heartily in their sports, and impressed them with a sense of his superiority as a teacher. Two years later he went back to Yale as a tutor for the freshman class, and his first act was to change the old custom of one instructor for all subjects. He arranged that each tutor should teach the subject in which he excelled, so that the class had the advantage of expert instruction in several studies. He soon resigned his tutorship in order to teach in a school for the deaf and dumb at Hartford, and later in a similar institution at New York. From this work he went to the University of Alabama, where he remained as professor for sixteen years. These were happy, useful years, and he became distinguished as an educator, and as one of the most public-spirited men of the. South. In 1854 he became connected with the Uni- versity of Mississippi, where he remained for seven years, part of the time as president. He was always outspoken in defense of the Union, 210 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS and at the outbreak of the Civil War he re- signed his position and with difficulty returned to the North. PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIA. In 1864, at the age of fifty-five, Dr. Frederick Barnard was elected president of Columbia College, and in that capacity he continued to labor for a quarter of a century. He found it an old-fashioned col- lege, and he left it transformed into one of the greatest of modern universities. Under his directing hand new and imposing buildings were erected, and the college was fully equipped for scholarly work in every department. He gave to the institution new and advanced ideals, and broadened its work in every way. He championed the elective system of study, and after 1880 gradually extended that system from class to class. He steadily urged that the college be thrown open freely to women, and his efforts resulted in the establishment of a college for women, distinct from but closely connected with Colum- bia. He did not live to see its opening, but in grateful memory of him and his work it is called Barnard College. In addition to his college work, Dr. Barnard did much other important service. He was active in the world of science. He was president of the American Metrological Society and of CHARLES G. FINNEY 21 1 two other scientific bodies, and served as honor- ary corresponding member of many foreign associations. He was commissioner for the United States at the Paris Exposition of 1867, and again at that of 1878. He was editor-in- chief of "Johnson's New Encyclopedia," and wrote a number of important books and papers. His life of usefulness and leadership in the cause of education came to an end after eighty years, on April 27, i! CHARLES G. FINNEY THE WESTERN COLLEGES. Though New England has the poetry of history as regards American colleges, the West has a more marvel- ous college record. To Harvard belongs the devotion of nearly twenty-five thousand alumni and the loyalty of much of the wealth of New England. She has been more than two hun- dred and fifty years in gathering her library and equipping her departments and laboratories. Within less than ten years the University of Chicago has sprung into existence, and now boasts of a faculty of two hundred members, twenty-five hundred students, a library of three hundred and fifty thousand volumes, and a plant, endowment, and income that make even 212 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS Harvard wonder at the magnitude of this fa- vored child of the West. The Western colleges have grown around two ideals, denominational devotion and free state tuition. The West has a vast array of church colleges, and nearly every state in that part of the country has a great university, built and supported by public taxation, and free to its young people. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and other great Eastern universities hold their leadership without church enthusiasm, public appropriation, or large gifts. They have re- ceived no such munificent bequests as those with which Rockefeller or Leland Stanford have en- dowed two of the great Western institutions, nor do they rest on state pride, as is the case of the universities of Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, California, and other Western states. Of the four hundred and seventy-two col- leges and universities in the United States, only seventy-eight are in the New England and middle states, but the twelve north central states contain one hundred and ninety-four. One sixth of the whole number are in the New England and middle group, and nearly one half in the north central division. Two hundred and eighty- one of the colleges are denominational. OBERLIN COLLEGE. Oberlin is one of the CHARLES G. FINNEY 214 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS best examples of a Western religious college. Though not classed as a denominational insti- tution, it has a distinctively religious character, and to its second president, Charles G. Finney, is largely due its well-deserved prosperity and the intensity of its influence. The college owes its beginning to the reli- gious zeal and desire for economy in education of two home missionaries. The funds for the lands and the first buildings came from gifts of one hundred and fifty dollars. Each donor of this sum was entitled perpetually to the privileges of the school for one pupil each year. The offer which made the opening of the in- stitution possible came from Philo P. Stuart, in 1833. Mr. Stuart had been a missionary among the Indians in Mississippi, and was deeply in- terested in the project of a school where needy students could, by their own exertions, defray all their expenses. He and his wife agreed to take charge of a boarding-hall for four years without remuneration. They asked only seventy- five cents a week for board from those who would forego the luxury of meat, and from those who wanted meat twice a day they re- quired only a dollar. It was estimated that the entire expense of a student on vegetable diet was about forty-eight dollars a year. Mr. Stuart's frugality and plain diet did not long CHARLES G. FINNEY 215 continue popular, but his devotion to the col- lege is commemorated in "Stuart Hall," built in 1880, where, in accordance with his principles of economy, the students are still boarded at very low prices. Oberlin was the first college in the world to admit women to all its privileges on the same terms with men. The first class, which assem- bled December 3, 1833, numbered forty-four students, twenty-nine young men and fifteen young