A. THE COMMON SCHOOL MOVEMENT

Common school education before the reform movement

1. Tocqueville's observations on the character and efficiency of instruction in the United States

Tocqueville, Democracy in America, I (1945), 315-318.

The observer who is desirous of forming an opinion on the state of instruction among the Anglo-Americans must consider the same object from two different points of view. If he singles out only the learned, he will be astonished to find how few they are; but if he counts the ignorant, the American people will appear to be the most enlightened in the world. The whole population, as I observed in another place, is situated between these two extremes.

In New England every citizen receives the elementary notions of human knowledge; he is taught, moreover, the doctrines and the evidences of his religion, the history of his country, and the leading features of its Constitution. In the states of Connecticut and Massachusetts, it is extremely rare to find a man imperfectly acquainted with all these things, and a person wholly ignorant of them is a sort of phenomenon.

When I compare the Greek and Roman republics with these American states; the manuscript libraries of the former, and their rude population, with the innumerable journals and the enlightened people of the latter; when I remember all the attempts that arc made to judge the modern republics by the aid of those of antiquity, and to infer what will happen in our time from what took place two thousand years ago, I am tempted to burn my books in order to apply none but novel ideas to so novel a condition of society.

What I have said of New England must not, however, be applied to the whole Union without distinction; as we advance towards the West or the South, the instruction of the people diminishes. In the states that border on the Gulf of Mexico a certain number of individuals may be found, as in France, who are devoid even of the rudiments of instruction. But there is not a single district in the United States sunk in complete ignorance, and for a very simple reason. The nations of Europe started from the darkness of a barbarous condition, to advance towards the light of civilization; their progress has been unequal; some of them have improved rapidly, while others have loitered in their course, and some have stopped and are still sleeping upon the way.

Such has not been the case in the United States. The Anglo-Americans, already civilized, settled upon that territory which their descendants occupy; they did not have to begin to learn, and it was sufficient for them not to forget. Now the children of these same Americans are the persons who, year by year, transport their dwellings into the wilds, and, with their dwellings, their acquired information and their esteem for knowledge. Education has taught them the utility of instruction and has enabled them to transmit that instruction to their posterity. In the United States society has no infancy, but it is born in man's estate.

The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote apes, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization. At the extreme borders of the confederated states, upon the confines of society and the wilderness, a population of bold adventurers have taken up their abode, who pierce the solitudes of the American woods and seek a country there in order to escape the poverty that awaited them in their native home. As soon as the pioneer reaches the place which is to serve him for a retreat, he fells a few trees and builds a log house. Nothing can offer a more miserable aspect than these isolated dwellings. The traveler who approaches one of them towards nightfall sees the flicker of the hearth flame through the chinks in the walls; and at night, if the wind rises, he hears the roof of boughs shake to and fro in the midst of the great forest trees. Who would not suppose that this poor hut is the asylum of rudeness and ignorance? Yet no sort of comparison can be drawn between the pioneer and the dwelling that shelters him. Everything about him is primitive and wild, but he is himself the result of the labor and experience of eighteen centuries. He wears the dress and speaks the language of cities; he is acquainted with the past, curious about the future, and ready for argument about the present; he is, in short, a highly civilized being, who consents for a time to inhabit the backwoods, and who penetrates into the wilds of the New World with the Bible, an axe, and some newspapers. It is difficult to imagine the incredible rapidity with which thought circulates in the midst of these deserts. I do not think that so much intellectual activity exists in the most enlightened and populous districts of France.

It cannot be doubted that in the United States the instruction of the people powerfully contributes to the support of the democratic republic; and such must always be the case, I believe, where the instruction which enlightens the understanding is not separated from the moral education which amends the heart. But I would not exaggerate this advantage, and I am still further from thinking, as so many people do think in Europe, that men can be instantaneously made citizens by teaching them to read and write. True information is mainly derived from experience; and if the Americans had not been gradually accustomed to govern themselves, their book-learning would not help them much at the present day.

I have lived much with the people in the United States, and I cannot express how much I admire their experience and their good sense. An American should never be led to speak of Europe, for he will then probably display much presumption and very foolish pride. He will take up with those crude and vague notions which are so useful to the ignorant all over the world. But if you question him respecting his own country, the cloud that dimmed his intelligence will immediately disperse; his language will become as clear and precise as his thoughts, He will inform you what his rights are and by what means he exercises them; he will be able to point out the customs which obtain in the political world. You will find that he is well acquainted with the rules of the administration, and that he is familiar with the mechanism of the laws. The citizen of the United States does not acquire his practical science and his positive notions from books; the instruction he has acquired may have prepared him for receiving those ideas, but it did not furnish them. The American learns to know the laws by participating in the act of legislation; and he takes a lesson in the forms of government from governing. The great work of society is ever going on before his eyes and, as it were, under his hands.

2. A teacher's description of conditions in a rural New England school on the eve of the common school revival

"History of a Common School, from 1801-1831," American Annals of Education and Instruction for the Year 1831, I (1831), 468-472.

SCHOOL HOUSE AND GENERAL ARRANGEMENTS

The school house stood near the centre of the district, at the junction of four roads, so near the usual track of carriages, that a large stone was set up at the end of the building to defend it from injury. Except in the dry season the ground is wet, permitting small collections of water on the surface, and the soil by no means firm. The spot is peculiarly exposed to the bleak winds of winter; nor are there at present any shade trees near, to shelter the children from the scorching rays of the summer's sun during their recreations. There were a few formerly; but they were cut down many years ago. Neither is there any such thing as an outhouse of any kind, not even a wood shed.

The size of the building was twenty two feet long, by twenty broad. From the floor to the ceiling, it was seven feet. The chimney and entry took up about four feet at one end, leaving the school room itself, twenty feet by eighteen. Around three sides of the room, were connected desks, arranged so that when the pupils were sitting at them, their faces were towards the instructor and their backs towards the wall. Attached to the sides of the desks nearest to the instructor, were benches for small pupils. The instructor's desk and chair occupied the centre. On this desk were stationed a rod or ferule; sometimes both. These, with books, writings, inkstands, rules, and plummets, with a fire shovel, and a pair of tongs (often broken), were the principal furniture.

The windows were five in number, of twelve panes each. They were situated so low in the walls, as to give full opportunity to the pupils, to see every traveler as he passed, and to be easily broken. The places of the broken panes, were usually supplied with hats, during the school hours. The entry was four feet square. A depression in the chimney on one side of the entry, furnished a place of deposit for about half of the hats, and spare clothes of the boys; and the rest were left on the floor, often to be trampled upon. The girls generally carried their bonnets, &c. into the school room. The floor and ceiling were level, and the walls were plastered.

The room was warmed by a large and deep fire place. So large was it, and so little efficacious in warming the room otherwise, that I have seen about one eighth of a cord of good wood, burning in it at a time. In severe weather, it was estimated that the amount usually consumed, was not far from a cord, or one hundred and twenty eight feet, a week.

The new building erected about five years since, has many improvements upon the former. It is of brick; the room is larger and higher; it is better lighted, and has an improved fire place. The writing desks for the pupils are attached to the walls, and the scats for the smaller pupils have backs. Besides, the local situation of the house is changed. It stands two or three rods from the road side, on a firm soil; but there are no shade trees near, nor any out houses. Like the former house, it has a cold bleak situation in winter. With regard to an entry, however, there now is none. The whole building forms but one room.

The school was not unfrequently broken up for a day or two for want of wood in former years; but since they have used a smaller fire place, this occurrence has been more rare. The instructor or pupils were, however, sometimes compelled to cut or saw it, to prevent the closing of the school. The wood was left in the road near the house, so that it was often buried in the snow or wet with the rain. At the best, it was usually burnt green. The fires were to be kindled, about half an hour before the time of beginning the school. Often, the scholar, whose lot it was, neglected to build it. In consequence of this, the house was frequently cold and uncomfortable about half the forenoon, when the fire being very large, the excess of heat became equally distressing. Frequently too, we were annoyed by smoke. The greatest amount of suffering, however, arose from excessive heat, particularly at the close of the day. The pupils being in a free perspiration when they retired, were very liable to take cold.

The ventilation of the school room, was as much neglected as its temperature; and its cleanliness, more perhaps than either. Situated as the house was, the latter might seem to be in a measure unavoidable. There were, however, no arrangements made for cleaning feet at the door, or for washing floors, windows, &c. In the summer the floor was washed, perhaps once in two or three weeks.

The winter school has usually been opened about the first of December, and continued from twelve to sixteen weeks. The summer school is commenced about the first of May. Formerly this was also continued about three or four months; but within ten years the term has been lengthened usually to twenty weeks. Males have been uniformly employed in winter, and females in summer.

The instructors have usually been changed every season, but sometimes they have been continued two successive summers or winters. A strong prejudice has always existed against employing the same instructor more than once or twice in the same district. This prejudice has yielded in one instance, so far that an instructor who had taught two successive winters, twenty five years before, was employed another season. I have not been able to ascertain the exact number of different instructors who have been engaged in the school during the last thirty years; but I can distinctly recollect thirty-seven. Many of them, both males and females, were from sixteen to eighteen years of age, and a few, over twentyone.

Good moral character, and a thorough knowledge of the common branches, were formerly considered as indispensable qualifications in an instructor. The instructors were chiefly selected from the most respectable families in town. But for fifteen or twenty years, these things have not been so much regarded. They have indeed been deemed desirable; but the most common method now seems to be, to ascertain as near as possible the dividend for that season from the public treasury, and then, fix upon a teacher who will take charge of the school three to four months, for this money. He must indeed be able to obtain a license from the Board of Visitors; but this has become nearly a matter of course, provided he can spell, read, and write. In general, the candidate is some favorite or relative of the District Committee. It gives me great pleasure, however, to say that the moral character of almost every instructor, so far as I know, has been unexceptionable.

Instructors have usually boarded in the families of the pupils. Their compensation has varied from seven to eleven dollars a month for males; and from sixtytwo and a half cents to one dollar a week for females. Within the last ten years, however, the price of instruction has rarely been less than nine dollars in the former case, and seventyfive cents in the latter. In the few instances in which the instructors have furnished their own board, the compensation has been about the same; it being supposed that they could work at some employment of their own, enough to pay their board, especially females. The only exceptions which I can recollect are two; both within five years. In one of these instances the instructor received twelve dollars, and in the other, eleven dollars and fifty cents a month.

It often happens that no family of the district is prepared to receive the Instructor. In such cases it is expected he will repair to the house of the District Committee. Some, however, from delicacy, or other causes, choose to go to their own homes, when near, until a place is provided.

Two of the Board of Visitors usually visit the winter schools twice during the term. In the summer, their visits are often omitted. These visits usually occupy from one hour to an hour and a half. They are spent in merely hearing a few hurried lessons, and in making some remarks, general in their character. Formerly, it was customary to examine the pupils in some approved catechism; but this practice has been omitted for twenty years.

The parents seldom visit the school, except by special invitation. The greater number pay very little attention to it at all. There are, however, a few who are gradually awaking to the importance of good instruction; but there are also a few, who oppose every thing which is suggested, as at the least, useless; and are scarcely willing their children should be governed in the school.

