Glass. Book- COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT K-^ NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 ♦Tij^y^o THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA. Ltd. TORONTO NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 A Social and Political History of Modern Education BY EDWARD H. REISNER Ph.D. ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION TEACHERS COLLEGE. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1922 All rights reserved 9 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Copyright, ig22, By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published July, 1922, JUL 191922 ©CUB 7 45 71 To MY FATHER AND MOTHER THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED PREFACE In the large view, education is public policy, related insep- arably to economic conditions, social organization, and politi- cal administration. The educator who would wisely plan the activities and the management of the schools, must pay attention to the major conditions of life outside the schools, and must be able to evaluate educational procedure in terms of far-reaching and broadly inclusive social purpose. No less must the statesman who would build a just, efficient, pros- perous, and patriotic nation, enlist the schools in his efforts and utilize them to effect his aims. Up to the outbreak of the World War, the pre-eminent importance of education as a phase of public policy had not been so clearly recognized in the United States as in some other great nations of the world. We had believed in the schools and had been generous in supporting them, but as a nation we had not concerned ourselves very actively with educational policies. The war has considerably changed this attitude, and we suddenly find citizens and legislatures making all kinds of demands upon the school system. Since many of the proposals that are being made among us have been exem- plified in the school systems of other nations, it might be well for us, before undertaking any radical reorganization of the spirit and method of American public education, to find out what has resulted from the application of similar policies in other countries. Furthermore, a study of the administrative systems which those other nations have built up will aid in guiding our heightened desire for greater educational effi- ciency. It is with these considerations in mind that the writer has tried to describe the major facts of the social, economic, and political life of France. Prussia, England, and the United viii PREFACE States since about 1789, in close relationship wtih educational policy and practice. As the period covered is short and the historical record is brought down to date, the matters treated of are of current concern in education, since the major con- ditioning factors of the period, namely, nationalism, democ- racy, and the factory system of industrial production, are with us today in more insistent form than ever before. The account given is necessarily brief and elementary, particu- larly with reference to the general social factors that surround and condition education. It is hoped, however, that it is accurate as far as it goes, and, above all, that it is unpreju- diced and candid. The book is an elaboration of a syllabus for a course in the history of education published in 19 19 by Teachers College, Columbia University, entitled Democracy and Nationalism in Education. In the preparation of the present work, the writer has made large use of source materials, particularly in the case of France, Prussia, and England. He has borrowed quite shamelessly his accounts of general social, economic, and political background from the works of acknowledged authori- ties in those fields and his indebtedness is fairly represented in the list of readings named at the end of chapters. Standard secondary accounts of education have also been studied care- fully, but in this field running acknowledgment has more often been made. For the first three chapters on the United States, free use has been made of Cubberley's Public Educa- tion in the United States and of the articles which Professor Cubberley has contributed to the Cyclopedia of Education, edited by Monroe. To Professor Paul Monroe of Teachers College is due the writer's sincere appreciation for encouragement in de- veloping the field of education which is the special sub- ject of this study. To many of his colleagues in Teachers College he is under obligation for advice and criticism lying within their special fields of mastery. Professor William H. Kilpatrick has the writer's lively gratitude for his valuable suggestions of changes or additions made after reading the PREFACE IX entire book in manuscript form. The writer's greatest indebt- edness is to his colleague, Dr. I. L. Kandel, whose extensive and accurate scholarship and first-hand knowledge of European school conditions have made his criticisms and suggestions invaluable. Dr. Kandel, to the decided improvement of the book, read it in manuscript form, and throughout the course of its preparation he has been most generously subject to call for suggestions and information. E. H. R. New York City, June, 1922. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. The Social Factors that Have Conditioned Western Education Since the French Revolution .... i PART I FRANCE II. The French Revolution: Its Educational Promise and Achievement 7 The Old Regime. The National Assembly and Tal- leyrand's Education Bill. The Legislative Assembly and Condorcet's Report. The Convention and the Directory and Daunou's Law. III. Napoleon and the Imperial French University . . 