HISTORY
OF EDUCATION
OHN H. JACKSON
Robert W. Woodruff
Library
EMORY UNIVERSITY
Special Collections & Archives
THE AUTHOR.
History of Education
From the GreeKs to the
Present Time
By
John H. JacKson
Ex-President of the KentucKy Normal and Industrial
Institute; also Ex-President of Lincoln Insti¬
tute, Jefferson City, Missouri
Denver
Western Newspaper Union
1903
Dedication
To my sons, Ethelbert, Arthur and Atwood, who passed
into the Great Beyond before they had an opportunity to
speaK for themselves, this hooK is affectionately dedi¬
cated by THE AUTHOR.
Motto: Multum in Parvo.
— 8—
Preface
HIS booK has been prepared especially for the
ambitious teacher, the hopeful editor, and the
general reader.
The design of the author is to give, in an
epitomized form, the history of education from the earli¬
est times to the present, and thus save the reader valua¬
ble time and much labor, as well as to direct the student
properly in more thorough and detailed research.
This booK will embrace a period of more than 2,000
years of educational growth, and will be treated of under
the following captions: (1) The GreeKs, (2) The Romans,
(3) The Middle Ages, (4) The Renaissance, (5) Education in
Europe, (6) Education in the United States, (7) Education
Among the Negro Race.
While the worK is not intended to be in any sense ex¬
haustive, yet the author has endeavored to set forth
clearly the salient points in the world's educational
progress.
It is the earnest desire of the author that those who
read this booK may be benefited, if not instructed, by a
careful perusal of its pages.
Table of Contents
Chapter I. Education Among the Greeks
Page 17
Some Definitions of Education—Plato—Aristotle
—Socrates.
Chapter II. Education Among the Romans
Page 46
Numa—Cicero—Quintillian.
Chapter III. Education in the Middle
Ages ;....Page 71
Charlemagne—Indifference of the Clergy—Scho¬
lasticism—Thomas Aquinas—System of Teach¬
ing—Character of Discipline—The Church Abso¬
lute in Education—Character of Pedagogy.
Chapter IV. Education During the Renais¬
sance Page 82
The Blending of Christianity and Classical Lit¬
erature—Dawn of the New Era—Groote—Eras¬
mus—Ramus—Montaigne—Bacon— Comenius—
ivlelancthon—Luther—Sturm— Ascham—Ratich
The Jesuits—Port Royal Schools—Character of
the Systems of Education.
Chapter Y. Education in Europe. . .Page 103
Age of Great Educators—Pestalozzi—Rousseau s
Emile—Comenius and'Pestalozzi Compared—Re¬
forms in Education—Froebel—Principles of the
Kindergarten —Rosencranz — Jacotot—Dr. Ar¬
nold—Hughes— Hamilton— Payne —Spencer—
Raikes — Difference Between Manual Training
and Trade Schools.
—11—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
Chapter VI. Education in the United
States Page 135
Character of Education During Colonial Times—
Views of the Early Founders of the Republic—
Channing—Mann. Difference Between Euro¬
pean and American Common School Systems—
The Puritans and the Cavaliers Contrasted—Sir
William Berkley—College of William and Mary
Founded—Harvard College—Popular Education
in New England During Colonial limes—Fed¬
eral Aid to Education—Education in the Several
States.
Chapter VII. Education in the United
States Page 159
The Growth of Education Among the Negro Pop¬
ulation—Tables of Statistical Data—Benjamin
Banneker—Booker T. Wasnington—Du Bois—
Scarborough—Dunbar — Chestnut Phyllis
Wheatley—Fannie Jackson Coppin—Anna J.
Cooper—Educational Movements of Colored
Women—Mary Church Terrell.
Chapter VIII. Education Among the Negro
Race Page 182
Wrong Conceptions of Education.
Chapter IX. Universal Education and Univer¬
sal Suffrage Page 194
Home Training—Address of John H. Jackson.
Biographical Sketches of Negro Educators
Page 209
—12—
Introduction
In treating of the History of Education in
the chronological order, as indicated in the
preface, in the judgment of the author the sub¬
ject is made much more simple and compre¬
hensive to the average reader than if some
other more arbitrary division had been selected.
No special mention is made of the systems
of education among the Egyptians, the
Hebrews and the Chinese, however important
and useful their educational ideas and methods
may have been to the world; but for the pur¬
pose of this book the author deems it sufficient
to begin with the educational history of the
Greeks and the Komans, the two nations of
antiquity that have done the most to mould and
to influence the pedagogical thought of our own
times.
INTRODUCTION.
During the Middle Ages, from the eighth to
the fifteenth century, will be noted the remarka¬
ble decline in the spirit of educational growth
from the high standard which had previously
obtained among the Greeks and the Romans.
The views of some of the early fathers of the
Church, and the apparent opposition of Chris¬
tianity as a retarding influence to the growth of
educational sentiment in this age will also be
mentioned.
During the Renaissance, which embraces the
period of what is known as the New Era, or the
Reformation, extending from the fifteenth to
the seventeenth century, we shall witness a
more rapid growth of educational sentiment
under the revival of letters; and the pedagogical
views held and methods of teaching advanced
by some of the most distinguished educators
will be noted.
Under modern times those systems of educa¬
tion, and many of those names in pedagogy will
be mentioned, both in Europe and America,
INTRODUCTION.
that have been tlie means of inaugurating and
preserving whatever is best in schemes of edu¬
cation for child training from past centuries,
with those modifications which are the out¬
growth of experience, and which have been so
fruitful of good results among all civilized na¬
tions.
A special chapter is devoted to the educa¬
tional growth of the Negro race in the United
States, abounding in figures and facts, useful
for reference, which tell of the remarkable edu¬
cational advancement of this race, especially
in the ex-slave states, during a little more than
a third of a century. Several of the most dis¬
tinguished educators of this race, both men and
women, are given, with brief biographical
sketches of their lives, and an account of their
worth to the world as educators.
The plan of the author has followed very
closely the well-known German method of
instruction and research.
As far as possible, important pedagogical
—15—
INTRODUCTION.
events are grouped about the name of that
teacher whose potent personality has infused
educational spirit into his age, and lent a
charm, by his example, to the generation in
which he lived.
—16—
CHAPTER I.
The History of Education Among the Greeks
—Some Definitions of Education—Plato—
Aristotle—Socrates
The history of education is to be distin¬
guished from related branches of education.
Pedagogics, or the science of education, aims
to present the great truths of education, as seen
in the school room, enters into the processes of
mental growth, and is concerned with the best
methods of accomplishing given results.
The history of education is designed to show
what has transpired among nations, along edu¬
cational lines, at certain important periods.
For example, we should endeavor to know what
ideas the Greeks, the Romans and other nations
had upon education, as found in the records left
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
to us by them. Such facts belong properly to
the history of education.
The history of education will also deal with
those systems of education, and methods of in¬
struction, that have obtained in the remote past,
and also with those that have come down to us
through the centuries, with various modifica¬
tions, until we reach the theory and practice of
education now extant among the most enlight¬
ened nations of the world.
As has been said in the preface of this vol¬
ume, the design of this book is to give bare out¬
lines on the history of education for a period of
nearly 2,300 years. Nothing exhaustive will be
promised nor attempted.
If, in a cursory glance, we can give, in very
general outlines, some idea, however faint, of
the main trend of educational growth through
the centuries, we shall consider the effort not to
have been in vain.
In order to trace its growth through the cen¬
turies, it is important in the very beginning to
—18—
AMONG THE GREEKS.
get a proper conception of what education is
as a means rather than as an end upon individu¬
als and nations.
Plato defines education as follows: "Good
education is that which gives to the body and to
the soul all the perfection of which they are
capable."
Cicero used the word education to represent
the earth as the nourisher and educator of all
things.
Tacitus confined the term to the nursing and
training of one in infancy.
Quintillian, probably the ablest educator
among the Latins, applied the term to prepara¬
tory instruction.
The founders of the most popular of modern
systems of education, that of Prussia, define ed¬
ucation to be "the harmonious and equable evo¬
lution of the human powers,"
Bishop Temple expresses what education is,
chiefly as an end, in the following words:
"It is the power whereby the present ever
—19—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
gathers into itself the results of the past, and
transforms the human race into a colossal man
whose life reaches from creation to the judg¬
ment day. The successive generations of men
are days in this man's life. The discovery of
inventions which characterized the different
epochs of the world's history are his works. The
creeds and doctrines, the opinions and princi¬
ples of the successive ages are all his thoughts.
The state of society at different times forms his
manners. He grows in knowledge, in self-con¬
trol, in visible size, just as we do, and his educa¬
tion is in the same way, and for the same rea¬
son, precisely similar to ours."
Profoundly conscious of our inability to do
justice to a subject so vast and so important as
that of a history of education, we shall invite
our readers to review for a few moments the
growth (I was about to say the origin) of educa¬
tion among the Greeks.
While it is true that broad conceptions of
aims and processes in education are modern
—20—
AMONG THE GREEKS.
rather than ancient, and where properly under¬
stood rid one of the idea that education consists
in merely turning over the leaves, of a text-book,
in following dogmatically the courses of study
prescribed in our high schools, colleges and uni¬
versities, in memorizing set formulas, and giving
rules by rote, rather than in the harmonious de¬
velopment of all the mental powers by their joy¬
ous and free exercise in the search of truth, yet
in the methods of Greek training and culture
the student of to-day will find a veritable store¬
house of literary wealth which, though musty
with age, is unusually prolific in the character
and variety of the methods taught, full of the
experience of many of the most profound think¬
ers and of the ablest educators of which antiq¬
uity can boast.
Especially will this be found to be true of
the system of education, as it obtained among
the Athenians, and reaching its culmination
and fruition now in the great and comprehen¬
sive educational systems of modern times.
—21—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
Plato, the earliest of the Grecian philoso¬
phers and educators, divided all children into
four classes, viz.: children of gold, of silver, of
bronze, and of iron.
He held that from the children of gold must
come tlie leaders of the Greek race; hence lie fa¬
vored the education of these children, and paid
little attention to those children of the other
three classes. "Plato's education," says Kein-
liart, "was essentially aristocratic."
He did not think that education would prove
beneficial to the lower classes. To those, how¬
ever, who were fitted by nature to become the
guardians of the state the people must look for
the protection of their rights and the preserva¬
tion of their liberties. "Their natures," said he,
"are different from the natures of other people;
in other words, they are philosophers by na¬
ture."
He had no conception of the doctrine of uni¬
versal education, as it is now held by us> upon
the theory that the state should provide each
—22—
AMONG THE GREEKS.
child within its borders with a common school
education.
But he denied this doctrine most emphat¬
ically in the statement that "only those can be
rulers who have been educated and only those
can be educated whose natures are superior."
The rulers of the state, then, according to
Plato, must come from the children of gold only,
must be from the best class—patricians and ar¬
istocrats—and only such need be trained for the
higher walks of life.
In such a scheme of education we neces¬
sarily find more of the ideal than of the real,
more of the theoretical than of the practical.
Under his scheme there must be a divinely-
appointed better class, a God-given ruling class,
and the masses must exist for no higher, no no¬
bler, no holier purpose than that of serving
these their aristocratic rulers. His scheme min¬
imizes the individual but magnifies the state.
The philosophers represent the wisdom of the
—23—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
state, the warriors its courage, the mob its pas¬
sions which must be controlled.
The children of gold must be educated for
the sole purpose of subserving the interest of
the state in all the higher walks of life.
The branches taught were music, gymnastics,
grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, geometry and
astronomy, which continued through the Ro¬
man period, and lasted, with various, modifica¬
tions, until the close of the Middle Ages.
The Greek day began with sunrise. Boys were
sent to school early in the morning, and a sec¬
ond time after breakfast, being accompanied by
a pedagogue, a faithful slave, who had charge
of their moral training. Six hours a day were
given to study, with occasional holidays, and
the hot time of year given to vacation.
We must not infer, however, that the sub¬
jects taught in the Greek course of study in the
time of Plato meant exactly what a course of
study usually means among us, nor that the
branches contained therein were taught either
—24—
AMONG THE GREEKS.
for the same purpose or in the same way.
Culture was sought for its own sake and
more as a happy diversion by students of leis¬
ure than for purposes of practical utility, as
among us.
While music, gymnastics, and rhetoric meant
more, it is quite probable that grammar, geom¬
etry, philosophy and astronomy meant far less.
In his "Republic" in which he sketches an
ideal state, and an ideal system of education^ it
indeed being the first great treatise upon educa¬
tion, Plato attaches much importance to both
aesthetic and physical culture, music being the
means of attaining the former and gymnastics
the latter.
The physical sciences, as we now know them,
and understand them, were scarcely known to
the ancients.
Astronomy was, for the most part, regarded
as superstitious astrology; arithmetic, simply
the computation of accounts; chemistry was un¬
known.
—25—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
In several respects, the scheme of education,
as understood by Aristotle, who was for seven¬
teen years the pupil of Plato, differed very
much from that of his master.
Aristotle taught at the Lyceum after the
death of Plato, and Avas considered to be the
greatest mind of antiquity. "For twenty cen¬
turies," says Keinhart, "his logical method ruled
with a despotism unparalleled, the minds of Eu¬
rope." This great mind was the creator and
formulator of the science of deductive logic.
His rhetoric deserves to rank among the very
best works upon that subject.
While his principal treatise on education is
lost, yet we find in his other writings that are
extant many remarks on pedagogy.
Aristotle makes the following three divi¬
sions of education: (1) bodily, (2) moral, (3) in-'
tellectual.
He retains music and gymnastics, so prom¬
inent in Plato's scheme of education, but adds
drawing, and regards mathematics as having
—26—
AMONG THE GREEKS.
little moral influence upon the training of pu¬
pils.
As an educator, Aristotle differed from Pla¬
to chiefly in being more scientific in Ms methods
of investigation, and in being more practical in
his researches for knowledge and truth.
He thought the main object in securing an
education wais not for aesthetic purposes, as did
Plato, but to consist chiefly in the attainment of
intellectual and moral force, which, combined,
induce the highest happiness of which man is
capable.
First in liis scheme of education came gym¬
nastics, which are not intended to make men
athletes, nor brutal in their tastes, but for the
production of courage which is to be a golden
mean between the fierceness of the wild animal
and the sluggish inactivity of the abject cow¬
ard. Gymnastics are to be regarded simply as
the means of preparing for the education of the
soul.
He believed thoroughly in the idea of a
—27—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
sound mind in a sound body. The soul was to
be educated chiefly by music, but the term mu¬
sic, as used by the Greeks, was more comprehen¬
sive and far-reaching than #s now used by us.
Music is to be used in a general scheme of ed¬
ucation for one of three purposes as best suited
the individual: (1) for one's proper education as
an artist, a specialist; (2) for the training of the
affections; (3) for the employment of one's lei¬
sure.
The term music was used by the Greeks in-
its generic sense, and was made the principal
means by which appeals were made in order to
cultivate the affections, to direct and to control
the desires, and to curb the animal propensities
in man.
As gymnastics were intended to develop and
to beautify the body, so music was designed to
order, to regulate, and to cultivate the soul.
The term music was used among the Greeks
much in the same sense as we now use the word
—28—
AMONG THE GREEKS.
culture, and included those studies which stim¬
ulate the mind and refine the character.
In connection with poetry, music inspired
the soul with the grandest, with the most lofty
conceptions of courage and virtue.
Browning says, "If a Greek youth had by
continuous practice become stronger than a
bull, more truthful than the Godhead, and wiser
than the most learned Egyptian priest, his fel¬
low citizens would shrug their shoulders at him
with contempt if he did not possess what a
series of music and gymnastics can alone give—
a sense of gracefulness and proportion."
What the Greeks expected to accomplish
through music we now hope to attain by means
of accurate scholarship during a course of
study for several years.
Drawing was considered an important
branch of training by the Greeks in their
scheme of education. It was studied with a
view to encourage and to develop a taste for the
beautiful.
—29—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
While, as lias been suggested, music was
taught for tlie purpose of arousing the affec¬
tions, and cultivating the soul with its finer sen¬
sibilities, the chief aim in the teaching of draw¬
ing was to cultivate a taste for external beau¬
ty, as it is learned by means of the physical or¬
ganism, and as manifested through the senses
of sight and feeling.
Mathematics was taught as a purely intel¬
lectual science, having little or no bearing upon
one's moral nature, while rhetoric and philoso¬
phy were taught for about the same purpose for
which we now teach them, the former to induce
force, accuracy and elegance in spoken and
written forms, and the latter to develop
thought.
The Greeks taught politics, which they re¬
garded as tlie greatest of practical sciences, and
which had for its object the attainment of the
highest good—happiness to the state.
They, however, restricted the study of poli¬
tics to those of mature years who are thoughtful
—30—
AMONG THE GREEKS.
and have deep moral natures, and did not think
it to be a study suitable for the young.
Before the time of Socrates the world had
produced no greater ethical philosopher, no
greater scientific educator than he; in his birth
we are to behold one of the greatest educational
figures in the world's history, greater and
grander than any one who had preceded him,
because he was regarded as the greatest orig¬
inal thinker, most profound reasoner, and ablest
educator among the ancients.
He was the first individual to consider the
claims of intellect as being superior to our
aninfal propensities and bodily desires, and to
consider a thorough knowledge of things rather
than a mere belief in things as being Godlike.
With the breadth of his intellect, and his su¬
perior, overmastering genius, he brushed aside,
as it were, false systems of philosophy, the crude
and theoretical cobwebs of sophistry which,
for ages, had held the minds of men imprisoned
in their frail meshes.
—31—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
He tlius brought daylight out of darkness,
hope out of despair, and in the search of knowl¬
edge for its own sake, evinced the best proof of
man's divine origin and angelic kinship.
Dr. John Lord, in his "Beacon Lights of
History," thus speaks of Socrates:
"To Socrates the world owes a new method
in philosophy and a great example In morals:
and it would be difficult to settle whether his
influence has been greater as a sage or a moral¬
ist. In either light his is one of the august
names of history. He has been venerated for
more than two thousand years as a teacher of
wisdom, and as a martyr for the truths he
taught.
"He did not commit his precious thoughts to
writing; that work was done by his disciples,
even as his exalted worth has been published by
tliem, especially by Plato and Xenophon. And
if the Greek philosophy did not culminate in
him, yet he 1 aid down those principles by which
only it could be advanced.
—32—
AMONG THE ROMANS.
"As a system maker, both Plato and Aristo¬
tle were greater than he; yet for original genius
he was probably their superior, and in import¬
ant respects he was their master. As a good
man, battling with infirmities and temptations
and coming off triumphantly, the ancient world
has furnished no prouder example."
Myers says of him, "He loved to gather a lit¬
tle circle about liim in the Agora or in the
streets, and then draw out his listeners by a
series of ingenious questions. His method was
so peculiar to himself that it has received the
designation of the 'Socratic dialogue.'
"He has very happily been called an edu¬
cator, as opposed to an instructor. In the young
men of his time Socrates found many devoted
pupils. The youthful Alcibiadeis declared that
lie was forced to stop his ears and flee away that
he might not sit down by the side of Socrates
and grow old in listening."
While nature was generous in gifts of the
soul to this great philosopher who has taught
—33—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
the world the purest system of morals, save
that of the Great Teacher, which it has ever
known, yet in the matter of his personal appear¬
ance nature had been very unkind to him.
Dr. Lord, in giving a biographical sketch of
this great philosopher and teacher, says: "Soc¬
rates was born at Athens, 469 B. G. His phys¬
iognomy was ugly and his person repulsive; he
was awkward, obese and ungainly; his nose was
flat, his lips were thick, and his neck large; he
rolled his eyes, went barefooted and wore a
dirty old cloak.
"He was witty, cheerful, good natured, and
jocose. His great peculiarity in conversation
was to ask questions—sometimes to gain infor¬
mation, but oftener to puzzle and raise a laugh.''
Thus to these three profound philosophers
and teachers, Plato, Aristotle and Socrates, the
Greek race, yea, the human race1, is indebted for
most of that which we prize in our great educa¬
tional systems now extant, and for much of that
—34—
AMONG THE1 GREEKS.
which is embraced in the curriculunis of our in¬
stitutions of learning to-day.
While we have earlier forms of education, as
the Chinese, the Indian, the Egyptian, and the
Jewish, yet the Greeks were the first to teach
education as a science.
Their theoretical and practical views, as un¬
derstood and taught, are exercising vast influ-
••
ence upon the world of thought at the present
time.
No one can understand thoroughly the edu¬
cational systems of Europe, and of our country,
without having an intelligent conception of the
principles and character of education as it ex¬
isted among the Greeks and the Romans.