The school books have been about the same for thirty years. Webster's Spelling Book, the American Preceptor, and the New Testament, have been the principal books used. Before the appearance of the American Preceptor, Dwight's Geography was used as a reading book. A few of the Introduction to the American Orator were introduced about twelve years since, and more recently, Jack Halyard. [1a]

Until within a few years, no studies have been permitted in the day school, but spelling, reading and writing. Arithmetic was taught by a few instructors, one or two evenings in a week. But in spite of a most determined opposition, arithmetic is now permitted in the day school, and a few pupils study geography.

1a. William S. Cardell, The Story of Jack Halyard, The Sailor Boy; or The Virtuous Family, 4th ed. (New York, 1825); as noted on title page, "Designed for American Children in Families and Schools."

3. Report of the superintendent in Schoharie County, New York, 1843

New York State, Annual Report of the Superintendent of Common Schools with the Reports of the Deputy Superintendent, 1843 (Albany, 1843), pp. 332-335.

The greatest portion of the schools in the county were found by me in a most deplorable condition; as the following statistical information, relating to them, will, without any other proof, clearly show.

The number of school districts in the county (as will be found in the abstract of the copies of the reports of the commissioners) is ........................... 180

Number of district schools visited by me during the year, once, ............ 175

Number of district schools visited by me during the year, twice .............. 116

Number visited in company with one or more of the town inspectors ....….65

Last winter, the terms in many of the districts were so short, that several of them had closed before I could get around, and consequently I have not been able to visit them but once, although 1 have visited nearly all the districts in the county twice. During the year there has been a school in every district in the county except two. In these, the number of children is small; besides, there is an indifference among the people about a school, and a want of union.

It appears from the reports of the commissioners, that the number of children in the county, over 5 and under 16 years of age, is ...................... 9593

The number of children in attendance in all the district schools taught this year in the county, except three, was, when visited by me, ........………. 4026

According to this, the number of children absent that should have been in school, was………………………………………………………………. 5567

The number reported as being in attendance in the 175 schools, when first visited by me, is probably a fair statement of the average attendance. A part of these schools were visited in the summer, and a part in the winter. There are but few private schools in the county. The whole number of children in the county that have attended the private schools and academies during the present year, will not exceed 350. Making allowance for these, and for the number of children that usually attend the schools in the three districts in which I found no schools at the time of my visits, and for those in the other two districts in which there have been no schools the present year, and we shall then find that more than half of the children in the county, over 5 and under 16 years of age, have, the present year, been daily absent from school.

Number built of stone, ............. 3

    do do wood framed, .....……164

    do do logs,........………………13

    do having but one room,……...77

    do having one room and an entry,…103

    do in good repair, ..........…..53

    do in a bad or decaying condition,…127

    do having no privies, .......…..160

    do having two privies, .....….3

    do having one privy,…….17

Fifty-three of the school houses I have reported in good repair; but these though in such a condition as to protect the children from the storms and cold of winter; and though furnished with whole benches and firm desks, yet they are nearly all in every respect badly planned, and ill adapted to the purposes for which they arc designed. And I regret most deeply to be compelled to say, that all the school houses in the county, with few exceptions, are not in such a condition as either to secure the health, comfort or convenience of the children. Nineteen-twentieths of them are badly located; and a great many of them are, in fact, apparently situated, so far as regards the physical well being of the children, in the very worst places in the districts. A very large number of them are built at the forks of the highways, or on the corners made by their intersection, and often standing, at the same time, on bleak hills, without any kind of out buildings, or even a tree to break off the chilling blasts of winter, or shade them from the scorching rays of the summer's sun. They almost all stand nearly on the line of the highway, and in most cases, they are very far from having any thing like appropriate play grounds, or the requisite or even out buildings of any kind whatever connected with them. In selecting the site for their school house, the all-absorbing object of the people would, indeed, seem to have been, either to find the central point in the district, or some corner at the intersection of the public roads, at the sacrifice of every nobler and more important consideration.

In size they are generally too small. This, though even now an inconvenience, yet it is not commonly so, in consequence of so many children in several of the districts being daily out of school. In regard to their interior accommodations, the construction and arrangement of the desks and benches, they are more defective than in their location. In my visits through the county, I found one-half of the children in seven-eighths of the school houses, seated on narrow benches without any backs, and so high too, that their feet could not reach the floor; and many of them while thus seated, were employed in trying to learn to write at writing desks, to the edges of which they could scarcely reach their chins. In constructing the desks and benches, no attention has, in fact, been paid to the comfort, health or convenience of the children.

I have, at every opportunity, endeavored to apprise the patrons of the schools, of the great danger to which their offspring are exposed by being confined in such painful positions, and in such miserable buildings; of undermining their constitutions, and sowing the seeds of disease; and it gives me great pleasure to be able to state, that the desks and benches in many parts of the county are undergoing a reformation. I found the school houses generally destitute of all kinds of apparatus; only a few being furnished even with a black-board. But I am happy to say, that several black-boards have lately been introduced.

I would state that the wretched condition of the school houses generally in the county, is not often owing to the want of means to rebuild better, but to the leaden apathy upon the subject of education, and to the belief among many farmers, that their money can be more profitably invested in building better barns and stables for their cattle and horses, than in constructing more comfortable and commodious school houses for the children of their bosom.

But to the credit of the people and the county, it gives me pleasure to mention, that three school houses are now building, and one of them of stone, and though not so large, yet they are on the most approved plans, with ample play grounds; and provisions are making for all the requisite out buildings. And I trust that an example so commendable, will next summer be followed in a large number of districts.

4. A dame school for very young children

Lucy Larcom, A New England Girlhood (Boston, 1889), pp. 42-44.

Lucy Larcom (1824-1893), author and teacher, attended this school in Beverly, Massachusetts.

Aunt Hannah used her kitchen or her sitting-room for a schoolroom, as best suited her convenience. We were delighted observers of her culinary operations and other employments. If a baby's head nodded, a little bed was made for it on a soft "comforter" in the corner, where it had its nap out undisturbed. But this did not often happen; there were so many interesting things going on that we seldom became sleepy.

Aunt Hannah was very kind and motherly, but she kept us in fear of her ferule, which indicated to us a possibility of smarting palms. This ferule was shaped much like the stick with which she stirred her hasty pudding for dinner, — I thought it was the same, — and I found myself caught in a whirlwind of family laughter by reporting at home that "Aunt Hannah punished the scholars with the pudding-stick."

There was one colored boy in school, who did not sit on a bench, like the rest, but on a block of wood that looked like a backlog turned endwise. Aunt Hannah often called him a "blockhead," and I supposed it was because he sat on that block. Sometimes, in his absence, a boy was made to sit in his place for punishment, for being a "blockhead" too, as I imagined. I hoped I should never be put there. Stupid little girls received a different treatment, — an occasional rap on the head with the teacher's thimble; accompanied with a half-whispered, impatient ejaculation, which sounded very much like "Numskull!" I think this was a rare occurrence, however, for she was a good-natured, much-enduring woman.

One of our greatest school pleasures was to watch Aunt Hannah spinning on her flax-wheel, wetting her thumb and forefinger at her lips to twist the thread, keeping time, meanwhile, to some quaint old tune with her foot upon the treadle.

I began to go to school when I was about two years old, as other children about us did. The mothers of those large families had to resort to some means of keeping their little ones out of mischief, while they attended to their domestic duties. Not much more than that sort of temporary guardianship was expected of the good dame who had us in charge.

But I learned my letters in a few days, standing at Aunt Hannah's knee while she pointed them out in the spelling-book with a pin, skipping over the "a b abs" into words of one and two syllables, thence taking a flying leap into the New Testament, in which there is concurrent family testimony that I was reading at the age of two years and a half. Certain it is that a few passages in the Bible, whenever I read them now, do not fail to bring before me a vision of Aunt Hannah's somewhat sternly smiling lips, with her spectacles just above them, far down on her nose, encouraging me to pronounce the hard words.

5. Example of inadequate schoolkeeping in Ohio, 1838

Ohio, First Annual Report of the Superintendent of Common Schools made to the Thirty-Sixth General Assembly of the State of Ohio, January, 1838, by Samuel Lewis (Columbus, 1838), pp. 8-10.

Samuel Lewis (1799-1854) was the first superintendent of common schools in Ohio and a leading western advocate of free schools for all.

As it will be impossible to give a full history of my observations, an example of the several classes must suffice. In one town a free school is taught three months in the year, by one teacher, in a district where more than one hundred children desire to attend; they rush in and crowd the school so as to destroy all hope of usefulness, the wealthy, and those in comfortable circumstances, seeing this, withdraw their children or never send them; the school thus receives the name of a school for the poor, and its usefulness is destroyed. This example is one that represents nearly all the free schools in the State, as well in the country, as in the cities and towns.

Another and much larger number of the districts, adopt a practice of which the following is an example.

The district has funds which would pay a teacher one quarter or less; but in order to keep up a school as long as possible, it is divided between two or more quarters; the teacher makes his estimate of the amount, besides public money, that must be paid by each scholar, and gets his subscription accordingly. Here none send but those who can pay the balance; of course, the children of the poor, the very intemperate and careless, with sometimes the inordinate lovers of money, arc left at home. This mode, though it defeats the primary object of the law, really secures a greater aggregate amount of instruction than the other. Another class proceeds on the same plan, with the exception that the teacher is bound to take the very poor free, if they prove their total inability to pay. This is but little, if any, better than the last, since the poor woman must humble herself, and in effect take the benefit of the poor law, before she can get her children into school; and then, both she and her children must suffer, constantly, deep mortification, which frequently drives from the school some of the most promising children, who (right or wrong) are too proud to brook such humiliating conditions. It effectually banishes the children of those who love money better than learning, as well as those of the intemperate, whose sensibilities are too much vitiated to care for this subject at all. Besides, if the poor go on these terms, it invariably crowds the school to a ruinous extent; and if the teacher cannot instruct all, he will, of course, take care of his patrons first; let him be as honest as he may, he will endeavor to satisfy those that support him; and the poor, whose conscientiousness of poverty always make them jealous and watchful, detect the smallest partiality, and leave the school in disgust, or stay to scatter the seeds of discontent and insubordination. Another part of this class is, where the directors agree with the teacher at so much per month, and, after expending the school money, levy, under the statute, a tax on the scholars for the residue, sometimes admitting the poor, and sometimes rejecting all that are unable to pay the difference.

In some towns, all the teachers receive a portion of the public money at the rate of so much per scholar, which they deduct from the subscription price. In these cases, the schools arc all strictly private, and no provision whatever is made for the poor. The officers in one place where this practice prevails, said that "if the schools were free, they would be so crowded as to be useless, unless they had more funds; but, by the mode they adopted, every man who sent to school, got a part of the public money;" if he was not able to pay the balance, he was punished by losing the whole; which is certainly a bad feature in the practice, and a gross violation of law. Another custom is not to draw the school money for several years, and then say once in two or three years, they can keep a crowded free school from three to six months. In some places public schools have not been taught this two years. These examples give the practice of all the school districts in the State; the second and third named prevail the most generally; but it is not uncommon to find all the examples adopted in different districts in the same township.

No correct idea can be given of the particular system of instruction adopted in the schools; it embraces almost every system; and in our public, as well as in our private schools, is found every variety from the very best, to those esteemed the most defective. But a small proportion of schools in the State have sufficient permanence to have adopted any specific plan, nor is it possible to produce or preserve any thing like system, until the schools have more permanence, and the art of teaching is recognized as something valuable.

