LIBRARY OF THE University of CALiFORNfA. GIF^T OF^ zAccession o-ClfMX^ Class (T^ Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation littp://www.archive.org/details/americanpublicscOOswetrich AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS HISTORY AND PEDAGOGICS BY JOHN SWETT Author of " History of the Public School System of California" " Methods of Teaching,' ''Normal Word Book" and " School Elocution ; " and Collaborator in the Authorship ofSwinton's Language Series, Word Book Series, and Geography Series. NEW YORK •:•. CINCINNATI •: CHICAGO AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY y^-^ Copyright, 1900, By JOHN SWETT. Am. Pub. Sch. PREFACE This book is intended mainly for the great body of American public school teachers, and, incidentally, for li- brary use in normal schools or in normal departments of other institutions of learning, both public and private. The prominence now given to American educational history by the pedagogical departments of universities has led to a similar line of study in many state normal schools. Furthermore, these historical studies have been emphasized during the past decade by a long series of able and exhaustive papers on the history of our public school system, published in the annual reports of the United States Commissioner of Education, and in special Bulle- tins of Information. But these reports, rich in historical treasures, reach only a small number of the five hundred thousand teach- ers in our country, and are not available for practical pur- poses in large classes of normal students. There seems to be room for a hand-book containing a series of studies on the vital points of public school history ; and also an outline of the psychological and pedagogical methods of instruction and management in American public schools. A knowledge of the history of public education in our own country is fast becoming an indispensable part of 3 86005 4 PREFACE the educational equipment of every American teacher ; and it is to help along this new movement that the First Part of this book has been written. The Second Part relates to applied pedagogics in the common schools, and treats specifically of modern courses of study in primary and grammar grades ; of school man- agement ; of professional reading and study for teachers ; and of common-sense applied to rural schools. In this part, as in the historical part, the author has made free use of quotations from the latest writings of American educational leaders in order to show the drift of modern pedagogical and psychological thought. JOHN SWETT. San Francisco, 1899. CONTENTS Part I. History of American Public Schools. CHAP, PAGE I. Colonial Schools 7 II. Early American Schools 34 III. Secondary and Higher Public Education . . . .73 IV. Public Schools after the Civil War 93 .V. Common-School Courses of Study XX8 VI. Studies on Common-School Text-Books , . . .130 VII. Educational Outlook for the Twentieth Century. . 164 Part II. Applied Pedagogics in American Public Schools. I. Management in School Government 173 II. Suggestions on Class-Room Management . . .179 III. Recitations and the Art of Using Text-Books . . .188 IV. Professional Reading and Study 199 V. Pedagogics Applied to Reading, Writing, Spelling, and Drawing, in Modern Graded Schools .... 206 VI. The Art of Teaching Language Lessons and Grammar . 230 VII. Pedagogical Principles applied to Arithmetic . . . 240 5 6 CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE VIII. Psychological Principles in Teaching Elementary History . 259 IX. Natural Methods in Teaching Geography . ... 269 X, The Natural Method in Nature Studies . . . .278 XI. Modern Views on Physical Culture 286 XII. Modern Training in Morals and Manners .... 292 XIII. Common-Sense Applied to Rural Schools . . . 303 TJNITERSITY PART I HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS CHAPTER I COLONIAL SCHOOLS For typical studies we may begin with the four chief centers of early settlements in our country : New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. The Colon ists a tjPl ymouth did not op en^ public school u ntil fifty years after the Pilgrim Fathers set fo ot on Plymouth Rock. But the little band of one hundred and two men, women, and children that came over in the Mayflower, at once organized a civil government, and immediately set about paying off their indebtedness to the Plymouth Company by making shipments of fish, furs, and lumber. In thirteen years the freemen of this small settlement owned their homesteads free from debt. For half a century t^e f ew child renjn this colony of slow growth wer e taught at home or in dame _sclmQls_to_read th£catechisiTL^nd_jhe_BlW.^ ; for so much instruction the Pilgrims held to be a re li gious duty. I n due time, when children had increased in numbers, the freeholders of the town of Plymouth set up a " La tin Grammar Schpo l " of the_EngHsh_type(i67o) ; and t hree years lat_£ r (167^) they established, after the manner of the Netherlands, where the Pilgrims had sojourned for a time, a public school for teaching the children to read and write their mother 8 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS tongue. For the public support of this school they- applied the profits of the Cape Cod fisheries . T^fTPiiritans who 9,^\\ei\ around Massachusetts Bay in 1630 were stronger in numbers and richer in me ans than the Plymouth Pilgrims. It is estimated that at least 20,000 emigrants came over from England during the period of rapid settlement -from 1630 to 1650. The J^nQtnn T atjn Scho'^l ( l^i5~3^) appears to have been the first public school opened in New England. It was started by subscriptions, was s upporte d in the beginning partly by town appropriatio ns; afterwards entirely by tTi e town. Sir Henry Vane headed the list of subscribers with a gift of ten pounds sterling. " There is no notice of a school among the regular entries of Boston records until 1642," says Felt's "Annals of Salem," " but on the last leaf of the first volume is a list, dated 1636, of subscribers and their donations towards a school of this kind." This Latin School was e ;cclusiv ely designed to fit boys forcolle^. It was the only public school in Boston for a period of more than thirty years. Harvard College was founded (1637-38) for the chief purpose of training up an educated ministry. One year later (1639), a printing press was set up at Cam- bridge. Other towns in New England followed the example of Boston and established '' Grammar Schoo ls," chiefly designed to teach Latin grammar, but incidentally in::, eluding a little i nstruction in read in g, writing, and arith- Inetter irr^rder of time these schools were set up as follows: Charlestown (1636); Dorchester and Newbury (1639); Salem (1641); New Haven (1639-41); Hartford (1642); Newport, R. I. (1640); Dedham (1651); Ipswich (1642) ; Plymouth (1670). COLONIAL SCHOOLS g These grammar schools were supported in part by tuition fees and in part by town appropriations. Occa- sionally they received small grants of land or individual bequests. They were public scho ols entirely under control of the civil government^_thouglijt^^ affiliations. They were designed to fit boys for college. The girls of this period either attended private schools or grew up without schooling. As the settlers were trans- planted Englishmen, their schools, as a matter of course, were modeled upon the plan of the eighteen Latin grammar schools founded in England during the reign of Edward VI. It was not until two c enturies after the settl ement ! of New England that OldEn gland took any measures for. ' providing for thee lementary instruction of th e children of_The~ comrnorr people, other than in charity schools in connection with the established church. Consequently the rnjrmjqfq dif] not inhf^Ht th<^ '' c^^roQi pn-school idea" from England. The legal conditions of admission to all these primitive grammar schools read as follows : *' No youth shall be sent to the grammar schools unless they shall have learned in some other way to read the English language by spell- ing the same." Consequently, for many years, children were taught to read at home, or in private schools, or dame schools, or were allowed to grow up illiterate. In due course of tirne most of these early graiiimaT^schools 'became free public_schools^supported_b y taxation, j jid.XSP yearsTater, girls gaine d admission t o them . Cotton Mather in his " MagnaiiaTsays : *' When scholars had so far profited at the grammar schools that they could read any classical author into English and readily make and speak true Latin, and write it in verse as well as in prose, and perfectly decline the paradigms of nouns and verbs in the lO HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS Greek tongue, they were judged capable of admission to Harvard College." RECORDS OF GRAMMAR SCHOOLS. The student of educational history must not be misled by the colonial use of the term s, " free school," *' Latin school," " grammar school," and " public school." They were all used , at times, to design ate public schools sup- ported_iii_part by tuitio n fees, an d were also applied t o schools un der, rh 11 rrh cnntrol.. It is claimed, for instance, that the first " free school " in America was established in 1621, by the Rev. Patrick Copeland, in Charles City, Vir- ginia. This was evidently a parish school, supported by subscriptions. • Town of Dedham. — It was ordered in town meeting (165 1) ''that all such inhabitants in our town as have male children or servants in their families shall for each pay to the schoolmaster for the time being the sum of five shil- lings per annum ; and (2) that whatever these sums shall fall short of the sum of twenty pounds shall be raised by by way of rateing upon estates according to the usual manner." The Dorchester School. — The history of the town of Dorchester (now a part of the city of Boston) is of special interest, as it contains a record of one of the earliest of town meetings in New England. Town Records. — " Monday, Oct. 8, 1633. Imprimis. It is ordered that for the general good and well ordering of the affairs of the planta- tion, there shall be every Monday before the Court, by 8 o'clock A. M., and presently by the beating of the drum, a general meeting of the in- habitants of the plantation at the meeting-house, there to settle and set down such orders as may tend to the general good aforesaid, and every man to be bound thereby, without gainsaying or resistance." COLONIAL SCHOOLS II Other towns followed this example, and in 1636, three years later, the General Court of the Bay Colony passed an act regulating town government and establishing the town meeting as an institution of local civil government. The town meeting laid the foundation for the town school. In 1635 the General Court of the Bay Colony granted to the inhabitants of Dorchester certain lands on " Thomp- son's Island," and in 1639 the town meeting voted to levy a tax on the proprietors of said island for " the main- tenance of a school in Dorchester." This was a grammar school for boys, and was supported in part by tuition fees. So far as public records show, this seems to have been the first direct tax voted in New England for the partial support of a public school. School Committee.— In 1645 the Dorchester town meeting elected a special school committee of three, termed " wardens or overseers of the schools," and adopted " rules and orders concerning the school," in part, as follows : " 2ly. That from the beginning of the first moneth until! the end of the 7th, hee shall every day begin to teach at seaven of the Clock in the morning and dismisse his schollers at five in the afternoon, and for the other five months he shall every day begin at 8 of the Clock in the morning and end at 4 in the afternoon." " 5ly. Hee shall equally and impartially receiue and instruct such as shalbe sent and Committed to him for that end, whither there parents bee poore or rich, not refusing any who have Right & In- terest in the Schools." " 61y. Such as shall be Committed to him he shall diligently instruct, as they shalbe able to learne, both in humane learning and good literature, & likewyse in Poynt of good manners and dutifull behauior towards all, specially there superiors as they shall haue occasion to bee in there presence, whither by meeting them in the streete or otherwyse." 12 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS " y\y. Euery 6 day in thq weeke at 2 of the Clock in the after noone, bee shall Catechise his Schollers in the principles of Christian religion, either in some Catechism wch the Wardens shall provide and present, or in defect thereof in some other." * Schools in Boston.— In 1682, half a century after the settlement of the town, it was ordered in town meeting : " That a committee with the selectmen consider and pro- vide for the teaching of children to write and cipher within this town." Accordingly, grammar schools were soon opened, with one department for teaching '* writing and ciphering," and another department for teaching " reading and spelling." These unique schools, English in type, are explained by George H. Martin in his " Evo- lution of the Massachusetts Public School System," as follows : '^ These grammar schools were double-headed af- fairs, divided into a writing department and a reading de- partment, and with a master and an assistant, the two masters having original and concurrent jurisdiction over the pupils. In the writing schools, arithmetic and pen- manship were taught to all, while algebra, geometry, and bookkeeping were optional. In the reading schools, reading and spelling, with definitions, grammar, and geography were required studies, with history, astron- omy, and natural philosophy optional. The pupils spent the morning in one school and the afternoon in the other." These grammar schools of 1682, however, were open to boys only. It was not until 1789, a century later, that girls were allowed to enter them, and then only from April to October in each year, and only at hours when the boys were not in attendance.' It was not until 181 8 that Boston opened primary schools for teaching both boys-and girls to read and write I a COLONIAL SCNOlS^^ ■^jT n the English language. The town of Northampton voted> in 1792 to admit girls into the grammar schools from May 1st to October 31st. In this connection it is worth noting that in 1696 the Scottish Parliament enacted a law which established a school in every parish and provided for its support partly by parish tax and partly by rate bills. The way had been opened for this law by the work of John Knox, more than a century before, in establishing parish schools in connection with the Scotch Kirk. Town of Salem. — This town, one of the first settlements in the Bay Colony (1629), ranked for a long period next to Boston in wealth and commerce. It held to Eng-lish o customs and educational ideas with peculiar tenacity. It established a British "Latin grammar school" in 1641 ; but made no public provision for teaching girls to read and write the English language until a hundred and fifty years later, and did not place girls on an equal footing with boys until 1812, one hundred and seventy-one years after the first Latin school was founded. It is historically interesting as the center of the witchcraft delusion in New England. Its school records, complete from the begin- ning, afford the pedagogical student a striking illustration of the slow evolution of the common school idea. These town records are made available by Felt's " Annals of Salem" (1845). I" the first volume of this book there are eighty pages of pubHc school history, made up largely of quotations from town records.' The following extracts mark a few of the successive stages of school development. Records.- " 164.1, March 30. Col. Endecot moved about the ffences and about a ffree skoole and therefore wished a whole towne meeting about it ; therefore, that Goodman Auger warne a towne meeting the 14 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS second day of the weeke." The town meeting estabUshed a Latin Grammar School (1641) in accordance with the call. 1644. " Ordered that if any poore body hath children or a child to be put to school and not able to pay for their schooling, that the towne will pay for it by rate." This " free skoole " was a Latin grammar school, free only to those too poor to pay for instruction. " Such was the practice to a limited degree in the metropolis " (Boston), says the historian of Salem, " and, to a considerable degree, in other places of the Commonwealth. This continued, more or less so, among our population till 1768." 1657. " A bill came to hand to make a rate for the Coledge [Har\^ard] ;^5 6s." 1680, Apr. 5. "Concerning the Colledge money. For building : amount raised by subscription ;^i 30-2-3." 1 716. "John Swinnerton began, 25th ult. to keep the English school by the town house." [First mention of an English grammar school]. 1733, Jan. 4. " The Grammar School had 36, and the English school 30 scholars." 1743, May II. "Voted that the Latin and English schools be united under a master and usher. Each Latin scholar paid 5s a quarter, and each English scholar 2s. 6d. a quarter." 1764, May 16. Order for £10, "to pay for learning the poorest children to read at women's schools " [dame schools]. 1767, March 9. Committee of the English school are empowered to spend the same sum for a hke purpose. 1793, March 11. School committee authorized to provide for the tuition of girls in writing schools or elsewhere, " in reading, writing, and ciphering." 1796, July 19. Statement that schools for young girls had been opened. [Primary schools.] 1801, April 13. "Notice is published, that writing, arithmetic, English grammar, composition, and geography are to be taught in the grammar school, besides Latin and Greek." 1 801, May 2. Notice is published that three public schools for children of both sexes, and not less than five years old, are opened. [Primary schools.] COLONIAL SCHOOLS 1 5 RURAL " COMMON SCHOOLS " IN NEW ENGLAND. It was outside^gLBoston and its surrounding group of '' grammar school " towns, in the outlying rural settle ^. jTients__of Massachusetts, Con necticut, a nd__New H amp- shire, tha t conditions w ere most favorable to the devej ^p- ment of the colonial " common school /* These pioneer settlers were a homogeneous people from the Puritan counties of England. They had no paternal government and no chartered companies to care for them ; but they were well fitted to look out for themselves. The earnest- ness of their religious convictions held them up to high standards. They had no bitter contentions arising from differences in race, language, or religion ; consequently, it was possible for them to act together in establishing town government and common schools. Like the Pil- grims, they were determined that their children should be able to read the Bible, the catechism, and the laws. Driven by the " land hunger " characteristic of English pioneers, small groups of settlers pushed out into the forest wilderness of New England, and, in the face of Indians, secured home-farms, erected meeting-houses, and built schoolhouses. Presently the people, assemble^^hx town mee ting, elected a teacher, and starte^Pa^^€£5oL sup- ported in part from a scanty town treasury and in part eked out by voluntary^^ubscri ptions or tuition fees . The children were instructed in reading, spelling, w ritjag, arithmet ic, and good manners. The school was open to boys and girls on equal t erms. The co-education of the sexes was not_a^theor y ; it was a condition of necessity. Pupils entered school at five years of age, and. were allowed to attend up to the age of twenty-one. In these rural schools the main purpose was to teach the English Ian- l6 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS guage, not the Latin. Rude and primitive schools they were, as befitted the pioneer conditions of a people fight- ing for survival among Indians, and wringing a scanty subsistence from a stubborn soil under a harsh sky. These schools have an accurately recorded history writ- ten in town records of civil government. They were or ganized directly by the common p eople_for the free pub- lic education of all children, witho ut distin ction of class, or caste, or sex. Of free cTiarity schools for teaching the children of the poor, the history of the world is full. Of schools established for the higher classes by centralized paternal governments, there are numerous examples. But these rural schools were not copi es of European s chools. They were planned neither by educational theorists nor by speculative metaphysicians. Plato had taught, cen- turies ago, that in a commonwealth the working classes had no need of any education whatever. These Puritan farmers and mechanics had never read Plato in the origi- nal Greek ; but they had faith in God and themselves, and guided by hard common-sense, they saw to it that their children learned to read and write their mother tongue, and to cipher. Their schools were rightly named '' com- mon schools," because they brought together all the chil- dren of each little democratic community, on one common level of equal legal rights to an elementary education in the English language. Many favorable conditions were combined to lead up to the organization of these schools. For defense against attacks of Indians the early settlers were grouped in vil- lages surrounded by stockades. There was no established Church of England to monopolize education. EaclLiittle Congregati onalist church was an independen t^ganizatiisn. governed by its own membe rs. For mo re than a century COLONIAL SCHOOLS 1 7 the ministers as well_ as_the_jtearh ers i n -xuraLjto wnswere elected in town meeting. Consequently the ministers were strong in their support of free schools. " These were the first lawgivers," said James Russell Lowell, "who saw clearly and enforced practically, the simple, moral, and political truth, that knowledge was not an alms to be dependent on the chance charity of private men, or the precarious pittance of a trust-fund, but a sacred debt which the commonwealth owed to every one of her chil- dren. The opening of the first grammar school was the opening of the first trench against monopoly in Church and State ; the first row of trammels and pothooks which the little Shearjashubs and Elkanahs blotted and blubbered across their copy-books, was the preamble to the Declaration of Independence." " The arts, sciences, and literature of England," said Daniel Webster, " came over with these settlers. That great portion of the common law which regulates the social and personal relations and conduct of men, came over also. The jury came ; the habeas corpus came ; the testamentary power came ; and the law of inheritance and descent came also. But the monarchy did not come, nor the aristocracy, nor the church, as an estate of the realm. Political institutions were to be framed anew, such as should be adapted to the state of things." It may be added to the preceding statements that the Pilgrims at Plymouth as soon as they organized civil government adopted the written ballot and the law which prevailed in Holland, but not in England, requiring a public record of land titles, deeds, and mortgages, as a protection against fraud, and for facilitating the transaction of business. The same rule was followed a little later by the Puritans of the Bay Colony. The Dutch settlers in New Netherlands adopted similar laws, which they brought with them from the republic of Holland. The published records and special histories of several hundred towns in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Con- necticut, and Maine are now to be found in the state, city, and town libraries of New England. To the student of AM. PUB. SCH. 2. 1 8 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS educational history they furnish an account of the begin- nings of the free American rural common school, — the most democratic institution known on the face of the earth, — a school under the control of the civil power, free to boys and girls alike, supported by a direct property tax voted by the people assembled in town meeting. The limits of this chapter will not admit of many extracts from original town records in proof of the preceding statements, but a few quotations will make luminous the origin of common schools. HISTORICAL RECORDS OF COMMON SCHOOLS. Town of Hampton (N. H.). — ■" On the 2 of the 2 mo., 1649. The select- men of this Towne of Hampton have agreed with John Legat for this present yeare insueing — To teach and instruct all the children of or be- longing to our Towne both tnayle andfemaile (wch are capiable of learn- ing) to write and read and cast accountes (if it be desired) as dilegently and as carefully as he is able to teach and instruct them ; And so dile- gently to follow the said imploymentt at all such time and times this yeare insueing, as the wether shall be fitting for the youth to com together to one place to be instructed ; And also to teach and instruct them once in a week, or more, in some Arthodox catechise provided for them by their parents or masters. — And in consideration hereof we have agreed to pay or cause to be payd unto the said John Legat the som of Twenty pounds, in corne and cattle and butter att price current, as payments are made of such goods in this Towne, and this to be payd by us quarterly, paying ^^5 every quarter of the yeare after he has begun to keep school.^ " This record was made ten years after the settlement of the town (1639). In 1670 the town record runs as fol- lows : " That the Schoolemaster's Rate for this year shall bee Raised by Estates of the Inhabitants as other Towne Rates are." Hampton Academy was incorporated in 1810. Town of Plymouth (Mass.). — 1673. Ordered in town meeting " that the charge of the free scools which is three and thirty pounds a year shall be defrayed out of the proffits arising by the fishing at the Cape." 1 Dow's "History of Hampton*' (1893), Vol. I. COLONIAL SCHOOLS jg Town of Sanbornton (N. H.).— This town, settled in 1764, voted in 1774 '* to hire a school teacher part of this year and raise $30 for that purpose." Capt. Eben San- born, the teacher, was paid $5.00 a month. He taught in a barn, and many of his pupils used birch bark as writing paper. Town of Pittsfield (N. H.).— This town was settled in 1768, largely by emigrants from the town of Hampton. The following extracts from the manuscript records show that the custom of electing the teacher in town meeting had been kept up in parts of New England for more than a century. This record also illustrates the manner of elect- ing ministers, which was common in parts of New England for more than a century. It further shows the natural development of the academy. "1782. — Voted. To hire Jonathan Brown to teach a school for six months at nine dollars a month." " Voted. To build a meeting-house of the same bigness of Hamp- ton Falls meeting-house, except the posts to be one foot shorter." " Voted. To raise some money this year for preaching, to be paid in corn, grain, and other produce." 1789. — Voted. Mr. Christopher Paige a salary of sixty-six pounds yearly, the one-third part in cash, and one-third part in corn at three shillings per bushel, and a third part in good beef at twenty shillings per hundred, during his ministry in said town."i Forty years after the preceding record the farmers of this small town of less than a thousand inhabitants con- tributed labor, lumber, and money ; erected a building ; and established an undenominational academy. This institution had no endowments, no apparatus, and no library. The successive preceptors of the school were young graduates of Dartmouth College, who were study- ^ Original unpublished records of the town of Pittsfield. 20 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS ing law, medicine, or theology. But this almost unknown academy, typical of many others, made a good record. It sent many students to college. Of its farmer-boy students, one became a United States senator from his native state ; another a judge of the Supreme Court ; a third, a judge in the Supreme Court of Minnesota. A large number studied law, many became teachers, and still more became successful business men in the various pursuits of life. More than half of the young men moved West, and a few reached California. Half a century after its foun- dation the academy was transformed into a town high school. Dame Schools, — These schools, both in England and New England were small private schools set up by women, generally in their own homes, for teaching young children to read in the primer or catechism. In most of the grammar-school towns the dame schools, for a century or more, fi tted the boys for admission to thej Latin schools , that is to say, taugh t them *^ to r ead t he English la nguage by spelling the same .*' It was in such schools that the little girls learned to read ; but girls were not allowed in the sacred precincts of the grammar school until about the beginning of the nineteenth century. In the course of time, some of the towns began to aid these private dame schools by small subsidies as an encourage- ment to continue their good work. Next, one town after another began to employ teachers at a regular salary. This innovation was the beginning of the modern primary school. The town of Woburn(i64i) agreed to pay Mrs. Walker ten shillings for the first year. In 1673 the town records show that two " dame teachers " were paid a total sum of ten shillings, or five shillings each, for the year. But COLONIAL SCHOOLS^iUSSS!^ 21 these '' dame teachers " undoubtedly collected the con- ventional tuition-fee for supplementary support. Town of Springfield (Mass.) — 1682. " The Selectmen agreed with Goodvvife Mirick, to encourage her in the good work of training up of children and teaching children to read, that she should have 3d. a week for every child that she takes to perform this good work for." Town of Hadley (Mass.). — 1749, March 13. It was voted that the committee should " hire three School Dames for three or four months in the Summer season to learn children to read." In 1752 it was voted that " 30 pounds be improved to hire a scool master all the fall of the year ; and that the other 30 pounds be improved to hire Scoole Dames in the Summer." Town of Salem (Mass.). — " 1764, May 16. Order for ^10 to pay for learning the poorest children to read at women's schools," " 1771, Feb. 12. Widow Abigail Fowler, a noted 'school dame' finished her earthly labors. She was in her 68th year, and began to teach children before she was 18, and continued so to do till her de- cease, with the exception of a few years after she was married." Education of Girls. — The records of the town of Hamp- _ton (N. H.),j64g^ show that"~nTg~-fTr st sch ot?t"estaBlIshed there was open to '' al l the childrenor~o r_ belonging ^t6^ our town, l?ot /i nialTand female^ In most of the rural town or district schools estabHshed after that date in New Hampshire and the small rural districts of Massachusetts the schools were open to both girls and boys. The grammar-sc hool tow n s lagg f^d far bphinH thp mral Hk, frjctsj^n pr oviding ^ for the edu catio n of gir ls, seeming to have been content with English precedents. Town of Salem (Mass.). — 181 2, June 11. The historian of this town quotes from the records of this date, as follows : " In the four public schools for English there are 465 boys and 295 girls. The latter at- tended, as usual, an hour at noon, and another in the afternoon. The Grammar school (Latin) had 40 pupils." To the credit of this town it may be here stated that 13 years later when it had become an incor- porated city, two high schools were opened, one for boys and another 22 HISTOR Y OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS for girls. " At this time," says the historian, " the tuition of females for an hour each day during a part of the year at the masters' schools seems to have been relinquished." COLONIAL SCHOOL LAWS IN NEW ENGLAND. Turning to legislative records, we find that in 1642 the General Court of Massachusetts enacted that the selectmen of every town *' should have a vigilant eye over their brethren and neighbors to see that none of them shall suffer so much barbarism in any of their fami- lies as not to endeavor to teach by themselves or others, their children and apprentices so much learning as to en- able them to read perfectly the English tongue, under a penalty of 20s for each neglect therein." The Connecti- cut code of 1650 contained a similar provision. The General Court of the Plymouth Colony (1658) proposed " unto the several Townshipes of this Jurisdic- tion, as a thing they ought to take into their serious con- sideration, that some course may be taken that in every Towne there may be a schoolmaster sett up to traine up children to reading and writing." In 1677, the General Court of the Plymouth Colony made the fol- lowing order : " That in whatsoever Townshipe in this Government, consisting of 50 families or upwards, any meet man shall be obtained to teach a Gramer Scoole, such townshippe shall allow at least twelve pounds in currant merchantable pay, to be raised by rate on all the inhabitants of such towne, and those that have the more immede- ate benefit thereof by their children's going to school, with what others may voluntarily give to promote so good a work and general, shall make up the residue Necessarie to maintaine the same ; and that the proffits of the Cape ffishing heretofore ordered to maintain a Gramer Scoole in the colonic be distributed to such towns as have Gramer Scooles, for the maintainance thereof," etc. COLONIAL SCHOOLS 23 The Mass achusetts Colony law of 1647 required ever^ tovvnof fifty families or upwards to appoint a teacher to instruct children in reading and writin g ; and every town ^ot one hundred families '' to s et up a grammar school, the expense to be borne by the town or by the parents as the town may determine." This was pnl y a legal recomrn enda- tion, as no penalty was attached for not carrying it into effect. The Connectic ut Colony la w passed a few years later (1650) enacted that every town hav ing__^eveiity househo lders, or upwar ds, should mai ntain a school for eleven months each year, anc^ that a grammar sch ool should be set up jn every head or co unt y town. F or the support of such schools a tax of forty shillings ''upon every thousand pounds in the lists of the respective towns " was levied and collected by colonial law. The New Haven Code (1656) ordered "That all Parents and Mas- ters doe duly endeavor, either by their own ability and labour, or by improving such Schoolmaster, or other helps and means, as the Plan- tation doth afford, or the family may conveniently provide, that all their Children and Apprentices, as they grow capable, may, through God's blessing, attain at least so much, as to be able to read the Scriplures and other good and profitable printed Books in the English tongue, being their native language, and in some competent measure, to understand the main grounds and principles of Christian religion necessary to Salvation." H^ If COLONIAL SCHOOLS IN NEW YORK. The Dutch West India Company established trading posts on Manhattan Island and at various other points in the province of New Netherlands, a few years before the English made a lodgment in New England. The church and the school were established together. These sturdy republicans brought with them some of the best of the 24 HISTOR Y OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS civil institutions of Holland ; such as the written ballot, public records of land titles and legal documents, and elementary schools for the education of the children of the common people. In 1633 Adam Roelandsen was sent over from the mother country to take charge of the school in the town of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. This first public school with an established record was called '' The School of the Dutch Reformed Protes- tant Church." It is still in existence in New York city, and is claimed to be the oldest school in the United States. Dutch Colonial Schools. — Schools were opened at Al- bany (1650) ; Flatbush (1659); Brooklyn (1661). In the town of New Amsterdam a Latin grammar school, or classical school, was established in 1659 and was supported partly by tuition fees and partly by taxation. These early schools seem to have been chiefly managed by the Dutch Reformed Protestant Church ; but as the town settlements grew stronger the schools were maintained, in part, or entirely, by public moneys. The t endency was in the s ame g^eneral direction as in the rural set tlern^nts i n New Englan d, that is, towards providing elementary inst ruction for the many r ather than aliraining in" Lat in^ T orthe few . Instruction was given in reading and writ- ing the Dutch language, in arithmetic, in the catechism of the Dutch Church, and in the Bible. Those early set- tlers, like the Pilgrims and Puritans, highly prized the right to read the Bible and to worship God according to the dictates of conscience. They held in living remem- brance the long and bloody war which their ancestors had waged against Spain, and in defense of civil and religious liberty. These colonists from Holland brought with them advanced ideas about elementary schools for the educa- tion of the common people. At this time the republic of COLONIAL SCHOOLS 25 Holland was the leading nation of Europe in commerce, industries, civil liberty, and the general education of its people.^ English Schools. — But this pro vince w as seizedbyJEng^ land in 1664 , and the Dutch schools were arrested in devel- opment. Under English rule the royal governors were unfriendly to schools that were not under the protecting care of the English Church. They vetoed several attempts to establish common schools managed directly by the people. They established several Latin grammar schools, and founded (1754) King's College, now Columbia Uni- versity. One governor, in a letter to the home govern- ment, urged a charter for King's College in the town of New York, " not only on account of religion, but of good policy, to preve7it the growth of republican principles ivhich already too much prevail in the colonies^ During the reign of King James, the colony was forbidden to have a printing press. Meantime, the strongest of the Dutch colonial schools maintained a lingering existence under teachers selected by the Dutch Reformed Church, a right guaranteed to them under the terms of surrender in 1664. Thus for a long period there were t wo rival sets of public schools ; one class under the control of t he C hurch of Englan d, the ' other governed by the Dutch Reformed Protestant Church. ^ Both were eventually fused into a c omposite system of free common Schools. For a century, however, " The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts," under the auspices of the Church of England, looked after the establishment of parish schools, which were mainly supported by tuition fees. From 1704 to 1 See Motley's " Dutch Republic," also Campbell's " The Puritan in Holland, England, and America." 26 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 1776 this society established twenty-one schools. These schools provided for the education of a part of the chil- dren, but not for all. They were good in their way, and were the natural development of civil and political con- ditions. The common-school record of New York, chiefly made up after the adoption of the Constitution, will again be considered in a succeeding chapter. " We must be con- tent for the present," says Andrew S. Draper, " with the statement, which is abundantly supported by the facts, that under the mistaken policy of the English rule, the schools languished, and during the progress of the war for independence which raged with great fierceness over our territory, they were nearly or quite obliterated. The fury of war had closed the doors or entirely extinguished the single college, and, practically, all the academies and schools." But the Dutch and the English schools together trained up several generations into a patriotic people. During the Revolutionary War New York supplied her full quota of troops and answered all requisitions of the Continental Congress for money. The descendants of the Dutch set- tlers proved themselves worthy of their ancestors in Hol- land who had defied the power of Spain, and established a Dutch republic. English Puritans and Dutch Puritans stood together for independence. COLONIAL SCHOOLS Ijj ^PENNSYLVANIA. William Penn sent the first colony of English Quakers to Philadelphia half a century after the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth. The desire for religious liberty led to the foundation of Pennsylvania as well as to that of New COLONIAL SCHOOLS 27 England. The tolerant government of the province soon attracted great numbers of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, German Lutherans, Swedish Lutherans, Dutch Mennon- ites, Moravians, English Episcopalians, and Catholics. In 1685 only about half the inhabitants were of English descent. The Scotch-Irish, driven from the north of Ireland by the decay of the linen industry, came in great numbers, and the German immigration from the Palati- nate was large. The population of the province rose from 20,000 in 1701 to 250,000 in 1749. It has been estimated that at the beginning of the Revolution about one third of the population of Pennsylvania was of Scotch- Irish stock. 1 Pa rish Schools . — It was impossible for these divergent peoples to act together in organizing public schools. Consequently education was provided for by typical parish and *' society " schools under the control of zealous religious sects. These sectarian school s were supported by tu ition fee s, though the children of the poor were some- times admitted as free charity or pauper pupils. They educated a^ part of the children, but not all . It was not possible at that time for the people to conceive of schools disconnected from church or society control. But the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian schools and the German schools educated their children to some purpose ; for this fighting stock contributed a majority of the Pennsylvania quota of troops during the Revolution. In Pennsylvania one third of the population was made up of Quakers who had conscientious scruples against bearing arms. The fight- ing men of this state came chiefly from the Scotch-Irish and the Germans. ' " The Puritan in Holland, England, and America," by Douglas Campbell (1892). 28 HIS TOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS The Provincial Council in 1683, on the i6thof October established a private school by the following enactment : ^ " The Governor and Provincial Council having taken into their serious consideration the great necessity there is of a School Master for ye instruction & Sober Education of youth in the towne of Phila- delphia, sent for Enoch Flower, an inhabitant of the said towne who for twenty years past hath been exercised in that care and employment in England, to whom having communicated their minds, he embraced it upon the following terms : To learn to read English, 4s by the Quarter, to learn to read & write and cast accounts, 8s by the Quarter ; for boarding a scholar, that is to say, diet, washing, lodging, and school- ing, ten pounds for one whole year." Fr iends^ Public Schoo l. — A gramma r school was char- tered by the Council in i68q _ '* at the request7costs, and charges of the people called Quakers." This school is stil) in existence as the ** Friends' Public School." The petitioners stipulated to instruct the rich at reaso nable, rateg^T the pn nr to he "' ^r hooled f ojuiothing." '* With a few legislative resolutions," says Dr. J. P. Wickersham in his '' History of Education in Pennsylvania," " none of which were in the direction of the common school idea, the historian of this colony may dismiss the considera- tion of education for well nigh a hundred years." BepjanmiJEranklin, remembering his three years' course in a Mbston grammar school, made a resolute endeavor to educate popular opinion up to the point of establishing free common schools, but he failed as Jefferson afterwards failed in Virginia. He su ccee ded, however, in_securirig a chartered acad^my^in'rhiladelphia (1755), with the fSfee_departme4vts-Q£ -charity scTi ooI7 academy, and col- lege. This triple school eventually was developed into ^ Quoted from Dr. Blackmar's " Bulletin of Information," Bureau of Education, 1890. COLONIAL SCHOOLS 29 the University of Pennsylvania, and Franklin's school itself was a modified form of Penn's grammar school of 1697. It was not until after the adopti on of the Con sti- tution that any reaTTieadway was made in establishing puBfic schools, and eventhe n progress wa sslow. COLONIAL SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA. The English settlers in Virginia, and their descendants for more than a century and a half after the settlement of Jamestown (1607), were content with priv ate tutor s and parish_schools established by the Church of England, supplemented by a few grammar schools, aca demies^^ gejniinaries, and_the^oll ege of William and M ary\ All of these schools were syp ported chjefly by tuition fees. They taught the children whose paTents~couM"afford to pay for an education, and left large numbers in the rural districts with little or no schooling. In Virginia the system of land tenure, the absence of town government, a scattered rural population, the parish schools of the Church of England, and the institution of slavery, — all stood in the way of public schools for nearly two centuries. In early colonial times (1671) Governor Berkeley placed himself on record as a bluff old English Tory by declaring : " I thank God there are no free schools or printing, and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years." Vir- ginia was filled up by a homogeneous people from Eng- land, strong in their attachment to the Established Church. They clung to the civil institutions of England with extreme tenacity until long after the Revolution. George Washington was taught to read and write and cipher in a parish school. He was taught surveying by a private tutor. He was trained to arms in the French and 30 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS Indian War, and was the one man in*all the colonies best fitted to command the Continental Army, and to organize civil government as first president of the United States. In 1776, Thomas Jefferson retired from the Continental Congress and became a member of the legislature of Virginia. By his efforts the laws of entail, primogeniture, and the union of Church and State were removed from the statute books ; but the hostility of the ecclesiastical and landed interests proved an impassable barrier to his earnest efforts in behalf of a system of public schools. The " old field schools," supported by tuition fees, were considered to be sufficient for the common people. But the work of the early educational institutions of the Old Dominion must not be underrated. They gave to the new republic great statesmen like Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Patrick Henry, and sent into the Continental Army a body of patriotic soldiers worthy of their great commander-in-chief. SLOW COLONIAL PROGRESS. During the first century of settlement the colonists were mainly engaged in fighting the Indians, subduing the wilderness, and organizing civil government. In the second century there came the deadly contests with the French and Indians, soon after to be followed by the long and desperate struggle for independence. During much of this period the people guarded their homes, their churches and their schools with musket always at hand. Without compunc- tion they exterminated Indians, for otherwise they them- selves would have vanished from off the earth. Taxation was heavy ; the people were poor ; and educational prog- ress was of necessity slow and irregular. But it was COLONIA,L SCHOOLS 3 1 during this very period of neglect by the mother country and misrule by royal governors, that in New England the common schools took root and grew strong. Almost from the beginning these schools were kept under direct control of town officers, or under the decision of a general town meeting, or the democratic vote of a school-district meeting. If in the beginning the schools were enveloped in an atmosphere more or less ecclesiastical, it should be remembered that deep religious convictions constituted the strength of Puritan character. If at first the right of voting was limited exclusively to church members, the elective franchise was soon extended to all town free- holders. If some of the schools at first were partly sup- ported by tuition fees, they sopn became free, and at all times received pupils without distinction of class or caste, and, in rural districts, without distinction of sex. The fact that these primitive common schools survived in the struggle with private schools and denominational institu- tions proves their adaptation to the needs of a free people. The Colonial Crisis. — For more than a century these schools gave to the great mass of the common people a fair elementary education. Then there came the great colonial crisis which summoned men to arms against the oppression of the mother country. The minute-men who rushed into battle at Lexington, and Concord, and Bunker Hill, had been trained to arms in the French and Indian War, and drilled into intelligent patriots in the common schools. They knew what they were fighting for. These '' embattled farmers " stood by Washington in the siege of Boston, and drove out the British troops and a thousand colonial " tories," who sailed away to Halifax on board the British fleet. They followed their great commander to New York, and Trenton, and Valley 32 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS Forge. They enlisted for the war in the Continental Army, and when, after the final triumph at Yorktown, that army was disbanded, they constituted, according to the records of the war department, a majority of the rank and file of the veterans of the war. No wonder the great Virginian exclaimed : " God bless the New England troops! " But the New England troops did not stand alone in the long battle for independence. The Continental Con- gress, on the 14th of June, 1775, made the beginning of a regular army by enacting ** that six companies of expert riflemen be immediately raised in Pennsylvania, two in Maryland, and two in Virginia. These were the first troops levied by direct act of Congress. It was a call to frontiersmen of the Alleghanies who were experts in the use of the famous backwoods rifle, and were trained in Indian warfare. The hardy pioneers of western Pennsyl- vania had met in a pi;blic meeting at Hanover, June 4, 1774, and passed defiant resolutions, the last of which read as follows : " 4th. That in the event of Great Britain attempting to force unjust laws upon us by the strength of arms, our cause we leave to Heaven and our rifles." " On the 1 8th of July, 1775, the first company of rifle- men, Nagel's Berks County * Dutchmen', arrived at Cambridge, and within less than sixty days from the date of the resolution of Congress, 1430 backwoodsmen, instead of the 810 required, had been raised, equipped by themselves, and had joined the army before Boston, after marching from four to seven hundred miles over difficult roads — all without a farthing being advanced by the Con- tinental treasury." ^ 1 " The Birth of the American Army," by Horace Kephart, Harper's Magazine, May, 1899. COLONIAL SCHOOLS 33 The riflemen of Western Virginia and Maryland re- sponded to the call with equal promptness. Daniel Morgan, just returned from an Indian war, led the Vir- ginians. " About two-thirds of the riflemen were of Scotch-Irish descent," says Kephart, " and nearly all of the remainder were ' Pennsylvania Dutchmen ' — that is to say, of Swiss or Palatine origin. Many of the Marylanders and Virginians were immigrants from western Pennsyl- vania. The famous rifle corps which Morgan aftenvards formed from marksmen picked from the whole army is usually referred to as ' Mor- gan's Virginians,' but, as a matter of fact, two thirds of them were Pennsylvanians, including a considerable number of Pennsylvania Germans. . . . When Washington, one day riding along his lines, saw the fringed hunting-shirts of the Virginians approaching, the reserve of his naturally undemonstrative nature broke down. At the sight, he stopped ; the riflemen drew nearer, and the commander, stepping in front, made the military salute, exclaiming, ' General, from the right bank of the Potomac ! ' Washington dismounted, c^me to meet the battalion, and going down the line with both arms extended shook hands with the riflemen one by one, tears rolhng down his cheeks as he did so." These hardy sharpshooters did effective service in the siege of Boston. They enlisted in the Continental Army and fought during the war or fell on the field of battle. AM. PUB. SCH. — 3 CHAPTER II EARLY AMERICAN SCHOOLS The ^seven yea^^_w ar for independ ence was a trying time for the people of the new republic or confederation. Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were successively occupied by British armies. C ommerce wa sin terrupte d or sus pended, taxation was hi^h, and '' ha jj_t imes " every - where prevailed. From the close of the Revolutionary War to the ratification of the Constitution and the inaug- uration of Washington, there was also a seven years* period of political unrest, of scarcity of coin and superabundance of depreciated paper money, of high taxation, of general poverty and dissatisfaction. A general census taken in 1 790, one year after the final ratification of the Constitution by nine states, showed the population of the United States to be 3,929,000. At this time Virginia had 747,000 inhabitants, or about one-fifth of the entire population of the whole country. Massachusetts, including the Province of Maine, had, in round num- bers, a population of 475,000 ; Pennsylvania, 434,000 ; North Carolina, 394,000 ; New York, 340,000 ; Maryland, 320,000 ; South Carolina, 240,000; Connecticut, 238,000; New Jersey, 184,000; New Hamp- shire, 142,000; Rhode Island, 69,000; Georgia, 82,000; Delaware, 59,000; Kentucky (soon after admitted) 74,000 ; and Vermont, 85,000. The New England States together had a population of a little more than one million ; the four Middle States had a little less than a million ; and the Southern States footed up 1,657,000 inhabitants, including negro slaves as "per- sons.'* In 1786, four years before this first general census, the 34 EARL V AMERICAN SCHOOLS 35 population of the three great commercial cities of the country ranked as follows : Philadelphia, 32,205 ; New- York, 24,500 ; Boston, 14,640. At the beginning of the Revolution the population of the colonies was estimated at 2,750,000; at the close (1783) 3,250,000. The preceding statistics will show, in part, the general conditions under which the several states began to turn their attention to the organization of public schools. At this time there were in this country no steamboats, no railroads, and no canals. Roads were bad, and land trans- portation was slow and_costly. A few small cotton mills "and woolen mills in Massachusetts and Rhode Island had just been set up with rough imitations of the spinning and weaving machinery used in England. Arkwright's great invention of the spinning-jenny had been jealously guarded by the British government, and it was not until eighteen years afterwards that the first rough drawings were se- cured in America. At length, William Som^rs, of Balti- more, went to England and brought back models and de- scriptions of machines for carding and spinning wool. He applied to the legislature of Massachusetts for aid in set- ting up his models, and was granted $100 for that purpose. Application was also made in behalf of two Scotchmen by the name of Barr, who had some knowledge of the spin- ning-jenny. " The General Court voted to the Barrs," says John Bach McMaster, '' six tickets in a State Land Lottery, and out of the money they drew, the first stock- card and spinning-jenny in the United States was made. It was not, however, till Washington had been one year president that Samuel Slater put up, in the workshops of Almy & Brown, the first series of machines worthy to be called copies of the famous inventions of Arkwright." 1 McMaster's " History of the People of the United States." 36 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS Thus were made the beginninga-oL-C Qtton factories and woolen mills, that soon brought about a radical change in the industrial conditions of New England, and led up to the rapid growth of cities, towns, and villages, and an era of unexampled financial and commercial prosperity. These new ind ustrial co nditions, in turn, soon led to a, ^corresponding- devHo pment of commo n_ schools. About this time, also, there came the invention of the cotton-gin by Eli Whitney, of Connecticut (1792), which greatly stimulated the production of cotton, and laid the founda- tion of the wealth, power, and prosperity of the cotton- growing states of the South. In 1786, the Continental Congress formally adopted a decimal system of currency, but the people were reluctant to change their local cus- toms and usages in money matters. The act creating the United States Mint was not passed until 1792, and the first regular issue of money was the copper cent of 1793. Meantime all kinds of European coins, bogus" coins, and depreciated paper money, were used as a circulating me- dium. The United States Patent Office was established by act of Congress, April 10, 1790, and to Thomas Jef- ferson is due the honor of securing it. After the adoption of the Constitution, the inaugura- tion of Washington, and the funding of the national debt by the wise policy of Alexander Hamilton, the Secre- tary of the Treasury, the new nation entered upon an era of great industrial prosperity and rapid expansion of territory. The people had cut loose from the civil gov- ernment of the mother country, and from English educa- tional ideals. Colonial schools begaji_a__sio]^eyohrd^oji_ _[nto an A merix.a n system of public schools adapte d to the changed civil conditi ons under a re pu blican form of gov- ernment. The separation of State from Church was fol- EARL Y AMERICAN Sch^&Si^^SSi^^ 37 lowed by the gradual release of schools from denomiria-_^ tional control. Within a decadealter the inauguration of Washington, new constitutions were adopted by eight states, in which the right of suffrage was greatly extended, and religious tests were either modified or abolished. The war of 1812-15 greatly intensified the American dem- ocratic spirit, especially in the valley of the Mississippi. State Control of Schools. — The new Constitution con- tained no section on public education. EducationaUc^Oz^^ ditions in the thirteen original states were so divergent tHatlT would have been impossible for the delegates in the Constitutional Convention to agree on any educational provision. At this period the idea of universal education had not entered into the minds of statesmen. Thus the maintenance of public schools was left as a matter of state rights. Of the state constitutions that were framed soon after the Declaration of Independence, only five mentioned education, and only two contained school provisions of any practical value. Thus the establishment and main- tenance of schools were left to enactments by state legis- latures. These enactments, in turn, were at first only general outlines, so that the direct government of the schools was long left, as in colonial times, mainly to the local regulations of city, county, town, or district, — that is, und er immediate contro l of the people. LAND RESERVATIONS FOR SCHOOLS. The Old Northwest. — Virginia (1784) ceded to the general government her shadowy title to wild lands ex- tending westward to the Mississippi, with the exception of the Virginia Military Bounty Lands in the Northwest Territory. Connecticut yielded her claims, with the ex- 38 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS ception of the Western Reserve. New York, Pennsyl- vania, Massachusetts, North CaroHna and South CaroHna, Maryland and Georgia, one by one reluctantly gave up their somewhat indefinite claims to other parts of the western wilderness. It consequently became necessary for Congress to outline a plan for governing this vast extent of territory and for disposing of the public lands. Fortu- nately for common schools and state universities the policy pursued was wise and far-reaching. The ordinance of 1787, entitled "An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States North- west of the River Ohio," passed July 13, by the Con- tinental Congress, established the territory as one dis- trict, but provided for its future subdivision into " not less than three nor more than five states." It prohibited primogeniture by providing that the estates of deceased persons should " descend to and be distributed among their children and the descendants of a deceased child in equal parts ; " and secured to the widow of the deceased " her third part of the real estate for life, and one third part of the personal estate." And '' for extending the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty, to fix and establish those principles as the basis of all laws, con- stitutions, and governments, which forever hereafter shall be formed in the said territory," it ordained a bill of rights in six articles. Article First declared that no " person demeaning himself in a peaceable and orderly manner shall ever be molested on account of his mode of worship or religious sentiments, in the said territory." Article Second secured the writ of habeas corpus and the right of trial by jury ; and declared that " No law ought ever to be made which should interfere with or affect private contracts or engagements, bo7ia fide, and without fraud, previously formed," Article Third declared that " Religion, morality, and knowledge, be- EARL V AMERICAN SCHOOLS 39 ing necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged." Article Sixth, most important of all for the future of the United States, read as follows : " There shall be neither slavery nor involun- tary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted : Provided, always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original states, such fugi- tive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid." Ten days after the passage of this famous ordinance, there was passed a supplementary act relating to the survey and sale of public lands, which reserved the i6th section (640 acres) of each township for the support of common schools, and also set apart two townships (46,080 acres) " to be given perpetually for the purposes of a seminary of learning [or university], to be applied to the intended object by the legislature of the state." This reservation of two townships in each future state for university purposes was secured, largely, through the ef- forts of Nathan Dane, Rufus King, Rufus Putnam, and Manasseh Cutler. Land System. — The beginning of the present land system of the United States had been made two years before, by act of Congress (May 20, 1785), under which government land was to be surveyed in townships of six miles square, laid off by meridian range lines and parallels of latitude. Each section included 640 acres, and each township 36 sections, or 23,040 acres. This land was to be sold for one dollar an acre, in tracts of not less than one entire section of 640 acres. Section 16 of each town- ship was to be reserved for common-school purposes, which provision was secured by Rufus King, a member of the Congressional committee, at the suggestion of Timothy 40 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS Pickering.