If savages continue, even in our day, to sub¬
serve the immediate ends of their existence, to
satisfy their mere animal wants, it was the pe¬
culiar mission of the Greeks to show to the
world that there is a pleasure and beauty in
abstraction, in idealism, which transports us
into real as well as imaginary regions beyond
■—35—-
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
the sordid propensities of time and place, and
enables us, by an eye of faith, at least,
"To find tongues in trees, books, in the run-
ning brooks, sermons in stones, and good in
everything."
As an apt illustration of this truth, Brown¬
ing says: "Reading was taught (among the
Greeks) with the greatest pains, the utmost care
was taken with the intonation of the voice, and
the articulation of the throat.
"We have lost the power of distinguishing
between accent and quantity. Thie Greeks did
not acquire it without long and anxious train¬
ing of the ear and the vocal organs. This was
the duty of the phonascus. Homer, was the com¬
mon study of all Greeks. The Iliad and the
Odyssey were at once the Bible, the Shake¬
speare, the Robinson Crusoe, and the Arabian
Nights of the Hellenic race."
Long passages, and indeed whole books, were
learned by heart and recited upon festive occa¬
sions.
—36—
AMONG THE GREEKS.
Born at a time as was Socrates, the most
original genius of antiquity, and then to be fol¬
lowed by his great disciple Plato, who was fol¬
lowed by his great disciple Aristotle, "the mas¬
ter of those who know," when systems of phil¬
osophy were speculative, systems of education
unknown, with primitive principles in science
uncertain and undefined, in the midst of condi¬
tions so ripe for investigation, these three great
philosophers, profound thinkers, matchless
teachers, wonderful iconoclastic idealists, lost
little time in entering upon their great task—
their holy mission—of creating a sentiment and
inaugurating a system of psychological teach¬
ing which has revolutionized the thought of the
civilized world, for more than twenty centuries,
and made possible, among us, all that is good
and grand in both conceptive and constructive
systems of education.
Yet, as profound as were these three philoso¬
phers and teachers of ancient times, as great as
were the Greeks during the "golden age," it is
—37—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
painful to know tliat the scheme of their initial
civil polity was based upon slavery as a funda¬
mental institution, and in many of their cities,
at this time, the slaves outnumbered the free¬
men as ten to one.
Women were given little consideration, and
education was confined almost entirely to the
boys, not to the boys of slaves, but to those of
the higher classes, as heretofore mentioned,
who were trained in the many excellent private
schools scattered throughout Greece, and espe¬
cially in those at Athens, the seat of learning
and for ages the intellectual Mecca of the Hel¬
lenic race.
Greek education, the result of scientific in¬
vestigation, of physical development, and of aes¬
thetic taste, reached its culmination—the very
acme of human endeavor and greatness—under
Grecian skies in the age of Pericles, or the gold¬
en age of Greece which, in modern times, is com¬
parable only to the age of Elizabeth in English
literature.
■—38—■
AMONG THE GREEKS.
"That period in the history of English let¬
ters," says /Shaw, "which corresponds to the
epochs to which we have alluded, is the age of
Elizabeth.
"It is the Elizabethan age which represents
among us, the age of Pericles ; that of Augustus,
that of the Medici; that of Leo; that of Louis;
nay, it may be asserted, and without any exag¬
gerated national vanity, that the productions of
this one era of English literature may boldly be
opposed to the intellectual triumphs of all the
other epochs mentioned, taken collectively."
The age of Pericles, which embraced less
than the life-time of a single generation, exer¬
cised a. far-reaching influence upon the world's
history.
In less than thirty years, "Athens gave
birth," says Meyers, "to more great men, poets,
artists, statesmen and philosophers, than all the
world besides has produced in any period of
equal length."
Among all these Pericles stood pre-eminent
—39—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
and so impressed himself upon his times that
this period is justly named after him.
During this age the Athenian democracy
was supreme. The popular assembly considered
and decided every vital matter that concerned
the republic. Each citizen enjoyed perfect po¬
litical liberty, and it is affirmed that every citi¬
zen was qualified to hold office.
Having established the supremacy of Ath¬
ens upon the sea, even if he had failed to do so
upon the land, Pericles induced his countrymen,
who loved art, to adorn their city with those
masterpieces of genius in art which, though
now in ruins, still continue to excite the admira¬
tion of the world.
In order that there should be no invidious
class distinctions in a democratic form of gov¬
ernment, he inaugurated the custom of giving
pay to the military, of paying citizens for jury
service, of attaching salaries to the various civil
offices ; also introduced the practice of supplying
all the citizens with free tickets to the theatre,
—40—
AMONG THE GREEKS.
and other places of public amusement, and of
banqueting the people on festal days at public
expense.
Says Meyers: "But the most significant fea¬
ture of this new imperial power was the combi¬
nation of these vast material resources with the
most imposing display of intellectual resources
that the world had ever witnessed. Never before
had there been such a union of the material and
intellectual elements of civilization at the seat
of empire. Literature and art had been carried to
the utmost perfection possible to human genius.
Art was represented by the inimitable creations
of Phidias and Polygnotus. The drama was il¬
lustrated by the incomparable tragedies of Aes¬
chylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and by the
comedies of Aristophanes,, while the writing of
the world's annals had become an art in the
graceful narrations of Herodotus."
Although, strictly speaking, in a technical
sense, Pericles is not classed as a teacher by
historians generally, yet in a better and broader
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
sense this wisest statesman and greatest hero
among the Greeks, if he is to be measured by
the wholesome influence exerted upon his coun¬
trymen in his day, as well as by the influence
exerted upon those of subsequent ages, was in¬
deed an educator as well as a statesman and a
soldier.
It is doubtful whether any other individual
ever did more effective object teaching, if it may
be so designated, along all lines where results
count in human growth and achievement than
did the hero of the "Golden Age."
It is sad, however, even in our day to contem¬
plate the brilliancy and grandeur of the mere
apex of an educational structure whose base
was shrouded in moral darkness and mental
stagnation, incident to a failure to provide both
the master and the slave with the means to
place them upon the same high moral and in¬
tellectual plane.
Any scheme of education, any system of
morals, any religious belief or practice which
—42—
AMONG THE' GREEKS.
fails to elevate common humanity can not bear
the test of our nineteenth century civilization,
can not meet the demands of our times, and
bodes ill rather than good to our country.
That democracy which does not include in
its civil benefits both the czar and the serf, that
educational system which does not embrace
ALL the children, that system of ethics which
fails to give inspiration to both the prince and
the pauper, that fails to admit the sunshine of
God's truth into the cabin and the cottage, as
well as into the parlor and the palace must ulti¬
mately be relegated to the rear as a bourbonized
fossil; as an exotic which can, find no growth,
no nourishing sentiment to sustain its putrid
life among a free and liberty-loving people.
The Greeks, that race which Minerva-like are
said to have sprung from the brain of Jove,
have done more than all others combined in the
inauguration and formulation of those incipient
ideas and plans which have fructified, in our
day, into great educational systems which are
—43—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
the intellectual and moral levers for the eleva¬
tion of mankind. Yet as much as has been done
in the past, and notwithstanding our wonderful
advancement at present, it is my opinion that
we stand, to-day, at the dawn and have not
reached the sunset of human endeavor.
After more than two thousand years of
mental growth and moral achievement we are
simply the advance guard of pigmies to the
great, race of intellectual giants who are to
follow us.
If the struggles and achievements of the
Greeks teach us one important truth more than
another, it is the fact that they believed that
there was no aristocracy so grand and so glor¬
ious as that of the human intellect, and that no
plutocracy, no pride of birth could be com¬
pared to that ultimatum which decreed, as un¬
erring as fate, a survival of the fittest.
In the light of Greek education it is no won¬
der that the Golden Age of Greece, prolific in
great men, poets, orators, historians and
—44—
AMONG THE GREEKS.
statesmen, made it possible for Tliucydides, the
historian, to have voiced the sentiment of his
countrymen in the inscription written upon the
cenotaph, erected to the memory of Euripides,
on the road from the Pireaus to Athens, in
these memorable words:
"This monument can not make thee great, O
Euripides, but thou can'st make this monument
great."
CHAPTER II.
The Roman System of Education
No great psychological ideas on education
were given to the world as the result of Roman
conquest and civilization.
No educators equal to those among the
Greeks appear to have flourished among the
Latin race.
The Roman mind, being almost entirely
utilitarian, was more akin to Sparta than to
Athens; it was, therefore, intensely practical
and real, and but rarely speculative and ideal.
It had little taste for philosophy and for the
mere abstract theories of human perfection.
Considering education almost entirely from
a materialistic standpoint, the chief aim of
training among the Romans was for the attain¬
ment of military prowess. . It looked toward
—46—
AMONG THE ROMANS.
glory, power, and conquest for its own sake. In
so far as education among the Romans was in¬
fluenced by Greek refinement and culture it ex¬
hibited a strong tendency toward the rhetorical
and oratorical, not so much, as among the
Greeks, as a means of mental growth, ethical
training and aesthetic taste, but as a necessary
and important means of welding into one na¬
tion the heterogeneous elements composing its
population.
In other words, from the Spartans the
Romans learned how to train the soldiers who
should conquer the world and teach mankind
how to control by brute force under the guise
of law; and from the Athenians they were
taught those deliberative and executive forms
of government so necessary in the formative,
experimental, and governmental period in the
world's history. We can better understand the
scope, aim, and effects of Roman education and
civilization when we contrast the ideal in" the
education of *the Greek with that of the practi-
—47—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
cal and real in the education of the Roman.
Browning says of the Greek ideal:
"On the one side, man, beautiful, active,
clever, receptive, emotional; quick to feel and to
show his feelings, to argue, to refine; greedy of
the pleasures of the world, if a little neglectful
of its duties; fearing restraint as an unjust
stinting of the bounty of nature; inquiring into
every secret; strongly attached to the things of
this life, but elevated by an unabated striving
after the highest ideal; setting no value but on
faultless abstractions, and seeing reality only in
heaven, on earth mere shadows, phantoms, and
copies of the unseen."
Of the Roman ideal, the same author thus
speaks: "On the other side, man practical, en¬
ergetic, eloquent, tinged but not imbued with
philosophy; trained to spare neither himself nor
others; reading and thinking only with an apol¬
ogy; best engaged in defending a political prin¬
ciple, in maintaining with gravity and solemn¬
ity the conversation of ancient freedom, in lead-
—48—
AMONG THE ROMANS.
ing armies through unexplored deserts, estab¬
lishing roads, fortresses, settlements, as the re¬
sults of conquest, or in ordering and superin¬
tending the slow, certain and utter annihilation
of some enemy of Rome.
Has the Christian world ever surpassed
these types? Can we produce anything by edu¬
cation in modern times except by combining,
blending, and. modifying the self-culture of the
Greek and the self-sacrifice of the Roman?"
The influence of the mother was felt, in large
measure, and was one of the chief character¬
istics of Roman education.
The mothers directed the early training of
their children, especially in early times, and
did much to rear up a class of youth who, in
after years, built up a strong nationality Avhich
was known and recognized in all parts of the
civilized world.
In the society of their fathers, during these
early times, the sons were prepared for future
life before their development in regular schools.
—49—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
They sat with their fathers at the table, and
in respectful silence, heard them recount their
martial deeds of valor, and in peace, tell of the
services they had rendered the state. The lads
accompanied their parents to the Senate, and
while others were speaking, learned the im¬
portant lesson of how to hold their tongues, and
when and what to speak when the proper oc¬
casion arrived.
With the increase of wealth, bringing its
train of enervating luxuries, the home became
less and less a training school, and pedagogues
were borrowed from Greece, who, although
slaves, were held in high honor, and were in¬
trusted with both the intellectual and moral
training of the Roman youth.
While these youth were educated by teach¬
ers from Greece, in kind much which was pecul¬
iar to the Greeks alone was omitted from the
branches taught.
What music was to the Greek, rhetoric was
to the Roman. The Greek loved fine culture for
—50—
AMONG- THE ROMANS.
which the term music was the symbol, while
the Roman may be said to have despised it.
Rome desired to produce, not as did the
Greeks, specimens of cultured human beings,
but persons fitted to be Roman citizens.
Remember that up to 50 A. D., however,
there were no public schools and no profes¬
sional teachers among the Romans.
The best accounts we have of education
among the Romans inform us that the rod was
freely used as a means of discipline, and that
th£re was a short holiday of five days during
the feast of Minerva, corresponding to our
Easter and spring vacation, and at the Satur¬
nalia, corresponding to our Christmas; but that,
as among us, school was entirely suspended
during the summer months.
It can be readily seen that we have not de¬
parted very much from the customs of the
ancients in our modern observance of holidays,
nor in our means of discipline.
Few schools fail to observe some one of our
—51—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
many holidays, and our ancient schoolmaster,
though living in modern times, with his back¬
less bench and solitary hole for a window, bad
ventilation and treeless grounds, still plies his
ferrule with a severity which equals, if it does
not surpass, the ancients.
Well might we say with Goldsmith:
Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way
With blossom'd furze, unprofitably gay,
There in his noisy mansion, skill'd to rule
The village master taught his little school.
A man severe he was, and stern to view;
I knew him well, and every truant knew.
Well had the boding tremblers learn'd to trace
The day's disasters in his morning face.
Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he;
Full well the busy whisper, circling 'round,
Gonvey'd the dismal tidings when he frown'd.
As among us, at the age of seven, the child
was committed to the literator to learn the
first elements of reading and writing. In his
—52—
AMONG THE ROMANS.
writings Horace speaks of how the lads went
through the streets of Home with their slates
and sachels on their arms.
Reading was taught by what is called the
syllabic method; that is, by explaining the
powers of the letters in combination before
their individual characteristics, which we have
modernized into the phonic-word method, if I
may be allowed to coin this term.
"Writing was taught by inscribing a copy
upon a waxen tablet and allowing the pupil
to follow the furrow of the letter with a stylus";
hence our system of tracing in copy books. In
reading and writing the Romans paid great
attention to the pronunciation and the accent
of words, as well as to the committing to mem¬
ory selected passages from the poets.
In reckoning, or counting, the fingers were
made of great use, each joint and bend of the
finger being made to signify a certain value,
which the pupil was expected to follow by the
trembling motion of the teacher's hands as he
—53—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
represented very dexterously number after
number; lience the trouble in trying to prevent
children from counting upon their fingers. It
is a mark of heridity and not easily overcome.
This primary training lasted from the sev¬
enth to the twelfth year.
I do not know that we are able to make a
better division as to the time which should be
given to primary instruction than that from
seven to twelve.
At the age of twelve children were then
committed to the literatus, and the study of
Greek was then added to that of Latin, embrac¬
ing etymology, syntax and composition.
Speaking of this period of Roman education
Browning says: "The explanation of the poets
was used for the formation of moral principle.
Livius Andronicus in Latin, the Odyssey of
Homer in Greek, Yirgil, Cicero and Aesop were
studied in those days as in our own. Orthog¬
raphy and grammar were carefully inculcated;
whole poems and orations were learned by
—54—
AMONG THE ROMANS.
heart. Nor was history neglected. Atticus, the
friend of Cicero, was so well acquainted with
Roman history that he knew the laws, the
treaties and the momentous events which
formed the fabric of his country's annals."
As the literator had prepared the way for
"the literatus, so the literatus prepared the way
or the rhetor, who took charge of the youth
at the age of fifteen or sixteen. At this age the
young Roman entered upon his career of man¬
hood, was no longer treated as a child, and was
kept under strict discipline.
He now chose his profession, either that of
agriculture, or the army, the senate, the forum,
or some of the many pursuits to which noble
Romans were called by virtue of their birth.
Rhetoric was regarded among the Romans
with that importance to which the Greeks at¬
tached to music.
We use the terms music and rhetoric now
with such a different meaning that it is diffi¬
cult for us to understand the significance of
—55—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
these terms as used by the Greeks and the
Romans.
We are told that the first special school for
Italian rhetoric was opened by Lucius Plotius
Grallus in the year 90 B. C., and it is quite prob¬
able that Cicero and the men of his time owe
much of their success in oratory to this noted
rhetorician.
The best account we have of early teachers
among the Romans is from Quintillian, who
tells us that Cato, the censor (235-199 B. C.), was
the first Roman writer on education.
Although, unfortunately, his treatise is lost,
yet, from other sources, both reliable and accu¬
rate, we infer that Gato was conservative, the
champion of Roman simplicity, valuing the
reputation of a good husband and a good father
as being far above that of a good senator.
He was a strict disciplinarian, trained his
sons to outdoor life, instructed them in the good
deeds of thedr country's history, taught that a
reasonable degree of reverence is due from the
—56—
AMONG THE ROMANS.
old to the young, and that the true foundation
of an orator must be laid in character. He con¬
sidered country life as the parent of both a good
soldiery and a good citizenship. He is said to
have opposed strenuously the new Greek learn¬
ing, and said that it was fraught with coming
destruction to the state.
Browning says: "Believe me," he wrote to
his son, as if a soothsayer had said it, "that the
Greeks are a good for nothing and unimprov¬
able race. If they disseminate their literature
among us it will destroy everything; but, still
worse, if they send their doctors among us, for
they have bound themselves by a solemn oath
to kill the barbarians and the Romans." He,
himself, learned Greek late in life, but this did
not change his opinions. A "homo elegans," a
man of culture, was liis abhorrence. Practical
activity he considered the whole duty of man.
He held the opinion that his nature rusts like
iron if it is not used.
Far different were the views of Oicero, who
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
stands as the typical educator, representing the
union of Greek and Roman thought and learn¬
ing.
While this famous educator and greatest
orator among the ancients, except Demosthenes,
limited education too much to the one idea of
rhetoric and oratory being chiefly important
in a scheme of education, yet he held to the im¬
portant truth that the aim of education is the
perfection of the individual, and that if such
citizens be developed to the highest level of
their poAvers, how fortunate, how grand and
blessed will be the state that contains them!
In speaking of the disposition and charac¬
teristics of an educator, Cicero said that a model
teacher would never speak nor strike in anger.
He considered religion as of chief impor¬
tance in one's training, regarding the gods as
being the masters and directors of human af¬
fairs.
Following the order as laid down by all the
other writers on pedagogy, both ancient and
—58—
AMONG THE ROMANS.
modern, education is to begin with the earliest
childhood. We must turn to account the games
of children and be careful about the company
by which they are surrounded. Pains must be
taken to develop the memory, and to aid in such
mental growth, passages from Greek and
Roman writers are to be learned by heart.
In selecting a profession a young man is to
be governed by nature and taste, after having
carefully proved his powers and capacities. He
must be so carefully trained as to be effectually
protected against the destructive attacks of the
passions, and if he be destined for public life,
his love of ambition and distinction must be
stimulated.
Cicero clearly lays down the rules by which
one can become a great orator through rhetori¬
cal methods, which tend to give forceful ex¬
pression and grace of bearing to the consum¬
mate orator, who is expected to control men
and to exert a wholesome influence upon the
destinies of one's couutrv.
—59—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION:
He holds up oratory as the goal .for which all
ambitious Roman youth, anxious for fame and
fortune, must contend. But, before he can at¬
tain such grand heights of pre-eminence over
his fellows, such an one must carefully culti¬
vate his natural gifts and must acquire a vast
amount of knowledge in different fields.
He must not only learn to become a skilled
rhetorician, but, as a means to the end sought,
must be readily conversant with jurisprudence,
history and philosophy.
He must devote a considerable time to the
study of classic models as standards worthy
of imitation.
He indorsed heartily the highest phases of
Greek culture and training, and urged a union
with the more practical education as taught by
the Romans. The second greatest orator of
antiquity held to no mere theories on education
which he was not willing himself to practice,
for he had his own sons instructed not only in
—60—
AMONG THE ROMANS.
philosophy but also in eloquence under Greek
masters.
It was not until the time of Quintillian,
however, that Roman education became fully
organized or empiralized, if I may use the ex-/
pression, reaching its highest perfection under
Trojan, Hadrian, and Antonines.
The cause of education had made such
progress in Quintilian's day that the children
of poor parents in Italy were ordered by Nerva
to be educated without expense; and an insti¬
tute for the education of girls was also erected
at this time.
The character of the education given at this
period, embracing the seven liberal arts, and
which has exerted a wonderful influence upon
the best educational thought of our times, is
both important and interesting.
Grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry,
arithmetic, astronomy and music were the prin¬
cipal subjects of education taught.
In a work written by Quintillian at this
—61—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
time we have a very full account of Roman edu¬
cation.
This distinguished educator was born at
Calaliorra, Spain, A. D. 42. It is said of him
that "He came .to Rome at an early age and
was educated to be a consummate speaker. He
afterward exchanged the practice for the teach¬
ing of his profession, and for twenty years, edu¬
cated the most distinguished Romans in his
art. He received from the Emperor the broad
purple stripe of consular dignity and was
raised to consular rank. He enjoyed the proud
distinction of being the first teacher paid by
the state and wore with becoming modesty the
distinguished title of professor of eloquence."