In towns and large villages, the common schools arc poorer than in the country. In the latter, neighborhoods depend more on them, and of course take a deeper interest in their control; while in the former, there is too frequently but little attention paid to these schools, by persons able to provide other means of instruction. Private schools are considered the best, and being patronized by the wealthy, create a distinction that is ruinous. I am unwilling to repeat the remarks in reference to this point, that I have often heard made; it may be sufficient to say, that in many instances, the whole tendency is to bring the schools into disrepute, if not positive disgrace.

6. Horace Mann's advocacy of common schools, 1838

Massachusetts, Board of Education, First Annual Report (Boston, 1838), pp. 46-51, 53-57.

Mann's work from 1837 to 1848 as secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education established him as the leading champion of common schools. In his reports he took up the major educational issues of the time.

Another topic ... is the apathy of the people themselves towards our common schools. The wide usefulness of which this institution is capable is shorn away on both sides, by two causes diametrically opposite. On one side there is a portion of the community who do not attach sufficient value to the system to do the things necessary to its healthful and energetic working. They may say excellent things about it, they may have a conviction of its general utility; but they do not understand, that the wisest conversation not embodied in action, that convictions too gentle and quiet to coerce performance, are little better than worthless. The prosperity of the system always requires some labor. It requires a conciliatory disposition, and oftentimes a little sacrifice of personal preferences. A disagreement about the location of a school-house, for instance, may occasion the division of a district, and thus inflict permanent impotency upon each of its parts. In such cases, a spirit of forbearance and compromise averting the evil, would double the common fund of knowledge for every child in the territory. Except in those cases, where it is made necessary by the number of the scholars, the dismemberment of a district, though it may leave the body, drains out its life-blood. So through remissness or ignorance on the part of parent and teacher, the minds of children may never be awakened to a consciousness of having, within themselves, blessed treasures of innate and noble faculties, far richer than any outward possessions can be; they may never be supplied with any foretaste of the enduring satisfactions of knowledge; and hence, they may attend school for the allotted period, merely as so many male and female automata, between four and sixteen years of age . . .It is generally believed, that there is an increasing class of people amongst us, who are losing sight of the necessity of securing ample opportunities for the education of their children. And thus, on one side, the institution of common schools is losing its natural support, if it be not incurring actual opposition.

Opposite to this class, who tolerate, from apathy, a depression in the common schools, there is another class who affix so high a value upon the culture of their children, and understand so well the necessity of a skilful preparation of means for its bestowment, that they turn away from the common schools, in their depressed state, and seek, elsewhere, the helps of a more enlarged and thorough education. Thus the standard, in descending to a point corresponding with the views and wants of one portion of society, falls below the demands and the regards of another. Out of different feelings grow different plans; and while one remains fully content with the common school, the other builds up the private school or the academy. The education fund is thus divided into two parts. Neither of the halves does a quarter of the good which might be accomplished by a union of the whole. One party pays an adequate price, but has a poor school; the other has a good school, but at more than four-fold cost. Were their funds and their interest combined, the poorer school might be as good as the best; and the dearest almost as low as the cheapest. This last mentioned class embraces a considerable portion, perhaps a majority of the wealthy persons in the state; but it also includes another portion, numerically much greater, who, whether rich or poor, have a true perception of the sources of their children's individual and domestic well-being, and who consider the common necessaries of their life, their food and fuel and clothes, and all their bodily comforts as superfluities, compared with the paramount necessity of a proper mental and moral culture of their offspring.

The maintenance of free schools rests wholly upon the social principle. It is emphatically a case where men, individually powerless, are collectively strong. The population of Massachusetts, being more than eighty to the square mile, gives it the power of maintaining common schools. Take the whole range of the western and southwestern states, and their population, probably, does not exceed a dozen or fifteen to the square mile. Hence, except in favorable localities, common schools are impossible; as the population upon a territory of convenient size for a district, is too small to sustain a school. Here, nothing is easier. But by dividing our funds, we cast away our natural advantages. We voluntarily reduce ourselves to the feebleness of a state, having but half our density of population.

It is generally supposed, that this severance of interests, and consequent diminution of power, have increased much of late, and are now increasing in an accelerated ratio. This is probable, for it is a self-aggravating evil. Its origin and progress are simple and uniform. Some few persons in a village or town, finding the advantages of the common school inadequate to their wants, unite to establish a private one. They transfer their children from the former to the latter. The heart goes with the treasure. The common school ceases to be visited by those whose children are in the private. Such parents decline serving as committee men. They have now no personal motive to vote for or advocate any increase of the town's annual appropriation for schools; to say nothing of the temptation to discourage such increase in indirect ways, or even to vote directly against it. If, by this means, some of the best scholars happen to be taken from the common school, the standard of that school is lowered. The lower classes in a school have no abstract standard of excellence, and seldom aim at higher attainments than such as they daily witness. All children, like all men, rise easily to the common level. There, the mass stop; strong minds only ascend higher. But raise the standard, and, by a spontaneous movement, the mass will rise again and reach it. Hence the removal of the most forward scholars from a school is not a small misfortune. Again; the teacher of the common school rarely visits or associates except where the scholars of his own school are the origin of the acquaintance, and the bond of attachment. All this inevitably depresses and degrades the common school. In this depressed and degraded state, another portion of the parents find it, in fitness and adequacy, inferior to their wants; and, as there is now a private school in the neighborhood, the strength of the inducement, and the facility of the transfer, overbalance the objection of increased expense, and the doors of the common school close, at once, upon their children, and upon their interest in its welfare. Thus another blow is dealt; then others escape; action and reaction alternate, until the common school is left to the management of those, who have not the desire or the power either to improve it or to command a better. Under this silent, but rapid corrosion, it recently happened, in one of the most nourishing towns of the state, having a population of more than three thousand persons, that the principal district school actually run down and was not kept for two years. I have been repeatedly assured, where every bias of my informants would lead them to extenuate and not to magnify the facts, that, in populous villages and central districts, where there is naturally a concentration of wealth and intelligence, and a juster appreciation of the blessings of a good education, and where, therefore, the common school ought to be the best in the town, it was the poorest.

Some objections are urged, on both sides, to a restitution of our system to its original design; but, as they are anti-social in their nature, they must be dissipated by a more enlarged view of the subject. Citizens, living remote from the place, where the town school would probably be kept, allege the difference in the distances of residence, and the consequent inequality of advantages, derivable from it, as arguments against its maintenance. They, therefore, resist its establishment, and thus extinguish all chances of a better education for a vast majority of the children in the town, whatever may be their talents or genius. They debar some, perhaps their own offspring, from the means of reaching a higher sphere of usefulness and honor. They forbid their taking the first steps, which are as necessary as the last, in the ascension to excellence. They surrender every vantage ground to those who can and will, in any event, command the means of a higher education for their children. Because the balance of advantages cannot be mathematically adjusted, as in the nature of things it cannot be, they cast their own shares into the adverse scale; as though it were some compensation, when there is not an absolute equality, to make the inequality absolute. The cost of education is nothing to the rich, while the means of it are every thing to the poor.

On the other hand, the patrons of the private school plead the moral necessity of sustaining it, because, they say, some of the children in the public school are so addicted to profanity or obscenity, so prone to trickishness or to vulgar and mischievous habits, as to render a removal of their own children from such contaminating influences an obligatory precaution. But would such objectors bestow that guardian care, that parental watchful ness upon the common schools, which an institution, so wide and deep-reaching in its influences, demands of all intelligent men, might not these repellent causes be mainly abolished? Reforms ought to be originated and carried forward by the intelligent portion of society; by those who can see most links in the chain of causes and effects; and that intelligence is false to its high trusts, which stands aloof from the labor of enlightening the ignorant and ameliorating the condition of the unfortunate. And what a vision must rise before the minds of all men, endued with the least glimmer of foresight, in the reflection, that, after a few swift years, those children, whose welfare they now discard, and whose associations they deprecate, will constitute more than five-sixths of the whole body of that community, of which their own children will be only a feeble minority, vulnerable at every point, and utterly incapable of finding a hiding-place for any earthly treasure, where the witness, the juror and the voter cannot reach and annihilate it!

The theory of our laws and institutions undoubtedly is, first, that in every district of every town in the Commonwealth, there should be a free district school, sufficiently safe, and sufficiently good, for all the children within its territory, where they may be well instructed in the rudiments of knowledge, formed to propriety of demeanor, and imbued with the principles of duty: and, secondly, in regard to every town, having such an increased population as implies the possession of sufficient wealth, that there should be a school of an advanced character, offering an equal welcome to each one of the same children, whom a peculiar destination, or an impelling spirit of genius, shall send to its open doors, — especially to the children of the poor, who cannot incur the expenses of a residence from home in order to attend such a school. It is on this common platform, that a general acquaintanceship should be formed between the children of the same neighborhood. It is here, that the affinities of a common nature should unite them together so as to give the advantages of pre-occupancy and a stable possession to fraternal feelings, against the alienating competitions of subsequent life.

After the state shall have secured to all its children, that basis of knowledge and morality, which is indispensable to its own security; after it shall have supplied them with the instruments of that individual prosperity, whose aggregate will constitute its own social prosperity; then they may be emancipated from its tutelage, each one to go withersoever his well-instructed mind shall determine. At this point, seminaries for higher learning, academies and universities, should stand ready to receive, at private cost, all whose path to any ultimate destination may lie through their halls. Subject, of course, to many exceptions; — all, however, inconsiderable, compared with the generality of the rule, — this is the paternal and comprehensive theory of our institutions; and, is it possible, that a practical contradiction of this theory can be wise, until another shall be devised, offering some chances at least of equally valuable results?

Amongst any people, sufficiently advanced in intelligence, to perceive, that hereditary opinions on religious subjects are not always coincident with truth, it cannot be overlooked, that the tendency of the private school system is to assimilate our modes of education to those of England, where churchmen and dissenters, —each sect according to its own creed,—maintain separate schools, in which children are taught, from their tenderest years to wield the sword of polemics with fatal dexterity; and where the gospel, instead of being a temple of peace, is converted into an armory of deadly weapons, for social, interminable warfare. Of such disastrous consequences, there is but one remedy and one preventive. It is the elevation of the common schools. Until that is accomplished (for which, however, they ought to cooperate), those who are able, not only will, but they are bound by the highest obligations, to provide surer and better means for the education of their children.

It ought not to be omitted, that it is urged, in defence of the private school system, that it is preparing a class of better teachers for the common schools than they could otherwise obtain. Suppose, however, that the common schools were what they should be, could not they prepare the teachers as well?

I trust I shall not be deemed to have given an undue importance to the different interests involved in this topic, when it is considered that more than five-sixths of the children in the state are dependant upon the common schools for instruction, and would have no substitute if they became valueless; while less than one-sixth are educated in the private schools and academies, and these would be educated, even if the common schools were abolished. To hold one-sixth of the children to be equal to five-sixths, I should deem to be as great an error in morals as it would be in arithmetic.

1. A conservative politician's estimation of the social utility of popular education, 1820 Daniel Webster, "First Settlement of New England," in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (Boston, 1851), I, 41-42.

Webster (1782-1852) was practicing law in Boston when he delivered this address at Plymouth on December 22, 1820.