^ The committee report also contained a res- ervation of one section in each township for the purposes of religion, but this was stricken out by Congress. This reservation of the i6th section for common schools was 6 7 i8 5 8 17 4 9 t 3 10 15 2 II 14 I* 12 13 19 30 20 29 21 28 22 23 24 27 26 25 31 32 33 34 35 36 Diagram Showing the Division of a Township. * Section. t School Section. reaffirmed in the land act of July 23, 1787, and supple- mented by the reservation of two entire townships in each new state to be formed out of the Northwest Territory, for university purposes. The sale of public lands was a vexed question in Congress until May 20, 1800, when a land act was passed on the recommendation of William Henry Harrison, then a delegate from the Northwest Ter- ritory. Among other things, this law provided that pub- lic lands should be sold at two dollars an acre, but only one twentieth was to be paid down at the time of purchase the remainder to be paid in installments running through five years. This act also provided for the opening of four government land offices in the western territory. Half a century later (1848) Congress enacted that in states there- after formed the 36th section, in addition to the i6th sec- tion, should be reserved for common school purposes. ^ See McMaster's " History of the People of the United States," Vol. III. EARLY AMERICAN SCHOOLS 41 The supplementary act of July 23, 1787, is often re- ferred to as a part of the ordinance of 1787, passed ten days before, on- July 13th. It became a precedent for the rule afterwards followed in the organization of new states, though in a modified form after 1889. The passage of this ordinance was hastened, if not ab- solutely secured, by the demands of the disbanded veter- ans of the Continental Army, who had been paid off in certificates of indebtedness worth ten or twelve cents on the dollar. They had returned to their homes poor. In 1786 General Rufus Putnam and General Benjamin Tupper, both veterans of the Revolution, organized an as- sociation, under the name of the " Ohio Company" and issued a circular addressed to officers and soldiers of the late army who might be, under the ordinance of Congress, entitled to lands in the Northwest Territory. The pur- pose of the Ohio Company was to raise a fund, not to ex- ceed one million of dollars, in depreciated continental -cer- tificates, and with it to purchase and settle a tract of land in the " Ohio Country." Putnam, Parsons, and Manasseh Cutler were made directors. Brigadier General Rufus Putnam was a graduate of a New England common school who had been successively a blacksmith, a millwright, an engineer, and an able military officer during the Revolu- tion. Dr. Manasseh Cutler started in life as a lawyer, then became a clergyman, an educator, and a shrewd busi- ness and political agent. Parsons and Cutler went on to New York city to make a business proposition to the Congress there in session. The members of Congress, anxious to sell the public lands, lent a ready ear to the claims of veterans of the war who wished to buy and settle on a part of the public domain. Cutler and Parsons proposed to buy one and a 42 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS half million acres for one million dollars, to be paid for in government certificates at par value. But the conditions exacted were that civil rights should be guaranteed in the territory, and that slavery should be prohibited. The committee, consisting of Carrington and Lee of Virginia, Nathan Dane of Massachusetts, Kean of South Carolina, and White of New York, reported a bill which was amended by the sixth article, prohibiting slavery, offered by Nathan Dane, and was passed by Congress, July 13, 1787, with only one dissenting vote, and that vote was from the state of New York. The states that voted in favor of the sixth article were Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. When the land contract was finally concluded with the officers of the Treasury, it included the sale of five millions of acres at two thirds of a dollar an acre, of which the Ohio Company took a mil- lion and a half acres, and other land operators secured three and a half millions of acres.^ As United States certificates of debt were worth at that time only twelve cents on a dollar, the cash price in this great land transac- tion was eight or nine cents an acre. But it proved a good bargain for the United States. After the passage of this Magna Charta of land ordi- nances, the disbanded veterans of the Revolution took up their peaceful line of march into the wilderness of the Northwest Territory. The first band of settlers from New England numbered only forty-seven, not quite half the number of Pilgrims that landed at Plymouth 167 years before. Under the leadership of Rufus Putnam this little company of pioneers started in November, 1 For details of this transaction, see " McMaster's Historj^ of the People of the United States," Vol. I. EARL V AMERICAN SCHOOLS 43 wintered thirty miles above Pittsburg on the banks of the Youghiogheny River, built a flat boat which they named the "■ Mayflower," and early in April, floated down the Monongahela into the Ohio, and landed in the wilderness of the West, as their ancestors had settled the wilderness in the East. Dr. Manasseh Cutler soon despatched a second party of settlers who followed in the wake of Putnam and united with the first expedition in the set- tlement of Marietta in Ohio. These pioneers carried town government and the common school into the North- west Territory and founded a "■ Greater New England " in the heart of the Mississippi Valley. The eastern contin- gent was swelled by veterans of the Revolution from New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. It is estimated that ten thousand emigrants poured into the Ohio region during the year 1788; and in ten years it was fortified by log schoolhouses and made sure forever to free labor. SCHOOLS IN THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. Ohio became a state in 1802 ; Indiana in 1816; Illinois in 1818; Michigan in 1837; and Wisconsin in 1848. In these states the school land reservations were not immedi- ately available, but the recognition of public schools by the general government greatly stimulated the educational efforts of pioneer settlers. The money to pay the first teachers at Marietta, in Ohio, was sent on from Massa- chusetts by Dr. Manasseh Cutler. The first state school law in Ohio (1821), was modeled after that of New York. It provided for the subdivision of townships into districts, the appointment of school committee men, and the levy- ing of rate bills. Four years later (1825), the law was re- 44 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS vised, and provision was made for levying a county tax for school purposes. In 1837 a state superintendent of schools was appointed by the legislature. In 1853 a law was enacted making each township a school district, and creating a township board of education. This board was authorized to establish a high school in each township upon a majority vote of the people, and to levy a tax for its support not to exceed two mills on the dollar. As a result of this town provision, Ohio ranks as one of the foremost states in respect to- the number and excellence of high schools. The other states of this territory de- veloped their school systems later in time, but after the manner of Ohio. All had the usual number of private and denominational schools and colleges, but these were soon overshadowed by the rapidly developed common schools and high schools. Here, as in all the other new states of the West and the Pacific Coast, public education proceeded from the common school upward to the high school, and, finally, t o the college^and the_free state^ uni- versity. The precedents of both Old England and New ' England were in a measure reversed. Up to this time it had been generally believed that the only possible scheme of education began with the foundation of the college or the university for educating the professional classes, which was afterwards to be extended downward through the Latin grammar school to the parish school, the charity school, or the common school for the mass of the people. SCHOOL LEGISLATION IN NEW ENGLAND. Taking up once more the subject of common schools in New England, we find that the Massachusetts law of 1789 required '' every town of one hundred families or upwards to maintain one school six months in the year, or two or EARLY AMERICAN SCHOOLS 45 more schools for terms that should together equal six months." Towns of two hundred families and upwards were also required to maintain a grammar school. This law required instruction in '' orthography, reading, writing, the English language, geography, and decent behavior." It ordained that the masters or mistresses of schools for primary instruction should be approved in respect to character and qualifications. It provided for official examinations of schools by the ministers, the selectmen, or a special school committee. It authorized the selectmen to divide the town into school districts. This law was soon amended (1800), by empowering the district to levy a tax for building a schoolhouse ; was again amended (1817), by making the district a corporation, with power to sue and be sued, etc. ; was further amended (1827), by requiring towns having districts to choose for each district a *' prudential committee man," who should have the care of school property and the power to ap- point teachers. The law allowed these committee men to be elected by vote of the electors in special district elec- tions, or to be appointed in the general town meeting. Most of the. districts preferred to elect their own com- mittee man, who held office for the " term of one year." Thus the school district became a political unit, subject only to the general state law. The amendments of 1827 provided that the district schools should be maintained by a compulsory town tax. Notwithstanding some de- fects, this law contained several foundation principles, which were subsequently adopted by the other New Eng- land states, by New York, and by the Western states. In Massachusetts it was disastrous to many of the original town " Latin grammar schools," but, on the other hand, it led to the foundation of academies. If these new insti- 46 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS tutions fitted fewer boys for college, they recognized the higher education of girls, and took a strong hold on the common people. The academies, when their usefulness came to an end, were superseded by high schools for both girls and boys, with a classical course for some pupils and an English course for those who desired it. In fact, the experiments of the people under this law were only in- cidents in the great wave of American spirit that swept over the whole country. There had prevailed a strong tendency to local self-government, as opposed to central- ized power. On this point William T. Harris remarks : " The central power had been largely theocratic, or ecclesiastical, at the beginning. The reaction against ecclesiastical control went too ifar in the direction of in- dividualism. The farthest swing of the pendulum in this direction was reached in 1828, when the districts obtained exclusive control of the schools in all matters except the examination of teachers." In 1795 New York provided for the election of three district school trustees, having power to appoint teachers, build schoolhouses, etc. California, in 185 1, made a sim- ilar provision, which is still suited to existing conditions. In variously modified forms like provisions are now found in most of the states of the West and the Pacific Coast. Town or County. — I n New En gl and the to wn, from the beginning, was the unit of local civil go vernment, the county bei ng_us ed for judicial p u£poses_only^ In the Southern states t he__rr>nni-y _was the ^ unit of governme nt^ the^town being_xinly an election distr ict and the juris dic- tion of a justice^ f the peace ^ These reversed conditions, though ifT modified forms, still exist at the present time. In New York, Pennsylvania, and the Western states there is a compromise of these two extremes. In a thickly EARL V AMERICAN SCHOOLS 47 settled manufacturing state, cities, villages, and towns are multiplied, and town government becomes relatively- strong. In sparsely settled agricultural states, the county government dominates that of the town. It is evident that the school sy stem must of necessity be develope d along the lines of the civil governm ent. The law of 1789 ill Its amended forms served its purpose in Massachusetts for half a century, but as population became dense, as cities and villages sprang up, the tendency grew strong to revert to the original town schools under control o f town governmen t. The other New England states at various later periods followed the lead of Massachusetts. But under different civil conditions in the Middle, the Western, and the Pacific states, the district schools with local school trustee s grew strong, and they still nourish with undiminished vigor. In twenty states dis- trict school trustees are elected by direct vote of the elec- tors in district elections.^ But they are now under the supervision of county superintendents, or county boards of education, and are governed by specific provisions of state law. In most of these states a heavy state property tax is levied for the support, in part, of comipon schools. Schools in Boston. — Turning again to schools in Boston we find that as late as 1818 it was a law of the Common- wealth of Massachusetts that " No youth shall be sent to the grammar schools unless they shall have learned in some other school, or in some other way, to read the Eng- lish language, by spelling the same." " The laws likewise provided," says Wightman in his " Annals of the Primary Schools of Boston," " for the establishment of preparatory schools where grammar was not taught ; but to this time (181 8) there 1 See " The Social Unit in the Public School System of the United States." Report of the Commissioner of Education, Vol. 2, 1895-96. 48 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS were no public schools in Boston where children could be qualitied for admission to the ' Grammar Schools.' The age at which they were eligible was fixed at seven years, and but few were ever admitted under that age. It was consequently necessary for parents to send their children io private schools." Boston in the year iSiowasa city of 33,250 inhabitants. '* There are seven public schools, viz. : one Latin gram- mar school, three English grammar schools, and three for writing and arithmetic, supported wholly at the expense of the town."-^ It was in 18 18, one hundred and eighty-eight years after the settlement of Boston, and four years before Boston became an incorporated city, that the selectmen of the town appointed, in answer to a petition from the people, a Primary School Committee to establish and control primary schools for children under seven years of age. Such schools were soon opened and made free to both boys and girls between four and sev^nyears of age. " At a legal meeting of the inhabitants of fflh^wn of Boston, held at Faneuil Hall, on Monday, the 3isl^^ of May, A.D. 1819, the following report was read, accepS»and ordered to be printed and distributed for the information of the inhabit- ants. Attest, Thomas Clark, Town Clerk." So reads the town record. This report of the committee shows that they had established twenty schools and admitted to them over 1 100 children. The report further shows that wo- men were appointed as teachers, and that in most of the schools the girls were taught knitting or sewing as well as reading. The town of Boston at this time had about 40,000 inhabitants. But however slow in pr oviding for free _primary school s, Boston Jinally took the lea d in main- taining free high schools; in supporting modern graded ^ Morse's Geography, Boston, 181 2. EARLY AMERICAN SCHOOLS 49 grRm'-^f^£JTj22Li-^^ priin;^ry scliools ; and ill building substantial and well planned schoolhouses. In 185 1 Nathan Bishop became the first city superintendent of schools. He was succeeded by John D. Philbrick, who held the office for eighteen years, and by his wise admin- istration brought the Boston schools to a high degree of excellence. Parish Schools. — Q onnecticu t was the only New Eng- land state that made the unfortunate exp eriment of sur- rendering, in part, the control of ^public-sc hools int o th< ^ hands of '* scho ol societies." This experiment began in -VjvThy makiTig the church parish a school district, and by putting into the hands of '' school societies " the local management of schools, and. school moneys. These " societies " were not strictly sectarian, but they had strong church affiliations. When the state had secured a school fund of one million of dollars derived from the sale of state lands in the Western Reserve, the income of this fund became a matter of importance to the school " so- cieties." Under the statute of 1794, the parish society schools received their /r Tuition, books, and stationery are free. It stands as the first fully organized free public college in the United States, under municipal government and support. It has a strong pedagogical department. Its counterpart is found in the " New York Female College " (1870), which- is a high-grade normal school for young women. In 1867 rate bills for the partial support of rural common schools were abolished and the state property tax was raised to one mill and a quarter on a dollar. NewJ^rSfiJT. — This colony was settled by Swedes, English Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Quakers, who brought with them preachers and teachers and estab- lished churches and schools side by side. As early as 1676 public schools maintained by subscription began ^o be organized. In 1693 there appears on the statute book an act which authorizes, by local option, the people of any town, " by the consent and agreement of the major part of the inhabitants," to employ a teacher and collect tuition. The College of New Jersey (now Princeton) had its begin- ning in 1747. In 1 8 16 a state school fund was established, and in 1820 there was enacted the first general law au- thorizing the township to raise money for the support of schools. In the general development of a c ommon-school system this state followed the lead of New York, and Dela\varertliat of Pen nsylvania^ " PROGRESS IN PENNSYLVANIA. The revised state constitution (1790) contained a sec- tion which reads as follows : " The legislature shall, as soon as conveniently may be, provide by law for the es- tablishment of schools throughout the state in such man- ner that the poor m ay be taught gratis . The arts. and 54 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS sciences shall be promoted, in one or more seminaries of learning." It was not convenient for the legislature to carry this section into effect until twelve years later (1802), when a law was enacted entitled : '' An act to provide for the education of the poor gratis." This law provided that parents too poor to pay tuition fees, could send them to school at public expense, on application to the proper authorities. Slightly amended in 1809, it remained in force for more than a quarter of a century. But the " P^LUpe^ 3.ct " was u npgpidar. People disliked to declare their poverty, and children were unwilling to be called *' charity scholars." Meanwhile, denominational acade- mies and seminaries were aided by appropriations of pub- lic moneys. All these subsidized instit utions were arraye d in ope n hostility to a system ot Amencaii coniji ion^schools. ^npor forty years after the organization of the state government, there were no laws enacted for the creation of a public-school system. ^ Nearly all the educational legislation was in favor of academies and seminaries. During this period many acts were passed favorable to these institutions, and nearly $300,000 were spent in their aid. In 1833 there were two universities, eight colleges, and fifty academies, all of which had been liberally aided by the state." It was not until 1834 that the sfate^f Penns ylvan ia secure d an'"e?fecti ye^ chool lav^\ THeconservatives and sectarians made desperate attempts to repeal this act at the next session of the legislature (1835), and the repeal was defeated only by the heroic efforts of Thaddeus Stevens, then a member of the legislature. Thaddeus Stevens, born to poverty in Vermont, began his education 1 See "Bulletin of Information" No. 9, 1890, by Dr. Frank W. Blackmar. EARL V AMERICAN SCHO OLS 5 5 in a country school, continued it in a country academy, worked his way through Dartmouth College, emigrated to Pennsylvania, succeeded in business, and represented his adopted state in the senate of the United States. The ''Agricultural College of Pennsylvania" became fully established in 1862. It had its beginning in the " Farmer's High School " (1854) and changed its name when the state came to its aid to the extent of $100,000. The land grants of 1862 came to its aid, and its name was changed to " Pennsylvania State College." Philadelphia Schools. — The city of Philadelphia was slow in pr oviding school s for the children of the co mmon people. Private schoolsanTsociety sch'ooTFTong stood in the^ay of free public schools. In 18 12 the common council was authorized by state law to establish common schools, but nothing was done until five years later, when the '' Society for the Promotion of Public Economy " was organized. Public schools modeled after the Lancastrian (monitorial) system of England were finally established. These schools for the poor were cheap, but not good. At this time the embargo and the war with England (1812- 1 5) had crippled the commerce of Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and all the other seaport towns, and thousands of their inhabitants had been reduced to poverty. When "hard times " came on, the prisons of all these cities were crowded with thousands of debtors. The semi-barbarous English laws of imprisonment for debt were established during colonial times, and were kept on the statute books of all the states long after this period. " By an old law which went back to the days when Pennsylvania was a colony," says McMaster,^ " magistrates were allowed cognizance, ^ McMaster's " History of the People of the United States." Vol. IV% 56 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS without appeal, of debts under forty shillings or five dollars and thirty- three cents in amount. When the indebtedness exceeded that paltry sum the debtor was allowed a stay of proceedings. But no such hap- piness awaited the poor wretches who owed a sixpence or a shilling, and who each year were dragged to prison by thousands, on what were truly called " spite actions." Murderers and thieves, forgers and counterfeiters, were fed, clothed, and cared for at the expense of the state ; but for the unhappy man whose sole offence was his inability to pay a trifling debt of a few cents, no such provision was made. The food he ate, the sheets that covered him, the medicine he took — nay, the very rags he wrapped about his sores — were provided, if provided at all, by his friends, by the public, or by some Humane Society or Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons." In 1794, this law was amended by ordering that the prison inspector should provide fuel and blankets for the poorest prisoners, make an allowance of seven cents a day for food and charge it to the creditor, but the main part of the statute remained in force. Things were no better in the city of New York. In 18 1 7 there were 1984 debtors confined during the year ; and of these 729 were imprisoned for debts less than $25. During the period of hard tim es one in every seven of the inhabitants in this city was wholly or in part supported by charity. In Boston the condition was quite as bad. During the fifteen months from January i, 1820, to April I, 1822, 3492 men and women were imprisoned for debt, of which number 2000 were thrown into jail for sums less than $20. One debtor had been in prison for thirty years. Another froze to death in the jail at Cam- bridge. In each of these three great cities of this country, the jails and penitentiaries were exceeded in wretchedness and filth only by the debtor prisons in London, so real- istically pictured by Charles Dickens. But such awful conditions could not long continue. One by one, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts, in the period from 18 17 to 1825, p rohibited EARLY AMERICAN SCHOOLS . ^y imprisonment_ for-sm all .debts in sums varying from thir- teen to twenty-five dollars. After this time, the constitu- tions of the new states of the West prohibited imprison- ment for small debts, — an evidence of a great advance in civilization. During the period of demoralization , the cities were full of dramshops, and drunkenness was a prevailing vice. Lotteries were universal. They were authorized by state law, and even started in aid of colleges, churches, schools, and many other purposes. But at length the tide of re- form set in. The bloody criminal code of England which had been fastened on the colonies was ameliorated, and the number of crimes punishable with death was reduced from fifteen and thirty to two or three. The bands of idle boys prowling in the streets for evil, were gradually gathered into public schools. This episode in the histoiy of the civil and social conditions of that period shows why common schools made but little headway in the great cities, and why state legislation was so long delayed. The city o f Philadel^ hjaLJinally establishedL^common schools, which educated the children of the common people without distinction of class, caste, or charity, but the evolution was sIoav. The city remained . without a superintendent of public schools until 1883, when the office was created and James McAllister was appointed to reorganize and modernize the city school system. He did the work well. One of the most notable educational bequests ever made in this country was the fou ndation of Girard Colle ge, with an endowment of seve 3l__m ill ions of donars^_by_ Ste2hen_&rard. It was established as a hom e for orpha n boys where they should be trained and educated for the 58 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS prac titalp ursuits ^ LJilg- The course of instruction adopted for Girard College was the Jirst practical and jDotential protest against the conventional educational formalism of those days. ^ =^- EDUCATION IN THE SOUTHERN STATES. Virginia. — We have seen that, during the colonial period, education was provided for in Virginia after the manner in England, by means of parish schools, private schools, academies, and the endowed College of William and Mary. Though Jefferson failed in his p lans jto,pro- vide sc hools for t he educa tion of the commo n peopl e, he succeeded^, after a quarter of a century of untiring efforts, in_organiziti£ _the University o f Virginia, which was opened in 1825, one year before the death""of its illustrious founder. The distinguishing features of this institution were worthy of the great statesman who planned them. The University provided for elective courses of study ; the honor system of discipline ; the voluntary system of religion ; and the prohibition of merely honorary titles. The state school law of 1820, however, provided that the county could be divided into s^hooldistricts of six miles square. If the people of the district raised three fifths of the sum required to build a schoolhouse, the re- maining two fifths might be appropriated from the state " literary fund." But the small income, — $45,000 a year from the interest of the state school fund, — could do but little in establishing a public-school system. In the west- ern part of this state the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians — those " Puritans of the South " — supported their church schools with their accustomed zeal. From these people sprang the Breckenridges, the McDowells, the Pickenses, and EARL V AMERICAN SCHOOLS 59 many other prominent families in the South. Emigrants of this sturdy stock poured into Kentucky and Tennessee in early days, and became prominent in fighting the Indians and in establishing schools. A century after the rejection of Jefferson's pl ans for p^ublic scho ols, — at the close of a war greater than that of the Revolution, — Virgin ia fell into line and established a system of Am erican free public schools . Most of the other Southern states followed the lead of Virginia. Efforts were made (1810-30), to secure State School Funds, the interest of which should be applied to said rural public schools and subsidize county academies Several states attempted to establish schools for educating ^'the children of the poor." Maryland subsidized from a scanty school fund a small number of county academies of the classical type. The city of Baltimore experimented with a Lancastrian school in 1820; made in 1830 a beginning of public schools; and in 1839 opened a high school. South Carolina. — South Carolina, in 1801, established the CoUegeof SouthCarolina, appropriated $50,000 for J?uildmgs, and $6000 annually for its support. The academies and private schools in Charleston were good, but, prior to 1730, there were no grammar schools in the state, and in 1776 there were only five. The Huguenots and Scotch-Irish that settled there were active in support of education, and both races stamped their impress on the educational, social, and political institutions of the state and the nation. The first public school movementjiithis_ state was made by'anact of the legislature (181 1), which creat ed a f i ee -school fund withThe^roviso " that the use of this fund should be confined to educating the children of the poor in case it was not adequate for all." The few 6o HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS schools that were established under this act were made unpopular by the charity proviso. '* The annual appro- priation by the state, which, for a period of forty years, averaged $37,000 a year," says Dr. Mayo, '' was of itself a . pittance for the education of at least 50,000 children and youth in need of elementary schooling." In 1868 the new constitution provided for a uniform system of public schools supported by taxation. Georgia. — Georgia, the l atest settled of the thirteen original states (1732), had a comparati vely slow gro wth both in population and schools . The English settlers were reinforced by large numbers of Scotch-Irish Presby- terians, and the usual number of Episcopal and Presby- terian parish schools and denominational academies were opened, as in other Southern states. In 1784 the Uni- versity of_Geor gia was endowed by a state grant of 40,- ^oo^res of wild lands, worth perhaps a thousand dol- lars ; and a land grant of 1000 acres was offered to each county to aid in opening an academy. Most of the in- come from a small state school fund was used in subsidiz- ing academies, seminaries, and other private institutions, leaving but a pittance to the elementary schools for teach- ing " indigent children " to read and write. Richard Malcolm Johnson has written a graphic history of early schools in middle Georgia, which is well worth reading by the historical student.^ North Carolina. — North Carolina secu red j^state school ^iujid (1825-40) of two millions of dollars, and then dis- tributed the annual income in aid of county district schools, thus making a nea rer approach to common schools 1-]Tan_airy _pther Southern st ate. This state"was strong"" in small private incorporated academies. During the ^ See Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1894-95, Vol. 2. EARL V AMERICAN SCHO OLS 6 1 period from 1760 to 1825, more than 150 of these academies were incorporated. Into the middle and western parts of this state and the Piedmont region there was a steady stream of Scotch-Irish settlers, and of Ger- mans and Quakers from Pennsylvania. These Scotch- Irish Presbyterians, Moravians, Lutherans, and Friends set up their churches and church schools and maintained both with great zeal. The University of North Carolina was chartered in 1789 and opened in 1795! It is well to remember that the Scotch-Irish settlement of Mecklen- burg, in a public meeting on the 20th of May, 1775, made the first public declaration, in the form of resolutions, that the Americans were " a free and independent people." In 1840 this state had 141 academies and grammar schools and 632 primary and common schools. In i860 the num- ber of primary schools had increased to 4000, with an attendance of 160,000 pupils. " This state is also conspicuous," says Commissioner Harris, " for the advanced position it occupied in matters of education in the constitution adopted in 1776, in the early chartering and opening of its State University, in the breadth of the educational thought shown by Archi- bald D. Murphey, the father of her common schools, and in the administration of Rev. Calvin H. Wiley, her first general superintendent. This state, too, was alone among the Confederate states, in keeping her schools open dur- ing the war." Rural Schools of the South. — Even the primitive " old field," or neighborhood, rural schools of North Carolina, Virginia, and other Southern states deserve to be held in grateful remembrance, along with incorporated academies and endowed colleges. These schools, like those of New England in early days, enable d many boy s , born to p ov:_ 62 HISTOR Y OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS e rty. but gi ited_wiih-43£>wer, to mak e a star t in life_and_ fight their way in the^wQiLcL It was in one of these schools in North Carolina that a sandy-haired lad of Scotch-Irish descent, named Andrew Jackson, learned *' to read and write and cast accounts," otherwise he would never have been heard of among men. Though born to poverty, he was richly endowed by heredity with the qualities that command leadership. His real education was mainly acquired by the study and prac- tice of law. In the state of Tennessee, to which he emi- grated, he rose to leadership in political and military affairs. In the War of 1812 he was the one man in the nation best fitted to take command of the western fron- tiersmen, and to beat back the British army of trained veterans at New Orleans. His election as President of the United States marked the growing political power of the West, and the birth of an American spirit of demo- cracy as a reaction against the federalism of New England and the British conservatism of Virginia. This awaken- ing of the common people gave a fresh impetus to com- mon schools in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio, and other states soon to be formed out of the Northwest Territory. J ohn C. Calhoun, of Scotch-Irish descent, born in South Carolina, educated at Yale, and bred under the influence of the old regime of his native state, lived to become the great political leader of the old South. His career, com- pared with that of Andrew Jackson, affords a striking illustration of the effect of different environments. A generation later, James K. Polk , born in North Caro- lina, of Presbyterian Scotch-Irish stock, studied law, emi- grated to Tennessee, rose to leadership, and became Presi- dent of the United States. Here, also, was born Thomas EARL V AMERICAN SCHOOLS 63 H. Benton. He too emigrated to Tennessee, studied law, served under General Jackson at New Orleans, removed to St. Louis, and represented Missouri for thirty years in the senate of the United States. Henry Cla y, of English stock, born to poverty in Vir- ginia, obtained a limited school education in Peter Dea- con's log-cabin schoolhouse, which had no floor but the earth and no window but the door. He earned his living at an early age as clerk in a law office, studied law, and emigrated to Kentucky. Gifted by nature with a winning manner and great power of oratory, he became a political leader in the senate of the United States. From this state, also, came William Henry Harriso n, of notable English descent. Educated in Hampden-Sidney College, he entered the army as an ensign, and was ordered to the West, where he combined a military with a civil career. He was appointed as the first secretary of the Northwest Territory, then territorial delegate to Con- gress, next, governor of Indiana Territory, and was finally elected President of the United States. Abraham Lincoln, whose ancestors dwelt in Virginia, was born to theTiardships and poverty of pioneer life in Kentucky. His school education was limited to reading, writing, and arithmetic, which he learned during a few months* attendance in the primitive schools of that period. He emigrated to Illinois, earned his living by farm work and other occupations, educated himself by the study and practice of law, and became one of the greatest of Amer- ican presidents. The lives of this group of leaders among men make an interesting study on the comparative effects of heredity, school education, and environment. Washington, Jeffer- son, John Marshall, Patrick Henry, John Tyler, and 64 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS Andrew Johnson make another group worth special con- sideration as a psychological study. Besides these few notable men, there went out from these states into the wilderness of Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Northwest Territory^ thousands of hardy pioneers of the type of DanieljB oone, J o hn_ Sevier, an d Georg e Rogers Clark. THeywent there in search of new homes on fertile lands, and because there was little chance for them to make their way in the older settlements. These constituted the advance guard of civilization. They fought the Indians, subdued the wilderness, and helped to lay the foundation of civil government and common schools in the states of the West. Though most of them had but scanty scj io pling, an d^orn^o^f them none at all^ they made a success of life under ne w con ditions. THE AGE OF ACADEMIES. The half century after the adoption of the Constitution was marked by great financial, commercial, and industrial prosperity, broken only by the war of 1812-15, and the financial panic of 1837. It was during this period that academies and seminaries were established to supplement the elementary instruction of the co mmon jchpols. These acadernies were establisHed in great numbers in all parts of the United States. In Massachusetts alone they num- bered nearly one hundred, and they were numerous and strong in New York, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. A few of these endowed institutions, like the Phillips- Exeter Academy (1781), in New Hampshire, and the Phillips-Andover Academy (1780), in Massachusetts, were preparatory schools exclusively designed to fit boys for college ; but, in general, they provided a course of study ^ ■ EARLY AMERICAN SCHOOLS 6$ pre paratory for college , and al so a general educational course, largely elective . These academies were mainly supported by tuition fees, though often aided by state subsidies or individual bequests. They were governed by boards of trustees, were generally denominational in name, but liberal in management. They were, in fact, quasi public schools, as whatever endowments or state aid they received, reduced their rates of tuition. They were no longer modeled after English schools ; they were, like the common schools, American institutions. They were open, at least in New England, to both young men and young women, f orerunners of the co-education of the sexes in modern high schools an d state universities^ They sup- plied teachers for the rural common schools. They trained, for two generations, the leaders in business. They recognized the higher education of women. After flourishing for more than half a century , they were grad- ually superseded, except in rural districts, by city and town high schools. Endowed Academies. — The first endowed academy in Massachusetts was the Dummer Academy at Byfield (1763,) Leicester Academy was incorporated (1784); Berwick (1791); Westfield (1793); Brad- ford (1803) ; Hampton, N. H. (1810). The first academy in New Hampshire for girls exclusively, was the endowed Adams Academy in the Scotch-Irish town of Londonderry, or Derry (1823) ; the first for girls in Massachusetts was at Ipswich (1823). The Troy Seminary (N. Y.) for young women, was opened in 1 821, by Mrs. Emma Hart Willard. Mt. Holyoke Seminary for the education of young women was founded by Mary Lyon, at South Hadley, Mass., in 1836. Concerning the influence of academies in Massachusetts, George H. Martin in his Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School Sys- tem says : " Besides this work as fitting schools, the academies had an immeasurable influence in broadening non-college students. They reached an immense multitude of young people, Leicester had received from six to eight thousand pupils, of whom perhaps four AM. PUB. SCH. 5 (i^ HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS hundred had been fitted for college : Westfield had over eight thou- sand persons ; Lawrence, at Groton, nearly eight thousand ; New Salem not less than seven thousand. In eighty or ninety years — three generations — these four schools alone had brought into a scholarly atmosphere, had kept under the instruction of scholarly men and women, for a longer or shorter time, not less than thirty thousand young men and young women — ten thousand to a generation ; and these are only four of more than a hundred such schools." District Schools. — The district scho ols and rural academi es were adapted to the sodal and industri al con- ditiong_ of the perim i_jn^ which they flourished. They turned out good American citizens. They brought the children of all classes together on one common footing. The strict discipline of the school was backed up by a firm home training. T he value of an education was a common topic in every family. Parents saw to it that tlTeir~children stiTdied at home during the long winter evenings. The forehanded farmers sent all their children, boys and girls alike, to the district school ; they sent them, also, for a few terms to the academy ; they toiled and economized to send at least one son to college. HOME EDUCATION. In addition to the supplementary education furnished by the academy we must take into account the value of a correlative course of manual trai ning j n_farmjvork and domestic industries, which j)y indu strial con dition s_was Rigidly enforced on the great majority of th e children during the period under consideration. Agriculture was the leading occupation of the people. For half the year at least the boys were kept at home hard at work in plowing, planting, hoeing, haying, harvesting, and taking care of live stock. The girls took a manual training course in EARL V AMERICAN SCHO OLS ey cooking, washing, mending, knitting, and sewing. Before the era of cotton factories and woolen mills, every farm- house contained a loom and a spinning wheel. The girls assisted their mothers in carding and spinning wool, in weaving it into cloth, and in making up clothing for the family. Thus both boys and girls were trained into steady habrts_ofwork. If they lacked somewhat in book knowledge, the loss was made up to them by a training in the p ractical d uties of life. If this strict and sometimes over-exacting school and home training failed to develop the aesthetic side of human nature, it resulted in a stock of vital common sense as a guide in earning a living. " That our successful men have come so largely from the country," says Dr. John Dewey, "is an indication of the educational value bo und up with participation in this practical life . It was not only an ade- quate substitute for what we now term manual training, in the devel- opment of hand and eye, in the acquisition of skill and deftness ; but it was initiation into self-reliance, independence of judgment and ac- tion, and was the best stimulus to habits of regular and continuous work." Back of the common school and behind the home education, there lay, also, the strength of heredity transmitted from ancestors who loved liberty and prized learning. All these things were further supplemented by the strong social influences of the church, the town meeting, ai;d the free discussion of public affairs. PRACTICAL VALUE OF THE COMMON SCHOOL. Horace Greeley was graduated from a district school into a printing ofifice in the Scotch-Irish town of London- derry in New Hampshire. From a neighboring school district Colonel John Stark went out to the battle of Bunker Hill, followed, according to tradition, by all the able-bodied men in town, save only two. Later in the 68 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS war the same townsmen followed General John Stark to the battle of Bennington. Generals John Sullivan, John Reid, and Alexander Scammell belonged to the same fighting stock and were trained in similar schools in neighboring towns. Benjamin Franklin when seven years old entered a Boston public school, left it at ten years of age, and began his great career as printer, statesman, and philoso- pher. George Peabody at eleven years of age left a Massachusetts common school to become, first a clerk in a small store, next a merchant, and finally the educational philanthropist who created the Peabody Southern Edu- cational Fund which has done so much to aid the establishment of common schools in the South. In the common school and rural academy of this same state Mary Lyon fitted herself for her great work in founding Mt. Holyoke Seminary and College for young women. Clara Barton, whose great work in the Red Cross Society is known to all the world, was educated in similar schools. In common school, academy, and Dartmouth College, Daniel Webster was trained. His father mortgaged the home farm to send Daniel to college, and his mother made for him with her own hands a homespun Suit as an outfit. In an obscure common school in Massachusetts, Roger Sherman got all the school education of his life. By suc- cessive stages, he rose from the shoemaker's bench to become, first a county surveyor, next a lawyer, then judge of the Superior Court ; afterwards a member of the Con- tinental Congress, and member of the committee of five to draft the Declaration of Independence. But the greatest strenj[th-_Q£j the com mon schools con- EARL V AMERICAN SCHOOLS 6g sisted in their power in molding the c ommon people into intelligent and industrious cit izens^ many of whom, for successive generations^^ pushed out into jthe West and aided in the ex tension of free schools^ _and_ free^ labor. The real power of this Republic consists, not in a few great statesmen, orators, or political leaders, not in a few highly educated philosophers or scientists, not in a few millionaires, but in the consolidated character, intelli- gence, and public opinion of the masses who cast the ballot on election days, who shoulder the musket and man the battleships in times of war ; of the men who in time" of peace carry on the industrial pursuits of the nation ; of the women who protect the homes and educate the children, — and if these lack the wisdom of intelligence the republic will suffer harm in spite of the educated few. Neither does the wealth of this nation consist alone in real estate, agricultural products, manu- factures, and mines ; for all these material things onty furnish the means for higher ends and a more complete civilization. The world has been enriched largely by the creative power of inventive genius ; and the great inven- tions — the steam-engine, the steamship, the railway, the cotton-gin, the spinning-jenny, the electric telegraph, the countless labor-saving machines in every department of industry — none of them were the blundering products of unskilled men held in the bonds of ignorance. Even the elective franchise is a menace to the republic unless the great majority of voters know how to think intelli- gently and act wisely in political affairs. The right of trial by jury — what is it but a shadow of justice when the jury box can be filled by the '' born thralls " of illiteracy ? 70 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS THE PERIOD OF EDUCATIONAL REFORM. The decade of 1 830-4 marks the beginning of a g reat educat ional awakening in t he United States. In conse- quence of the rapid development of ma nufactures, com- merce, and_jii£aniIoL lJ'ai^sportation, there had begun a tendency of the po pulation to jconcentrate in ^ities_ai]Ld- villages^ The urban population, which, in 1790, consti- tuted only one in thirty, had increased in 1830 to one in twelve. Changes in social and industrial conditions led to corresponding modifications of school laws and school or- ganization. The " age of homespun," the *' old-fashioned district school," and the denominational academy began to fall into decadence together. It was at this period (i837)that Horace Mann appeared in M assachusetts as Secretary of the S tate Board of Edu- cation. " He was," says WiUiam^nTarrTsr " like so many of the great men of the Puritans, modeled on the type of the Hebrew prophets." He went out into all par ts of the^ tate as an educational missionary, lecturing ^o_the_p>eaple wherever he could gather them together, in hall, or meeting-house, or country schoolhouse, on the need of reforms in schools and school management. He advocated the consolidation of the independent school districts into township schools under the control of one central school committee ; the levy of town taxes for school purposes; the establishment of graded schools, nor- mal schools, and high schools; a higher standard for teach- ers* certificates ; the addition of oral teaching to text-book memorizing; institutions for the deaf and dumb and blind ; special schools for the reformation of vicious chil- dren ; and he attacked the extreme severity of corporal punishment in the Boston schools. He wrote school re- ports so eloquent that they are still read as classic educa- EARLY AMERICAN SCHOOLS yi tional literature. His fiery zeal roused th e pe ople to action. H enry Barnard took up the same work in Con- necticut, and the two greatest of early American educa- tional leaders together inaugurated a refor m movement. felt even in the remote stat e^ of the South and West. " The school children of Massachusetts," says George H. Martin, " made no mistake when they placed in front of the capitol of the state a statue of Horace Mann, as of their benefactor and their ideal." The establishment of normal schools in Massachusetts and New Y QTir~^ ed~tcrTTiark edr' nnprovemen ts7'bojh_In^ methods of teaching and in courses of study. New and improved text-books appeared j^cityschools were graded ; and high schools began to be organized. School laws were amended. City, town, and county superintendents were appointed and school supervision was begun in earnest. Since that period of educational revival, there has been no reaction in the spirit of progress. THE GREAT NATIONAL CRISIS. We are apt to consider accomplished results rather than the remote causes which lead up to them. Seventy years after the adoption of the Constitution there came the great crisis in national affairs in which the stability of the Re- public was at stake. It was then that the beneficent re- sults flowing from the ordinance of 1787 were clearly made evident. The powerful and populous states, carved out of the Northwest Territory, which had been dedi- cated by law to freedom, gave to the nation that wisest of modern statesmen, Abraham Lincoln. The President's call to arms was answered by hosts of volunteers, made intelligent and patriotic citizens in the common schools, which had been fostered by the Magna Charta of 1787. ^2 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS In these public schools were trained, in their boyhood, the great military and civil leaders, — Grant, Sherman, Har- rison, Hayes, Garfield, and McKinley — better known but not more patriotic than the rank and file of the army. Shoulder to shoulder, with the common-school recruits from the older Eastern and Middle states, and the newer states of the Pacific, they fought through the war or fell on the field of battle, in defense of the Union. The spirit of these patriots is clearly set forth in Gen- eral Grant's address to his comrades, at Des Moines (1875), which reads, in part, as follows : " In this centennial year of our national existence, I believe it is a good time to begin the work of strengthening the foundation of the house commenced by our patriotic forefathers, one hun- dred years ago, at Concord and Lexington. Let us all labor to add all needful guarantees for the more perfect security of free thought, free speech, a free press, pure morals, unfettered religious sentiment, and of equal rights and privileges to all men, irrespective of nationality, color, or religion. Encourage free schools, and resolve that not one dollar of money appropriated to their support, no matter how raised, shall be appropriated to the support of any sectarian school. Resolved that either the state or nation, or both combined, shall support institutions of learning sufficient to afford to every child growing up in the land the opportunity of a good common-school edu- cation, unmixed with sectarian, pagan, or atheistical tenets. Leave the matter of religion to the family circle, the church, and the private school supported entirely by private contribution. Keep the Church and State forever separate. With these safeguards I believe the battles which created us * the Army of the Tennessee ' will not have been fought in vain." CHAPTER III SECONDARY AND HIGHER PUBLIC EDUCATION THE BEGINNINGS OF HIGH SCHOOLS Public High Schools. — We have seen that for more than a century the academy, th e seminary, the private sc hool, and the Latin grammar school furnished the mean s of sec ondar y educatio n as a supplement to the elementary common school, or as a preparation for col- lege. It was not until nearly the middle of the nine- teen th century that public hig^h schools and public normal schools began to form an essential feature in public edu- cation. The modern free high schoo l is a modified type of the academy and seminary of former times with traces of the early Latin grammar schools. Its distinctive points of difference from the older institutions are that it is under pub lic managemen t instead of denominational or private control, and is free from tuition fees . It came into exist- ence to meet the demands of modern life. It was not the work of the college or the university reaching downward*; nor was it the creation of speculative philosophers. It came naturally from the upward pressure of the common schools, and the demand of the masses of the American people for a free education of a grade higher than that of the comir.on school. One of the functions of the high school is to fit pupils for the college or univ ersity ; but its chief purpose is to give the great mass of pupils, after 74 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS they have completed the grammar school course, the means of acquiring an English _ £.rlii rati on which shall better fit them for good ci tizgnship and for the nrclinjirj7 pursuitsoflife. Leaving out of consideration the colonial Latin schools, and other " grammar schools *' of like type, the modern free high school may be said to date, in this country, from the establishment of the Boston English High School (1821), with George B. Emerson as head master, and a course of study which included, besides EngHsh, the French and Spanish languages, physics, mathematics, mental and moral philosophy, rhetoric, and general his- tory. Massachusetts in 1826 made the modern high school a part of the state school system by enacting a law that towns having at least 500 families should organize an English high school, and that towns having at least 4000 inhabitants should establish a classical high school. In 1840 this law was repealed, but was re-enacted in 1848. For some time the high school had to encounter the de- termined opposition of private preparatory schools, de- nominational academies and seminaries, denominational colleges, and many tax-payers. It took all the fiery zeal of Horace Mann and his co-workers to break down these antagonizing influences and finally to win a victory for the American people. The dates of the establishment of free modern high schools in the great cities afford a striking illustration of the slow evolution of this part of the American school system: — Boston (1821), English high school for boys, and (1825 and 1852) one ^ for girls; Philadelphia (1837), boys' high school, and (1840), a girls' high school; Buffalo 1 Continued only one year and abolished because it was considered too expensive. SECONDARY AND HIGHER PUBLIC EDUCATION 75 high school (1838) ; Baltimore (1839), boys' high school; Providence (1843) ; Cincinnati (1847), Central high school ; New York city (1849), free academy for boys ; Cleveland high school (1852) ; St. Louis (1853), high school for boys and girls; Newark high school (1855) ; San Francisco (1856), English high school for boys and girls ; Chicago high school (1856) ; Detroit high school (1858) ; New York city (1870,) normal school for girls, and (1897) three modem high schools. In 1838 there were fourteen high schools in Massa- chusetts; in 1852, sixty-four; in i860, one hundred and two. But during the last half century, under the impera- tive demands of the people, the high school has been ex- tended not only into every city, but also into towns, villages, and rural districts, so that in 1897 no state 01 territory was without one, except Alaska. According to the Report of the Commissioner of Edu- cation (1896-97), there were 5109 public high schools in the United States, of which, in part, Ohio had 576 ; In- diana, 343 ; New York, 341 ; Illinois, 323 ; Iowa, 322 ; Michigan, 280 ; Pennsylvania, 249 ; Massachusetts, 223 ; and other states in varying numbers from 218 in Nebraska to 2 each in Utah and Wyoming, 3 in the Territory of Oklahoma, and 3 each in Indian Territory and Arizona. In these public high schools there were enrolled 235,988 girls and 173,445 boys, making a total of 409,433 students. Of this number the returns for 1897 show that only 12.17 per cent, were preparing for college. In the total enrollment the state of New York reported 38,957 students; Ohio, 37,958; Illinois, 31,909; Mas- sachusetts, 31,360; Michigan, 25,745 ; Iowa, 24,626; and Pennsylvania, 24,044. There were 627 high schools in cities having a population of 8000 or upwards, and 4,482 in rural districts or in cities and towns with less than 8000 inhabitants. In the 2100 private high schools. 76 HISTOR Y OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS academies, and denominational institutions in tlie United States there was reported an enrollment of 107,633 secondary students, or a little less than 21 per cent, as against 79 per cent, enrolled in the public secondary schools. The total number of secondary students in both public and private secondary schools shows that there is an average of 819 such students in every 100,000 of the population of the United States. In the department of higher education the ratio is 196 students to each 100,000 inhabitants. High School Courses of Study. — It would be outside of the scope of this chapter to treat of high school courses of study, but I cannot forbear quoting a paragraph from the pen of Professor Paul H. Hanus, of Harvard Univer- sity, which presents a matter of vital importance to sec- ondary schools. " The efforts to improve the secondary or high-school courses of study, like the corresponding efforts for the improvement of the gram- mar-school courses of study, have been directed to an enlargement of its scope (content) and such modification of its form as would best adapt it to modern needs. In bringing about these very desirable changes in the high-school course of study the West has rendered im- portant service. In those newer regions traditions have had less weight in determining educational practice, and the non-classical high- school courses have thrived there especially. A very important inci- dental gain, traceable largely to these modifications in the high-school course of study made in response to external demands, deserves to be noted here. These modifications have had much to do with insuring the permanence of the public high school as an integral part of our public-school systems. ... At the present time the public high school may justly be said to be firmly established throughout the coun- try. These are great gains. At the same time, however, another im- portant modification is gradually finding recognition in our secondary- school programmes. Not only may the pupil choose one of several courses of study offered to him in every considerable high school, but SECONDARY AND HIGHER PUBLIC EDUCATION yy choices are permitted within these courses, and there are schools — and the number of such schools is increasing — in which at least one course of study, the ' general course,' which is not determined by col- lege admission requirements, is entirely elective throughout. That is to say, not only does the modern high school aim to provide an intro- duction to the culture and training demanded by modern life, but in so doing it seeks also to adapt its opportunities and demands to the tastes and capacities of individuals. The importance of this change in our secondary-school opportunities it is difficult to overrate." i THE BEGINNINGS OF NORMAL SCHOOLS. The First Training Schools. — During the colonial period and for nearly half a century after, the common schools were mainly supplied with teachers by the acad- emy, the seminary, and the college. But after the war of 1812-15, the great i ncrease of schools in commercial cities and manufacturing towns and villages, created a demand ^ for teachers having some special training fo r their work. Rev. Samuel R. Hall opened in the town of Concord. Vermont (i 823), a private s chodL^for— the training o f teachers, which he continued for seven years. Mr. Hall, when a young man, teaching his first common school in the state of Maine (181 5), showed his radical tendencies towards innovations by introducing the writing of compo- sitio ns, which excited a storm of protests from parents and pupils. In 1829 he published one of the first notable American books on common school pedagogics, entitled, *' Lectures on School Keeping." In 1830 he took charge of a teachers' department in the Phillips- A ndover Acad- emy, and also established a private normal school at Plymouth, New Hampshire. The state of New York made an experiment (1830-44), 1 Educational Review, December, 1896. 78 HISTOR Y OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHO OLS I ... , - 1 in establishing teachers' departments in incorporated \ academies by a system of state appropriations for that purpose. Such departments were organized in sixteen \ academies, but the results fell short of expectations, and ^ state aid was withdrawn on the passage of an act (1844), \ to establish a state normal school at Albany. i Meanwhile, i n New England, the norma l-school idea ] _wa s brought bef ore_the._aublicby a group of educatio nal _ \ reformers of remarkable ability and zeaH Among these j were James G. Carter, Rev. Samuel R. Hall, George B. \ Emerson, Professor William Russell, Rev. Charles Brooks, \ Edmund Dwight, Thomas Gallaudet, Horace Mann, Henry \ Barnard, and many others. ^ i The Ainerirn/y,- fnnrnnl pf F^nrnfinn^ one of the first \ in the English language, appeared (1826), in Boston, \ edited by William C. Woodbridge, William Russell, and j William A. Alcott ; the Massachusetts Common School '\ Journal {\Zi(^, was started and edited by Horace Mann; j the New York Cojumon School Assistant (1836-40) was edited and published by J. Orville Taylor ; and a Con- necticut School J ourjial (1838), was edited by Henry \ Barnard. j A s ociety for the improvement of common schools was ! organized (1827), in Connecticut; a similar society in \ Pennsylvania (1828); another in Ohio (1829) ; the Ameri- \ can Institute of Instruction, in Massachusetts (1830); the \ American Common School Society (1838), New York. 1 All these combined influences r esulted in the b eginning \ of a great upward extension of the"common-scho^ system j by including in it the public high school and the state \ n ormal school. 1 ^ Public Normal Schools. — The first public normal school ) in the United States was opened at Lexington, Massa- J SECONDARY AND HIGHER PUBLIC EDUCATION 79 chusetts(i839), with Cyrus Pierce as principal ; the second at Barre, Massachusetts (1839) 5 ^^ third at Bridgewater, Massachusetts (1840); the fourth at Albany, New York (1844) ; the fifth at New Britain, Connecticut (1849) 5 the sixth was established at Ypsilanti, Michigan (1850), but was not opened until two years later. At the middle of this century (1850), there were only six state normal schools in the United States. Concerning the immediate results of the three pioneer state normal schools in Massachusetts, Mr. George H. Martin says : ^ " Their early graduates encountered every- where prejudice and suspicion, in many cases active and persistent opposition ; but steadily, year by year, they fixed themselves more and more firmly in public esti- mation and support." Since 1850 state normal schools have been rapidly multiplied and have become, like the high schools, an essential part of the public-school system. Local normal schools are maintained by the cities of New York, Phila- delphia, Chicago, Boston, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Balti- more ; and many other cities have normal classes in con- nection with high schools. The total number of state and municipal public normal schools (1896-97) was 164. Of these schools Pennsylvania and New York had 14 each ; Massachusetts, 9 ; North Carolina, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, 7 each ; Alabama, Ohio, and Iowa, 6 each ; California, 5 ; and other states had varying numbers from 4 each in Maine and Con- necticut, to I each in New Mexico, Arizona, and Oklahoma. The total enrollment in public normal schools was 43,197 students. In the public normal schools for colored students, the Southern States reported an enrollment of 1800. The number of graduates from public normal schools was 8,032, of which number 62.6 per cent, were women. The ^ " Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School System " (1894). 