His treatise on education was written after
his retirement from public life. Although it
professes to treat merely of the education of
the orator, yet it deals, incidentally, with most
of the questions which refer to the education
of the perfect man.
This great educator placed much stress upon
—62—
AMONG THE! ROMANS.
training in early childhood. He saw no reason
for deferring the education of a child until
seven years of age. He asserted that memory is
most tenacious in childhood and not to make
use of it then he deemed unreasonable. He
even admonished against employing unedu¬
cated nurses for children, since their in¬
correct and inelegant expressions would be
hard to eradicate from the child's vocabulary
in after years. He urged that we begin the
instruction of a child with reading, but held
that if one thing could not be taught then
another should be tried. He differed with the
teaching in our times in that he held that it
did not require a teacher of the highest genius
to instruct a child. He held that by the seventh
year a child may have learned to read and to
write with ease; that his mind may be stored
with a copious supply of sayings of great men
and of select passages which he will never for¬
get, and that he will have acquired a correct
and clear pronunciation. After he has received
—63—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
such, a training at his home—in our modern
kindergarten—then he is prepared to be sent
to the public school.
No one has presented better arguments in
favor of the public school system than Quintill-
ian. He affirmed that, in the corrupt homes of
Home, children learn vices before they know
that they are vices; that they do not imbibe
criminality from schools so much as they carry
it to the schools.
He stated that it is a mistake to suppose
that the pupil will derive more care and atten¬
tion from a single teacher. "The best teachers,"
said he, "will naturally be found in large
schools, and there are many subjects which one
man can teach as well to a large class as to a
small one. Because some schools are bad that
would be a poor reason for rejecting schools
altogether."
The reasons in favor of a public rather than
a private education can better be given in the
exact words of this great educator, who lived
—64—
AMONG THE ROMANS.
nearly 2,000 years ago, and they are just as
cogent now as when uttered by this ablest of
Roman teachers: "The mind requires to be
continually excited and aroused, while in
such retirement it either languishes and con¬
tracts rust, or, on the other hand, becomes
swollen with empty conceit, since he who
compares himself to no one else will nec¬
essarily attribute much to his own pow¬
ers. Besides, when his acquirements are to
be displayed in public he is blinded at the sight
of the sun and stumbles at every new object,
because he has learned in solitude that which
is to be done in public. I say nothing of friend¬
ships formed at school, which remain in full
force even to old age, as if cemented by a cer¬
tain religious obligation, for to have been
instructed in the same studies is a no less
sacred bond than to have been instructed in the
same sacred rites. Where shall a young man
learn the sense, too, which is called common
sense, when he has separated himself from
—65—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
society? Besides, at home he can learn only
what is taught himself; at school, even what is
taught others. He will every day hear many
things commended, many things corrected; the
idleness of a fellow-student when reproved will
be a warning to him, the industry of one com¬
mended will be a stimulus, emulation will be
excited by praising, and he will think it a dis¬
grace to yield to his equals in age and an honor
to surpass his seniors. All these things excite
the mind and, though ambition itself be a vice,
yet it is often the parent of virtues."
Senaca, a Koman philosopher, who lived in
the first century, and was a contemporary of the
Apostle Paul of the Xew Testament, has given
us some splendid educational maxims, such as,
"We study not for school, but for life"; "I fear
the man of one book"; 'kBy teaching we our
selves learn'1; "The end is attained sooner by
example than by precept." These maxims con¬
tain some of the best examples of pedagogic
thought among the Romans.
—66—
AMONG THE ROMANS.
Plutarch, in his "Lives of Illustrious Men,"
has left an important contribution to education.
Although he was born a Greek and wrote
in that language, yet he lived much in Rome
and opened a school there in the latter part of
the first century. He lectured upon philosophy,
literature, and rhetoric. The substance of his
instruction is contained in the "Lives," which
lias earned for him a fame that has come down
to us through the ages.
The career of Numa Pompilius in the mythi¬
cal history of Rome is similar to that of
Lycurgus in the history of Sparta.
He is regarded as the founder of national
ethical teaching.
The gods were considered as guarding all
the relations of life—matrimony, the family,
society, commerce, agriculture, politics. Numa
sought, by peaceable methods, to extend the in¬
fluence of the Romans, and to procure a firm
foundation for prosperity and morality, by
strengthening the ties of domestic and political
—67—-
HISTORY OP EDUCATION.
life, and by enhancing the interests of agricul¬
ture and the trades. He inspired a patriotism
among the citizens that had a potent influence,
for many years, in serving to level all mere in¬
vidious distinctions, and prepared the way for
the civil equality that came when the plebeians,
by constant and persistent opposition, obtained
•their political rights from the patricians.
But, strange to relate, the Romans never
recognized the rights of others, except along
their own race lines.
Once to be a Roman was always to be a
Roman, and in their self-exultation and pride
they grew harsh and cruel toward others, until
they engendered a spirit of conquest and fos¬
tered a desire for the mere external, material
blessings of life.
In the third century B. C. Greek literature
was brought to Rome and imparted to the
Roman youth by Greek teachers.
Rapid strides were made in science and art
—68—
AMONG THE ROMANS.
by the patricians, who almost exclusively en¬
joyed educational advantages.
With Greek training came foreign vices,
which slowly undermined the social and politi¬
cal fabric of the Roman commonwealth, thus
verifying the prophecy of Cato, who, in a letter
to his son about the close of the second century
13. C., said: "Believe me, as if a prophet had
said it, that the Greeks are a worthless and in-
corrigible race. If this people diffuse its litera¬
ture among us it will corrupt everything."
In the early days of the republic the mother
exercised and exerted great influence in the in¬
tellectual, moral and physical development of
children. It was not until a later period that
the place of the mother was taken by a system
of nurse training which, under the influence of
slavery, became almost universal and permit¬
ted only the poorest mothers to perform peda¬
gogical functions.
In the main the father attempted to do for
—69—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
the son what the mother endeavored to do for
the daughter.
This home training-, however, was supple¬
mented by hired pedagogues from the slaves of
the household or from the ranks of the educated
Greek instructors.
No system of common schools, such as is the
custom with us, existed among the Romans. For
the most part their schools were of a private
character, supported by the wealthy class, and
taught by foreign teachers from Greece.
While the Roman writers upon pedagogy
have given us few principles of education of an
enduring character, as did the Greeks, yet they
have left us many suggestions of a practical
kind which are most helpful and beneficial in
the great work of teaching.
CHAPTER III.
The Middle Ages
After Greec e and Rome liad furnished won¬
derful educational examples to the world, with
teachers whose principles and practices had
blazed the way for intellectual, physical and
moral advancement, it is one of the marvels of
history that, instead of this period being an im¬
provement upon that of antiquity in these re¬
spects, we should witness an age of intellectual
and moral darkness that extends over nearly
seven hundred years.
It is one of those strange coincidences of
history to find that, while Greek and Roman
literature continues to impress itself upon our
own age, it had little effect upon the age that
immediately followed the one that was so fruit¬
ful in pedagogical lore.
—.71—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
The Middle Ages produced no great educa¬
tors, no profound philosophers, and no systems
of education in any respect comparable to that
of antiquity.
However, a few men in this age stand out
somewhat more prominently than others, and
it is with the sayings and doings of these that
we have to deal.
The distinguished names of Pythagoras and
Lycurgus as educators, the philosophy and
great examples of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle
which had aroused the Greeks and made them
masters in the domain of thought, the practical
ideas of education as held by Gallus, Quintillian
and Cicero, among the Eomans, and which
had contributed so much to the glory of the
Latin race, seemed powerless to bring a1)out
beneficial results during the Middle Ages.
During this age, too, the new doctrine of
Christianity, as heralded by the lowly Nazarene,
the world's greatest teacher, had its be^innin^
and began its sway over the minds and the con-
—72—
IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
sciences of mankind. There was little in this
new doctrine that taught man to sympathize
with the philosophy of antiquity. Christianity
opposed all external distinctions among men,
and sought perfection in the character of the
individual, rather than in the dignity of the
state, or in the exultation of any dogma, secu¬
lar or religious.
Few understood the new religion, which was
at variance with the tenets of the past; many
approved the new doctrine from policy, and
saw only personal advantage in its teachings;
others, overawed by an idealism that they
could, not comprehend, sought solace in self ab¬
negation and indulged in contempt for real
life.
Selfishness, ignorance and fanaticism itself
robbed Christianity of its humanizing influence
and essential principles, and permitted it to
drift into a specific kind of education—the pro¬
duction of mere followers and believers in
Christianity.
—73—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
Nevertheless, it is a fact that Greek and
Roman learning was not wholly extinguished
and did not expire during this period of en¬
feebled pedagogical history.
The New Testament was written in Greek,
the Corpus Civilis of the Roman Empire also
survived, and the works of the great writers of
antiquity were preserved in manuscript.
If the study of these masterpieces of litera¬
ture were held in abeyance during the Middle
Ages, it was only to break out afresh in Europe,
as we shall see, during the revival of letters,
which was to illumine the minds of men in all
subsequent generations.
But the so-called "dark ages" were not
wholly so. There were schools in the towns, in
the castles, and in the monasteries. Two impor¬
tant educational movements took place in Eu¬
rope during these ages:
(1) That of the time of Charlemagne.
(2) That of the scholasticism of the twelfth
century.
—74—
IN THE MIDDLE ACJES.
The one especially prominent educational
personage of the Middle Ages was Charle¬
magne, who sought in the establishment of the
Palatine school, through the direct efforts of
Alcuin, a distinguished teacher, an alliance be¬
tween classical literature and Christianity. The
lack of such an alliance was probably the cause
of much of the intellectual feebleness and the
bigoted ignorance of this age.
Many of the early fathers of the Church had
little sympathy with what they regarded as the
pagan philosophy and agnostic teaching of the
previous ages.
To be an ignorant Christian at this time was
of far more importance than to be a wise phil¬
osopher. Zeal for the Church was the ultimate
end of all human endeavor in the minds of the
monks and those who controlled the teaching of
that age.
While the Catholic Church is held responsi¬
ble for this condition of education in the Middle
Ages, we do not by any means hold the Protes-
—75—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
taut Church as being blameless for many of the
educational faults, foibles and shortcomings
peculiar to this period of history.
Charlemagne not only sought instruction for
himself, but also endeavored to diffuse instruc¬
tion among the clergy and nobles of his time.
It was his desire to exercise authority over
a civilized rather than over a barbarous people.
He sought the basis of a political unity founded
upon a religion which should be the outgrowth
of a system of well-defined instruction.
He did not hesitate to rebuke the nobles,
barons and clergy, of his day, for their lack of
interest in education, and his constant aim
seemed to be to infuse into them a love of learn¬
ing rather than have them rely upon their birth
alone to maintain their social rank.
His efforts along educational lines for the
most part proved ineffectual, and, after his era,
a new decadence ensued.
The young barons, wrapped up in the in¬
tense selfishness of their own self sufficiency,
—76—
IN THE MIDDLE AGkri.
self-satisfaction, and reveling in indolence and
ignorance, caused Charlemagne to exclaim one
day as he entered school, "Do you count upon
your birth, and do you feel a pride in it? Take
notice that you shall have neither government
nor bishoprics if you are not better instructed
than others."
The clergy were not responsive to the ap¬
peals and the efforts of this educational em¬
peror to better the intellectual and moral con¬
dition of his times.
In 817 the council of Aix-la-Ohapelle refused
to receive any more day pupils into the con¬
ventional schools upon the ground that too
large a number of pupils would seriously effect
the discipline of the monasteries.
This general indifference to the educational
needs of the times manifested itself in many
ways during the entire Middle Ages.
The emperors who succeeded Charlemagne
were not in sympathy with his ideas upon edu¬
cation, and sought to base their power upon
—77—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
their own despotic authority rather than to rely
upon the intellectual progress of their subjects.
It is said that Louis the Pious and Charles
the Bold constructed more castles in their day
than schools.
In speaking of the scholasticism of the Mid¬
dle Ages, Reinhart says, "Scholasticism is a
form of learning and teaching which held more
or less sway from the ninth to the fifteenth cen¬
turies, reaching the climax of its influence with
Abelard in the twelfth century.
"Its professed design was to illustrate and
to defend Christian doctrine on the principles
of the deductive logic of Aristotle. The result
was an immense development of the power of
subtile reasoning; the invigoration of the
human mind in the line of disputation and
logic. The age had no physical sciences, no
history, nor ethics. Its education and culture
was, therefore, one-sided and imperfect."
The best and most representative teachers
of this age were Thomas Aquinas, the author of
—78—
IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
a work on teaching called De Magistro, and a
master of the cleductive method of Aristotle as
it applied to theology; and Abelard, professor
of the University of Paris, who stands for in¬
dependence in theological thought and for orig¬
inality in methods of instruction.
The seven liberal arts constituted what may
be called the course of study of the Middle Ages,
and was given in the conventional schools, and
later in the universities. They were distributed
into two courses of study called the trivium and
the quadrivium.
In the trivium were taught grammar, logic
and rhetoric, and in the quadrivium we find
music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy.
This course of study, as we see, consisted of
abstract and formal studies, which were pecu¬
liar to this age, and there were embraced in it
no real nature studies of a concrete kind. The
teaching of dogmas was regarded as of more
importance than the training of the intellect.
Teachers read and recited their lectures, and
—79—
HISTORY OP EDUCATION.
the pupils were required to learn them by heart.
Pupils were distrusted, the discipline was
harsh, and for securing obedience, corporal pun¬
ishments were used and abused. In speaking
of the difference between the use of the rod in
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, an his¬
torian says: "There is no other difference except
that the rods in the fifteenth century are twice
as long as those in the fourteenth."
But the Middle Ages must forever be re¬
garded as a period of intellectual stagnation
and moral darkness.
The few virtues of obedience and consecra¬
tion to the dogmas inculcated by the ecclesias¬
tics and by men of noble rank were negative
rather than positive ones; instruction abounded
in "verbal husks," which induced a species of
mechanical reasoning and, in the words of an¬
other, "made of the intelligence a prisoner of
the formal syllogism."
The Church itself seemed to be absolute in
educational affairs and determined the limit of
—80—
IN THE MIDDLE1 AGES.
thought, action, and belief for prince as well
as for pauper.
This age is characterized by the domi¬
nance of religious conceptions; by an alliance
between church and state; by the spirit of free
and independent inquiry being stifled in the
arbitrary and dogmatic teaching of the Scrip¬
tures; by harshness in discipline; by rudeness
in matters of deportment and polite manners,
and by a contempt for the common amenities of
life by man toward his fellow.
The pedagogy of the Middle Ages abounded
in no lofty, unattainable ideals, which alone
can cause true intellectual and moral growth
among individuals and nations.
The concrete ideas, for which the common
mind struggles, were soon found by faint effort,
and afforded ample satisfaction to the superfi¬
cial and the indifferent of that day, and were,
in my judgment, the chief cause of the intel¬
lectual decay and the pedagogical stagnation
of the Middle Ages.
—81—
CHAPTER IV.
The Renaissance
The fruitful store of Greek and Roman liter
atiue which had lain dormant for seven hun¬
dred years, covering the entire period of the
Middle Ages, was only to break out during the
"revival of letters" ^-ith an effulgence that was
destined to fill all Europe with its glory and
thus to effect the intellectual progress of all
succeeding generations.
The spirit of Christianity, which had been
greatly retarded by the disposition of the early
fathers of the Church to confound ignorance
with holiness, and also by a scholasticism as
well as a monasticism, which absolutely seemed
to stifle all attempts at true reforms in educa¬
tion, is now beginning to blend with the classi¬
cal literature of antiquity; freedom of individ-
—83—
THE RENAISSANCE.
ual thought and action, under this combined
and uplifting influence, is beginnig to make
itself felt for the first time in the world's his¬
tory; philosophy and science are to be given a
place in men's thoughts as friends and not ene¬
mies of Christianity; the revival of letters in
the sixteenth century is to unite what is best
in all former systems of pedagogy with what is
most promising and most progressive in new
ideas and under new methods.
The old, a victim of its own supineness, and
condemned by the infallible test of time, must
give place to the advancing thought of an age
which was to put Christianity to the test of
scientific investigation and philosophic inquiry.
The fathers of the early Church, who, dur¬
ing all these years, had hugged the delusive
phantom to their bosoms that intellectual
growth Avas fatal to the new doctrine of Chris¬
tianity, and had chiefly, on this account, permit¬
ted the Christian religion to drift into mechan¬
ical roots and grooves, were now to pass away,
—83—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
and the iconoclasts, the reformers, and the
philosophers were to drive the zealots and the
dreamers from the field of thought.
The intellectual world stood aghast as it
witnessed this wonderful transition of bidding
adieu to the old and extending a welcome to
the new dispensation of letters.
For the first time the individual, freed from
a hide-bound monasticism, which for centuries
had held him a veritable prisoner in its relent¬
less grasp, takes delight in his unaccustomed
intellectual and moral freedom, and begins to
investigate, to grow, and to accomplish.
The dawn of the new era is seen in what is
called humanism, which is a study of the an¬
cient classics—the best that has been handed
down to us from Grecian and Roman civiliza¬
tion—instead of the barbarous Latin writers
of the Middle Ages.
Groote founds a school at Deventer in north¬
ern Holland, where his pupils are taught the
—84—
THE RENAISSANCE.
Bible, Horace, Yirgil, Plutarch, Heroditus,
Thucydides, Cicero, Plato and Aristotle.
The teachers of this celebrated school were
pious men and eminent scholars^ and if they
had done nothing more than to have produced
Erasmus, who was the finest product of-human¬
ism and the editor of the first printed Greek
New Testament, being the contemporary and
associate of the reformers of the sixteenth cen¬
tury, and to have given us Thomas a Kempis'
"Imitation of Christ," a book of remarkable
spiritual and intellectual power, this alone
should cause them to live forever enshrined in
the memory and in the hearts of mankind.
In addition to the Greek New Testament
Erasmus wrote "Praise of Folly," a fine satire
in condemnation of the follies of the school
men of his day.
In his "Order of Studies" he gives principles
of teaching in literature and grammar, and in
methods of cultivating the memory. He also
favored the education of women and believed in
—85—
history of education.
affording them equal opportunities with men.
He urged family training for tlie young, in¬
struction in manners and morals, and polite¬
ness in demeanor.
Ramus, a professor in tlie University of
Paris, denounced tlie logic of Aristotle and said
that the science of reasoning should be the
servant and not the master of the minds of men.
In speaking of the "terms" of logic he said:
"They have no leisure for the orators; they
have no taste for the poets; all their business
is to clamor about "terms." He thus saw very
early the necessity for such a method of induc¬
tive reasoning as Bacon gave to mankind.
In Montaigne's work, entitled "Of the Edu¬
cation of Children," are to be found many ex¬
cellent ideas upon education.
He holds with Plato that education extends
to the end of life; that the mind is to be devel¬
oped according to its natural bent and not
according to ideas formed in advance by the
teacher.
—86—
THE RENAISSANCE.
He deplores the lack of tlie training of the
judgment, and criticises the overtaxing of the
memory of children. He held the idea of female
education in contempt, a sentiment which was
so prevalent during antiquity and the Middle
Ages.
In the sixteenth century, however, there ap¬
peared in the educational world some of the
brightest minds and greatest educators of
which Europe could boast. This century was
to feel the influence of a Bacon, a Gomenius, a
Melancthon, a Luther, a Sturm, an Ascham and
a Ratich, the Jesuits, with a host of "lesser
lights," who were destined to revolutionize the
pedagogical world and cover the entire earth
with their glory. It is doubtful if so few names,
in any previous age of the world's history, have
exerted such a potent influence in the field of
thought, in the republic of letters, as have the
leaders of intellectual progress in this century.
By one stroke of his invincible logic the
author of the Novum Organum displaced the
—87—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
deductive system of Aristotle, which had held
in check for centuries correct methods of scien¬
tific investigation. At his touch, as if by magic,
ancient and sluggish systems of reasoning van¬
ished, and those who had hitherto seen through
an intellectual glass darkly began to see the
truths of nature, in the light of inductive logic,
revealed face to face.
Lord Bacon, who was born in London in
1561, was not a practical teacher, but a great
educator and a profound philosopher.
Wedded to no preconceived opinions upon
logic, and being out of joint with the deductive
system of Aristotle, and his school of philoso¬
phers, which had held the world in its despotic,
intellectual grasp for centuries, Bacon rejected
all that was servile and traditional in the. sys¬
tems of reasoning of previous ages, and insisted
upon independent and individual investigation
of the0 truths of nature in concrete form. He
believed that the only correct method of study
—88—
THE RENAlboANCE.
consisted in observation, in experiment, and in
experience.