women. Half of the entire number were from the East. From the first the college was extremely radical on the temperance question. But the point in which it showed its pioneer reform spirit most prominently was in the admission of colored students to its classes. In the very year that the American Anti-Slavery Society was formed, twenty-eight years before the emanci- pation proclamation, Oberlin College received colored students into the classes with white men and women. The college became a center of the anti-slavery movement, and a depot of the "underground railroad." Much opposition and hardship were suffered on account of these things, but the institution succeeded in weather- ing the storms. The radical character of Oberlin was deter- mined in 1835, when it was hardly two years 2l6 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS old. In the theological seminary at Cincinnati the trustees forbade any discussion of the slavery question by professors and students. This ac- tion caused a crisis. The Rev. Asa Mahan, the leading minister in Cincinnati, resigned from the board of trustees, and agreed to accept a call to the presidency of Oberlin, provided "stu- dents shall be received irrespective of color." The Oberlin trustees were astonished at the receipt of this proposition. The antislavery people were in earnest, however, and promised eight new professors and many students from the theological school if colored students should be admitted to the college. Still the trustees hesitated. Then they were promised that Charles G. Finney, pastor of the Broadway Tabernacle Church in New York city, would serve as a professor in the college, and they accordingly yielded. Thus, in 1835, Oberlin led the country in the advocacy of total abstinence, of woman's equal- ity with man, and of freedom for the negro ; and Charles G. Finney then began his great career as a college leader. For thirty-one years he was at Oberlin as professor and president. MR. FINNEY'S BOYHOOD. Charles G. Finney was born at Warren, Conn., August 29, 1792. When he was two years old his father moved to Oneida County, New York, which was then CHARLES G. FINNEY 2i; mostly a wilderness. There was no church or Sunday School, and scarcely a Bible in the com- munity. Occasionally some wandering, ignorant preacher came into the neighborhood, but his sermons did no appreciable good, and merely stirred the people up to ridicule his crudeness. Young Finney attended the summer and win- ter district school until he was seventeen. Then he taught a winter school for three years. It had been his intention to enter Yale College, but a prominent teacher whom he met persuaded him that he could learn more in the same time by private study. As a result he did not go to college, and instead of studying privately, he taught in New Jersey for two years. As A LAWYER. At the age of twenty-six, Mr. Finney began to study law in the office of a prominent attorney in New York state. In the course of his studies he found several references to the Bible, especially to the laws of Moses. As there was no Bible in the office, he bought one, the first he had ever owned, and the first he had ever read. For a while he only opened it when some reference to it occurred in his law books, but he soon found himself reading more than the designated verses. Then he became greatly interested, and before he fully realized whither he was drifting, he joined the church. At once 2l8 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS he determined to preach. Few persons knew of his sudden purpose. The first intimation of it came when a deacon of the church stepped into his office and said : ' You recollect that my case is to be tried at ten o'clock this morning. I suppose you are ready?" "Deacon," said Finney, "I have a retainer from the Lord to plead His cause, and I cannot plead yours. You must get some one else." The deacon dropped his eyes, and without 'saying a word walked out. He went directly to the other party to the suit, and settled it out of court. As A PREACHER. Mr. Finney's answer to the deacon settled his purpose at once. Leaving the office, he dropped into a shoemaker's shop near by, where a young fellow was arguing against the Bible. With earnest, convincing words, Mr. Finney quickly demolished the un- believer's arguments. Then he went from store to store, from shop to shop, and even from house to house, simply telling people how happy he was in the prospect of preaching. This was the beginning of a great religious revival. Mr. Finney preached in several com- munities, and always with great effect. This good work spread until he had large meetings in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. Later CHARLES G. FINNEY 219 in life he went to England twice, and his revi- val work in London was unsurpassed. When he was about forty years of age, he established the Broadway Tabernacle Church in New York city, and became its pastor. His whole being was absorbed in his great work, and he was loath to leave his church when the call came in 1835 to go to Oberlin College as professor of theology. This change, however, did not end his preaching, for after 1837 he was pastor of the Congregational church in the vil- lage of Oberlin. A COLLEGE LEADER. For fifteen years Mr. Finney labored at Oberlin as a professor with intense energy and zeal; and _in 1851 he was elected president. The college was in great financial straits, and had been nearly ruined by the panic of 1837. It survived only through the devotion of its antislavery friends and the pro- fessors, who stood by the college even when their salaries were far too small for the neces- saries of life. Mr. Finney sold everything he possessed that was salable, and even then was in great destitution. Thanksgiving Day in 1837 was anything but a time of rejoicing from a tem- poral standpoint, yet he went to church that morning with his usual cheerfulness. On his return he found that the mail had brought a 220 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS check for two hundred dollars from a well- wisher in Providence, Rhode Island. This per- son continued to send him six hundred dollars annually for several years. To Mr. Finney, as we have said, Oberlin College is largely indebted for its success, repu- tation, and influence. He went there before it was two years old, and stayed with it in interest and force for forty years. But for his coming, the college would not have committed itself to the antislavery issue. Few men could have carried a college through such stormy trials as those which assailed Oberlin from 183710 