8o HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS aggregate amount of public appropriations for the support of these schools was nearly two and one-half millions of dollars. The public colleges and universities reported i ,839 normal students ; and public high schools having normal departments reported 9,001 normal students. In 198 private normal schools there were 24,181 students ; in private universities and colleges, 4,650, and in private high schools, 7,064. The aggregate of normal students in all public institu- tions was 54,039 ; in all private institutions, 35,895. STATE PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES. Colleges. — The colleges founded in colonial times and during the first half century after the Revolution were, in the main, den omination a l or non -public institutions^ supported, like the primitive colonial public " grammar schools " and academies, bv _endowment and by tuition fee s, though _someUmes^-aided--by--pxLbli£_ appropriations. Their chief purpose was to fit young men for the profes- sions of law, medicine,_a rui- the ministcy. Little or no provision was made for the higher education of women. But within the last half of this century, the enormous ex- pansion of industrial, mechanical, and commercial pur- suits, has created the _imperativ eji eed of a modified type of the higher education adapted to the ne w_enyi ronmep t- This demand has been intensified by the powerful upward pressure of the public high schools, by the demands of women for equal education, and by the more general dif- fusion of science among men. Endowed State Universities. — The germ of free state universities is found in the land act of July 23, supple- mentary to the ordinance of 1787, which reserved for each new state to be formed out of the Northwest Terri- tory, two entire townships of public lands (46,080 acres) vfor the purpose of aiding the establishment ty each state SECONDARY AND HIGHER PUBLIC EDUCATION 8 1 of a '' seminary of learning," or, in other words, a state college, or university. This original act of 1787 set the precedent for a series of subsequent acts and land grants by the Federal government in aid of state colleges and universities. Under the land act of 1787 and^its successors in direct line up to 1889, the Federal land grants specifically for " seminaries of learning," that is, state universities, amounted to 20,000 square miles, estimated to have real- ized five millions of dollars. Many of the states, following the example of the gen- eral government, have endowed their universities by grants of state lands. But endowments furnish only an incidental part of university revenue. Like other public schools, the state universities are supported mainly ^by direct st ate. taxation. These universities are f lourishing with great vigor. They r epresent the b es t thought of the American people . They have strengthened and stimulated the high schools, normal schools, and common schools. They are organized in general with el ective courses of study which include ■^riVnrp^ a^^welj^^gjjteratiire and rPf^^^phj^'^JC'^^ Most of Them, like the common school and the high school, are open to young men and women on equal conditions. They have pedagogical departments for the training of teachers. They are closely connected with the human life of to-day. They fit some students for the professions, and others for the highly differentiated industri al,- com- m ercial , r nechanic^ and business pursuits, of a complex civilization. More than any other agency they have brought the higher education home to the common inter- ests of mankin d^ They have opened to talented and ambitious students, gifted by nature but born to poverty, AM. PUB. SCH. — 6 82 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS the doors of the higher education which before had been barred by tuition fees. The state universities in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michi- gan, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Kansas, Missouri, the Dakotas, and Nebraska, represent the culmination of a strong common school system in the North Central division of states. In 1897 Michigan University had 2878 students, including professional departments ; Min- nesota, 2647 ; Illinois, 2356; and Wisconsin, 1650. The University of Texas, representing the southwest, is the crown of a public-school system richly endowed by the reservation of the sixteenth and thirty-sixth sections of each township in the vast domain of that state. On the Pacific coast the State University of California, founded in 1868, is a natural sequence of the ordinance of 1787 and the land-grant act of 1862. Its doors are open, without tuition fees, to 1700 young men and women within the university proper, and to 3000 students, in- cluding its affiliated colleges of law and medicine. It has a strong pedagogical department. It has numerous elec- tive courses in language, literature, science, philosophy, history, the mechanic arts, agriculture, horticulture, and viticulture. It is liberally supported, in the main, by direct state taxation, though it has an endowment fund derived from state and Federal land grants, and has re- ceived several large bequests from educational philan- thropists. It is an integral part of the public-school sys- tem of California, intrenched in the state constitution, and held in trust by a board of regents appointed by the governor of the state. California is fortunate in having another free university which, though not under direct state control, has all the other characteristics of a modern state university. Stan- SECONDARY AND HIGHER PUBLIC EDUCATION 83 ford University, founded and endowed by Mr. and Mrs. Leland Stanford (1890), is open to both men and women; it has the elective system in studies ; it has a department of pedagogics; it has no tuition fees. Opened in 1891, it has now more than a thousand students. The state universities of Washington and Oregon are yet in their infancy, but are rapidly growing. In the other states of the western mountain division — Colorado, Montana, Wj^oming, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and the terri- tory of Arizona — the public-school system is well estab- lished, and state universities and colleges of agriculture and the mechanic arts are taking root. In the older states along the rim of the Atlantic, non- public, quasi-public, and denominational colleges and uni- versities; grown powerful by age and by great endow- ments, still chiefly hold the field of higher education. But the tuition fees of most of these institutions are not high. Moreover, many of them, broadened, liberalized, and modernized, exercise most of the functions of state universities. To this class belong Cornell, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, and the universities of Penn- sylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. Cornell, indeed, is to all intents and purposes a state university, be- cause it has a college of agriculture and the mechanic arts richly endowed by the land grant of the act of Con- gress (1862), and because it annually receives a fixed num- ber of students free from tuition rates. Harvard Univer- sity received in its infancy liberal appropriations from the commonwealth of Massachusetts, as did Yale from Con- necticut, Columbia from New York, and the universities of Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia from their several states. University Departments of Pedagogy. — The normal 84 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS idea began to appear in the State University of Iowa in 1855 in the form of elementary instruction, and in the State University of Missouri in 1856, in which institution it took shape as a normal college department in 1867. The early state-university pedagogical departments were established in order of time as follows: Iowa (1873); Michigan (1879); Wisconsin (1881); North Carolina (1884); Indiana (1886). Within the decade of 1887-97 pedagogical departme nts have been opened in the state universities of California, Colorado, Kansas, I^'evada, OhioT'Pennsylvania, Minne- sota, Mississippi, South Dakota, South Carolina,Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Washington. In several other state universities there are classes of normal students, but no organized pedagogical departments. Pedagogical departments have also been opened in numerous colleges j£i d univ ersit ies not unde r rate contro l, such as Cornell, Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, Clark, Brown, Columbia, and New York city. It seems a fitting close to this chapter to quote a thought from the president of the oldest university in the land, who has been the pioneer in leading the way up to the modern idea of elective courses of study in all institu- tions of learning, whether public or non-public. Charles W. Eliot says : ^ *' As a force in the world, universal education does not go behind this century in any land. It does not go back more than twenty years in such a civiHzed country as France. It dates from 1871 in England. Plato maintained that the producing or industrial classes needed no education ; and it is hardly more than a hundred years since this Pla- tonic doctrine began to be seriously questioned by social philosophers. It is not true yet that education is universal even in our own land ; and 1 " Educational Reform" (1898). SECONDARY AND HIGHER PUBLIC EDUCATION 85 in all lands educational practice lags far behind educational theory. In this process of educational construction, so new, so strange, so hope- ful, I believe that the chief principles and objects are the same from the kindergarten through the university ; and therefore, I maintain that school teachers ought to understand and sympathize with university reform and progress and that college and university teachers ought to comprehend and aid school reform and progress." COLLEGES OF AGRICULTURE AND THE MECHANIC ARTS. Industrial Education. — The demands of modern in - dustrial pursui ts first found expression in trade schools endowed by ed ucational philanthropists, m manual train- ing^ chools, and in polytechnic schools ofv arious kinds^ The constitution ot MicETgan (1850) contained a provision that the legislature should provide for the establishment of an agricultural school. Accordingly, the first state agri- cultural school was opened in 1857, at Lansing, the state capital. In 1850 the legislature of Michigan petitioned Congress for an endowment of 350,000 acres of land for the agricultural school provided for in the state constitu- tion of that year, but the request was denied. It soon became evident that it would be a wise policy for the Federal government, following the lead of the ordinance of 1787, to extend indirect aid to a higher grade of tech- nical institutions of learning, in which special instruction should be given in subjects relating to agriculture and the mechanic arts. Congressman Justin S. Morrill, of Ver- mont, introduced a bill into the House (1857) authorizing the establishment of industrial colleges, and granting to each state 20,000 acres of public land for each member of Congress. In 1858, the committee on public lands made an adverse report. At the following session the bill passed both houses, but was vetoed by President Buchanan. S6 HISTOR Y OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS In i86i Mr. Morrill introduced an amended bill which was reported on adversely by the committee on public lands, but was passed in 1862, and was signed by Presi- dent Lincoln. This bill persistently followed up for five years, in the face of the most determined opposition, en- titles Senator Morrill to high rank as an educational states- man. This act reads, in part, as follows : " Each state now existing and each new state admitted into the Union shall be entitled to as many times 30,000 acres of public land (not mineral bearing) as it had in i860, or has, at the time of its admis- sion, representatives in both houses of Congress. ... The interest of the entire remaining gross proceeds of the grant shall be used for the endowment, support, and maintenance of at least one college where the leadh % object shall be, without excluding other scientific and clas- sical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the states may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions of life." Land-Grant Colleges. — Under this act New York re- ceived 990,ocx) acres; Pennsylvania, 780,000; Ohio, 630,- 000; Illinois, 480,000; Indiana, 390,000; Massachusetts, 360,000; Kentucky and Missouri, 330,000 each ; Virginia and Tennessee, 300,000 each, and other states in propor- tion to their number of Senators and Representatives in Congress. This act of 1862, with its successors up to 1889, yielded a total of 10,500,000 acres, estimated to be worth $10,500,000. Some of this land was thrown upon the market by some states and sold for fifty or sixty cents an acre. Most of the land-scrip issued to the state of New York (990,000 acres) was bought by Ezra Cornell for sixty cents an acre, on condition that whatever amount exceed- ing this price was derived from the sale of these lands after their location, should constitute a fund for the support of SECONDARY AND HIGHER PUBLIC EDUCATION 87 the agricultural college of Cornell University. These land warrants were located with great business foresight on the pine timber lands of Wisconsin, held for some years, and sold at an average price of $6.73 an acre. These colleges were further aided by act of Congress, March 2, 1887, which provided that " there shall be established under the direc- tion of the college or colleges, or agricultural departments of colleges, created by the law of 1862, in each state, a department to be known as an agricultural experiment station," and provided for an annual subsidy of $1 5,000 to each state. By the act of Aug. 30, 1890, to more completely endow the colleges established imder the law of 1862, it was provided that the annual appropriation of $15,000 should be sub- ject to an annual increase of $1,000 until a maximum appropriation of $25,000 annually should be reached. Provision was also made for a division of this subsidy between one school for white and one for colored students. The act of 1890^ specifies that the appropriation shall " be applied only to instruction in agriculture, the mechanic arts, the English language, and the various branches of mathematical, phy- sical, natural, and economic science, with special reference to their applications in the industries of life, and to the facilities for such in- struction." These ^Mand-grant *' colleges^ were regarded, at first, with little favor by the'older classical institutions. Small and feeble in the beginning, most of them have passed through the stage of experiment. S tandards of admission^ are gradually made high er, and th e number of students is rapidly incre asi ng year by year. They are steadily grow- ing in publ ic favor, and are sending out skilled experts in agricultural, horticultural, viticultural, mechanical, and other technical pursuits. In a few states, they have been united with other endowed institutions, as in New York with Cornell University; in Indiana with Purdue Uni- versity ; in New Jersey with the Rutgers Scientific School ; in Vermont with the University of Vermont ; in Dela- ware with Delaware College. They are unij^d with f( 88 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS state universities in California, Georgia, Illinois, Louisi- ana, Minnesota, Missouri, Maine, Nebraska, North Caro- lina, Nevada, Ohio, Tennessee, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and Arizona. Altogether there are sixty-six of these institutions, established under the Morrill acts of 1862 and 1890, sixteen of which are college departments of universities, and the remainder are separate institutions. The sixteen colleges which are departments of state universities practically maintain a standard of admission equal to that of other department colleges in the uni- versity ; that is, the completion of a high-school course for admission to the freshman class. The larger class of separate colleges, especially in the newer states, must re- ceive its students from the eighth or ninth grade of the public schools. In other words, the stan dard fo rthe time being is de termined by conditio ns. This flexibility is in accord with the wisdom with which the common-school system has been adapted to meet successive stages of the political, social, and industrial advancement of the people. These colleges are winning their way in the face of criti- cism, opposition, and ridicule as did the common school, the high school, and the normal school in the days of their beginnings. Altogether they have an annual rev- enue of $6,000,000, and give instruction to about 30,000 students. At the meeting of the Association of American Agricultural Col- leges and Experiment Stations,i Nov. 10, 1896, the Chairman, Presi- dent J. E. Stubbs, President of the State University of Nevada, made an interesting summary of admission conditions, and courses of in- struction offered in these colleges, from which the following brief statements are drawn : " Out of 46 colleges reporting, 16 have no sub- freshman class and 30 have preparatory departments. The institu- 1 See Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1896-97, Vol. i. 0- SECONDARY AND HIGHER PUBLIC EDUCATION 89 tions which have no preparatory departments are chiefly in the wealthy and populous states where there are first-class high schools in all cities and towns. In the newer and less populous states a well-tequipped preparatory school of high-school grade, with courses of studies cov- ering a period of three or four years, is a necessity, and will continue a necessity for many years to come." As to four-years' courses of study in these colleges, the statement is made that California, Purdue, Kentucky, Minnesota, Cornell, Virginia, and Wyoming, offer 7 ; Del- iivvare, Idaho, Tennessee, and Wisconsin, 6 ; 13 give from 4 to 5 ; and 14 give one and two courses with numerous electives. Federal Aid for Higher Education. — In the report _ of_ the Commissioner of E ducation (1896-97), there is found a report (Chapter XXIII), giving, in a condensed form the amount of Federal and state aid for the establishment of higher education . Thetotal amount given by the United States for state universities, act of July 23, 1787, and its successors in direct line up to 1889, is 20,000 square mil es, of pubHc land, realizing five millions of dollars ; for State Colleges of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts, act of July 2, 1862, and its successors, up to 1889, 15,000 square miles,, realizing ten and a half millions of dollars ; lands granted by act admitting seven new states since 1889, 3,260 square miles, realizing $20,864,000. The annual appropriations of money from the United States treasury towards the support of agricultural colleges and experi- ment stations, by acts of 1887 and 1890, capitalized at four per cent., would represent an endowment fund of $44,400,000. The increasing power of state univ ersities, agricultural and me chanical colleges and similar public ins titutions under jnunicipaT control, is made evideiit b y the latest educat ion_al stat isUcs. _^. The total enrollment of graduate and undergraduate students re- ported by public institutions for higher education was 27,654, an in- go HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS crease of 1,358 over the previous year. The total number of students reported in the collegiate, graduate, and professional departments of institutio is for higher education, public and private, and in professional schools, of all kinds, was 140,1^3, of which number 42,999 were en- rolled as professional students pursuing studies in law, medicine, and theology, leaving 97,134 students reported as pursuing what are gen- erally known as liberal studies. Of this latter number, 27,654 students belong to public institutions, and 69,480 in private, parochial, and other non-public institutions. Higher Education. — In a paper read before the American Social Science Association, December, 1898,1 William T. Harris made the following statements relativ^e to the higher education : " In 1872 the records of higher education show for the entire nation an enrollment of 590 students in each million of inhabitants, — a little more than one college student, on an average, for each community of two thousand population. Not only did the growth of schools for higher education keep up with the growth in population, but the en- rollment increased, year by year, until in 1895, instead of 590 students we had 1 190 in each million. The quota had doubled, and it has since increased. . . . The number of students reported as engaged in post- graduate work in all our colleges and universities in 1872 was only 189. This has steadily increased, doubling once in five or six years until in 1897 the number was 4419. They are twenty-five times as numerous. Professional students, too, have increased. The number studying law, medicine, and theology in 1872 was only 280 in each million of inhab- itants. In 1896 the 280 had become 740 in the million. In the same quarter of the century, scientific and technical schools have multiplied. In the six years from 1890 to 1896 the number of students in engi- neering and applied science increased from 15,000 to 24,000." NATIONAL SCHOOLS. With the exception of a few Indian schools on various Indian reservations and in Alaska, there are o nly two great national schools esta blished bY act of Congress a nd supportecientireiy by^irect appropriations of national 1 Journal of American Social Science Association, 1898. SECONDAR V AND HIGHER PUBLIC EDUCATION 91 revenue. These are the United States Military Academy ^t West Point (1802), and the United States Nava l Academy at Annapolis (1845). They are not usually considered as public schools, but they form in reality an important part of the American system of public educa- tion. They were established for training men in the art of war, and for purposes of national defense. Their an- nual cost is over $800,000. Their value has been proved in every war since their establishment, but was never more clearly demonstrated than in the recent war with Spain. The skilled naval officers who destroyed the Spanish navy at Manila and off Santiago were educated in the Naval Academy. All these great sea-captains write in praise of the skill and valor of the engineers, gunners, firemen, and seamen who were trained in technical schools, and common schools. West Point supplied, in part, the trained army officers. The rank and file who stormed the Spanish intrenchments at El Caney and San Juan had been trained, some in common schools, some in high schools, some in college and university, but whether regulars or volunteers, ex-federals or ex-confederates, cow- boys, or college graduates, they proved themselves equals in patriotism and valor. A NATIONAL UNIVERSITY. ^ There remains one more stage of development to com- plete the Am erican public-school_systern, — the estab- lishment of a free national univers it y in the na tional rap- ital, which shall utilize the great museums and libraries and government scientific departments at Washington, and represent the culmination of the free state universi- ties in one national institution of learning such as George 92 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS Washington hoped for when he bequeathed in his will half of his estate towards that noble end. In 1796, Pres- ident Washington, in his message to Congress, urged the establishment of a national university as well as a military academy. His reasons for desiring a national university are set forth as follows : " True it is that our country contains many seminaries of learning highly respectable and useful ; but the funds upon which they rest are too narrow to command the ablest professors in the different depart- ments of liberal knowledge for the institution contemplated, though they would be excellent auxiliaries. Among the motives to such an institution the assimilation of principles, opinions, and manners of our countrymen by the common education of a portion of our youth from every quarter well deserves attention ; the more homogeneous our citizens can be made in these particulars, the greater will be our pros- pects of permanent union ; and a primary object of such a national institution should be the education of our youth in the science of government." At various intervals during an entire century, Washington's recom- mendation has been a subject of discussion, but not of legislation. In 1899, President David Starr Jordan says of it : " In matters of educa- tion, no other agency can take the place of the combined effort of the people. To the end that a great university, worthy of a growing na- tion, should be established at the national capital, Washington left a large part of his property in trust to Congress to form the nucleus of such an establishment. The scholars and investigators now main- tained at Washington exert an influence far beyond that of their offi- cial position. To the force of high training and academic self-devotion is to be traced the immense influence exerted in Washington by Joseph Henry, Spencer F. Baird, and Brown Goode. Of such men as these are universities made. When such men are systematically selected from our body of university professors and brought to Washington and allowed to surround themselves with like men of the next genera- tion, we shall, indeed, have a national capital. A university is simply ) a contrivance for making wisdom effective by surrounding wise men with the conditions most favorable for rendering wisdom contagious." CHAPTER IV PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER THE CIVIL WAR THE SOUTHERN STATES Reconstruction. — When the Civil War was over and reconstruction completed, the people of the Southern states took up the common-school question with all the zeal of the early educational reformers in the North dur- ing the days of Horace Mann and Henry Barnard. "The South," says Dr. A. D. Mayo, " that so long remained outside the expanding circle of the common school, has responded to the cry of the children during the last twenty years by the most remarkable achievement in the organization and support of popular education recorded in history." During the reconstruction period (1866-76) all the Southern states made provisions in their new constitu- tions for establishing a syste m of free pub lic^ schools. "The^siluatrdn was complicated, because separate schools were required for the children of the colored race. More- over, civil government was unsettled, and the people, exhausted by the Civil War, were poon The pioneer educators in the new states of the Northwest or of the Pacific states can realize from their own experience, in some measure, the untiring efforts and devotion to duty necessary to provide for a general system of education, — a work which required the combined energies of edu- cators, philanthropists, and statesmen. 93 94 HISTOR Y OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS The preliminary steps were taken when General John Eaton, afterwards U. S. Commissioner of Education, was ordered by General Grant to look after the freedmen in Tennessee and Arkansas, and to open schools for colored children wherever it was possible to do so. In 1864 a considerable number of schools was opened in and around Vicksburg and Memphis, so that in 1865 the reports showed a school attendance of 7000 pupils. The Freedman's Bureau. — The Fr eedman's Burea u, attached to the War Department, was organized in 1 865, a nd a part of its work was educational. General O. O. Howard, the Commissioner, entered vigorously on his duties. In 1867 he reported to the Secretary of War that $115,000 had been expended for schools. His later official reports show that, from 1866 to 1870, about $2,600,000 was expended for school purposes. Dr. J. M. L. Curry states that the American Missionary Association was the chief body, apart from the govern- ment, in the great enterprise of meeting the needs of the colored race. Its expenditures from i860 to 1893 in the South for freedmen, including church extension as well as education, amounted to $11,600,000. The Peabody Fund. — George Peabody, educated in a Massachusetts common school, placed in the hands of a board of trustees of which Robert C. Winthrop was presi- dent (1867), a fund of $2,000,000 to be used "for the promotion and encouragement of intellectual, moral, or industrial education among the young of the more des- titute portions of the Southern states of our Union." Dr. Barnas Sears, the general agent of the trustees, wisely presented the plan of confining aid to public schools, allowing them partial support, but requiring the people to tax themselves for the remainder necessary to PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER THE CIVIL WAR 95 maintain the schools. He said : " The object of the Peabody Education Fund is free schools for the whole people, neither more nor less. We have nothing in view but what is comprised therein." Robert C. Winthrop, president of the trustees, said in his address at the Yorktown Centennial celebration : " There must be aids and appropriations, and endowments by cities and states, and by the nation at large through its public lands if in no other way, and to an amount compared with which the gift of George Peabody — munificent as it was for an individual benefaction — is but the small dust of the balance. . . . The whole field of our Union is now open to education, and the whole field of the Union must be occupied. This government must stand or fall with free schools. These and these alone can supply the firm foundation, and that foundation must, at this very moment, be ex- tended and strengthened and rendered immovable and indestructible." The Slater Fund.— John F. Slater, educated in a Rhode Island common school and academy, made a be- quest of $1,000,000 (1882), and placed it in the hands of a board of trustees, of which Rutherford B. Hayes was president. The income from this fund was to be ex- pended in aiding education in the Southern states. In his letter to the trustees Mr. Slater expresses his pur- pose as follows : " The general object which I desire to have exclusively pursued, is the uplifting of the lately emancipated population of the Southern states, and their posterity, by conferring on them the blessings of Chris- tian education. . . . But it is not only for their own sake, but also for the safety of our common country in which they have been invested with equal political rights, that I am desirous to aid them with the means of such educa- tion as shall tend to make them good men and good citizens. . . . The means to be used in the prosecution of the general object above described I leave to the discre- tion of the corporation, only indicating as lines of opera- 96 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS tion adapted to the present condition of things, the train- ing of teachers from among the people required to be taught." The trustees decided that students should be trained in some manual occupation simultaneously with their mental and moral instruction, and confined their aid exclusively to such institutions "• as were, with good reason, believed to be on a permanent basis." The trus- tees paid out for educational aid from 1884 to 1894 the sum of $439,000. Dr. J. L. M, Curry, secretary of the John F. Slater Fund, in an ex- haustive paper on the " Education of the Negroes since i860," ^ makes the following statements in relation to education in the South : " All the states of the South, as soon as they recovered their governments, put in operation systems of public schools which gave equal opportuni- ties and privileges to both races. It would be singularly unjust not to consider the difficulties — social, political, and pecuniary — which em- barrassed the South in the efforts to inaugurate free education. It required unusual heroism to adapt to the new conditions, but she was equal in fidelity and energy to what was demanded for the reconstruc- tion of society and civil institutions. The complete enfranchisement of the negroes and their new political relations, as the result of the war and the new amendments to the Constitution, necessitated an entire reorganization of the systems of public education. Comparisons with densely populated sections are misleading, for in the South the sparse- ness and poverty of the population are almost a preventive of good schools. Still the results have been marvelous. . . . The urban pop- ulation is small and agriculture is the chief occupation. Of the 858,- 000 negroes in Georgia, 130,000 are in cities and towns and 728,000 in the country ; in Mississippi, urban colored population 42,000, rural 700,- 000 ; in South Carolina, urban 66,000 ; against 498,000 rural ; in Ala- bama, 65,000 against 613,000; in Louisiana, 93,000 against 466,000. While the colored population supplies less than its due proportion of pupils to the public schools, and the regularity of attendance is less than with the white, yet the difference in length of school terms in schools for white and schools for black children is trifling. In the 1 Report of the Commissioner of Education, Vol. 2, 1894-95. PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER TH, same grades the wages of teachers are about the same. The annual State school revenue is apportioned impartially among white and black children, so much per capita to each child." In 1893-94, the common-school enrollment of colored pupils in the sixteen former slave states and the District of Columbia was 1,425,000 as against an enrollment of white pupils of 3,835,000. " In 1880, on my first visit to the South,"says Dr. Mayo, " I found these public schools everywhere acknowledged models and centers of light. Their boards of education were composed of the leading men of the community, who gave character to the move- ment and from the first assured its success. It would be impossible to make a Northern public fully understand the enthusiasm I witnessed in scores of villages and cities, ex- tending the * whole region roundabout,' awakened by the strange and beautiful spectacle of all the children going to school together, instructed, disciplined, and interested in a way that had never been known before in the memory of the oldest inhabitant." School Organization. — The following exact statement is quoted from an exhaustive paper on " The Social Unit in the Public School System of the United States," by Mr. Wellford Addis, Specialist in the Bureau of Edu- cation : 1 " It seems legitimate to conclude that the school systems of the southeastern and southern coast are systems of state schools, while in Massachusetts, to. take the most striking example, the school system is a town (ship) system, though most freely directed by the legislature to carry out reforms or inaugurate innovations. Five Southern states have a county board as the real local school authority. In one of these (Florida) the county is divided into three districts, and a member of the board is elected from each ; in another (Georgia) the grand jury choose the county board ; in another (Mississippi) the county board is 2 See Report of the Commissioner of Education, Vol. 2, 1894-95. AM. PUB. SCH. — 7 98 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS composed of a member from each supervisor's district appointed by the states uperintendent, and in the fourth and fifth the county board is appointed by the governor. The other states of our southern coast have a county superintendent as the local school authority, who is appointed in Alabama and Virginia by the state superintendent, and in South Carolina (under the old law) by the people. " North Carolina has no county superintendent, and its schools are under authority of its ' county commissioners ' sitting as a ' county board of education.' The more local or district authority, as far as it occurs, is appointed by the county authority, except in Mississippi, where the ' patrons* elect three district trustees, and in Virginia, where an electoral board, composed of the county judge, commonwealth attor- ney, and county superintendent, elect the district boards for the school subdivisions of the county." Recent Statistics. — The report of the Commissioner of Education (1896-97), shows that the total school enroll- ment in the sixteen Southern states and the District of Columbia was 5,398,000, the number of colored pupils being 1,460,000, and the number of white pupils 3,938,000. In Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina the colored school population exceeds the white school population. The total expenditure for the public schools of this sec- tion was $31,145,000. The estimated cost of colored schools alone is $6,575,000. Since 1870 the total amount of money expended in the Southern states has reached $514,922,000, of which it is estimated that $100,000,000 has been expended on schools for colored children. Secondary and Higher Education. — The Report of 1896-97 shows that in the 169 schools of all kinds, public and private, in the United States, exclusively for the edu- cation of the colored race, there was an enrollment of 45,402 students. Of these schools all but nine were in the Southern states. In the secondary grades there were 15,203 students, and in collegiate grades 2108 students. Separate state institutions belonging to the class of PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER THE CIVH WAR 99 " land-grant " colleges, receiving their share of the Con- gressional subsidy for such colleges, have been established for colored students in Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. One of the most notable of these schools is the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia (1870). Dr. Mayo tells the story of this school as follows : " The one great educational genius developed by the Civil War was General S. C. Armstrong. Born in Hawaii, educated in Massachusetts, a brave soldier and a worker with the colored people during the war, he established at Hampton, close by the beach where the first slave ship landed, the most original and characteristically American and mis- sionary organization for the uplifting of the humbler classes, still the majority of mankind, now in existence. The Hampton system com- bines all that can be done for the lower orders of mankind in one institution. It organizes worship on unsectarian basis, establishes military discipline and training in a soldier's life for the boys, compels every pupil to learn some method for self-support, introduces the girls to new modern ways of home life, organizes the principal industrial occupations, gives instruction in English in a good graded system, with a great normal school at the center for teachers, and through its summer schools reaches outward. On the one hand, it joins hands with the state of Virginia, and on the other, with the nation, in the training of the negro and the Indian, and with no complications ap- peals to the American people for support. Armstrong wore himself out in a ministry of education, died in middle life, and, like the good soldier he was, asked for a soldier's funeral." The Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, Ala- bama, receives from the state a small appropriation, and is further aided by contributions from philanthropists. The story of this school is an object lesson in education, and I let the founder and president of the institution give it in his own words. In an address on the " Industrial Edu- lOO HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS cation of the Blacks" ^ (1896), Booker T. Washington spoke, in part, as follows : " I was born a slave on a plantation in Virginia in 1857 or 1858, I think. . . . With the long prayed freedom in actual possession, my mother decided to locate in West Virginia. Soon after, I began work in the coal mines for the support of my mother. While doing this I heard in some way of General Armstrong's school at Hampton, Va. I heard at the same time that it was a school where a poor boy could work for his education so far as his board was concerned. I began at once to save every nickel I could get hold of. At length, with my own savings and a little help from my brother and mother, I started for Hampton. ... I at once found General Armstrong and told him what I had come for, and what my condition was. In his great hearty way he said that if I was worth anything he would give me a chance to work my way through the institution. ... While at Hampton I resolved, if God permitted me to finish the course of study, I would enter the far South, the black belt of the Gulf States, and give my life in providing as best I could the same kind of chance for self-help for the youth of my race that I found ready for me when I went to Hampton, and so in 188 1 I left Hampton and went to Tuskegee and started the Normal and Industrial Institute in a small church and a shanty, with one teacher and 30 students. Since then the institution of Tuskegee has grown till we have connected with it 69 instructors and 800 young men and women representing 19 states. . . . From the first, industrial or hand training has been made a special feature of our work. While friends at the North and elsewhere have given us money to pay our teachers and to buy material which we could not produce, still, very largely by the labor of our students, we have built up within about fourteen years a property that is now valued at $225,000; 37 buildings, counting large and small, located on 1,400 acres of land, all except three of which are the product of student labor." Taxation for Public Schools. — The burden of school taxation^in the Southern states has been heavy and it must long remain so. The people fully realize that while ^ Address at the dinner in honor of Alexander Hamilton, Brooklyn, N. Y., 1896. Report of Commissioner of Education, Vol. 2, 1894-95. PUBLIC SCHOOLS 'AFTER THE CIVH WAR loi endowments, bequests, and denominational appropriations may aid them, to some extent, in educating some of the children, the main support of the public schools for the great mass of children must be derived from a regular and unintermittent revenue derived from state and local tax- ation. Heavy as the burden is, it is no greater, relatively, than it was in New England during the period when the common schools first gained a foothold in the world. The gra ded schools of cities and large towns in the South now differ buMrttle from the urban scho ols in other pa rts of the United States; the j niral schq ols, as in all other sparsely populated states, will be subject, as in other states, to slow deve lo^pment. THE PACIFIC STATES. For a brief typical study of this section, we may take California, which was acquired by conquest in the Mexican War and was ceded by Mexico to the United States in 1848. Owing to the discovery of gold this region was rapidly filled up by emigrants from every state in our own country and from most of the nations of the old world. California was admitted as a state (1850) without the usual preliminary stage of a territorial government. The state constitution, framed and adopted by the people in 1849, provided for the election of a state superintendent of public instruction by the people for a term of three years ; made it the duty of the legislature to " provide for a system of common schools by which a school should be kept up in each school district at least three months in every year ; and provided that the proceeds of school lands should constitute a perpetual fund to be inviolably appro- priated to the support of common schools, and to protect any land grants for a state university." HIS TOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS State Legislation. — At the first session of the legisla- ture (1849-50) no school law was enacted, the Commit- tee on Education reporting " that the taxes laid on the people, for state, county, and municipal purposes were so heavy, the committee did not deem it advisable to report a bill to tax the people still further for the support of public schools." At the second session of the state legislature (1850-51) a school law was enacted, provTdTng" toFThe subdiyisfon-gTc^o unties into schoot jlstric ts ; for a distri ct school committee of thre e, elected annually by "direct vote of the people ; gave the school committees power to build schoolhouse s, to examine and j^point teachers, and t o report to the state superint endent. David C. Broderick, afterward U. S. senator from Cali- fornia, educated when a boy in the public schools of New York city, was an active supporter of this bill. In 1852, the imperfect act of the preceding year was amended by making county assessors ex officio school superintendents ; and by authorizing counties to levy a school tax *' not to exceed three cents on a hundred dollars " — a meager pro- vision for a flourishing and already populous state. This law also contained a section which enabled the parochial schools to secure a pro rata of the public school moneys, a provision which led to several bitter contests in the state legislature for a period of ten years. School Beginnings. — Meanwhile, the peopl e of Am eri- can descent set t o work and organized schools, after th e^ rnarmer jDt thetF^ ncestors on the A t]antic_c oast in ea rly days, w ithout_anyi^- law other than l o c al ordi nances^ In the town of San Francisco, October 11, 1847, a committee of " Town Council " (Ayuntamiento ) built a small one-room schoolhouse on the corner of the town plaza (now Ports- mouth Square), and on February 23, 1848, a small num- PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER THE CIVH WAR 103 ber of townsmen held a meeting and elected the first school committee in California, consisting of seven mem- bers. This school committee appointed as teacher, Thomas Douglass, a graduate of Yale College. The school was opened in April, 1848, with six pupils. This was a public school, mainly supported by tuition fees, but indigents were admitted as charity pupils, after the manner that prevailed in public and parish schools two hundred years before in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York. The town council agreed to pay for these charity pupils the sum of $400 towards the support of the school. But this school was short-lived. When the stampede for the gold mines became general the school dwindled down to eight pupils, and schoolmaster Douglass joined the prospectors and set out for the mountains. In December, 1849, ■'^^- ^'^^ Mrs. John C. Pelton opened a school sup- ported by " voluntary subscriptions," but free to the " children of the poor." This school was made a free public school by ordinance of the Common Council of San Francisco, April 8, 1850, and John C. Pelton was appointed as teacher, in which position he continued until September 25, 185 1. During this period (1848-51), numerous small private schools and denominational schools were opened in San Francisco and other parts of California where the population had become grouped into villages and small towns, such as Sacramento, Stockton, San Jose, Santa Clara, Nevada City, Grass Valley, Rough and Ready, etc. At this time the total number of chil- dren in the state between 4 and 18 years of age was estimated to be about 6,000. Outside of San Francisco, there were only a few feeble public schools, and the his- tory of these is known only by tradition.^ iSwett's " History of the Public School System of California." I04 HISTOR Y OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS Further State Legislation. — At thethird sessionjof JJie Legislature (1851-52) Frank Soule, chairman of the senate committee on education, made an able report in favor of common schools and introduced a revised school law containing several important provisions in advance. /^This law, as approved May 3, 1852, created a state board of education, consisting of the governor, surveyor gen- eral, and state superintendent ; defined the duties of all school officers ; authorized the common council in incorporated towns to raise a school tax not to exceed three cents on a hundred dollars, and fixed the county tax at the same rate ; and provided that no school should receive any apportionment of public money unless free from all denominational and sectarian bias, control, or influence whatever. This last provision was rendered necessary from the fact that under the previous law (185 1- 52), parochial schools had obtained a pro rata of public moneys. School Beginnings in San Francisco, 1851-53. — The first city school ordinance passed under the state school law of 185 1, was that of San Francisco, adopted Septem- ber, 185 1, which provided for a city board of education and a city school superintendent, and appropriated $35,000 for the support of schools. During the forma- tive period of 1851-53, among the small group of school principals, James Denman was a graduate of the Albany { N. Y. ) State normal school ; Ellis H. Holmes and Ahira Holmes were from the Bridgewater ( Mass.) State normal school ; and William Russell's Merrimack ( N. H. ) private normal school was represented by the writer of this history. The first schools were held in rented buildings, small, rude, and cheap, and roughly fitted up for temporary PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER THE CIVH WAR 105 school purposes. For instance, the Happy Valley School ( now the Denman School) occupied for a time a livery stable, sub-divided by thin board partitions. The Rincon School was held in a shanty half-buried in a sand bank. But these rooms were crowded with pupils. In 1851 there was an enrollment of 400 pupils; in 1852, of 600 ; in 1853, of 1500; and in 1856, of nearly 8,000, including 1,421 in the ward or parochial schools. The school appropriations, at first, were niggardly. The common- school spirit had not yet been developed. The new city was full of parochial and other denominational schools, and of small private schools. It required heroic efforts to organize and maintain common schools in the midst of a cosmopolitan population drawn from the four quarters of the globe. The political elements were unstable, and the tenure of teachers was uncertain. The Vigilance Com- mittee, in 1856, purified the city, and for a decade the school administration was good, and prospects began to brighten. The parochial schools of the Catholic Church were strong, and were attended by more than a thousand chil- dren. For several years these schools, known as ward- schools, received their pro rata of public-school moneys. This question became a vexed one in state legislation. The first high school in San Francisco (1856) was started under the name of " The Union Grammar School," because some of the city officials held that a high school was not legally a common school. At the end of a year, however, the school was allowed to assume its proper name, " The English High School." State Legislation Again. — At the fifth session of the legislature (1853-54), Hon. D. R. Ashley "submitted a carefully-prepared school bill, biit as it contained a section Io6 HISTORY OF AMERICAN RUBLIC SCHOOLS that prohibited sectarian schools from receiving a pro rata of public school moneys, it was buried in the rubbish of unfinished business. During the next session (1854-55), Mr. Ashley introduced, in substance, his rejected school bill of the preceding year, which became a law May 3, 1855. This enactment provided among other things that no school should be entitled to any share of the public fund that had not been taught by teachers duly examined and approved by legal authority, and that no sectarian doctrines should be taught in any public school under penalty of forfeiting public funds. In 1857, Andrew J. Moulder, a graduate of the Uni- versity of Virginia, was elected to the office of state sup- erintendent, which he held until 1 863. From his varied ex- perience as a teacher in a Virginia academy, and as a journalist in California, he brought to the office good qualifications for his work. He secured numerous amend- ments to the state school law, and his six annual reports afford a good record of the advancement in common schools. _. In 1 861, John Conness, afterwards U. S. senator from ' California, introduced a bill in the assembly, which be- came a law, providing for the sale of the i6th and 36th sections of school lands, and also that the proceeds should be paid into the state school fund. Thus, after many years of impracticable legislation in tinkering on town- ship land bills, a practicable law was enacted by which in less than one year 200,000 acres were sold, and the pro- ceeds applied to the state school fund. Another attempt was made to secure a pro rata of school money for parochial schools ; but it was defeated by the determined stand taken against it by Hon. John Conness. PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER THE CIVIL WAR 07 Important school legislation was secured in 1865-66 by the enactment of the *' Revised School Law " — a law drafted by the Superintendent of Public Instruction and passed almost without amendment. This law contained liberal provisions for state, county, and district taxation ; and marked the beginning of free common schools in every rural district in the state. It fixed the rate of state school tax at eight cents on each hundred dollars of tax- able property ; the' county school tax at a minimum of $3.00 for each school census child, and the maximum at thirty-five cents on each $100; authorized and required schooL trustees to levy a school tax sufficient to keep a free school five months in each year. It provided for a state board of education ; for life diplomas for teachers ; for district school libraries ; for county institutes ; for the election of district school trustees for a term of three years, one to be elected each year ; and for many other details of a modern public school system. State Taxation. — In i874 _thestate school tax was in- creased to an annual levy of $7.00 for each school census child, which yielded an annual school revenue of over a million of dollars. Another provision secured for each school district, even the smallest, a minimum annual ap- portionment of $500, thus securing at least an eight months school in all rural district schools. The original state tax of half a mill on the dollar was secured in 1864 by a petition to the state legislature from each school district in the state. There were nearly a thousand of these petitions, and the legislators were forced into an immediate compliance with the demands of their constituents. This petition, drafted by the state superintendent, and sent out for circulation in every school district, read as follows : I08 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS "Whereas, We believe that it is the duty of a representative government to maintain pubhc schools as an act of self-preservation, and that the property of the state should be taxed to educate the children of the state ; and whereas, the present school fund is wholly inadequate to sustain a system of free schools ; we, the undersigned, qualified electors of the state of California, respectfully ask your honorable body to levy a special state tax of half a mill on the dollar, during the fiscal years 1864 and 1865, the proceeds of the same to be disbursed in the same manner as the present state school fund." In 1866, the rate of state school tax was raised to eight cents on each $icx), and at a later period was more than doubled. State Normal Schools. — The first state normal school was opened in San Francisco, July, 1862, with Ahira Holmes, of the Bridgewater Normal School, as principal. Henry P. Carlton was soon after appointed vice principal. In 1873 the school was removed to San Jose. Since that time additional state normal schools have been established at Los Angeles, Chico, San Diego, and San Francisco. The State University. — In 1868, John W. Dwindle drafted a bill and secured its passage in the legislature of which he was a member, providing for a state university with an agricultural college. The College of California, a liberal denominational college, founded in 1855, dis- incorporated and conveyed its grounds at Berkeley to the State University, which assumed the debts of the college. The State University opened its doors in Oak^ land, September 23, 1869, with Professor John Le Conte, of South Carolina, as acting president. In 1870, Henry Durant, of Yale, who had been president of the College of California, was elected president of the State Uni- versity. The endowment fund of the State University, derived from Federal and state land grants, may be roughly estimated at two millions of dollars. A state tax of ^eT" PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER THE CIVIL WAR 109 cents on $100 is annually levied for the support of the university, and liberal appropriations have been made from time to time for the erection of buildings. Several large individual bequests have been made to the uni- versity by educational philanthropists. State Publication of Text-Books. — The special student will discover that most of the states made, at one time or another in their history, some blunder or some unfor- tunate experiment in school legislation. California made an ill-advised experiment by a law providing for the state publi cation of co mmon-school text- book s. This law was enacted during a period of great social agitation and in- dustrial discontent. Various causes led up to this result. Under a law enacted in 1863-64, the State Board of Education was authorized to adopt a uniform series of school-books for rural school districts, which at that time included only about one third of the school children in the state. Incorporated cities and towns having special boards of education were left free to adopt their own text-books. This law was enacted on the repeated de- mand of the teachers assembled in state institutes. It had been found that district school trustees made ill- advised selections, or else made no adoptions whatever, leaving pupils to use whatever miscellaneous books they brought to school. This law worked well enough before the days of county boards of education ; but by influences other than good public policy, San Francisco and all other incorporated cities were soon included in the state uni- formity law. The question still remained a vexed sub- ject of legislation. Finally, in 1885, a law was enacted which provided that the State Board of Education should edit or prepare a series of text-books, to be printed by the state printer, published by the state, and furnished to 1 10 HISrOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS pupils at the cost price of publication. At the outset, the majority of public-school teachers were opposed to this plan ; after an experience of fifteen years, the teachers are almost unanimous in condemnation of it. Educational Evolution. — Jn a quarter of a century, "^ California rapidly passed through a l l the successive sta ges of educational development, — first, private and denomina- tionaTschools; next, city schools^; then, ungraded district schools, partly supported by rate bills ; thetTTree public prirnarv^_a nd grammat ^^schools ; and, in due time, high schools, no rmal schools , and a f ree state university^ Incidental to this system, there were provided, as in other states, reform schools, institutions for the deaf and dumb and blind, and for feeble-minded children. In 185 1, the public-school enrollment was less than 2000; ten years later it had increased to 18,000; in 1 871, it was 64,000, and in 1875, to 130,000. The public school expenditures amounted in 1851 to $33,000; in 1861, to half a million, and in 1875, to $2,500,000. From 1850 to 1875, the total expenditure for school purposes, including state normal schools and state university, amounted to nearly $25,000,000. The expenditure for public-school purposes s in 1897 was $5,748,000. Other Western Mountain States. — The history of the school system of the other Pacific and Rocky Mountain states, — now classed by the Bureau of Education as the " Western Division," — resembles, in general outlines, that of California. Oregon had a slower development ; Wash- ington and Colorado a quicker growth. The state uni- versities of Washington, Oregon, and Colorado are excep- tionally promising, and are based on well-organized sys- tems of public schools. Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, are marching along PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER THE CIVIL WAR m their mountain highways in the public-school procession. Alaska has its system of schools for Indians, in charge of the National Bureau of Education, and will soon have its common schools for white children, and in due time its state university and experiment stations. In all this western mountain group of states the total public-school enrollment is 700,000, or 200,000 less than that of the New England states. Out of the total public and private school enrollment, only about six per cent are found in private schools. In the universities, colleges, and schools of technology, there are 5,300 students, 60 per cent of whom are in public institutions. In San Fran- cisco, the largest city of this group of states, there were enrolled (1896-97) 39,000 pupils in public schools, and 8,000 in parochial and private schools. THE NORTH ATLANTIC STATES. New England. — In N ew England mod ernadvancement hasjconsist ed chiefly m perfecting the sch ools_alj^alo^ng t he li nes of original development. The dist rict sc hools have given place to town sc hools place d u^nder the super- YJsion o fedn rational ev perts ; wise compulsory educational laws strictly enforced in all rnanufacturing cities, secure" the rights of children to attend school at least a part of each year. Notwithstanding the influx of foreign opera- tives into cities, ample provision has been made for taking the children into well-planned and well-ventilated school buildings, where they are assimilated into American cit- izens. School attendance has been everywhere increased by furnishing t ext-books at public expense ; and in rural districts by ^frg^_£ublicjtraii sportation tO — the central schools. In the city of Boston (1896-97), there were 1 12 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 82,000 children enrolled in the public schools, and 12,000 attending parochial and private schools. In Massachusetts the doors of the high schools are open to all girls and boys who are fitted to enter them and de- sire to do so, transportation of pupils remote from school being paid for at public expense. Here is what William T. Harris said in 1894 :^ " I find, by the returns made to the National Bureau of Education that the total amount of school education that each inhabitant of Massachusetts is receiving on an average — basing the calculation on the attendance in public and private schools and the length of the annual school term — is nearly seven years of two hundred days each, while the average schooling given each citizen in the whole nation is only four and three-tenths of such years. No other state is giving so much education to its people as Massachusetts, and yet all the education given in all its institutions does not amount on an average to so much as seven eighths of an elementary education of eight years. Even Massachusetts is not over-educating the people. But there would seem to be some connection between the fact that, while her citizens get nearly twdce the national average amount of education, her wealth-producing power as compared with other states stands almost in the same ratio — namely (in 1885), at seventy-three cents per day fot each man, woman, and child, while the average for the whole nation was only forty cents." New York and Pennsylvania. — Of all the states. New York ranks highest in the number of pupils enrolled on public-school registers, having a total enrollment of 1,200,- 000, and Pennsylvania is a close second with 1,140,000. Each state has fourteen large and well-equipped public normal schools. Each state has a strong system of high schools. Each state has an effective system of common schools, differing in details, but each accomplishing the ^ Editor's Preface to " Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School System," by George H. Martin. PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER THE CIVIL WAR 113 main purpose of educating the people. Both states have their public and non-public colleges and universities, of which they are justly proud. Including the school en- rollment in New Jersey (295,000), and the New England states (907,000), the total public school enrollment of the Northern Atlantic Division is 3,545,000. According to the Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1896-97, in the city of Philadelphia, there were 168,000 pupils en- rolled in public schools, and 42,000 in parochial and private schools. The school_systPm of New York city has recently been reorganized and the executive power has been central- ized. In 1896, an act"oT~the stateTegTstatnre^-provided for a city board of educati on for New Y ork_city, consist- ing of 2i_commissiQa£j :s of common sc hools, appointed by the mayor, for a term of three years, one third to be ap- pointed annually. The board have full control of public schools and of the public-school system of the city, sub- ject only to the statutes of the state. Teachers are ap- pointed by the board on the written nomination of a major- ity of the board of school superintendents. The city must be divided into fifteen inspection districts, for each of which there is a board of school inspectors of five mem- bers, appointed by the mayor for a term of five years, one inspector being appointed each year. The local or ward boards elected by popular vote are abolished. Under this law high schools have been established, and kindergarten schools opened. T his law is typical of the present ten- (ien£y_ilL_all_great cities to a centralized management of school s, under the inspectlon^ f educ ationaTexperts. The new charter of San Francisco, adopted in 1899, provides for a board of education of four members, appointed by the mayor, and each paid a salary of $3,000 a year. AM. PUB. SCH. — 8 114 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS The g£o^^ of New York city in recent years has been so rapid that it has been difficult for the schools to keep pace with the population. At the opening of the schools in September, 1898, there were 15,000 children clamoring in vain for admission into the over-crowded public schools. Under the imperative demands of the public press, tem- porary rooms were rented for most of these children, and measures proposed for issuing bonds to the amount of $9,000,000 for the erection of suitable modern school- houses. In 1897 there were estimated to be 40,000 chil- dren in this city attending parochial and private schools, and 226,000 enrolled in the public schools. Yet there is not room enough to accommodate the children clam- oring for admission into the public schools. One great drawback on the public schools of New York city, for the last quarter of a century has been the over-crowded school- rooms and the great number of pupils to each teacher. This condition of things exists in Chicago and most of the other great cities. THE NORTH CENTRAL STATES. The Northwest Territory. — In this central seat of popu- lation, made secure to public schools and free labor by the ordinance of 1787, the American public-school system has full and free development. HereTTn tKe"Tive~staYes formed ouf of'The ofiginall^orthwest Territory — Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin — there are now enrolled in the public schools 3,2 15,000 pupils, — an enroll- ment lacking only 30,000 of being equal to the combined enrollment of New York, Pennsylvania, and the New England States taken together. Here, also, are enrolled in all institutions, public and private, for the higher edu- PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER THE CIVH WAR 115 cation, 17,000 students, of whom one half are in pubUc colleges and universities. Here are growing up great state universities like those of Michigan and Illinois. Here is the University of Chicago, which resembles the modern state university in most respects except in name. Here, too, are congregated the notable leaders of the American-Herbartian methods of instruction, who are bringing common-school methods of instruction into ac- cord with psychological principles and the needs of mod- ern social conditions. Other States. — If we add to these five states the other states included in the North Central Division — Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Kansas, — we find a public school enrollment of 5,587,000 pupils, or more than one-third of the entire enrollment of the republic. These states, with one exception, came into the Union under conditions similar to those of the Northwest-Territory states. Missouri, which remained so long on the border line of North and South, East and West, is distinguished, educationally, by the public-school systems of St. Louis and Kansas city, and the work of William T. Harris and James M. Greenwood. Turning to the great cities of this division we find a large school attendance in parochial and private schools, but in these states, as a whole, such attendance is compara- tively small. The public schools of Chicago, like those of New York, are overcrowded with children, having an en- rollment of 225,000 pupils; yet there are estimated to be 91,000 children attending parochial and private schools. The city of St. Louis has a public school enrollment of 75,000 and a parochial, and private school attendance esti- mated at 25,000. 1 1 6 HISTOR Y OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS SOUTH ATLANTIC STATES. In this division are included the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. The total common-school enrollment in these states in 1 896-97, was 2,070,000, Georgia ranking highest in number (446,000), Virginia second (368,000), and North Carolina third (258,000). The city of Washington (D. C), had a pubhc- school enrollment of 42,000, and a parochial and private school attendance estimated at 5,000 pupils. In Baltimore the public-school enrollment was 76,000 ; the parochial and private school attendance was estimated at 16,000. SOUTH CENTRAL STATES. This division includes Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. The total common school enrollment is 2,725,000, Texas ranking highest (616,000), Tennessee second (482,000), Kentucky third (400,000). The city of Louisville has a public-school enrollment of 26,000, and a parochial and private school attendance estimated at 8,000. New Orleans has a public-school attendance of 29,000, and no report on parochial or private school attendance. Nash- ville has in public schools an enrollment of 10,000; in parochial and private schools, 1,700. CONCLUSION. This chapter may be fitly closed by a quotation from the Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1896-97 : " If the conditions existing in the year 1896-97 were con- tinued indefinitely, what would be the average amount of PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER THE CIVH WAR u; schooling per individual, counting it in school years of two hundred days each ? I find that if we include public and private schools and higher education as well as elementary and secondary, the amount that each inhabitant would receive is 4.94 years." The table which the commissioner submits shows the comparative rank by " divisions " as follows : North Atlantic, 6.50 years; North Central, 5.90 years; Western, 5.54 years ; South Atlantic, 3.08 years ; South Central, 2.83 years. Another table shows the total amount of school- ing per inhabitant, considering only public elementary and secondary schools, to be 4.37 years. The " divisions " rank as follows: North Atlantic 5.61 years; North Central 5.29 years; Western 5.02 years; South Atlantic 2.78 years ; South Central 2.49 years. This official exhibit doesjiot ^eryt to indicate that the republic, as a whole, ^^V^m'Tig frr>m f^^rf-r- e-<\y^^:x\^\c^X\ (^\ thc pCOplc. ' ^ The report of the Bureau of Education further shows that there were enrolled in the schools and colleges, both public and private, during the school year 1896-97, 16,255,093 pupils, being an increase of 257,896 over the preceding year. There were also enrolled 393,194 pupils in city evening schools, business schools, Indian schools, schools for defective classes, reform schools, orphan asy- lums, and miscellaneous schools. This makes the grand total of pupils and students in the whole nation 16,648,287. CHAPTER V COMMON-SCHOOL COURSES OF STUDY. BRANCHES OF INSTRUCTION In Colonial Schools. — The curriculum of the primitive colonial common school included only reading, writing, and arithmetic. For half a century the course in reading consisted of the hornbook, some church primer or cate- chism, the Psalter, and the Bible. In arithmetic the teachers used some English text-book, such as Cocker's or Hodder's, and dictated lessons to pupils, who carefully copied their work into blank-books. When the catechism and the Psalter began to go out of use, various kinds of readers and spelling-books were brought over from Eng- land. Still later, text-books on grammar, geography, and history were dimly foreshadowed by fragments of each, roughly " correlated " in various reading books. In Early American Schools. — During the first half cen- tury after the War of the Revolution, the colonial course ^'study was enriched by the addition of grammar, geo- graphy, and, occasionally, history of the United States. Studies other than these were exceptional, save in a few cities and large towns, in which the original Latin gram- mar schools were becoming slowly transformed into American public schools which supplied an education in English along with instruction in Latin. The text-books were few in number and poor in quality. Noah Web- ster's ''American Spelling Book" was used as a correlated ii8 COMMON-SCHOOL COURSES OF STUDY 119 text-book for beginners in reading and spelling, though some schools retained Perry's or Dilworth's, both of Eng- lish origin. The spelling book was followed by a single ungraded reading book, usually Murray's ** English Reader," or the " American Preceptor," or Scott's " Elo- cution," or the "Columbian Orator," or Webster's " Ameri- can Selection," or Porter's "" Rhetorical Reader," or the " Ameycan First Class Book," with the Bible for sup- plementary reading. There was, in general, one un- graded text-book for each of the other studies ; such as Pike's, or Daboll's, or Hodder's, or Welch's, or Adams's Arithmetic ; Lindley Murray's or Noah Web- ster's English Grammar; and Dwight's, or Morse's, or Olney's, or Woodbridge's Geography. Engraved copy-books were unknown. . The teacher wrote the copies at the head of each page in each pupil's blank- book, and made and mended the quill pens. Drawing was an unknown art, and little or no time was wasted in school singing. Printed courses of study had no exis- tence. School desks and seats were rude and uncomfort- able. Behind the teacher's platform there was usually found a small blackboard, but it was never used by pupils. Charts, maps, and globes had not yet come into general use. The hours of school were from 9 A. M. to 4 P. M., with an intermission of one hour at noon. Schools were^ in session six days in the week, though on Saturdays they closed at noon in order to give pupils time to prepare for Sunday. In summer time, when the big boys were at work on the farm, the school was taught by some young schoolmistress that had attended the academy a few terms. During the winter term of three months a school- master was employed, because some of the boys required 9, strong hand in discipline, and the older boys from fifteen / ^ 1 20 HIS TOR Y OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS to twenty-one years of age took up book-keeping or pursued the advanced course in algebra and geometry found in Pike's arithmetic. The schoolmaster was paid from ten to fifteen dollars a month, exclusive of board ; and the school- mistress from three to eight dollars a month. As late as 1 8 14, Mary Lyon, the founder of Mt. Holyoke Seminary and College taught her first district school in Western Massachusetts for $3 a month, and " boarded round.** DISCIPLINE. School discipline was rigid and sometimes sever e, like that in the schools of England and Scotland. It was pithily summed up and kept alive by a well-known couplet in the " New England Primer: " " The idle fool Is whipped at school." The schoolmasters who came over from England dur- ing the first century of colonial life were firm believers in corporal punishment as a stimulus to mental activity in memorizing hard lessons. But the se verity of English discipline slowly disappeared. The ordinary school dis- cipImeT except m some of the British types of Latin grammar schools was reasonably well adapted to the ex- isting home government and the condition of society. In the schools of which I gained a personal knowledge, either as a pupil (1835-44), or as a teacher (1848-52), corporal punishment was of rare occurrence, and then only in cases of open insubordination. Whipping a boy for not learning his lessons was unknown. The usual manner of punishment was by a few strokes on the palm of the hand with a light wood ferule. I call to mind only one instance COMMON-SCHOOL COURSES OF STUDY 121 of punishment on an extensive scale. This was when ten big boys became so interested in skating on a neighbor- ing mill-pond that they came into school late after the noon intermission. They stood up in line manfully and took their feruling without a whimper. But the next day they were in their seats promptly after the ringing of the bell. As for myself, I was never whipped either at school or at home. During a teaching experience of two winters in New Hampshire and two winters in a district school in Massachusetts, the list of corporal punishments began and ended with one obstreperous boy. My friend, John Muir, the distinguished writer and sci- entific explorer, who began his education by six years of study in a " grammar school " in Scotland, gives me an account of the severe discipline in the Scotch schools of that period. " Any failure in Latin, or French, or gram- mar, or spelling, or arithmetic, was followed by a warm thrashing, which the boys took as a matter of course and seemed to be greatly benefited by it. No disgrace at that time was attached to corporal punishment ; it was as hearty and natural as the weather ; kept the scholars wide awake and mindful ; exerted a marvelous influence on memory ; and developed manly Spartan fortitude." Earl Barnes, also, takes a very charitable view of the results of corporal punishment in the English schools of to-day. METHODS OF TEACHING. Recitations. — In general there was very little direct ora Hnstruction . It was the offi ce of thejteacher to keeg ord er and hear recitations. It was the duty of pupils to nie morize text:: book lessons and recite them withou t note,^ comrn ent, or question. The end aimed at was the mem- 122 HISTOR Y OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS orizing of text-book lessons. In arithmetic '^ sums ' ' were worked out by rule, and this work was believed to be the highest kind of mental discipline. In the un- graded schools of that time, indeed, it was not possible for teachers to do much more than to hear recitations. Thus the text-book became all important, and almost entirely determined the mental training of pupils. The dominating influence of this method is strong in American schools even at the present time. The sharp criticisms of German educators on our undue reliance on text-book work is not undeserved. In the district school that I attended (1835-44), as in most of the schools of that period, written arithmetic was pursued on the *' individual system," each pupil attacking the subject in his own way and working as fast as he could. We worked by the rules in the book, and when we " got stuck " by some puzzling problem, went to the master or to some older boy, who showed us how to do it. More than half our entire school time was devoted to working out sums in the book. When Colburn's In- tellectual Arithmetic appeared, we were put on regular drill work in class, much to our delight. Great stress was placed on oral spelling and oral reading, in class. We had innumerable spelling matches, and frequent evening spelling schools. Co mposition-writing was unknown to _us. We were supposed to acquire the " art of writing the English language with propriety " by a text-book study of Orthography, Etymology, Syntax, and Prosody, without writing even a sentence. District Schools. — These d istrict school s, however, were often far better than their limited curriculum would seem to inciicate. For a long period, the winter schools were taughtJby_y oun^ college graduates who were enabled by COMMON-SCHOOL COURSES OF STUDY teaching to " pay their way " while studying law, medicine, or theology. These cultured young men were ready to aid ambitious and promising pupils in beginning algebra, Latin, or other advanced studies. They encouraged fore- handed farmers to send their smartest boys through the academy and to college. The village district school that I attended was taught for three successive winters by young law students, graduates of Dartmouth. It was one of these young liberals that started a class of big boys in United States history, natural philosophy, and the civil government of New Hampshire, and graciously allowed me to enter it when only ten years of age. A PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW. Attempted Improvements. — There is a recent article on *' attempted improvements in the course of study," from which, by the kindness of the writer, I am permitted to make a liberal quotation. The theory, practice, and results of the old school curriculum and its accompanying method are graphically summed up and set forth by Pro- fessor Paul H. Hanus, of the pedagogical department of Harvard University, as follows :^ " Once it was assumed that all knowledge was locked up in books ; at the same time it was assumed that all knowledge (book-knowledge) was power. Hence all intellectual development meant the mastery of books. ' To put a child to his book ' was accordingly the phrase which described the aim and processes of elementary education. Or, in other words, the aim was to enable the child to read, write, and cipher in order that he might possess himself of the contents of books. Until a command of written and printed speech and facility in numer- ical operations were secured, it was assumed that nothing else could be learned. " Not many years ago, it was still quite generally true that the ele- 1 The Educational Review, December, 1 896. 124 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS mentary school course of study — the pre-high school course — could be described as chiefly a course of study in the school arts, reading, writ- ing, arithmetic, and English grammar, together with book-geography and a little United States history. It was still quite generally true that the school seemed to be divorced from life. . . . " It was, therefore, quite generally true that the total permanent re- sult of the first eight or nine years of the pupil's school life was the ability to read, but not the reading habit ; the ability to spell and write words, but no power of expression with the pen ; a varying ability to add, subtract, multiply, and divide simple numbers, integral and frac- tional, but much uncertainty in all other arithmetical operations ; some fragmentary book-knowledge of names and places of our own country and of foreign countries ; and some scrappy information relating to the history of the United States. " A further defect of this barren elementary course of study was to create a gap between ' the grades,' as they were called, and the high school. The pursuit of literature, art, natural science, foreign languages, was usually rigorously excluded from ' the grades ' ; and the pupil, on entering the high school, found himself face to face with a bewildering number of conceptions wholly new to him, and consequently often as uninteresting and as devoid of significance as the drill of his grammar- school period." MODERN IMPROVEMENTS. The Enlarged Curriculum. — The early common-school curriculum has been enlarged from time to time during the past half century, by the addition of mus jc^ rawing , p hysiology and hygien e, history and lite rature, nature ^udy , and th e^riting^oT^En^risiri In many city schools and in some rural schools, the course has recently been further enlarged by the addition of e lementary alg ebra and_ geometry . Moreover, in many city schools, manual trainin g has been introduced in the form of sewing, cook- ing, and tool-work. In many cities graded evenin g schools are kept open during the winter season, and in some places, as in San Francisco, such schools are continued COMMON-SCHOOL COURSES OF STUDY 125 throughout the year, and are regularly graded. These schools include the common studies of the elementary course, and also bookkeeping, drawing, typewriting, sten- ography, and certain high school studies. ^ Nor has this general progress been limited to the ele- mentary schools. Science and the scientific method have led t^^^^^^_'jj^j<'^^'^Tic;triir^ Ciirriridnm in high scHo ols, riormal schools, c olle ges, and univ ersities. / But the greatest enrichment of the elementary courses ^^ of study consists, not so much in the addition of new sub- jects, as in the chan ge from the formal, deductive , logical, philosophical method of former times to the inductiv e, scientific, genetic method pursued, to-day, in the best schools. Even primary-grade pupils are now led to the direct study of nature at first iiand. Instruction is im- parted by the voice of the earnest teacher. Pupils are introduced to suitable literature at an early age, and are led to form a taste for good and wholesome reading. The_[ general equipment of schools with small school libraries of appropriate modern literature, for supplementary read- ing at home or in school, has proved one of the greatest sources of enrichment. In many cities and towns free public libraries reinforce the school libraries. The Kindergarten. — One notable means of enriching the common-school course is the kindergarten method of training young children from four to six years of age. This has proved the possibility of beginning school educa- tion before children learn to read and write. Created by the genius of Froeb el a little before the middle of this century, the kindergartenwas transplanted from Qfj^rmariy _ to Ameri ca in 1855. This new educational movement was taken up by charitable associations and societies, and free kindergartens were opened in various parts of 126 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS the United States for the children of the poor in great cities. The first public-school kindergarten was established in St. Louis (1873), through the combined influence of Wil- liam T. Harris, then City Superintendent of Public Schools, and Miss Susan E. Blow. In 1896 the number of public school kindergartens in St. Louis was ninety-five. Phila- delphia, Boston, Chicago, Milwaukee, New York, and many other cities have made the kindergarten a part of their school system. According to the report of the Commissioner of Education (1895-96), there were in the United States 924 free public-school kindergartens, the three leading states being Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York. The kindergarten method has stimulated child study j^ it has si mpHged Jn struct ion in t hp lower prJmgry^graHpg ; it h as, in tro duced a natu ral ^ method of teaching y oung children to sing ; it has proved its power in m ^raljtrain- ing. It is only a question of time when it will become a vital part of all city school systems. The German type of kindergarten is not perfect, and it has already been ma- terially modified to meet its American environment. It will doubtless experience further changes in methods and management. A DECADE OF CHANGE. During the past ten years (1888-98) there has been a period of unprecedented educational activity and improve- ment all over the land. Marked changes in courses of study and in methods of teaching have occasioned some friction ; for teachers are conservative, and require time to adapt themselves to new conditions. It has conse- quently become a matter of vital importance to make room for the new studies and to find time for old ones COMMON-SCHOOL COURSES OF STUDY 127 without overtasking pupils. For the adaptation of courses of instruction has only begun, and psychological methods are in their infancy. The comparative value of studies in the modern school curriculum, the distribution of time to each study, the best methods of grading and promoting pupils, the value of oral instruction as contrasted with the dead formalism of text-book study and memorized recitations ; the fitting of grammar school work to connect with enlightened high school courses ; the closer inter-relation of high schools with the varied courses in public colleges and state uni- versities ; the extent of elective studies in grammar school, high school, college, and university ; — all these are now the subjects of earnest investigation by the pedagogit departments of universities, by college presidents, by normal-school principals, by school superintendents, by boards of education, by educational journals, by the lit- erary magazines, and by thousands of thoughtful and pro- gressive teachers of elementary schools. It may require many years of observation, experiment, and discussion before any general conclusion shall be reached. Indeed, entire agreement on this complex question may never be reached. All__enlightened educators agree that Chinese ji niformity is _undesirable, ev en i f it w ere poss ible. Flex- ible courses, adapted to varying cond itions are most to "~tie"Hesired. WHY PROGRESS IS SLOW. Conservatism and Progress. — Though the development of the primitive colonial school curriculum into the highly differentiated course of instruction in the American public school system of to-day was slow for a period of two centuries, it kept even pace with the evolution of civil 128 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS government, the extension of the right of suffrage, the "^increase" in population^ the accumulation of wealth^^nd tft^'lh^usffialand commercial prospe rity of ou r country. ^nmnTdeFTRe American system of local school manage- ment, uniform development is impossible. As vestiges of the *' homespun age " are still found in some rural sections of our country, so there are schools yet in ex- istence that closely resemble those of a century ago. The subject of improvement of rural schools is still under earnest consideration by all thoughtful educators. The question of securing good public school management in great cities is one of the most difficult problems before the American people to-day. The Law of Change. — In taking leave of the old cur- riculum and its antiquated pedagogical methods, we do so without regret. All enlightened educators recognize the truth that s chool systems a nd pedagogical methods mustb e subject to change in order to meet the suj ccessiye stages in the pol itical, social, and industrial devel opment ot a]^eopTeT " Every educational system," says a modern leader of educational thought in Germany, '' grows his- torically from the general status of science and the views of the world and life of a people and its age ; conse- quently there is no system of education generally appli- cable to all ages." In a recent paper on " Scientific vs. Poetic Study of Education," Professor Charles De Garmo says : ^ " How can one make a scientific study of educational ends for the present age ? Only, I apprehend, by applying to education the methods that have illuminated other fields of research. If every known science, natural and human, except education, has been made alive by the his- torical or comparative method, why should we not expect it will do as 1 Educational Review, March, 1899. COMMON-SCHOOL COURSES OF STUDY 129 much for that ? Such a method would show that, despite the visions of the poets, every nation, race, or order having the power, has given a training to its youth that in its opinion best furnished the true requi- sites for survival. Open at any chapter in the history of civilization, and if you would understand the education of the people, study their ideals and institutions. In these you will find the key to their educa- tion. If the national purposes are simple, the education is marked by like simplicity in its aims ; if the national life is complex, the same complexity is found in education. Would an American teacher study scientifically the ends for which we educate, let him study the evolu- tion of this people. It is not an easy task, for in two hundred years we have many times repeated, in one portion and another of our vast domain, the principal stages of the more slowly developing European civilizations. The student will have to follow with fidelity the stages of our development in religion, government, and politics ; he will need to follow the unfolding of our material wealth in the development of natural resources, the growth of manufacture, and the invention and perfection of wonderful instruments of "transportation and communica- tion ; he will have to investigate the financial problems of universal education, the growing independence and increased public services of women. In short, to comprehend the ends of our education as they are, he will have to become a student of our civilization as it is." We believe that the schools of to-day are better in most respects than those of the period we have had under consideration. But in contrasting the two systems we must consider each in relation to its environment. The real question which the pedagogical student should at- tempt to decide is whether, on th e whole , the schools of to-day fit pu pils f qr_their life-work, un der the social co ndk, tions of present times, better than the old-time school s fitted children for the life environme nts of their own j time. By laws, customs, and traditions, the past holds a strong grasp on the present, and we cannot escape from it if we would. In a succeeding chapter a few special studies on primitive school text-books may be of aid in arriving at a final judgment. AM. PUB. scH. — 9 CHAPTER VI STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS It is not a matter of idle curiosity that leads the stu- dent of educational history to gather up and examine primitive school text-books. In early day s these t.fext-^ books absolut ely determined the course of study , and 'Fromthem jvve^ can gai nLSome knowledge^of vvhat schoo l c hildren really studied and memorized und er the narrow curriculum of the common school in early tiroes. In no other way can we ascertain the extent to which the schools of to-day are hampered by the conventional cus- toms or traditions of the past, or how far we have suc- ceeded in finding our better psychological or genetic methods of instruction. TEXT-BOOKS IN READING AND SPELLING. The e arly En glML-Colonlsts in Virginia and New Eng- land brought with them the *' hornbook," the church c atechisms , a fe:w_§pelling_books, an arithmetjc, and_the_ Bible. The settlers of New York brought with them from the Netherlands, the catechism of the Dutch Re- formed Church, the Bible, and the primers of Holland, and their children were trained to read and write their mother tongue according to the spirit of the age. In Boston and the surrounding grammar school towns, the boys, at the age of seven years, or when they could ** read the English language by spelling the same," 130 STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 131 or the catechism, or the Psalter, were admitted to the grammar schools in which the major study was, in the beginning, Latin grammar, and the minor and inci- dental branches were reading, writing, and arithmetic. In the rural schools of New England the hornbook was the only school chart, and the reading books were Dil- worth's or Perry's Speller — both English, or the New England Primer, or the Psalter, or the New Testament. The " Psalter " was a collection of the Psalms of David, the Proverbs of Solomon, and the Church Creed. The Engli sh Hornbook . — This " hornbook " was a paper sheet on which were printed the alphabet in capitals and small letters, the vowels, and combinations of one vowel with one consonant ; as, ab, eb, ib, ob, ub ; ba, be, bi, bo, bu, by, etc. Then followed the benediction, the Lord's Prayer, and the Roman numerals. This printed paper was pasted on a piece of thin woodboard and covered by a translucent sheet of horn, held in place by a brass frame or binding. Authentic specimens of the hornbook are now rare even in England. The New England Primer. — After the hornbook was learned, the " New England Primer " was taken up. This little book, r nainly theolog ical, incidentally educational, consisted of the ''Assembly's Shorter Catechism," with various additions to adapt it for school use. It was also extensively used in families and Sunday-schools. The first edition probably appeared about 1660, as an im- provement on some primer from England. One of the best-known editions is a fac simile reprint of the edition of 1777, the full title of which runs as follows : " The New England Primer improved for the more easy attaining the true reading of English, to which is added the As- sembly of Divines, and Mr. Cotton's Catechism, Boston, 132 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 1777." This correlation of reading and theology affords a striking illustration of the extreme type of the educa- tional, metaphysical, and theological formalism of that time. The frontispiece is a full-page wood-cut of '' The Hon- orable John Hancock, Esq., President of the American Congress." The first page contains the alphabet in capi- tals, small letters, and italics ; the next two pages include combinations of single vowels with single consonants, as, ab, eb, ib, ob, ub ; ba, be, bi, bo, bu ; az, ez, iz, oz, uz ; za, ze, zi, zo, zu. Following this there are three pages of words for spelling ; the first lesson consisting of words of one syllable ; the second, of words of two syllables ; the third, of words of three syllables ; and the sixth, of such words as abomination, edification, humiliation, mor-tifi- ca-tion. Reading. — The following is half of the first regular lesson in reading : " Call no ill names. Speak the truth. Use no ill words. - Spend your time well. Tell no lies. Love your school. Hate lies. - Mind your book. Strive to learn. Be not a dunce." Next there follows an illustrated alphabet, with a short couplet after each letter, each couplet having a rude wood-cut illustrating the text. The following extracts will illustrate the character of these rhymes : A. In Adam's fall ^ Q. Queen Esther sues We sin-ned all. J And saves ihtjews. D. The Deluge drown'd T. Young Timothy The Earth around. Learnt sin to fly. E. Elijah hid W. Whales in the sea By Ravens fed. God's voice obey. STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 133 F. The judgment made X. Xerxes did die Felix afraid. And so must I. O. Young Obadias, Z. Zaccheus he David, Josias, Did cHmb the tree All were pious. Our Lord to see. In subsequent editions, these rhymed couplets were often materially changed. In one edition, I find the fol- lowing substitutes for the original text : C. The Cat doth play L. The Lion bold And after slay. The Lamb doth hold. D. A Dog will bite M. The Moon gives light A thief at night. In time of night. F. The idle Fool O. The royal oak it was the tree Is whipped at school. That saved his royal majesty. Other Lessons. — The succeeding twenty pages of read- ing lessons include the following topics : An *' Alphabet of Lessons for Youth," mostly composed of quotations from the Bible ; the Lord's Prayer ; the Creed ; Dr. Watts' Cradle Hymn ; Verses for Children ; " Some Proper Names of Men and Women, to teach Children to spell their Own ; " a wood-cut of " Mr. John Rogers, the first martyr in Queen Mary's reign, who was burnt at Smith- field, February 14, 1554," followed by a poem of six pages written for his children a few days before his death ; Agur's Prayer; and "Choice Sentences," of which the following is an example : *' Our weakness and inabilities break not the bond of our duties." " The Shorter Catechism, agreed upon by the Reverend Assembly of Divines at Westminster," fills twenty-four pages of print, all of which children were expected to read, memorize, and recite. The nature of the task set before pupils will best be comprehended by a single quotation. 134 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS " Q. 1 6. Did all mankind fall in Adam's first transgression ? A. The covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself, but for his posterity, all mankind descending from him by ordinary genera- tion, sinned in him, and fell with him in his first transgression." The ** Assembly Catechism" is followed by another catechism of nine pages, entitled : '' Spiritual Milk for American Babes, Drawn out of the Breasts of both Testa- ments for their Soul's Nourishment, by John Cotton." In the later editions, Cotton's Catechism was omitted. The book closes with a dialogue in verse entitled : " A Dialogue between Christ, Youth, and the Devil." This primer for teaching reading reminds one of the Chinese primer entitled the " Three Character Classic," which consists of 178 poetical couplets in rhyme, with three words in each line. But this Chinese classic, a thousand years old, is more difficult than the New Eng- land Primer. " It is," says Professor John Fryer, of the University of California, *' a most difficult and abstruse epitome of the whole circle of Chinese knowledge written in the classical or dead language, as are all Chinese school books. This is no more like the language of home, or of every-day life than Greek or Latin are like current Eng- lish. When the primer is perfectly memorized, the young pupil proceeds to the Thousand Character Classic, a book compiled A.D. 550, which he also commits to memory. Besides this dreary task, he is expected to spend some time daily, as a sort of recreation, in tracing or writing characters with the Chinese brush or pencil, commencing with large ones, from one to two inches square, and de- creasing to the size of the ordinary current hand. Here the poor lad only learns the form of the characters, but is not given the faintest idea of their meaning." The young Chinese boy learned by heart from his STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 35 " Three Character Classic," and shouted aloud to his teacher, a Chinese sentence, which means in English : " Man, as to his nature, is originally virtuous." The American boy memorized from his New England Primer, the following philosophic rhyme as he learned the first letter of the alphabet : *' In Adam's fall, we sin-ned all." The Bible. — In connection with the New England Primer, the New Testament was largely used as a read- ing book. As an opening exercise each pupil in turn read one verse. This custom continued in use in most schools up to the middle of the nineteenth century. At a later colonial period various English readers and spellers came gradually into use, such as the '' English Reader," Perry's " Spelling Book, the Only Sure Guide to the English Tongue," and Dihvorth's '' Spelling Book," published about the middle of the century, which con- tained, in addition to columns of words, a few elementary principles of grammar. Webster's Spelling Book. — One of the most notable of the early American school-book authors was Noah Webster, who published, in 1783, "An American Spelling Book," which soon went into general use throughout the United States. At the beginning of the nineteenth century most of the school children in our country began both reading and spelling with the use of Webster's Spelling Book. This famous old schoolbook was developed in strict accordance with the formal scholastic logic and the orthodox pedagogical philosophy of a century ago. Like the hornbook and the primer, it begins with the alphabet and proceeds with mathematical exactness to combina- tions of one consonant with one vowel ; next proceeds to combine three letters, then takes up words of two sylla- 136 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS bles, and so on up to a-bom-i-na-tion and un-in-tel-li-gi- bil-i-ty. This method of developing language by syllables in general disregard of thought is best made evident by reproducing a few lessons verbatim. After two pages devoted to the alphabet in Roman letters, Italic, Old English, and script, with the numerals, the reading and spelling lessons proceed as follows : No. i-I. ba be bi bo bu by ca ce ci CO cu cy da de di do du dy fa fe fi fo fu fy ga ge gi go gu gy go on. by me. it is. is he. go in. we go. to me. he is. go up. to us. to be. I am. an ox. do go. No. 3- on it III. • on us. is he to go- is it by us. we go to it. he is to go- it is by us. he is by me. am I to go. if he is in. so he is up. I am to go. go up to it. sol am up. No. 6-VI. is he to do so by- me. it is to be by me. he is to do so by me. by me it is to be. so I am to be in. I am to be as he is he is to go up by it. he is to be as I am No. lo-X. pha phe phi pho phu phy qua que qui quo spa spe spi spo spu spy sta ste sti sto stu sty sra see sci SCO scu scy swa swe swi swo swu swy STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 137 No. ii-XI. spla sple spli splo splu sply spra spre spri spro spru spry stra stre stri stro stru stry shra shre shri shro shru shry sera sere scri sero seru sery scla sele sell selo selu scly No. 54, page 41, contains 78 words of three syllables, among which the following words are found : " liturgy, blasphemy, litany, betony, scammony, chancery, sorcery, orrery." Lesson No. 63, of 39 words, corj^ains, " disbursement, disfranchise, hydraulics, embargo." Lesson 121 consists of 2% words of seven and eight syllables, among which are, "incompatibility, impercepti- bility, irresistibility, unintelligibility, immalleability, per- pendicularity, indefensibility." In the reading lesson attached to this spelling there are eleven sentences for reading and definition, two of which run as follows : " The indivisibility of matter is supposed to be demonstrably false." *' Stones are remarkable for their immalleability." In general, about three fourths of each page was de- voted to short, disconnected sentences in reading, the other fourth to spelling. Near the end there were seven short stories and fables of from ten to twenty lines each. When pupils could read the story of " The Two Dogs," and the "Tale of the Boy that Stole Apples," they were ready to begin Webster's " American Selection " or the " English Reader." The Little Reader's Assistant. — There lies on my table a very rare old book entitled : " The Little Reader's Assistant, by Noah Webster ; Northampton, 1791. Third 1 38 HISTOR Y OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS Edition." The author says in the preface : *' The com- piler of this work has been repeatedly requested by the instructors of schools to publish a small book containing familiar stories in plain language for the benefit of chil- dren when they first begin to read without spelling." The table of contents of this primitive first reader is as follows : " I. A number of stories mostly taken from the history of America, and adorned with cuts. II. Rudiments of English Grammar. III. A Federal Catechism, being a short and easy explanation of the Constitution of the United States of America. IV. General Principles of Government and Commerce. V. The Farmer's Catechism, containing plain rules of husbandry. All adapted to the capacities of children." " The Little Reader's Assistant " is a book of 136 pages, 48 pages being given to reading; 51 to grammar; 16 to the Constitution ; 8 to principles of government and com- merce ; 8 to the Farmer's Catechism, and 3 to Reform in Spelling. It is interesting as one of the first rough attempts in this country at a " correlation of studies." It is rudely bound in the thin wood covers of that period. The history stories would delight the Herbar- tians of the present day. Some of these are as follows : " Columbus ; Capt. John Smith ; First Settlers of New England ; Pequod War ; Philip's War ; Story of the Taking of Dover; Burning of Schenectady; Speech of Logan; Putnam and the Wolf; Putnam a Prisoner," etc. The " Rudiments of Grammar " is a simple presenta- tion of the subject to beginners. Noah Webster was a reformer, and he boldly cut loose from some of the an- cient forms of the Latin grammar. He was half a century ahead of his times. The " Federal Catechism " is a clear STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 139 statement of the Civil Government of the United States. " The Farmer's Catechism " is probably the first attempt made in this country to introduce the teaching of agricul- ture into the common schools. It doubtless was satisfac« tory to the hard-fisted farmers of that period. It begins as follows : " Q. What is the best business a man can do ? A. Tilling the ground, or farming. XQ. Why is farming the best business ? / A. Because it is the most necessary, the most healthy, the most in- miocent, and most agreeable employment of men. Q. Why is farming the most innocent employment ? A. Because farmers have fewer temptations to be wicked than other men. . . . They have but little dealings with others, so that they have (ewer opportunities to cheat than other men. Q. What is the great art of cultivating land to advantage ? A. It consists in raising the greatest quantity of produce on the smallest quantity of land with the least expense and labor," etc. Murray's English Reader — The title of this notable school book runs as follows : " Murray's English Reader, or pieces in prose and poetry selected from the best writers, designed to assist young persons to read with propriety and effect ; to improve their language and senti- ments, and to inculcate some of the most important principles of piety and virtue," etc. The first lessons, headed " Select Sentences and Paragraphs," were made up of philosophical aphorisms like the following : " Dili- gence, industry, and proper improvement of time are material duties of the young," " Virtuous youth gradually brings forward accomplished and flour- ishing manhood." " Whatever useful or engaging endowments we possess, virtue is requisite, in order to their shining with proper lustre." " Society, when formed, requires distinctions of property, diversity of conditions, subordination of ranks, and a multiplicity of occupations, in order to advance the general good." The titles of a few selections will show their didactic, abstract, and metaphysical character : " The Vanity of Wealth ; " " The Trials of I40 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS Virtue ; " " Reflections on a Future State from a View of Winter ; " "Change of External Condition Often Adverse to Virtue;" "The Good Man's Comfort in Affliction ; " " The Pleasures of Virtuous Sen- sibiHty ; " " The Pleasures of Retirement ; " etc. The American Selection. — " The American Selection " was a reading book published by Noah Webster (1785). In his preface the author says : " I consider it a capital fault in all our schools, that the books generally used contain subjects wholly uninteresting to our youth. In the choice of pieces, I have been attentive to the politiqal interests of America." We find the subject matter of this American reader su- perior to the metaphysical abstractions and philosophical essays of the English Reader. In the table of contents there are numerous histor- ical pieces, such as : Washington's Resignation ; Sketch of the Late War (14 pages) ; Captivity of Mrs. Howe, etc. ; patriotic selections, such as Warren's Oration on the Boston Massacre ; State papers, such as, Declaration of the American Congress, July 6, 1775 ; ^"^ Oration by Joel Barlow, July 4, 1787. There are several geographical sketches, numerous extracts from Shakespeare, a number of humorous dia- logues, and a few rules and directions for reading and speaking. Modern Reading Books. — About the middle of the century there were published a number of graded read- ers to meet the needs of graded schools, among which McGuffey's series was one of the most popular. For a long period these readers were extensively used in the Western and Southern States, and, in a revised form, they are still in use. Another well-known series was that of Salem Town. A marked departure from the purely literary " scrap- book " style of readers was the series by Marcius Willson, in which the author correlated nature studies with read- ing. These readers were the forerunners of the numerous illustrated supplementary readers and nature stories that have enriched the course in reading during the last decade. Ten years later there appeared Appleton's Readers, edited by William T. Harris, characterized by their high literary STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 141 standard. These were followed a little later by Swinton's series of readers and supplementary readers, which com- bined literature with nature stories. Baldwin's School Reading by Grades (1897), consists of a series of eight carefully-graded books, each book being adapted to the work of a single school year. This excellent series is typical of the most recent form of numerous school reading books. The Modern Method. — There has been^ during the last decade, a great enrichment of the course in reading, through the introduction of supplementary reading books and leaflets of good literature. In the primary grades the fairy tales of Hans Andersen, and of Grimm, stories, myths, and fables, put into plain language, open a new world of delight to children and stimulate them to read for the pleasure of reading. Beautifully illustrated nature stories are of unfailing interest, while for the higher grades, the subject-matter is drawn from history, liter- ature, and science. SCHOOL ARITHMETICS. In the beginning of colonial times, primitive ordi- nances required only reading, writing, and the catechism to be taught in common schools. But in most schools some instruction was given in arithmetic to the extent of the *' f our ru les," and ev en of '* vu lgar_Jractions," and "me" rule of jthree." George H. Martin says: " In 1789, no knowledge even of common arithmetic was required for admission to Harvard, nor was the candidate required to know anything of geography. But in 18 14 the college called for arithmetic to the rule of three, and announced that after 1815 it would also demand a knowledge of 142 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS ancient and modern geography. In 1816 it asked for the whole of the arithmetic. Yale, too, enlarged its requirements about the same time." English Books. — The earliest text-books used by the colonial schoolmasters were brought over from England, though afterwards reprinted in the colonies. One of the most popular of these was *' Hodder's Arithmetic, or, That Necessary Art Made Easy," which passed through many editions before 1719. There was another famous English text-book (1688), the full title of which ran as follows: " Cocker's Arithmetick, Being a plain and familiar Method, suitable to the meanest capacity, for the full understand- ing of that incomparable Art, as it is now taught in City and Country, Composed by Edward Cocker, late Prac- titioner in the Arts of Writing, Arithmetic, and En- graving (1688)." Later there came Thomas Dilworth's " Schoolmaster's Assistant." American Books. — " The earliest arithmetic written and printed in America," says Professor Cajori, in his " History of Mathematics," " appeared anonymously in Boston, in 1729." This book had only a limited sale. But at length there was pubhshed (1788) an American text-book entitled, "A New and Complete System of Arithmetic, composed for the use of citizens of the United States, by Nicholas Pike, A. M., Newburyport, Mass., 1788." This bulky volume of 512 pages contained over 300 rules. Everything was done by rule. The author everywhere adheres strictly to the time-honored " logical " method of rule, example, problems, or exercises. At the time of its publication there were in use in the United States nine different kinds of currency, and the various problems given under the head of business exchange re- quired fifty-eight specific rules. There were many pages STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 143 of exercises in '' English Money," but only two pages were devoted to " Federal Money." These two pages had become necessary because Congress had adopted (1786) the decimal currency of the United States. Jefferson de- sired to extend the decimal system to weights and meas- ures, but this radical reform was rejected. This new American schoolbook constituted a tough piece of resistance for the big boys, who frequently attended the winter school until they were twenty-one years of age. It kept them busy for winter after winter, and few there were that ever got to the end of it. It contained a full treatment of Permutation, Progression, Alligation, Single Position, Double Position, and many other barbarisms which are now, fortunately for the chil- dren, eliminated from school text-books. The advanced problems, or '' sums," as they were then called, related to the mechanical powers, gravity, the calculation of the age of the moon, and the time of high and low tides. It dominated the type of succeeding arithmetics for more than half a century, and its influence on the order of topics can still be perceived in many of the text-books now in use. The order of subjects in this book makes an interesting peda- gogical study for teachers. This order reads, in full, as follows : simple addition, subtraction, multiplication (40 pages) ; compound addition and subtraction, with tables and problems (17 pages) ; reduction, ascending and descending, and vulgar fractions (14 pages) ; decimal fractions (3 pages) ; Federal Money (2 pages) ; compound multiplication and division (12 pages) ; reduction of coins, (12 pages) ; duodecimals and single rule of three (16 pages) ; rule of three in vulgar fractions and decimals (8 pages) ; rule of three inverse (3 pages) ; compound proportion (5 pages) ; conjoined proportion (7 pages) ; single fellowship and double fellowship (8 pages) ; practice (i.e., business calculations in all sorts of problems in [44 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS all kinds of currency (29 pages) ; tare and trett, extraction of square root, cube root, bi-quadrate root, sur-solid root, and roots by approx- ^pmation, — in all (24 pages) ; arithmetical progression and geometrical progression (32 pages) ; simple interest and interest by decimals (14 pages) ; annuities, discount, discount by decimals (17 pages) ; barter, loss and gain, equation of payments, brokerage, policies of insurance, compound interest, compound interest by decimals, discount by com- pound interest, annuities or pensions in arrears at compound interest, present worth, or annuities at compound interest, annuities, etc., in reversion, and purchasing annuities forever, — in all (53 pages) ; cir- culating decimals (6 pages) ; alligation alternate (5 pages) ; single position and double position (5 pages) ; permutations and combina- tions (6 pages) ; " Miscellaneous Questions, wuth the Method of Solu- tion," including problems of all kinds in physics, relating to the me- chanical powers, specific gravity, the tides, astronomy, etc. (31 pages) ; tables of exchange (16 pages) ; chronological problems (14 pages) ; use of logarithms (2 pages) ; " plane trigonometry " (16 pages) ; men- suration of superficies and solids (36 pages). The final problem at the foot of page 468 reads as follows : "31. Suppose a Ship sails from Lat. 43^ North, between North and East, till her departure from the Meridian be 45 Leagues, and the sum of her distance and difference of Latitude to be 135 Leagues ; I demand her distance sailed, and Latitude come to .'* " Having " gone through " all the topics catalogued above, which are condensed into 468 pages, ambitious pupils met with *' An introduction to Algebra, designed for the use of academies," which carried them through quadratics, thirty-two pages. The pupils who wanted still more of mathematics were next ''introduced " to twelve pages on conic sections. On the whole, this was a valuable text- book for college-bred teachers, and a passable book for common-school boys and girls that never got further than the rule of three (simple proportion). There is no tradi- tion of any prodigy in any common school that ever reached and mastered the last proposition under the head of "Section III. of the Hyperbola": Prop. 4. As the STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 145 transverse axis is to the conjugate; so the conjugate, to thelatus rectum of the transverse : AB : VY : : VY : LI. See figure 12." This full edition was soon followed by an abridgment in which algebra and geometry were left out. Pike's Arithmetic was followed (1800) by that of Nathan DaboU which was succeeded by Daniel Adams' Arithmetic (181 1) and Oliver Welch's Arithmetic (18 13). At a later period there appeared Smith's Arithmetic, Greenleaf's Arithmetic, and an innumerable company of arithme- tics. Colburn's Arithmetic. — The first radical departure from the old, formal, English type was made by Warren Col- burn in his "Intellectual Arithmetic (1823). This book went at once into general use. It was characterized by George B. Emerson as "a faultless text-book." David P. Page, author of "Theory and Practice," said of it: " In three weeks I had mastered it, and I had gained in that time more knowledge of the principles of arithmetic than I had ever acquired in all my life before." This book introduced the modern inductive and analytical method of teaching mental, or intellectual, or oral arithmetic. The abuse of this book consisted in crowding it upon young^nd immaturejTiindSj_an^a^us^^ suf- fered to some extent when a small boy. Such questions as the following confused me at nine or ten years of age : Question " 9 " p. 86. " 2 eighths of 72 is 3 tenths of how many fifths of 40?" Problem 183, p. 143. "A man being asked how many sheep he had, answered, that if he had as many more, \ as many more and 2\ sheep, he would have 100. How many had he ? " Graded Books. — At a later period, to meet the needs of graded schools, various " three-book series " of arith AM. PUB. scH. — 10. 146 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS metics were published, of which the Robinson series and the Ray series are familiar types. Reform Movements. — In consequence of the general introduction of music, drawing, literature, and elementary science into both primary and grammar school grades, and of elementary geometry and algebra into the higher gram- mar grades of city schools, the undue proportio n of time formerly devoted to arithmetic has, within the last de- cadeTbeen greatly reduced. The introduction into city schools of manual training in wood-work, cooking, and sewing is intensifying the demand for still further limita- tions of the time given to this study. The reform move- ment in the teaching of arithmetic has found aggressive leaders among university presidents, pedagogical profes- sors, school principals, teachers, and hard-headed business men. ENGLISH GRAMMARS. " The Young Lady's Accidence," one of the early Eng- lish grammars published in the United States (1804), seems to have been the first English grammar used in the Boston schools. It owes its title to the fact that Caleb Bingham, the author, wrote it for use in a private school for girls which he had opened in the city of Boston. Pre- vious to this time, instruction in text-book grammar had been limited to a few pages inserted in " Dilworth's Speller." Lindley Murray's English Grammar. — This book, first published in England (1795), was soon after republished in this country, where it immediately went into extensive use. It dominated the type of all succeeding American text-books in this school study for more than half a cen- tury. It was an Anglicized Latin grammar which applied STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS H7 to the English vernacular most of the forms of the highly inflected Latin tongue. Special importance was attached to "parsing" according to Latin models, and to the cor- rection of innumerable examples of " false syntax." There lies before me a copy of this famous text-book, printed (1824) at Exeter, N. H. It is an octave of 334 pages, of which 28 are devoted to orthography, 95 to etymology, 87 to syntax, 32 to prosody, 17 to punctuation and capitals, and 60 pages to an " Appendix, containing rules and observ^ations for assisting young persons to write with per- spicuity and accuracy. To be studied after they have acquired a com- petent knowledge of English Grammar." In his preface the author says it has been his aim to make his definitions and rules " as intelli- gible to young minds as the nature of the subject and the difficulties attending it would admit. " From the sentiment generally admitted, that a proper selection of faulty composition is more instructive to the young grammarian than any rules and examples of propriety that can be given, the compiler has been induced to pay peculiar attention to this part of the subject ; and though the instances of false grammar, under the rules of syntax, are numerous, it is hoped they will not be found too many, when their variety and usefulness are considered." This ancient, " logical," formal, and pedantic text-book opens with the following misleading definition : " English grammar is the art of speaking and writing the English language with propriety." Then there follows a long treatise on " orthography," which is a formal dictionary disquisition of eighteen pages on the sounds of the let- ters. The author's treatment of etymolog}^ has been so closely followed in many American school grammars that it might pass current in the schools of to-day. Murray's twenty-two rules of syntax have been closely followed by the authors of most modern grammars. The models of etymological and syntactical parsing, though formal and Latinized, are shorter and simpler than those given by many of his successors and imitators. The first model for " etymological parsing " is as follows ; 148 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS " Virtue ennobles us." Virtue is a common substantive, of the neuter gender, the third person, the singular number, and in the nomi- native case. (Decline the noun.) Ennobles is a regular verb active, indicative mood, present tense, and the third person singular. (Repeat the present tense, the imperfect participle.) Us is a personal pronoun, of the first person plural, and in the objective case. (Decline it.) The " specimen of syntactical parsing " runs as follows : " Vice produces misery." Vice is a common substantive, of the neuter gender, the third person, the singular number, and in the nominative case. Produces is a regular verb active, indicative mood, present tense, third person singular, agreeing with nominative, vice, according to Rule I. which says : (here repeat the rule.) Misery is a common substantive, of the neuter gender, the third person, the singular number, and the objective case, governed by the active verb, produces, according to Rule XI. which says," etc. There are only sixteen short sentences given for " syntactical parsing," but the models cover seven pages. The thirty-two solid pages on " prosody " must have proved a stumbling block to the boys and girls of former times. The probability is that very few of them ever reached the 224th page of the book. The author states that the appendix on " Perspicuity and Accuracy " is quoted, in the main, from text-books on rhetoric by Blair and Campbell. The student of methods will find in Mur- ray's Grammar the origin of much of the unprofitable and distasteful drudgery with which the school study of Eng- glish grammar has been encumbered for a century, and with which, in many schools, it is still loaded down. Webster's Grammar. — Noah Webster, one of the most notable of American text-book makers, published (1783- 86), " A Grammatical Institute of the English Language," which comprised (i) ''The American Spelling Book;" (2) " A Plain and Comprehensive Grammar ; " (3) " The American Selection " (a school reading book). Web- ster's '* Speller " went at once into general use in the United States, but his " Grammar " seems to have been STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS limited mainly to New England. In 1793 he published " The Little Reader's Assistant," which included in one \ small book a correlation of easy reading lessons, the rudi- ments of grammar, and civil government. \ In his preface to the " Rudiments of Grammar, compiled at the re- \ quest of the Trustees of the Grammar School at Hartford," the author j remarks : " There has been a general complaint among the teachers ? of schools that the Second Part of the Grammatical Institute is a work y. too complex and difficult for young beginners in Grammar. The \ author is sensible of the justness of this complaint, for Grammar is a^,.