His method lias been called the method of
induction, as distinguished from Aristotle's
method of deduction.
Bacon's system of reasoning has exercised
tremendous influence upon intellectual culture
and scientific investigation since his day.
Although morally weak, as a public official,
occupying as he did some of the most prominent
positions of honor and trust under the govern¬
ment of England, yet, in view of his great
intellectual worth to the human race, we are
inclined to forgive the moral weakness of the'
doer in praise of the thing done.
One of the greatest teachers of this century,
and one who deserves front rank as such in any
age and in any clime, was John Amos Come-
nius, who was born at Comnia in Moravia in
1592. Probably more than in case of any other
famous teacher this individual best illustrates
—89—
HISTORY OP EDUCATION.
the beneficial effects of Bacon's philosophy
upon applied pedagogy.
We know little of the early history of Corne¬
lius except that lie was a student of the Uni¬
versity of Herborn at Nassau, where he studied
theology. Afterwards lie became rector of a
school in his native country and pastor of the
Bohemian Brothers' parish.
Being banished in 1624: from his realms by
Ferdinand II., Comenius fled to Lissa in Poland,
where he soon became a member of the faculty
of the academy.
At Lissa he completed his "Key to the Study
of Languages," which first made him famous.
This was the first of his didactic works of im¬
portance. It was received in 1631 with ^o much
favor that it was soon translated into twelve
European and seven Asiatic languages.
In 1641 the English Parliament extended to
him a call to reform the English schools, but
civil war prevented him from performing this
task, and he accepted a similar call in 1642 from
—90—
THE RENAISSANCE.
Sweden, wliere lie was more successful. In
1650 he accepted the call of a Hungarian prince
to assist in the reorganization of schools.
During his stay in this country he gave to
the world his "Orbis Pictus," which means the
visible world, and which contains the pictures
and names of all the principal things in the
world, and the principal occupations of man.
This book exerted wonderful influence upon the
schools of his day in diffusing correct educa¬
tional views among the people.
The other important works of Comenius are
the "Didactica Magna" (the great didactic) and
his "Janua Linguarum Reseratal" (the gate of
tongues unlocked).
In the "Janua" was presented a new method
of acquiring languages more especially suited
to the intelligence of the young.
In the "Didactica Magna," written in 1630,
Comenius sets forth his theories and principles
of teaching and gives his views on the prac¬
tical organization of schools.
—91—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
While this noted pedagogue is said to ha\e
written twenty works and to have taught m
twenty schools, yet the three works spoken of
are the chief ones that have made him famous
among the world's great educators.
We are especially indebted to him, how¬
ever, for the four kinds of schools into which
the general educational system is now divided
viz. (1) Infant schools and kindergartens;
(2) primary schools; (3) high schools and
academies; (4) colleges and universities.
Comenius may be justly regarded as the
world's first great psychological teacher, as
Pestolozzi is the second. He was a philosopher,
a thinker, and a practical teacher. Amid untold
difficulties he devoted, his life to improvements
in universal instruction, and of him it can be
well said that if "Bacon proposed a new method
for the acquisition,of knowledge by the race, so
Comenius laid a new procedure for the acqui¬
sition of knowledge in school. What Bacon was
—92—
THE RENAISSANCE.
to the method of science, Comenius was to the
method of instruction."
Melancthon, who was styled the "preceptor
of Germany," was great both as a writer and as
a teacher. .He was a friend of Luther and fully
sympathized with the efforts of this great ec¬
clesiastical and educational reformer. The
lectures of Melancthon at Wittenburg are said
to have been sometimes attended by two thou¬
sand listeners.
Martin Luther was the central figure of the
great religious and educational reformation of
the sixteenth century. He was probably the
first man to conceive and to advance the idea
of universal education.
In a special document addressed to the pub¬
lic authorities of Germany he urges the necessi¬
ty of a common school system for the good of
both religion and the state.
"The Bible, with the right of private inter¬
pretation," was his watchword, and he had the
foresight to see that in the education of the
—93—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
masses was the surest means of inaugurating
the religious reforms that he sought to accom¬
plish.
In presenting the mere view of secular edu¬
cation he uses the following strong, pointed
terms: "Were there neither soul, heaven nor
hell it would still be necessary to have schools
for the sake of affairs here below, as the his¬
tory of the Greeks and the Romans plainly
teaches. The world has need of educated men
and women to the end that the men may govern
the country properly and that the women may
properly bring up their children, care for their
domestics and direct the affairs of their house¬
holds."
He not only urged the necessity for public
schools supported by the state for all the chil¬
dren, but also showed the importance of having
trained teachers prepared to direct them.
No individual, during this century, exerted
a more far-reaching and wholesome influence
the renaissance.
in favor of popular education, both secular and
religious, than did Martin Luther.
John Sturm, another "preceptor of Ger¬
many," is noted as the teacher who organized
classical literature and determined ,the form of
the instruction which is now given in the
schools and colleges, of Europe and America.
On account of his profound interest in the
study of the humanities he gathered a thou¬
sand students at his school at Strasburg, to
which he gave the name of "New Athens,"
Roger Ascham, the instructor of Queen Eliz¬
abeth and the author of the "Scholemaster,"
was also a noted teacher of this century. In his
"Scholemaster" he urges and strongly advo¬
cates what is called the double translation in
the teaching of languages. As a method for ad¬
vanced students it is regarded as excellent, but
as a method for beginners it is thought to lead
to unintelligent and unnecessary memorizing.
In 1610 we find Ratich traveling over Eu¬
rope telling of his wonderful discovery whereby
—95—
HISTORY OP EDUCATION.
one could learn Hebrew, Greek and Latin in
six months. While the pretensions of this Ger¬
man reformer were extravagant, yet many
writers upon pedagogy agree that there is a
grain of truth in his ideas which only needs to
be seen and to be applied under proper limita¬
tions.
In the light of pedagogical history it is in¬
teresting to see the part that the schools of the
Jesuits, which originated in the middle of the
sixteenth century, played in the educational
affairs of this age.
It is said that from these schools have gone
forth some of the greatest scholars and geniuses
of Europe, and if the instructors of these early
schools left us no theories and lasting princi¬
ples of which we are proud, yet they were prac¬
tical teachers and first-class organizers who
had received a systematic training which had
prepared them for their work.
In these schools were taught Greek, Latin,
rhetoric, poetry, music and history. The teach-
—96—
THE RENAISSANCE.
ing, which was oral, was given in the form of
lectures; the following day the pupil repeated
the substance of the lecture; written exercises
and translations were required daily; the ad¬
vanced pupils recited their lessons to the
master, and then, in his presence, the pupils
in the lower grades recited to the advanced
pupils.
Much of what is best in our own methods of
teaching, still in vogue in many of our best
schools, was borrowed from the Jesuits.
Reinhart speaks thus of these Jesuit
schools: "The Jesuits fostered in great degree
the spirit of emulation and rivalry. Voluntary
associations for study and for disputation were
encouraged. In the lower grades the boys were
arranged in pairs, each boy having as compan¬
ion a rival, who should push him on, trip him
if necessary and thus spur him forward. Prizes
and honors were offered for the best work,
while the indolent were scourged by the weekly
publication of offenses by the crier, and by the
—97—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
fear of being tried by their classmates in the
capacity of judges and magistrates. One of tlie
maxims of the Jesuits was "Repetition is the
mother of learning.' Before beginning any les¬
son, that of the,preceding day was repeated; be¬
fore ending the lesson,that which had just been
acquired was summed up and repeated. At the
end of every year was an examination, for the
form of which the boys had been prepared. It
was conducted by outside authorities, the mas¬
ter being present and permitted to make sug¬
gestions, but not to examine. The results of
the examination, united with the record for the
past year, made up the standing of the pupil."
It will be seen, then, that the Jesuit schools
were well managed and manned by experienced
and practical teachers, who did a great deal to
promote system and to maintain good discipline
in school work. For hundreds of years the
Jesuits maintained their supremacy as educa¬
tors in Europe.
They were opposed in France, however, by
—98—
THE RENAISSANCE.
the schools of Port Royal, which were estab¬
lished in 1643 a few miles south of Paris, and
were taught by Pascal, Arnauld, Nicole, Lance¬
lot and Madame Arnauld.
The logic and grammar of the Port Royal
schools became famous the world over, and they
deservedly occupy front rank to-day in the an¬
nals of French education.
Nicole has given us the "Education of a
Prince"; Lancelot, "Methods," for learning lan¬
guages, and other teachers of "The Little
Schools' have written "Rules for the Education
of Children" and "Christian Education."
It is said that Port Royal teachers "Made an
advance in the comprehension of education.
They rejected the artificial, the verbal, that
which was purely formal. * In their view educa¬
tion was the training of the judgment and the
affections."
Browning says: "The discipline of Port
Royal was not at all severe and was maintained
by the self-sacrifice of those who conducted it.
—99—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
The charge given to them by the master was
'Speak little, bear much, pray more.' "
The jealousy of these schools aroused by the
Society of Jesuits caused the royal power to be
invoked against them. Their instructors were
mercilessly persecuted, their schools closed and
their buildings burned.
Those who bade fair to become the most po¬
tent factors in the educational affairs of this
century were literally swept from the face of
the earth by a religious jealousy and a factional
strife which were most disastrous in results to
the educational interest of this century.
It is the concensus of intelligent opinion
that modern education begins with the Renais¬
sance.
The educational methods that are beginning
to be put forth in this age are tt> be perfected
later; the correct theories of education, which
are held in embryo, are to be practiced gradu¬
ally and to be fully accepted in the following
ages.
—100—
THE REJSTAI&oaNCE,
From this time forward the essential prin¬
ciples of education are to afford a common
ground for concerted action among teachers.
The system of education of the Middle Ages,
severe and repressive in its discipline, with its
narrow training of the mental and moral fac¬
ulties, is to give place to a scheme of education
broader and more liberal in character.
Attention is directed for the first time to the
importance of the hygiene of the body and to
physical exercises in school economy; intelli¬
gence, heretofore the prisoner of logic and en¬
vironment, is to become freed from the
restraints of the past; man's moral nature
is to be given a broader scope for its growth
and activity; studies of nature are hence¬
forth to be substituted for those which
abounded merely in "verbal husks," and meant
little to the average mind; in other words, those
psychological principles that were to lead to
man's complete and harmonious development
along proper intellectual, moral and physical
—101—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
lines originated in this period to find the frui¬
tion of its hopes, and to attain its ultimatum, so
to speak, in subsequent centuries.
The Protestant Reformation, the art of
printing, the blending of classical forms of lit¬
erature with Christian theology, the number
of distinguished teachers, with their correct
ideas of pedagogy, that abounded during the
Renaissance, all these contributed to the won¬
derful results that we witness to-day in educa¬
tional growth, both in Europe and America.
CHAPTER V.
Modern Times—Education in Europe
Under the caption of "Modern Times" the
growth of education in Europe, beginning with
the eighteenth century to the present time, and
also the progress of education in America from
Colonial times to the present, will be briefly
discussed.
There are so many great teachers, educators,
and thinkers, who have either taught or writ¬
ten upon educational subjects in Europe, during
the period designated as modern times, that any
division of the subject, even for the purpose of
treating it systematically, must necessarily be
regarded as arbitrary and liable also to the
criticism that, in selecting a few names, how¬
ever distinguished and worthy of mention, one
is guilty of making invidious distinctions.
—103—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
In an age abounding in such a number of
great pedagogues, and with systems that have
been the means of causing such a wonderful
progress in education, it is very difficult to
select a few names from among the many and
then attempt to give a history of pedagogy that
will be in any degree comprehensive. But to
select all the teachers and writers who have
made this period forever illustrious, in the field
of educational thought and action, would make
this volume entirely too large, and, therefore,
the author simply selects those few names, and
will allude to those system only that he shall
regard as having exercised the most influence
upon this age.
No previous age in the world's history has
been so prolific in great educators, with sys¬
tems of education so comprehensive and far-
reaching in its effects, upon the minds of men,
as we shall witness in Europe during modern
times.
All that was best from the growth of edu-
—104—
IN MODERN TIMES.
cation during the period of the Renaissance,
whether religious or secular in character,
whether a product of the Reformation or an out¬
growth of the Jesuit schools, seem to have been
0
reserved for this one period of pedagogical his¬
tory. Many of the brightest minds of any age,
with the best systems of education extant, are
to pass in review before us.
The common people, the English masses,
who, since the invasion of Gaul by Julius
Caesar and the battle of Hastings, which two
events had much to do in welding and blending
various dialects into the richest and most flexi¬
ble language known to man, having thrown off
the yoke of a galling Jesuitical and ecclesiasti¬
cal system, were ready for the freedom of
thought and action which the Reformation and
the revival of letters had ushered in with so
much splendor.
Reforms in church and state, under great
leaders, religious and educational, which are
to be immense in influence, far-reaching in
—105—
HISTORY OP EDUCATION.
character, and beneficial in results, are charac¬
teristic of this period of pedagogical history.
As the seventeenth century had produced
Gomenius, the first great reformer in education,
so the eighteenth century was to produce Pesto-
lozzi, the second great educational reformer.
In this century, too, German pedagogy was
to rid itself of the shackles of the past and
become for the first time an active, living force.
France also overthrows the traditions of its
past, expels the Jesuits, and joins the ranks of
modern progress in educational affairs.
In this century, also, is published Rousseau's
Emile, which had wonderful influence upon
the great educator Pestalozzi, and which has
influenced all subsequent events in the educa¬
tional world.
Without doubt Pestalozzi was a beneficiary
of the writings of many of the greatest educa¬
tors of the seventeenth century. He had read
the writings of Locke to advantage, was famil¬
iar with the teachings of Montaigne, and was
—106—
IN MODEHN TIMES.
probably not unacquainted with the schools of
Port Royal. In civil affairs Europe was at
peace; ample time was afforded for educational
thought and growth.
Kant was great as a philosopher and
thinker, and Voltaire equally as great as a
skeptic and a critic.
In 1762 the Emile was first published; was
soon translated into almost every European
language, and it was generally read by the
thinking men of that age. It was, in its day,
regarded as containing something of a new
"kind of gospel" and was said to be "perhaps
the most influential educational book ever
written."
We must remember that the book was writ¬
ten previous to the French Revolution, when
the minds of men were unsettled and intensely
speculative, and when the world abounded in
theorists, idealists, and dreamers.
The book met with the most violent opposi¬
tion. The Archibishop of Paris condemned it
—107—
HISTORY OP EDUCATION.
as being opposed to Christianity, and as encour¬
aging the spirit of revolt and insubordination
against the existing order of things.
Rousseau was compelled to flee to Paris, and
while his book was consigned to the flames, the
good in it, that which was destined to live for¬
ever in the hearts and minds of men, found a
lodging place first in the hearts and minds of
Pestalozzi and Froebel.
The author of the Emile was born in
Geneva, Switzerland, and, being of a roving and
unsettled disposition, after several years of aim¬
less effort and hopeless wanderings, finally
settled at Lyons, where he was a tutor for three
years. Afterwards, with the help of his friends,
he maintained himself at Paris, for several
years, by his musical ability and literary labor.
Most of his life, however, was passed in adver¬
sity. As a man he was unduly sensitive and led
an immoral life. These unfortunate traits of
character cast a shadow over Rousseau, who
—108—
IN MODERN TIMES.
was one of the most brilliant of French prose
writers, with a style of charming beauty.
His Emile is not a treatise upon education,
but rather a romance in which he takes occa¬
sion to give his ideas upon education.
Emile is not a real but an imaginary child,
who has no parents, is not reared in a family,
but is brought up by a preceptor in the country,
far removed from the influence of society.
Of the five books into which this work is
divided the first book treats of the needs of a
new-born child and of the duties of mothers in
rearing their children. The second book treats
of the education of a child from six to twelve,
and the third, of the training of a child from
twelve to fifteen.
The moral education of a youth from fifteen
to twenty is treated of in the fourth book, and
the education of woman is treated of in the fifth
book.
The doctrine contained in the first two books
is that the character of teaching in infancy
—109—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
should be negative rather than positive. That
infants should be separated from and shielded
from the contaminating influences so prevalent
in society.
That nature should be the real teacher of
the child from birth to twelve years of age.
In his third book Rousseau dwells upon the
importance of teaching things rather than their
mere signs, which are often expressed in mean¬
ingless words; and urges the prime importance
of keeping the student free from fatal errors.
From the third book of Emile it is said that
the great Pestalozzi derived many of those
ideas that have made his name illustrious
among the world's great teachers, just as Rous¬
seau had gotten much of his inspiration from
reading Robinson Crusoe.
In considering the influence of the Emile
upon pedagogy in Europe, it would be well for
the reader to remember that this book was pub¬
lished in 1762, before the expulsion of the
Jesuits and before the events of the French
—no—
IN MODERN TIMES.
Revolution; and it is, therefore, to be judged
by educational conditions existing at the time
rather than in the light of methods now in
vogue. The book is best understood by reading
it as a whole, and is designed to correct the
errors existing in the mind of Rousseau. We
must be willing to pardon his errors and over¬
look his fanciful notions on account of the
grand truths and sublime thoughts contained
in the work at every step in its reading.
The wonderful influence exerted by the
Emile can best be seen in the fact that, twenty-
five years after its publication, there appeared,
in the French language, twice as many books
upon education as had been known during the
first sixty years of the century.
His work did much to give inspiration and
to stimulte the minds of educational thinkers,
for more than a hundred years subsequent to
the time of its first publication, and the book
will forever be regarded as being more valua¬
ble for the educational current that it set in
—till*—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
motion than because of the intrinsic merit of
its pedagogical instruction.
What Comenius, the first great reformer of
education, was to the age of the Renaissance,
Petalozzi, the second great reformer of educa¬
tion, was to the education of Europe in the
eighteenth century.
A splendid comparison of these two great¬
est educators that the world has ever known
is best given in the words of Reinhart:
"Comenius, the first great reformer of edu¬
cation, translated in the seventeenth century
the inductive philosophy of Bacon into the pre¬
cepts of a new education. Pestalozzi, illus¬
trating in his life all the apparent failures
which characterized that of Comenius, intro¬
duces into educational history a. spirit and
method which are potent even to-day. We are
now living in the spirit of Pestalozzi. The ideas
which he set forth are now, through pain and
struggle, endeavoring to get themselves real¬
ized."
—113—
IN MODERN TIMES.
Pestalozzi must ever be regarded as the
world's greatest educational iconoclast. The
educational idol which had been set up in the
study of the Humaijites—a blending of ancient
literature with the ideas contained in the Refor¬
mation and the revival of letters—was shat¬
tered by the touch of this remarkable genius,
and the study of the sciences, as the agencies
of nature, was regarded by him as the most de¬
sirable thing to be sought. He also taught that
an education could be obtained aside from the
study of mere books.
Pestalozzi believed firmly in the idea that
every child had a right to the full development
of all his intellectual powers, and that this
should be given by parents to their children as
an inherent right. In this broad and compre¬
hensive idea he laid the foundation for the doc¬
trine of universal education now practiced,
without exception, in all civilized and Christian
countries.
His one aim seemed to be the education of
—113—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
the masses, as opposed to the custom of restrict¬
ing education to the rich and the favored few,
which was so prevalent in his day, and which
was sanctioned by such educators as Basedow
and others.
It should encourage every ambitious youth
to know that Pestalozzi enjoyed very few early
educational advantages. He lost his father
at six years of age, and received such a train¬
ing as his mother alone could give him. His
own condition caused him to have a profound
sympathy for the poor, and this trait of his
character is plainly shown in his devotion to
systems of instruction that embraced in its
scheme the poor as well as the rich.
It is said that Rousseau's Emile exerted a
wonderful influence upon him and was, per¬
haps, the turning point in his life for an educa¬
tional career. This benefactor of mankind was
born at Zurich, Switzerland, in 1746, and died
in 1827.
He became a student in the college at Zurich
'—XI l-
IN MODERN TIMES.
when fourteen years of age. The character of
his instructors at Zurich may be learned from
the following words of his biographer: "So
great was the influence of these professors on
these pupils that the latter came to despise
wealth, luxury, material comfort, and care for
nothing but the pleasure of the mind and soul,
and the unceasing pursuit of justice and truth."
Before he entered upon his life work as an
educator he seems to have entered and tried
other professions and occupations.
He entered the ministry, preached one ser¬
mon, and gave that up. He afterwards studied
law, but abandoned that. Then for ten years
he followed the occupation of ah agriculturist,
and, after squandering the entire fortune of
his beautiful and devoted wife, this experiment
also ended in a disastrous failure.
In 1775 he established a school at Neuhof,
in his own house, for the education of poor chil¬
dren; but, being a poor manager in financial
matters, this attempt soon failed.