1866. No institution sixty years ago could take its stand in favor of extreme temperance legisla- tion, of the equal rights of woman, and of active opposition to slavery without provoking bitter hostility and widespread opposition. The twenty years before the crisis of 1860, as well as the years of the Civil War, were long, desperate, and critical. That the college came through them safely and triumphantly was chiefly due to Charles G. Finney. Oberlin has now an enrollment of more than thirteen hundred students, and it stands, as it has always done, for as high scholarship, char- acter, and force as any college in the West. More than a thousand colored students have at- tended the college, and an army of teachers has CHARLES G. FINNEY 221 been sent out since the war to labor in the South for the freedmen. Oberlin's missionaries are scattered throughout the world carrying on the work of education in the spirit in which the college was founded. Mr. Finney worked on at Oberlin until August 1 6, 1875, when he died at the age of eighty-three. No American educator was ever more respected, and few have had so great an influence for good upon the country and the world. HISTORICAL SKETCH OF AMERICAN EDUCATION A TYPICAL WESTERN SCHOOLHOUSE 1850 A WESTERN HIGH- SCHOOL BUILDING 1900 A HALF-CENTURY OF PROGRESS AMERICAN EDUCATION HISTORICAL SKETCH The American public school is one of the grandest institutions in the world. Without it, America would not be what she is, and could not be the mighty power she is destined to become. The school system as it is to-day so universal, so elastic, so enriched as to be the wonder of the world has come to be what it is within seventy years, and largely within thirty years. In 1830 Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New York were the only states in the Union that had established a free-school system. In the seventy years that have followed, all the original states and all the new states that have come into the Union have organized free-school systems, until from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Canada to Mexico, the public school is a mighty force in American life. In the lives of great American educators we have seen by what efforts this growth was attained, but the results accomplished can best be appreciated by trac- 225 226 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS ing back our educational system to its be- ginnings. The common schools of the United States are now educating more than 15,000,000 pupils. The common schools include both the high schools and all lower grades that are free and public. These 15,000,000 young people are more than 20 per cent of the entire population. The schools give on the average more than seven months' schooling each year, and more than 400,000 teachers are employed in them. The property of the common schools is valued at nearly $500,000,000. More than $i 20,000,000 is paid each year in the United States for salaries of teachers and superintendents of the common schools. Spain has a population but little greater than the number of children in our common schools. The entire population of European Turkey is equal to half the number of school children in the United States. These children outnumber the entire population of Mexico and of Portugal; they are three times as many as the population of Sweden, and seven times that of Denmark or of Norway. The pupils in our common schools would make, according to the census of 1890, ten cities as large as New York, fifteen as large as Chicago or Philadelphia, or thirty as large as Boston. AMERICAN EDUCATION 227 They would make three cities with the popula- tion of London. The common school teachers alone would make a city as large as Boston was at that census. 1870-1900 The schools of to-day are vastly better than they were thirty years ago, or than they ever were before that time. The people who talk about how much better the schools used to be have forgotten a great deal, and imagine more about the common schools of thirty years ago than they know about the schools of to-day. Any one who has watched children in school during the last twenty years or more can see that the child to-day has learned more in school and has learned it better than a child of the same age learned ten years ago. This has been true all through this period. There has been a steady improvement in the variety of subjects studied, in the interest of the child in his school work, in the omission of non-essentials, and in the power developed through the teaching. Since 1870 the elementary school courses have been greatly enriched. Manual training, in the form of sloyd for boys and cooking and sewing for girls, has been introduced. Kinder- gartens have come to be generally adopted. Education has been made compulsory in many 228 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS states. Text-books are furnished free in Maine, NewHampshire,Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Idaho. Evening schools, vaca- tion schools, and free lectures have been provided. Adjustable school furniture has been invented and put in use, scientific ways of heating and ventilating schoolhouses have been discovered, and school sanitation has become a science. Since 1870 small rural schools have begun to be abolished, and children in out-of-the-way parts of the town are now transported to a first- class central school. Elective courses have been introduced into all the leading universities in the last thirty years. Women have been admitted to all the prominent colleges and universities. Profes- sional training has for the first time been pro- vided for teachers above the elementary grades. Teachers' colleges have been established, and the leading universities have departments of education. More than twenty of these elements of edu- cational progress will for all time be attributed to this last third of the nineteenth century. AMERICAN EDUCATION 22Q 1840-1870 The previous thirty years were much more productive of progressive educational ideas than any other period of equal length. From 1840 to 1870 school supervision was introduced and became almost universal in cities. It was the time of great advancement in making text- books, and in this regard it was an epoch- making period. It was the time of introducing music, drawing, and physical culture in the com- mon schools. Schoolhouse architecture was improved and single desks were introduced. Women's colleges came in that period, and state universities got their great start. Techni- cal institutions grew up in those years. The National Educational Association and the United States Bureau of Education were organized. The South began its career of free public schools for all children without regard to color. Before 1840 there was not a normal school in America, nor was there a state department of education except in Massachusetts, and that one was only three years old. In 1870 there were normal schools in all the Northern states, and every state in the Union had its department of education. The reforms, though not so numerous as in the thirty years that followed, were many of them of 230 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS the utmost importance, and led to the wonderful development of these later years. The great leaders of American education, Horace Mann, Mary Lyon, David P. Page, Henry Barnard, Wickersham, Philbrick, Sheldon, and Bateman, all did their important work in this period. 