^ | subject difficult in itself, and not easily comprehended even by adult^ ; // t's a 7nistake that children ever learn their native tongue by rule ; \ they learti it by ear and practice. Rules are drawn from the most general and approved practice, and serve to teach young students how \ far their own practice in speaking agrees with the general practice of j the nation, and thus enable them to correct their errors." \ The original preface to Goold Brown's " First Lines in English '^, Grammar " (1823), thirty years later, reads, in part, as follows : " The \ only successful method of teaching grammar, is to cause the principal ; definitions and rules to be committed thoroughly to memory, that they j may ever afterwards be readily applied. And the pupil should be ' alternately exercised in learning small portions of his book, and then ] applying them in parsing, till the whole is rendered familiar." \ A comparison of these two statements made by two eminent gram- marians shows that the reign of " formal grammar " had not only con- j tinued unbroken for thirty years, but that it had also become intensi- ' fied. The preface by Webster frankly stated a truth now generally \ accepted by teachers, while that of Brown emphasized the deadening formalism of the ancient regime. Other Text-Books on Grammar.— In the half century \ succeeding the publication of Murray's Grammar, there \ were published in this country about two hundred differ- ent text-books on English grammar, all modeled mainly j on the plan of that famous book. Among the best known \ of these were the grammars of Kirkham, Smith, Bullions, 1 and Goold Brown. S 1 50 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS Kirkham's Grammar (1823) introduced " a new systematic order of parsing." Taking the sentence, " John's hand trembles," the follow- ing is the model 'for parsing the word hand: " Hand is a noun, the name of a thing ; common, the name of a sort or species of things ; neuter gender, it denotes a thing without sex ; third person, spoken of ; singular number, implies but one ; and in the nominative case, it is the actor and subject of the verb trembles, and governs it agreeably to Rule 3. The nominative case governs the verb ; that is, the nomi- native determines the number and person of the verb. Declined : Sing, nom. hand, poss. hand's, obj. hand ; plu. nom. hands, poss. hands', obj. hands." His model for parsing a verb is too long to be quoted. Goold Brown in " Brown's Institutes " (1823), says in his preface : " In the w^hole range of school exercises there is none of greater im- portance than that of parsing ; and yet, perhaps, there is none more defectively conducted. Scarcely less useful, as a means of instruction, is the practice of correcting false syntax orally, by regular and logical forms of argument ; nor does this appear to have been more ably directed towards the purposes of discipline." The author's formula for parsing a verb is found in Praxis V. as follows : Sentence — " Piety has the purest delight attending it." Has is an irregular active transitive verb, from have, had, having, had ; found in the indicative mood, present tense, third person, and singular number. 1. A verb is a word that signifies to be, to act, or to be acted upon. 2. An irregular verb is a verb that does not form the preterit and the perfect participle by assuming d or ed. 3. An active transitive verb is a verb that expresses an action which has some person or thing for its object. 4. The indicative mood is that form of the verb which simply indi- cates or declares a thing, or asks a question. 5. The present tense is that which expresses what now exists or is taking place. 6. The third person is that which denotes the person or thing merely spoken of. 7. The singular number is that which denotes but one. After reading a formula like this we cease to wonder that half a century ago pupils -detested grammar ; and STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 151 that even teachers began a general rebellion against such interminable repetitions of definitions and rules. Goold Brown's "Grammar of Grammars'* (1851), a book of 1002 pages, fortunately intended for teachers and adults, not for pupils, is a remarkable compilation of examples of " false syntax " gleaned from English litera- ture and from the authors of other school grammars. One rises from its perusal with the despairing feeling that nobody ever succeeded '* in writing the English language with propriety." Having waded through the formalism of the past, let us turn, as a pleasant relief, to trace the evolution of a more rational method of studying our mother tongue. An Improved Grammar. — It was my good fortune in a New Hampshire village school to begin the study of grammar when ten years of age (1840) with a copy of "■ English Grammar on the Productive System ; a method of instruction recently adopted in Germany and Switzer- land, by Roswell C. Smith." The inductive method of this book was a marked improvement on the logical for- malism of previous grammars. Though our teacher made no explanations, confining himself rigidly to asking the questions in the book, we had Httle difficulty in under- standing the lessons. At the end of a year we began to " parse " in Thomson's "■ Seasons," which was followed by Young's " Night Thoughts.'' This was our introduc- tion to English literature. But we were never required to write a composition, nor even a detached sentence. Learning to write the English language by actually trying to write it was at that time unknown in the common school. In the academy, even when pursuing a Latin course, which included, in order, a Latin Grammar and 152 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS Reader, Sallust, Caesar, and Virgil, we were never once required to render a written translation. Sentence Analysis. — The publication of Greene's '' Analysis " (1847) marks the beginning of a revolt against the dead formalism of grammatical teaching. One sen- tence in the preface of this book conveys a pedagogical truth now generally recognized : "As a sentence is the expression of thought, and as the elements of a sentence are the expressions for the elements of thought, the pupil who is taught to separate a sentence into its elements is learning to analyze thought, and consequently to think. Greene's " Analysis," a book designed for secondary schools, was soon followed by Greene's '' Introduction," which was well adapted for use in elementary schools. It contained the elements of etymology and syntax, clearly stated, and provided for daily exercises in sentence-anal- ysis and sentence-making. This new feature of grammatical work was immediately incorporated into revised editions of other text-books on grammar ; but parsing according to Latin models was re- tained in all its dead formalism, and thus a double burden was imposed on the school children. Sentence analysis, introduced as a reform, was soon carried to a painful ex- treme of complicated minuteness, and was finally made mechanical by the devices of wonderfully constructed " diagrams." But the children still failed " to write and speak the English language with propriety." The Mur- ray type of grammars contained no suggestions whatever about the writing of compositions. Language Lessons. — Meantime progressive teachers were beginning to train pupils to write good English by requiring them to write s hort comspsitions upon subjects suited to the age and capacity of children, and upon STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 153 topics connected with school lessons in history, geography, and reading. This new movement in language practice was embodied in Swinton's *' Language Lessons " (1874), which determined the type of numerous succeeding pubr lications for school use. The central idea of Swinton's Language Lessons is set forth in the author's preface as follows : " This book is an attempt to bring the subject of language home to children at the age when knowledge is acquired in an objective way, by practice and habit, rather than by the study of rules and definitions. In pursuance of this plan, the traditional presentation of grammar in a bristling array of classifications, nomenclatures, and paradigms has been wholly discarded. The pupil is brought in contact with the living language itself ; he is made to deal with speech, to turn it over in a variety of ways, to handle sentences ; so that he is not kept back from the exercise — so profitable and interesting — of using language till he has mastered the anatomy of the grammarian. Whatever of technical grammar is here given is evolved from work previously done by the scholar." Swinton's " English Grammar and Composition " (1877), for more advanced pupils, emphasized sentence building and composition writing. It boldly lopped off orthography and prosody as a part of modern grammar. The author says in his preface : " The necessity of a grad- uated course of training in the mother tongue, extending over some years, and beginning in practice and ending in theory, is now generally recognized and acted on . . . It is earnestly recommended that the grammar be taken in con- nection with the school composition, the author's ideal study being : three grammar lessons and two composition lessons a week." * SCHOOL GEOGRAPHIES. Dwight^s Geography. — During the colonial period 154 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS geography was not included by law in the common-school curriculum though sometimes taught incidentally. The full title of one of the earliest of American text-books on this subject runs as follows : "A short but comprehen- sive System of the Geography of the World ; by way of Question and Answer. Principally designed for Children and Common Schools. By Nathaniel Dwight. Boston, 1801." In his preface to the first edition, dated Hartford (1795), republished in the sixth edition (1801), the author says: •' During an employment of several years in school keeping I observed that the science of Geography was but little attended to in the early days of childhood. . . . The expense of this book is so small that it may be easily afforded, and the form of a catechism admits of its being made more comprehensive, and more easily understood by children, than any of the small geographies, which have heretofore been designed for them. It will enable them usefully to improve many hours of their early years, which, for want of something of this kind, are entirely lost." Dwight's geography is a well-printed volume of 212 pages, bound in the old-fashioned thin wood covers. It is descriptive text exclusively, containing neither maps nor wood-cuts, and no reference is made to an atlas. It opens with five pages of definitions relating to the natural divisions of land and water, to latitude, longitude, mathematical geography, and forms of government. The following extracts from a general description of New England illustrate the manner of treatment : " Q. What are the general characteristics of the people of New England } A. They are an industrious and orderly people, economical in their livings, and frugal in their expenses. . . . They are plain and simple in their manners, and, on the whole, they form perhaps the most pleasing and happy society in the world." STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 55 " Q. What are their diversions ? A. Dancing is a favorite one of both sexes. Sleigh-riding in winter, skating, playing ball (of which there are several different games), gun- ning and fishing, are the principal ; gambling and horse-jockeying are practiced by none but worthless people, who are despised by all per- sons of respectability and considered as nuisances in society." " Q. What is the state of science in New England ? A. It is greatly cultivated, and more generally diffused among the inhabitants than in any other part of the world. Every town has or ought to have a school in it, where the children are early taught read- ing, writing, and arithmetic." Morse's Geography. — Jedidiah Morse, D.D., the father of Professor S. F. B. Morse who invented the elec- tric telegraph, was the author of one of our first school- booTcs. The preface to the first edition, dated New Haven, 1789, is interesting reading, not only for the light it throws on the state of education, but for its illustration of the pride of American citizenship in the new-born republic : " There is no science better adapted to the capacities of youth, and more apt to cultivate their attention, than Geography. An acquaint- ance with this science, more than with any other, satisfies that perti- nent curiosity, which is the predominating feature of the youthful mind. It is to be lamented that this part of education has been so long neg- lected in America. Our young men, universally, have been much better acquainted with the geography of Europe and Asia, than with that of their own State and country. The want of suitable books has been the cause, we hope the sole cause, of this shameful defect in our education. Until within a few years, we have seldom pretended to write, and hardly to think for ourselves. We have humbly received from Great Britain our laws, our manners, our books, and our modes of thinking ; and our youth have been educated rather as the subjects of the British king, than as the citizens of a free and independent na- tion. But the scene is now changed. The revolution has been favor- able to science in general ; particularly to that of the geography 6f our own country. In the following pages, the Author has endeavored to bring this valuable branch of knowledge home to common schools 1 56 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS and to the cottage fireside by comprising, in a small and cheap vol- ume, the most entertaining and interesting part of his American Uni- versal Geography." In 1 81 2 there was published a revised edition, the full title of which reads as follows : " Geography made easy : being an Abridgment of the American Universal Geography. To which are prefixed Elements of Geography. For the use of Schools and Academies in the United States of America, By Jedidiah Morse, D.D., author of the American Universal Geography, and the American Gazetteer. ' There is not a son or daughter of Adam, but has some concern both in Geography and Astronomy.' — Dr. Watts. Illustrated with a Map of the World, and a Map of North America. Fifteenth Edition, and third of this new abridgment." • This well-written book of 360 pages octavo, opens with 20 pages devoted to the history of geography and astron- omy, and to a full description of the solar system, fol- lowed by 20 pages on physical geography. Then there are 180 pages given to North America and " Independent America, or the United States." The remainder of the book treats of the rest of the world. The author's re- marks on the condition of education in the United States (18 10-12) are of special interest to the student of educa tional history, and we quote as follows : " State of Literature. — There are in the United States (1810) thirty colleges ; three or four of them, however, exist only on paper ; and upwards of eighty academies. A plan is now forming under the aus- pices of Congress, for establishing a National University at the seat of Government." Massachusetts. — " In Boston there are seven public schools, viz. : one Latin grammar school, three English grammar schools, and three for writing and arithmetic, supported wholly at the expense of the town ; in these schools, the children of every class of citizens (the black excepted) freely associate. Next to these in importance, are the academies, of which there are about 20 in the State. In these the sciences are taught, and youth fitted for the university. Harvard Uni- versity, at Cambridge, with respect to its library, philosophical appa- STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 157 ratus, and professorship, is the first literary institution in the United States." Connecticut. — " In no part of the world is the education of all ranks of people more attended to than in Connecticut. Yale College was established in 1 701. The students are divided into four classes. Their number in 1810 was 255." Rhode Island. — " The literature of this State is confined principally to the towns of Providence and Newport. No provision is made by law for the establishment of town schools." New York. — " Dutch schools are now discontinued and the lan- guage will probably soon cease to be used. There are twelve or fourteen incorporated academies in the State, and two col- leges. Columbia College, in the city of New York, is in a flourishing state, and has more than 100 scholars, besides medical students. Union College, in Schenectady, though an infant institution, is deserv- edly celebrated. The annual expense of board, tuition, etc., is less than $100. New York City contained in 1810, 93,914 inhabitants." Pennsylvania. — " There are many private schools in different parts of the State ; and to promote the education of poor children, the legis- lature has appropriated a large tract of land for the establishment of free schools. A seminary is established at Philadelphia by the name of The University of Pennsylvania. This State contained in 18 10, 810,091 inhabitants." Virginia. — " There are three colleges, William and Mary, Hampden- Sidney, and Washington. There are also several academies, one at Alexandria, one at Norfolk, one at Hanover, and others in other places." Modern Books. — During the first half of the nine- teenth century Woodbridge's, Olney's, Smith's, and Mitchell's geographies came into use at successive periods. They were large books, crowded with formal descriptive text and crammed with thousands of map questions the answers to which had to be hunted out in a large separate " atlas " which accompanied them. At a later period there came into use the " three book series," Primary, In- termediate, and Grammar School, such as Cornell's, Mon- teith's, Guyot's, and some others, with text and maps in 158 HIS TOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS each book of each series. A marked innovation on the old-style text-books is found in the Guyot series which made prominent the study of physical geography. The three-book series having been found too burden- some for pupils, the latest geographies consist of only two books, Primary and Grammar School. The modern psychological and pedagogical method of teaching ge- ography, so far as it is embodied in text-books, is to be found in Redway and Hinman's Natural Series (1898), comprising two books, — " The Natural Elementary Ge- ography," and " The Natural Advanced Geography," — both of which will be welcomed by teachers that are in sympathy with the modern movement to simplify the teaching of geography and bring it into harmony with the modern course in nature study. EARLY BOOKS ON PEDAGOGICS. The firstLnotable book on common school pedagogics published in New England (1829), was writtenby Rev. Samuel R . Hall, and was entitledJ^Lectures on School^ Keepings" The author had taught in "district schools when he was studying for the ministry ; he had also organized the first private normal school in New Eng- land, consequently he knew something about his subject. This unpretentious little volume, being a practical book, went at once into extensive use in New England and New York. A few years later there appeared several small treatises such as, " The Teacher," by Jacob Abbott ; " Suggestions on Education," by Catherine E. Beecher ; " The Teacher Taught," by Emerson Davis ; and *' The Teacher's Manual," by Thomas H. Palmer. STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 159 " The School and the Schoolmaster " was a pedagogical volume of 552 pages pubHshed by Harper and Brothers, 1842. Part I., '* The School," by Professor Alonzo Potter, of Union College, N. Y., treated of general education, the existing condition of common schools and the means of improving them ; of the duties of parents, trustees and inspectors; and of the need of a state normal school. It was ably written and is still of interest to the educa- tional student. Part II., " The Schoolmaster," by George B. Emerson, of Boston, President of the American Insti- tute of Instruction, treated of " the proper character, studies, and duties of the teacher, with the best methods for the government and instruction of common schools." George B. Emerson, was one of the foremost practical teachers in New England, and his part of the book is so pervaded by common-sense, it is delightful reading even now. His suggestions on oral instruction and the use of text-books, on the correlation of geography and history, on composition and grammar, and on studies in natural science, all are in accord with modern ideas. Through the liberality of some friend of common schools whose name was withheld, a copy of this book was placed in every school district in the state of New York. This book constituted my entire pedagogical outfit when teaching my first district school. "■ Theory and Practice of Teaching" (1847), t>y David P. Page, was an inspiring book which went at once into general use in normal schools and academies. Wickersham's " Methods of Instruction " (1865), was a valuable educational contribution by one of the leading educators in Pennsylvania. About this time Henry Barnard published '* Russell's Normal Training." Pro- fessor William Russell, graduate of Glasgow University, l6o HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS and author of numerous school readers and books on elocution, was one of the pioneers in organizing private normal schools in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, and also one of the active promoters of state normal schools. He was a prominent leader in the educational life of New England, as a lecturer at Teachers' Institutes, \ and as a teacher of elocution, during and after the great \ revival inaugurated by Horace Mann. His rich scholar- ship, his unselfish devotion, and his noble character | greatly endeared him to his pupils. I BOOKS FOR CHILDREN. \ \ The first_c entury of colonial life was a dism a l period ; for children's books. Juvenile literature was limited to ^ spelling book, primer or catechism, and the Bible. The grown-up people on the isolated farms fared little better ; ; for books oL any kind we re costly and sc arce. The col- j lege-bred clergyman had a small library limited to college class books and a few volumes of ponderous theology. i The one indispensable book in every family, next to \ the Bible and the church catechism, was the annual \ " almanack," which hung suspended by a string near the ; great open fireplace. One of the earliest publications of ] the solitary printing press in New England (1639) was j Pierce's " Almanack, calculated for New England." In ' addition to the calendar of time, these early almanacs . ; were filled up with weather predictions, old saws and ' maxims, and bits of theological aphorisms. They were j well thumbed by all members of the family. At a later { period, Benjamin's Franklin's almanac, known under j the name of " Poo r Richard's Al ma nack ," circulated everywhere in all the colonies. It had a spice of humor, ^ STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT- BOOKS i6i and was full of wise maxims and prudent aphorisms about diligence and economy, sometimes put into rhyme. There were things that stuck like burs in the memory of young and old alike. They exerted a marked effect upon the American people, and they still hold a place in liter- ature. Bunyan's " Pi Igrjrn^ Progress " was reprinted in Boston (1681), and was eagerly read by the few children that could get hold of it. About the beginning of the eighteenth century a few books designed by theologians for the good of children, drifted over from England, such as, "Godly Children Their Parents' Joy," " Young People Warned," and Janeway's '' Token for Children." Cotton Mather tried his hand in making juvenile litera- ture, and wrote a short booklet entitled, " Good Lessons for Children in Verse." ^ Mather's "Token for the Chil- dren of New England," was a reprint of an English book, with a supplement by Cotton Mather containing, " Exam- ples of children in whom the fear of God was remarkably budding before they died." From such melancholy leaf- lets, even the New England Primer was a pleasant relief for children. Then came " Robinson Crusoe " (1714), which ^^ttll rank<^ ag one of the most enchanting of all books for gr o win g boys. Next came " Gulliver^sJLravfils " and " Th£_Vi car of Wakefield," and near the end of the eighteenth century several real books for little children, such as " £oody-TwjQ ^pes," "Tom Thumb," and " M other G oose Mejodies," all of which were originally published in England by John Newberry, the notable London printer. During the Colonial period there were few newspapers, 1 See Neiu England Magazine, April 1899. Article by Charles Welsh. AM. PUB. SCH. II 1 62 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS and those had a limited circ ulatio n. *' In 1775," says McMaster, " there were in the entire country, thirty-seven papers in circulation. Fourteen of them were in New England, four were in New York, and nine in Pennsylva- nia. In Virginia and North Carolina there were two each, in Georgia one, in South Carolina three." Most of these papers were weeklies. They were carefully pre- served and passed from neighbor to neighbor. Early in the nineteenth century, the two popular novels were **The Scottish Chiefs," and *' Thaddeus of Warsaw." Twenty years later, Pope's " Essay on Man," Young's " Night Thoughts," and Thomson's '' Seasons," were read and studied as literature, in common schools and academies. Watts on the " Improvement of the Mind," was a text-book on intellectual philosophy. My own personal knowledge of books' for children in New England began about the year 1837. ^7 ^^st library at that time consisted of Webster's Speller, a progressive reader, four bound volumes of " Peter Parley's Magazine," and a book of '* Stories About Indian Fights." When a little older, I read and re-read two bound volumes of " The Penny Illustrated Magazine," from which I gained a pretty good knowledge of all the famous naval victories of the Americans over the British in the war of 1812. Then I plunged into '' Josephus," and " Rollin's Ancient History." In my grandfather's library I discov- ered a large bundle of old " Almanacks," which proved a source of endless delight. My father was reading Combe's " Constitution of Man," and I read it too, though it was then held to be a dangerous book. Next I found among my father's books Pope's " Essay on Man," Pope's '* Translation of the Iliad," Young's " Night Thoughts," Thomson's " Seasons," Pike's Arithmetic, and STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 163 Murray's Grammar, all of which became of more or less interest. Stowed away on a dusty shelf in the garret, I discovered " Peter Wilkins," '' Gulliver's Travels," " His- tory of the Pirates," and several other thrilling books. The last half of the nineteenth century brought with it a juvenile literature of great variety from the pens of Hawthorne, Miss Alcott, Longfellow, Whittier, and a score of others ; and this has been enriched by Grimm, Hans Andersen, Charles Dickens, and recent writers too numerous to mention. CHAPTER VII EDUCATIONAL OUTLOOK FOR THE TWENTIETH CENTURY School Enrollment. — On the latest school celebration of Washington's birthday, the national flag was unfurled upon more than two hundred thousand schoolhouses, stretching from ocean to ocean. Our national songs, sung at the opening of the schools in New England, were caught up, hour after hour, with the course of the sun. It was high noon in the schools of Boston before the children in San Francisco had sung '* The Star Spangled Banner," in their opening exercises. Before the waves of light, and color, and song had reached the school outposts in Alaska, the symbols of liberty and law along the Atlan- tic had been furled, and the schools dismissed. During this day, more than fourteen millions of public school children saluted the national flag, sung the national songs, were instructed in American history, and inspired with patriotic fervor by four hundred thousand public school teachers. In all institutions of learning, public and private, in- cluding elementary, secondary, and higher education, there is found to be a total enrollment of 16,742,000 pupils and students. Of this vast number, about one million and a half are enrolled in private educational institutions, and over fourteen and a half millions in common schools and other public institutions of learning. Who Control the Schools ? — Under a free govern ment, j public schools j-epresent th^w ants, spirit , and ideals of a N "^ 164 OUTLOOK FOR THE TWENTIETH CEXTURY 65 nation. As local self-government is a marked characteristic of our civil institutions, it follows that local control by dis- trict, town, city, or county, under general state law, should be a distinctive feature of our public schools. Unlike Euro- pean nations, we have no centralized national system of education. We have a multiplicity of state school laws, hundreds of special provisions in city charters, hundreds of differently constituted city boards of education, thou- sands of town or county school ofificers, and tens of thou- sands of district school trustees. Under such decentral- ized control, exact uniformity of school management is impracticable and undesirable. In the words of Dr. A. D. Mayo, '* the American common school is only the Ameri- can people keeping school." If we sometimes become impatient of the slow evolu- tion of public schools, we must bear in mind that they are improved mainly b y the public opinion of the communi- ties in which they are organized. They are under the gleLl eonliol o f~the people, and are vitalized by the in- du strial, political, and educational advancement of socie ty. In the beginning the early colonial schools, modeled after European ideals, were partly under denominational con- trol, partly under the civil power; they were chiefly sup- ported by tuition fees, but were sometimes maintained entirely by taxation. Under the fostering care of the people, these primitive schools have been developed into a system of free public education rising in successive stages from the kindergarten, through the .primary and the grammar grades ; through the high, the normal, and the polytechnic school ; through the colleges of agriculture and the mechanic arts ; culminating in the free state uni- versity. The following axiomatic principles have become estab- 1 66 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS lished in the minds of the people, and are now generally accepted and acted upon by state governments : First, that it is the duty of a republican government, as an act of self-preservation, to establish and maintain a system of ' free public schools under the exclusive control of the civil power. Second, that the property of the state shall be taxed to educate the children of the state. Simple propositions these seem to us now, but it has required two and a half centuries of experiment and strug- gle, and two great wars, — the Revolutionary war, and the Civil war, — to bring them into full recognition throughout ,, all the land. The public-school system is now fi rmly in- tre nched in the revi se^Z constifutions of each and every state in the Unio n, is regulated by state legislative enact-, ment. is supported, incidentally, by t he interest on in- vested school ^nds , b ut rn ai nly by direcF st ate, county, citv^_di strict. and town taxatio n. In the older states, which have become thickly settled, the school system is developed in full. In new and sparsely settled states, if schools are still crude, and are yet in process of formation, their condition is a necessity of pioneer life. Educational Progress. — The true economy of scho ol management consists i n the employment of professionally trained teachers. While it cannot be claimed, as yet, that we have reached the standard of fully recognizing teach- ing as a profession, we are steadily approximating this high ideal. The demand for professionally educated teachers is steadily growing, and the number of state and city normal schools increases year by year. Teachers' institutes and " summer schools " are everywhere estab- lished. State associations of teachers are increasing in number and strength. The National Educational Asso- ciation is an acknowledged power. Educational journals > J OUTLOOK FOR THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 167 are infusing a progressive spirit into the great body of teachers. Magazines are presenting to the people the best educational thought of the country. Newspapers are spreading information on educational matters. The com- paratively recent establishment of departments of peda- gogics in state universities and other institutions of learn- ing, is due to a recognition of the need of special prepara- tion for teachers in high schools and colleges, as well as for teachers in the elementary schools. Imperfections in the School System. — No thoughtful educator will claim that our school system is free from Refects. The annual re-election or re-appointmen t of teachers still stands as a legal barrier against teaching as a profession. The provisions in state school laws and city ordinances, limiting the teachers' tenure of office to dne year, are survivals of the age of primitive schools, when a schoolmaster was engaged to teach during the winter term of three months, and a school-mistress was employed during the summer term. A short term of ap- pointment was then a necessity. In early days, the terms of most civil offices were limited to one year ; but there is now a general tendency to lengthen them, and it is to be hoped that this reform will soon reach the school de- partments of cities and towns. There are already a few cities in which, by ordinance, the tenure of a teacher's position holds during good behavior. But in many of the large cities in which boards of education are elected by direct popular vote, the power of political bosses and ward politicians to order the appointment or dismissal of teachers, is a menace, not only to teachers, but to public school systems of great cities. Another serious defect is the over-crow ded conditi on of schools in cities of rapid growth, where from fifty to sixty 1 68 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS pupils, and sometimes even more, are forced upon each teacher in a classroom. Under such circumstances, pupils may learn to read and write and cipher, but even the best of teachers cannot train them in accordance with modern pedagogical methods. Notwithstanding some weak points, however, our free- school system is broader and better than any other ever Oman i7jp d ^'^^ ^he hiVstor3 ^j2)f_1jhe[Tm^ The kind and quality of instruction will be changed to meet new conditions, but there is no danger that the extent of educa- tion will be curtailed. When times are hard or taxes high, the schools, like other departments of government, are subjected to a running fire of criticism all along the line ; but only timid and despairing souls will be frightened into the belief that the foundations of society are breaking up on account of over education. No prophets of evil can convince the American people that vice, crime, idleness, poverty, and social discontent are the results of free public schools. On the contrary, there is an abiding conviction that it is only by means of general education brought within the reach of all classes that a people can permanently maintain free institutions. T he idea of universal educa- tion has fairly entered into t he minds of men . TrueTconomy. — Liberali ty in t axation for public schools is believed to be enlightened economy for the state. T^^hat migKt be ext ravagance in The individual is a^ wise expenditure by the nation. This generation is no t living jorjtself alone,,^u t for future generations^ an d the glory of the republic. Complaints about school taxation have been heard ever since the first town tax was levied in New England or New York. There are always some taxpayers who seem to consider that the chief end of man is to escape taxation. But pub lic schoo ls are worth far more OUTLOOK FOR THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 169 than they cost ; for they make_ijitel1igent ihe great mass of electors whose will, expressed by the ballot, makes or ^inmakes cgnstTtutiohs, jn3 enacts laws that make or mar tHe^ ommon weal. ~ The better the schools are made, the more costly they become. The era of liberal appropriations for common schools, public colleges, and free state universities, is only beginning ; for a modern scientific and literary educa- tion, however costly it may be, is a good permanent in- vestment. Now that a free education from kindergarten to university has been brought within the possible reach of all classes, we need not fear that intelligent electors will surrender the power of voting all the money needed for maintaining the American system of free public educa- \Jion. The Outlook. — As the nineteenth century draws to a close, the educational outlook is full of promise. The common schools, with an enlarged and an enriched course of study, fairly meet the needs of the common pursuits of life ; state normal schools are everywhere training teachers for their work ; the secondary schools are extending the culture of the elementary schools and are fitting students for college ; while the free state universities and colleges of agriculture and the mechanic arts, constitute the crown- ing glory of the system. Freed from the scholastic tram- mels of the ancient curriculum, these new universities and colleges are training skilled specialists in agriculture, the mechanic arts, and other industrial, commercial, scientific, and educational pursuits, but in nowise neglecting classical courses and the professions of law and medicine. They are reacting powerfully on high schools, normal schools, and common schools, raising the standard of all, and bring- ing the entire system into harmony. I/O HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS The corner stones of our public-school system have been securely laid and they will long endure. When we consider how the common schools have reached every state, city, village, hamlet, and rural district in our country, how they have molded successive generations into Ameri- can citizens who have met the demands of every crisis in our national affairs, we pay little heed to the lamentations of pessimists. We exult, rather, that we have lived to behold the glory and grandeur of our reunited country, and rejoice that our lot is cast among a people whose faith grows firmer and stronger in republican institutions, free labor, free schools, free speech, and a free press. The words of the prophet-poet Whittier have become true : " The mighty West shall bless the East, and sea shall answer sea, And mountain unto mountain call : Praise God for we are free." On the threshold of the twentieth century, as the con- solidated republic is entering on a new era of prosperity and power, let us, each and all, do our utmost to hold our public schools up to their highest degree of efficiency, so that they may meet all future needs of the new nation. If our public schools are kept vitalized by enlightened common sense, patriotism, and righteousness, universal suffrage will not prove a failure, and universal education will prove the safeguard of the republic. REFERENCES FOR SPECIAL STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. Boone's History of Education in the United States. George H. Martin's Evolution of the Massachusetts Pub- lic-School System. Wickersham's History of Education in Pennsylvania. Randall's History of the Public Schools of New York. OUTLOOK FOR THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 71 Barnard's American Journal of Education. Kiddle and Schem's Cyclopedia of Education. McMaster's History of the People of the United States. Motley's Dutch Republic. Campbell's The Puritan in Holland, England, and America. Reports of the United States Commissioner of Edu- cation : — A series of Historical Sketches by Dr. A. D. Mayo : (a) Public Schools during the Colonial Period, Report for 1893-94, Vol. I. {p) Education in the Northwest, Report foci 894-95, Vol. 2. {c) Common Schools in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, Report for 1895-96, Vol. i. {d) Common Schools in the Southern States, Report for 1895-96, Vol. I. {e) Horace Mann and the Great Revival of the Ameri- can Common School, 1830-50, Report of 1896- 97, Vol. I. PART II APPLIED PEDAGOGICS IN AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS CHAPTER I . MANAGEMENT IN SCHOOL GOVERNMENT The foundat i on of a school, a s_of sodety^_ls_Jaw _and- order. Teachers must possess the power of enforcing such regulations as are essential to the existence of the school as a social organization. In school government much depends on making pupils feel that rules and reg-_ ulations are intended for their own^ood, not that they "■^re'made^by the" teacher for his own pleasure in~exercis- ing arbitrary power. Most pupils really prefer order to disorder, firmness to weakness, law to lawlessness. Hence calisthenics and military precision in marching are efficient aids in securing prompt obedience to commands. One object of discipline is ^o secure a sufficient degree of order, qui etness, and regularity to enahlejin pils to p nrsnp^ their studies^and redte^Jji^uiless ons without interrup tion ; butTEe higher aim is to tra in the will, and incite_^^ils to put fo rth vigorous efforts for self-control. But upon untrained children whose impulses are strong and whose habits of self-control are weak, the hand of power must be laid, to remind them of duty and compel them to do it. 173 174 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS Firmness. — The power to govern well is an essential quality of every successful teacher. V/hen a new teacher takes charge of a school or a class, there is always a trial of strength between the ruler and the ruled ; and woe be to that man or woman who falls a weak prey to young and merciless school tyrants. At present, in school as in ', state, judicious severity is, in the end, the truest kindness. , Fear of punishment is the only check to the lawlessness of some children as well as of some men. The penalties of crime awarded by the law of the state, are designed; not for the average law-abiding ^tizen, but for the ex- ceptional offender ; and punishment in sc jiool is held as a terror only over the exceptional pupi l. When alTcBlId^ren are "well governed at home, when all teachers are profes- sionally trained, when all parents are reasonable, when hereditary tendencies are in harmony with existing social conditions, all kinds of penalties in school may safely be abolished. ^ But one of the main objects of the teacher should be' to lead pupils to do right from a sense of duty and self-respect rather than from fear of punishment. As the school is a small social community, its members should be so trained in their duties to one another that they will learn to respect the rights of others. School Opinion. — The public opinion of the school is an i mport ant_eleme nt in di scipline, and the teacher with tact will direct this power to the side of order and right- doing. Many a boy is influenced by the opinions of his fellows more than by the decisions of his teachers. Few pupils can resist when they find themselves con- demned by the common voice of their companions, whose censure they dread more than that of their superiors. A wise teacher can win to his side the active, energetic, AfANA GEMENT IN SCHO OL GO VERNMENT 1 75 leadLng^pupils by puttiiig:tJieiiLiiitQ43laces of honor, trust, or duty ; and, having done this, it is easy to secure their co-operation in establishing a wholeson[ie^nd_restraining school infliieiiee, - ^"^stinate Children. — It is not good policy to drive strong-willed children into obstinacy. Respect the per- so nality and individu ality of every pupil._ Indeed, make every effort to develop positive force of character. The more will of the right kind in a child the better. By a little patience and forbearance, you may bring to bear on the self-willed child the influence of kindness, sympathy, or reason. Set your own tact againsrilie~dull, brutish obstinacy of the pupil. A forced submission often ends in sullen doggedness or a smoldering fire of rebellion. The child must learn obedience ; that is the first and greatest of lessons, but with some impulsive children real affection for the teacher will often secure obedience when nothing else will avail. Penalties. — In order to enforce good government in schools, there must be penalties for violations of rules^ These penalties may be re£nmanHs7lcHeclcs7Toss_of privi- leges, detention, suspension, or possibly in extreme cases, cofporal punishment. T'enalties must be certain, and mu st appe aT js^tlie natural consequence of wrqng_acts. The child should know what he has to expect, and when to expect it. The child soon learns to yield to the in- evitable. It is the certainty, not the severitj^, of punish- ment that deters~pupils fro m violating 2iig"l^iQ^s. But rns"lioFwise to make cast-iron rules with unchangeable penalties. If you fail to enforce fixed penalties, you lose the respect of your pupils ; and if you do enforce them, you may often be guilty of injustice. Give your verdict and pass sentence after the conviction of the offender. 1^6 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS President Eliot, in tlie ** Unity of Educational Reform," ^ remarks : " Down to times quite within my memor}% the method of discipline, both in school and college, was extremely simple ; for it relied chiefly, first, on a highly stimulated emulation and fear of penalty. . . It is now an accepted doctrine that the discipline of childhood should not be so dif- ferent from that of adolescence as to cause at any point of the way a full stop and a fresh start. . . . Among the permanent motives which act all through life are prudence, caution, emulation, love of approbation, shame, pride, self-respect, pleasure in discovery, activity, or achieve- ment, delight in beauty, strength, grace, and grandeur, and the love of power, and of possessions as giving power." Liberty. — It is an essential principle of school govern- ment that everv _ pupil be allowed the largest liberty ^possihle_without infringing on the rights, interests, dutie s, or convenience of othe rs. Hence the right adm inistration of school affairs is not always an easy task. It is easy enough to sit in judgment on the cases that are pure black or pure white, but the gray cases are complex, requiring the utmost caution and deliberation. Trust. — Re gard your ^upils_aS-tr uthful until you hav e positive evidenceto the contj; ary. Children with a high sense of honor will never forgive you for doubting their word, or for making an unjust accusation. Trust your pupils if you want them to put their trust in you. Truthfulness. — Encou rage truthfulness by rewarding full and frank confession _with a remission of penaltie s, so far as is consistent with school discipline. Undue severity excites fear, and fear seeks an easy refuge in cun- ning and evasion. There is a conventional sense of honor among schoolboys which binds them not to inform the teacher of the misdeeds of their fellows. They are un- wise teachers who take ground against this school opin- ion, and endeavor, by threats of punishment, to compel 1 " Educational Reform " ( 1 898) . MANA CEMENT IN SCHO OL GO VERNMENT 1 77 pupils to become informers. It is wisdom for teachers to use tact in so r Q_odifying the school code as to draw a lij ie of distinction betwee n minor matters th at belong to J^he ""Tattllhg order, and the graver offenses that concern the real welTafeTofTilie scHooTT ~ Order. — It is wise to make but few rules and not to indulge in much talk about infringements of them. Put yourself in the place of your pupils. Recall your own school experiences, your hopes and fears, your impulses, your notions, and the motives that influenced you. Professor Hinsdale, in " Studies in Education," says : " Reasonable order in the schoolroom, for the most part, must be secured indirectly ; it must come as the result of keen interest in the work, and close application to it. What is sometimes called ' good order ' does not always imply either interest in studies or a good school, since it may be secured by extreme repression ; but interest and application are pretty certain to lead to good order . In other words, order should be largely spontaneous. In the long run, that teacher will best succeed in securing it who says little about it. Even grown persons who are consciously trying to keep still, find it difficult to do so. How hard many find it to sit for a photograph ! The boy whose business it is to be quiet is likely to make a great deal of noise while about it. Moreover, a positive direction of order to keep still, given to any assemblage, tends to provoke nervous and muscular movements. Great audiences are as still as death, not when the orator is descanting on order and stillness, but when he loses himself and them in his subject. Hence attempts to secure order should not be thrust into the faces of children." Barbarism. — It is educational barbarism to inflict per- sonal indignities , such as pulling the hair, boxing the ears, or slapping the face. Such brutalities excite the bitterest resentment, and are seldom forgiven. Punishment. — One of the most effective penalties is to deprive offe nders of som e privileg e, or to cut them off fron from the society of schoolmates at recess or intermission. AM. PUB. SCH. — 12 178 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS Secure order, if possible, without corporal punishment ; but secure obedience at all hazards . For in school, as in an army, discipline is essential to existence. Corporal punishment is now generally regarded only as a final resort when all other means fail to secure obedience. In many cities suspension has superseded corporal punishment even as a final resort. It will be well for teachers to be guided in some measure by the public opinion of the community in which they teach. Dr. G. Stanley Hall, the kindest and most genial of re- formers, said in a recent lecture in Chicago (1889): "I believe in corporal punishment in the schools. It should not be carried to excess, but the fact that an incorrigible boy knows that the teacher may whip him is a tremendous support to the teacher." CHAPTER II SUGGESTIONS ON CLASS-ROOM MANAGEMENT Cheerfulness. — Cultivate a habit of cheerfulness that shall shine out from your countenance like the light of the rising sun. *'A teacher has only partially compre- hended the familiar powers of his place," says Bishop Huntington, " who has left out the lessons of his own countenance. There is a perpetual picture which his pupils study as unconsciously as he exhibits it. His plans will miscarry if he expects a genial and nourishing session when he enters with a face blacker than the blackboard." Scolding. — The less you threaten, the less you find fault, the less you scold, the more friends you will have among the boys and girls, and the better will be your school. Unless you wish to be hated, beware of sarcasm and ridicule. A cutting remark is never forgotten and seldom forgiven. Courtesy. — Consent cordially and gracefully, but let your refusals be firm and absolute. Be courteous and polite ; it is easier to win children by kindness than to drive them by authority. Self-help. — Beyond imparting a small stock of specific knowledge, the chief work of the teacher is to teach pupils the ri^ htjway of findrnf^o ut thinp:^ for the7nselves ^ just as little children are taught to walk in order that they may go alone. It is only the poorest teachers and the un- trained ones that do all the hard work for their pupils. 179 l8o APPLIED PEDAGOGICS Agassiz said that the worst service a teacher could render to a pupil was to give him a ready-made answer. The best teachers are those whose pupils are made daily more and more able to pursue their studies without the aid of teachers. Praise. — Make use of the stimulus of praise ; but use it sparingly, so that it may be of value when bestowed. Given with good judgment, commendation is a powerful agency, but prizes and distinctions often produce the worst effect in school. Generous emulation is good, but the selfish pride of rivalry is bad. Manner. — In conducting a recitation, look your pupils in the eye when you question them, and make them look you in the eye when they answer. Keep your voice down to the conversational key. A quiet voice is music in the schoolroom. Lighten up your class with a pleasant coun- tenance. The teacher who cannot occasionally join in a hearty laugh with pupils lacks one important element of power. Have something interesting to say to your pupils at every recitation. If you can keep them interested you will have but little trouble about order. Keep them on the alert by being wide-awake yourself. Question and Answer. — In general, put questions to the whole class, in order to make every pupil think out the answer ; then, after a pause, call upon some one pupil to give it. Seldom_repeat a question. Train pupils to a habit of close attention, so that they will understand what you say the first time you say it. Give slow children time to think and speak. The readiest children are not always the soundest thinkers. The highest praise given by an English inspector to a teacher was " that he allowed his slow boys time to wriggle out an answer T It is a bad^ habit for the teacher to repeat to the class a pupil's half- SUGGESTIONS ON CLASS-ROOM MANAGEMENT igi audihl£__answer. Require every pupil to speak loud enough to be distinctly understood by every member of the class. Do not expect pupils to know as much as you do, neither consider them dull because they fail to per- ceive things that seem to you to be simple and easy. Keep in mind the aphorism of Arnold Tompkins: '* Teaching is the process by which one mind, from a set purpose, prodtcces the life-unfolding process in another!' Explaining. — Explain when necessary, but make your pupils do a part of the talking. Your talk should consist largely of intelligent questions. Encourage pupils to ask questions, but do not answer them yourself until after you have given the class an opportunity to answer. Good English. — Train pupils to recite in good English, but do not worry them by interruptions when they are speaking. Make a note of incorrect or inelegant expres- sions and have them corrected afterwards. The correct use of language is a matter of habit ra ther than_a_result_ ^ t studying the rules of grammar . It will be one of the arduous duties of every teacher, whether in high or low grade classes, to correct inaccuracies of speech. The teacher should use plain and pure English, and require pupils to do the same. No provincialisms, no slang, no careless or slovenly pronunciation should be allowed to pass unnoticed. Questions should be direct ; answers concise. But do not expect children to speak perfect English, and do not become too critical about their ex- pressions. Habits of Study. — The text-book is designed as an aid both to pupils and teacher ; but the teacher should show pupils how to study their lessons by calling their atten- tion to leading points, by vitalizing printed words with the living voice, and by showing children not only what APPLIED PEDAGOGICS to study, but, also, how to__ study. It is a good plan to require short intervals of study in school hours. In graded schools at least ten minutes of the half hour al lowed for recitation may often be devoted to silent study by pupils. The common practice of detaining pupils a fter s choo M:o study i mperfect ly recited^ l essons isj on-^ psychological. It is a physical impossibility for a tired, hungry, impatient child to do good thinking under such conditions. " No learning," says Socrates, as translated by Roger Ascham, *' ought to be learned with bondage ; for bodily labors wrought by compulsion hurt not the body ; but any learning learned by compulsion tarrieth not long in the mind." Home Study. — No lessons whatever, except perhaps a reading lesson, should be assigned for home study to children below the fourth grade. In general, only les- sons which require mainly an exercise of memory should be assigned for home work. Many pupils have no con- veniences for writing at home, and few have a quiet room to themselves. The giving out of long and difficult prob- lems in arithmetic to be worked at home is an unmiti- gated evil. The lessons most suita bl e for home stu dy seem to be reading, geo graphy, spelling, grammar, h istory, "^d observation lessonsmnature study. MentaTHabits.^^In whatever grades you are teaching train pupils, as far as practicable, to the habit of listening attentively to what you tell them ; of giving back to you, in their own words, the substance of your instruction ; of observing carefully in nature-study or science ; and of re- cording correctly. These are important things in all grades. " We must learn," says President Eliot in " Educational Reform " " to see straight and clea^r ; to compare and infer ; to make an accurate SUGGESTIONS ON CLASS-ROOM MANAGEMENT 183 record ; to remember ; to express our thought with precision ; and to hold fast lofty ideals. . . . The child of five years should begin to think clearly and justly, and he should begin to know what love and duty mean ; and the mature man of twenty-five should still be training his powers of observing, comparing, recording, and expressing. The aims and the fundamental methods at all stages of education should, there- fore, be essentially the same, because the essential constituents of education are the same at all stages. The grammar-school pupil is try- ing to do the same kinds of things which the high-school pupil is trying to do, though, of course, with less developed powers. The high-school pupil has the same intellectual needs which the university student feels. From first to last, it is the teacher's most important function to make the pupil think accurately and express his thoughts with preci- sion and force ; and in this respect the function of the primary-school teacher is not different in essence from that of the teacher of law medicine, theology, or engineering." Reviews. — F requent review s are essential to good training. However well anything is learned for the time being, it will pass into oblivion if not called up again and again. Repetition is absolutely essential to habit, skill, readiness, thoroughness, and accuracy. But reviews should not, in general, consist in the assignment of five or ten pages of the text-book for home study. " T he best form of revi ew," says McMurry,^ " is that wh ich sprin gs out ofc ompariso ns, which finds in the new lessons amplifications of old principles, which makes e very lesso n_a_review_of_old knowledge iri^ t helight of new experienc e. Incidental reviews and comparisons, by which every new topic is incorporated into the body of our previous experiences are the rational form of study. It is constantly making over, modifying, and expanding the old thought material. The stated periodical review presupposes a static condition in knowledge ; such knowledge, when finally salted down, partakes of the nature of a petri- faction and lacks that fluidity and pervasiveness which make it pene- trate and permeate every nook and avenue of experience." Child Study. — Above all make a careful study of your I McMurry's " Method of the Recitation " (1897). 1 84 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS pupils, of their personal characteristics, of their varied de- grees of capacity, so that you can treat them fairly and intelligently. The best psychological methods of teaching are found out by careful study of the spontaneous activi-J ties and natural tendencies of children. " I cannot but think," says William James, '* that to apperceive your pupil as a little sensitive, impulsive, associative, and reac- tive organism, partly fated and partly free, will lead to a better intelligence of all his ways." Professor Earl Barnes closes an able paper on " Methods of Study- ing Children " with the following summary : " Undoubtedly, the best student of the natural history of child-life is he who uses all methods in due proportion. If a man goes about his daily work with his eyes and his heart open ; if he lives over his own childhood's life, with an honest desire to see what kind of a child he was, and what kind of a man he is, quickening his memory with childish records and autobi- ography ; if he studies children under carefully arranged conditions, bringing the same fair-mindedness and persistence to his work that the scientist brings to his laboratory ; and if he brings all thes'e scattered studies into their due relations, by setting them in a back- ground of general law, based on large quantitative studies, he will accomplish all that he can reasonably hope for in these days of begin- nings." New Methods. — Stand ready to give a fair considera- tion to new methods in teaching, even if they differ from your preconceived ideas. "The only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject," says John Stuart Mill, " is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever ac- quired his wisdom in any mode but this ; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner." SUGGESTIONS ON CLASS-ROOM MANAGEMENT 185 *' I have never yet seen in any college or university," says President Eliot, ** a method of instruction which was too good for an elementary school or a secondary school. The alert, inspiring, winning, commanding teacher is just the same rare and admirable person in school and college. When it is a question how best to teach a given subject, the chances are that college or scientific-school teachers of that subject can help school teachers, and that school teachers can help college teachers. Moreover, it is im- portant that each should know what the other does." ^ Individuality. — It is desirable in large schools that there should be some general unity of method, but teach- ers ought not to be reduced to the dead level of Chinese uniformity. The life of all good teaching is the individ- uality of the class teacher. Principals should allow as- sistants the same liberty that they ask for themselves. The general tendency of large graded schools is to weaken the individuality of both teacher and pupil. Uriifo rmity i n essentials, diversity in particulars, should be the r ule. Without some degree of freedom, there can be neither interest nor enthusiasm. Slaves never become enthusiastic except in a struggle for liberty. Grade Promotions. — A quarter of a century ago there prevailed in most of the cities of our country an epidemic of official written examinations at the end of the year, which determined the promotion of pupils from grade to grade. These examinations belonged to the class termed by Huxley " the Abomination of Desolation." The result was disastrous both to teachers and pupils. Finally, the evils of this method became unbearable, and there was a general revolt against it. The " lock-step " of graded schools was broken. In many cities, pupils are 1 "Educational Reform " (1898). 