—115—
HISTORY OP EDUCATION.
It is said that after this failure at Neuhof,
for eighteen years, the great soul of Pestalozzi
was shrouded in despondency and gloom. But
if so, this great reformer was subjected to this
crucible of suffering only to be purified, as by
fire, for a greater and nobler work, which he
was to accomplish, later in his career, as a
philanthropist and as an educator.
These eighteen years of misfortune, sorrow,
and suffering only served to teach him valuable
lessons in human sympathy, and all the better
prepared him for the work that God designed
that he should accomplish for mankind. By
suffering he learned to sympathize with those
who suffer. His own words best tell his feel¬
ings at this time: "Never was I more profoundly
convinced of the fundamental truths upon
which I had based my undertaking than when
I saw that I had failed."
These words of Pestalozzi deserve to rank
among the wise sayings of great men and
should serve as an inspiration to young men
—116—
IN MODERN TIMES.
who begin life with nothing but rugged, phy-
ical strength, a lofty purpose, and an uncon¬
querable ambition. Nor did this great Swiss
reformer give up in despair after his failure at
Neuhoff, for the orphan asylum at Stanz, the
primary schools at Berthoud, the institute at
Berthoud and the institute at Yverdun, all
these attest his worth to the world as a great
teacher and a superb humanitarian.
Among the writings of Pestalozzi may be
mentioned the "Evening Hour of a Hermit,"
his first educational work, which was published
in 1780, composed principally of maxims upon
education and giving the theory of the author
upon education. In the following year he pub¬
lished ^Leonard and Gertrude," which is a pic¬
ture of village life in Switzerland. This work,
being in the style of a pleasing story, soon be¬
came very popular, was extensively read, and
was followed by a second, third and fourth*
volume, in which were plainly set forth his ideas
for educational reformation.
—117—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
Other educational works of Pestalozzi were
"Christopher and Alice," "Figures to My A, B,
C Book," "Researches into the Course of Na¬
ture in the Development of the Human Race."
But none of these publications had such a
marked effect upon the thinking minds of
Europe as did "Leonard and Gertrude" and
"How Gertrude Teaches Her Children."
It is impossible to estimate the value to the
world of the life and character of such a man
as Pestalozzi. Although he died with apparent
failure staring him in the face, with the cher¬
ished plans of a lifetime thwarted, yet, from
the institute at Yverdun he sent out many cele¬
brated teachers, who were imbued with the
proper spirit, and through these, his great peda¬
gogical teachings secured a foothold in the
world of thought.
* The very essence and spirit of what is best
in our educational systems of to-day, whether
in Europe or America, we have derived from
Pestalozzi's teaching, and on this account espe-
—118—
IN MODERN TIMES.
eially, he will be held forever in grateful remem¬
brance by the masses of thinking men and
women of all countries and of all climes.
In considering the great improvements in
systems of education and methods of teaching
in Europe, in the nineteenth century, one may
well be amazed at the wonderful advancement
that all the nations of the earth have made in
all respects. We seem now to be the rightful
educational legatees of all the past centuries.
We appear to be the fortunate heirs to all that
is best in the pedagogical history and the didac¬
tic experience of the past. In our day, we see re¬
moved all the obstacles and difficulties to edu¬
cational progress which beset the pathway of
Oomenius, Pestalozzi, and other great educa¬
tional reformers; and what seems best and most
useful in their theories are now being put into
practice without let or hindrance everywhere.
To-day all the nations of the earthj worthy of
the name, have national systems of education
which include, in their scholastic benefits and
lid—
HISTORY OF .EDUCATION.
educational advantages, the poor and rich alike
without regard to sex, religion, politics or race.
What a growth in educational scope through
the centuries from the time of the Greeks and
the Romans, when education was restricted to
the higher classes and denied to slaves! What
wonderful progress in pedagogical growth since
the Middle Ages, when monasticism and eccle¬
siastical authority absolutely controlled educa¬
tional affairs!
During this century we see that the physical
sciences are given more prominence in our
courses of study; that Latin and Greek are no
longer given the first place in a liberal course
of instruction; that the scope of educational in¬
vestigation has immensely broadened; that the
age has drifted into special professional and
technical forms of education wholly unknown
to the pedagogues of previous centuries.
No account of this wonderful age in educa¬
tional growth and investigation would be com¬
plete, however, without a mention of the name
—120—
IN MODERN TIMES.
of Froebel, who stands out prominently as the
one individual, more than any other, who Jias
most clearly and distinctly impressed his ideas
upon this century.
Born in Thuringia in 1782, he was deprived
of the influence of a mother's training and love,
at an early age, and was educated by his father
and his uncle, both of whom Avere village
pastors.
From his earliest years he exhibited splen¬
did traits of character, and remarkable mental
power. He was an idealist and showed a strong
tendency toward a deep religious sentiment.
The founder of kindergartens was an asso¬
ciate of Pestalozzi in the school at Yverdun,
Switzerland. In the school that he established
at Keilhan, for fifteen years, it is said that he
"based instruction on the principle of culti¬
vating the self-activity of the pupil by connect¬
ing manual labor with every study." In keep¬
ing Avith this doctrine kindergartens were
established in different parts of Germany
—121—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
between 1840 and 1850, and the training of the
young children began.
As a teacher Froebel was a master of both
the science and the art of teaching. He com¬
bined the theory and the practice of teaching
in his own person in a wonderful degree. Al¬
though he was a man of one idea, for the
most part, and was awkward in appearance,
yet he was most impressive and brilliant as a
teacher; he was a Christian rather than a secta¬
rian, and exercised a far-reaching influence
upon the pedagogical thought of his times.
The object of the kindergarten is best stated
by him in his own words: "To take the oversight
of children before they are ready for school life;
to exert an influence over their whole being in
correspondence with its nature; to strengthen
their bodily powers; to employ the awakening-
mind; to make them thoughtfully acquainted
with the world of nature and of man; to guide
their heart and soul in the right direction, and
—122—
IN MODERN TIMES.
to lead them to the Origin of Life and to union
with Him."
We doubt whether any other educator,
either ancient or modern, ever expressed more
sublime sentiments in so few and so simple
words. We can readily see that the inspira¬
tion that could give birth to such thoughts as
these is more a kin to the Sermon on the Mount
than to any reasoning of the ancient philoso¬
phers, however learned and profound.
In these words Froebel shows that he is to
be the one great friend of children throughout
all subsequent ages. He shows that he under¬
stands their natures and is to be the one to
apply those principles of training peculiarly
adapted to them.
He gives some excellent psychological prin¬
ciples that we should remember and practice,
viz.:
1. That knowledge and activity are closely
related.
2. That the child's spontaneous activity is
—123—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
tlie force that sets the mechanism of the senses
in movement.
3. That perception includes the employ¬
ment not only of the eye but of the hand.
4. That a nice perception of form is only
gained in connection with the devices of manual
reproduction.
These kindergarten principles, so pointedly
stated, are now recognized almost everywhere
as being fundamental in the education of chil¬
dren.
While Froebel is the greatest educator of
the nineteenth century in Europe, judged by
any standard and compared to any other great
pedagogue of this age, yet there are others who
are worthy of mention, and who have done
much to help spread the influence of correct
principles of teaching among the masses.
It was Diesterweg, one of the celebrated
German teachers, who gave utterance to the
great educational truth that the aim of educn-
—124—
IN MODERN TIMES.
tion is "self-activity in the service of the true,
the beautiful and the good."
He has given us "Catechism of Methods of
Teaching," "School Discipline and Plans of In¬
struction," "Intuitional and Speaking Exer¬
cises." These educational publications are
sufficiently meritorious to cause the author to
take high rank among professional teachers for
all time to come.
Eosenkranz, in his "Philosophy of Educa¬
tion," endeavors to reduce to a system of philos¬
ophy the many great educational truths set
forth by Eatich, Comenius, Eousseau and Pest-
alozzi, as well as the truths that were contained
in the current systems that they attacked. This
work is of inestimable value in presenting
truths in such form as to be comprehensive to
all who seek true pedagogical knowledge.
Jacotot, in his "Universal Method," has also
given us some splendid ideas upon the teach¬
ing of language. The main idea contained in
the treatise is "that a single fact thoroughly
—125—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
known by careful observation and repeated re¬
flection becomes the key to the acquisition of
all other facts."
Jacotot believed that the pupil must learn
something thoroughly, and with this known
fact as a basis, he must proceed to acquire
knowledge of kindred facts. He laid down four
rules for carrying out his principles that we
would do well to remember: (1) Learn; (2) re¬
peat; (3) reflect; (4) verify.
Dr. Thomas Arnold, master of the school at
Rugby, was one of the greatest teachers that
England has ever produced.
Thomas Hughes, author of "Tom Brown at
Rugby," and Dean Stanley, author of the "His¬
tory of the Jewish Church" and "The Life of
Dr. Arnold," were pupils of this celebrated edu¬
cator. His whole idea upon education can be
summed up in the fact that he believed in
arousing the self-activity of each individual. He
stimulated the individual by a series of in-
genius questions, by means of which the pupil
—126—
IN MODERN TIMES.
was aroused, and sought knowledge for himself
without depending upon his teacher to give him
any information that he could obtain for him¬
self.
As a logician and philosophic teacher few
men have surpassed Sir William Hamilton, who
was for many years professor of moral philoso¬
phy at the University of Edinburgh. He be¬
lieved firmly in the doctrine of the importance
of self-activity in educational methods. It is
upon his lectures in logic, mainly, that his
reputation as a scholar and educator rests. The
following familiar quotation in regard to read¬
ing was given by him: "Some books are, there¬
fore, to be only dipped into; others are to be run
over rapidly, and others to be studied long and
seduously."
His "Discussions in Philosophy and Litera¬
ture" embrace papers upon education of the
highest value and importance to advanced stu¬
dents. He agrees with a great many other
prominent pedagogues in holding that mathe-
—127—
HISTORY OP EDUCATION.
matics tends "to cultivate a smaller number of
the faculties in a more partial and feeble man¬
ner" than other studies. He sustained his
position upon this question by giving cogent
reasons, which the leading educators of our day
now almost regard as truisms, and which seem
to have put this question forever beyond further
dispute.
"Lectures on the Science and Art of Educa¬
tion," by Joseph Payne, professor of education
in the College of Preceptors at London, is a
book remarkable for the presentation of accu¬
rate views upon the art of teaching.
He held, in common with many other educa¬
tors, that the office of the teacher is not to
transmit knowledge from teacher to pupil, but
to direct it properly and to stimulate the pupil
judiciously while he educates himself. The im¬
portance of this philosophy of teaching is now
almost universally recognized and practiced by
all teachers, who understand the mental devel-
—128—
IN MODERN TIMES.
opment of the child, as it is revealed to us by
the profound science of psychology.
He has given us also lectures upon "True
Foundation of Science Teaching," ^Pestalozzi"
and "The Curriculum of Modern Education."
Perhaps no other philosopher and scientist,
in this century, has exerted more influence upon
educational thought than has Herbert Spencer.
In his "Education; Intellectual, Moral and
Physical" he gives his views upon evolution as
the controlling method in nature. His ideas
are the result of his investigations, discoveries
and conclusions in science.
In his treatise upon intellectual education
he protests against the misuse of books as in¬
struments in education. He regards books,
properly, as being means and not ends in the
acquisition of power, knowledge and skill. More
important than the book—the mere instrument
—is the child with an immortal soul, and with
intellectual faculties to be developed, and to
—129—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION
be prepared for complete living, to exercise the
important functions of a useful citizen, etc.
His works have had a most wholesome influ¬
ence upon tl^e thoughtful minds of the century,
and many abuses in educational methods have
been abandoned, and others corrected, as a re¬
sult of his pedagogical philosophy.
There are several reasons why popular sys¬
tems of education, such as now obtain in Amer¬
ica, have had such a slow growth in Europe.
The union of church and state, giving rise to a
system of parochial schools; the excellent pri¬
vate schools, with colleges and universities
dating back to mediaeval times; lack of race
homogeneity, with different languages and cus¬
toms; religious differences between Protestants
and Catholics; the conservatism and exclusive-
ness of the aristocracy—all these influences
combined had a tendency to leave education to
individual effort and to denominational zeal;
and, chiefly on this account, for generations,
—130—
IN MODERN TIMES.
Europe lagged behind America in popular edu¬
cational systems.
Previous to the present century the educa¬
tion of the masses was almost entirely neg¬
lected, when Robert Bailees, the famous founder
of the Sunday school, began an agitation in
favor of the education of the English poor
which, in 1870, resulted in the adoption of a
compulsory educational system, supported by
the state, for all children between the ages of
five and thirteen.
Now, in every country in Europe, systems of
education for the masses have been adopted
and are in vogue, and are accomplishing splen¬
did results in educational growth and mental
development.
The idea of industrial training, as an inte¬
gral part of the course of study in public
schools, is now quite prevalent in all parts of
Europe. The difference in the aim of this char¬
acter of school work can best be understood by
—131—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
contrasting the methods practiced in France
with those that obtain in Germany.
The French seek to find a direct preparation
for the trades in their industrial schools, while
the Germans seek what is purely of an educa¬
tive value to the pupil from his manual work,
[n other words, the trade schools exist in
France for the purpose of preparing the pupil
to earn a livelihood by becoming proficient in
a trade. In Germany, the manual training
schools exist for the mere educational A7alue to
be derived by the pupil in such a training, with¬
out any reference or bearing that such skill may
have upon him as an artisan in the future.
It is a well-established fact, also, that con-
ceptive ideals have much to do with giving a
practical finish to products in our industrial
schools.
This theory of idealism, combined with prac¬
tical utility and ornamental finish, runs
through the entire scheme of drawing as it is
—132—
IN MODERN TIMES.
taught, respectively, in French and German in¬
dustrial schools.
In Germany the Sloyd system of drawings
does not permit the turning out of products that
find so ready a sale, when put upon the market,
as is the case with the more graceful and better
finished products, which are the result of the
ornamental system of drawing that obtains in
the schools of France and Belgium.
In Europe, during the century just closed,
we have witnessed a rapid growth in education
from former systems toward what is more popu¬
lar and more practical; the best theories of the
past have been combined with the best prac¬
tice of the present; popular systems of educa¬
tion have been adopted by all the nations of
Europe; industrial schools have sprung up, in
all lands, devoted to trades and to manual
training; special schools for the training of
teachers are nowT everywhere in vogue; there
has been an awakening toward the establish-
—133—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
ment of eleemosynary and charitable institu¬
tions for the weak and the unfortunate.
Never before in the world's history has so
much been done, under such excellent methods,
and by such able instructors for general intel¬
lectual growth and development, as we find to¬
day. Let us hope that this good work may con¬
tinue to grow until the individual—the unit of
civil and moral force—may find the most ample
opportunity for the exercise of his moral, intel¬
lectual, and physical powers.
CHAPTER VI.
Education in the United States
Tlie one criticism that can be justly made
against the pedagogy of Europe, as a whole, is
that it has always been essentially aristocratic
in character.
Not only would this be true because, in the
main the forms of government are monarchical,
but even in tlie writings of Herbert Spencer,
Alexander Bain, and John Locke; we find traces
of this idea without any apparent comprehen¬
sion of a popular system of education, for all
the people supported by the state, as we find it
now in our country.
Almost from the very foundation of our gov¬
ernment it seems that William Ellcry Channing
and Horace Mann, two of our earliest and
most prominent American educators, regarded
—135—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION
a system of popular education as being essen¬
tial in a republican form of government, and by
means of lectures and writings upon education,
did much to call the attention of the people to
the supreme importance of education as a pri¬
mary and most essential means of perpetuating
our free institutions.
Similar opinions had been previously ex¬
pressed and a system of public education had
been boldly urged by such patriots and early
founders of the republic as George Washington,
John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, as the
surest and best means of preserving a govern¬
ment that must depend upon the intelligence
and the integrity of the people to give it vital¬
izing force and enduring character. This was
felt to be the more important because, for the
first time among men, a government was to be
founded in which the masses were to consider
and to decide every kind of a political and eco¬
nomic question involving the public welfare.
The principles of civil liberty; schemes for
—136—
IN THE UNITED STATES.
the material growth of the country; questions
of education, finance, and those concerning our
foreign relations were to be discussed and to
be decided by the people.
At the polls every man had an equal voice
in making all decisions and determining the
policy of the government.
On this account chiefly, and because a high
degree of intelligence was considered best for
the individual citizen, from any point of view,
the establishment and the maintenance of a
system of education, in the respective states,
suitable to the masses, under a republican form
of government, was urged from the very begin¬
ning.
For more than one hundred and fifty years—
during the Colonial period—the writings and
educational efforts were almost entirely re¬
ligious in character; difficulties with the In¬
dians kept the colonies on the defensive; settle¬
ments were sparse in number and far apart;
poverty and hardship were common—all these
—137—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION
influences combined liad a tendency to retard
the general growth of education among the
early settlers.
But even during Colonial times there was a
vast difference in the growth of education as
shown in the character of the Puritans, who
settled Massachusetts, and the cavaliers, who
colonized. Virginia.
The Puritans, having fled from religious per¬
secution and political intolerance, were imbued
with deep religious convictions and had right
conceptions of civil liberty for the individual
citizen, and, therefore, sought to establish a
government for the intellectual, moral, and po¬
litical development of every member of the
community.
If these objects, in any degree, were held in
abeyance, and no fitting opportunity found for
their free exercise and wholesome advancement,
these are to be found more in the untoward cir¬
cumstances of the times than in any desire of
these Massachusetts settlers to fail in contrib-
—138—
IN THE UNITED STATES.
uting their full share to a normal growth in
•education that found its best fruition in after
years.
The gay cavaliers, on the other hand, tak¬
ing leave of their mother country more from a
desire to free themselves from unpleasant
bodily restraints than because of any compunc¬
tion of conscience, sought the shores of Vir¬
ginia with no definite aim and with no lofty
purpose in view.
The efforts of John Smith to teach these
gentlemen of early plantation fame "to swing
the ax" proved fruitless in his day, nor have
such attempts startled the world by any un¬
usual degree of success since.
The character of these early settlers was
not of a kind to encourage the growth of edu¬
cation, nor to foster a spirit of liberty that
would include, in its civil benefits, every inhabi¬
tant among these early colonists.
Inheriting more of the aristocratic spirit of
the English ruling classes, and becoming en-
—139—
HISTORY OP EDUCATION
tirely oblivious of the London prison bars from
whence they had fled, their conception of edu¬
cation and idea of civil policy, from the very
first, differed widely from the broad and com¬
prehensive ideas shared by the New England
settlers.
The lack of a proper conception of an edu¬
cational system for the masses, and the desire
to evade the plain injunction of Scripture,
which declares that "In the sweat of thy face
shalt thou eat bread," were to be found the two
principal causes for the tardy growth of educa¬
tion among the Virginia colonists for genera¬
tions.
It is said that for half a century after the
settlement at Jamestown schools w7ere un¬
known. The feeble efforts in this direction
were confined to private homes, and several gen¬
erations were reared in comparative ignorance.
The educational spirit of these early times in
Virginia can best be expressed in the words of
Sir William Berkley: "I thank God that there
—140—
IN THE UNITED STATES.
are 110 free schools, nor printing, and I hope we
shall not have these for a hundred years; for
learning has brought disobedience and heresy
and sects into the world, and printing has di¬
vulged them and libels against the best govern¬
ment. God keep us from both!-'
True, however, to their aristocratic ideas,
the same indifference that was manifested
toward a popular school system did not ex¬
tend to higher institutions for the education of
the more fortunate few. About seventy years
after the first settlement in Virginia the col-
lge of William and Mary was established at
Williamsburg. Leading citizens subscribed
liberally in behalf of the founding of this col¬
lege and even a royal grant of 20,000 acres,
£2,000 in rents, and a tax of a penny a pound
to support this institution was laid upon all
tobacco exported from Virginia and Maryland
to other American colonies.^
Rev. James Blair, a man noted for his emi¬
nent piety and great learning, and who had
— 141 —
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
been most active in securing the establishment
of this college, was chosen its first president.
In its course of study were embraced divini¬
ty, Greek and Latin, and natural philosophy.
This was the second college founded in our
country, and from its "shady groves and classic
walls" have gone forth many of those men who
have been most prominent in helping to mould
- public, sentiment and to shape the destinies of
our country.
At this early day, with the blighting curse
of slavery, like the suspended sword of
Damocles, even then a menace to the public wel¬
fare; with the isolated condition of the popula¬
tion; with wealthy land owners dominating
both civil and social affairs; with meager sym¬
pathy for the true, worth in mankind of another
race, little else could be expected from these
aristocratic adventurers, who chiefly sought
their own pleasure, except the production of a
class of politicians, orators, and gentlemen who
would seek, in after years, to maintain their con-
—142—
IN THE UNITED STATES.
trol by keeping tlie masses in ignorance and
in subjection.