I must yet advert to another most interesting topic,—the Free Schools. In this particular, New England may be allowed to claim, I think, a merit of a peculiar character. She early adopted, and has constantly maintained the principle, that it is the undoubted right and the bounden duty of government to provide for the instruction of all youth. That which is elsewhere left to chance or to charity, we secure by law. For the purpose of public instruction, we hold every man subject to taxation in proportion to his property, and we look not to the question, whether he himself have, or have not, children to be benefited by the education for which he pays. We regard it as a wise and liberal system of police, by which property, and life, and the peace of society are secured. We seek to prevent in some measure the extension of the penal code, by inspiring a salutary and conservative principle of virtue and of knowledge in an early age. We strive to excite a feeling of respectability, and a sense of character, by enlarging the capacity and increasing the sphere of intellectual enjoyment. By general instruction, we seek, as far as possible, to purify the whole moral atmosphere; to keep good sentiments uppermost, and to turn the strong current of feeling and opinion, as well as the censure of the law and the denunciations of religion, against immorality and crime. We hope for a security beyond the law, and above the law, in the prevalence of an enlightened and well-principled moral sentiment. We hope to continue and prolong the time, when, in the villages and farmhouses of New England, there may be undisturbed sleep within unbarred doors. And knowing that our government rests directly on the public will, in order that we may preserve it we endeavor to give a safe and proper direction to that public will. We do not, indeed, expect all men to be philosophers or statesmen; but we confidently trust, and our expectation of the duration of our system of government rests on that trust, that, by the diffusion of general knowledge and good and virtuous sentiments, the political fabric may be secure, as well against open violence and overthrow, as against the slow, but sure, undermining of licentiousness.

2. Public education as a way of securing social unity, 1824

James G. Carter, Letters to the Honorable William Prescott . . . on the Free Schools of New England (Boston, 1824), pp. 44-46.

Carter (1795-1849), teacher, author of textbooks, publicist, and politician, was the pioneer of educational reform in Massachusetts.

In publick and large seminaries of learning, which bring together young men from different towns, states, and sections of the country, the change in habits, manners, and feelings towards each other, is astonishingly rapid. They come together with feelings and prejudices, and oftentimes with a dialect peculiar to the different places, from which they come, and each staring and wondering at the excessive strangeness of the other. But a very short time loosens their local prejudices, and teaches them, that all excellence is not peculiar to any one place. The whole exterior and deportment of the young man is often almost entirely transformed, in the short space of a few weeks. The change and improvement in this respect are more rapid at first, and quite as important and valuable to him, as his acquisitions in knowledge. What has a more direct tendency to improve "the manners" and deportment of the children, who attend our schools, than to observe some refinement in their instructer? Such is the personal influence of an instructer in a common school, that whether he is refined or vulgar, or whether he attends to the manners of his pupils or not, his manners will infallibly be imitated and copied by all, for the time, as a model of perfection. The different sections of our country are more free from dialects of the same language than any other in the world. What has produced this uniformity of language, so desirable on every consideration, but our public and common seminaries of learning, — the frequent and intimate commercial and literary intercourse between different parts of the country, — and the numerous points of contact between the educated and uneducated parts of the community? For the interest and happiness of the whole, and especially, the lower and uneducated classes of the community, it is certainly desirable these points of contact and intercourse should be multiplied, rather than diminished. For these reasons, the employment of instructers in our schools, who have had the advantages of some publick school or college, is an object of great consideration. Besides being the most direct and effectual means, of inculcating "decent behaviour," — of reconciling the prejudices of different parts of the country, and different classes of the community; there is still another point of view, in which the measure is not less important. It tends more than any thing else, to lessen the distance and weaken the jealousies, which very generally subsist between the educated and uneducated. The talents and acquirements of a young man of publick education are often lost to the unlettered community for some years, while they have a delicious season of mutually hating and despising each other. These evils are in some degree obviated, when, by the kind of interourse usually subsisting between a publick instructer and the publick, they are taught by experience their mutual worth and dependence as members of the same body politick.

3. The failure to educate the children of the poor, 1838

Ohio, First Annual Report of the Superintendent of Common Schools, pp. 16-18.

Though a great majority of our citizens are enlightened and intelligent, it must be admitted, that quite a number do not regard the education of their children with sufficient interest to induce proper individual action; and unless provision for these, other than parental, be made, they will be even worse situated, in many cases, than the orphan. It is common to say of these, 'They could educate their children, if they would": but visits to the houses of many people, in different counties, of whom this was said, would satisfy any man, as it has satisfied me, that if they paid for schooling, it must be taken from the already too scanty fare of an unfortunate wife and poorly provided family. In many cases, you may as well charge fifteen dollars per quarter, as fifty cents. They cannot, if they would, and too many would not, if they could, pay, as individuals, any thing.

If such fathers were the only sufferers, we might be excused from labors to avert the evil; but such parents will have left the world, long before society will feel its full extent.

The children are not to blame; nor are the children of those in other circumstances, guilty of any offence that will justify their fathers in fixing upon them a great moral contagion, destroying their best interests.

The children of those several classes (and there are not a few) are practically shut out of our common schools, in nine cases out of ten, in the State. For it makes but little difference, whether we positively prohibit their attendance, or prescribe such conditions as preclude them. Nor is it a question that can influence us, whether they are correct in their views. So long as those views operate the hindrance, it is the same thing to the public. It is not by any means certain, that we should discourage a feeling of independence, in parents or children. A magnanimous friend, in doing the greatest favor, seeks how he may do it so delicately, that the favored party may not feel himself oppressed with a sense of obligation.

Though common school is a civil, rather than charitable institution, it must be admitted that a primary object is, to bring under a wholesome influence, the classes of children I have named.

Whether we regard this subject in reference to their interest, or that of the whole people forming the State, it is of too much importance to be passed over lightly, or justify, for a moment, the conclusion that any portion of the rising generation, on whom must devolve the government of the country, can be abandoned to accident or certain ruin. Men may discourse eloquently about family instruction, and fireside education: it is all good; better than orators have spoken, or poets sung. But we must not be misled by eloquence or poetry. The fact is, a large part of our fellow citizens, who depend on their labor for a support (and they are the majority) have no time for much of this, if they had ability. If we should rise in the morning, and before our little ones were even dressed, hurry to our work, and devote the entire day to it, returning when our fatigued bodies, without other aid, admonished us of approaching night, we should be exceptions to all general rules, if we could undertake the instruction of our sons by candle light. And the cases of three-fifths of our mothers, is still harder. Their labor begins on the first move in the house, nor ends until the last candle is out. They have, emphatically, no time to educate their daughters. Exceptions, we know, there are; persons who have risen above all these obstacles, and educated both themselves and their families. But we must stop until at least one generation shall be educated, before we can expect to make the exceptions, the general rule. We should, in providing for the people, look to their present condition as a body, and not to what they should be according to the perfection of a few characters, perhaps over-drawn, if they ever existed, except in the inventive genius of vivid imaginations. I do not place a low estimate on the capacity of my countrymen; but it is out of their power to do the labor that custom requires of them, and do much toward educating their children at home. A very great number declare they cannot, if they had time.

4. Horace Mann analyzes the American moral crisis and calls for its solution by a new education, 1846

Massachusetts, Board of Education, Ninth Annual Report (1846), pp. 75-76.

Now it is too obvious to need remark, that the main tendency of institutions and of a state of society, like those here depicted, is to cultivate the intellect and to inflame the passions, rather than to teach humility and lowliness to the heart. Our civil and social condition holds out splendid rewards for the competitions of talent, rather than motives for the practice of virtue. It sharpens the perceptive faculties, in comparing different objects of desire; it exercises the judgment in arranging means for the production of ends; it gives a grasp of thought and a power of combination, which nothing else could so effectively impart; but, on the other hand, it tends not merely to the neglect of the moral nature, but to an invasion of its rights, to a disregard of its laws, and, in cases of conflict, to the silencing of its remonstrances and the denial of its sovereignty.

And has not experience proved what reason might have predicted? Within the last half century, has not speculation, to a fearful extent, taken the place of honest industry? Has not the glare of wealth so dazzled the public eye, as often to blind it to the fraudulent means by which the wealth itself had been procured? Have not men been honored for the offices of dignity and patronage they have held, rather than for the ever-during qualities of probity, fidelity, and intelligence, which alone are meritorious considerations for places of honor and power? In the Moral Price Current of the nation, has not Intellect been rising, while Virtue has been sinking in value? Though the nation, as a nation, and a very great majority of the States composing it, have performed all their pecuniary obligations, and preserved their reputation unsullied; yet have there not been great communities, acting through legislators, whom they themselves had chosen, that have been guilty of such enormous breaches of plighted faith, as would cause the expulsion of a robber from his brotherhood of bandits?

And who will say, even of the most favored portions of our country, that their advancement in moral excellence, in probity, in purity, and in the practical exemplification of the virtues of a Christian life, has kept pace with their progress in outward conveniences and embellishments? Can Virtue recount as many triumphs in the moral world, as Intellect has won in the material? Can our advances towards perfection, in the cultivation of private and domestic virtues, and in the feeling of brotherhood and kindness towards all the members of our households, bear comparison with the improvements in our dwellings, our furniture, or our equipage? Have our charities for the poor, the debased, the ignorant, been multiplied in proportion to our revenues? Have we subdued low vices, low indulgences and selfish feelings, and have we fertilized the waste places in the human heart, as extensively as we have converted the wilderness into plenteous harvest fields, or enlisted the running waters in our service? In fine, have the mightier and swifter agencies which we have created, or applied, in the material world, any parallel, in new spiritual instrumentalities by which truth can be more rapidly diffused, by which the high places of iniquity can be brought low, or its crooked ways made straight?

Must it not be acknowledged, that, morally speaking, we stand in arrears to the age in which we live; and must not some new measures be adopted, by which, as philanthropists and Christians, we can redeem our forfeited obligations?

While then, the legislator continues to denounce his penalties against such wicked desires as break out into actual transgression; and while the judge continues to punish the small portion of offences that can be proved in court; the friends of Education must do whatever can be done, to diminish the terrible necessity of the penal law, and the judicial condemnation.

5. Mann asserts a natural right to education and points out the limitations it places on the rights of property, 1847

Massachusetts, Board of Education, Tenth Annual Report (1847),pp. 111-113, 119-120, 124-125.

I believe that this amazing dereliction from duty, especially in our own country, originates more in the false notions which men entertain respecting the nature of their right to property, than in any thing else. In the district school meeting, in the town meeting, in legislative halls, every where, the advocates for a more generous education could carry their respective audiences with them in behalf of increased privileges for our children, were it not instinctively foreseen that increased privileges must be followed by increased taxation. Against this obstacle argument falls dead. The rich man, who has no children, declares it to be an invasion of his rights of property to exact a contribution from him to educate the children of his neighbor. The man who has reared and educated a family of children denounces it as a double tax, when he is called upon to assist in educating the children of others also; or, if he has reared his own children, without educating them, he thinks it peculiarly oppressive to be obliged to do for others, what he refrained from doing even for himself. Another, having children, but disdaining to educate them with the common mass, withdraws them from the Public School, puts them under what he calls "selecter influences," and then thinks it a grievance to be obliged to support a school which he contemns. Or if these different parties so far yield to the force of traditionary sentiment and usage, and to the public opinion around them, as to consent to do something for the cause, they soon reach the limit of expense where their admitted obligation, or their alleged charity, terminates.