1810-1840 In 1810 there was no general provision for the education of girls. At the close of this period of thirty years, girls were welcome to the summer term in rural schools, to city pri- mary and grammar schools all the year round, and there were private schools and seminaries for girls in New York and New England. Grammar and geography were now recog- nized as a worthy part of the common-school course. Geography was first required for en- trance to Harvard College in 1816, and was required in the public schools of Massachusetts in 1827. The teachers' associations and insti- tutes are due to the leaders of this period; and the first state department of education was established between the dates above given. 1780-1810 The thirty years following the Revolutionary War were important ones for education. In 1 780 Massachusetts and New Hampshire were the AMERICAN EDUCATION 231 only states with free common schools. Massa- chusetts was almost exhausted by the effort of more than a hundred years to enforce her famous law of 1647, which required every town to have a public school. In 1789 a new plan was formed, by which towns were allowed to divide them- selves into school districts, each to maintain a school of its own. In 1800 these districts were given power to raise money by taxation for buildings and for the support of schools. This established the machinery of the common- school system as it has been generally known for a century. The law of 1789 required every town of fifty families to support for six months annually a school taught by a master. There were more than thirty ways of raising money for these dis- trict schools. A town of 200 families was re- quired to support a grammar-school master, who must teach reading, writing, the English lan- guage, spelling, arithmetic, and decent behavior. He must be a graduate of some college or uni- versity, or he must produce a certificate of qualification from a learned minister of the town or neighborhood. He must also have a certificate from the select-men of the town stat- ing that he was a man of good moral character. Outside of New England there was no school system at the beginning of the century. New 232 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS York dates the successful .inauguration of her school system from 1812. As early as 1787 Governor George Clinton urged upon the people the necessity of educating the youth, and every year the governor or some members of the state assembly championed the cause of education. A movement begun in 1795 proved unsuccessful, and not until 1812 did educational matters receive the .attention necessary for establishing free public schools. Since then a magnificent school system has been developed. The unsettled territory of the West came into the possession of the young nation during this period, and the first orders for its govern- ment contained provisions for schools. In 1785, on May 2Oth, Congress reserved for school pqr- poses one square mile, or 640 acres, in every township of thirty-six square miles in the region northwest of the Ohio. The famous "ordinance of 1787," passed by Congress on July 13th of that year, provided that, " religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged in this new territory." It is remarkable that this should have been voted by the states when eleven of the thirteen had no public-school system. If this provision had not been made, if the new West had been AMERICAN EDUCATION 233 left in its rapid growth to struggle with the school problem as the East had done in its slow growth, the Union would have been stunted be- fore it was fairly started. 1750-1780 During this period of thirty years the typical New England academy originated. The Revo- lutionary War, with all that led up to it from 1763 to 1775, and the lethargy which followed it, were not conducive to educational activity. Nevertheless numerous academies were organ- ized, and these served a most important educa- tional purpose for a century and more. The first efforts to provide academic privi- leges for American youth, outside of col- lege halls, resulted in the Dummer Academy, established in 1763 by Governor William Dum- mer at Byfield, Massachusetts. One of the first pupils in this academy was Samuel Phillips of Andover, who was afterwards instrumental in establishing Phillips Andover and Phillips Exeter academies. Both of these institutions date from 1778, and are still in existence. The Leicester Academy was established in 1784, and others followed at various places in New England. At one time there were eighty-eight incorporated academies in Massachusetts. These academies were an important factor 234 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS in American education. In them most of the great statesmen were educated, and they gave a higher tone to general education than had pre- viously been possible. 