No review of the early educational history
of our country, however, would be complete
without a brief account of the character and
far-reaching influence that the Puritans ex¬
erted upon the history of pedagogy during
Colonial times. Unlike the early settlers of
Virginia the Puritans came to America with a
fixed purpose, with a grim determination to
find for themselves permanent homes, and to
establish a government that should guarantee
complete religious and. civil liberty to every
person in the colony.
No pride of birth, no arrogance of rank, was
to swerve them a hairsbreadth from a purpose
which had become an inseparable part of them¬
selves. They were a people who had deep re¬
ligious convictions, who, had literally suffered
for conscience, sake, and who had come to the
bleak shores of Massachusetts, into the wilder¬
ness of a new world, -to risk the hardships and
—143—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION
to endure the suffering that would inevitably
follow them in a settlement among hostile
Indians, and amid unfavorable surroundings,
rather than to remain in England to become
either religious dependents or political nonenti¬
ties.
These early settlers were brave and fear¬
less men, who dared think for themselves, and
several of them also had enjoyed educational
advantages at Oxford and Cambridge, and had
brought with them to the new world correct
ideas in regard to religious toleration, and en¬
tertained liberal views in regard to the theory
and practice of comprehensive and far-reaching
methods of education.
It is one of the marvels of history to know
how this band of settlers, within a few years
after the landing of the Mayflower, being small
in number, with meager home comforts, and be¬
ing in constant fear of the scalping knife of the
Indians, could have established a system of
—144—
IN THE UNITED STATES.
schools that at once placed them far in advance
of European systems of education.
In 1G36 Harvard college was founded main¬
ly through the efforts of Rev. John Harvard,
after whom this famous institution was named.
It was opened in 1638 and was patronized and
sustained by all the New England colonies.
Also, unlike the Virginia settlers, the edu¬
cational efforts of the Puritans were not con¬
fined merely to the establishment and the main¬
tenance of institutions for the higher educa¬
tion of the few, but, as early as 1647, steps were
taken to establish schools in every township
for the purpose of teaching the children to read
and write. Not only were primary schools es¬
tablished for this purpose, but provisions were
also made for the maintenance of grammar
schools, which were to prepare pupils for the
university. In other words, a system of edu¬
cation for the masses was established, less than
thirty years after the Puritans landed upon
Plymouth Rock, that has proven more far-
—145—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION
reaching, from an educational point of view,
upon the destinies of our country than any
other one act in all our governmental and edu¬
cational history.
Nor did the other New England colonies
long lag behind Massachusetts in well-directed
educational efforts. As early as 1650 provisions
wefe made for the education of the children in
Connecticut.
Rhode Island, Maine, New Hampshire and
New Jersey, at an early period, adopted sub¬
stantially the same educational system as had
Massachusetts.
The charter granted William Penn in 1711
contains the following excellent provision in
regard to the early educational history of
Pennsylvania:
"Whereas, The prosperity and welfare of
any people depend in a great measure upon
the good education of youth and their early in¬
troduction in the principles of true religion and
virtue, and qualifying them to serve their coun-
—146—
IN THE UNITED STATES.
try and themselves by breeding them in read¬
ing, writing and learning of languages and use¬
ful arts and sciences suitable to their sex, age
and degree, which can not be effected in any
manner so well as by erecting public schools
for the purpose aforesaid."
While Maryland made no provision for a
popular system of education until 1723, and no
action was taken in this direction in the state
of North Carolina until as late as 1819, the
states of Georgia and South Carolina made no
provision whatever for a general system of edu¬
cation during the colonial period.
But it has been during the national period
that the United States has made such wonder¬
ful advancement along educational lines.
Although, from the foundation of the gov¬
ernment, a general system for the education of
the masses was recognized to be necessary to
the growth and to the perpetuity of our institu¬
tions, yet the early fathers of the Republic
thought it best that the question of education
—147—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION
should be left entirely to the respective states.
In the very beginning of our constitutional
formation and growth, Washington and others
urged the establishment of a national univer¬
sity at Washington, in order to liberalize educa¬
tional ideas, and to check narrow conceptions
of governmental relations, which might be
brought about as a result of leaving the subject
of education entirely to the respective states,
but no action was taken in the matter. Even
the plan, now in vogue, of granting certain por¬
tions of the public lands for educational pur¬
poses, had its inception as early as 1785. Upon
this subject we shall quote from Painter's "His¬
tory of Education," viz.:
"In the ordinance for the government of
the Northwest Territory the sixteenth section
(one square mile) in every township was set
apart for the maintenance of public schools.
The principle governing this action was stated
as follows: 'Religion, morality and knowledge
being necessary to good government and the
—148—
IN THE UNITED STATES.
happiness of mankind, schools and the means
of education shall be forever encouraged.' Two
years later an additional grant of two town¬
ships was made to each state for the support
of a university. As this action was confirmed
in 1879, after the adoption of the federal Con¬
stitution, every state organized since that time,
has received, in addition to the grant for com¬
mon schools, at least two townships for the pro¬
motion of higher education. In 1848 the thirty-
sixth section of each township was added to
the sixteenth for the support of common
schools. Special grants have been made at dif¬
ferent times. The land granted by the federal
government for educational purposes between
1785 and 1862 amounts to nearly 140,000,000
acres."
Even in 1862, amidst one of the most dread¬
ful civil wars of modern times, which for more
than four years threatened the very existence
of the government itself, Congress made a grant
of land script to the amount of 30,000 acres for
—149—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
each senator and representative for the estab¬
lishment of agricultural colleges in the several
states. It is estimated that the amount of land
thus donated under the act was 9,510,000 acres.
The object of these schools is to encourage
scientific and classical studies,.military tactics,
and to teach such branches of knowledge as are
closely related to agriculture and the mechanic
arts, in order that the industrial classes may
enjoy the benefits of a liberal and a practical
education.
In every state, as a result of the wise edu¬
cational policy on the part of the federal gov¬
ernment, agricultural schools have been estab¬
lished, and in most of them the federal
appropriations have been largely supplemented
by state appropriations, as well.as, in a few
cases, by individual donations.
In the Department of the Interior at Wash¬
ington there has been established a Bureau of
Education to collect, to preserve, and to dis¬
tribute educational information among the peo-
—150—
IN THE UNITED STATES.
pie. Annually there is issued from said Bureau
of Education much valuable information, in the
form of reports and circulars, which is widely
disseminated in all parts of our country. In
addition to what the federal government is
doing for the general encouragement of educa¬
tion among the people, each state and territory
has its own institutions for higher education,
and a common school system for the education
of all the children within its borders.
In addition to state schools that are supple¬
mented by national aid, there are many excel¬
lent private and denominational schools in
each state, also, that are doing a most impor¬
tant and necessary work for the moral, intel¬
lectual and industrial development of the peo¬
ple. Indeed, such is the interest now manifested
in industrial education that manual training
and trade schools, together with technical
schools of every character, are being made spe¬
cial features in almost every school for the
-—151—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION
higher education of both sexes in every state
and territory.
In the southern states, where the least
progress had been made in education during
the Colonial period, where private and denomi¬
national schools largely prevailed, and where
the ravages of the Civil War had left the peo¬
ple poor and impoverished, it is highly gratify¬
ing to witness the wonderful progress that is
now taking place, in that entire section, in
favor of popular education.
In every southern state it seems that the
traditions of the past have been apparently for¬
gotten, and systems of public education for
black and white alike, although the schools are
separate, are now in vogue.
The Rev. A. D. Mayo, in speaking upon this
subject, says: "The great work has begun in
earnest. Our northern folk have no concep¬
tion of the rapidly growing power of the edu¬
cational movement in the South. It is popular¬
izing political parties, shaking up religious
—152—
IN THE UNITED STATES.
sects, exciting the drawing rooms, pulverizing
'bosses'—civil, ecclesiastical and social."
Though differing in details, and although
education is, in the main, regulated by the
states, yet the general interest in this direction
which has been exhibited by the federal govern¬
ment, from the very beginning, in encouraging
and supplementing the efforts of all the states
for the growth of education, has been the means
of inaugurating, in the United States, the best
system of popular education now extant among
civilized nations.
In the general scheme of popular education,
as it now exists in all the states, is compre¬
hended three grades of schools: The primary
schools, in which are taught reading, writing,
arithmetic, geography and English grammar;
the secondary schools, embracing what is
known as high schools, graded schools, gram¬
mar schools and academies, in which the higher
mathematics, foreign languages, history and
natural sciences are taught; and the colleges
HISTORY OF EDUCATION
and universities, in which the course of study
embraces all the branches necessary to a liber¬
al education and to a successful professional
life.
In addition to these may be mentioned the
normal schools, which are designed to train
and to equip teachers for their professional
work.
For the most part these primary and sec¬
ondary schools are supported by local and state
taxation and the A. and M. colleges by grants
from the national government.
Though many of the states have one or
more institutions for superior instruction, main¬
tained by a direct appropriation from the state
Legislature, and by grants or donations from
the federal government in aid of agricultural
and mechanical colleges, yet the great majority
of our colleges and universities are the result
of individual effort and denominational zeal.
In every state there is a Board of Educa¬
tion or a Superintendent of Public Instruction,
—154—
IN THE UNITED STATES.
exercising a general supervision over the public
schools, while in all minor details the manage¬
ment of the schools is left to local officers, usu¬
ally consisting of county superintendents and
district trustees. In every section of our coun¬
try great interest is being manifested in educa¬
tional growth and mental development.
The log huts and temporary makeshifts of
antebellum days are now being supplanted by
comfortably built and neatly furnished school
houses; public sentiment is demanding training
schools for the education of a better class of
teachers; school officers are being held to a
more strict accountability for the faithful dis¬
charge of their duties; the term of the schools
is being constantly lengthened, and improved
courses of study and modern methods of teach¬
ing are becoming general everywhere. .
- It is true that the leading educators are not
agreed as to the advisability of a compulsory
system of popular education, yet it has many
prominent and earnest advocates in all the
—155—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
states who are urging its adoption as tlie crown¬
ing step to our excellent public school system.
While many reasons are given both for and
against compulsory education, yet it seems, on
the whole, to be gaining ground in our country.
It has been adopted iru Connecticut, Massachu¬
setts, Michigan, Maine, Texas, California, New
Jersey, and in partial forms in some of the
other states.
While co-education exists in Europe, it is
not so prevalent a form of education there as
it is in the United States. In the primary and
secondary schools of our country it is the gen¬
eral custom, in all the states, to permit the
young of both sexes to be educated together. In
large measure, too, but not to such an extent as
in primary and secondary grades of school, co¬
education exists in many of our high schools,
colleges, and universities.
There are many reasons given for and
against co-education, by its respective advo¬
cates and opponents, but, on the whole, it is
—156—
IN THE UNITED STATES.
rapidly gaining in public favor, and, in the few
years of its adoption and trial, it now obtains in
two-thirds of our higher institutions of learning.
One of the most remarkable modifications
that has been witnessed in our educational
growth is that which has effected the courses
of study in our high schools, colleges, and uni¬
versities.
Instead of sticking dogmatically to the
study of Greek, Latin and mathematics, jyhich,
for ages, constituted the only college curricula
of the past, these courses of study have now
been adjusted to meet present conditions, and
to keep pace with the practical demands of our
times. Sciences relating to nature have sup¬
planted much of mere ancient lore, and modern
literature, with its advancement in knowledge
of all kinds, has had a constant tendency to
enlarge and to modernize our courses of study.
In keeping step with this advancement in
knowledge, also, almost all our colleges have
adopted what are called parallel courses of
—157—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION
study which now give a choice to the student
in an elective scheme of study. Upon this sub¬
ject we quote from President Eliot of Harvard
college as follows:
"The general growth of knowledge and the
rise of new literatures, arts and sciences during
the past two hundred and fifty years have made
it necessary to define anew liberal education,
and hence enlarge the signification of the degree
of Bachelor of Arts, which is the customary
evidence of a liberal education."
—158—
CHAPTEK VII.
Among the Negro Population
No history of education concerning our
country should omit an accurate account of the
education of the Negro race since the close of
the Civil War.
In the early days of slavery many kind-heart¬
ed slave holders taught their slaves to read and
write. Others among the slaves picked up their
knowledge under the forms of self-culture,
overcoming difficulties in the achievement not
easily explained nor understood. Schools were
established for the education of the free colored
people within the limits of slave territory. These
schools were, however, mainly located in the
large cities. But the Missouri Compromise, the
insurrection of Nat Turner, and the prevalence
of abolition sentiment in the North served to
arouse a feeling, in the South, against Negro
—159—
HISTORY OP EDUCATION.
education. About this time most stringent
laws were passed in all the slave states prohibit¬
ing Negro education in schools and discourag¬
ing private efforts for his instruction.
Notwithstanding these efforts to prevent
his intellectual advancement, there are many
instances of persistent individual effort, on the
part of the Negro, to gain a knowledge of read¬
ing and writing, as in the case of Frederick
Douglass, self-taught, and of John M. Langs-
ton, who was instructed by his master and
father; and the same thing can be said of very
many others.
Beginning about 1828 every southern state
began to pass laws prohibiting the education
of the Negro by legislative enactment.
But the history of education, as it affects
the American Negro, began at the close of the
Civil War in 1865, which resulted in his eman¬
cipation.
Some statistics bearing upon his education
will be given as follows:
—160—
AMONG THE NEGRO POPULATION.
The estimated number of children in the
South (sixteen former slave states and District
of Columbia) between five and eighteen years
of age for the scholastic year of 1899-1900 was
9,094,490. Of this number 6,103,390, or 67.15
per cent., were white and 2,991,100, or 32.85 per
cent., were colored. The enrollment shows
4,16.7,489, or 68.28 per cent., of the white popu¬
lation in public schools, while the enrollment
in the colored schools was 1,539,507, or 51.46
per cent., of the colored school population.
The average daily attendance in white schools
was 2,711,701, or 65.06 per cent., of the white
enrollment, and in the Negro schools 957,160,
or 62.17 per cent., of the colored enrollment.
These factsr stated in a more succinct form,
show that about one-third of the pupils of
school age in the South are colored; that while
a little over two-thirds of the whites are en¬
rolled in the schools, that a little over ha^f of
the Negroes are also enrolled in schools; that
the average daily attendance of the colored
—181—
BUILDINGS OF LINCOLN INSTITUTE. JEFFERSON CITY. MISSOURI.
AMONG THE NEGRO POPULATION.
child is only about 2.89 per cent, behind that of
the white child.
The total expenditure of the public schools
of the South for 1899-1900 was $35,594,071. It
is estimated that 20 per cent, of this sum, or
$7,118,814, was expended in support of Negro
schools.
Since 1870-71, or during a period of thirty
years, $615,103,948 have been expended in the
South for both races. Of this amount $109,000,-
000 have been expended for colored education
alone.
During the scholastic years 1899-1900 a
report from ninety-two public high schools for
Negroes shows 8,448 pupils enrolled, with 272
teachers. There were 3,216 pupils in elemen¬
tary grades and 5,232 in secondary or high
school grades proper. There were 1,083 stu¬
dents in the classical courses, 1,303 in scientific
courses, 2,788 in the English course, 100 in the
business course, 206 in the normal course and
600 in manual training. The number of gradu-
—163—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
ates from the high school course for the same
year was 646. Of these ninety-two schools
fifty-nine had libraries aggregating 14,961 vol¬
umes, valued at $13,041.
In 1899-1900 there were also 145 schools of
secondary and higher grade for the education
of colored students and supported by funds
from private sources. These had enrolled
37,696 students, 22,043 in elementary grades,
13,267 in secondary grades and 2,386 in col¬
legiate grades. Of students in secondary grades
there were 4,881 in training courses for teach¬
ers and 803 of these were graduated. In higher
education 1,751 students were in professional
courses and 15,683 of all grades in industrial
training.
The following tables, giving statistical in¬
formation, should be carefully studied by the
reader, who desires to become acquainted with
the real progress the colored people, in the
ex-slave states, have made in thirty-five years.
These facts are gathered from the reports of
the Bureau of Education for 1899-1900:
—164—
TABLE I.—Common School Statistics.
STATE.
Alabama !
Arkansas
Delaware '91-'92..
Dis. of Columbia.
Florida
Georgia
Kentucky '96-'97..
Louisiana ...
Maryland '98-'99..
Mississippi '98-'99
Missouri
North Carolina.
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Virginia
West Virginia.
Estimate No of
Persons 5 to 18
Years of Age.
351,630
337,280
39,470
45,640
97,970
405,950
575,041
227,760
268,060
227,470
910,980
418,560
185,860
517,060
819,140
365,890
309,630
Total, '99-'00.. |6,103,390|2^991,100
301,300
130,740
8,900
25,110
77,640
380,970
98,490
242,590
77,290
331,330
55,420
250,970
311,900
174,510
250,860
260,320
12,760
Percentage of
the Whole.
53.85
72.06
81.61
64.36
55.79
51.59
85.37
48.43
77.63
40.71
94.26
62.52
37.34
74.76
76.55
58.43
96.04
67.15
46.15
27.94
18.39
35.64
44.21
48.41
14.63
51.57
22.37
59.29j
5.74
37.48
62.66
25.24
23.45
41.57
3.96
Pupils Enrolled
in Public
Schools.
234,000
230,345
28,316
31,261
67,077
287,397
432,572
121,936
182,480
167,684
685,276
270,447
126,289
384,649
451,830
241,696
224,233
Per Ct. of Per¬
sons 5 to 18Yrs.
I Enrolled.
142,423
84,317
4,858
15,258
41,797
195,276
69,321
74,233
46,852
192,493
34,540
130,005
155,602
100,705
126,538
117,129
8,110
66.54
68.29
71.74
68.49
68.48
70.79
75.22
53.53
68.07
73.71
75.22
64.86
67.94
74.39
55.16
66.05
72.40
32.85|4,167,489J1,539,507) 68.28
51.46
TABLE 2.—Common School Statistics.
STATE.
Alabama
Arkansas
Delaware, 1891-92
^ District of Columbia.
o> Florida
J* Georgia
Kentucky, 1896-97
Louisiana
Maryland, 1898-99
Mississippi, 1898-99...
Missouri
North Carolina
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Virginia
West Virginia
Total, 1899-1900 2,711,7011 957,160
Average Daily
Attendance.
198,463
142,745
19,746
23,852
46,267
178,961
265,623
90,187
109,696
98,695
437,011
142,413
90,348
270,662
309,876
141,382
145,774
99,342
52,656
2,947
11,611
28,736
119,276
43,074
56,136
22,989
102,898
23,001
64,505
110,947
67,904
83,904
61,754
5,480
Per Cent, of
Enrollment.
84.81
61.97
69.73
76.29
68.97
62.26
61.41
73.96
60.11
59.45
63.77
52.65
71.54
70.36
68.58
58.50
65.01
65.06
69:75
32.45
60.66
76.09
68.75
61.08
62.14
75.62
49.07
53.45
66.59
49.61
71.30
67.42
66.28
52.72
67.57
Number of
Teachers.
5,000
1,578
5,518
1,441
734
106
814
412
2,084
645
6,557
3,563
8,564
1,396
3,072
1,085
4,300
827
4,871
3,285
15,397
804
5,600
2,387
3,270
2,294
7,329
1,866
12,019
3,001
6,671
2,165
6,852
327
62.17 I 98,052 I 27,182
AMONG THE NEGRO POPULATION.
AMONG THE NEGRO POPULATION.
The adult male population (21 years and over). Per
cent, of illiterates (unable-to write) among adult males:
Native
Foreign
State or Territory.
white.
white.
Colored.
1
9
10
■ 11
United States
. . 4.9
11.5
46.8
North Atlantic Division...
.. 2.0
15.2
16.7
South Atlantic Division...
.. 11.5
11.3
51.0
South Central Division....
.. 11.1
18.8
52.3
North Central Division....
. . 2.9
7.9
27.4
Western Division
.. 2.4
7.7
36.1
North Atlantic Division—
Maine
. . 3.1
21.4
27.3
New Hampshire
. . 2.0
24.0
19.8
Vermont
. . 4.1
23.3
19.8
Massachusetts
.9
13.8
14.2
Rhode Island....