It seems not irrelevant, therefore, in this connection, to inquire into the nature of a man's right to the property he possesses, and to satisfy ourselves respecting the question, whether any man has such an indefeasible title to his estates, or such an absolute ownership of them, as renders it unjust in the government to assess upon him his share of the expenses of educating the children of the community, up to such a point as the nature of the institutions under which he lives, and the well-being of society require.

I believe in the existence of a great, immutable principle of natural law, or natural ethics, --a principle antecedent to all human institutions and incapable of being abrogated by any ordinances of man, — a principle of divine origin, clearly legible in the ways of Providence as those ways arc manifested in the order of nature and in the history of the race, —which proves the absolute right of every human being that comes into the world to an education; and which, of course, proves the correlative duty of every government to sec that the means of that education are provided for all.

In regard to the application of this principle of natural law, — that is, in regard to the extent of the education to be provided for all, at the public expense,—some differences of opinion may fairly exist, under different political organizations; but under a republican government, it seems clear that the minimum of this education can never be less than such as is sufficient to qualify each citizen for the civil and social duties he will be called to discharge; — such an education as teaches the individual the great laws of bodily health; as qualifies for the fulfilment of parental duties; as is indispensable for the civil functions of a witness or a juror; as is necessary for the voter in municipal affairs; and finally, for the faithful and conscientious discharge of all those duties which devolve upon the inheritor of a portion of the sovereignty of this great republic.

The will of God, as conspicuously manifested in the order of nature, and in the relations which he has established among men, places the right of every child that is born into the world to such a degree of education as will enable him, and, as far as possible, will predispose him, to perform all domestic, social, civil and moral duties, upon the same clear ground of natural law and equity, as it places a child's right, upon his first coming into the world, to distend his lungs with a portion of the common air, or to open his eyes to the common light, or to receive that shelter, protection and nourishment which are necessary to the continuance of his bodily existence. And so far is it from being a wrong or a hardship, to demand of the possessors of property their respective shares for the prosecution of this divinely-ordained work, that they themselves are guilty of the most far-reaching injustice, who seek to resist or to evade the contribution. The complainers are the wrongdoers. The cry, "Stop thief," comes from the thief himself.

But sometimes, the rich farmer, the opulent manufacturer, or the capitalist, when sorely pressed with his legal and moral obligation, to contribute a portion of his means for the education of the young, replies, — either in form or in spirit; — "My lands, my machinery, my gold and my silver, arc mine; may not I do what I will with my own?" There is one supposable case, and only one, where this argument would have plausibility. If it were made by an isolated, solitary being, — a being having no relations to a community around him. having no ancestors to whom he had been indebted for ninety-nine parts in every hundred of all he possesses, and expecting to leave no posterity after him, — it might not be easy to answer it. If there were but one family in this western hemisphere, and one only in the eastern hemisphere, and these two families bore no civil and social relations to each other, and were to be the first and last of the whole race, it might be difficult, except on very high and almost transcendental grounds, for either one of them to show good cause why the other should contribute to help to educate children not his own ... In self-defence, or in selfishness, one might say to the other, "What are your fortunes to me? You can neither benefit nor molest me ... But is this the relation which any man amongst us sustains to his fellows? In the midst of a populous community to which he is bound by innumerable ties, having had his own fortune and condition almost predetermined and foreordained by his predecessors, and being about to exert upon his successors as commanding an influence as has been exerted upon himself, the objector can no longer shrink into his individuality, and disclaim connection and relationship with the world. He cannot deny that there are thousands around him on whom he acts, and who arc continually reacting upon him. The earth is much too small, or the race is far too numerous, to allow us to be hermits, and therefore we cannot adopt either the philosophy or the morals of hermits. All have derived benefits from their ancestors, and all are bound, as by an oath, to transmit those benefits, even in an improved condition, to posterity. We may as well attempt to escape from our own personal identity, as to shake off the three-fold relation which we bear to others, — the relation of an associate with our contemporaries; of a beneficiary of our ancestors; of a guardian to those who, in the sublime order of Providence, arc to follow us. Out of these relations, manifest duties are evolved. The society of which we necessarily constitute a part, must be preserved; and, in order to preserve it, we must not look merely to what one individual or family needs, but to what the whole community needs; not merely to what one generation needs, but to the wants of a succession of generations. To draw conclusions without considering these facts, is to leave out the most important part of the premises.

All moralists agree, nay, all moralists maintain, that a man is as responsible for his omissions as for his commissions; — that he is as guilty of the wrong which he could have prevented, but did not, as for that which his own hand has perpetrated. They then, who knowingly withhold sustenance from a newborn child, and he dies, are guilty of infanticide. And, by the same reasoning, they who refuse to enlighten the intellect of the rising generation, are guilty of degrading the human race! They who refuse to train up children in the way they should go, are training up incendiaries and madmen to destroy property and life, and to invade and pollute the sanctuaries of society! In a word, if the mind is as real and substantive a part of human existence as the body, then mental attributes during the periods of childhood, demand provision at least as imperatively as bodily appetites. The time when these respective obligations attach, corresponds with the periods when the nurture, whether physical or mental, is needed. As the right of sustenance is of equal date with birth, so the right to intellectual and moral training begins, at least as early as when children are ordinarily sent to school. At that time, then, by the irrepealable law of nature, every child succeeds to so much more of the property of the community as is necessary for his education. He is to receive this, not in the form of lands, or of gold and silver, but in the form of knowledge and a training to good habits. This is one of the steps in the transfer of the property of the present to a succeeding generation. Human sagacity may be at fault in fixing the amount of property to be transferred, or the time when the transfer should be made, to a dollar or to an hour; but certainly, in a republican government, the obligation of the predecessors, and the right of the successors, extend to and embrace the means of such an amount of education as will prepare each individual to perform all the duties which devolve upon him as a man and a citizen. It may go further than this point; certainly, it cannot fall short of it.

6. The Americanizing mission of the schools, 1850

Benjamin Labaree, "The Education Demanded by the Peculiar Character of Our Civil Institutions," in The Lectures Delivered Before the American Institute of Instruction, 1849 (Boston, 1850), pp. 33-35.

Most common school reformers believed the influx of non-English immigrants in the two decades before the Civil War posed a threat to the national unity they sought Labaree (1801-1883) was president of Middlebury College and a writer on educational subjects.

The foreign element, which is becoming so prominent in our social and civil state, demands . . . forbearance and expansiveness of view, on the part of our public men and of the rising generation. The multitude of emigrants from the old world, interfused among our population, is rapidly changing the identity of American character. These strangers come among us, ignorant of our institutions, and unacquainted with the modes of thought and habits of life peculiar to a free people. Accustomed to be restrained by the strong arm of power, and to look upon themselves as belonging to an inferior class of the human race, they suddenly emerge from the darkness of oppression into the light and liberty of freemen. The transition is instantaneous, and admits of no preparation for the new life. Will not this sudden change in their political relations produce a corresponding change in their views respecting personal rights and duties? Would it be strange if in such circumstances, many should mistake lawless freedom from restraint, for true and rational liberty? Shall these adopted citizens become a part of the body politic, and firm supporters of liberal institutions, or will they prove to our republic what the Goths and Huns were to the Roman Empire? The answer to this question depends in a great degree upon the wisdom and fidelity of our teachers and associated influences. They have a two-fold duty to perform in regard to this class of our population. On the one hand they must act the part of master-builders, and by degrees mould these unprepared and uncongenial elements into the form and character which the peculiar nature of the edifice demands, and in due time the youth especially may become intelligent, enterprising and liberal-minded supporters of free institutions. On the other hand, our instructors must prepare our native population for the suitable reception and treatment of these strangers, must teach them to lay aside prejudices and animosities, to meet the newcomers in the spirit of kindness and benevolence, and to enlist their sympathies and good-will on the side of liberty, humanity and truth. If our country is to remain, as it has been, the asylum of the oppressed, and the home of the free, a wise and liberal policy must he pursued towards foreigners; resolute and persevering exertions must be made to engraft them upon the republican stock, and to qualify them for the duties of free and enlightened citizens.

7. Arguments in opposition to common schools, 1830

Editorials in the Philadelphia National Gazette, July 10, 12, Aug. 19, 1830, in John R. Commons et al., eds., A Documentary History of American Industrial Society, V (Cleveland, 1910), 107-112.

We remark the following toast in one of the lists which nearly fill the papers at this season.

"Education and general information — these must indeed constitute our only true National Bulwark. May the day soon come when in point of literary acquirements the poorest peasant shall stand on a level with his more wealthy neighbours.

It is our strong inclination and our obvious interest that literary acquirements should be universal; but we should be guilty of imposture, if we professed to believe in the possibility of that consummation. Literature cannot be acquired without leisure, and wealth gives leisure. Universal opulence, or even competency, is a chimera, as man and society are constituted. There will ever be distinctions of condition, of capacity, of knowledge and ignorance, in spite of all the fond conceits which may be indulged, or the wild projects which may be tried, to the contrary. The "peasant" must labor during those hours of the day, which his wealthy neighbor can give to the abstract culture of his mind; otherwise, the earth would not yield enough for the subsistence of all: the mechanic cannot abandon the operations of his trade, for general studies; if he should, most of the conveniences of life and objects of exchange would be wanting; langour, decay, poverty, discontent would soon be visible among all classes. No government, no statesman, no philanthropist, can furnish what is incompatible with the very organization and being of civil society. Education, the most comprehensive, should be, and is, open to the whole community; but it must cost to every one, time and money; and those are means which every one cannot possess simultaneously. Doubtless, more of education and of information is attainable for all in this republic, than can be had any where else by the poor or the operatives, so called.

It is an old and sound remark, that government cannot provide for the necessities of the People; that it is they who maintain the government, and not the latter the People. Education may be among their necessities; but it is one of that description which the state or national councils cannot supply, except partially and in a limited degree. They may endow public schools for the indigent, and colleges for the most comprehensive and costly scheme of instruction. To create or sustain seminaries for the tuition of all classes — to digest and regulate systems; to adjust and manage details, to render a multitude of schools effective, is beyond their province and power. Education in general must be the work of the intelligence, need, and enterprise of individuals and associations. At present, in nearly all the most populous parts of the United States, it is attainable for nearly all the inhabitants; it is comparatively cheap, and if not the best possible, it is susceptible of improvement and likely to be advanced. Its progress and wider diffusion will depend, not upon government, but on the public spirit, information, liberality and training of the citizens themselves, who may appreciate duly the value of the object as a national good, and as a personal benefit for their children. Some of the writers about universal public instruction and discipline, seem to forget the constitution of modern society, and declaim as if our communities could receive institutions or habits like those of Sparta. The dream embraces grand Republican female academies, to make Roman matrons!

We can readily pardon the editor of the United States Gazette for not perceiving that the scheme of Universal Equal Education at the expense of the State, is virtually "Agrarianism." It would be a compulsory application of the means of the richer, for the direct use of the poorer classes; and so far an arbitrary division of property among them. The declared object is, to procure the opportunity of instruction for the child or children of every citizen- to elevate the standard of the education of the working classes, or equalize the standard for all classes; which would, doubtless, be to lower or narrow that which the rich may now compass. But the most sensible and reflecting possessors of property sufficient to enable them to educate their children in the most liberal and efficacious way, and upon the broadest scale, would prefer to share their means for any other purpose, or in any other mode, than such as would injuriously affect or circumscribe the proficiency of their offspring. A public meeting of "the Mechanics and other Working Men of the City and County of New York," was held in the city, on the 17th inst., and among the principles for which they have "resolved" to contend, we find the following: "In Education — The adoption of a general system of instruction, at the expense of the State, which shall afford to children, however rich or poor, equal means to obtain useful learning. To effect this, it is believed that a system of direct taxation will not be necessary, as the surplus revenue of the State and United States Governments will, in a very few years, afford ample means — but even if it were necessary to resort to direct taxation to accomplish this all-important object, and the amount paid by the wealthy should be far greater than that paid by our less eligibly situated fellow-citizens, an equivalent to them would be found in the increased ability and usefulness of the educated citizen to serve and to promote the best interests of the State; in the increased permanency of our institutions — and in the superior protection of liberty, person and property."