1 86 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS now promoted from grade to grade, or section to section, by the school principal and the class teacher, semi-annually or annually, by class recordsandthe judgment of teachers. In the best schools pupils are changed from section to section whenever they become fitted for it. In an address on " Problems in Graded School Management," Dr. Emerson E. White, of Ohio, makes the following statements : " There is a growing conviction among the more intelligent observers of our graded system of schools, that there are serious defects either in the system itself or in the administration. . . . But whatever may be true of the necessity or value of test examinations, they are very generally employed in graded schools, and their character largely determines the character of school instruction. If the examination tests are narrow and technical, the instruction will be narrow and technical ; if the tests run to figures, the instruction will run to figures ; if the tests demand details, they will ' emphasize and make imperative all the lumber of the text-books.' . . . Instead of half-time schools, I would suggest a half-time course of study in all grades above the primary. It is not necessary to require all the pupils to take the same number of studies and advance with even step through the course. This pro- crustean device must be given up if the public school system is to do its full legitimate work as an agency for the education of the whole people. Instead of excluding pupils who cannot meet all the conditions of a complete and thorough course of elementary education, it must provide for such pupils the best education possible under the circum- stances." 1 Written Examinations. — In all schools there must be occasional written examinations. Kept within reasonable limits, they are productive of great good, provided the questions are properly prepared. Here again I am con- strained to quote the tersely put statements of President Eliot : " Tests of faithfulness and of mental condition are also necessary at stated periods ; but these tests should 1 Republished in the Report of the Commissioner of Education, Vol. 2, 1896-97. SUGGESTIONS ON CLASS-ROOM MANAGEMENT 1^7 be directed to ascertain what the pupils can do, rather than what they know. There must be examinations, an- ticipated and unanticipated. Let them always be con- ducted by the teacher, for the teacher, and as helps and guides in teaching and learning." This question of per cent, is nowhere set forth more clearly than by Arnold Tompkins, when he says : " It must be remembered that nothing lies like figures when used to indicate mental attainments ; especially so when per cents, are used as motives to study, and become an object of attainment by the teacher." School Program. — For a full discussion of the rel- ative time to be given to the different studies, and for the arrangement of a program, teachers are referred to the "Report of the Committee of Fifteen " (1895), and the *' Report of the Committee of Twelve " (1897). The Chief End. — T-Lc ulgr a]| the mprhanism of crpHpH schools, and programs, and courses of study, teac hers must^ol lusL sight Of llTe fact that the chief end o^ the sc hooland the teacher is to bring about m some way tn'e^ bes t possible development for e ach particular pupil. Now the ^hildren are variable facto rs. 1 hey neither look alike " nor think nh'ke. They ha ve inherj tffj fliff^r^nf pr>.irp>rg of mind and tendencies of temperament. School ma- c hinery, howev er elaborate and systematic, and beautiful, must not b e allowed to crush out ail nidividualliy ih th e child. Each pupil is of more consequence than jthe system. Child study me ans a recog^nition of differences in pupifs. In spite of numbers and automatic appliances, it is th e fine art of t| if ^^'^^ j-p^^^v.^^ f^ ir;,->^i^ Pirh little souPnito high ideals with some spark of enthusiasm fro m her own. CHAPTER III RECITATIONS AND THE ART OF USING TEXT-BOOKS Objects of the Recitation. — The objects of the reci- tation are to induce study, to test preparation, to awaken inquiry, to cultivate expression and attention, and to en- able the teacher to give necessary explanation and instruc- tion. But the main purpose should be, not so much " to hear the lesson," as to instruct the pupil. According to Herbart, the formal steps should be : 1. The preparation, which consists in connecting the preceding lesson with the one in hand. 2. The making clear the new material to the compre- hension of the pupil. 3. The apperception or assimilation of new ideas with old ideas by association, to make sure the whole lesson is understood. Credits and Checks. — Waste as little time as possible in keeping a daily account of recitation credits. No teacher can do his best at instructing when his attention is diverted by jotting down credits. The strong tendency in graded schools to run into excessive dependence upon questions and text-book answers springs largely from the undue importance attached to credits and rank. Many sensitive pupils are kept in a constant worry on account of "checks" in recitations. A "check" is not quite so brutal as a blow ; but the depressing effect of its endless dropping is often quite as bad upon the disposition. Be- sides, if all the half hour of recitation is spent in putting 188 RECITATIONS AND ART OF USING TEXT-BOOKS 189 a question to each pupil in order to " mark " him, there is little time left for teaching. The most vital work done in a class cannot be reduced to percentage. Recitation rec- ords may be kept ; but it is by no means desirable that every recitation should be recorded. Frequently the recitation of an assigned lesson should be brief, the prin- cipal part of the time being devoted to explanations and illustrations by the teacher. The Oral Method. — P upils at tend school, not merely to recite ^ut also to be ins tructed_and_ai ded by th e living j^ach en Do not stop short with hearing a lesson ; add something to it ; discuss it ; show its connection with pre- ceding-lessons and its relation to the next advance lesson, and thus excite some interest on the part of pupils. In doing this, there is no need of going to the extreme of not requiring pupils to recite set lessons in set terms, pro- vided that you are satisfied that ideas are associated with the words repeated. '' The older pedagogic method of learning things by rote," says Dr. William James, ** and reciting them parrot-like in the schoolroom, rested on the truth that a thing merely read or heard, and never ver- bally reproduced, contracts the weakest possible adhesion in the mind. Verbal recitation or reproduction is thus a highly important kind of reactive behavior on our impres- sions, and it is to be feared that in the reaction against the old parrot recitations as the beginning and end of instruc- tion, the extreme value of verbal recitation as an element of complete training may be nowadays too much for- gotten." Text-books. — In the primitive common school the chief duty of the pupil was to memorize text-book les- sons, and the main office of the teacher was to ask the text-book questions without note, comment, or explana- 90 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS tion. While this custom has been materially modified by modern methods, undue dependence upon the text-book is still a marked characteristic of the schools in our country. In an official report on the public-school system of the United States by a distinguished German educator, Dr. E. Schlee, who attended in an official capacity the World's Fair at Chicago and the Congress of Education, there is found the following paragraph on " Methods and Text- Books " : 1 " The American method of instruction, having taken the French and English mechanical memorizing for its model, differs essentially from the German. It aims, not at comprehending and mastering a subject through understanding, but at the acquisition of a complete presenta- tion through the memory-. Consequently, instruction is defined less by the teacher than by the text-book ; which is learned almost by heart. Most of the time is taken up by daily questions and answers, and marks are given for the recitation. The book contains a number of questions with answers attached for recitation. Examinations for promotion in class, as well as teachers' examinations, consist, for the most part, of a number of questions and answers, so that with diligent application and a good memory even an inferior mind can easily pass them. Be the books never so good, such instruction will hardly lead to the development of the intellect and to a free mastery of the subject. The stacks of pupils' work at the exposition in Chicago contained ex- cellent work in geography and the natural sciences, especially physiol- ogy ; the explanatory drawings were particularly good and appro- priate, but the finished form and at times the almost identical word- ing, betrayed that they were chapters from the text-book committed to memory. American teachers are by no means ignorant of this defi- ciency in their method. Many objections have been urged, but the method is a natural growth of the whole school system. In cases where schools or a few teachers have adopted the German method they and their pupils appear at a disadvantage at inspections and ex- aminations arranged according to the text-book system." ^ Report of Commissioner of Education, 1892-93. RECITATIONS AND ART OF USING TEXT-BOOKS 191 Use of Text-Books. — One of the things which young teachers must acquire by experience and practice is the fine art of making a wise use of school text-books by fit- ting the printed lessons to the minds of pupils by means of inductive development exercises and explanations. For the author of a school arithmetic, or grammar, or geog- raphy, intended for use in grades other than the primary, is subject to rigid limitations. His book must treat of the conventional topics found in other books on the same subjects, else it will be rejected by publishers and school boards. It must be limited to a certain number of pages in order to compete in price with similar books. There is no room for inductive exercises, and the author reluc- tantly falls back on the deductive or formal method of definition, general statement, rule, exercises, and problems.^ / The easy inductive steps must, of necessity, be sup plied) f by the development lessons of the teacher. Illustration in Arithmetic. — Before me lies a copy of the Advanced Arithmetic (1887), officially adopted for use in the common schools of the state of California. It is edited, published, and sold by the state. In using this text-book according to the average courses of study, pupils go through " the four rules," and begin their first lessons in written common fractions, in the fifth or sixth grade. The subject is presented in a deductive manner admirably adapted to a mathematician of the old colonial type. It begins with a philosophical definition as follows : *' A fraction is an indicated division. Thus, the indicated division of the remainder in division is a fraction." This is immediately followed by other defini- tions, such as : numerator, denominator, integer, mixed number, and improper fraction. Next, these definitions are applied in twenty-one *' Exercises " in which the frac- 192 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS tions given are to be classified in columns on the slate ac- cording to the preceding definitions. The following are typical - exercises " : " (6) iM^ iH ; " - (13) m^ M^ fM-" Now human ingenuity could hardly devise a more un- psychological beginning. It is evident that teachers must precede this deductive treatment by a series of inductive questions, explanations, and genetic exercises, which shall prepare the minds of pupils to assimilate this crude mass of fractions with what little knowledge of real business fractions they have managed to pick up outside of school and then substitute in place of the *' exercises," exam- ples that will be in accord with both common-sense and modern psychology. In a few lessons after this formidable introduction to fractions, in due ''logical order," pupils reach a topic headed " inverting the divisor." An example is given in division of fractions, with an analytical or algebraical ex- planation of the reason for inverting the divisor. This brings to mind my own experience as a teacher half a century ago in a district school in New England. At the close of the winter term the examining committee made their appearance — one of them being the master of the town high school, who examined my arithmetic class of three boys by asking only one question, to wit : " Give an explanation of the reason for inverting the divisor." This lesson on " inverting the divisor " is immediately succeeded by an appalling exercise on " complex frac- tions," piled up in pyramids of confusion. Is it not the imperative duty of the young teacher to cut loose from this dry, pedantic, mathematical formalism and take up the subject in some natural method of development? Finally, the pupils reach " decimal fractions," in- troduced by a ** diagram" and thirty-two "exercises," RECITATIONS AND ART OF USING TEXT-BOOKS 193 to be read and written. The following are fair samples of these exercises : "(5)7.007; (6) .13147 ; (19) 171.4112; (29) 293.0293." What possible use can teachers, possessed of plain common sense, make of a text-book lesson like this for a class of beginners ? How one class encountered this formidable deductive lesson, I know from observation. On entering an evening school in San Francisco, I found an anxious-looking young lady in charge of a sixth grade class of boys. She said to me, with a weary air : " We are taking our first lessons in decimals this evening, and the boys don't seem to understand it." " What is the lesson ? " I asked. She showed me the book open at the " diagram and 32 exercises " mentioned above. Taking charge of the class, I sent half the boys to the board, let the others take paper and pencil, and dictated a column of dollars and cents to be added. The work was well done because the question was a business one and these were business boys. Then I asked them such questions as the following : How many cents in a dollar ? What part of a dollar is one cent ? ; 25 cents ? ; 75 cents } etc. Next they read, from the columns on the board, each item as dollars and hundredths of a dollar ; then, they erased the sign of dollars, and read each item as a whole number and hundredths. Finally, with $1.12^ cents written on the board, and a few inductive questions, the class understood the reading and writing of decimals to thousandths, and there the lesson ended. Take still another illustration. After a year devoted to common fractions, the growing boy at last reaches on page 105 of his book, a half page on *' Dollars and Cents Written Decimally," containing '' 16 exercises to be read," such as ''$25.50," etc. Now it was believed in colonial times that in " logical " sequence decimal fractions could not be learned until all the complications of common fractions had been mastered. Consequently, in all parts of this book previous to page 105, $25.50 is expressed as "$25^;" $2.35 as "$2^;" $1.75 as " $i|," etc. This form of expression is awkward, but it was assumed as a " logical necessity." Immediately after this half page of AM. PUB. SCH. 13 194 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS dollars and cents, the pupil is confronted by a half page on '' circulating decimals." What is the evident duty of the teacher? Because Nicholas Pike, a century ago, placed his two pages on " Federal Currency " in a certain place in his arithmetic, must that " logical order " remain forever unchanged ? When the children in all the schools of France learn decimals and whole numbers from the beginning, and carry both along together naturally and easily, shall American boys and girls, who use the Metric System as far as currency is conc-erned, postpone the writing of dollars and cents until long past the middle of their school course ? Turn to Grammar. — In teaching etymology, in what- ever grade the subject is begun, teachers should connect, by means of inductive exercises, whatever knowledge children have acquired in the use of their mother tongue with the new terms which are presented in the text-book lesson. For instance, before assigning a lesson on " tense," the teacher should call the attention of pupils to the fact that they have been using correctly for years, most of the verb forms to express present, past, and future time. By suitable questions, without using tech- nical terms, pupils should be led to make up sentences to show these distinctions of time. They may then regard the assigned lesson with some little degree of interest. If pains were taken to explain the real purpose of learning the conjugation of a verb, and pupils were asked to make use of each verb-form in a full sentence for the purpose of expressing a thought, the possible use of studying " conjugation " from the book might begin to dawn upon them. In a modern text-book on my table, a lesson on " conjugation " begins with a definition of the term, fol- lowed by definitions of regular and irregular verbs, and of RECITATIONS AND ART OF USING TEXT-BOOKS 95 the term "principal parts." Without further waste of words, the author proceeds at once to present " a conjuga- tion of the verb to be auxiliary of the passive voice, and of the progressive form." This is immediately followed by a "paradigm of the regular verb : To loveT What course shall teachers pursue to lighten up this lesson full of terms new to pupils, and apparently entirely destitute of interest to them because of their utter in- ability to comprehend its use? A little preparatory thought may enable many teachers to discover some way of interesting the class. Some modern book on language lessons and grammar to which teachers can turn will pre- sent inductive approaches to this topic. Almost any way is better than the mere memorizing of the " paradigm " without perceiving its application to the use of language. The Development Method. — " The developing plan of teaching," says McMurry, " is one radically different from the lecture and the text-book methods. The teacher / who employs it lectures or tells comparatively little to her class, although it is important to remember that she "Soes tell some things outright ; neither does she allo\y__ the facts that are to be learned to be first prese nted : through a text-book ; she prefers to develop them by con- versation with the^pupils. . . . Conversation for the sake of developing facts should be prominent in ail school in- struction, and since text-books, if used to introduce the " topics, would often deprive this conversation of its point' their perusal should in such cases follow rather than pre- cede the discussion itself. One trouble with many people is that they began text-books so early in school and fol- lowed them so closely that they have never learned to distinguish their own thoughts and opinions from those of the books ; in fact, they are scarcely aware that they 196 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS have opinions of their own. The present common use of text-books in school results too often in slavery to books or loss of independence in thought, rather than in a mas- tery of books and ability to use them properly." But it is possible to carry the development method to extremes, and teachers must endeavor to keep an even balance of judgment. Pupils-must not..be left. to find out everything for themselves because much effort might be wasted. Interest and Attention. — Most of us retain pleasant memories of some gifted teacher who had the power of interesting us in our work and thus stimulating us to do our best. This power of interesting pupils in their school work is partly a gift of nature, and partly the result of skill acquired by practice in accord with the principles of educational psychology. Few teachers now rely mainly on the compulsory memorizing of text-book lessons learned without interest on the part of pupils and im- perfectly comprehended, or not understood at all. The chief aim of modern teachers, whether in primary grade • or grammar grade, high school or college class, is to in- terest pupils in the subject-matter, and so lead them to the self-development of their own powers. As to detailed ways of interesting pupils, there are many good modern treatises on applied psychology and pedagogics to which teachers can turn for suggestions. From one of the leaders in educational psychology, Pro- fessor William James, I quote one paragraph, with the hope that teachers will seek for more from the same source : * '' Any object not interesting in itself may be-_^ xome interesting through becoming associated with_an_. ^ Atlantic Monthly, April, 1889. " Talks to Teachers on Psychol- ogy." RECITATIONS AND ART OF USING TEXT-BOOKS [97 objecMn3^hiGluan.4nterest already exists. The two asso- ciated objects grow, as it were, together; the interesting portion sheds its quality over the whole ; and thus, things not interesting in their own right borrow an interest which becomes as real and as strong as that of any na- tively interesting thing. . . . From all these facts there emerges a very simple abstract program for the teacher to follow in keeping the attention of the child : Begin with the line of his native interests^ and offer him objects that have some immediate connection with these'' General Principles. — In the general management of the recitation the difference between the skilled teacher and the untrained teacher is constantly made apparent. The unskilled teacher assumes that children are educated mainly by what they are told, or by what they commit to memory from books. His fetich is the school text-book, and he makes his pupils bow down before it. To him the child has but one intellectual faculty, and that is memory. Mill says, that if there is a first principle in education, it is this : '' That the discipline which does good to the mind, is that in which the mind is active, not passive ; the secret of developing the faculties is to give them much to dfoT^^ct much inducement to do it." Tyndall says, "The exercise of the mind, like that of the body, depends for its value upon the spirit in which it is accomplished." Spencer says, *' The child should be told as little as pos^ sible and induced to discover as much as possible." All modern educators agree that in every branch of study the mind should be conducted from the simple to the complex ; the concrete to the abstract ; the indef- inite to the definite ; the empirical to the rational or scien- tific. But the unpsychological teacher violates all these first principles. In arithmetic, he begins with definitions 1 98 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS and mechanical rules, and ends in puzzling problems. In grammar, he omits the actual use of language in express- ing thought, and devotes his attention to the technicalities of parsing, analysis, and diagrams. In geography, he is content to have his pupils memorize names, regardless of associated ideas. In history, he strings dates, like wooden beads, upon the thread of memory. In reading, he trains pupils to call words without reference to thought. In botany, he takes books before plants, and in physics, omits experiments. In fact, he neither awakens curiosity, nor excites inquiry. While the art of conducting the recitation must be ac- quired, in part, by actual practice in teaching, it is a great gain for young teachers to begin with high ideal aims, presented by masters in this art. A careful study of " The Method of the Recitation" (1897), by the two brothers, Charles A. and Frank M. McMurry, cannot fail to lead any teacher, young or old, experienced or inexperienced, into new lines of thought, which will result in higher ideals of instruction. This book is the clearest and most prac- tical presentation of the subject that has been made, as yet, in this country. The authors make in their preface the following statements : " The Method of the Recitation is based upon the principles of teaching which were expounded and illustrated in the works of Herbart, Rein, and Ziller. At the same time, the authors hope to have shown in the body of the work that we have to do here with principles rec- ognized by teachers in every land, and that there is no thoughtless imitation of foreign methods and devices. While our debt to German thinkers for an organization of fundamental ideas is great, the entire discussion, as here presented, springs out of American conditions ; its illustrative materials are drawn exclusively from lessons commonly taught in our schools. In fact, the whole book, while strongly influ- enced by Herbart 's principles, is the outgrowth of several years' con- tinuous work with classes of children in all the grades of the common school." CHAPTER IV PROFESSIONAL READING AND STUDY Before teaching can take rank as a profession, teachers must command respect for their scholarship. Most teach- ers can make their culture liberal if they rightly use the leisure time which their occupation gives them ; and those who get out of the sphere of irriitation into that of inven- tion and discovery, will find ample scope for their powers. Teaching as an Art. — Though the desirability of pro- fessional training in the art of teaching is now generally conceded, the grea test waste of time and money in our school system comes from the employment of untrained teachers, who, in time, learn how to teach, but who do so at the expense of their pupils. This waste will continue until there is a general recognition of the need of profes- sionally trained teachers. There are, it is true, many men and women who make teaching their life-work ; but they have little or no legal recognition as professional teachers. No state law, as yet, requires any professional training whatever as a prerequisite for teaching, the only require- ment being an examination in certain conventional branches. The legal status of the teacher is strictly in accordance with the popular fallacy that anybody who can get a certificate is fit to " keep school." Why should not a state normal school diploma be taken as prima facie evidence of fitness to teach ? Why should not the life diploma of one state be legally recognized in other states ? Is there any good and sufficient reason why each state, 199 200 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS or county, or city, should be hemmed in by an ancient Chinese wall of educational exclusiveness ? Must all teachers, when they change their residence, be compelled to halt at every state line, or city limit, or town boundary, and submit to an examination, in order to prove that they are not educational tramps ? President Andrew S. Draper, of the State University of Illinois, tersely sums up this question as follows : ^ " Teaching in the common schools of the country cannot be advanced to the standing of a pro- fessional employment, so as to justify its classification with the learned professions until the conditions which obtain in many of our states are materially modified. It is absurd to think of reaching that consumma- tion so long as competency is placed in ruinous and destructive com- petition with incompetency, so long as the best qualifications are scarce- ly able to earn a living or maintain independent self-respect, while boys and girls not yet mature, physically or mentally, and older persons who are unable to succeed in other vocations are permitted to secure better pay for alleged teaching in the schools than they can obtain in any other way. . . . Without a scholarship which is at home in any intellectual center, without special training which can readily prove its utility, and force the necessity of its recognition, without public dis- crimination between professionals and amateurs, without an entire cessation of indiscriminate licensing, without putting the school doors in the charge of professionals, without an entire elimination of favorit- ism — there can be no teaching profession. If I were to withhold an- other word you would draw an inference which I should regret. As exacting as these conditions are, it is by no means impossible to comply with them. The signs of the times are auspicious. There is a manifest educational awakening throughout the country. If we sur- vive twenty years we shall witness advances in learning more marked and far-reaching than the country has ever known before." Pedagogical Reading. — Aside from some general course of literary or scientific reading, all progressive teach- ers will read something relating to modern educational 1 Address before the Massachusetts State Teachers' Association, 1890. PROFESSIONAL READING AND STUDY 201 psychology and practical pedagogics. They will sub- scribe for and read at least one weekly journal of educa- tion, and one educational monthly. They will read the reports of the United States Commissioner of Education, whenever they can find them in the public libraries, and other school reports whenever they can get them. Special Studies. — The student teacher who wishes to learn something about apperception, interest, character training, the oral method, and other Herbartian doctrines of the young leaders in the valley of the Mississippi, will do well to read McMurry's General Method, De Garmo's Essentials of Method, De Garmo's Herbart and the Her- bartians, and The Method of the Recitation, by Charles A. and Frank M. McMurry. Student teachers who wish to make special studies in school management and organization will read Dr. Joseph Baldwin's School Management and School Methods (1897); Dr. Emerson E. White's School Management; School Management, by Arnold Tompkins (1895) ; or any other good book of similar scope. On applied pedagogy they will read Colonel Parker's Talks on Pedagogics, Compayre's Lectures on Teaching (Payne), and Hinsdale's Teaching the Language Arts. For advanced thoughts on education in general, they will read Educational Reform (1898), by Charles W. Eliot, President of Harvard University. This book is made up of papers read by the author from time to time, at various kinds of educational gatherings. President Eliot has been an educational reformer for more than thirty years, and while his chief work has been done in connection with Harvard University, he has been a leader in all matters relating to elective courses of study in all kinds of schools, from primary grade to university. His book ranks as one 202 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS of the most interesting and most instructive contribu- tions to modern educational literature. It is of special value to public school teachers, as well as to educational leaders. On the subject of psychology there are many books. The young student may begin with one of the clearest and most comprehensible, Halleck's Psychology and Psychic Culture (1898), and follow up the subject by reading Talks to Teachers on Psychology, by Dr. William James (1899), succeeded by other books whenever they appear. Here perhaps a thought from Professor James will prove of value to student teachers : " The art of teaching grew up in the schoolroom, out of inventiveness and sympathetic concrete observation. Even where, as in the case of Herbart, the advancer of the art was also a psychologist, the pedagogics and the psychology ran side by side, and the former was not derived in any sense from the latter. The two were congruent, but not subordinate. And so everywhere, the teach- ing must agree with the psychology, but need not necessarily be the only kind of teaching that would so agree, for many diverse methods of teaching may equally follow psychological laws. To know psychol- ogy, therefore, is absolutely no guarantee that we should be good teachers. To advance to that result we must have an additional en- dowment altogether, a happy tact and ingenuity to tell us what definite things to say or do. That ingenuity in meeting and pursuing the pupil, that tact for the concrete situation, though the alpha and omega of the teacher's art, are things to which psychology cannot help us in the least. . . . Divination and perception, not psychological pedagogics or strategy are the only helpers here. . . . But if the use of psycho- logical principles be negative rather than positive, it does not follow that it may not be a great use, all the same. ^ Within the past ten years attention has been directed to a study of the child rather than to the study of meta- physics. The teacher interested in this special direction ^ " Talks to Teachers on Psychology," by William James (1899). PROFESSIONAL READING AND STUDY 203 will do well to read the various monographs of G. Stanley- Hall, President of Clark University ; the Year Books of the National Herbart Society ; the leading educational journals in the United States; and The Study of the Child (1898), by A. R. Taylor, or any one of several other books on this subject. For special studies in the history of education in our own country, students may begin with Martin's Evolution of the Public School System of Massachusetts ; followed by Boone's History of Education in the United States, and Dr. A. D. Mayo's historical sketches of early educa- tion in the United States found in the reports of the Commissioner of Education, from 1894 to 1898. Teachers should make a study, in detail, of the early educational history of the town, city, or state in which they are teaching school. Town histories and state histories are now available to some extent in most large libraries. These local records are of great interest and of priceless value. After many years of absence from New England, I re- cently took a trip across the continent in search of early educational records not to be found in California. There in the town records and town histories, I read accounts of early settlements, primitive schools, and warfare with savages. There were the rolls of honor of volunteer soldiers in a long series of wars — King William's War, Queen Anne's War, King George's War, and the French and Indian War — with pathetic tales of the slaughter of women and children, and woful stories of captivity in Canada. There in state libraries were the Army Rolls of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the great Civil War, most terrible of all. Every- where the fervent patriotism of the people was made evident in statues, monuments, and inscriptions in honor / 204 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS of heroes, soldiers, and statesmen. In every burial ground over the whole country, even in the remotest rural dis- tricts," memorial flags " blossomed over the graves of men who had served their country in battle. In the town histories, too, were recorded the humble beginnings of the common schools, and the names of the early teachers in common school and academy. Returning to my western home through the great met- ropolitan cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, I realized that the seat of wealth, power, and empire had indeed moved westward. But I hold in living remembrance and renewed respect the sturdy pioneers of the East, who made their way against " heathen savages," established a democracy of the common people, helped to win Independence from the British, and while doing all these things, wrested an economical living from a stub- born soil, and yet found time to establish and organize a public school system that has stamped its impress on every township of American soil from the Atlantic to the Pacific. ^vK Applied Pedagogics. — In the succeeding chapters of this book, the modern course of study in the primary and " grammar grades, will be considered somewhat in detail, and generally by grades. The course, as presented, will not be an ideal one, possible only in small classes under, the most favorable conditions as to numbers and condi- tions, but one which shall represent the average American school under average conditions. An attempt will be made to present condensed pedagogical directions, hints, and suggestions in accord with modern pedagogics and the principles of educational psychology, and adapted in a measure to the schools as they now exist. In accordance with this plan, the outlines of work and method will be PROFESSIONAL READING AND STUDY 205 composite, representing the schools of no particular part of our country, but like a composite photograph, presenting the general American type. Moreover, liberal quotations \ will be drawn from the latest writing of American teach- ers, educators, and pedagogical leaders, thus presenting something of the drift of educational thought in the United States. CHAPTER V PEDAGOGICS APPLIED TO READING, WRITING, SPELLING, AND DRAWING, IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS I. READING AND WRITING. First Grade or Year. The variety and excellence of the Reading Charts and First Readers now in use, render unnecessary any specific consideration of methods of teaching beginners how to read. Most teachers begin with the word-method and, after teaching a limited number of common words in easy sentences, proceed to introduce gradually the spelling of words by letters, aided, more or less, by the phonic method. After a short preparatory training, it is a good plan for teachers to write on the blackboards short sentences, such as children use in conversation, and let pupils copy them on blackboards, paper, or slates. In this way a lively in- terest may be awakened. Writing. — Writing should be carried along hand in hand with reading. Children may begin by copying on slates or paper, words or short sentences written on the blackboard by the teacher, or by copying script lessons from the First Reader. If possible, children should be allowed first to write on blackboards, and then to repeat the lessons on slates or paper. Writing with a pencil on paper is better than slate-writing, and after the first half year, the pen is better than the pencil. Encourage the crudest attempts. Show pupils how to hold pens and 206 PEDAGOGICS IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 207 pencils, and encourage them to write easily and freely. The best development lessons are : First, practice on blackboards. Second, practice on paper or slates, with the pencil. Third, practice on paper with the pen. Spelling. — The first work in spelling should be com- bined with writing, by having pupils copy, first from the board and afterwards from memory, words written by the teacher. A little oral spelling may be taken at times to gain the help of the ear as well as the eye. " All educators are now agreed," says Compayre, " that the child ought to be drilled in writing from the moment he enters school, and that he should not wait for this until he has learned to read fluently. More and more, the truth of this pedagogical maxim will be recognized, that drawing, writing, and reading, need one another and are mutually helpful." Aim. — The aim during the first year should be to change the child's oral vocabulary into the corresponding forms of the written and printed page. When children enter school at five or six years of age, they have been learning a spoken language from the time they began to lisp the "wordspapa and mamma, under the painstaking tui- tion of mothers and other members of the family. Their colloquial vocabulary is by no means a limited one. They have already learned to speak their native tongue with some degree of " propriety," though they have never heard of grammar. They have probably learned by heart many Mother Goose rhymes, and have listened to folk- lore stories handed down from primitive times. Their active young minds have been developed by the method of nature. The thoughtful teacher will take all this into account when she begins to teach these children to read and write the language they already know how to speak. 2o8 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS Stories. — As a continuation of the home method, the teacher will tell or read to the children many stories of which the* following are types: The Three Bears, Cinder- ella, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Bean Stalk, The Lion and the Mouse, The Ugly Duckling, and the Pea Blossom. Dr. Herman T. Lukens, of Clark University, makes the following suggestions about teaching children to read : " Most children learn to read either as a matter of course, or else, if they think of it at all, the only reason they can find is because other boys are learning to read. ... A child who does not want to learn will take from five to ten times as long to learn to read as one who is eager. To start with this live interest and eager desire is of a hundred times more importance than it is whether you use the word method or the alphabet method. The teacher ought to read a good deal of wholesome and interesting material to the pupils in the kindergarten and the primary school, and she ought to take pains to read well, with expression and appreciation. Then, in beginning, let her take some story with the substance of which the pupils are already familiar (say a fairy tale or a rhyme from Mother Goose) and use it for the first reading lesson. If this is done, the children realize what reading is, viz.: That it wUl enable them to get for themselves from books that sort of material. . . . When in this and other ways a good head of interest has been turned on, the second stage will be rich and abundant in eager attempts to imitate that which has aroused the activity. This is the great opportunity for suggestion and for indirect teaching, which is the best of all teaching. Helps for Teachers. — Teachers seeking practical illustrations of the possibility of combining the teaching of reading, writing, and drawing in this grade will find them in recent publications, such as, Crosby's Our Little Book for Little Folks ; The Finch Primer ; Baldwin's School Reading by Grades — First Year ; Lane's Stories for Children. Book L of the Heart of Oak Series contains a delightful collection of Mother Goose rhymes. Second Grade or Year. Supplementary Reading. — After the first school year it should be the aim of teachers to secure the very best PEDAGOGICS IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 209 kind of supplementary reading matter suited to the wants and needs of young children. Instead of repeated reviews of old lessons, children should have new books 'that will awaken fresh interest. As soon as they begin to read a story because of its interest, their rapid progress is assured, and if suitable books are placed in their hands they will read a great deal out of school. Teachers need not fear to let them read stories that contain some hard words, pro- vided the stories are interesting. The Herbartian princi- ple of interest applies in full force in teaching children to read during their first three years of school life. It will be well for the teacher to make an experiment by select- ing, occasionally, an exceedingly interesting story, making a beginning of it in class, and then putting the books into the hands of the children and asking them to finish the story at their desks or at home. It is always a mistake to keep children long at work on short, easy sentences expressing only commonplace thoughts that excite no interest. An illustration may serve to give point to this state- ment. I know of one little fellow who learned to read at home before he was six years old. He was not a preco- cious boy. His grandmother taught him his letters from nursery picture books. In some way or other, probably coached by his grandmother, he learned to read nursery rhymes. At length, in looking at the pictures in a copy of the St, Nicholas, he became interested in a story about the " London Cats' Meat Man." He stuck to that story for three weeks. It was full of long and hard words. He gave his grandmother, his mother, his father, and his elder sister no peace until he had read that four page story through. After he had mastered it, he read many other stories without help from any one. When six years old AM. PUB. scH. — 14 210 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS he went to school and was put into the primer class. At this degradation he protested so vigorously that the thoughtful young teacher tried him successively in reading from a second reader, a third reader, and a fourth reader, and then wisely excused him from the primer class. The following are types of a large class of supplementary books suitable for the second school year : Easy Steps for Little Feet ; Heart of Oak Series, Book I ; The Hiawatha Primer ; Baldwin's Fairy Stories and Fables ; Baldwin's Reading by Grades, Second Year ; Baldwin's Fifty Stories Retold. A small set of each of these, or of similar books, varying in number, according to the size of the class, should belong to the school library. From time to time lend these books to children to read at home. If there is no school library, teachers should secure a copy of each of these books for their desks. Spelling. — While the greater part of spelling is learned by reading and writing, oral spelling should not be entirely neglected. An occasional oral spelling exercise is a good thing to stir up a class that has become weary of writing. Give occasional exercises, both oral and written, in spell- ing the names of things that are good to eat ; of articles of home or school use ; of household words, etc. In written spelling, train pupils to write short sentences from dictation, and to copy sentences from the reading lessons. Pupils should not be required to spell from memory all the hard words of their reading lessons, because their ability to read words runs far ahead of their memory to spell them. The words which children are most interested in spelling are the names of common objects at home or at school ; names of things they eat, the names of ani- mals, etc. For Reference. — Teachers who may wish to get a glimpse of what is possible within the range of story-telling in first and second grades PEDAGOGICS IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 21 1 are referred to Rice's Course of Study in History and Literature, and to McMurry's Course of Study for the Eight Grades. Third and Fourth Grades. For the third school year, the basis of reading should be some Second or Third Reader, to which should be added selections from suitable supplementary readers or other books of which the following are good types : Scudder's Fables and Folk Stories, Andrews' Seven Little Sisters, Heart of Oak Books, Book II., Baldwin's Reading by Grades, Baldwin's Old Stories of the East. During the fourth school year, in addition to the regular Fourth Reader, supplementary reading may be extended, using books like the following: Hans Andersen's Stories, Robinson Crusoe, Bass's Nature Stories, Eggleston's True Stories of American Life and Adventure, Bald- win's Reading by Grades. Fifth and Sixth Grades, The school readers officially adopted for these grades ought to contain choice selections of good literature. For supplementary books suitable for reading at home or in school, teachers are referred to a typical list at the end of this course. In addition to school reading, strive to direct home reading. If pupils have access to a public library, suggest interesting books for them to read. If there is no library, give them the names of at least two good books that they ought to read ; possibly their parents may buy them. Seventh Grade, In the seventh grade, begin to call the attention of pupils to the structure of sentences in their reading lessons. 212 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS Require them to point out the subjects and the predicates in sentences selected from reading lessons. The sooner children learn to apply what they have learned about the structure of the sentence to sentences as they occur in literature, the better it will be for them. Avoid compli- cated forms of sentence analysis, and eschew diagrams. Among the books selected for supplementary reading in school or at home, there should be at least one containing stories of American history. Eighth or Ninth Grade, In the highest grammar grade, take up Gray's Elegy, or some other suitable poem for special study of grammar as applied to literature. Begin the study of figures of speech, particularly simile, metaphor, and personification. Lead pupils to think about the real meaning of poetic forms of speech, and show them how *' parsing " becomes an aid in ascertaining the meaning of long and involved sentences. The chief use of sentence analysis and parsing is to enable pupils better to comprehend the full meaning and force of literature. Home Reading. — In the crowded program of most schools, it will not be possible to find time for enough oral reading in class to make good readers; therefore, teachers should encourage pupils to practice reading aloud at home. The standard of good reading should be : — The ability to read at sight both prose and poetry without mispronouncing common words, without stumbling or hesitation, or the repetition of words. Stage elocution is not expected. BOOKS. Every school library ought to contain several sets of PEDAGOGICS IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 213 supplementary readers or leaflets of good literature for use in connection with the standard readers. For valuable hints in selection, teachers are referred to Rice's Course of Study in History and Literature, and to McMurry's Special Method for Reading.. Commissioner Harris says : " One great object of the school in our time is to teach the pupil how to use books — how to get out for him- self what there is for him in the printed page. The man who cannot use books in our day has not learned the lesson of self-help, and the wisdom of the race is not likely to become his. He will not find, in this busy age, the people who can afford to stop and tell him by oral instruction what he ought to be able to find out for himself by the use of the library that may be within his reach. . . . The most important in- vestigation that man ever learns to conduct is the habit of learning by industrious reading what his fellow-men have seen and thought." Ideals. — The aim in the common schools should be to / make known to pupils the proper use of books as sources / "of knowledge, and at the same time to inspire a love for ^ literature which shall prove a life-long means of inteW lectual enjoyment and education. *' Our ideal should be,"\ says John Dewey, "that the child should have a personal interest in what is read, a personal hunger for it, and a personal power of satisfying this appetite." " From the total training during childhood, " ^ says President Eliot, of Harvard, " there should result in the child a taste for interesting and improving reading, which should direct and inspire its subsequent in- tellectual life. That schooling which results in this taste for good reading, however unsystematic or eccentric the schooling may have been, has achieved a main end of elementary education ; and that schooling which does not result in implanting this permanent taste has failed. Guided and animated by this impulse to acquire knowledge and exercise his imagination through reading, the individual will con- tinue to educate himself through life. Without that deep-rooted im- pulsion he will soon cease to draw on the accumulated wisdom of the 1 " Educational Reform " (1898). . 214 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS past and the new resources of the present, and, as he grows older, he will live in a mental atmosphere which is always growing thinner and emptier." Caution. — It is possible in the higher grades to crowd too much of even the best Hterature upon the immature minds of pupils. In the lower grades it is quite probable that some enthusiastic teachers carry reading to the ex- tremes which have so long characterized the endless drill on arithmetic in these grades. The work should be kept within the limits of enlightened common sense. The danger line has certainly been reached in the mass of Greek and Roman and Pagan mythology which has recently been forced into the lower grades. On this point Professor John Dewey in his trenchant paper on "The Primary Education Fetich "^ says: "We have to take into account not simply the results produced by forcing language-work unduly, but also the defects in development due to the crowding out of other subjects. Every respectable authority insists that the period of childhood, lying between the years of four and eight or nine, is the plastic period in sense and emotional life. What are we doing to shape these capacities ? What are we doing to feed this hunger } If one compares the powers and needs of the child in these directions with what is actually supplied in the regimen of the three R's, the contrast is pitiful, tragic. This epoch is also the budding-time for the formation of efficient and orderly habits on the motor side ; it is pre- eminently the time when the child wishes to do things, and when his interest in doing can be turned to educative account. No one can clearly set before himself the vivacity and persistency of the child's motor instincts at this period^ and then call to mind the continued grind of reading and writing, without feeling that the justification of our present curriculum is psychologically impc^ssible. It is simply a superstition ; it is a remnant of an outgrown period of history. All this might be true, and yet there might be no subject-matter suf- ficiently organized for introduction into the school curriculum, since ^ The Forum^ May, 1 898. PEDAGOGICS IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 215 this demands, above all things, a certain definiteness of presentation and of development. But we are not in this unfortunate plight. There are subjects which are as well fitted to meet the child's domi- nant needs as they are to prepare him for the civilization in which he has to play his part. There is art in a variety of modes — music, drawing, painting, modeling, etc. These 7nedia not only afford a regulated outlet in which the child may project his inner impulses and feelings in outward form, and come to consciousness of himself, but are necessities in existing social life." Books for Supplementary Reading. — The following books are sug- gested for supplementary reading, but this list is subject to amendment to-morrow if better ones appear : (From Fourth to Seventh Grade.) —Hawthorne's Wonder Book; Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales ; Swiss Family Robinson ; Robinson Crusoe ; Elliott's Six Stories from Arabian Nights ; Baldwin's Story of the Golden Age ; De Garmo's Tales of Troy ; Jane Andrews' Ten Boys on the Road ; Longfellow's Children's Hour ; Holmes' Grand- mother's Story of Bunker Hill Battle ; Eggleston's Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans; Baldwin's School Reading by Grades. Eighth and Ninth Grades. — Longfellow's Evangeline ; Dickens* Christmas Carol ; Julius Caesar ; Vicar of Wakefield ; Merchant of Venice ; Baldwin's Reading by Grades — Eighth Year ; etc. HINTS ON CLASS MANAGEMENT IN READING. While the leading idea throughout the whole course in teaching the art of reading should be the thought side, or the quality of the reading matter, the " mechanical-mental " side of the art must always remain an important secondary- consideration. The extent of " drill work " in this direc- tion must be determined by the skill of the teacher and the ever-varying needs of different grades. It is evident that some attention must be given to vocal training, to correct pronunciation, to emphasis, and to inflection. Standard in Oral Reading. — Pupils should be trained 2i6 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS to avoid a high-pitched, thin, sharp, unnatural, school tone, as well as the other extreme of feebleness and in- distinctness. It is a good standard to require each pupil, except those in the first and second grades, to read so clearly and distinctly that all the class can hear every word. The teacher should sometimes listen with her own book closed. In the lowest grades it is often a waste of effort to try to make timid children with feeble voices read loud enough to be heard by the class. Vocal Drill. — By short and suitable concert exercises, pupils should be trained to the proper use of the lips, tongue, and teeth in distinct articulation. Occasional breathing exercises are of great value as an aid in securing an erect attitude and the free use of the vocal organs. Occasionally give a drill exercise on words containing vowel sounds, giving special attention to those sounds which children in some parts of our country are apt to give incorrectly ; such as a in half, calf, laugh, etc. ; inter- mediate a, as in ask, last, past, after, etc. ; u after r, as in truth, rude, fruit, etc. The school is the proper place for correcting provincialisms in pronunciation. Explain the essential diacritical marks of the school dictionary in order that pupils may be able to find out for themselves the correct pronunciation of words. Train pupils to refer to the dictionary for definitions as well as pronunciation. Oral Expression. — In the highest grammar grade, some special attention should be given to manner of expression. At this stage of progress the motive of the pupil should be, not merely to pronounce words correctly, not merely to comprehend the thought in what is read, but to make others clearly comprehend the thought, feeling, or emotion in what is read. Good oral reading does not necessarily involve much training in elocution. Indeed, what is PEDAGOGICS IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 217 termed " stage elocution " should be avoided in school reading. Choice Extracts. — In each grade throughout the entire course, pupils should be required t'o memorize a few short extracts of prose or poetry suited to their successive stages of development. The recital of such extracts should occasionally take the place of a lesson in oral reading. Correlation. — In the higher grammar grades the read- ing lesson will become a correlated study of reading, lan- guage, literature, composition, and grammar, in varying degrees according to the skill of the instructor in teaching the language-arts, and according to the quality of the reading matter in use. Thought. — On the thought side of reading, it is evident that for the first three or four years in school the teacher must take great pains in showing children how to get at the thought in their reading lessons, and how to study a lesson at home or in school. In the higher grades it is usually a difficult matter to lead pupils to study a read- ing lesson in the careful manner with which they study a lesson in arithmetic or geography. In most school readers there are some selections that may be read with little or no study ; there are others that the teacher may study with the class ; and, occasionally, there are some which pupils should study by themselves. It is here that the good judgment of the teacher must be her own guide, independent of hints or suggestions. It is useless, how- ever, for any teacher to expect that all pupils can be made to comprehend, in full, everything in all the literary ex- tracts which are read ; some children will assimilate much, others but little. It wi ll be well for e very teacher to call to mind whatever she can recollect of her own school e x- periences when she was of the same age as her pupils. 2 1 8 APPLIED PEDA G O GICS II. MODERN WAYS OF TEACHING PENMANSHIP. In the Beginning. — At some time during the first school year, write on the board easy words and short sentences and let pupils copy them on slate or black- board. Little children like blackboard writing in large hand because the teacher and the class can see their work. Follow these lessons by slate-work in large, easy, run- ning hand. Do not trouble beginners with elements, principles, or analysis, but put them at once to writing words and short sentences. In fact, as said before, read- ing and writing ought to be carried along together. The capital letters are no harder to make than are some of the small letters. In blackboard lessons, see that your pupils form the habit of holding a crayon properly. In slate writ- ing, train pupils to hold their pencils as a pen is held. Oc- casionally give a drill exercise in making ovals, running m*s, etc., in order to secure freedom of arm-movements and an easy way of holding the pencil. Of course their first attempts, like those in drawing, will be rough, crude, and irregular, as naturally they should be. Above all, no attempt should be made to force children during the first two or three years of school life into premature accu- racy and finish of handwriting. Give special attention to the manner of placing slates or paper upon the desk, and to the position of the pupil in writing. Under favorable conditions children should occasionally be allowed to use pen and paper after the first six months in school, writing in a large, free, and easy hand. If the school desks are not too high, train children to use the forearm movement in writing with pencils. The difficulty is that many desks are so high that no arm PEDAGOGICS IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 219 movement is possible, and therefore children are limited to finger movements, which are slow and labored. If you are allowed liberty to experiment, try the vertical writing now coming into extensive use. Do not sit down in a chair behind your table, as some teachers do, but go about among your pupils, place their slates or books prop- erly, take hold of their rigid fingers, and show them how to hold a pen easily. Do not expect to secure exact uni- formity in holding the pen, but make allowance for the natural tendency of the child. Free Hand. — Train pupils from the beginning to write with a free and ready movement, instead of the slow, constrained, rigid, snail-like tracing that so often prevails in school. Do not attempt to make the older pupils write a uniform " copy-book hand," but let them form their own characteristic style. The main object is to make them write legibly, easily, and rapidly. Standard, — The standard should be to write a legible hand fast enough for the ordinary purposes of life. There should be no attempt to teach a delicately shaded, orna- mental handwriting like that of a special teacher of penmanship. Copy Books. — The conventional method of learning to write, which prevailed until recently, involved the use of a series of graded copy books, consisting of from six to ten successive numbers. Children were required to fill out, slowly and painfully, each half year, one of these copy books, striving to imitate the elaborate, delicately- shaded and hair-line penmanship of the copy. This kind of writing was painfully slow in execution. A great deal of time was wasted in vainly trying to make all pupils learn to write a fancy style of penmanship. The introduction into the school course of written exercises in 220 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS the various school studies has already compelled, not only a reduction in the number of copy books but also a change to a simpler style of penmanship, bearing some resem- blance to the business handwriting of practical life. In many city schools engraved copy books are but little used during the first three and in the last two years of the course, thus limiting drill in copy-book lessons to the third, fourth, and fifth grades or years. In such schools, indeed, writing is mainly taught incidentally in connection with written exercises in the various school studies. The result is a saving of about one half of the conventional time generally allotted to writing. Illustration. — As superintendent of schools in a large city, I had an opportunity of observing the result of an experiment in teaching writing in a large grammar school which included primary grades. The principal was author- ized to dispense with copy books or to use them as she pleased, and to teach vertical or slant handwriting as she selected. At the end of eight months, I visited a first grade class engaged in writing short sentences from dictation. The children were writing with lead pencils on rough, unruled paper, in an easy, flowing, legible, vertical hand. In the fifth grade, the penmanship was good enough for all practical purposes in life, and very few special lessons in penmanship were required in grades higher than this. In the whole school the transition from slant writing to vertical had been made, to the delight of the children. There had been no striving after fancy penmanship, but in good writing the school as a whole ranked among the best in the city. Under the method pursued, there had been a great saving of time, and this extra time had been given to free- PEDAGOGICS IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 221^ hand drawing from objects such as leaves, plants, vines, flowers, and figure drawing. Some of the middle grade classes were skillful in the use of water colors, and all were delighted with their work. In the higher grammar grades, the written exercises in the various school studies were dispatched in half the time required in most other schools. Psychological Principles. — In the Second Year Book of the National Herbart Society (1896), there is an ex- haustive paper by Dr. H. T. Lukens, on race and indi- vidual development, illustrated by reading, writing, and drawing. In relation to writing he says : " But a candid observation of facts would lead one to agree with Rousseau, Compe, Graser, Scripture, and a host of other German and American teachers who, regarding only the child's normal develop- ment and noting the increasing nervousness, injury to the eyes, and poor writing combined, proclaim with emphasis that the normal nas- cent period for learning penmanship is from nine to thirteen, and not earlier. Certainly this is the period when the handwriting is acquiring its individuality and the writing habits are getting their set. Hence practice and drill on regularity of slant, uniformity of height and shading, and gracefulness of outline will now be most effective and lasting. . . . To potter along with sixty minutes a week spread out through eight or nine years is to dissipate all interest and all lasting results in motor training. The Committee of Fifteen very wisely drops it out of the curriculum after the sixth grade, but for reasons stated above, very unwisely assign the drill period in penman- ship to the first and second school years, instead of the fifth and sixth." Professor John Dewey, of the department of philosophy and peda- gogics in the University of Chicago, in a recent article on " The Primary Education Fetich,"^ speaks of primary school writing as follows : •' There is an order in which sensory and motor centers develop, — an order expressed, in a general way, by saying that the line of progress is from the larger, coarser adjustments having to do with the bodily system as a whole (those nearest the trunk of the 1 The Forum, May, 1898. 