33 IV. The Restoration Monarchy and Educational Con- servatism 43 V. The Upper-middle-class Monarchy and the Estab- lishment of a State System of Primary Schools . 46 The State of Primary Education. The Primary Education Law of 1833. Improvements in Education under the July Monarchy. VI. The Second Republic and the Second Empire and the Revival of Church Influence in Education ... 63 The Second Republic. The Education Law of 1850. Government and Education after December 2, 1851. VII. The Third Republic and Further Developments of National Education 79 The Ferry Laws. Moral and Civic Instruction. Centralization of Educational Administration. Vo- cational Education and the Higher Primary School. Democracy in Education under the Third Republic. PART II PRUSSIA VIII. The Regeneration of Prussia and the Organization of AN Efficient National System of Education . . . 121 No Efficient National System of Education before the Nineteenth Century. The Reforms Following xii CONTENTS CHAPTER PACE the Treaty of Tilsit. The Organization of a National System of Education. The Conflict between Liberal and Conservative Political Opinion. IX. MlDCENTURY POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS AND ThEIR Ef- TECTs ON Public Education 151 The Advent of a New Political and Intellectual Period. Official Reorganization of the Teachers Seminaries. The Regulations of 1854. Prussia under William I and Bismarck, X. Prussia and the German Empire 176 Prussia in the Empire. Economic Expansion of the Empire. Vocational Education. The Kultur- kampf. The General Regulations of 1872. The Fight against Social Democracy. Militant Nationalism after 1890. The Modern Prussian System of Educa- tion. Nationalistic Propaganda by Means of the Schools. The Lack of Democracy in German Edu- cation. The GermanRepublic. PART III ENGLAND XI. The Old Order and the Industrial Revolution . . 221 England in the Late Eighteenth Century. The Industrial Revolution. Philanthropy in English Edu- cation. Early Parliamentary Interest in Education. XII. Benevolent Aristocracy and Early State Interven- tion IN Education 243 The New Spirit of Political Reform. The First Parliamentary Grants for Education. The Report of the Newcastle Commission. Secondary Education the Object of Parliamentary Inquiry. XIII. Political Democracy and the Achievement of a Na- tional System or Education 273 Political and Social Reform. The Elementary Education Act of 1870. The Third Reform Act. The Cross Commission on Elementary Education. Sec- ondary Education as .Effected by New Social and Economic Conditions. Report of the Bryce Com- mission on Secondary Education. The Education Act of 1902. XIV. The New Liberalism and the Fisher Act .... 300 New Political Alignments. Social Legislation. The Education Act of 1918, Commonly Called the Fisher Act. The Present English System of Schools. CONTENTS Xlll PART IV THE UNITED STATES XV. XVI. XVII. XVIII. The New Federal State and the Passing of an Old Political Order 323 The Degree of Political Union among the Original States. The Constitution of the United States. The Federal Constitution and Democracy. The Frontier and Its Influence on the Suffrage. The Nature of American Democracy. The Federal Government and Education. State Governments and Education. Local Education Authorities. The Elementary School. Secondary Education. Higher Education. Philanthropic School Societies. Sectionalism and Democracy 368 The Triumph of Sectionalism. The Common People Take the Helm. Progress in the Development of State .Administrative Systems. The Common School Revival. State Educational Administration. Local Education .Authorities. The Public Schools Made Free. The Extension of the Elementary School Up- ward. Educational Influences of the New Immigra- tion. The American School System by 1861. 41S Material Growth and Cultural Unification Economic Development of the North and West. Increase in Centralization in Government. Recon- struction and Education. State and Local School Administration. City School Administration. The High School. Industrial Education. The Prepara- tion of Teachers. Compulsory .Attendance. Rural Schools. The Changes of Twenty-live Years. The Development of a National Consciousness in Education 468 Economic and Social Conditions after i8go. Ex- tension of the Prerogatives of the National Govern- ment. The Practical Disappearance of Sectionalism. The Federal Government and Public Education. State Educational Administration. Local Education Authorities. Local School Supervision. City School Administration. Public Secondary Education. Vo- cational Education. Continuation Schools. Com- pulsory .Attendance. The Professional Education of Teachers and Supervisors. Private and Parochial Schools. Civic and Patriotic Instruction. Index S6i NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 CHAPTER I THE SOCIAL FACTORS THAT HAVE CON- DITIONED WESTERN EDUCATION SINCE THE FRENCH REVOLUTION Three great social movements have conditioned the educa- tional developments of the last century and a half of Western history. They are: (a) the increasing importance of nation- alism as a form of political organization; (6) the gradual enlargement of the electorate in control