1700-1750 Prior to 1750 education received but a slight amount of public attention. Massachusetts and New Hampshire were the only places in the world having free public schools. The free-school idea in Massachusetts was fighting for its life. There was little enthusiasm for learning. A law had to be passed putting a fine of ;io on every town that failed to pro- vide a schoolmaster. This fine was afterwards increased to 20, because "the observance of the school law was shamefully neglected by divers towns." Many towns tried to escape the penalty by having the minister teach the children with little or no extra pay. This led to a law declaring that no minister could be a school- master within the intent of the law. Scarcely a session of the general court passed at this time without a fine being imposed on some town for having no school. One town put in the plea of poverty, another claimed that it was unable to find any one but the minister who could teach. Some towns persistently refused to have a school, and paid the fine each year because this AMERICAN EDUCATION 235 was cheaper. The law increased the penalty every few years in the effort to make it so great that the towns would maintain schools rather than pay the fines. Though there is much in the educational his- tory of these fifty years that Massachusetts must regret, it is a cause for genuine pride that, under the circumstances, she made the fight at all. It was the only place where an attempt was made to force communities to educate children. If a few towns openly rebelled, the towns as a whole not only did not rebel, but punished those that refused to maintain schools. If some towns at- tempted to evade the law by allowing the min- ister to teach, the towns as a whole fined them for it. With all its weaknesses this half century re- veals more heroic devotion to the educational idea than any other period in our history. There was no perceptible advance and some retrogres- sion, but the people held on. They were strug- gling to keep from sinking, and as the man who clings to a floating spar in a wreck is more of a hero than he who raises the sail in a fair breeze, so Massachusetts deserves praise and honor for her conduct in the hour of her greatest gloom. It is important to know something of the diffi- culties in t;he way of education in this period. Before 1700 there was no scattered population 236 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS in Massachusetts. The law prohibited the peo- ple from living at any great distance from the town center. Dedham had a law specifying that no one could build more than two miles from the meeting-house, and other towns had similar requirements. This concentration of the popu- lation made it comparatively easy to have one school for the town. But the people now thought there was to be no more danger from the Indians, and all over the state they moved from the villages out into the country. Between 1700 and 1760, 123 new towns were incorporated in Massachusetts, and in most of them the population was widely scat- tered. As a rule the less thrifty families left the villages for the farms. The mothers were not able to teach their children even to read. More than sixty per cent of the women whose names appear in the documents of those years could not sign their names, but were content to make their mark. The first settlers in these new towns were poor, and could see no reason why their children should be educated in a school. It is small wonder that they fought against the school law. The best that could be done in a town that had a school was to move it around. In Scituate in 1704 it was voted that the school be kept one third of the time at each end of the town, and AMERICAN EDUCATION 237 one third in the middle. In Sutton in 1730 the school was moved all over the town, staying a month in each place. Few of the new towns had schoolhouses, and the schools were usually kept in private houses. One result of the migratory school without a schoolhouse was the employment of teachers of an inferior quality. Thisbecame so noticeable that the general court forbade that any man who was not conspicuously good be employed as teacher. He must be formally endorsed by the minister of the town; and when it was found that some ministers indorsed unworthy men, the school- master was required to have the endorsement of the ministers of adjoining towns as well. It was soon evident that good men who had taught in village schoolhouses would not go into the country and teach from place to place in the homes. Consequently women were employed as teachers. The old town records contain many items regarding schooldames. In 1694 Woburn paid Widow Walker ten shillings for schooling small children. The town of Mendon voted in 1732 to choose schooldames to teach in the outskirts of the town. Westford in 1764 hired a school- dame to keep school six months in six parts of the town. In 1721 the wife of the smith was the only teacher of young children. She taught 238 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS twenty-two weeks in the warm season at four- pence a week. At the same time she was making shirts for the Indians at eightpence apiece and breeches at a shilling and sixpence a pair, and caring for her own children. Teaching was not so profitable as making shirts and breeches. It certainly was not regarded as an important and dignified calling in those days. 1619-1700 The English of Virginia, the Dutch of New York, the Swedes of Delaware, and the Quakers of Pennsylvania, all came to America with great educational ideas and .ideals. There are few more beautiful utterances upon the need of schools, or more praiseworthy acts, than those of the promoters of these settlements. On the other hand, the Pilgrims came to Plymouth and the Puritans to Boston apparently with no edu- cational sentiment. THE MIDDLE COLONIES In 1619, a year before the Pilgrims landed, and eleven years before the Puritans came to Boston, the Virginia Company made a grant of ten thousand acres of land for a university in its colony, and that same year the bishops of England raised $7,500 to found a school; but nothing came of these efforts. In 1688 interest AMERICAN EDUCATION 239 in education revived, and $i 2,500 was subscribed by wealthy men in the colony and by friends in England. The queen added $10,000, twenty thousand acres of land, and a tax of a cent a pound on all tobacco exported from Maryland and Virginia. All this educational zeal ultimately resulted in the College of William and Mary, which was chartered in 1692. But Virginia had no free-school system until after the Civil War. The authorities in Holland in granting a charter to the Dutch West India Company for the settlement of New Amsterdam New York required that the company should main- tain "good and fit preachers, schoolmasters, and comforters of the sick." In 1629 the company laid the responsibility of providing ministers and schoolmasters upon the colonists. Four years later the new governor, William Kieft, brought with him from Holland the first American school- master, Adam Roelandsen. He was appointed teacher by the authorities in Holland, and his salary was paid by the Dutch West India Com- pany. His school was under the supervision and management of the deacons of the Dutch Re- formed Church, and such a school has been connected with that church ever since Roeland- sen opened it in 1633. In 1649 there was no school in New York in which a lad could study Latin or fit himself for 240 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS college; and a formal complaint was made that no schoolhouse had ever been built, and that " the school was kept very irregularly, by this one and that, according to his fancy, as he sees fit." Good as were the intentions of Holland in providing schools for the colony, the results were very slight. As late as 1 749, when it was more than one hundred and twenty years old, that great colony had only two schools out- side the city of New York and its immediate vicinity. A school was established at Albany in 1665, and a second one at Schenectady in 1710. Not until 1812 was the free-school system of New York founded. Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, planned for an American colony in 1626, four years before the Puritans came to Boston. He promised, as an inducement to his people to go to America, that "schools and churches will flourish through the colony and be sustained, and, furthermore, those who have learned something will be pro- moted to dignities and positions." Where else has there been so explicit a statement of the reward that shall come directly from learning? The settlement on the Delaware, which was made some years later, was under high educa- tional inspiration; but the colony really did little for education, and it was nearly two hundred years before the people of that section established free schools. AMERICAN EDUCATION 241 William Penn had formed great plans for the education of the children of his colony. In his frame of government he provided that "the gov- ernor and provincial council shall erect and order all public schools, and encourage and reward the authors of useful sciences and laudable in- ventions." The twenty-eighth law for the guid- ance of the colony was as follows: "That all children of the age of 12 years shall be taught some useful trade or skill, to the end none may be idle, but the poor may work to live, and the rich, if they become poor, may not want." Before the colony was founded Penn wrote: ' The world is certainly a great and stately vol- ume of natural things. * * This ought to be the subject of the education of our youth." The colony of Pennsylvania was chartered in 1 68 r, but despite Penn's excellent ideas re- garding universal free education, there was no free-school system until 1834-5. THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES The Pilgrims, soon after they came to Ply- mouth in 1620, voted that some course should be taken "that in every town there may be a schoolmaster set up to train the children in reading and writing." Nothing definite was done about the matter, though it is quite prob- 242 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS able that some sort of school privileges were provided. The first record on the subject is in 1670, when the Plymouth colonial legislature voted to appropriate the profits of the Cape Cod fisheries for school purposes. A grammar school was at once established at Plymouth. In 1677 the old colony of Plymouth passed a law much like the famous one passed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1647. After that, education in the two colonies developed along the same lines, and can best be traced in the Massachusetts Bay history. The Dutch from New York and the English from Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay began settling in the rich lands of Connecticut in 1633. In 1638 a company from Massachusetts founded New Haven, and they must have established a school almost at once, for the next year the court decreed that "Thomas Fugill is required to keep Charles Higginson, an apprentice, at school one year." On Christmas Day in 1641, it was voted that " a free school be set up in this town, and our pastor, Rev. John Davenport, together with the magistrates, shall consider what yearly allowance is meet to be given to it out of the common stock of the town, and also what rules and orders are meet to be observed." This school had as its first teacher Ezekiel Cheever, Amer- AMERICAN EDUCATION 243 ica's first great schoolmaster and one of the grandest the country has ever known. He was paid $100 a year for two years, and in 1644 the salary was raised to $150. This increase was made " for the better training up of the youth of this town, that through God's blessing they may be fitted for public service hereafter, either in church or commonwealth." Ezekiel Cheever was born in London, and came to Boston in 1637, when he was 23 years old. He taught in New Haven, Ipswich, and Charlestown for more than thirty years; and in 1670, at 56 years of age, he took charge of the Boston Latin School. He taught there for thirty-eight years until he died at his post at the age of 94. He wrote the first text-book published in America, a book on the teaching of Latin grammar. The governor and all the dignitaries of the city and the colony gathered to honor and mourn him at the funeral which was held in the school- house. Cotton Mather delivered the sermon, and in speaking of his great service said: " Ink is too vile a liquor, liquid gold should fill this pen by which such things are told." Neither Europe nor America has produced a better schoolmaster than Ezekiel Cheever. He deserves a place with Roger Ascham. He may not have been an " educator," but he was 244 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS a wonderfully able schoolmaster and New Haven and Boston owe much to him. In 1650 the Connecticut legislature passed a compulsory education law, not requiring that children should be sent to school but that they should know how to read and write. The penalty was twenty shillings a year for neglect to educate a child. It was also voted the same year that every town of fifty families should sup- port a teacher of reading and writing, and every town of one hundred families a Latin school. Any town that failed to comply with this order must pay a penalty of twenty-five dollars a year to the nearest school. The schools at first were supported wholly by tuition fees, but in 1656 New Haven voted that a third of the cost should be paid by the town. Public lands were set aside to aid the schools in 1737; and in 1793 Connecticut provided the first state school fund in the world. This soon amounted to $1,200,000. This money did not help to establish free schools, as it was very generally given -to the church schools. The sentiment for education was strong, but the idea of making it free was not popular in Connecticut until the nineteenth century. Roger Williams went to Rhode Island in 1636 with the most