222 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS body) to the finer and accurate adjustments having to do with the periphery and extremities of the organism. To violate this law means undue nervous strain ; it means putting the greatest nervous tension upon the centers least able to do the work. The act of writing — especially in the barbarous fashion, long current in the school, of compelling the child to write on ruled lines in a small hand and with the utmost attainable degree of accuracy — involves a nicety and com- plexity of adjustments of muscular activity which can be definitely appreciated only by the specialist. Forcing children at a premature age to devote their entire attention to these refined and cramped adjustments has left behind it a sad record of injured nervous sys- tems and of muscular disorders and distortions." Summary. — Combining the imperative conditions in large public schools with the results of modern psycho- logical investigations, it seems safe to say that, during the first three or four years in school, children should learn to write an easy hand with comparatively little drill in exact uniformity of style ; that the next two years should be the period of drill in slant and proportion to fix the hand- writing ; and that thereafter the training in penmanship should be incidental in connection with written school ex- ercises. It seems safe to say, further, that in the future when pupils shall be trained, in accordance with psycho- logical principles, to learn reading, writing, and drawing carried along together, better results will be obtained with less waste of time, in each of the three branches. III. MODERN WAYS OF TRAINING IN ORTHOGRAPHY. The Spelling Book. — In the district school of a century ago, spelling was studied from the columns of a spelling book and recited orally in class, with little or no attention to the meaning or use of words. Written spelling was unknown. For nearly three quarters of a century, Web- PEDAGOGICS IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 223 ster's Spelling Book (1783), held almost undisputed sway in American schools. It was undoubtedly a great aid in securing correct pronunciation in schools at a time when a dictionary was a rare possession ; but its method, not- withstanding, was formal, logical, mechanical, and un- psychological. Yet it is not wise to underrate the edu- cational usetulness of this famous schoolbook during the long period which elapsed before it was superseded by something better. It at least secured a regular and rigid drill, and enlarged to some extent the vocabuTa^bf the several generations that toiled over it. When graded reading books made their appearance and teachers began to require various written exercises in school studies, the spelling book fell into disrepute ; and in many schools it was dropped out altogether. But the experiment of dispensing entirely with formal lessons in spelling proved unsatisfactory, and a modified spelling book was restored in the form of numerous Word Primers and Word Books, the type of which was largely deter- mined by Swinton's Word Book Series (1873). How Spelling is Learned. — Spelling is mainly learned in reading, in writing compositions, and by other written school exercises ; but the great majority of teachers find it desirable to supplement this indirect and incidental training by the study of a modern word book which in- cludes elementary defining and more or less of word an- alysis, or a study of prefixes, suffixes, and definitions. Oral Spelling. — Make some use of oral spelling to train the ear as well as the eye, and to secure careful pronun- ciation. Written spelling, if used exclusively, becomes wearisome to pupils. Allow the class, occasionally, to " choose sides " and have a spelling match, thus appealing to good-natured emulation. In oral spelling, require 224 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS pupils to pause in spelling after each syllable to show the division into syllables ; but do not require each syllable to be pronounced separately. Text-Book. — If a word book or a spelling book is re- quired by the official course of study, make the best pos- sible use of it. Swinton's Word Primer and Word Book may prove helpful for supplementary purposes. Correcting Papers. — After a lesson in written spelling let pupils exchange papers and correct the spelling in one another's papers. This exercise in criticism is one of the most profitable of spelling lessons. Word Study. — The teaching of spelling should be so conducted as to unfold something of the meaning of words, and something of the formation of derivative from primitive words and roots. The exercise then becomes a part of good intellectual training, instead of a blind effort of memory. Defining. — It is not wise to require pupils to give for- mal definitions of words when the meaning is already well enough known. Pupils should be trained at an early age to the habit of referring to the school dictionary for defi- nitions. Mark any difficult words in the advance reading ' lesson, and require pupils to find out the dictionary defi- nitions. Give out, once or twice a week, a list of five words to be defined at the next lesson. Exact and full definitions should be required, in general, only from ad- vanced pupils, when they have gained the knowledge necessary to frame definitions. A simple explanation of the ?^^^ of a word is often better than a formal dictionary definition. Beware of defining a word by means of a synonym equally incomprehensible. Waste. — Learning to spell the English language is a long-continued and laborious task, and there is little reason PEDAGOGICS IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 225 to expect that the irregular orthography of our mother tongue will ever be so reformed that spelling will be made easy. The chief waste of time in school consists in re- quiring children to attempt to learn to spell words which are entirely outside of their possible vocabulary. IV. MODERN THOUGHT ON ELEMENTARY DRAWING. Practical Value of Drawing. — The general introduc- tion of drawing into both country schools and city schools marks one of the most notable means of enriching the course of study. Drawing has become a special aid in nature study. It is a source of unfailing pleasure and in- terest to children ; it lies at the foundation of manual training ; it is an important aid in the study of geography and history. Finally, it affords an aesthetic training that will make life pleasanter and happier. Hindrances. — The limitations to which most teachers are subjected I fully understand, having been subject to them myself during many years of teaching. Wherever '* a system of drawing " has been ofificially adopted by boards of education or school trustees, teachers must master the directions and require pupils to fill out each successive number of the drawing books, whether the system be good or bad. Unfortunately, the general intro- duction into elementary schools — some twenty years ago — of formal systems of industrial, or geometrical, or mechanical, or design drawing, proved unsatisfactory in results. Even the employment of large numbers of special teachers failed to awaken any vital interest in drawing. The system pursued in technical art schools for older pupils or adults cannot profitably be applied to the lower grades in public schools. AM. PUB. scH. — 15. 226 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS But whatever may be the limitations of the adopted course of study, it is possible for teachers to supplement the required work with various exercises in drawing adapted in some measure to the successive culture epochs of young children. Practical Hints and Suggestions. — Drawing, as a means of expression, should begin with the first lessons in reading and writing and should be carried along hand in hand with both. Drawing, indeed, is a primitive mode of expression which preceded the invention of letters. It is in accordance with psychological method that .the first efforts of children should be directed to rude drawing rather than to writing. The primary children may be sent to the blackboard to copy something drawn by the teacher, or to indulge their fancy by drawing whatever they choose. Children do not hesitate to attempt houses, trees, hills, dogs, and the human figure. They prefer blackboard drawing with crayons to exercises on slates or paper, because their draw- ings are on a larger scale. Besides, teachers and pupils can see the pictures. Direct their feeble efforts, but leave full play to individuality. One child may take to flowers, another to boats and ships, a third to houses, and a fourth to horses. Allow pupils from the beginning to attempt drawing ' from real objects instead of from pictures on the flat. Drawing a leaf from the flat copy is only a makeshift com- pared with sketching the outline of a real leaf placed on the desk right before the eyes of the child. Drawing a house from the flat copy may secure a slow and painful accuracy and finish, but the process is dead drudgery com- pared with the attempt to make a crude outline of a real house. PEDAGOGICS IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 227 The most attractive and most profitable exercises in drawing will be those made in connection with oral lessons in elementary natural science, or with geography, or with history. Here drawing supplements writing. Dr. Lukens presents the subject psychologically as follows : " In the course in drawing, (as in writing) the same three stages should no doubt be provided for. In kindergarten and primary schools abun- dance of pictures and models should be on hand and should be made use of in every subject. Then comes the second transitional play stage of imitation and suggestibility before the skill of hand and the right attitude of mind for artistic production are developed. During this time drawing seems properly merely a -language for expressing ideas, and should be so used in connection with all the other subjects of study. Diagrams, illustrated stories, and pictures of everything the children are interested in, will be the natural and pedagogical course as opposed to the systematic course, now so universal, and yet so out of place in the lower grades. At about ten years of age, Barnes thinks, (and all the others who have made special studies of the sub- ject seem to agree with him) the child may with profit take up the technique of drawing, or its grammar and rhetoric, as he calls it." ^ At ten or twelve years of age, then, pupils having had this preliminary training may begin to learn the technique of drawing. At the right time, geometrical, mechanical, and instrumental, and design drawing may be made both interesting and useful. As my ideal of natural free-hand drawing in an ele- mentary school, I have in mind a grammar school for girls, which also included primary grades, in San Fran- cisco. For the purpose of experiment, this school was excepted from the conventional " system " required in other schools, and the principal and teachers were given full liberty to teach drawing according to psychological principles. In the first and second grades, the children began by drawing from real objects placed on their desks, ^ The Second Year Book of the National Herbart Society (1896). 228 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS such as a leaf, a fern, or a spray of ivy, or a flower, or a specimen of fruit. Their work was free and easy, but it was followed up with the keenest interest. In the third grade their work showed artistic taste. In the fourth grade they were painting flowers in water colors. In the next two grades the girls could look out of the windows and sketch a city street in perspective, or make a good out- line of Telegraph Hill. In the two higher grades, they could make in fifteen minutes a good sketch of a human figure drawn from a little girl perched on the teacher's desk. An atmosphere of artistic taste pervaded the whole school. Drawing was a perennial source of de- light. The teachers as well as the pupils were enthusi- astic. V. VOCAL MUSIC AS A MEANS OF CULTURE. Fifty years ago, in country schools, singing was the exception, not the rule, and in city schools the instruc- tion in music was meager and unsatisfactory. Now, in most large cities a special teacher is employed to super- vise and direct the teaching of music. It is the exception to find a rural school in which singing is not a daily exer- cise. The kindergarten schools afford a good illustration of the extent to which rote singing can be carried with young children before they learn to read. The number of songs which these little children memorize and sing is a marvelous proof of the retentive memory of early child- hood. In the kindergarten, the songs are selected with special reference to melody ; and the children act them out by movement and gesture while singing them by words. The songs best adapted for children in the first PEDAGOGICS IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 229 two years in the primary school will be found in the vari- ous publications of kindergarten songs. The extent to which formal instruction in music and singing by note can be carried in small rural schools must be determined according to conditions. But singing by rote or by note is an essential school exercise. Apart from its great value as a means of aesthetic cul- ture, singing is one important means of cultivating the voice for expression in speech and in oral reading. In the recital of poetry, there is always a touch of the rhythm, melody, and harmony of song. The power- ful effect of school singing in stimulating the emotions is universally recognized. It is impossible to over-esti- mate the stimulus to patriotism resulting from the long- continued singing during the whole school course of such songs as " America," the " Battle Hymn of the Re- public," " Rally Round the Flag, Boys," and other na- tional songs and hymns. How much dearer has home been made to us all by the singing of '' Home, Sweet Home ! " How many friendships have been made stronger by the singing of " Auld Lang Syne ! " CHAPTER VI THE ART OF TEACHING LANGUAGE LESSONS AND GRAMMAR Grammar. — Within the last twenty years the use of a formal text-book on grammar has come to be limited in the best schools to the last two years of the grammar- school course. The general introduction of written exer- cises and written examinations, the written work in ele- mentary science, in history, in geography, and in letter- writing — all lend their aid in training children to acquire the habit of using language with some degree of " correct- ness and propriety," without the study of grammar. This is the natural method of development. In the lower grammar grades, the formal text-book on grammar has been superseded by " Language Lessons," in which the simpler parts of grammar are taken in connection with written sentence work and composition. ^ The variety of good reading matter now available for /^school children is undoubtedly an important factor in / training them to speak and write their mother tongue. / But most teachers will admit that somewhere in the Y school course there must be some formal study of gram- \ mar. Colonel Parker, who cannot be classed as a conserv- ative, remarks in his Talks on Pedagogics : " Whenever and wherever, throughout the course, a part of speech, a fact of etymology, a definition, an explanation, a rule, or general direction, a lesson in parsing or analysis, will di- rectly assist pupils in comprehending or adequately ex- 230 LANGUAGE LESSONS AND GRAMMAR 231 pressing thought, any and every detail of grammar should be freely presented and freely used." There is little difference of opinion about the high value of a careful study of grammar in secondary schools. Sentence analysis is a logical study of the forms of thought. The study of English syntax increases the power of interpreting thought in literature. It affords the student a standard of self-criticism in a careful revi- sion of his own writing. It opens the mind to the great lines of thought in logic, rhetoric, and philosophy. A kno wledge of grammar is essential to a full appreciar_ tion of the masterpieces of literature. With advanced pupils, the right study of grammar is a means of mental discipline fully equal to that of mathematics. '' I hold," says Tyndall, " that the proper study of language is an intellectual discipline of the highest kind. The piercing through the involved and inverted sentences of * Paradise Lost ' ; the linking of the verb to its often distant nom- inative, of the relative to its distant antecedent, of the agent to the object of the transitive verb, of the preposi- tion to the noun or pronoun which it governed ; the study of variations in mood and tense ; the transformations often necessary to bring out the true grammatical structure of a sentence — all this was to my young mind a discipline of the highest value, and, indeed, a source of unflagging delight." But the unsettled point in dispute is the extent to which the teat king of g 7 ammar' can profitably be carried in iJie elementary course of study in the common schools. There has been a general revolt against the '' Murray type " of text-books ; against Latinized parsing, and against the hair-splitting refinements of sentence analysis. As a nat- ural result, many teachers have been led to the opposite 232 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS extreme of advocating no instruction whatever in techni- cal grammar below the high school grades. On the other hand, there are many schools in which the Murray type of grammar still reigns supreme. Teachers who were themselves trained under the old regime cling to the forms of parsing and sentence analysis with which they have grown familiar. They greatly overestimate the value of text-book grammar to the great majority of common school pupils, who leave school at fifteen or sixteen years of age. In consequence of educational bias, they under- estimate the worth of composition work and language training. Having become grammatical experts by drill in teaching parsing and analysis for many years, they unconsciously assume that this kind of training is of ines- timable value to their pupils. Language Teaching. — The general method in language teaching pursued in a majority of graded schools at the present time may be briefly stated as follows : 1. During the first three years of school life, reading, story-telling, and easy exercises in sentence-making and composition-writing. 2. For the next three years, the beginning of literature in supplementary reading ; the writing of compositions in connection with nature study, history lessons, literature, and geography ; and the use of some text-book on language lessons. 3. During the last two years of the course, the study of some formal text-book on grammar ; reading of a dis- tinctly literary character ; composition-writing on topics correlated with school work. Hints and Suggestions on Methods of Teaching — Language Lessons. — In the lower grades, language les- sons and composition work constitute the best means of LANGUAGE LESSONS AND GRAMMAR 233 acquiring a ready and correct use of language, which usage, in its turn, becomes a sound basis for the study of formal grammar. As children learn to speak good Eng- lish by hearing it spoken in school or at home, so they learn to write good English only by continued practice in writing under the direction and criticism of teachers. As a guide to first lessons in this work Swinton's Talking With the Pencil (1898) will be of value. Stories. — It is one of the best of exercises to let chil- dren reproduce from memory, in their own words, stories told them by the teacher, or which they themselves have read. In this way writing becomes a pleasure instead of a task. Originality in thought ought not to be expected of children. Letter- Writing. — One of the most practical of all ex- ercises is letter-writing. As soon as children can write at all, they ought to be trained to write a short letter. In every grade during the whole course, repeated exercises in letter-writing should be given, so that on leaving school every child should be able to write a letter neatly and correctly, In the best of modern schools the work in composition is mainly done in connection with nature studies, oral lessons in history, and lessons in geography. In this way writing becomes a pleasure. The work in composition is in accord with the pupils' mental equipment. In order to learn the art of expression, children must have definite thoughts to express. There is a general consensus of opinion among modern teachers that writing the English language is an art which must be learned by actual,p.rac- tice in written composition, rather than by the study of a text-book on grammar. Formal Grammar. — In the grammar grade next to 234 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS the highest, that is, in the seventh or eighth school year, if a formal text-book on grammar is taken up, teachers should first give their attention to the essential parts of etymology, assuming that pupils have previously learned something about the sentence. Special attention should be given to personal pronouns, to verb-forms and the tenses, to irregular verbs, to participles and infinitives. The forms for parsing should be brief and simple, limited, in the main, to the construction that is, the use of the word in the sentence. For example, in the sen- tence, " America has furnished to the world the character of Washington," it is quite enough to say: ^^ America is a proper noun, subject of the verb has furnished ; has furnished is a verb in the present perfect tense, agreeing with the subject America ; world is a common noun, ob- ject of the preposition to,'' etc. Sentence analysis, free from technicalities and diagrams, may profitably be correlated with parsing. It is sheer waste of time to parse every word in a sentence. Select from a reading lesson only the words that are most im- portant in the structure of a sentence, or that are placed out of their regula rorder ; e. g. in the sentence, " Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke," — parse glebe ; " Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight," — parse landscape. The ancient Latinized models involve too great waste of time for modern school use. Such endless repetitions of definitions and grammatical terminology result neither in " logical training " nor in readiness of expression. Sentence analysis, — limited, is useful, but, when carried to extremes, it becomes a dead formalism, quite as unat- tractive to pupils as was the old-time parsing. The ex- tent to which teachers carry parsing and sentence analysis LANGUAGE LESSONS AND GRAMMAR 235 must be modified by their school environment, or their school text-books, or the examinations to which their pupils are subjected. Comparatively few teachers are free agents to determine their course of instruction for themselves. Syntax. — In the highest grammar grade, the subject of syntax may be taken up, limiting the work mainly to the half dozen rules that have the closest practical rela- tion to the writing of English. In this grade literary study should be combined with grammatical study. Sup- pose, for instance, the class were to take up Gray's Elegy, one of the most elaborate of Short poems in the English language. This study would involve a wide range of thought. The poem is full of figurative expres- sions ; of historical allusions ; of long sentences that some- times include two or three stanzas. In some instances owing to the transposed structure of a sentence, it is not easy to determine which word is the subject and which the object of the verb. But the teacher with a little fore- thought can make the study one of lively interest. After such a course with a large normal class, many of the students came to me and said that they had never before perceived any practical use of grammar as applied to the study of literature. In the city of San Francisco, this poem, selected from the adopted school reader, was as- signed for special study in the highest grammar-grade class. Near the end of the year, I had the pleasure of examining, orally, more than thirty classes, most of which far exceeded my most sanguine expectations of success. Take another illustration of the possible use of a stanza from Byron's Apostrophe to the Ocean, found in most of the school readers. 236 • APPLIED PEDAGOGICS " The armaments which thunderstrike the walls Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake And monarchs tremble in their capitals ; The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make Their clay creator the vain title take Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war — These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, They melt into thy yeast of waves which mar Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar." Put the following questions to a class, and note the results : (a) What kind of sentence is this stanza ? {d) What is meant by " armaments " ? {c) Parse 7iations. (d) Parse tremble. (nr|y ^hilHrpn f^vp^^rfc in co unting, in reckoning the smal l coins of United Stat es cu rrency, and in making change. The knowledge of such children is empirical, it is true, but the teacher can utilize it to advantage. It would be refined cru-elty to hold such pupils to the strict limitations of the Grube system or to the number lo, or 20, or 100. Perhaps some section of her class may need slow and patient drill with " count- ers ; '* if so, give it to them, but begin the drill with ab- 240 PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC 241 stract numbers as soon as possible. No harm will come to the children if they learn to count to 100 by I's; by 2's; by lo's. Take addition and subtraction of small numbers first ; in due time take multiplication and divi- sion. It is not wise to crowd four rules on the helpless children all at once. The Grube method with its endless " grind " on all possible combinations may be philosophical and logical, but it is not psychological, and it is often carried to absurd extremes. Children in this grade are keenly alive to arithmetic of the kind suited to them, but the making of endless tables of figures with plus and minus signs is neither rational nor attractive work. For various kinds of natural ways and means the teacher must fall back on her enlightened common sense. It may be advisable to let the children learn that " 12 inches make I foot," by actually, themselves, measuring off twelve inches on the blackboards. Most of them knew before they came to school that there are 5 cents in a nickel, 10 cents in a dime, 10 dimes in a dollar, 2 quarters in a half dollar, and 2 half dollars in a dollar. The time given to continuous class drill in number work should not ex- ceed 10 or 15 minutes in any one lesson. The teacher who feels the need of a text-book of detailed lessons will find Baird's Graded Work in Arithmetic, First Year, a very helpful book of well-arranged exercises of all kinds. Another modern book is Bailey's American Elementary Arithmetic for the First Five Grades (1898). But teach- ers should avoid all forcing processes and rest content with beginnings. SECOND GRADE OR YEAR. The average limitations of number work in this grade run in most schools as follows : exercises in the four rules AM. PUB. SCH. — 16 242 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS limited, in general, to hundreds of thousands ; the multi- plication table through 5*s or 6's ; counting by 2's, 5's, and lo's to icxd; addition of two-place numbers, no sum of units or tens to exceed 10; — e. g. 43 and 24, etc. ; sub- traction of two-place numbers, without '' borrowing ; " multiplication of two-place numbers by 2 and 3, no pro- duct to exceed 10: — e. g. 23 by 3, etc. ; division of two- place numbers, — e. g. 64 -^ 2, etc. ; easy problems such as are found in most primary arithmetics ; inches, feet, and yards, by actual measurement by pupils themselves ; pint, quart, gallon, by actual measurement ; cent, nickel, dime, dollar, by actual inspection of the coins, and by simple business questions in making change. As an ex- periment the above limitations may be supplemented by exercises in finding ^, ^, i^, \, and ^ of small numbers evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, and 10 ; and by taking up the reading and writing of dollars and cents, — e. g. $1.25, $1.50, $5.00, etc. Fractions. — There seems to be no psychological rea- son why the beginning of a limited practical use of both common and decimal fractions should not be made in the second school year, and continued, under due limitations, in easy inductive lessons in the third and fourth grades, as a fitting preparation for formal text-book treatment in the fifth grade. But as it took me many years of teach- ing and experiment to reach this conclusion, I have no doubt that many teachers will dissent from it. The general postponement of any written work with fractions until the fifth school year or grade seems to have been the result of the arrangement of the old-fash- ioned one-book arithmetics under which it was impos- sible for pupils to reach fractions until about that period. These books began with definitions and rules but omitted PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC 243 inductive elementary exercises altogether. When pupils finally reached common fractions at ten or eleven years of age, they were required to go over many dreary pages of unprofitable work on factors, prime factors, greatest com- mon divisor, least common multiple, common denomi- nator, and least common denominator, before they could reach the practical operation of adding ^ and %. More- over, the subject of common fractions was exhaustively treated and applied to complex and difficult problems before pupils were taught the simplest operations in decimals or in the decimal currency of the United States. Teachers who were trained when pupils under the formal, logical, deductive order of text-book presentation of arithmetic do not always take kindly to the natural method of easy inductive lessons which ought always to prepare the way for a final formal treatment of the sub- ject. The fact is that when children enter school at six years of age, most of them are familiar with *' halves " and " quarters " though they may not be able to express them in arithmetical form. They will tell you that one-half of half an apple is a quarter of an apple, though they know nothing about *' multiplication of fractions." They begin school with some practical knowledge of the decimal cur- rency of the United States, though they know nothing of " decimal fractions." Now by utilizing the knowledge which they already have, the skillful teacher can make their first lessons in fractions pleasant and profitable. When superintendent of the schools in San Francisco, I personally tested the elementary knowledge of more than a hundred classes in the first and second grades in which, according to the course of study, no instruction whatever had been given in fractions. In every class in 244 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS . the first grade some pupils knew how to write >^. One little girl when asked how she learned to write it, an- swered, ** I live at 2i2>^ Pacific St." They added halves almost as readily as wholes. In the second grades when the children were asked to write y2 and ^, from ten to twenty per cent, of them did it, much to the surprise of their teachers. When the children were asked to add one-half an apple and one- quarter of an apple, the oral question was correctly an- swered, usually by from ten to twenty pupils in each class. Then they went to the blackboard, wrote the fractions, added them, and told how they got the answers. They said nothing about reducing fractions to a common denom- inator. They simply said, '* One half is two quarters, and two quarters and one quarter are three quarters." These same children were experts in " making change " and some of them could write dollars and cents, though they had been taught neither " decimal fractions " nor " United States money " at school. My presumption that the children had brains and had learned something outside of school was correct. Inductive lessons in arithmetic should begin with ques- tions about something that pupils already know, and should gradually lead up to something new to be found out. In giving such development lessons, teachers should explain to the class nothing that pupils can readily find out for themselves, should tell nothing in advance, and should lend a helping hand only when the class fails after having had ample time to think. This process is slow but very effective. In development lessons the fractions should be strictly limited to such as are used in the or- dinary business of life. As statistics show that nearly one half of the pupils of the public schools leave school PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC 245 before they reach the fifth grade, or year, it is a matter of practical importance that such children should leave •school with some business outfit of simple operations in both common and decimal fractions. Colonel Parker in his Talks on Pedagogics says : " The putting off of the teaching of fractions to the fifth and sixth grades is simply put- ting in abeyance an essential means of developing the mind. The child, when he reaches the fifth grade may know all there is to be known of fractions with the greatest ease, if fractions are really taught, — not the mere notation and numeration of fractions. Frac- tions should be taught from the first to last, and the same can be said in regard to decimal fractions. Decimal fractions in notation have a great advantage over common fractions. Decimal fractions are per- fectly easy and should be taught when ten is taught, and the notation of decimal fractions should always be learned and used when required in the development of number." ..." We have great complaint that children go out of school, after four or five years of study, without any knowledge of arithmetic, and the cause for this is that these subjects are out of their pedagogical relation. They have an artificial, illogical place in the course. Tradition has taught us to put off these things until a certain time comes, — a time when half of the children of the United States are out of school. The genuine demands for a child's growth always include the best for practical life at all times." Superintendent J. M. Greenwood of Kansas City states in his dissent from the " Report of the Committee of Fifteen : " " There is really no valid argument why children in the second, third, and fourth years in school should not master the fundamental operations in fractions. Not 9nly this, they will put the more common fractions into the tech- nique of percentage, and do this as well in the second and third grades as at any other time in their future progress. ... In decimals, the pupil is really confronted by a simpler form of fractions than the varied forms of common fractions. . . . There should be a rearrangement of the topics in arithmetic so that one subject naturally leads up to the next." In the Report of the Commissioner of Education (1893-94, Vol. I.,) there are 60 pages of verbatim reports of recitations in arithmetic and language in the schools of Kansas City, Missouri, furnished by Super- intendent Greenwood, who had stenographic reports taken of lessons 246 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS given by teachers under his direction. These lessons show the possi- bilities in the practical use of fractions in the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth grades. THIRD GRADE OR YEAR. The conventional work includes, in general, drill on the multiplication table to lo's or 12's ; addition by " carry- ing," and subtraction by *' taking from higher order ; " multiplication with " carrying " and with two-place num- bers for a multiplier ; long division limited to small num- bers. All of the work should be kept within reasonable limitations. There is a general tendency, fostered by the old-type arithmetics, to run the children at once into large numbers, long operations, and difficult problems. It is well to keep in mind a recent statement (1898), by Dr. E. E. White : " The forcing of young children to do prema- turely what they ought not to do until they are older, results in what Dr. Harris calls, ' arrested development.* The colt that is over-speeded and over-trained when two j^ears old, breaks no record at six. There is such a thing as too much training in primary grades ; an over-develop- ment of the reason. A little child may be developed into a dullard. More natural growth and less forced develop- ment would be a blessing to thousands of young children." What the children iij this grade really need is a great variety of comparatively easy exercises, dealing with num- bers kept within reasonable limits, and with exercises that have some relation to their daily life. They need careful drill in accuracy, not abnormal rapidity of operation. They need drill on hundreds of short operations, not long- continued drill on ledger columns of addition, or puzzling problems that have no relation to human life or to busi- ness. Baird's Third Year's Work is full of reasonable and practical exer- PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC 247 cises. The preface to this book contains the following statement which should be kept in mind by teachers : " As many pupils are unable to attend school beyond the grade for which this book is in- tended, there are here included some of the applications of arithmetic, a knowledge of which will give to the pupil power to solve many prob- lems of every-day occurrence." Accordingly, there are given a great many exercises which involve the use of dollars and cents in business examples. A few business fractions are introduced in a natural way, without note, or comment, or definition. For the use of any teacher who may wish to experiment still further in this direction, a few forms of inductive exercises are here introduced, which any teacher can supplement to any extent with similar models of her own. Models for Inductive Exercises. — Proceed at once, without any talk about numerator or denominator, to give a great many drill exercises in writing and adding after the type of exercises given below. As children are ac- customed to write whole numbers in vertical columns for adding, it is the more natural way for them to write frac- tions in the same manner. Send the class to the blackboards, dictate the examples, give pupils ample time to think, and ascertain how many can do the work without any assistance. If put upon the right track, many pupils will find out for themselves a method for working an exercise in arithmetic. When necessary, help out pupils by a hint in the right direction. ADDITION OF COMMON FRACTIONS.— -SLATE MODEL. (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) Yz % i ^ 6% 2f 2/8 % % i ^ 2K 2f 3f % % i ^ S% 5^ 1/8 % % i tV A% 6X 1% 248 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS ADDITION OF DOLLARS AND CENTS AND DECIMALS. One good way of teaching decimals to beginners is by means of exercises in writing and adding dollars and cents, the change from reading and writing dollars and cents to reading and writing whole numbers and hundredths is easily made, because most children know there are 100 cents in a dollar. FIRST STEPS IN ADDING DOLLARS AND CENTS. (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) I1.50 I-50 I2.10 2.10 I4.05 4.05 I1.12K I1.25 1-25 $2.15 2.15 I2.05 2.05 I1.12K MODEL FOR SLATE WORK IN ADDITION. (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) ^% %^% $1-50 IX |o.2S .25 3^ %^% I1.25 IK I0.50 •75 MODEL FOR SLATE WORK IN MULTIPLICATION (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) 4K 5X 6^ 6.3 U)i I4.25 4-25 X2 X3 X3 X3 X3 X3 X3 PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC 249 DIVISION. (a) (b) (c) (d) Kof 4 4 -^- 2 = >^ of $4.20 J5 4.20 -^ 2 = ? Kof 1 i^2 = : Xof|i6.8o I16.80 -=- 4 =^ ? KofT«^ A ^ 2 = : )4oi$ 1. 00 1 I.OO -T- 2 = ? %oi .6 6^2 = i of $10.25 I10.25 -4- 5 = .? FOURTH GRADE OR YEAR. This course, in general, includes addition and subtrac- tion, numbers not to exceed thousands ; multiplication, the product not to exceed five or six places ; division, divisors not to exceed two places. Tables learned and applied in actual measurements ; — square measure — inch, foot, yard; cubic measure, inch, foot, yard. To this out- line there might be added by the teacher willing to make experiments, the following : addition and subtraction of dollars and cents ; of decimals not exceeding hundredths ; easy business examples involving the multiplication of dollars and cents by multipliers not exceeding ten, etc. If two books are used, as is the case in many schools, teachers should take special pains to correlate the mental or oral arithmetic with the work found in the text-book on written arithmetic. Teachers who may wish to give supplementary work in common and decimal fractions, and dollars and cents, will find Baird's Graded Work in Arithmetic — Fourth Year — a helpful hand book ; also Bailey's Arithmetic and any one of several other modern text-bdoks. 250 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS FIFTH GRADE OR YEAR. Whatever may be the arrangement of the school text- book used by pupils, the teacher should modify its ar- rangement so that attention should be concentrated on accuracy in the four rules by means of practical business problems involving comparatively small numbers ; on common and decimal fractions, taught inductively as far as practicable ; on the common business tables of weights and measures and their practical application in life. Un- fortunately many of the arithmetics in use contain a great deal of traditional padding, and vast numbers of examples and problems that have little or no relation to the busi- ness life of to-day. An excellent series of inductive ex- ercises in common and decimal fractions will be found in Baird's Parts IV. and V. ; in Bailey's Elementary, and in other modern text books. SIXTH GRADE OR YEAR. The chief work in this year, according to the average course, will be common and decimal fractions taken up in formal text-book style, and the practical application of tables to the ordinary business pursuits of life. The ob- jective points are to make pupils accurate, and to enable them to see through reasonable problems and apply prin- ciples for themselves. They should be trained to test and prove their own work. They should also be taught how to make out a bill and reckon it accurately, how to write a promissory note, and how to write a receipt. It is de- sirable, further, that pupils should be taught the elements of percentage, and a business method of reckoning interest on small sums of money for one year and fractional parts of a year. This should be done for the benefit of large PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC 251 numbers of pupils that will drop out of school at the end of the year. Omit the greatest common divisor, as a separate topic, and take only so much of the least com- mon multiple as is required in the addition or subtraction of business fractions. Omit reduction and most of the operations formerly required under the head of compound addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Take only the parts that are actually used in ordinary business pursuits and in farm life. Bailey's Comprehensive Arith- metic will be useful to teachers. SEVENTH GRADE OR YEAR. The main work of this year should be percentage and its applications to the business method of commission and to simple interest. The incidental work should consist of geometrical exercises and measurements. A great deal of the work found under the preceding heads in many text-books may profitably be omitted. The concentration of effort should be to lead pupils, by means of simple in- ductive lessons, to a clear conception of principles. Chil- dren should be made to realize that all operations on business problems should be as accurately performed as if they were actual business transactions. The work in interest should be strictly limited to reckoning interest, omitting altogether the work found in many text-books under the head of " Problems in Interest " ; e. g., to find the time, when the principal, interest, and rate are given, etc. Special attention should be given to drill in writing promissory notes, and the making out of bills. Colonel Parker, in his Talks on Pedagogics, makes the following trenchant criticism on text-book work in " interest " : " Of all subjects, within a few years, the subject of interest has been made the most mysterious, complex, and most confusing; still, the subject of interest 252 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS in itself is perfectly simple and easy. Bookmakers have crowded their terms of rate per cent, base, etc., upon us ; and when the pupils come to it they suppose that they are coming to a brand-new subject, when the fact is, if the subject of number has been developed, there is nothing essentially new to learn in interest." EIGHTH GRADE OR YEAR. The work should include simple interest ; profit and loss ; commercial and bank discount, omitting " true dis- count," which is not used in common business affairs ; simple proportion and square root. Cube root with ana- lytical explanation should be omitted, except as limited to such simple exercises as may be done by inspection ; e. g., cube root of 27 ; of 1728, etc. Exchange, stocks, and some other topics, still retained in many text-books, really belong to a commercial course. If the grade work is kept within reasonable limits, there will remain time to make a beginning of algebra, or of concrete geometry, or of both together. A thoughtful and practical monograph on Geometry in the Gram- mar School by Professor Hanus, of Harvard University, will be of great value to teachers as a guide in the right direction. A few quotations will show the trend of his suggestions : "In the grammar school the knowledge value of a subject should never be subordinate to the disciplinary value. . . . Grammar school instruction in geom- etry should give preference to those topics which have a practical application in the ordinary affairs of life. In so doing special attention must be given to those propositions which can be established chiefly through observation, empirically ; gradually the pupil must be led to undertake the easier deductive proofs. ... In the presentation of the subject, the best results will be obtained only when the pupil has no text-book which contains the definitions and propositions. When geometry is not taught as it should be, not only shall we fail to achieve the results at which we aim, but we may even produce results the reverse of those desired." This book contains a detailed outline of PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC 253 work for the work in geometry for the last three years of the grammar school. BOOKKEEPING IN GRAMMAR GRADES. By state law in some cases, and by city ordinances in others, bookkeeping is made a required study in connec- tion with arithmetic as was '' the casting of accounts " in times past. To a limited extent this is well enough, but there has grown up a tendency to convert the highest grammar grade into a commercial school. This plan is not the part of educational wisdom. Other and more im- portant things ought not to be excluded by attempting to make boys and girls expert accountants. President Eliot emphasizes this matter as follows : " I believe it to be the most useless subject in the entire program, for the reason that the bookkeeping taught is a kind never found in any real business establishment. . . . What a boy or girl can learn at school which will be useful in after-life in keeping books or accounts for any real busi- ness is a good handwriting, and accuracy in adding, subtracting, mul- tiplying, and dividing small numbers. As trades and industries have been differentiated in the modem world, bookkeeping has been differ- entiated also, and it is, of course, impossible to teach in school the infinite diversities of practice." ^ RELATIVE VALUE OF ARITHMETIC. During the greater part of this century, arithmetic was made the major study of the common schools, incident- ally to learn how to " reckon," but mainly for the philo- sophical reason that it was supposed to give a better " mental discipline " than any other study. In a majority of the schools of to-day it is allowed more time than any other school study. But there is a general tendency towards accuracy rather than rapidity, quality rather than 1 "Educational Reform " (1898). 254 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS quantity, simplicity rather than complexity, business exer- cises rather than schoolmaster's problems, and clearness of ideas rather than endless drudgery over wearisome exer- cises, problems in compound numbers, complex fractions, compound interest, compound proportion, and cube root. There is no shadow of doubt that this tendency will end in a general recasting of the order of presentation as found in the older school arithmetics, and in a still greater re- duction of the time now devoted to the study which our forefathers made the most important pursuit of school life. In many city courses of study, not only has the time given to arithmetical work been reduced from nine years to seven, but there has also been a great reduction in the quantity of arithmetic. Some of the time-honored topics formerly included in text-books have been eliminated, and others, though still retained in the books, have been dropped in practice. The latest type of the improved modern text-book is found in Baird's Graded Work in Arithmetic (1898), consisting of five small books, ar- ranged in specific *' Parts," one for each grade or year. Bailey's American Elementary Arithmetic for the first five grades is an excellent text-book, as is also the American Comprehensive Arithmetic, which follows it. There are several other new series of text-books, on a similar plan, all in the direction of educational reform. HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS ABOUT ARITHMETIC. Essentials. — The essential parts of arithmetic which pupils should understand are the four rules, common and decimal fractions, the tables of. xaaneyjL weights and meas- ures with their practical application, percentage, and in- PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC 255 teres t. A great deal that passes in text-books under the name of arithmetic consists largely of conventional exer- cises, of no practical and of little disciplinary value. Accuracy. — Pupils in the higher grades should be re- quired to state not only what they do, but why they do it. They should test the truth and accuracy of their pro- cesses by proof, the only test they will have to rely upon 'in real business transactions. All grades should be trained to special accuracy in addition. One good exer- cise is to dictate a column of units to the class, the amount not to exceed 50 or 100 ; give ample time for every pupil to add the column upward and then downward ; when every pupil gets the correct answer, the class is trained to accurate work. Analysis. — Do not try to force upon young pupils demonstrations and analyses which are suitable only for older pupils. It is a marked defect in some school arith- metics that they are filled up with explanations and dem- onstrations. The explanations, if given at all, should be given orally by the teacher ; they do not belong to a pupil's book, unless it is assumed that the teacher knows nothing whatever about the subject. Another marked defect, arising from limited space, is the too sudden tran- sition from very simple questions to complex ones. The teacher should remedy, in some degree, this defect by substituting development exercises. Difficult problems, requiring sustained processes of reasoning, or complicated forms of analytical explanations, if used at all, should be given only to advanced pupils. In fact, what are termed " hard problems " do not come within the province of the common school at all, if, indeed, of any school. Time. — The time devoted to arithmetic should not ex- ceed four hours a week, and in primary grades it may be 256 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS reduced to two hours, or less. Most of the arithmetical work should be done in school. Educational Reform. — Arithmetic when rightly taught is a means of promoting sustained attention ; of render- ing the memory more tenacious by retaining the condi- tions of a question in mind during the solution ; and of cultivating, to some extent, the reasoning powers. To a certain extent, arithmetic is a business necessity. There are many teachers, however, and their number is rapidly increasing, who no longer rank arithmetic as the most important subject in the common-school course of study. These reformers recognize the practical need of knowing how to cipher, but they believe that the " mentaj disci- pline " acquired by a long-continued study of arithmetic is greatly over-estimated by the majority of school boards and school teachers. They insist that arithmetic should no longer be made the major study in school as it was in the days of our forefathers. They demand that a part of the time now given to this study should be devoted to better things. Other Reforms. — This cutting down of time given to arithmetic is only one of several reforms now pressing upon us. The plain truth is that the grammar grades, including the last four years of the elementary school course, seem at present to form the most inflexible and non-progressive part of the entire public system, so far as the course of study is concerned. A flexible or an elect- ive course exists in all state universities and technical colleges and in many of the higher institutions outside of the public school system. The high schools have in gen- eral at least two courses, a classical course and an English course, and some of them have a broader course of elect- ives. The work in primary grades has been brought into PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC 257 harmony with advanced methods and with modern psy- chological principles. But the grammar school stands alone as a monument of the past. In a few enlightened educational centers some slight modifications have been made, and that is about all. One great barrier standing in the way of possible reform is the crowding of from 45 to 55 pupils into one room to be taught by one teacher. Here is what President Eliot says in his paper on the Grammar School of the Future, and every word of it is true : " It is obvious that the young woman with fifty or sixty pupils before her is attempting what no mortal can perform. ... I suppose it is practi- cable for one young woman to hear the lessons out of one book of all the fifty children before her during the hours of the grammar school session. . . . But the new teaching is of quite a different character. To double the number of teachers would not be too much ; for twenty-five or thirty pupils are enough for one teacher to grapple with. The individual requires teaching in these days, and no teaching is good which does not pay attention to the individual. We are coming to accept the doctrine that no 4;eaching is good which does not awaken interest in the pupil. . . . But the American grammar school of the future will make that the rule which is now the excep- tion — every child without special favor to get at the right jubject at the right age and to pursue it as fast as he is able to travel." Need of Some Common Standard. — All teachers are agreed that practical arithmetic should be taught in the elementary schools to the extent required by the demands of modern life. The unsettled point in question is the extent to which it shall be carried as a means of mental discipline. This point cannot be decided by discussion. It must be determined by careful examination and experi- ment carried on in a spirit of scientific investigation. It cannot be said, at present, that there is any fixed standard of attainment which is generally agreed upon by teachers, by school superintendents, or by other school of^cials. However, the reform is well under way, and the methods AM. PUB. SCH. 17 258 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS of old-time schoolmasters together with the " sums" and ** rules " of old-time text-books will become more and more uncouth, and finally disappear altogether. It certainly is educational barbarism to require pupils in rural schools or in city grammar schools to cram a course in arithmetic far in excess of the standard for admission into colleges and universities. CHAPTER VIII PSYCHOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES IN TEACHING ELEMENTARY HISTORY The valiicof history as a school study depends on the manner in which^j^ is taught, and on what the term "" history " is made to include. Not many years ago, when learning history meant the memorizing and reciting of the pages of a text-book, it is not to be wondered at that pupils found the subject uninteresting, and that teachers regarded history as of little educational value. But history is now made to include stories, tradition, myths, biography, and poetry in addition to formal text-book study. Instruction begins with stories and oral lessons, and is made an im- portant part of regular grade work throughout the whole course. The Herbartians present history as a means of promoting patriotism, of fitting for intelligent citizenship, and above all, of moral training ; in other words, as the chief means of forming character. Oral Lessons in History. — Whatever instruction in history is given in the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grades must, of necessity, be mainly by oral lessons. Perhaps the majority of teachers are unaccustomed to giving such lessons. This, however, is no reason why they should not fit themselves for the work by thoughtful practice. The training departments of state and city normal schools are now sending out annually large num- bers of graduates well trained in this line of work, and many untrained teachers have the opportunity of visiting 259 26o APPLIED PEDAGOGICS their classes and learning their methods by actual obser- vation. The school journals are full of lessons and sug- gestions in this direction. Moreover, there are several books recently published which outline in detail the history work that has been done by special teachers in the train- ing classes connected with large normal schools. One of these is the Special Method in History and Literature by Charles A. McMurry, a book that is replete with com- mon sense, and is imbued with a spirit of enthusiasm that can hardly fail to convince the most doubtful teacher of the value of oral lessons and the possibility of learning how to give them. Moreover, to meet the needs of the new method of history teaching, there have been published within the last few years a large number of history stories for young children in the lower grades. Most of these inexpensive little books have been written by teachers experienced in teaching primary grades in public schools, and familiar with the wants and needs of children. These history sketches are fully in accord with the spirit of modern educational thought. They are psychological in method and interesting in style and illustration. Teachers can safely study them as models for their own oral lessons, or make use of them as supplementary reading matter in jSchool. / The following outlines are suggestive only of begin- inings, but their meagerness and simplicity can be supple- mented by reference to the elaborate courses for the train- ing classes connected with normal schools. SECOND AND THIRD GRADES OR YEARS. It may be well for a teacher inexperienced in giving PRINICPLES IN TEACHING HISTORY 261 oral lessons to begin with a series of short talks in familiar homelike language about Columbus and his discovery of America ; about Washington, his boyhood, his life as a surveyor, and his early experience in Indian warfare ; and about Abraham Lincoln, as a study of the poverty and hardships of pioneer life in the valley of the Mississippi. " The oral treatment of such stories," says McMurry, " when the personal interest, energy, and skill of the teacher give the facts and scenes an almost real and tangible form — this oral treatment is the thing and the only thing to give a child the best start in historical study." As an aid in this direction, teachers will do well to secure such inexpensive leaflets of biography as are found in The Young Folks' Library, consisting of short sketches of Columbus, Washington, and Lincoln ; or in those in the Werner Biographical Booklets, such as the stories of Washington, Lincoln, Clay, Franklin, and Webster, written by Dr. James Baldwin. Teachers who think they cannot learn to tell such stories as these can at least make them lifelike by reading them to their pupils. My own faith in the awakening power of oral lessons is made strong from my personal experience as a boy, as well as by my later experi- ence as a teacher. My own interest in history began, when I was six or seven years old, with stories about the Revolutionary War told by my grandfather around the fireside on winter evenings. I well remember my boyish admiration for him as he told me how he ran away from home when he was only sixteen, to enlist in the Revolutionary Army. And right there, over the fireplace, was the old flint-lock gun that he brought back from the war. I also heard many stories of famous Indian fights, handed down by tradition, for my ancestors were New England pioneers. My oral lessons were learned outside of school, but in the true psychological method. When a little older, my interest in history was intensified by a book of Stories About Indians, which my father gave me. That book I read and re-read until I knew most of the stories by heart. This 262 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS method, also, was psychologically correct, but it was not then the school method. So lively was the interest thus excited that I asked the teacher to let me join a class of older boys who were studying history of the United States. It was the recollection of my unsatis- fied longing at this time for more books to read, which led me, a quarter of a century afterwards, when State Superintendent of Public Instruction in California, to secure by the most strenuous efforts, after repeated failures, a state law which reserves a small percentage of the school moneys apportioned to each school district to be expended by the trustees and teacher in buying library books. Into these school libraries there are now going, annually, thousands of volumes of history stories, nature stories, and good literature for pupils and also books of reference for the use of teachers. FOURTH GRADE OR YEAR. After giving an oral lesson, question the children on the succeeding day to find out how much they remember about it. It may be well in this grade to let pupils begin to make notes of a very few important points. In country schools taught by only one teacher, when there are only two or three pupils in a grade, it will be advisable to put several grades together. It will be well, also, w^hen the teacher is crowded for time, to let pupils take home some suitable history stories from the school library, if the school is provided with a library. In graded city schools, which are now quite generally provided with sets of his- tory stories for supplementary reading, such books can be read in school to supplement talks by the teacher. TOPICS FOR ORAL LESSONS. Stories of the settlement at Plymouth by the Pilgrims, and at Boston by the Puritans. Stories of the settlement of Virginia at Jamestown. Stories of the settlement of Pennsylvania. PRINCIPLES IN TEACHING HISTORY 263 Stories about the settlement of the pupils' own state, city, or town. Connect history with geography by locating on the map the places named in histor>^ lessons. BOOKS FOR THE TEACHER'S DESK OR THE SCHOOL LIBRARY. Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans. Brookes' Stories of the Old Bay State. Mowry's First Steps in the History^ of Our Country. Clarke's Story of Caesar. Mara Pratt's American History Stories, Vol. I. Guerber's Story of the Greeks. McMurr>''s Pioneer History Stories. (This book is especially de- signed for schools in the Valley of the Mississippi.) Wagner's Pacific Coast History Stories, Vol. I. (This book is specially designed for schools in the Pacific Coast States.) Hittell's Brief History of California, Vol. I. Discovery and Early Voyages. (California Classes.) FIFTH GRADE OR YEAR. In this grade pupils may be required not only to put into their notebooks a few main points of topics pre- sented, but also, occasionally, to write out a report of all they can remember in the form of connected narrative. Topics for Talks. — The Settlement of New York. Stories about Washington, ending with an account of Braddock's Defeat. Stories about Benjamin Franklin. Story of Sir Walter Raleigh and his attempts at settlement. Settlement of the French in Canada. Settle- ment of the Spaniards in America. Conquest of Mexico by Cortez. The Indians of America. Stories of Indian Wars in connection with accounts of pioneer life. Books for Teachers or for School Libraries. — The following books will be useful to teachers either as models of oral lessons, or as sources from which to make selections to be read to the class, and they will be useful in the school library for home reading by pupils : Swinton's First Lessons in our Country's History. Eggleston's Stories of Amer- 264 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS ican Life and Adventure. Guerber's Story of the Thirteen Colonies. Wright's Children's Stories of American History. McMurry's Pioneer Histor)' Stories. Montgomery's Beginner's American History. Johon- not's Stories of Our Country. Dodge's American History Stories. Mowry's First Steps in the History of Our Country. SIXTH GRADE OR YEAR. In schools provided with sets of suitable history stories, oral lessons may be varied by selections to be read in class, or at home, and talked about in succeeding oral exercises. TOPICS FOR LESSONS. 1. A more extended treatment of the four great centers of settlement in our country, namely: Massachusetts, Virginia, New York, and Pennsylvania. 2. Further accounts of the settlement of the children's own state. 3. Stories of the French and Indian War. 4. Stories of pioneer life in log cabins. 5. Common schools in colonial times. Books for Teachers and School Libraries. — Eggleston's First Book in American Histor)'. Pratt's American History Stories, Vols. II and III. McMurr)''s Pioneer History Stories. Mowry's First Steps in the History of Our Country. SEVENTH GRADE OR YEAR. In many graded city schools, pupils in this grade begin to use some primary history of the United States, such as Swinton's, or Eggleston's, or Montgomery's, or Mowry's, either as a supplementary reader or as a text-book for the formal and regular study of the subject. In ungraded country schools, also, it is desirable, if practicable, that some primary book should be read or studied by pupils. But the use of a book should not be allowed to super- sede altogetherthe oral lessons by the teacher. However, PRINCIPLES IN TEACHING HISTORY 265 the use of a book will mainly determine the order of topics. Teachers should now call in the aid of literature to reinforce history lessons by reading, for example, *' Paul Revere's Ride," " Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill Battle," " Lodge's Story of the Battles of Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill." The life of Washington may be made the thread on which to string the events of the War of the Revolution. Short biographical accounts should be given of Franklin, John Adams, Jefferson, Putnam, Greene, Morgan, Sumter, and other American patriots. Books for Teachers or for School Libraries. — Scudder's Life of Washington ; Lodge's Story of the Revolution ; Mowry's First Steps in the History of Our Country. EIGHTH GRADE OR YEAR. In the eighth grade, or in the eighth and ninth grades where the school course includes nine years or grades, the history of our country will be completed up to the pres- ent time. The manner of using the adopted text-book, whatever it is, must be determined by the judgment and skill of the teacher. John Fiske's History of the United States will prove useful, partly on account of its excel- lence as a schoolbook, and partly on account of the great value of the work of Dr. Hill in the way of topical anal- ysis, suggestive questions and directions for teachers. As additional books of reference, use John Bach Mc- Master's School History of the United States (1897); also McMaster's History of the People of the United States, for reference. HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS ON TEACHING HISTORY. History and geography are correlative studies, and 266 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS skillful teachers will make each supplement the other. In this study, more than in most other elementary school branches, the teacher, by his skill, tact, and stores of in- formation, can make the subject one of living interest. Assignment of Lessons. — When an advance lesson is assigned, call attention to the leading points, and let pupils note them with pencil marks. A considerable part of the history is intended, not to be memorized, but only to be carefully read. If there are any reference books in the school library, or if pupils have any at home, suggest to the class some particular topic or topics about which they may find fuller information. Selection. — Of the early discoveries treated of so fully in most text-books, single out three or four to be studied with care, and let the remainder be read at home or in the class. In the period of settlements, select the four great centers, namely : Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania. So in the Revolutionary War, single out a very few marked events and have them learned so that they cannot be forgotten. Dwell at length on events that happened in the pupil's own state. Literature. — If the battle of Bunker Hill is the subject of a history lesson, read to your class the vivid picture of it in " Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill Battle " by Oliver Wendell Holmes. If the battles of Lexington and Concord are included in the lesson, read " Paul Revere's Ride," and the story of these battles found in Lodge's " Story of the Revolution." When the battle of Gettys- burg is reached, read Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and Bret Harte's " John Brown of Gettysburg." Main Points. — Fix in the memory the causes and the results of the War of the Revolution, the War of i8t2, the War with Mexico, the Civil War, and the War with Spain ; PRINCIPLES IN TEACHING HISTORY 267 but do not attempt to make pupils remember the dates of many battles. Chronology. — Do_not__attach much importance to chronological tables, except for reference. Fix in the minds of the pupils the dates of a few great events, and fasten them there by frequent reviews. A multitude of minor dates may be temporarily learned for to-day's les- son, only to be crowded into oblivion by to-morrow's recitation. " By means of history," says Montaigne, '' the pupil enjoys intercourse with the great men of the best periods ; but he must learn, not so much the year and the day of the destruction of a city, as noble traits of character ; not so much occurrences, as to form a correct judgment upon them." A comprehension of the great events of history, of their causes, results, and relations, is more important than the verbatim memorizing of pages of text-books. Method. — Questions for written examinations should be confined strictly to leading events and should include veiy'"few dates. In part, assign lessons by topics, and allow pupils to recite in their own language. Close the text-book yourself, and you will be better satisfied with the answers of pupils. Supplement the dry, condensed statements of the text-book by anecdotes, incidents, stories, and biographical sketches of noted men, drawn from your own memory or from books. In his Essentials of Method, De Garmo sums up the serious defects in the teaching of history as follows : " History, like geography, records a wilderness of facts. If our analysis of right methods is correct, these facts should be grouped, not only so that they may be remembered, but so that the lessons they should teach may appear in the consciousness of the learner. This is true, not alone of the ethical lessons with which history always abounds, but also of the immediate ends for which men struggle. When the objective point for which a 268 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS war, a campaign, or a battle is conducted is once understood, it be- comes a beacon-light by which the meaning of every movement may be examined. Historical facts are then vitally related and easily re- membered. But to require an unthinking memorizing of facts, to im- part a knowledge of whose rational connection and significance de- pends upon accident, and whose application never appears, is to pursue a method as unpedagogical as it is easy." Outlines of the World's History. — There seems to be no good reason why pupils in the grammar school should not learn something about the history of the world. By means of ^ral lessons many thoughtful teachers are giving their pupils general outlines of the great events of the^ past. There are many more who would give such lessons were they authorized to do so by the course of study. There are many educators who would welcome the ap- pearance of a small handbook of general history suited to the needs, not of high-school pupils, but of boys and girls in the highest grade of the common schools. CHAPTER IX NATURAL METHODS IN TEACHING GEOGRAPHY The following rough outlines of a course by grades consists chiefly of practical hints and suggestions about modern methods now generally pursued in teaching this subject. SECOND AND THIRD GRADES OR YEARS. Oral Lessons. — As no text-books are used by pupils in these grades, oral instruction must be given by the teacher. In accordance with psychological method, a beginning should be made by a study of that small part of the earth which children see daily at school or at home. Pupils should be taken to some good points of view near the schoolhouse and their attention directed to such natural divisions of land and water as they can there see. In this way pupils may be made familiar with hill, mountain, valley, plain, brook, river, etc. They can make a real study that will fill their minds with pictures which may afterwards be used in forming conceptions of things that are represented by pictures, or described in words. The attention of pupils should be called to the phe- nomena of day and night, sunrise and sunset, the sun, moon, and stars, clouds, wind, dew, rain, frost, snow, and ice. This will set them to thinking about the causes of what they observe. They should begin to collect speci- mens of plants, and to learn the names of trees that grow in the neighborhood of the school. If there is a mill, or 269 2/0 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS factory or blacksmith's shop in the vicinity, the class should be taken on a visit to it. In rural schools, pupils should make out lists of all the food products grown on the farms of the neighborhood, lists of the birds in the vicinity, of the occupations by which the people earn their living, etc. The importance of this kind of introductory teaching is emphasized by M. Elisee Reclus as follows : ** Certainly we must always take as a starting-point what the child sees ; but does he see nothing more than the school and the village ? That is the tip of his abode ; he also sees the infinite heavens, the sun, stars, and moon. He sees the storms, the clouds, the rain, the distant horizon, the mountains, the hills, the downs or simple undulations, and the trees and shrubs. Let him attentively notice all these things, and let them be described to him. This is real geography, and to learn the child has not to go beyond the things which surround him, and which are exhibited to him in their infinite variety." Further than this, a few lessons may be given in connection with the school globe, showing the shape of the earth, the rotation of the earth, the continents and the oceans. Helps for Teachers. — Among numerous good books for use by teachers there is one that reaches the high-water mark of modem elementary instruction in geography — Redway and Hinman's Na- tural Elementary Geography. Suggestive exercises for beginners will be found in Geographical Nature Studies by Frank Owen Payne, and in McMurry's Special Course in Geography. FOURTH GRADE OR YEAR. In this grade a Primary Geography is usually placed in the hands of pupils, though in some schools, the use of a text-book is postponed until the fifth year. The intro- ductory pages of local geography will naturally be suc- ceeded by special oral lessons on town, city, and state geography, and by an extension of the nature study begun in previous grades. Pupils should now begin to study maps and to draw rough outlines. The wall-maps NATURAL METHOD IN TEACHING GEOGRAPHY 27 1 most needed for school use will be a county map, a state map, the United States, North America, and the hemi- spheres. A little modeling with clay or sand is desirable if conditions and surroundings are favorable. The inductive lessons on home and state geography must soon be followed by a general view of the earth as a whole, its great natural divisions of land and water, its im- aginary divisions, and some of its political divisions. The psychological or inductive method must be carried along with the logical or formal method. Pupils must now begin to pass from the home-world of direct perception to a broader world, pictured in imagination after a study of maps, descriptions, and pictorial representation. Teachers should take great pains in training pupils how to study text-book lessons. No intelligent teacher will follow the old method of requiring pupils to memorize in detached lessons, the entire text-book. There are some things in the text-book that should be memorized, but much of the text is only to be read, or to be used for ref- erence. The skill of the teacher will be shown by a wise grouping of important things. The work to be done must necessarily be determined, in part, by the kind of a text- book in use. Out-of-door Studies.— I^f^_ £ossible, pupils should^ be taken on excursions to pointsoi m terestin th e neighbor- -fKFSH, or the surroundmg country? 1 hey must be shown how to study the plants ajid animals which they see with leTr own UVt^s : to observe the farms, gardens, shops, factories, and the industrial pursuits of the people among whom they live. De Garmo says : '' Geographical instruc- tion must, above all, stimulate the creation of vivid mental pictures which shall come close to the reality. To awaken and to form pictures of the imagination must be 272 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS considered the great purpose of geography, however dif- ficult the task may be." Helps for Teachers — Redway and Hinman's Natural Elementary Geography. FIFTH GRADE OR YEAR. The study of local state geography should be a con- tinuation and extension of the work of the preceding grade. In accordance with the arrangement of most text- books, it will be advisable for the class to take up the study of North America as a whole, and of the United States as a whole, and by sections. Map Drawing. — Special attention should be given to the proper study of maps, and to map-drawing. In gen- eral, black board map-drawing in the ro u.gh_is be tter than labored drawings with pen or pencil. Map-drawing should not be made a hobby ; kept within due limits, the exercise is good, but it often runs into a waste of time and labor. Let pupils draw upon the blackboard, from the open book, on a large scale, an outline map of their own state, and, if possible, of their own country. Then them let outline the grand divisions. Finally require them to outline off-hand, from memory. The school globe should be used to enable pupils to form a correct idea of the relative position on the earth of the continents and oceans represented on maps. Clay modeling if practicable. What to Omit. — As school geographies are designed for use in all parts of our country, they are necessarily crowded with details to meet the wants of each state or locality. The sensible teacher will omit all that belongs to the local or special geography of states other than that in which the pupils reside. Do not expect children to NATURAL METHOD IN TEACHING GEOGRAPHY 273 know more of a lesson than you remember without re- ferring to the text-book. If you forget details, it is a sure sign that your pupils will forget them, and therefore it is best not to require such details to be learned at all. If oral lessons in history are given to pupils, or if some book of history stories is used for supplementary reading, it is hardly necessary to suggest that all places of early settlement in our country, or other places marked by im- portant events should be located on the map. In addition to North America and the United States, it is desirable that there should be some study of Europe, on account of our commercial relations with European countries. Special attention should be given to the Brit- ish Isles. If the Primary Geography is to be completed in this grade, a few general lessons will be required on South America, Asia, and Africa. For reference and reading. Carpenter's Geographical Reader — North America. SIXTH GRADE OR YEAR. In this grade pupils generally begin the use of the larger or complete text-book. Some attention must be given to the introductory lessons and to the outlines of mathematical and physical geography. The United States should be taken up by groups or sections. Main Points. — Pupils are not expected to learn the boundaries of all the states nor even to name all the capitals. But they should be able at the end of the year to name the leading products of each group of states ; to locate from two to five of the chief cities in each group, and to locate the chief rivers of commercial importance. Also to name the chief mountain ranges and the most impor- AM. PUB. SCH. — 18 274 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS tant rivers of the United States as a whole, and to name the leading industries of each group of states. Special Topics. — The major topic of the class should be the geography of Europe. The following are a few among many special topics to be studied by pupils : (a) London, as the center of the world's commerce. {b) Glasgow, for building iron ships, (r) Manchester, as a typical manufacturing center. {d) Paris, the city of arts. (4W-€oa^ . s cience . Hence the successful teacher must be a trusted friend and guide, not a mere bundle of philosophical ethics. The moral nature must be called into daily exer- cise until habits of right-thinking result in habits of right- doing. And this process of development is slow and al- most imperceptible. *' Whatever moral benefit can be effected by education," says Herbert Spencer, "must be effected by an education that is emotional rather than perceptive. If, in place of making a child understand that this thing is right and the other wrong, you make it feel that they are so ; if you make virtue loved and vice loathed ; if you arouse a noble desire and make torpid an inferior one ; if you bring into life a previously dormant sentiment ; if you cause a sym- pathetic impulse to get the better of one that is selfish ; if, in short, you produce a state of mind to which proper behavior is natural, spontaneous, instinctive — you do some good." Methods. — Methods of conducting moral lessons in school must be gathered up by experience and observa- tion. A warm heart, a genial nature, an even temper, a beaming eye, a cheerful countenance, a sincere voice, 294 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS an earnest manner — these are the potential agencies by which you can win, direct, and control young pupils. Teachers should keep fresh in mind their own feelings, passions, emotions, impulses, sympathies, and experiences when they were children, and thus avoid the grievous mistake of applying to school children the moral philos- ophy suited only to adult metaphysicians. Children should not only be taught what is right ; they must also be made to do what is right. The school is a miniature world ; in one way or another it affords opportunities for the practice of most of the moral virtues. Strict discipline trains pupils to habits of obedience and order, corrects bad habits, and compels the lawless to respect the rights of others ; but in addition to this it is possible for a teacher to breathe into a school a spirit of honor, truth- fulness, and honesty which will put down profanity, vulgarity, slang, slander, tattling, lying, and meanness generally. Stories and Books. — One of the most effective ways of giving moral lessons is by reading or telling to pupils stories or anecdotes illustrating some virtue to which the teacher desires to call attention ; such as honor, truthful- ness, courage, or honesty. " Stories of great and noble deeds," says Bain, " have fired more youthful hearts with enthusiasm than sermons have." If there is a school library, make good use of it by calling the special atten- tion of pupils to the biographies and story books that you think best fitted to become your assistants in moral development. The high ideals presented in good books will result in a rich harvest of noble sympathies and right actions. Weems' Life of Washington was one of the few books that fell into the hands of Abraham Lincoln when he was a boy living in a log cabin ; who can estimate the MODERN TRAINING IN MORALS AND MANNERS 295 high ideals which this patriotic book, in spite of its exag- gerated rhetoric, suggested to this solitary boy, as he pored over it by the light of the open fireplace ? Though Lincoln owed little to school training, we cease to wonder at his character-development when we know that he read and re-read, at home, in early life, a select library consist- ing chiefly of the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, Plutarch, Washington, spelling book, reader, and arithmetic, and an old volume of the statutes of Illinois. Dr. George H. Martin, of Boston, in his unequaled ad- dress on " The Unseen Force in Character Making," said : ^ " Our boys and girls, all unknown to us, often uncon- sciously to themselves, are admiring the characters they find in the books they read, and are fashioning themselves into the same image. Through literature and history, there is no limit to the possibilities within the reach of every teacher. Character in history, character in liter- ature, illuminated in the portrayal by the enthusiastic admiration of the teacher, glows before the student and' kindles within him a responsive emotion. As the long line of men and women who have lived, and wrought, and suffered moves before him, he feels nobler impulses stir- ring within him, and sees himself living such a life, and with the thoughts and impulses, the work of transforma- tion begins." One of the most valuable books for use by teachers of the higher grammar grades, or by teachers of country schools, is Thayer's Ethics of Success. It is the special excellence of this book that the moral lessons are not sermons or lectures, but inspiring anecdotes from the lives of successful men and women. 1 Read at Columbus ; published in i\\t Jour ?ia I of Education, March 16, 1899. 296 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS History. — By the new school of Herbartians, great stress is placed on history as a means of moral culture. The general term history is made to include, not only the formal text-book study of history, ancient and modern, in the higher grades, but, also, fables, myths, stories, tra- dition, biography, and poetry, for children in the lower grades. In McMurry's General Method, a book based on the principles of Herbart, the use of history in moral training is set forth as follows : " Although history has many uses, its best influence is in illustrating and inculcating moral ideas. It will strike most teachers with sur- prise to say that the chief use of history study is to form moral notions in children. Some of the best historical materials (from biography, tradition and fiction) should be absorbed by children in each grade as an essential part of the substratum of moral ideas. . . . Examples of moral action drawn from life are the only things that can give meaning to moral precepts. Moral ideas always have a concrete basis or origin. Some companion with whose feelings or actions you are in close personal contact, or some character from history or fiction by whose personality you have been strongly attracted, gives you your keenest impressions of moral qualities. To begin with abstract moral teaching, or to put faith in it, is to misunderstand children." De Garmo, in Essentials of Method, emphasizes the uses of history as follows : " For the reason, then, that we first grasp the general through the particular, all ethical instruction should proceed from individual cases of action involving a moral content. Hence it does not suffice to preach in school, except from the text of an actual event. Children can best get the first points of crystallization for moral truths from stories involving a moral content. Here the emo- tions are not unduly aroused, as they are likely to be where the action is one that touches them personally, so that the irrational nature of wrong action appeals to the understanding as well as to feeling. History fulfills its noblest mission to the race on account of its ethical content and of the individual nature of the presentation. Every deed of heroism, of benevolence, of charity, of patriotism is a concrete em- bodiment of a precious virtue ; while every mean, cowardly, dastardly act is an individual protest against meanness, cowardice, or villainy. MODERN TRAINING IN MORALS AND MANNERS 297 We can only continue the deposit about these starting-points until at last the soul is strong in itself to stand against temptation." Occasions. — Talks on morals should be given at the proper time and in the right way. The events of a school week will often furnish practical illustrations for a short but effective talk to the pupils on manners or morals. Omit no fitting occasion to impress a principle upon the moral feelings. Kindergarten Training. — It will be well for all thoughtful teachers to consider what has been accom- plished in kindergarten schools in the way of molding the characters of little children, and of reforming the waifs gathered in from neglected homes. The annual reports of the Golden Gate Kindergarten Association written by the late Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper, the philanthropist of San Francisco, are filled with proofs of the possibilities of moral training at a very early age. In one of her reports (1891), she says : " During the twelve years we have had nearly nine thousand chil- dren under our care and training. The children who were with us in the earliest years of our work are now from fifteen to eighteen years of age. We have followed these children as closely as possible since they left us, and after the most rigid investigation we do not find our kin- dergarten children among the juvenile offenders. Their names are not to be found upon the police records ; and this, too, in face of the fact that our kindergartens are located in the districts where crimi- nals are made. We have perused every avenue of information, only to find one arrest for petty ofTenses among the 8,000 children that have attended the kindergartens during the last eleven years — and as he was a feeble-minded boy, with an inborn mania for setting fire to things, we counted him out entirely. He was deemed iiresponsible, and placed in confinement to keep him from mischief." A Teacher^s Testimony. — The following letter was written by Agnes M. Manning, who has been for many 298 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS years principal of one of the largest primary schools of San Francisco, in answer to a letter of inquiry from my- self when City Superintendent of Schools : Dear Sir: I wish to tell you why I am so strongly m favor of kin- dergartens. My school is in a crowded neighborhood. I have many children from tenement-houses and from the narrow streets off Market street. Before the days of the kindergarten these children as soon as they could crawl, spent their waking lives on the sidewalks. From the age of two to six years they pursued the education of the street. The consequences were that at six they came to us with a fund of in- formation of the worst description, and a vocabulary that might excite the envy of the Barbary Coast. At the commencement of each new year they tumbled over each other in their rude haste to take up the unexplored life of a school. They were in tens, fifties, hundreds in our yards. The novelty being past, the hard struggle commenced of keeping them from joining the army of truants, and leading them into habits of work and cleanliness. . . . The kindergartens have changed all this. They have taken the babies that used to be consigned to the curbstone, trained and guided them along a path of develop- ment. They have wisely attempted no cramming of the infant^ brain with premature scholarship. They have surrounded the young lives with a fresh atmosphere. They have passed the hours in pleasant games, taught a purer language, and led the little feet into a new civ- ilization. The children of tenement-houses and narrow streets still come in tens, fifties, and hundreds to begin life in a new school at the beginning of each school year. The little ones are clean, self-respect- ing, eager for knowledge. They have opinions of their own on many things, and are quite anxious to express them. They neither know how to read nor write. They have been taught to see, to observe, to tell about what they see and hear. They have been taught to respect older people, to be honest, to tell the truth. It is a rare thing now to find a child that does not know it is wrong to steal. If you meet one you may be sure he has never been in a kindergarten." Character. — The exercise of good principles, con firmed into habit, is the true means of forming a good character. Children do not learn arithmetic and grammar merely by MODERN TRAINING IN MORALS AND MANNERS 299 repeating rules and fornmulas ; neither will they apperceive and assimilate the foundation principles of right and wrong as rules of action merely by the process of repeat- ing mottoes and maxims. The moral faculties are of slow growth ; they need daily culture and exercise until habits of right-thinking and right-doing are formed. There' are evil tendencies in the child's nature to be repressed ; there are germs of good qualities to be warmed into life and quickened in their growth. Canon Farrar says : " Plant a fleeting fancy and you reap a thought ; plant a thought and you reap an action ; plant an action and you reap a habit ; plant a habit and you reap character ; plant a character and you reap a destiny ^ The practical teacher who has begun to make a direct study of children at first hand will find occasion to make use of the doctrine of interest and desire as set forth by the Herbartian school of thinkers, as well as the creed of duty and the will expounded by the Hegelian school of philosophers. In the kindergarten and the primary grades children will be won by sympathy, influenced by desire, and stimulated by interest. In succeeding stages of develop- ment, as good habits are strengthened, and higher ideals are created, character begins to be formed, conscience is developed, and duty becomes more and more a controlling power. " The development of the character," says Dr. Jordan, " is the for- mation of the ego. It is in itself the co-ordination of the elements of heredity, the bringing into union of warring tendencies and irrelev^ant impulses left us by our ancestors. The child is a mixture of imper- fectly related impulses and powers. It is a mosaic of ancestral hered- ity. Its growth into personality is the process of bringing these ele- ments into relation to each other. " Doing right becomes a habit if it is pursued long enough. It be- comes a second nature or a higher heredity. The formation of a 300 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS higher heredity of wisdom and virtue, of knowing right and doing right, is the basis of character-building." William T. Harris, United States Commissioner of Education, closed a paper, read before the California State Teachers' Association (1896) with the following summary : " In closing, let us call up the main conclusions and repeat them in their briefest expression. " I. Moral education is a training in habits, and not an inculcation of mere theoretical views. "2. Mechanical disciplines are indispensable as an elementary basis of moral character. " 3. The school holds the pupil to a constant sense of responsibility, and thereby develops in him a keen sense of his transcendental free- dom ; he comes to realize that he is not only the author of his deed, but also accountable for his neglect to do the reasonable act. " 4. Lax discipline in a school saps the moral character of the pupil. It allows him to work merely as he pleases, and he will not reinforce his feeble will by regularity, punctuality and systematic industry. . . . " 5. Too strict discipline, on the other hand, undermines moral char- acter by emphasizing too much the mechanical duties, and especially the phase of obedience to authority, and it leaves the pupil in a state of perennial minority. He does not assimilate the law of duty and make it his own. The law is not written on his heart, but is written on lips only. He fears it but does not love it. 6. The best help that one can give his fellows is that which enables them to help themselves. The best school is that which makes the pupils able to teach themselves. The best instruction in morality makes the pupil a law unto himself. Hence, strictness, which is indis- pensable, must be tempered by such an administration as causes the pupils to love to obey the law for law's sake." PRACTICAL SCHOOLROOM LESSONS. (i) Beginnings in First, Second, and Third Grades. — Talk to pupils about kindness to animals, particularly to dogs, cats, birds, and horses. Read extracts from *' Black Beauty." Read short stories that have a moral wrapped up in them. MODERN TRAINING IN MORALS AND MANNERS 301 For Use by — Heart Culture, by Emma E. Page will prove a valuable assistant to teachers. The purpose of the author cannot be better expressed than by the follow^ing quotations from her preface : " The aim of this book is to teach kindness to animals by quickening sympathy for them, arousing a sense of justice toward them, and instilling the fundamental principles of right care of them. How to care for domestic animals is dwelt upon with considerable detail, because these things must be taught in school to get down into the family life of all the people. Not to know is often as cruel as not to care." Fourth and Fifth Grades — Topics for Short Talks. — Put everything in its right place. Why ? Have a regular time for home study. Why } Be punctual at school. Why ? Why is it your duty to study your lessons ? Kindness to children younger than yourself. Duties to other pupils. Duty to home and parents. Kindness to animals. Kindness to little children. For Reference by Teachers. — Dewey's Ethics or Stories of Home and School. Thayer's Ethics of Success, Book I. Sixth and Seventh Grades — Topics for Short Talks. — Topics may be brought before a class by reading some anecdote or story, or by means of conversation lessons. Fighting and quarreling. Calling nicknames. Truthfulness. Word of honor. Cheating. Promises. Profanity. Slang. Cruelty to animals. Courage. Duties at home. Duties in school. Duties to others. For Reference. — Thayer's Ethics of Success, Book H. Topics for Eighth and Ninth Grades. — Earning a living. The read- ing of good books. Economy. Patriotism. Obedience to law. Duties of American Citizens. For Reference. — Thayer's Ethics of Success, Book H. Everett's Ethics for Young People. HINTS ON LESSONS IN POLITENESS. " A beautiful behavior," says Emerson, *' is the finest of the fine arts. Give a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes." It is too often assumed that children learn manners at 302 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS home, or unconsciously acquire a polite behavior from their teachers, schoolmates, or friends. But whatever they may learn through unconscious tuition, it is very desirable that they should receive ^jierrfir instruction in politenes s. It is said that the winning manners of Henry Clay were owing in no small degree to the careful training in man- ners given him at an early age in a log schoolhouse in Virginia. Topics for Short Talks in Second and Third Grades. — Politeness to schoolmates. Politeness to teachers. Manners at the table. Polite- ness to parents. Politeness to brothers and sisters. For Reference. — How to Teach Manners in the Schoolroom, by Julia Dewey. Topics for Short Talks in the Fourth Grade. — Manners at home ; at school ; at places of amusement. Minor rules of politeness : (Adapted from Miss Dewey's How to Teach Manners in School.) 1. When you pass directly in front of any one say " Excuse me." 2. Never fail to say " Thank you " (not " Thanks ") for the smallest favors. 3. When a schoolmate is reading, or is answering a question, do not raise your hand to correct a mistake until after he has finished. 4. Do not stare at visitors who enter the schoolroom. 5. When you stand to recite, stand erect like a well-bred gentleman or lady. 6. In handing a pointer, pen, or pencil, hand the blunt end towards the person to whom you wish to pass it. 7. It is impolite to chew gum or to eat in school. Fifth Year or Grade — Topics for Short Talks. — When you do a favor, do it cheerfully. A cheerful countenance is always welcome. Give up your seat to older people. Apologize to any one you have wronged. Do not bluntly contradict any one. Look persons in the eye when you speak to them. Whispering in company is impolite. Avoid the use of slang expressions. For Reference. — Gow's Primer of Politeness. Sixth to Eighth Grades — Topics for Short Talks. — Rules of polite- ness in society. Politeness to strangers. Politeness in traveling. How to write notes of invitation and acceptance of invitations. How to introduce persons in a proper manner. . .,_ CHAPTER XIII COMMON-SENSE APPLIED TO RURAL SCHOOLS It requires great tact ari^ jud^mg jit to manage suc- cessfully, a rural school in which the whole work is done by one teacher. In the graded schools of town and city the course of instruction is definitely laid down in printed manuals ; the work of each successive grade is directed by principal and superintendent ; the results are tested by written examinations ; and each class teacher is only a cog in a complicated system of wheels. But in the country school the teacher combines the function of as- sistant, principal, examiner, and superintendent. He is an autocrat, limited only by custom, prece dent, and text- bn g] [ f s, When we consider that about one half of the school children in our country receive their elementary education in rural schools, their importance as a part of our school system is obvious. Many of these schools in the sparsely- settled districts of some states are kept open only from three to six months in the year, and even then the at- tendance is irregular. The whole schooling of many children, from the age of five to fifteen, hardly amounts to five years of unbroken school attendance. For such pupils, what instruction will best fit children for their life duties ? What knowledge is of most worth to them ? The subject under consideration is so important that it seems to require special treatment by itself. As an axiom, we may safely take this statement of John Stuart Mill : 303 304 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS " The aim of all intellectual training for the mass of the people should be to cultivate common-sense." It is of the first importance that pupils should be trained to speak, read, and write the English language. At fif- teen or sixteen years of age they should be able to read readily, to keep their conversation free from provin- cialisms in pronunciation, to write a letter in a neat and legible hand ; and they should have a taste for reading good literature. In arithmetic they should be trained to work examples in the " four rules " ; to perform business operations in common and decimal fractions ; to reckon simple interest ; and to make out a bill, a receipt, and a promissory note ; and to keep simple accounts. Wise teachers will concen- trate their drill upon what the pupils most need. In geography they should acquire a general knowledge of our own country and of the world as a whole ; but it is not necessary that they should be compelled, term after term, and year after year, to memorize text-books. Present the subject in a natural way according to modern methods. Begin with a study of local geography from nature and proceed according to the methods presented in a previous chapter on geography in graded scliools. The text-book study of grammar should be preceded by a course of elementary exercises in language les- sons, such as are found in the best modern text-books. Children cannot be trained to speak or write correctly by parsing according to Latinized formulas. They will never learn to construct a good sentence by analyzing complex or compound sentences, or by memorizing and repeating the rules of syntax, though this method be followed until they grow gray. Require, then, at least, one short composition exercise a week, upon subjects COMMON-SENSE APPLIED TO RURAL SCHOOLS 305 about which the pupils have learned something. Let them write about farming, about animals, birds, fishes, flowers, trees. Read them short stories to be reproduced in writing. Require pupils over eight years of age to write at least one short letter a week, until they can write it in due form, punctuate it, capitalize it, spell correctly most of the words they use in it, fold it neatly, and direct it properly. After this preliminary work is well done, let the older pupils study grammar from a text-book, by taking up a few essential points in etymology, by learn- ing to apply a few important rules of syntax, by taking a little parsing and a minimum of plain sentence analysis without diagrams, and with as little as possible of the scholastic forms of logic in which the subject is often enveloped. Pupils should acquire a general knowledge of the lead- ing events in the history of our own country. Teachers should present the subject by means of oral lessons, which will include stories, anecdotes, incidents, and well- selected extracts. Narrative and biography constitute the life of history to the young. A text-book may be used to supplement this work. It will be one of the pleasantest of duties to awaken country children to the beauties of nature by which they are surrounded. It is here that teachers may do their best work, by drawing out of pupils all they know of the world around them, and by encouraging every effort to increase their knowledge. Country boys and girls generally have a considerable stock of crude knowledge about animals, plants, and the phenomena of every-day life. Draw out these fragmentary stores of facts, and supplement them by the facts of science. Set the girls to collecting and pressing plants and flowers. Let' the AM. PUB. scH. — 20 3o6 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS boys bring in specimens of minerals, shells, woods, and grains for a school cabinet. Open their eyes to the beauty of the world in which they live. In the Report of the Committee of Twelve on Rural Schools (1897), Wilbur S. Jackman, of the Chicago Normal School, in a special paper on a course of study for rural schools, makes the following sug- gestions about nature study : " In the earlier years, especially, great attention should be given to the picturesqueness and natural beauty of the surroundings. Without trained and careful effort in this direction, the intensely practical char- acter of their contact with the various things about them will close the eyes of the children to many beautiful things that should be a source of joy and pleasure throughout life. Much out-door study should, therefore, be encouraged. The children should be familiar with every brook and waterfall ; with every cliff, wooded copse, and ravine." From personal experience I deeply realize the force of Mr. Jackman's suggestions. In my boyhood I attended a village school in one of the mountain towns of New Hampshire. From the schoolhouse door we could see, not two miles distant, a granite mountain which rose to the height of more than a thousand feet. Away in the distant western horizon Mt. Kearsarge rose still higher. At our feet, not a stone's-throw from the schoolhouse, there flowed the winding Suncook River, an important tributary of the Merrimac. But nature study was un- heard of when we boys went to school. None of us ever connected the mountains that we read about in the geog- raphy with the real mountains right before our eyes. We failed to assimilate the rivers traced in spider lines on the atlas with the clear-running stream in which we went a-swimming every day in the hot summer time. We boys never once thought of climbing to the summit of the mountain near by, though we could have reached it by a two hours' walk. No one of our teachers ever COMMON-SENSE APPLIED TO RURAL SCHOOLS 307 thought of suggesting to us that it would be a good geog-/ raphy lesson to find out what we could see from that!^ familiar mountain top. We were blind as bats to the beautiful panorama of nature spread out everywhere around us. No teacher ever once in all our lives called our attention to the mountain, or the river, or the ponds, or the farms, or the woods, or the beauty of the landscape. It was only after an absence of many years in California, that my eyes were opened to the wondrous summer beauty of my native town, a landscape of hill and mountain, farm and forest, unequaled by anything that I had seen in my distant wanderings. Then I climbed to the top of Cata- mount and looked out on the scenery that tourists travel hundreds of miles to behold. I brought away with me, as a special treasure, a piece of quartz delicately grooved and polished by the great glacial ice-mass that once moved over New England and sculptured the rough outlines of the varied landscape spread out in all its wondrous summer beauty. In the appendix to the report of the Committee of Twelve there is a paper on " The Farm as the Center of Interest," by Col. Francis W. Parker, of the Chicago Normal School, which so graphically and truthfully sets forth the field for nature study in the country school that it cannot fail to prove an inspiration to all who read it. Among other things he says : " Nowhere on earth has a child such advantages for elementary- education as upon a good farm, where he is trained to love work and to put his brains into work. The statement of what a farm does for a boy in its general lines may easily be taken from the experience of a farm boy in New England, for instance. It is possible for me to give the story- of such a one from actual experience — what he learned, what he studied, and what he acquired. As soon as he found himself upon the farm, at eight years of age, he began to study — to study in the best sense of that much-abused word. He began the study of geography — real geography. He observed with ever- increasing interest the hills, valleys, springs, swamps, and brooks upon 3o8 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS the old farm. The topography of the land was clear and distinct ; its divisions into fields, pastures, and forests were to him the commonest facts of experience. ... He studies botany. All the kinds of grasses he knew — timothy, clover, red top, silver grass, pigeon grass ; how they were sown, how they came up, grew, were cut, cured, and fed to the cattle ; what kind of hay was best for sheep ; and what for oxen. ... He knew the trees, the maple w4th its sweet burden of spring, the hemlock, and the straight pine which he used to climb for crows' nests. He knew the wild animals, the squirrels, the rabbits, the wood- chucks ; the insects, the grasshoppers, and ants ; bugs that scurried away when he lifted a stone. With the birds he was intimately acquainted. " He obsen'ed, investigated, and drew inferences, perfectly uncon- scious, to be sure, of what he was learning, or how he was learning ; but still, he learned, and he studied, and the best lesson of all was his personal reaction upon his environment. His plowing, hoeing, haying, digging, chopping, lumbering, his mending of sleds, and making of cider, sugar, lye, and soap were all so many practical lessons in life which exercised his body, stimulated his mind, and strengthened and developed his purpose in life. He lived to become a school teacher, and taught school earnestly and bunglingly for twenty years before he had even a suspicion of the value of his farm life and farm work." It is not necessary that you should teach ethics as a science. What pupils most need is that plain preceptive morality which is diffused among the people as their daily rule of action. Your work here must be an outgrowth of your own life and character, observation and experience, combined with the best thoughts you can glean from books and society. It is desirable that pupils should know something about the laws of health in relation to diet, sleep, air, exercise, work, play, and rest. Teach the plain truth that sickness is the penalty of violated laws ; that bad habits are physical sins ; that poor health, unless hereditary, is the result of carelessness or ignorance. These things can be taught either with or without a text-book. COMMON-SENSE APPLIED TO RURAL SCHOOLS 309 Teach drawing in a natural way" by giving pupils a few hints, and then setting them at work in trying to draw from real objects, such as leaves, fruits, flowers, animals, birds, ships, boats, houses, and easy landscapes. There is a fine opportunity in the country school for allowing pupils to follow their individual bent. Allow a reason- able time for singing, recitals, dialogues, the reading of compositions, and other incidental exercises. The arrangement and length of recitations are matters of judgment to be modified according to conditions. When one class is reciting, set the others about some specific piece of work at their desks. The few advanced pupils ought not to monopolize your attention. Assign older pupils lessons to be learned at home ; for children who attend a school only a part of the year cannot easily be overtaxed with brain work. Train them to depend upon themselves, and to find out things by hard thinking. In recitations, explanations and illustrations must be con- densed, for time is limited. If there is a school library, make good use of it by recommending suitable books for pupils to read at home. Many a dull boy, lazy and listless over his lessons, has been made alive by books suited to his age and capacity. If you have tact, good-nature, and firmness, and know how to interest children in their work, you need not have much trouble about order, discipline, or government. Win the good will of the older pupils, and they will be- come your assistants in school government. On the morning of the first day, that crucial test of a teacher, introduce yourself by a few cheerful remarks, distribute slips of paper on which pupils are to write their names, age, class or grade, and studies ; and, having col- lected these, proceed at once to business by giving out a 310 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS sheet of paper to all who can use a pen, and require them to write a composition about their'^st vacation. This will keep them at work an hour at least, during which time you can attend to the little ones, and make out your rough program. The art of the first day is to keep pupils busy. You will avoid much mischief by getting every- body hard at work in ten minutes after school opens. If you know how to tell a good story, close school with one ; if not, read one from some book. The true economy of teaching in an ungraded school is to make the fewest possible number of classes, and to consider both age and capacity in making the classifica- tion. If the school is a large one, do not attempt to hear daily recitations in everything, but alternate the studies of the more advanced pupils. Economize time and in- struction by means of as many general exercises as possi- ble, in which all except the youngest pupils can join; such as drill exercises in the four rules of arithmetic, mental arithmetic exercises, the spelling of common words, short compositions, review questions on the leading facts of geography and history. Take an hour, weekly, for select readings, recitals, dialogues, and lessons on morals and manners. Occasionally give written examinations. In most city schools, written examinations are carried to extremes; but in most country schools there is not enough of writ- ten work to give readiness and exactness in the written expression of thought. For a young teacher, whether man or woman, there is no better school of practice than a country school. Nor should the educational advantages of the rural school for pupils be underrated. In the long race of life, boys edu- cated in such schools often come out ahead of those COMMON-SENSE APPLIED TO RURAL SCHOOLS 311 ground out by the graded machinery of city schools. During a part of the year country boys work on the farm, and get, not only muscular strength, but also a habit of work. They go back to school with a keen relish for study, and a habit of steady application. Hard work on his father's farm, from sunrise to sunset, hoeing corn, or haying, or digging potatoes, has made school-life seem a play spell to many a boy, and has laid the foundation of steady habits that have led to success in life. The trouble with many city boys is that they have no work to do out of school, and never learn what hard labor means until school-life is over. Herein lies the great advantage of the country school ; both boys and girls have a com- bination of mental and manual' TraiiTing;^"' TTie~lnorn- ing and evening ''chores" on the farm, and in the house- hold, prevent undue mental application. Pupils are not surfeited with school and books ; school, indeed, is a ; relief from hard labor. Many a man has reason to be thankful that he was trained to habits of farm work in his boyhood, and was sent to a country school, where he was not crammed to repletion, nor worried with credits, nor made wretched with competitive written examinations. In this connection, I cannot forbear quoting the following extract from the concluding paragraph of Col. Parker's paper in the appendix to the Report of the Committee of Twelve : ^ *' No method, no system of schools, no enrichment of^ courses of study, not even the most successful of teachers, can ever take the place in fundamental education of the farm and the workshop. No matter how good the city schools may be, or may be made ; no matter how good the state of society may be, the vital reinforcements of city life that lead to progress and prosperity, so far as we 312 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS can see, must always come from the sturdy stock of the farm. This fact, upon which most educators agree, puts upon the country school an immense responsibility. When skill, expertness, and insight control the methods of country schools ; when excellent teachers remain in the same schools year after year, the already powerful influence of country life upon the destinies of the nation will be mightily enhanced." Finally, perhaps the greatest service I can render student- teachers who are looking forward to a country school, is to call special attention to the Report of the Committee of Twelve on Rural Schools. This report of 227 pages is one of the most notable educational documents ever published in this country. In it the young student of pedagogics will find a detailed course of study, a report on Instruc- tion and Discipline ; a report on program ; an enrich- ment of Rural School Courses ; a Course of Study for Rural Schools, by Wilbur S. Jackman ; the Farm as a Center of Interest, by Colonel Parker ; the Country School Problem, by Dr. Emerson E. White. INDEX. Academies, Age of, 64 ; endowed academies, 65 ; Phillips-Andover Academy, 'j'j ; Phillips-Exeter Academy, 64, j^j. Agricultural Colleges, 85-90; Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, 55. Alaska, Schools in, iii. American Institute of Instruction, 78. Animal Life, Study of, 281, 282. Appleton's Readers, 140. Arithmetic, Methods and text-books in, 141-146, 191-194, 240-258, 304; Colburn's Intellectual Arithmetic, 122. Armstrong, S. C, and the Hampton Institute, 99. Athletics, 288. Bailey, L. H., quoted, 280. Baldwin's Readers, 141, 208, 215. Baltimore, Schools of, 59, 116. Barnard, Henry, 71. Barnes, Earl, 121, 184, 290. Benton, Thomas H., 62. Berkeley, Governor, of Virginia, 29. Bible, The, 135, 292, 295. Bookkeeping, 253. Books for children, 160-163, 215, 261, 263, 284, 294, Books for school libraries, 263, 264, 265, 285, 301, 309. Books for teachers, 158-160, 170, 200-205, 263,270, 285, 312. See Text-books. Boston, Schools in, 8, 12, 47, 56, 74, 1 11, 130. Branches of Instruction, 11 8-1 20. Brown's (Gould) Grammars, 150. Calhoun, J, C, 62, California, Education in, loi-iio; high schools, 82. Chicago, Schools in, 1 1 5. 314 INDEX H Child Study, 183. Children, Books for, 160-163, 215, 261, 263, 284, 294 Chinese Classics, 134 j Civil War, The, 71 ; public schools after the, 93-117. j Class-room management. Suggestions on, 179-187. \ Clay, Henry, 63. a Clinton, George, 50. ^ Colburn's Arithmetic, 145. | College of the City of New York, 52. I College of William and Mary, 29, 58. \ Colleges, Colonial, 80. See ^/z/'t/ Mythology, Excess of in lower grades, 214. "^ \ National Schools, 90 ; a national university, 91. \ Natural Geographies, The, by Redway and Hinman, 158, 285. \ Natural methods in teaching geography, 269-277. ^ Nature Studies, 278-285, 305. 3i8 INDEX i Naval Academy at Annapolis, 91. \ Negroes, Education of, 96-100. \ New England, Education in, 7-23, 44, 64, 1 1 1 ; colonial school laws in, 22 ; normal schools in, 78. New Jersey, Early schools in, 53. i Newspapers, Colonial, 162. ^ New York, College of the City of, 52. \ New York, Schools in, 23,46, 49, 56,71, 111-114; normal schools \ in, 77. 1 Normal Schools, 77-80, 83, 108 ; public normal schools, 78 ; statistics \ of, 79 ; private normal schools, 80 ; state normal schools in Cali- j fornia, 108. ) North Carolina, Schools of, 60. \ North Central States, Education in, 114-116. \ Northwest Territory, 37; ordinance of 1787, 38; land system, 39; ! schools in, 43, 71, 80, 114. Ohio, First permanent settlement in, 42 ; early schools in, 43. ii Ordinance of 1787, for Northwest Territory, 38. \ Oregon, Schools in, 1 10. J Outlook, Educational, 164-170. -^ Pacific States, Education in, loi-iii ; state legislation in California, \ 102, 104, 105 ; school beginnings, 102 ; parochial schools in San ] Francisco, 105 ; normal schools, 108 ; state publication of text- ] books, 109; the mountain states, no. 1 Parish schools, 27, 49. '; Parker, Francis W., quoted, 230, 245, 251, 277, 307, 311. ' { Peabody, George, 94 ; Peabody Educational Fund, 95. \ Pedagogics, Apphed, 204; books on, 158-160, 170, 200-205. 1 Pedagogy, Departments of, in state universities, 83. See Normal \ Schools. . : Penn, William, 26. Pennsylvania, Schools in, 26, 46, 53, iii. Periodicals, Educational, 78. M^ Philadelphia, Schools in, 55, 57, 113. Phillips-Andover Academy, 64, 77 ; Phillips-Exeter Academy, 64. | Physical Culture, Modern Views on, 286-291. ^ Physical Geography, 283. y INDEX 319 Physics, 283. Physiology and Hygiene, 282. Pike's Arithmetic, 142-145. Plants, Studies of, 280, 281, 282. Plymouth Colony, Schools in, 7, 17, 18, 22. Politeness, Lessons in, 301. Practical value of common schools, 67. "Primer, The New England," 62, 131-134. Princeton, University of, 53. Program, 187, 310. / Promotions, 185, 276. Psychology, 202; psychological principles, 221. Public School Society, The, 52. Punishments in school government, 120, 161, 177. Puritans, Schools and educational ideas of the, 8, 30. Quakers, Schools and education among the, 26, 28, 61. Question and Answer, 180. Reading, Methods and text-books in, 130-141, 207, 208-212,215- 217, 304. Reading and Study, Professional, 158-160, 199-205, 312. Recitations, 121, 180, 188-198, 309. Records, Historical, of common schools, 18; of grammar schools, 10. Reform, Educational, 256. Revolutionary War, Effects of, on Education, 31, 34. Rural Schools in colonial times, 15 ; in the South, 61 ; in New Eng- land, 15, 66; common-sense applied to, 303-312. St. Louis, Schools in, 115, 126. Salaries, Teachers', 120. Salem, Mass., Early schools in, 13, 21. San Francisco, History of schools in 102-105, 124. Schlee, E., quoted, 190. School committee, 11. "School Keeping, Lectures on," Hall's, fj. Science, Natural, and geography, 276. Scotch-Irish, The, in America, 27, 33, 50, 58, 59, 61. Secondary and higher public education, 73-92, Sherman, Roger, 68. Slater Fund, The John F., 96. 320 INDEX South Carolina, Schools in, 59. Southern States, Education in, 58, 93-101, 116. Spelling Books, 118, 135-137. Spelling, Methods of teaching, 135-137, 207, 210, 304. Spencer, Herbert, quoted. 293. State control of schools, 37 ; state public universities, 80 ; state normal schools, 79 ; state agricultural colleges, 86. Stevens, Thaddeus, 54. Study, Courses of, 118-120, 123-129; habits of, 181-183, 310. Supplementary Reading, 208, 212, 215, 261, 263, 264, 266, 284. Swinton's Readers, 141 ; Grammar and Language Lessons, 153. Tabor, F. H., quoted, 289. Taxation for Support of Schools : In the South, 100 ; in California, 107. Text-books, State publication of, 109; studies on, 130-163; use ot, 189-197. See Methods and Text-books, Tompkins, Arnold, quoted, 181, 187. Township, Congressional, Division of, 40. Training Schools, 'j'], 81. See Not'inal Schools, Tuskegee, Normal Institute, 99. Ungraded schools, 303-312. Universities, State, 80-85, ^o^- University, A National, 91; California, 82, I08 ; Columbia, 25, 83; Cornell, 83, 86 ; Harvard, 8, 83 ; Michigan, 82 ; Princeton, 33 ; Purdue, 87 ; Texas, 82 ; Yale, 83. Virginia, Schools in, 29, 58. Vocal music as a means of culture, 228. Washington, Booker, T., 100. Washington, D. C, Schools in, 116. Washington, George, 29. 30, 63, 92. Webster, Daniel, 68. Webster, Noah, 118, 135, 137, 140, 148. West Point, Military Academy, 91. White, E. E., quoted, 186. Willard, Emma H., 65. William and Mary, College of, 29, 58. Willson's Readers, 140. ^=' Writing, 206, 218. Se e Co1)y Book s, Yale University ,> OCT 8 ladg-""^ MA«12 136Q LD 21A-50m-8.'61 (Cl795sl0)476B General Library University of California Berkeley ^-iS,-^ ^ ^^:^^-^- -^i-mfiQr' ?«^» ...v?% >*y v5sfv-<£d^ ?«.> **