Thus, a direct tax for "the equal means of obtaining useful learning" is not deemed improbable, and it is admitted that the amount which would be paid by the wealthy would be "far greater" than that paid by their "less eligibly situated fellow citizens." Here, we contend, would be the action, if not the name, of the Agrarian system. Authority—that is, the State—is to force the more eligibly situated citizens to contribute a part (which might be very considerable) of their means, for the accommodation of the rest; and this is equivalent to the idea of an actual, compulsory partition of their substance. The more thriving members of the "mechanical and other working classes" would themselves feel the evil of the direct taxation; they would find that they had toiled or the benefit of other families than their own One of the chief excitements to industry among those classes, is the hope of earning the means of educating their children respectably or liberally: that incentive would be removed and the scheme of State and equal education be thus a premium for comparative idleness to be taken out of the pockets of the laborious and conscientious…

We have no confidence in any compulsory equalizations; it has been well observed that they pull down what is above, but never much raise what is below, and often "depress high and low together beneath the level of what was originally the lowest." By no possibility could a perfect equality be procured. A scheme of universal equal education, attempted in reality would be an unexampled bed of Procrustes for the understandings of our youth, and in fact could not be used with any degree of equality of profit, unless the dispositions and circumstances of parents and children were nearly the same; to accomplish which phenomenon in a nation of many millions, engaged in a great variety of pursuits, would be beyond human power…

Political aspects and laws of the common school movement in Pennsylvania

1. Pennsylvania legislators propose a system of common schools, 1834

"Report of the Joint Committee of the two Houses of the Pennsylvania Legislature, on the subject of a System of General Education . . ." in Hazard's Register of Pennsylvania, XIII (1834), 97.

In Pennsylvania, as in many other states, common school reform consisted of replacing pauper schooling at public expense with schools free and open to all

The number of voters in Pennsylvania, unable to read, have been computed…at many thousand; and two thousand five hundred, grow up to be voters annually, who are equally ignorant. In a republican government no voter should be without the rudiments of learning; for aside from political considerations education purifies the morals, and lessens crime. Our philanthropists, who visit our jails have ascertained that more than half the convicts are unable to read. It is better to avert crime by giving instruction to our youth, than punish them when men, as ignorant convicts.

A radical defect in our laws upon the subject of education, is that the public aid now given, and imperfectly given, is confined to the poor. Aware of this, your committee have taken care to exclude the word poor, from the bill which will accompany this report, meaning to make the system general; that is to say to form an educational association between the rich, the comparatively rich, and the destitute. Let them all fare alike in the primary schools receive the same elementary instruction; imbibe the same republican spirit, and be animated by a feeling of perfect equality. In after life, he who is diligent at school, will take his station accordingly, whether born to wealth or not. Common schools, universally established will multiply the chances of success, perhaps of brilliant success, among those who may forever continue ignorant. It is the duty of the State to promote and foster such establishments that done, the career of each youth will depend upon himself. The State will have given the first impulse; good conduct and suitable application must do the rest. Among the indigent some flashing of a mounting genius" may be found; and among both rich and poor, in the course of nature, many no doubt will sink into mediocrity, or beneath it. Yet let them start with equal advantages, leaving no discrimination then or thereafter, but such as nature and study shall produce.

2. Pennsylvania common school law, 1834

"An Act to Establish a General System of Education by Common Schools," 1834—ch. 102, Laws of Pennsylvania of the Session of 1833-1834 (Harrisburg, 1834), pp. 171-174.

The recommendations of the Joint Committee were written into this law providing free schooling for all. The financing scheme was designed to encourage school districts to vote taxes for schools without coercing them. Attendance was not compulsory.

Be it enacted . . . That each . . . district shall contain a competent number of common schools, for the education of every child within the limits thereof, who shall apply, either in person or by his or her parents, guardian or next friend, for admission and instruction.

There shall be held, at the county courthouse in each division, a joint meeting of the county commissioners and one delegate from each board of school directors within said county or school division, in which it shall be decided whether or not a tax for the expenditure of each district be levied; and if a tax be authorized by a majority of the joint meeting, it shall be apportioned among the several districts as county rates and levies are now by law apportioned . . .

The appropriations made for the common schools, by the joint meeting, shall be considered part of the authorized estimates of county expenditures, and shall be levied and collected in the usual manner: Provided, That no tax shall be less in amount than double the funds which may be furnished to said county or school division, as hereinafter directed, out of the treasury of this Commonwealth, in aid of common schools organized according to the provisions of this act ...

When such delegate meeting is organized, the vote on the question of making appropriations for common schools shall be taken by yeas and nays, a record whereof shall be kept by the county commissioners, and if it shall be determined, by a majority of said meeting, that no such appropriation shall be made for any division or county, then all the districts, whose delegates voted in the negative, shall for that year be entitled to no part of the money appropriated by this act, but the whole amount which such division would have been entitled to, had it determined to make such appropriation for common schools by tax, shall go and be appropriated to such district or districts in said division or county, whose delegates voted in the affirmative, in the ratio of the taxable inhabitants of said district . . .

Within twenty days after such joint meeting of the delegates as aforesaid, or at such time as such joint meeting shall fix and determine, if said delegate meeting shall have determined to make an appropriation as aforesaid, the people of the several school districts shall assemble in their respective wards or districts, at the usual place of holding ward or township elections . . . And it shall be in the power of said meeting to decide, by a majority of votes, whether they will raise for the current year a sum in addition to that determined on by the delegate meeting aforesaid, to be applied to the common schools of the said district . . .

3. Thaddeus Stevens' speech in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives opposing repeal of the school law, 1835

Hazard's Register of Pennsylvania, XV (1835), 284-285.

Stevens is often given credit for saving the bill of 1834.

The amendment which is now proposed as a substitute for the school law of last session, is, in my opinion, of a most hateful and degrading character. It is a re-enactment of the pauper law of 1809. It proposes that the assessors shall take a census, and make a record of the poor; This shall be revised, and a new record made by the county commissioners, so that the names of those who have the misfortune to be poor men's children shall be forever preserved, as a distinct class, in the archives of the county! The teacher, too, is to keep in his school a pauper book, and register the names and attendance of poor scholars. Thus pointing out and recording their poverty in the midst of their companions. Sir, hereditary distinctions of rank are sufficiently odious; but that which is founded on poverty is infinitely more so. Such a law should be entitled "an act for branding and marking the poor, so that they may be known from the rich and proud." — Many complain of this tax, not so much on account of its amount, as because it is for the benefit of others and not themselves. This is a mistake. It is for their own benefit, inasmuch as it perpetuates the government, and ensures the due administration of the laws under which they live, and by which their lives and property are protected. Why do they not urge the same objection against all other taxes? The industrious, thrifty, rich farmer pays a heavy county tax to support criminal courts, build jails, and pay sheriffs and jail keepers, and yet probably he never has and never will have any direct personal use of cither. He never gets the worth of his money by being tried for a crime before the court, allowed the privilege of the jail on conviction: or receiving an equivalent from the sheriff or his hangman officers! He cheerfully pays the tax which is necessary to support and punish convicts; but loudly complains of that which goes to prevent his fellow being from becoming criminal, and to obviate the necessity of those humiliating institutions.

This law is often objected to, because its benefits are shared by the children of the profligate spendthrift equally with those of the most industrious and economical habits. It ought to be remembered, that the benefit is bestowed, not upon the erring parents, but the innocent children. Carry out this objection and you punish children for the crimes or misfortunes of their parents. You virtually establish castes and grades founded on no merit of the particular generation, but on the demerits of their ancestors; an aristocracy of the most odious and insolent kind—the aristocracy of wealth and pride.

It is said that its advantages will be unjustly and unequally enjoyed, because the industrious, money-making man keeps his whole family constantly employed, and has but little time for them to spend at school; while the idle man has but little employment for his family and they will constantly attend school. I know sir, that there are some men, whose whole souls are so completely absorbed in the accumulation of wealth; and whose avarice so increases with success that they look upon their very children in no other light than as instruments of gain — that they, as well as the ox and the ass within their gates, are valuable only in proportion to their annual earnings. And according to the present system, the children of such men are reduced almost to an intellectual level with their co-laborers of the brute creation. This law will be of vast advantage to the offspring of such misers. If they are compelled to pay their taxes to support schools, their very meanness will induce them to send their children to them to get the worth of their money. Thus it will extract good out of the very penuriousness of the miser . . .

Why, sir, are the colleges and literary institutions of Pennsylvania now, and ever have been, in a languishing, sickly condition? Why, with a fertile soil and genial climate, has she, in proportion to her population, scarcely one-third as many collegiate students, as cold, barren, New England? The answer is obvious — She has no free schools. Until she shall have, you may in vain endow college after college, they will never be filled; or filled only by students from other states. In New England free school's plant the seeds and the desire of knowledge in every mind, without regard to the wealth of the parent or the texture of the pupil's garments. When the seed thus universally sewn, happens to fall on fertile soil, it springs up and is fostered by a generous public, until it produces its glorious fruit. — Those who have but scanty means and are pursuing a collegiate education, find it necessary to spend a portion of the year in teaching common schools; thus imparting the knowledge which they acquire, they raise the dignity of the employment to a rank which it should always hold, honorable in proportion to the high qualifications necessary for its discharge. Thus devoting a portion of their time to acquiring the means of subsistence, industrious habits are forced upon them, and their minds and bodies become disciplined to a regularity and energy which is seldom the lot of the rich. It is no uncommon occurrence to see the poor man's son, thus encouraged by wise legislation, far outstrip and bear off the laurels from the less industrious heirs of wealth. Some of the ablest men of the present and past days never could have been educated except for that benevolent system.

New York City organizes its public schools

1. The controversy over the religious character of the public schools in New York City, 1842

Governor William H. Seward’s message to the New York state legislature, 1842, in Charles Lincoln, ed., State of New York, Messages from the Governors, III (Albany, 1909), 946-951.

The Public School Society, a private organization with public revenues, had managed the city's schools since 1809 (see above, Part Two, Chap. Ill, sec. B, The Public School Society of New York). Although nondenominational, it required religious instruction sufficiently Protestant in character to force faithful Roman Catholics to keep their children out of its schools. The legislature removed control of the schools from the Society and vested it in a public board of education.