of government, and (c) the transformation of economic and social life which has been brought about by the application of a series of important mechanical inventions to the arts of communication and to the processes of the manufacture and distribution of goods. For convenience we may refer to these major conditioning factors of education as nationalism, democracy, and the indus- trial revolution. They have been closely interrelated in their development and each has had a host of ramifications. In son)e respects they have supplemented one another, while in other respects they have been antagonistic. At all events, each has had important influence in the creation of the present social situation and each has entered with power into the conditions of public education. Contrast between American and European Conditions. — While nationalism, democracy, and the industrial revolution have influenced the entire Western world, their manifestation in Europe has been different from that in the United States. 2 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 17S9 In Europe, in the latter part of the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth, a new and extremely vital type of nationalism sprang into existence as a result of the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic wars. In its beginnings, this new nationalism was apparently closely allied to liberal conceptions of political rights; but nationalism continued to govern the policies of European governments, while the prom- ise of democracy was engulfed in a flood of political reaction- ism. After the Congress of Vienna (181 5), it was the indus- trial revolution that brought about in Europe gradual exten- sions of the suffrage and ultimately manhood suffrage. In the United States, on the other hand, the full development of a democracy based on manhood suffrage had taken place before 1830; that is to say, before any large degree of national unity had been achieved and before the industrialization of American life had made much headway. If democracy in the countries of Western Europe has been the result of the efforts of the factory workers to secure the ballot for the improvement of the conditions of labor, in the United States democracy has come as a result of the abundance of free land on the ever- extending frontier and from the simplicity and the naturalness of pioneer life. The effects of the industrial revolution on American institutions have been appreciably felt only since the Civil War. And so it is seen that, while the three factors of nationalism, democracy, and the industrial revolution have operated both in Western Europe and in the United States, they have done so in different order, with different emphasis, and with quite different effect. Major Social Movements of the Period All Favor Public Education. — It may be said that each of these factors of nationalism, democracy, and the industrial revolution might alone have accounted in considerable measure for the present status of public education. Each implies the necessity for an educated people. Nationalism calls for universal education in order that there may be a general development of individual power — physical, mental, and moral — so that the nation com- posed of individuals may realize its full military and economic SOCIAL FACTORS CONDITIONING EDUCATION 3 strength. Democracy calls for assiduous devotion to educa- tion in order that the great mass of the voters may be equipped for the responsible duties and privileges of citizenship. The economic revolution, with its extensive application of science, art, and superior forms of management to the business of everyday life, calls in its turn for the education of all the people in order that they may be efficient economic units, productive and prosperous for their individual satisfaction as well as for national strength. In the pages which follow, the materials introduced have been selected from the point of view of their bearing upon the major social influences named above. The necessity of con- serving space has led to laying the emphasis, in the treatment of each of the four nations considered, upon the particular development which that nation's history has especially exem- plified. Thus, Prussia has been seen as representative of the extreme development of nationalism in education; France as showing a type of accommodation between the demands of nationalism and those of democracy; while in the parts of the book devoted to those countries, the influence of the indus- trial revolution has been given slight attention. In the story of England, the dominant theme throughout has been the re- sponse of a conservative society in terms of education to the conditions brought about by the revolution in industrial life. America has been accepted as showing an extreme type of democracy responding gradually to the necessity of self-disci- pline and self-cultivation through public education and only in recent years feeling in marked degree the influence either of the industrial revolution or of nationalism. The writer has tried to describe the educational evolution of each of these four countries as it has taken place in response to changing social, economic, and political conditions. The narrative does not attempt to solve problems or teach lessons, but rather to bring concrete educational situations before the reader for his own observation and judgment. It is to be hoped and