. . 2.0
18.2
15.6
Connecticut
.. 1.0
15.6
13.8
New York
. . 1.8
12.1
14.5
New Jersey
. . 2.3
13.4
19.0
Pennsylvania
. . 2.5
20.2
■18.2
South Atlantic Division—
Delaware
. . 7.1
17.6
42.6
Maryland
. . 5.1
10.7
40.5
District of Columbia
.9
5.0
26.0
Virginia
.. 12.2
10.5
52.5
West Virginia
.. 10.7
22.5
37.7
North Carolina
.. 18.9
5.7
53.1
South Carolina
.. 12.3
5.2
54.7
Georgia
.. 11.8
5.6
56.3
Florida
.. 8.3
9.2
39.4
South Central Division—
Kentucky
.. 14.3
8.6
49.5
Tennessee
.. 14.1
7.7
47.6
Alabama
.. 13.8
8.0
59.5
—167—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
Native
Foreign
State or Territory.
white.
white.
Colored.
Mississippi
... 8.1
9.5
53.2
Louisiana
... 16.9
24.6
61.2
Texas
... 5.8
25.4
45.0
Arkansas
... 10.5
6.4
44.8
Oklahoma
... 2.7
6.3
44.4
Indian Territory
... 10.7
16.8
35.9
North Central Division—
Ohio
... 3.2
9.6
21.9
Indiana
... 4.4
9.6
27.7
Illinois
... 2.8
7.8
18.8
Michigan
... 2.4
10.2
23.8
Wisconsin
... 1.9
9.3
42.2
Minnesota
... 1.0
6.4
35.4
Iowa
... 1.6
5.2
23.3
Missouri
... 5.4
6.8
31.8
North Dakota
... 1.0
6.3
64.5
South Dakota
.8
4.9
51.6
Nebraska
... 1.0
5.1
16.7
Kansas
... 1.7
6.4
28.7
Western Division—
Montana
.8
6.7
39.7
Wyoming
.8
7.8
36.4
Colorado
... 2.4
7.1
20.6
New Mexico
... 23.6
30.9
72.3
Arizona
... 4.5
30.9
62.8
Utah
... 1.2
4.6
43.3
Nevada
7.0
58.7
Idaho
5.7
49.1
Washington
.5
3.9
31.0
Oregon
3.4
36.5
California
8.1
28.1
—168—
AMONG THE NEGRO POPULATION.
It will be seen from these tables that, in
thirty-eight years, more than half of the Negro
population in the United States can write, and
are, therefore, taken out of the class of illiter¬
ates.
As an evidence of the remarkable growth
that the Negro race is making, along lines of
higher education, it is stated that colored stu¬
dents are freely admitted into and are gradu¬
ated annually from about seventy-three of the
leading universities and colleges that are under
the entire supervision of the white race, and
that there are about sixty normal schools,
academies and colleges, under control of their
own race, from whence scores of these students
graduate annually.
The most astonishing feature in the educa¬
tional growth of the American Negro, in the
forty years of his mental development, is to be
seen in the great number of able colored teach¬
ers that have arisen, in all sections, to instruct
and to guide his more unfortunate and more
—169—
THE KENTUCKY NORMAL AND INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTE.
AMONG THE NEGRO POPULATION.
untutored fellows. It is true that among the
27,182 Negro teachers in the United States there
are, doubtless, very many that are incompetent
and unworthy of the high places of trust and
responsibility that they are called upon to fill,
yet hundreds of these teachers, in each of the
ex-slave states, to the personal knowledge of
the author, are as able and conscientious as any
to be found in the great teaching force of our
country.
Possibly in no other country than our own
would circumstances have permitted an ex-
slave, in the person of Booker T. Washington,
a West Virginia lad, utterly penniless and with¬
out pride of birth, in face of a caste system
more galling than that which curses British
India, to have become, in less than one genera¬
tion, the greatest educational reformer of his
day. And yet, when we remember that, among
the Romans, some of. the most distinguished
pedagogues were Greek slaves, it seems only to
be another remarkable case of history repeat-
—171—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
ing itself in the life and public services of this
noted Negro educator.
Among other Negro teachers and writers
eminently worthy of mention may be named
Prof. W .E. B. Du Bois, of Atlanta (Ga.) Uni¬
versity, a native of Massachusetts and a gradu¬
ate of Fisk University, and also of Harvard
College, who is a profound sociologist and who
has written several works of rare educational
merit.
Prof. W. S. Scarborough, of Wilberforce
University, Ohio, has published "First Lessons
in Greek and the Theory and Functions of
the Thematic Vowel in the Greek Verb."
Col. George W. Williams, a native of Penn¬
sylvania, educated at West Newton Theological
Seminary, has left a "History of the Negro
Race in America" as his best legacy to the age
in which he lived.
Charles W. Chestnut, a native of North Caro¬
lina, now a resident of Cleveland, Ohio, has
given to the world in prose fiction "The Wife
—172—
AMONG THE NEGRO POPULATION.
of My Youth," "The House Behind the Cedars"
and the "Marrow of Tradition."
In poetry Paul Lawrence Dunbar, a native
of Dayton, Ohio, has given to the human race
"Oaks and Ivy," "Majors and Minors," "Lyrics
and Lowly Life," "Lyrics of the Hearthstone,"
and other stories.
Benjamin Banneker was born November 9,
1731, near Ellicott's Mills, Maryland. Both his
father and grandfather were native Africans.
He attended a private school, which admitted
colored students. Although his early educa¬
tional facilities were scanty, young Banneker
soon gained a local reputation as a miracle of
wisdom. In 1770 he constructed a clock to strike
the hours, the first to be made in America. This
he did with crude tools and a watch for his
model, as he had never seen a clock.
Through the kindness, of Mr. Ellicott, who
was a gentleman of cultivation and taste, he
gained access to his valuable collection of books
and was thus inducted into the study of astron-
—173—
HISTORY OP EDUCATION.
omy. In this study he gained great proficiency
and constructed an almanac adapted to the
local requirements of Pennsylvania, Virginia
and Maryland. This was the first almanac con¬
structed in America and was published by God-
dard & Angell, Baltimore.
Banneker's Almanac was published annu¬
ally from 1792 to 1806, the year of his death.
It contained the motions of the sun and moon;
the motions, places and aspects of the planets;
the rising and setting of the sun and the rising,
setting, southing, place and age of moon, etc.,
and is said to have been the main dependence
of the farmers in the region covered. He lived
mainly from the royalty received from this pub¬
lication.
Banneker sent a copy of this almanac to
Thomas Jefferson, which elicited a flattering
acknowledgment on part of the philosopher and
statesman. Banneker assisted the commission¬
ers in laying out the lines of the District of
Columbia. A life of Banneker was published
—174—
AMONG THE NEGRO POPULATION.
by Hon. J. H. B. Latrobe, Baltimore, 1845, and
another by J. S. Morris, 1854. That Thomas
Jefferson believed in the intellectual capacity of
the Negro and appreciated the force of the
argument that the treatment of this race found
justification in its assumed low state of mental
possibility is revealed by his letter to Benjamin
Banneker, the black astronomer:
Sir—I thank you sincerely for your letter
of the 19th inst. and for the almanac it con¬
tained. Nobody wishes more than I do
to see such proofs as you exhibit that nature
has given to our black brethren talents equal to
those of the other colors of men, and that the
appearance of a want of them is owing merely
to the degraded condition of their existence
both in Africa and America. I can add with
truth that nobody wishes more ardently to see
a good system commenced for raising the con¬
dition both of their body and mind to what it
ought to be as fast as the imbecility of their
present existence, and other circumstances
—175—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
which can not be neglected, will admit. I have
taken the liberty of sending your almanac to
M. De Condorcet, secretary of the Academy of
Sciences at Paris and member of the Philan¬
thropic Sociey, because I • considered it as a
document to which your color had a right for
their justification against the doubts which
have been entertained of them. I am, with
great esteem, sir, your most obedient, humble
servant, THOMAS JEFFEKSON.
Mr. Benjamin Banneker,
Near Ellicott's Lower Mills, Baltimore Co.
Among the noted women who have taken
deservedly high rank, as educators and writers,
may be mentioned Phyllis Wheatley, who was
born in Africa and was brought to America in
1761. She was bought from the slave market
by John Wheatley of Boston, and soon devel¬
oped remarkable acquisitive faculties. She ad¬
dressed some lines to Gen. George Washington,
—176—
AMONG THE NEGRO POPULATION.
in response to which he wrote a courteous letter
and invited her to visit the Revolutionary head¬
quarters, where she was received by Washing¬
ton and his officers with marked attention. Her
principal writings are "An Elegiac Poem on
the Death of George Whitfield," "The Negro
Equaled by Few Europeans." Miss Wheatley
visited England in 1774 and, after returning
to Boston, corresponded with such distinguished
persons as the Countess of Huntington, the
Earl of Dartmouth, Eev. George Whitfield and
others.
Mrs. Fannie Jackson Coppin was born a
slave in Washington, District of Columbia, in
1837; was purchased by her aunt and sent to
Oberlin College, where she was graduated with
honor. For two years she enjoyed the proud
distinction of being the first colored person to
teach a class in that famous institution of learn-
in. For thirty years she has held the position
as principal of the Institute for Colored Youth
in Philadelphia. "Without doubt she is the
—177—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION
most thoroughly competent and successful of
the colored women teachers of her time, and her
example of race pride, industry, enthusiasm
and nobility of character will remain the in¬
heritance and inspiration of the pupils of the
school she helped to make the pride of the col¬
ored people of Pennsylvania."
Mrs. Anna J. Cooper was born in Raleigh,
North Carolina, and graduated from Oberlin
College in 1884. She has taught at Wilberforce
University; St. Augustine Normal School,
Raleigh, North Carolina, and the Colored High
School, Washington, District of Columbia, of
which she is now principal. A book recently
written by her, entitled "A Voice from the
South," has attracted much attention from com¬
petent critics and can justly be regarded as a
valuable contribution to literature upon the
race problem.
Mrs. Mary Church Terrell was born in Mem¬
phis, Tennessee, and was graduated from Ober¬
lin College in 1884. She has taught at Wilber-
—178—
AMONG THE NEGRO POPULATION.
force University, and at the Washington City
High School; she has served as trustee of the
public schools of Washington, District of Co¬
lumbia, and was the first president of the
National Association of Colored Women, an
organization which has grown into such large
and useful proportions that it has become
noted as one of the most important and far-
reaching educational and reform movements of
our times. In its ranks are to be found many
of the most useful and most cultured colored
women in America. They are doing an im¬
mense amount of good in helping to mould a
wholesome public sentiment and in elevating
their common sisterhood, especially in the
Southland. Her father, being a man of great
wealth, sent her to Europe, where she com¬
pleted her education, and probably acquired the
refinement in manners, the ornate style in dic¬
tion, and the fluency and persuasiveness as an
orator, for which she is so noted. Being favored
by nature with rare graces of intellect, combin eel
—178—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
with a personnel of remarkable beauty, Mrs.
Terrell is, without doubt, one of the most at¬
tractive and striking women among her race
in this country.
The following is quoted from her address in
"The Progress of Colored Women":
"And so, lifting as we climb, onward and up¬
ward we go, struggling and striving and hop¬
ing that the buds and blossoms of our desires
will burst into glorious fruition ere long. With
courage born of success in the past, with a
keen sense of the responsibility, which we shall
continue to assume, we look forward to a future
large with promise and hope."
In the education of the Negro also we must
by no means underrate the potent influence
of the colored ministry of all denominations
and in all sections of our land. These ministers
have, in the main, exerted a moral force, both
conservative and preservative, in the Negro's
educational evolution, which will have a dis¬
tinct and most important bearing upon his fu¬
ture character building.
—180—
AMONG THE NEGRO POPULATION.
In other parts of the world, too, where little
or no account is made of one's color, as is the
case in the United States, very much of what
has been accomplished by those of the "mixed
race," in whose veins there is scarcely a visible
admixture of Negro blood, has not been accred¬
ited to them as a distinct race, and credit is
given to them only as individuals.
Notwithstanding this, a careful investiga¬
tion of the facts will show that very many of
these individuals have won imperishable re¬
nown in science, art and literature, and that
their names deserve to take high rank in the
pentralia of the world's glory temple. This race
has given to Russia her national poet in Alex¬
ander Pushkin, and to France her most distin¬
guished novelist in Alexander Dumas. In this
country they have adorned all the walks of life,
inheriting in their gentle graces what is best
from the parent stock in intellectual attain¬
ments, moral force, and refinement of manners.
—181—
CHAPTER VIII.
Education Among the Negro Race — Wrong
Conceptions of Education
It is not surprising that in a country like
the United States, where the public school sys¬
tem has been tried for only a few years, com¬
paratively speaking, that there should be many
wrong conceptions of education.
While all are willing to admit that in gen¬
eral the chief aim of our public school training
is to make good citizens, yet there are many
ways used for reaching the desired end, some
of which are radically wrong and are the out¬
growth of wrong conceptions of education.
These erroneous views can be considered:
First. As racial.
The fact that a man is either white or black
should be considered a mere incident of birth
—182—
AMONG THE NEGRO RACE.
and as having no bearing upon either educa¬
tional aims or limitations. Yet, in many of our
states, the Legislatures have seen fit to enact
laws to the effect that no white child shall
attend a Negro school, and that no Negro child
shall attend a white school.
The propriety of limiting the course of
study, in some of the ex-slave states, for Negro
children and confining their educational train¬
ing to mere elementary branches, has been
seriously considered, as well as the advisability,
in some of the states, of separating the public
school funds in proportion to the taxes paid by
each race.
Those who urge, as a principle to be insisted
upon for all time, a separation of the races, in
our common schools, carry the idea of race too
far, and lose sight of the fact that the great
aim in education shoud be to develop the
moral, the intellectual, and the physical powers
of the individual regardless of race.
No thought of race superiority nor of race
—183—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION
inferiority should, for a moment, be allowed
to find a permanent abiding place in our public
school life. Such a view of the one great edu¬
cational force upon which we must rely to make
our people homogeneous in ideas, habits, and
tastes will tend only to make them more hetero¬
geneous, as the years come and go, and can but
prove a great detriment to the perpetuity of our
free institutions, and a source of great vexation
to our national life.
Those who urge separate schools, as a per¬
manent feature of our public school system, cer¬
tainly do not believe that we should be a har¬
monious people. They have yet to learn the
truth that the right to attend a public school is
a civil and not a social right. In favor of the
policy of having every child attend the common
schools, without distinction of color, it may be
safely asserted that in states where "mixed
schools" obtain, the relations of the races are
much more friendly than in states where sepa¬
rate schools exist, and that in the "mixed
*—184—
AMONG THE NEGRO RACE.
school" states the civil status of the one race
is fully recognized by the other. In those states
where "mixed schools" obtain, if race friction
occurs, it is frequently caused by untutored
adults, who have come from states where
hostile relations have been engendered largely
on account of separate schools, and because of
the prevalent sentiment existing in such states
to deny to negroes their civil rights.
However, in states where both races approve
the doctrine of separate schools, it would not be
good policy to change the present school sys¬
tem. For years, and perhaps for generations,
separate schools will exist in the southern
states on account of abnormal conditions, grow¬
ing out of a former condition of servitude, on
part of the Negro race, and in such states, sep¬
arate school systems must be maintained as a
means to an end, rather than as an end in itself.
Second. Religious.
It is not strange, considering their inexperi¬
ence and the few years that have elapsed since
their emancipation, to find that, in localities
—185—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
where the Negro race elect trustees to control
their own schools, there has been a manifest
desire to place teachers of their own religious
denomination in control of their schools.
Perhaps a decade or more ago this feeling
was very general among them. It is but just
to state, however, that since they are learning
more of the scope and aims of our great com¬
mon school system they are becoming broader
in their views of education, and we find that a
more wholesome sentiment is beginning to
make itself felt; and the desire for competent
teachers, regardless of religious inclinations,
is becoming to be more general throughout the
southern states.
Third. Relationship.
A frequent hindrance to the advancement
of education has been found in the manifest
disposition of trustees to appoint their relatives
as teachers in our common schools, in each of
our states, often at the expense of the pupils,
—186—
AMONG THE NEGRO RACE.
who are supposed to attend school for their
moral, mental and manual training.
This species of nepotism seems to be the
bane of our common school system, and the
best and most laudable efforts of superinten¬
dents, and other educators, are often thwarted
by such questionable methods as trustees
sometimes resort to in the selection of teachers
for our public schools. If it be not the appoint¬
ment of relatives, it is often the selection of
teachers of their own political party. In either
case the chief motive is not to obtain the most
competent teachers from a moral and an intel¬
lectual standpoint, but, often, to reward friends
from whom they expect to derive either a direct
or indirect personal benefit.
The true motive that should actuate school
boards and trustees in the selection of teachers
should be the appointment of those who are
morally, intellectually, and physically fitted to
do the work required. In such a selection there
—187—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
should not enter any question of race, of re¬
ligion, of politics, nor of relationship.
The author is aware that this is not the view
that generally obtains in this country in the
employment of teachers, and that the practical
application of this rule is utterly impossible,
especially in states where separate schools ex¬
ist. Yet it should be maintained as the ideal
motive in the selection of teachers, where con¬
ditions are normal rather than abnormal, and
every true educator should try to create a pub¬
lic sentiment that would make the practical
application of this principle possible in any
section of our country.
In closing this chapter, which gives an ac¬
count of the remarkable growth of the Negro
race in this country along educational lines in
less than forty years, in which it has been
shown that in this brief space of time more than
one-half of them can write—taking them out of
the class of illiterates—the author trusts that
his readers may not consider it in bad taste for
—188—
AMONG THE NEGRO RACE.
him to make a few practical suggestions de¬
signed to help in the solution of the so-called
race question.
It should be borne in mind that true char¬
acter building is a matter of much slower
growth, as it is also more fruitful in perma¬
nent and substantial results, than can be hoped
for in the mere acquisition of primitive knoAvl-
edge.
It is too much to expect that a people who
have just emerged from a bondage of two and
a half centuries could lift themselves in a little
more than three decades from the terrible
depths into which a cruel bondage had plunged
them.
In the educational growth of all races hered¬
ity and environment have played a most con¬
spicuous and a most important part.
After the battle of Hastings it required
many years before the heterogenous elements
that entered into the formation of the great
English speaking race became homogeneous.
—189—■
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
The history of education in tliis country
shows that for the moral weakness exhibited by
the untutored Negro in the past, and for much
of that which exists at present, the white race
is largely responsible.
On the other hand, for the proper growth
and development of those sterling moral and
intellectual traits so necessary in his progress,
as a good citizen, the Negro alone will be held
responsible in the future, and if he does not
fully measure up to the Anglo-Saxon standard
of civilization he will lose cast among his fel¬
lows and drift into a state of peonage but a
little better, perhaps, than actual slavery
itself.
In view, however, of the wonderful educa¬
tional advancement that he has made, no sane
person can possibly believe that the future of
the Negro is not bright and hopeful; yet it will
require time and an abundant exercise of pa¬
tience, on the part of all, before the vexed ques¬
tion of the proper and delicate adjustment of
—190—
AMONG THE NEGRO RACE.
the relations of the races will be effected in a
manner entirely satisfactory to all concerned.
The Negro, himself, must learn to exercise
a keener sense of discrimination in social
affairs between the good and the bad elements
of his own race. He must • positively exert a
greater moral influence on the side of law and
order, in every community, and effect organiza¬
tions with this end in view everywhere. He
must, unhesitatingly, seek to foster and to
maintain those highly educative and salutary
ethical forces that will tend to elevate him, and
that will give him greater character and conse¬
quence among his fellows.
He should seek to make his good deeds as
prominent, as many newspapers, periodicals,
and demagogues now seek to make his evil ones
heinous and widespread.
The people of this country will have to learn
that it is wrong to attribute the acts of some
unfortunate and ignorant Negro to the entire
race, while similar crimes committed by a white
—191—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
man of tlie same grade are to be considered as
personal and having no race bearing.
Compulsory educational laws, wherever
feasible, voluntary organizations to promote
self-culture, churches and Sunday schools, cor¬
rect home training, a strict enforcement of the
laws, with a greater degree of mutual forbear¬
ance, will speedily tend to better present condi¬
tions, and allay much of the apparent rather
than real race antagonism that seems to exist.
In addition to this an educated and an up¬
right ministry, intelligent and upright colored-
men and women given the political and school
positions in municipality, state and nation; a
gradual lessening of the army of mendicants
that, under various pretexts, infest our body
politic; a marked increase in the ranks of pro¬
ductive industry; the exclusion of political
methods in public schools and in higher insti¬
tutions of learning; the acquisition of the kind
of education best suited to the condition of the
individual; a greater disposition to defend the
—192—
AMONG THE NEGRO RACE.
chastity of womanhood; a desire to cultivate
polite manners; and to seek the inauguration
and the maintenance of a higher social life will
greatly and speedily conduce to a better citizen¬
ship in all sections of our country.
- J9H
CHAtT.EJEl IX.
Universal Education and Universal Suffrage
Under a republican form of government the
tendency has ever been toward universal suf¬
frage, regardless of race or sex.