It was among my earliest duties to bring to the notice of the Legislature the neglected condition of many thousand children, including a very large proportion of those of immigrant parentage in our great commercial city; a misfortune then supposed to result from groundless prejudices and omissions of parental duty. Especially desirous at the same time not to disturb in any manner the public schools which seemed to be efficiently conducted, although so many for whom they were established were unwilling to receive their instructions, I suggested, as I thought, in a spirit not inharmonious with our civil and religious institutions, that if necessary, it might be expedient to bring those so excluded from such privileges into schools rendered especially attractive by the sympathies of those to whom the task of instruction should be confided. [1b] It has since been discovered that the magnitude of the evil was not fully known, and that its causes were very imperfectly understood. It will be shown. . . that twenty thousand children in the city of New York, of suitable age, are not at all instructed in any of the public schools, while the whole number in all the residue of the State, not taught in common schools, does not exceed nine thousand. What had been regarded as individual, occasional and accidental prejudices, have proved to be opinions pervading a large mass, including at least one religious communion equally with all others entitled to civil tolerance — opinions cherished through a period of sixteen years, and ripened into a permanent conscientious distrust of the impartiality of the education given in the public schools. This distrust has been rendered still deeper, and more alienating, by a subversion of precious civil rights of those whose consciences are thus offended.

Happily in this, as in other instances, the evil is discovered to have had its origin no deeper than in a departure from the equality of general laws. In our general system of common schools, trustees chosen by taxpaying citizens, levy taxes, build school houses, employ and pay teachers, and govern schools which are subject to visitation by similarly elected inspectors, who certify the qualifications of teachers; and all schools thus constituted participate in just proportion in the public moneys, which are conveyed to them by commissioners also elected by the people. Such schools are found distributed in average spaces of two and a half square miles throughout the inhabited portions of the State, and yet neither popular discontent, nor political strife, nor sectarian discord, has ever disturbed their peaceful instructions or impaired their eminent usefulness. In the public school system of the city, one hundred persons are trustees and inspectors, and by continued consent of the common council, are the dispensers of an annual average sum of $35,000, received from the Common School Fund of the State, and a sum equal to $95,000, derived from an undiscriminating tax upon the real and personal estates of the city. They built school houses chiefly with public funds, they appoint and remove teachers, fix their compensation, and prescribe the moral, intellectual and religious instruction which one-eighth of the rising generation of the State shall be required to receive. Their powers, more effective and far reaching than arc exercised by the municipality of the city, are not derived from the community whose children are educated and whose property is taxed, nor even from the State, which is so great an almoner, and whose welfare is so deeply concerned, but from an incorporated and perpetual association which grants upon pecuniary subscription the privileges even of life membership and yet holds in fee simple the public school edifices, valued at eight hundred thousand dollars. Lest there might be too much responsibility, even to the association, that body can elect only one half of the trustees, and those thus selected appoint their fifty associates.

The philanthropy and patriotism of the present managers of the public schools, and their efficiency in imparting instruction, are cheerfully and gratefully admitted. Nor is it necessary to maintain that agents thus selected will become unfaithful, or that a system that so jealously excludes popular interference, must necessarily be unequal in its operation. It is only insisted that the institution, after a fair and sufficient trial, has failed to gain that broad confidence reposed in the general system of the State, and indispensable o every scheme of universal education. No plan for that purpose can be defended, except on the ground that public instruction is one of the responsibilities of the government. It is, therefore, a manifest legislative duty to correct errors and defects in whatever system is established. In the present case, the failure amounts virtually to an exclusion of all the children thus withheld. I cannot overcome my regret, that every suggestion of amendment encounters so much opposition from those who defend the Public School system of the metropolis, as to show that in their judgment it can admit of no modification, either from tenderness to the consciences or regard to the civil rights of those aggrieved, or even for the reclamation of those for whose culture the State has so munificently provided; as if society must conform itself to the public schools, instead of the public schools adapting themselves to the exigencies of society . . .I submit, therefore, with entire willingness to approve whatever adequate remedy you may propose, the expediency of restoring to the people of the city of New York — what I am sure the people of no other part of the State would, upon any consideration, relinquish –the education of their children. For this purpose it is only necessary to vest the control of the common schools in a board to be composed of commissioners elected by the people; which board shall apportion the school moneys among all the schools, including those now existing, which shall be organized and conducted in conformity to its general regulations and the laws of the State, in the proportion of the number of pupils instructed. It is not left doubtful that the restoration to the common schools of the city, of this simple and equal feature of the common schools of the State, would remove every complaint, and bring into the seminaries the offspring of want and misfortune, presented by a grand jury, on a recent occasion, as neglected children of both sexes, who are found in hordes upon the wharves and in corners of the streets, surrounded by evil associations, disturbing the public peace, committing petty depredations and going from bad to worse, until their course terminates in high crimes and infamy.

This proposition, to gather the young from the streets and wharves into the nurseries which the State, solicitous for her security against ignorance, has prepared for them, has sometimes been treated as a device to appropriate the school fund to the endowment of seminaries for teaching languages and faiths, thus to perpetuate the prejudices it seeks to remove; sometimes as a scheme for dividing that precious fund among an hundred jarring sects, and thus increasing the religious animosities it strives to heal; sometimes as a plan to subvert the prevailing religion and introduce one repugnant to the consciences of our fellow citizens; while in truth, it simply proposes, by enlightening equally the minds of all, to enable them to detect error wherever it may exist, and to reduce uncongenial masses into one intelligent, virtuous, harmonious and happy people. Being now relieved from all such misconceptions, it presents the questions whether it is wiser and more humane to educate the offspring of the poor, than to leave them to grow up in ignorance and vice; whether juvenile vice is more easily eradicated by the court of sessions than by common schools; whether parents have a right to be heard concerning the instruction and instructors of their children, and taxpayers in relation to the expenditure of public funds; whether in a republican government, it is necessary to interpose an independent corporation between the people and the schoolmaster, and whether it is wise and just to disfranchise an entire community of all control over public education, rather than suffer a part to be represented in proportion to its numbers and contributions. Since such considerations are now involved, what has hitherto been discussed as a question of benevolence and of universal education, has become one of equal civil rights, religious tolerance, and liberty of conscience. We could bear with us, in our retirement from public service, no recollection more worthy of being cherished through life, than that of having met such a question in the generous and confiding spirit of our institutions, and decided it upon the immutable principles on which they are based.

1b. Seward had earlier recommended that children should be taught by teachers of their faith and in the languages that they spoke.

2. The legislature responds by requiring that public schools in New York City be nonsectarian, 1842

"An Act to extend to the city and county of New York the provisions of the general act in relation to common schools," 1 842 — ch. 150, Laws of the State of New York . . . (Albany, 1842), pp. 187-188.

All children between the ages of four and sixteen, residing in said city and county, shall be entitled to attend any of the common schools therein; and the parents, guardians, or other persons having the custody or care of such children, shall not be liable to any tax, assessment, or imposition for the tuition of any such children, other than is herein before provided.

The schools of the Public School Society, the New-York Orphan Asylum school, the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum school, the schools of the two Half Orphan Asylums, the school of the Mechanics' School Society, the Harlem school, the Yorkville Public school, the Manhattanville Free school, the Hamilton Free school, the Institution for the Blind, the school connected with the alms house of the said city, and the school of the Association for the Benefit of Colored Orphans, shall be subject to the general jurisdiction of the said commissioners of the respective wards in which any of the said schools now are or hereafter may be located, subject to the direction of the board of education . . .

No school above mentioned, or which shall be organized under this act, in which any religious sectarian doctrine or tenet shall be taught, inculcated, or practised, shall receive any portion of the school moneys to be distributed by this act, as hereinafter provided; and it shall be the duty of the trustees, inspectors, and commissioners of schools in each ward, and of the deputy superintendent of schools, from time to time, and as frequently as need be, to examine and ascertain, and report to the said board of education, whether any religious sectarian doctrine or tenet shall have been taught, inculcated, or practised in any of the schools in their respective wards…

With public schools come attendance laws

1. New York truancy law, 1853

"An act to provide for the care and instruction of idle and truant children," 1853 — ch. 185, Laws of the State of New York (Albany, 1853), pp. 358-360.

Until the passage of general public school attendance laws, truancy laws requiring a citizen's complaint for enforcement were used. This legislation was an instrument for placing abandoned and neglected children in institutions.

1. If any child, between the ages of five and fourteen years, having sufficient bodily health and mental capacity to attend the public schools, shall be found wandering in the streets or lanes of any city or incorporated village, idle and truant, without any lawful occupation, any justice of the peace, police magistrates, or justices of the district courts, in the City of New-York, on complaint thereof by any citizen on oath, shall cause such child to be brought before him for examination, and shall also cause the parent, guardian, or master of such child, if he or she have any, to be notified to attend such examination. And if, on such examination, the complaint shall be satisfactorily established, such justice shall require the parent, guardian, or master to enter into an engagement in writing, to the corporate authorities of the city or village, that he will restrain such child from so wandering about, will keep him or her on his own premises, or in some lawful occupation, and will cause such child to be sent to some school at least four months in each year, until he or she becomes fourteen years old. And such justice may, in his discretion, require security for the faithful performance of such engagement. If such child has no parent, guardian, or master, or none can be found, or if such parent, guardian, or master refuse or neglect, within a reasonable time, to enter into such engagement, and to give such security, if required, such justice shall, by warrant under his hand, commit such child to such place as shall be provided for his or her reception, as hereinafter directed.

2. If such engagement be habitually or intentionally violated, an action may be brought thereon, by the overseers of the poor, or either of them, of such city or village, in the name of the corporate authorities thereof, and on proof of such habitual or intentional violation, the plaintiff shall recover therein a penalty of not more than fifty dollars with costs. And thereupon, the magistrate or court, before whom such recovery shall be had, shall by warrant commit such child to the place so provided for his or her reception, as aforesaid.

3. The corporate authorities of every city and incorporated village shall provide some suitable place for the reception of every child that may be so committed, and for the employment of such child in some useful occupation, and his or her instruction in the elementary branches of an English education, and for his or her proper support and clothing. Every child so received shall be kept in such place until discharged by the overseers of the poor, or the commissioners of the alms-house of such city or village, and may be bound out as an apprentice by them or either of them, with the consent of any justice of the peace, or any of the aldermen of the city, or any trustee of the incorporated village where he may be, in the same manner, for the same periods, and subject to the same provisions, in all respects, as are ... children whose parents have become chargeable on any city or town.

2. Robert M. Hartley, founder and general secretary of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, discusses the New York truancy law of 1853

New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, Annual Report, 1853 (New York, 1853), p. 71.

Why is it that the neglected children of our city have so long furnished the class which endangers life and property among us, and tenants our prisons and penitentiaries? It is because mere moral influence, opposed by parental authority, has been incompetent o effect their recovery; and because previous legislation had shrunk from its high duty in respect to them. The law, which is so omnipotent concerning adults, whose stringent provisions reach our modes of living, — which regulates the steamer, the rail-car, the stage-coach, — the markets which supply our food, — polices our streets, and ordains in what kind of houses we shall not live; which, with almost unlimited power, binds and unbinds the marriage tie, interferes between man and man, husband and wife, brother and sister, — has, until now, failed to extend its protecting care over unprotected and neglected children.

But this anomaly in legislation no longer exists. Our State has the merit of being foremost in this great work of reform, and of thus establishing for itself a lasting memorial of its wisdom and beneficence. By assuming the place of a parent to its helpless children, and undertaking their training, it raises them from the degradation of their previous condition to one of equality with the other pupils of our public schools, while it saves such pupils from the dread of debasement by intercourse with them.