expected that the serial presentation of the educa- tional problems and practices of four important modern na- 4 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 tions may reveal to us in a new light and with greater clearness the complex educational problems of our own day, and that it may give us an enlarged conception of the responsibility and the promise of public education in a democratic state. PART I FRANCE CHAPTER II THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: ITS EDU- CATIONAL PROMISE AND ACHIEVEMENT The Old Regime The Absolute Monarchy and the Privileged Classes. — In order to appreciate fully the tremendous significance of the political and educational changes that were accomplished through the French Revolution, it is necessary to understand the nature of the system which it brought to an end. The government under Louis XVT was an absolute monarchy — the government of France was simply the extension of the will of the king. The king's power over his subjects was practically absolute wherever he cared to set aside the operation of ordi- nary law, and no one was secure against distortions of justice or even against imprisonment without warrant or means of redress. There was no representative assembly for the making of laws or the determination of public policy. The adminis- tration of government in the provinces into which the country was divided was accomplished through intendants, who were the appointees and the personal representatives of the king. The nobility, which under mediaeval conditions had per- formed real social and political functions, had been deprived of all political significance. They served mainly as the personnel of the king's brilliant court. Maintained partly by the income from their estates and largely by sinecure pensions and salaries provided by the king, they spent their time in the diversions of society. The higher officials of the church were often worldly men who had been appointed from strictly personal or political 7 8 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 motives. They absented themselves from their legitimate fields of religious activity and frequented the court, where commonly they entered with abandon into all its worldliness and excess. In such instances the cure of souls was left to the lowly parish priest who toiled among the poor while the bishops and abbots and other high Church dignitaries flirted and gamed and in- trigued at Versailles. The Bourgeoisie. — If the first and second estates — or, in other words, the nobility and the clergy — had degenerated from positions of large social importance and had become mere supernumeraries in the real administration of French govern- ment, the third estate, otherwise known as the bourgeoisie or the middle class, had risen to a position of great power and influence. They furnished the members of the bureaucracy through which the civil administration was carried on. They were in complete possession of the courts of justice and could delay or defeat the operation of the law to meet their personal ends. They were the bankers, the manufacturers, the profes- sional class. Through their wealth or the political favor which they were able to win, the members of the middle class fre- quently acquired titles of nobility. In general, their interests were much more closely assimilated to those of the upper classes than to those of the submerged masses of the peasantry and the artisans. The bourgeoisie were the backbone of the civil administration; they were the foundation of France's financial credit; they furnished the great majority of France's intellectual elite. Of actual political representation or power on their own initiative, they had none, because there were no political institutions through which they could make their will effective. Peasants and Workingmen. — The condition of the peas- ants was altogether unfavorable. Serfdom, to be sure, had largely disappeared; but even where the peasants enjoyed freedom of person a great number of mediaeval dues and re- strictions continued to plague and hamper them. The great burden of taxation which was necessary to maintain the mili- tary and civil establishments and to support the wasteful THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND EDUCATION 9 extravagance of the royal court rested almost exclusively upon their backs. Toil as they might, the tax collector would make away with all the returns of their labor above the barest minima of a miserable existence. ^ Education under the Old Regime. — Corresponding to the political and social aspects of the old regime, there was a system of education which served as a means of its perpetua- tion. Largely through the Church, to which he had tacitly dele- gated this function, the king controlled education in the interest of maintaining the existing order. Instruction in the univer- sities had about it none of the spirit of research, being mainly the lifeless reproduction of the formulas of an earlier time. Everything taught therein was in the spirit and the letter of orthodox religion and to the glory of "His Most Christian Majesty." The secondary schools were in the hands of re- ligious orders and gave traditional and devitalized instruction to the sons of the middle and upper classes. As for the children of the common people, such facilities of instruction as they en- joyed were provided by religious associations of men and women. The