exalted ideas as to intelligence, education, virtue, and freedom. In 1640 Rhode AMERICAN EDUCATION 245 Island made a beginning in public education when Newport voted, on August 20, "that one hundred acres of land should be laid forth and appropriated for a school, for encouragement of the poorer sort to train up their youth in learning." Newport continued to have a public school until 1774, but there was none from that time until about 1820. In Providence, in May, 1663, one hundred acres of upland and -six acres of meadow land were set apart for the maintenance of a school. Over a hundred years later, in 1767, the town made an effort to establish public schools, but the movement to build four schoolhouses was voted down. One schoolhouse, however, was built by the town and by private enterprise the town to use the lower story for a school, and the other owners to have control of the rest of the building. In 1785 the town voted to keep a hall in repair for school purposes at public expense. In 1 795 it was voted to establish a free school, but the law was not carried into effect until 1800, and the free-school system did not come until 1828. All this shows how difficult it was to get the colonies, and later the states, outside of Massa- chusetts, to support anything like a free school. The Virginians, the Dutch, the Swedes, the Quakers, the Pilgrims, the people of Connecti- 246 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS cut, and Roger Williams, all had excellent edu- cational ideals, but no one of them established a school system or maintained free schools prior to the nineteenth century. This helps us to appreciate how great must have been the effort in Massachusetts to maintain public schools from 1647 until the general revival of learning in the days of Horace Mann. MASSACHUSETTS It was left for the Puritan, the stern, rigid, unrelenting, unattractive Puritan, to establish the first free elementary schools, the first free Latin schools, and the first university. It was for the Puritan to insist on having public schools, and to require all the people to educate all their children. It was for the Puritan to enforce this law by exacting penalties through all the years of war and peace, through the length and breadth of the commonwealth. The story of the struggle to establish and maintain free schools is an interesting one. It must be remembered that the Puritan came with no flourish of educational trumpets. There are behind him no such beautiful sentiments as those of Gustavus Adolphus, William Penn, and the promoters of the other colonies. The Puri- tan school is a matter of deeds, not of words. The first New England schoolmaster was AMERICAN EDUCATION 247 Philemon Pormort. The records of Boston show that in 1635 it was "agreed upon that our brother Philemon Pormort shall be entreated to become schoolmaster for the teaching and nurturing of children with us." The first year he was paid by subscriptions and by the use of an island in Muddy river. The next year, 1636, all the principal inhabitants of the town sub- scribed from four shillings to ten pounds each " towards the maintenance of a free-school mas- ter, for Mr. Daniel Maude being now also chosen thereunto." The list of these subscribers is still preserved. In 1650 the schoolmaster was Mr. Robert Woodmansey, who received a salary of ^50 a year, which was raised by taxation. In 1666 Mr. Daniel Henchman was chosen to assist him for 40 a year. After Mr. Woodmansey's death the town voted, in March, 1670, that Widdowe Margaret Woodmansey should have ^8 a year with which to provide herself a house during her " widdowhood." This first school, taught by Mr. Pormort and then by Mr. Woodmansey, still exists as the Boston Latin School, and was for more than fifty years the only school in Boston. The colony voted on September 8, 1636, to give ^400 ($2,000) toward a school or college, the location of which was to be determined by the next session of the general court. New- 248 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS town was the place chosen. In 1638, before the college was established, Rev. John Harvard of Charlestown, in dying, bequeathed his library and half his property to the infant institution. The bequest amounted to ^779 175. 2d., and with this help the college was at once established. It received the name of Harvard College, and the name of the town was changed to Cambridge in honor of the English university town. This was for many years the only college in America, and it has grown to be a mighty institution whose scholarship is admired throughout the world. The ^400 voted by the colony for the college was as much as it appropriated that year for all other purposes, and this Massachusetts Assem- bly of 1636 was the first body in which the peo- ple by their representatives ever gave their own money to found an institution of learning. In 1642 the general court instructed the selectmen in every town to take account of the education and employment of all children. The selectmen were authorized to divide the town so that each of them should have oversight of a cer- tain number of families, to see that the children could read, understand the principles of religion and the laws of the country, and be put to some useful work. The colony was only twelve years old when the legislature made education com- pulsory. It did not then require that the chil- AMERICAN EDUCATION 249 dren go to school, but that they be taught reading, good morals, good citizenship, and manual training. This law was enforced. All children of each town were examined and reported upon. The selectmen appointed a day and notified the peo- ple that they would " go the rounds to examine the teachings of children and youth according to law." Sometimes the selectmen appointed one man to whom all the children should come at a given time to be examined. This was con- sidered a great educational advance. Seven grammar schools, or schools which prepared for college, had been established in Massachusetts by 1647, an d no two of them were supported in the same way. The school in Boston required no tuition fees, but the master was paid $Q a year from moneys obtained from four sources: subscriptions, in- come on certain town lands, income from the school funds, and a town tax. The Dorchester school had neither a tax nor a fee, but was sup- ported by the income from leasing an island and from bequests. The Cambridge school was wholly supported by tuition fees. The Charles- town school had the rent of some islands, income from fishing privileges, and a town tax. In Salem the town paid for