3. The Massachusetts compulsory attendance law of 1852

"An Act concerning the Attendance of Children at School," 1852 — ch. 240, Acts and Resolves Passed by the General Court of Massachusetts . . . 1852 (Boston, 1852), pp. 170-171.

This mandatory legislation replaced an ineffective law of 1850 which had permitted towns to require attendance. Other states did not adopt compulsory attendance legislation until after the Civil War.

Every person who shall have any child under his control, between the ages of eight and fourteen years, shall send such child to some public school within the town or city in which he resides, during at least twelve weeks, if the public schools within such town or city shall be so long kept, in each and every year during which such child shall be under his control, six weeks of which shall be consecutive.

Every person who shall violate the provisions of the first section of this act shall forfeit, to the use of such town or city, a sum not exceeding twenty dollars, to be recovered by complaint or indictment.

It shall be the duty of the school committee in the several towns or cities to inquire into all cases of violation of the first section of this act, and to ascertain of the persons violating the same, the reasons, if any, for such violation, and they shall report such cases, together with such reasons, if any, to the town or city in then-annual report; but they shall not report any cases such as are provided for by the fourth section of this act.

If, upon inquiry by the school committee, it shall appear, or if upon the trial of any complaint or indictment under this act it shall appear, that such child has attended some school, not in the town or city in which he resides, for the time required by this act, or has been otherwise furnished with the means of education for a like period of time, or has already acquired those branches of learning which are taught in common schools, or if it shall appear that his bodily or mental condition has been such as to prevent his attendance at school, or his acquisition of learning for such a period of time, or that the person having the control of such child, is not able, by reason of poverty, to send such child to school, or to furnish him with the means of education, then such person shall be held not to have violated the provisions of this act.

4. School truancy in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1853

Annual Report of the School Committee of the City of Lawrence for the School Year 1853 (Lawrence, 1854), pp. 20-21.

Despite the Massachusetts law of 1852, habitual truancy remained a problem in some industrial towns.

TRUANCY. — This is an alarming evil among us, and demands the serious consideration, not of the Committee alone, but of the whole community. It is not an occasional stolen half day's absence from school that is meant, for the tables given show that to be a very moderate evil, but it is the constant non-attendance at school of a large number of children. From the best available information, I judge that there are now in the city upwards of two hundred boys and girls between five and fifteen years old, who keep aloof from school and have no regular reputable employment. They spend their time in prowling about shops, alleys and backyards, pilfering swill, fuel, old-iron, and such more valuable articles as happen to be unprotected. Still, it can not be said that these children receive no education. Every child is in school learning daily lessons and forming habits which the energy and will of after life will find it difficult if not impossible to break. These two hundred little marauders rarely if ever enter a school of literature and science, of wisdom and virtue; but through each live-long day they are taught by example, and their knowledge fixed by practice, in the school of the street, where the violation of every moral precept and duty form the morning and the evening lesson. This is a subject of much importance when viewed in its minor bearings — the losses from theft, the malicious mischief done to public and private property, the occasional disturbance of schools and religious meetings, and the frequent and increasing insults to women and children; but how much graver does it become when we consider the influence of this "dangerous class" on such virtuous children as are unavoidably brought in contact with its members, and are thus introduced to the Primary School of vice, and when we remember that these uncared for youth will soon be parents and citizens, training up a new generation after their own ideas and exerting an equal power with the most exemplary in determining the character of our institutions ... It would surely seem that our community in which $85,000 is now expending on a prison for adult criminals, might be led from mere considerations of economy to join in obtaining and enforcing some sufficient enactment for the suppression of this great promoter of crime and disorder.

The cause of popular education in the South

1. An open letter addressed to the North Carolina legislature in opposition to public schools, 1829

Raleigh Register, Nov. 9, 1829, in Charles L. Coon, ed., The Beginnings of Public Education in North Carolina (Raleigh, 1908), I, 432-433.

You will probably be asked, Gentlemen, to render some little assistance to the University of our State. But I hope you will strenuously refuse to do this ... It is respectfully submitted . . . whether our good old-field schools are not abundantly sufficient for all our necessities. Our fathers and mothers jogged along uncomplainingly without colleges; and long experience proves them to be very expensive things. The University has already cost the people not a little; and the good it has accomplished thus far is extremely doubtful; if I might not rather allege it to have been productive of mischief. College learned persons give themselves great airs, are proud, and the fewer of them we have amongst us the better. I have long been of the opinion . . . that establishments of this kind are aristocratical in their nature, and evidently opposed to the plain, simple, honest matter-of-fact republicanism, which ought to flourish among us. The branches of learning cultivated in them are, for the most part, of a lofty arrogant and useless sort. Who wants Latin and Greek and abstruse mathematics in these times and in a country like this? Might we not as well patronize alchymy, astrology, heraldry and the black art? . . .It is possible, but not very likely I confess, that you may be solicited to take some steps with regard to the establishment among us of common schools. Should so ridiculous a measure be propounded to you, you will unquestionably, for your own interest, as well as that of your constituents, treat it with the same contemptuous neglect which it has ever met with heretofore. Common schools indeed! Money is very scarce, and the times are unusually hard. Why was such a matter never broached in better and more prosperous days? Gentlemen, it appears to me that schools are sufficiently plenty, and that the people have no desire they should be increased. Those now in operation are not all filled, and it is very doubtful if they are productive of much real benefit. Would it not redound as much to the advantage of young persons, and to the honour of the State, if they should pass their days in the cotton patch, or at the plow, or in the cornfield, instead of being mewed up in a school house, where they are earning nothing? Such an ado as is made in these times about education, surely was never heard of before. Gentlemen, I hope you do not conceive it at all necessary, that everybody should be able to read, write and cipher. If one is to keep a store or a school, or to be a lawyer or physician, such branches may, perhaps, be taught him; though I do not look upon them as by any means indispensable: but if he is to be a plain farmer, or a mechanic, they are of no manner of use, but rather a detriment. There need no arguments to make clear so self-evident a proposition. Should schools be established by law, in all parts of the State, as at the North, our taxes must be considerably increased, possibly to the amount of one per cent. and six pence on a poll; and I will ask any prudent, sane, saving man if he desires his taxes to be higher?

You will doubtless be told that our State is far behind her sisters in things of this sort,--and what does this prove? Merely, that other states are before us; which is their affair, and not ours. We are able to govern ourselves without reference to other members of the confederation; and thus are we perfectly independent. We shall always have reason enough to crow over them, while we have power to say, as I hope we may ever have, that our taxes are lighter than theirs.

2. Virginia permissive school district law 1829

"An Act to amend the several acts concerning the Literary Fund," 1829 — ch. 14, Acts Passed at a General Assembly of . . . Virginia (Richmond, 1829) pp. 13-14.

Be it enacted . . . That whenever the school Commissioners of any county shall believe that the funds appropriated to the education of the poor children of their county, can be employed to advantage in the manner hereinafter designated, it shall be lawful for them to cause their county to be divided into convenient districts . . .

Whenever the inhabitants of any one of the said districts shall, by voluntary contribution, have raised three-fifths of the amount necessary to build, either in the centre, or such other part of their district as may be agreed on with the School Commissioners of their county, a good and sufficient school-house of wood, stone or brick, it shall and may be lawful for the said School Commissioners to appropriate, out of the annual quota of their county, the remaining two-fifths of the amount requisite for said buildings . . .

It shall moreover be lawful for the School Commissioners of any county to appropriate out of the annual quota of their county, a sum not exceeding one hundred dollars, for the employment of a good and sufficient teacher for any school-house vested in the President and Directors of the Literary Fund, in the manner prescribed in the foregoing section, or for any similar school-house erected by the inhabitants of any district in the centre, or such other part of their district as may be agreed on with the said School Commissioners: provided the inhabitants of said district shall raise by voluntary contribution, an equal or greater sum for the same purpose, and shall select no teacher that shall not have been examined and accepted by such person or persons as the School Commissioners may have appointed for that purpose. And provided also, That the said school shall be constituted into a free school for the instruction, without fee or reward, of every free white child within said district

3. A southerner's criticism of permissive legislation on schools and pauper education, 1835

Lucian Minor, "An Address on Education, as Connected With the Permanence of our Republican Institution," Southern Literary Messenger, II (1835), 19-20.

Minor (1802-1858) was a Virginia lawyer, man of letters, temperance reformer, and later professor of law at the College of William and Mary.

A great and obvious difference between our primary school system, and the common-school systems of the northern states, is, that they take in ALL children; while we aim to instruct only the children of the poor; literary paupers. We thus at once create two causes of failure: first, the slight value which men set upon what costs them nothing…second, the mortification to pride (an honest though mistaken pride) in being singled out as an object of charity. As if these fatal errors had not sufficiently ensured the impotence of the scheme, the schools themselves are the least efficient that could be devised Instead of teachers retained expressly for the purpose,-selected, after strict examination into their capacities, and vigilantly superintended afterwards, by competent judges—the poor children are entered by the neighboring commissioner (often himself entirely unqualified either to teach or to direct teaching) in the private school which chance, or the teacher s unfitness for any other employment, combined always with cheapness of price may have already established nearest at hand. There the little protÈgÈ of the commonwealth is thrown amongst pupils, whose parents pay for them and give some heed to their progress; and having no friend to see that he is properly instructed—mortified by the humiliating name of poor scholar—neglected by the teacher—and not rigorously urged to school by anyone—he learns nothing, slackens his attendance and soon quits the temple of science in rooted disgust.

Observe now, I pray you, how precisely the results agree with what might have been foretold, of such a system. In 1833, nearly 33,000 poor children (literary paupers) were found in 100 counties of Virginia; of whom but 17,081 attended school at all: and these 17,081 attended on an average, but SIXTY-FIVE DAYS OF THE YEAR, EACH! The average of learning acquired by each, during those 65 days, would be a curious subject of contemplation: but I know of no arithmetical rule, by which it could be ascertained. That it bears a much less proportion to the reasonable attainments of a full scholastic year, than 65 bears to the number of days in that year, there can be no doubt.

Judging by the number met with in business transactions, who cannot write their names or rend, and considering how many there are whose poverty or sex debars them from such transactions, and lessens their chances of scholarship; we should scarcely exceed the truth in estimating the white adults of Virginia who cannot read or write, at twenty or thirty thousand.

Sagacious men have not been wanting among us to see the radical defects of our primary school system: and in 1829, the late Mr. Fitzhugh of Fairfax, stimulated the Legislature to a feeble effort towards correcting them, by empowering the school commissioners of any county to lay it off into districts of not less than three nor more than seven miles square; and to pay, out of the public fund, two-fifths of the sum requisite for building a school house, and districts, whenever its inhabitants, by voluntary subscription, should raise the residue necessary for these purposes: and the schools thus established were to be open, gratuitously, alike to rich and poor. But the permissive phraseology of this statute completely neutralized its effect. It might have been foreseen, and it unforeseen, that empowering the commissioners to act, and leaving the rest to voluntary contributions, would be unavailing, where the workings of the school system had so long been regarded with apathy. The statute has been acted upon so far as I have learned, in but three counties of the State; remaining, as to the other 107, a dead letter. I have the strongest warrant—that of actual experiment, in New York and in Massachusetts—for saying, that had the law commanded the commissioners to lay off districts in all counties where the census shewed a sufficiently dense white population; and had it then organized in the districts some local authorities, whose duty it should be to levy the needful amount upon their people—I should have been saved the ungracious task of reproaching my county with her want of parental ca