schools maintained by these teaching congrega- tions were by no means universally supplied and their main purpose was moral and religious instruction. The great mass of the French poorer classes were altogether illiterate. The National Assembly (May 5, 1789, to September 14, 1 791) AND Talleyrand's Education Bill Political Reforms of the National Assembly. — The French Revolution began by being no revolution at all, but rather a council of representatives of the three estates of France elected to propose means for bolstering up a tottering financial system. The government stood prepared to trade off as advantageously as possible social reforms for money grants, and the estates of France had prepared cahiers (notebooks) of grievances which their representatives were to have reme- died as far as possible. But even before the three estates had been organized for the work which they had been called to- 10 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 gether to perform, a contest over the matter of balance of power in the council arose between the Third Estate and the two privileged estates, with the result that the representatives of the Third Estate, hitherto without political recognition or social privilege, declared themselves a National Assembly of the French people and invited the representatives of the other estates to join them. Upon royal order this invitation was accepted. The king's later effort to suppress the Assembly by armed force led to an uprising of the Paris Commune in support of the Assembly. The success of the uprising of the people of Paris was immediate and complete, and the National Assembly was saved. It promptly set to work to abolish the old regime and its numerous relics of feudalism and to draft a constitution. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, prefixed to the Constitution of 1791, stated in a positive way the principles of security from those abuses which had been abolished. This declaration asserted in part that the aim of all political association was the preservation of the natural and inalienable rights of man, which were liberty, property, se- curity, and resistance to oppression, and that the principle of all sovereignty resided essentially in the nation. Law, it de- clared, was the expression of the common will, and every citizen had the right to participate personally or through his representatives in its formation. It called for protection against the subversion of justice by arbitrary power and guaranteed freedom of conscience, freedom of the press, and equity and universality of taxation. The Constitution set up by the National, or Constituent, Assembly provided for a limited monarchy with the king in possession of a limited veto power. The French nation was divided for administrative purposes into departments, which in turn were divided and subdivided into districts, cantons and communes. All officials, including judges, of these various political divisions, were to be elected. The franchise was limited, in apparent inconsistency with the provisions of the Declaration of Rights, to those who paid taxes equal to three THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND EDUCATION ii days' wages, and there was established a property qualification for all office holders. Trial by jury was guaranteed for all criminal cases and a system of local and appellate courts was organized. The legislative function of the government was to be in the hands of a single chamber, the members of which were to be elected by the departments. The Constitution of 1791 is thus seen to represent a com- plete overturn of the old system of absolutism and privilege and to be democratic in a very true sense of the word. But it is equally plain that the writers of the Constitution intended to have a democracy which was limited by the possession of property. If the new order of things had changed radically in contrast with the old, it nevertheless realized only the aspirations for political power of the bourgeoisie, or middle class, and withheld from the great mass of artisans and agri- cultural laborers the right of active participation in political affairs. The National Assembly and the Church. — A phase of the work of the National Assembly that is of great signifi- cance in the history of French education is its treatment of the Church. The state confiscated the lands of the Church and sold a large part of them, applying the proceeds to govern- mental purposes. Monasteries and nunneries were dissolved and the monks and nuns were pensioned by the state, while the salaries of the clergy were carried on the civil service list. The opposition which was aroused within the Church to this policy of confiscation and interference rallied that venerable institution against the new radical political policies and the new nationalism. As a result, there has been from that time to the present in France an alliance, more or less influential at various periods, between conservative or reactionary politics and the Catholic Church. The Enlarged Importance of Education in the New Political Order. — When the Old Regime was overthrown and a system of representative political institutions was estab- lished, participation in the national life was extended at least as widely as the suffrage. In addition to the voters, every 12 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 peasant who had had his hunger for independent