There may be temporary expedients resorted
to, in various states, to impede the growth of
this sentiment, and to thwart the practical ap¬
plication of this principle of government, but
the accepted theory that all power in a democ¬
racy is inherent in the people causes an irre¬
sistible trend toward universal suffrage, which
can not *be permanently checked by experi¬
mental makeshifts of any character.
In a republic it is all the more important,
then, that the doctrine of universal education
be coupled with the theory of universal
suffrage, and that no cheap citizenship, no sys-
—194—
UNIVERSAL EDUCATION AND UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE „
tem of peonage, which is usually the result of
ignorance in the body politic, be permitted to
flourish to the detriment of our higher civil
interests.
, To deny to an intelligent and thrifty Negro
the right of suffrage while permitting its exer¬
cise by an ignorant and shiftless white man can •
never be permitted, as a permanent principle,
under our theory of government. Nor is it de¬
sirable to have a large class of persons, as in¬
habitants of a country, who have no intelligent
interest in its affairs.
Under a system of universal education only
does the author believe that, as a general rule,
it will become possible for every citizen to be¬
come a useful factor in promoting the welfare
of the state and national governments, and he
has no other idea than that this conception
of wise governmental and ethic policy will ulti¬
mately, obtain in all the states of the Union.
Any othep theory7 must ultimately lead to
most disastrous civil results, and can not, for
—195—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
a moment, be tolerated by an enlightened public
sentiment.
No pride of race, however hallowed by
sacred memories and ancient customs; no
species of syllogistic reasoning, however
cogent, can rid a rational being of the idea that
an intelligent and productive individual, white
or colored, is *not worth more to the state and
to the nation, as a civil unit, than an ignorant
and shiftless one.
Home Training
While all, who are at all conversant with the
facts, as presented in this book, must admit that
most commendable progress has been made by
the descendants of the recently emancipated
slaves, in less than forty years, especially when
statistics are given showing that more than
one-half of the Negro population can write, yet
the weak point, barring defects in common
school systems, where equal opportunities are
not afforded to all alike on account of color, is
found, as is to be expected, in the greater lack
of proper home training on part of the average
Negro child, as compared to the average white
child.
The matter of propel* home training is a
relative rather than an absolute one, at any
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
rate, and the lack of it*is to be found in all prim¬
itive races, regardless of color, struggling to
reach a higher moral and intellectual plane.
It is not strange, then, that a proper lack
of home training would beset the Negro upon
the very threshold of his intellectual life, and
prove something of a barrier to his more rapid
growth in intellectual and moral pursuits.
But, as successive generations pass away, and
others come upon the stage of action, this want
will be gradually supplied until the Negro
child can begin his career at the public schools
upon an equal footing with the white child.
Considering the many difficulties encoun¬
tered by Negro parents, and the great sacrifices
made by them in their efforts to educate their
children, the progress made even in their home
training can not only be regarded as hopeful,
but also as being truly marvelous.
Address by John H, Jackson
An address delivered to the Teachers of
Missouri by John H. Jackson in the Hall of the
House of ^Representatives at Jefferson City,
December 28, 1900:
"The pleasant task is mine to bear fraternal
greetings from the association of teachers at
the court-house to you at the capital.
"Our association is composed largely of the
descendants of ex-slaves, whose ancestors a
few years ago were members of tribes wander¬
ing aimlessly in the jungles of Africa.
"Your ancestors represent generations of
culture, which is now felt as the most potent
force in human affairs.
"Since the battle of Hastings your race,
whether in a battle of bullets or of ballots, has
played the most important part in the world's
history.
"It is peculiarly appropriate, then, that
—199—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
greetings be borne from the weaker to the
stronger," and that, after the lapse of centuries,
these races are found in the new world seeking
to continue the cultivation of friendly relations.
"While we may derive a sort of grim satis¬
faction in reading Tacitus, to know that even
your ancestors, the ancient Britons, tattooed
their bodies, burrowed in dens and wore their
masters' collars around their necks, yet the
world can never forget the fact that in the elo¬
quent words of another, in speaking of the an¬
cient Britons, 'Even in their barbarism they
were able to withstand the invincible cohorts
of Julius Caesar.'
"That may be considered a strange irony of
fate which induces the dominant race to become
magnanimous and the other to forget and to
forgive, yet the feeling that induces such action
is certainly of divine origin and in harmony
with the best ethical teaching of our asre.
o o '
"Whatever others may think, the sensible
American Negro, and especially the colored
—200—
ADDRESS BY JOHN H. JACKSON.
teacher, knows that our civilization to-day rep¬
resents. the struggle of the Anglo-Saxon to at¬
tain to what is best both in conceptive and con¬
structive systems of education.
"While the Anglo-African does not hope to
dominate this land, yet he thinks he should
have, as by right of inheritance, the privilege to
share in all past glorious achievements, and
be permitted in future to win triumphs, if pos¬
sible, in unexplored fields.
"While we may admit that there is not
among us to-day any living Frederick Douglass,
yet during thirty-five years of freedom we can
point to a Paul Lawrence Dunbar in poetry, to
a Charles W. Chestnut in prose, and to one of
the greatest educational reformers of our times
in the person of Booker T. Washington.
"On account of these achievements wTe are
sure that the enlightened judgment of the world
considers that there are future possibilities for
the trained and cultured Negro.
"In extending to you fraternal greetings I
—201—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
recognize the fact that I am addressing the
most liberal class of citizens in the state of Mis
souri, so far as my people are concerned; let us
all trust that we may see in it a glimmering of
the dawn—a ray of hope—a beginning of that
higher and better civilization which is fraught
with wonderful and magnificent possibilities
for both races.
"You are greeted the more heartily because,
more than others, you know that the old days
are gone, and that a new race of colored men
and women, as it were, is now at the bellows
and throttle valve, and that new ideas, gath¬
ered from the school room and from the broader
fields of experience are destined to supplant
the old and to dominate the new.
"More than others you fully appreciate the
fact that we, as colored teachers, have discov¬
ered that moral ideas must precede religious
fanaticism, and that the teacher must logically
be the forerunner of the preacher.
For, while the pious priest is struggling
—202—
ADDRESS BY JOHN H. JACKSON.
with might and main to keep the children out
of hades, we are trying to keep hades out of the
children.
"If permitted, however, to indulge in a few
words of eulogy, a tribute of respect would be
paid to the colored teacher in language sub¬
stantially as follows:
"I do not hesitate to affirm that there is
more of moral worth, intellectual growth and
substantial material accumulations among col¬
ored teachers than can be found in the ranks of
any other profession of colored people.
"It is the only body among us that has the
courage of its convictions to such an extent as
to be potent enough to relegate moral lepers to
the rear and to purge itself of the shams and
parasites that would infest its ranks.
"It is the only profession among us that pre¬
pares our youth for noble manhood and exalted
citizenship.
"It is the only profession among us that puts
—203—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
a premium upon brains and stamps ignorance
as a crime.
"I can very well say of tliem in the worda
of another: 'The very act of struggling is in
itself a species of enjoyment; and every hope
that crosses the mind, every high resolve, every
generous sentiment, every lofty aspiration—
nay, every brave despair—is a gleam of happi¬
ness that flings its illumination upon the dark¬
est destiny.'
"And after life's fitful fever," if I were asked
to select a suitable inscription to be placed upon
marble as the epitaph of a faithful teacher,
upon it would be inscribed, in imperishable let¬
ters of gold, the expressive words of Dean Mil-
man:
" 'It little matters at what hour o' the day
The righteous falls asleep—Death can not come
To him untimely who has learned to die.
The less of this brief life the more of heaven;
The shorter time the longer immortality.'
"(1) Fraternal greetings are extended to
—204—
ADDRESS BY JOHN H. JACKSON.
3rou because you are our friends and co-labor¬
ers and, therefore, know liow to sympathize
with us in our difficulties.
"(2) Because you are content to do the
work of each, day thoroughly in instilling cor¬
rect principles in our youth and to leave the
solution of unsettled questions to those who
are to come after you.
"(3) Because, in common with us, you en¬
courage us to teach the Negro youth of our
land to look,more to his destiny than to his
origin, to dwell less in the past and to live more
in the future, to expect infinitely more under
the stars and stripes than he could possibly
hope for under African skies.
"(4) Because it is believed that you are
willing to have us encourage the Negro, youth
to enter all fields fraught with human effort,
and thus permit him to be taught that he is,
in truth, the architect of his own fortune, the
guiding star of his own destiny.
"Be assured that, as colored teachers (al-
—205—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
though I say it modestly), we are as willing to
give, if possible, as to receive.
"We are not unmindful of the fact that like
us you have your professional trials and diffi¬
culties, and if permitted to make a parody upon
the beautiful sentiment expressed by the great
Irish bard, I would say:
" 'Come, ye disconsolate, where'er you languish,
Come, at our pedagogical alter fervently kneel;
To us bring your wounded hearts, tell us your
anguish;
You have no sorrow we would not heal.'
"You will find among us at the court house
many Mark Tapleys, who can extract sunshine
from shadow and who can see triumph even in
failure.
"We believe somewhat in the,philosophy of
Paul Lawrence Dunbar, expressed in the poem
entitled "For the Man Who Fails," as follows:
—206—
ADDRESS BY JOHN H. JACKSON.
"The world is a snob, and the man who wins
Is the chap for its money's worth;
And the lust for success causes half of the sins
That are cursing this brave old earth.
For it's fine to go up, and the world's applause
Is sweet to the mortal ear;
But the man who fails in a noble cause
Is a hero that's no less dear.
'Tis true enough that the laurel crown
Twines but for the victor's brow;
For many a hero has lain him clown
With naught but the cypress bough.
There are gallant men in the losing fight
And as gallant deeds are done
As ever graced the captured height
Or the battle grandly won.
We sit d± life's board with our nerves high
strung
And we play for the stake of fame,
And our odes are sung and our banners hung
—207—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
For the man who wins the game.
But I have a song of another kind
That breathes in these fame-wrought
gales—
An ode to the noble heart and mind
Of the gallant man who fails!
The man who is strong to fight his fight,
And whose will no front can daunt,
If the truth be truth and the right be right,
Is the man that the ages want.
Tho' he fail and die in grim defeat,
Yet he has not fled the strife,
And the house of earth will seem more sweet
For the perfume of his life."
"The Greek race which, Minerva-like, could
be said to have sprung from the brain of Jove,
has done more than all others combined to for¬
mulate those plans which have fructified into
great educational systems challenging the ad¬
miration of the world.
—208
ADDRESS BY JOHN H. JACKSON.
"Yet,, as much as has been done in the past,
we stand to-day at the dawn rather than at
the sunset of human endeavor.
"At the close of two thousand years of men¬
tal growth and moral development we are sim¬
ply the advance guard of pigmies to the great
race of intellectual giants who are to follow us.
"I thank God that the history of the past
teaches that there is no aristocracy so great,
so grand and so glorious as that of the human
intellect; and that no plutocracy, no pride of
birth can approach it in that ultimatum which
decrees, as unnerving as fate, a survival of the
fittest in all lands.
"Permit me to say, in conclusion, that in all
candor I do not believe the mission of the col¬
ored teacher will end until every idiosyncrasy
that marks us now as a distinct race, of what¬
ever character, is entirely obliterated, and the
Negro is fully prepared to take his place along¬
side his Anglo-Saxon brother in all the Tvalks
—209—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
of life without fear of segregation, coloniza¬
tion or utter extinction.
"Whether the future has in store for us sun¬
shine or shadow, success or failure, hopes real¬
ized or hopes blighted, the wreath of the victor
or the broken sword of the vanquished, we shall
go forward bravely to face the duties and the
dangers that may confront us."
Educators Among the Negro Race,
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.
This distinguished educator was born of
slave parents in West Virginia. He spent part
of his early life as a coal miner near Charles¬
ton, West Virginia. He worked his way
through Hampton Institute, where he was en¬
gaged for a while as a teacher. His work at
Tuskegee began in 1881, in a small building,
which accommodated less than one hundred
students. To-day the school represents over six¬
teen hundred acres of land, more than forty
buildings, nearly one hundred teachers, and
over twelve hundred students.
Tuskegee is considered now to be the largest
industrial school in existence for colored peo¬
ple.
—211—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
There can be no question of the fact but
that Booker T. Washington is the greatest edu¬
cational reformer now living. He has traveled
abroad extensively, and has been well received
in all parts of the civilized world. Money has
been given to him by many people who, hitherto,
never helped the educational work among the
colored people. Recently, Andrew Carnegie,
the great philanthropist, has given this insti¬
tution a sufficient endowment fund to make the
financial success of this famous seat of learn¬
ing forever assured.
If the negro race, since freedom, had given
to the world no other educator than Booker T.
Washington, the vast amount spent in their
education would have been well expended, and
the American people share with their "brother
in black" the story of his life and achievements
as a common heritage, demonstrating the won¬
derful possibilities of our free institutions.
—212—
EDUCATORS AMONG THE NEGRO RACE.
W. H. COUNCI LL.
Prof. W. H. Councill was born in Fayette-
ville, North Carolina, in 1848, and was brought
to Alabama by traders in 1857, haying been
bought at the famous, or rather infamous,
Richmond slave pen.
In 1865 he attended school tit Stevenson,
Alabama, which had been opened by northern
friends for the education of Negro children.
The school training which he received here for
three years was practically all that he acquired
in schools; but he is one of those self-made men,
who has always been a close student, and one
who improved every opportunity, both by read¬
ing and contact, to fit himself for future use¬
fulness. By private instruction and constant
study he has acquired a splendid knowledge
i>f the languages, higher mathematics, and the
sciences. He read law, and was admitted to
:he Supreme Court of Alabama in 1883.
—213—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
Professor Councill is now president of the
A. and M. College at Normal, Alabama. This
school is a state institution, and he has been
its president since it was first opened.
It is the next largest industrial school in
the South. They have about twenty-four build¬
ings, from forty to fifty teachers, nearly four
hundred students, and several hundred acres of
land that is cultivated by student labor. In
addition to the excellent normal training re¬
ceived, several trades are taught to both boys
and girls, designed to fit them to earn a living
and to add to the productive industry of the
Southland.
R, R. WRIGHT.
Richard R. Wright was born at Dalton,
Georgia, in 1855. He was educated at Atlanta
University, and has been one of the most use¬
ful as well as one of the most public-spirited Ne-
—214—
EDUCATORS AMONG THE NEGRO RACE.
gro educators in the South. He called together
the first convention of colored teachers in Geor¬
gia, and was president of that organization for
several, years. He founded the Ware High
School at Augusta, Georgia, which is said to be
the first high school in the state for colored
youth, and the only one then supported by city
appropriations.
Mr. Wright has. always taken a leading part
in politics, as well as in educational affairs. In
our recent war with • Spain he was appointed
by President McKinley one of the regular pay¬
masters in the United States army.
In October, 1891, when the Georgia State
Industrial College was. founded, he was unani¬
mously elected its president, and is still hold¬
ing that position.
Being yet a young man, we predict for the
subject of this sketch a more brilliant educa¬
tional career in the future than he has yet en¬
joyed.
—215—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
INMAN E. PAGE.
Inman E. Page is a graduate of Brown Uni¬
versity, and at an early age was elected presi¬
dent of Lincoln Institute, Jefferson City, Mis¬
souri. These were the days before politics had
cut such a figure in the affairs of that institu¬
tion, and chiefly on that account, he held the
position of president for nearly eighteen con¬
secutive years.
Professor Page is ' chiefly noted as an
educational lobbyist, and in that capacity he
secured many of the appropriations by means
of which Lincoln Institute has grown to be one
of the best-equipped normal schools in the coun¬
try for colored youth.
SAMUEL T. MITCHELL.
Prof. Samuel T. Mitchell was a native of
Ohio and a graduate of Wilberforce University.
—216—
EDUCATORS AMONG THE NEGRO RACE.
Wilberforce is the educational center of the
A. M. E. Church, and, while it is a northern
school, it has exerted great influence all over
the country. Graduates from this institution,
as teachers and preachers, are to be found in
nearly every state in the Union.
President Mitchell, who was regarded in
his day as one of the most scholarly of men,
succeeded President Lee, and devoted many
years of his life in increasing the attendance,
in securing donations and appropriations, and
in raising the standard of the institution. He
has probably done more than any other edu¬
cator to place this university upon a firm and
self-sustaining financial basis.
PROF. JOHN M. MAXWELL.
Prof. John M. Maxwell, a graduate of Wil¬
berforce University, near Xenia, Ohio, deserves
—217—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
to rank among the most useful of Negro educa¬
tors.
In the prime of his young manhood Profes¬
sor Maxwell was called to Louisville, Kentucky,
where, for nearly a quarter of a century, lie had
charge of the educational interest of the colored
people. As principal of the high school, and
training teacher of the city normal school, he
was very successful. But, especially was his
influence felt, in these early times, upon the
general educational interest in Kentucky. With
voice and pen he labored, as did few others, in
helping to mould that public sentiment in
Kentucky which, subsequently, secured the
adoption of a common school system, which is
as fair and just to the Negro race as to the
white race.
His strong moral influence and intellectual
attainments have made him, for nearly a gener¬
ation, an educator of unusual influence among
his fellows.
—218—
EDUCATORS AMONG THE NEGRO RACE.
Because of these splendid traits of charac¬
ter possessed by him, and because he exerted
these unselfishly in behalf of his people, the
Negro race in Kentucky owes to Prof. John M.
Maxwell a debt of gratitude, for timely words
spoken and written, and for deeds done in their
educational interest, at a time when they most
needed friends.
PROF. PETER H. CLARK.
Few Negro educators are better known than
Prof. Peter H. Clark. Even as a youth he ex¬
hibited those strong traits of natural ability
that have been so characteristic of himt as a
man, as a teacher, and as a scholar.
He attended the high school at Cincinnati
for four years, and left a record, as a student,
rarely surpassed by any other for ability and
scholarship.
For thirty years Professor Clark was prin-
—219—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION
cipal of Gains High School, Cincinnati, Ohio,
where he trained very many of the best colored
teachers for public school work in all sections
of our country.
A man of remarkable independence of
thought and action, being a devotee to no party
and a lover of no creed, he has not always been
understood by his people. But no one can
doubt his sincerity of purpose as a lover of his
race and a friend of humanity.
His life and public services will do much to
help in the delicate adjustment of all questions
affecting the two races, in this country, viewed
from the high plane of intellectual and moral
worth.
PROF. WILLIAM T. VERNON.
Prof. William T. Vernon was born of slave
parents near Lebanon, Missouri, and was edu¬
cated at Lincoln Institute, Jefferson City, Mis¬
souri.
—220—
EDUCATORS AMONG THE NEGRO RACE.
Among the younger class of educators who
have made splendid records, Professor Vernon
deserves high rank. As acting president of
Western University, Quindaro, Kansas, he has
secured such appropriations from the Kansas
Legislature as to be able to place this institu¬
tion upon a reliable and self-sustaining basis.
In addition to his worth as an educator,
Professor Yernon is also a very fluent orator
and a versatile writer for the current maga¬
zines.
Miss Lucy Moten, principal of the Normal
Training School of Washington, District of Co¬
lumbia, was born in that city and educated
there in the public schools. She graduated at
the Salem (Massachusetts) Normal School.
For several years she taught in the public
schools, and the high school of her native-city,
and was afterwards called to take charge of
the Normal Training School of the District of
—221—
HISTORY OF EDUCATION.
Columbia, in which responsible position she has
been eminently successful.
Miss Moten is a woman of great innate re¬
finement of manner, and a teacher of remarka¬
ble force of character. These characteristics,
combined with her splendid scholarly attain¬
ments, make her one of the best trained, as well
as one of the most useful teachers in this
country.
Prof. G. N. Grisham, of Kansas City, Mis¬
souri, is a graduate of Brown University, Rhode
Island, and has also received the degree of A. M.
from Roger Williams University, Nashville,
Tennessee. No other Negro educator west of
the Mississippi river has exerted greater influ¬
ence or is better known to the educational
world than he.
For many years he held the chair of mathe¬
matics at Lincoln Institute, in which he was
unusually successful, and left that institution
—222—
EDUCATORS AMONG THE NEGRO RACE.
to take charge of the higher educational inter¬
ests of the colored people at Kansas City,
Missouri.
He has contributed many educational arti¬
cles of rare merit to the current magazines.
Polished in his manners to an unusual
degree, ornate in diction, a splendid conversa¬
tionalist, commanding in bearing, he never fails
to impress his personality upon all with whom
he comes in contact.
The people of Missouri should consider them¬
selves extremely fortunate in having such a
forceful character, and such an elegant gentle¬
man, to direct the training of their children
along the lines of higher moral and intellectual
development.
—223—