the poor children, but the school for the most part was supported 250 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS by subscriptions. The Ipswich school was partly a tuition school. The Roxbury school was exclusive, and was never made public. Dedham had a school in 1644 wholly free and supported by taxation. The tax was to be paid in wheat and corn, at least two thirds to be wheat. In general, there was no apparent objection to a tax, but no disposition to resort to it until it became necessary; and, for the most part, the schools were free to the pupils. In 1647 the general court passed the most famous school law ever made. Every township in the colony with fifty households was required to appoint some one within the town to teach reading and writing to all such children as should resort to him. This man was to be paid by the parents and guardians, or by the inhabitants in general, or in such other way as "the major part of those that order the prudentials of the town shall appoint." Those who sent children to school were not to be oppressed by having to pay "much more" than their tuition would have cost in other towns. It was further required that when a town had one hundred families it should set up a grammar school, with a master who could instruct the youth " so far as they may be fitted for the uni- versity." If any town neglected this provision AMERICAN EDUCATION 251 it was to pay a fine to the next school until it established a school of its own. The colony was only seventeen years old. There were only twenty thousand people, scat- tered through thirty towns, and all were strug- gling with the conditions of life in a new world. Yet they had provided a complete system of education. Parents must educate their children. The towns must provide schools for all children at slight expense, and they might tax the citi- zens in order to furnish free schools. The town officers must see that the children were edu- cated according to law, and a penalty must be paid for failure in any respect. Further, towns of one hundred families must provide prepara- tory schools to fit boys for the college, which had already been established nine years by pub- lic appropriation. Such was the foundation, firm and true, on which the school system has been built by per- sistent determination and devotion. Through all the hard years that followed, Massachusetts remained faithful to the idea of free schools for all the people. The American free common school is the result of three special factors: the ideals for the education of those who settled in Virginia, 252 GREAT AMERICAN EDUCATORS Delaware, New York, and Pennsylvania ; the grit and persistency of the Puritans; and the blending of the devotion of all in the educa- tional provisions for the territory west of the Alleghanies. When the thirteen colonies be- came an independent nation, those which had inherited the educational traditions of William Penn, Gustavus Adolphus, and the Dutch of Holland, looked to New England to set the standard for national education, and this meant, ultimately, free common schools throughout the United States. Leaders were needed. Leaders alofae could put the breath of life into the great educa- tional idea that had been associated with everything American for two centuries. These leaders appeared in Horace Mann, Mary Lyon, Henry Barnard, David P. Page, John D. Phil- brick, Newton Bateman, Edward A. Sheldon, James P. Wickersham, and other men and women to whose wisdom and devotion are largely due the grandeur and efficiency of the present American schools. " TRAINING FOR CITIZENSHIP " THE "FOUR GREAT AMERICANS" SERIES BIOGRAPHICAL STORIES OF GREAT AMERICANS EDITED BY JAMES BALDWIN, PH.D. About 256 pages each. Cloth. Illustrated Price 50 Cents the Volume THESE Stories present the lives of our Great Americans in such a manner as to hold the attention of the youngest readers. The boyhood of each of these great men is described with many interesting details. The manner also in which each educated himself and prepared for his life work has been especially dwelt upon. For the school or for the home, these books are unique and valuable, and cannot fail to have an uplifting influence on the youth of America. As no books have done before, these Life Stories serve the following purposes: They lay the foundation for the study of BIOGRAPHY and HISTORY; they stimulate a desire for further HIS- TORICAL READING; they cultivate a taste for the BEST LITERATURE; and by inspiring examples they teach PATRIOTISM. SEVERAL VOLUMES ALREADY PUBLISHED. OTHERS IN PRESS. SEND FOR LIST Liberal Terms for Supplies to Schools " TRAINING FOR CITIZENSHIP " THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT NATIONAL AND STATE B. A. HINSDALE, PH.D., LL.D. Professor of the Science and the Art of Teaching in the University of Michigan Extra Silk Cloth. 4.96 Pages, I2mo. Price, $1.25 NEW AND REVISED EDITION HINSDALE' S American Government has been written with three classes of persons constantly in mind: (i) Students who are studying the American government in Colleges ; (2) Students who are studying it in High Schools, Academies, or Normal Schools of high-grade ; and (3) Teachers of History and Civics in Elementary and Secondary Schools. The general character of the work, as respects subject-matter, is shown by its main divisions. Introduction Political Science; Terms defined. 16 pages Part I. The Making of the American Government. 92 pages Part IL The National Government. 252, pages Part III. The State Governments. 66 pages Appendix Documents Illustrative of the Growth of the American Union. 55 pages Indexes n pages It gives a complete view of our dual system of government. In developing the state side of this system, the author supplies a manifest want in similar treatises,, and is thoroughly in accord with the spirit of the times. "TRAINING FOR CITIZENSHIP" THE STATE GOVERNMENT SERIES UNDER THE GENERAL EDITORSHIP OK B. A. HINSDALE, PH.D., LL.D. Professor of the Science and the Art of Teaching in the University of Michigan EACH VOLUME IS ARRANGED UNDER THREE MAIN HEADS Part I. HISTORY OF THE STATE Discovery and Exploration Settlement State Growth. Part II. 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JUL 1 1958 AUG 5 1988 AUG 1 2 1958 MAR 2 8 195S , APR 10 1959 APR 13 1959 JUN 3 1959 JUL 9 1S9I JUL1 6 1959 JUl2q AUG 6 1959 1359 NOV 2 8 1960 ** 1 1 1961 SUBJECT TO FINE IF EDUCATIO NOT RETURNED TO M LIBRARY MAY 1 6 1963 fat* 1963 FEB 2 1983 RECEIVE ED/PSYCH UB. Ql OCT 5 88? Form L9-32w-8,'57(.C8680s4)444 UCLA-ED/PSYCH Library LA2311W73 library LA 2311 W73 A 000959173 6