landowner- ship satisfied by the agrarian reforms of the National Assembly and the sale of Church and forfeited lands, might be expected to feel identified with the fortunes of the nation. Immediately the complex problem arose of preparing the citizens for their new privileges and responsibilities and of welding them into social unity. It was seen to be necessary that all the people should be able to read the official French language; that they should be informed respecting the political institutions under which they were to live; that enthusiasm for those institutions should be engendered in them; that they should be assimilated to the historical tradition of France and made to feel a pride in their heritage; and that their bodies be strengthened and trained, their minds be stimulated and expanded, and their moral purposes be formed and set in the mold of the new social and political order. To accomplish this work of human creation and regeneration it was seen to be essential that there be a system of education that was dependent in its purposes and its administration upon the civil state. The Constitution of 1791 contained the following provision regarding education: "There shall be created and organized a system of public instruction common to all the citizens and gratuitous in respect to those subjects of instruction that are indispensable to all men. Schools of various grades shall be supplied according to need over the entire kingdom. Com- memorative days shall be designated for the purpose of pre- serving the memory of the French Revolution, of developing the spirit of fraternity among all citizens and of attaching them to the constitution, the country and its laws." Consis- tently with the constitutional provision for education, the National Assembly appointed a Committee on Public Instruc- tion, in behalf of which a report was made and a bill pre- sented for the consideration of the Assembly by M. Talleyrand- Perigord on September 10 and 11, 1791. Talleyrand's Education Bill. — Talleyrand's Bill is an in- dication of a new attitude toward education which had been induced by the establishment of a new political order. It THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND EDUCATION 13 recognized education as a state function and not a church function. It proposed to employ the schools as an agency for the promotion of a national culture. It planned an organ- ization of schools consistent with the increased participation of the people in government. A division in principle was made in the Bill between those subjects of instruction which were "indispensable to the indi- vidual as a man and a citizen" and those which were needed only in preparation for professional life. The former were to be free of cost and open to the children of all citizens without distinction, while the latter were to be paid for. Such a dis- tinction was essentially that which has existed in Europe be- tween primary and secondary education down to the present time and only reflected the half-way democracy which France had achieved by the Constitution of 179 1. Primary Education. — Truly a high and difficult objective was set up in the Bill for the primary schools, for their pur- pose was declared to be "to teach all children their first and indispensable duties, to instil in them the principles which ought to direct their actions; and to make them happier men and more useful citizens through preserving them from the dangers of ignorance." These results were to be achieved through reading, writing, the simple elements of the French language, the rules of elementary arithmetic, the elements of mensuration, place geography of limited scope, and some well- conceived moral and religious material. The children were to be taught the principles of religion and the first elements of morals in such a way as to show the interdependence of the members of society. They were to be instructed in the duties common to all citizens and in the laws which it was necessary for all to know. The Bill did not specify any administrative unit for the establishment of primary schools, but left this to the judgment of the departmental governments acting upon the demands of local initiative. No compulsion was laid upon the communes to establish schools nor upon parents to send their children to the schools after they had been established. The Committee 14 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 on Public Instruction relied upon popular enthusiasm for edu- cation to establish schools and to send the children to them for instruction. The teacher of the primary school was to receive from the state a fixed salary and to be provided with a schoolroom. His professional fitness was to be insured through official examinations; his loyalty to the state was to be guaranteed by a civil oath. Secondary Education. — The Bill provided for secondary education through a system of "district" schools, the number of which was to be decided upon by the government of each department. The double purpose of these schools was to give general cultural development and to furnish special preparation for entrance to professional life. The curriculum as described in the Bill was a decided innovation in its emphasis upon scientific and social subjects and the verriacular. The prin- ciples of religion, ethics, languages, logic, rhetoric, geography, history, mathematics, and physics were to be distributed over a period of seven years, while special attention was to be paid to physical training and military exercises. In the Grammar Course, comprising the first two years, republican morality was to be made the central theme, and the pupils were to learn by heart the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The motive of creating a national culture is shown in the relatively great emphasis which was to be laid upon the French language and literature and upon comparative and French history. The secondary school teacher was to be made a member of the national civil administration through uniform examinations to determine his eligibility, through civil appointment and legally safeguarded tenure of office, through a state contribution to his salary, and through his subscribing to a civil oath. Scholarships in the District Schools. — Even though the instruction in the district schools was not to be free, a system of scholarships was provided for in the Bill which was intended to keep such schools at least partly accessible to poor, but gifted youths. At least ten scholarships were to be provided in the principal school of each department in their behalf. Existing educational foundations were to be applied to this THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND EDUCATION 15 object, but where such funds were insufficient, the expense of the scholarships was to be borne by the state. A third and higher grade of schools was named "schools of the department." They were professional in nature and comprised schools of religion, medicine, law, and military science. At the head of the state system of education proposed by Talleyrand was to be a National Institute, made up of the most noted of aU men distinguished for their learning. Their activities were to combine research and lecturing, with the occasional added duty of offering advanced instruction to those capable of profiting by it. The aim of this body was to be, however, the advancement of science, art, and letters into new fields rather than the imparting of what was already known. National Administration. — In order to secure unity of pur- pose, completeness of organization and uniformity of adminis- tration over the whole kingdom, a Commission of Public In- struction was to be formed in Paris. Its six members, bearing the name of Commissioners of Education, were to be ap- pointed by the king; but they were not to be subject to re- moval except with the consent of the legislative body. Acting under the orders of the Commission were to be inspectors, appointed by the king, who were to be sent wherever at any time their presence might be desirable. Under the care of the Commission were to be the celebration of the national holidays with fitting pageantry and other exercises, the en- couragement of the arts, and the direction of public libraries, the National Library, and all library exchanges. The Com- mission was to have charge of all the property and the reve- nues devoted to education and it was to be called on for an annual report to the legislative body on the state of education in the country at large. In order that tyranny of the majority might be avoided as well as the tyranny of the king, the Bill proposed to allow any private party who would submit to the general laws of public instruction, to set up a school^ provided that he would 1 6 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 give notice of such action to the municipal council and publish the regulations of his school. As only a few days of life remained to the National Assembly after Talleyrand had reported his Bill, the members were unwilling to undertake in the short time available the con- sideration of so weighty and intricate a matter as the organi- zation of an entirely new system of education along lines so thoroughly experimental. Talleyrand urged the imp)ortance of the measure, pointing out that the needs were infinitely press- ing, for the universities had everywhere suspended their opera- tions, and the colleges were without discipline, without pro- fessors, without pupils. But his plea was not granted. The Assembly ordered that the Bill be printed and distributed, and recommended its consideration to the Legislative Assem- bly, which its labors had called into being. The Legislative Assembly (October i, 1791, to September 21, 1792) AND CoNDORCET's RePORT Revolutionary feeling had grown rapidly in France since the calling of the Estates General. 'Jacobin societies had been organized in all parts of the country for the active propaga- tion of theories of extreme democracy. Styles of dress and salutation were changing to follow the customs of the working classes. This radical sentiment had its most extreme expres- sion in the Parisian mob, which had free access to the chamber in which the Legislative Assembly met and there terrorized its members. The attacks upon France by foreign monarchs who were interested in the suppression of revolutionary ten- dencies and in the reinstatement of the old regime, strength- ened the drift toward democracy and alienated the affections of the French people from their king. On the tenth of August, 1792, the Parisian mob, organized by the Jacobins and having the support of the Mountain within the Assembly, stormed the king's palace and accomplished the suspension of the king by vote of the Assembly. Three days later the Assembly sum- moned a convention to draw up a republican constitution. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND EDUCATION 17 The Legislative Assembly was elected in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution of 1791, but the number of radicals among its members was out of all proportion to the prevalence of radical political notions in the country at large. The active planning of the radical Jacobin element had eliminated from the voting for members a large part of the voters, and violence and fraud at the elections had contributed still further to increase the representation of the radical Re- publicans. The political complexion of the Legislative was, on the whole, much more radical than had been that of the National Assembly. A certain group which occupied the Right of the Chamber were loosely united in support of constitutional government, while another group which was composed of the Girondins and the radical Mountain and occupied the Left of the Chamber, were desirous of still further democratization of the government and the overthrow of the conservative constitution. A numerical majority, without any definite policy, occupied the Center. In the course of events, the Center fell largely under the influence of the radical Left. The educational situation was made even worse than it had been under the National Assembly by reason of the suppression of all teaching congregations by a law passed August 18, 1792. Condorcet's Report. — On the twentieth and twenty-first of April 1792, Condorcet presented to the Legislative Assembly a report and a bill on the general organization of public in- struction in the nation on behalf of the Committee on Public Instruction of which he was a member. Condorcet belonged to the party of the Girondins, who supported a radically demo- cratic phase of government. He is most generally known as the author of "A Sketch of a Historical Chart of the Progress of the Human Spirit," in which he elaborated his belief in the unlimited perfectibility of the human race. While radically democratic in his political views, he was opposed to the terror- ism and mob-rule of the Mountain, by whom he was later hunted down and imprisoned and at whose hands, directly or indirectly, he lost his life. The spirit and purpose of Condorcet's educational program 1 8 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 for the new nation is clearly indicated in the following words with which his report begins: "To offer all individuals of the human race the means of providing for their wants, of insuring their welfare, of knowing and exercising their rights, of knowing and fulfilling their duties; "To assure each one the opportunity of making himself more efficient in his industry, of making himself more capable of performing social functions to which he may be called, of developing to the fullest extent the talents which he has re- ceived from nature; and by that means to establish among the citizens an equality in fact, making real the political equality recognized by the law; "Such ought to be the first aim of national education." The system of schools through which this ideal of demo- cratic education was to be achieved comprised four distinct grades of instruction; namely, primary schools, secondary schools^ institutes, and lycees. A National Society of Arts and Sciences was to be formed for the general supervision and administration of the educational system and for the encour- agement of scientific research, fine arts, and literature. The Primary Schools. — One primary school was to be provided for every settlement having a population of four hundred, and in sparsely settled districts schools were to be provided for all villages found more than two thousand yards from a place containing four hundred inhabitants. The objec- tive of the lowest grade of school was to make all men capable of performing those simple public functions, such as jury service or communal administration, to which any man might in all probability be called. The course of study was to in- clude reading and writing, some elementary notions of grammar, the rules of arithmetic, including mensuration and simple methods of land measurement, elementary notions of geog- raphy and the processes of agriculture and the trades, the simpler ideas of ethics and the rules of conduct derived there- from and, finally, "such rules of social organization as one is able to bring down to the comprehension of the child." On THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND EDUCATION 19 Sundays, the teacher of the primary schools was to be expected to give lectures open to all members of the community. This form of "extension education" was intended to furnish to those whose earlier education had been neglected an oppor- tunity to make up such deficiencies, as well as to keep them in touch with new legislative enactments, new developments of agriculture and the trades, and to teach them the use of such means of self-education as the dictionary, the index of a book, and maps and charts. The Secondary Schools. — The secondary schools were in- tended for children whose parents would be able to dispense with their services for a longer time than was possible in the case of the children who might attend the primary school. In his use of the woni secondary to describe this second grade of school, Condorcet departs from the customary European usage. The secondary school in the sense in which the word is now used on the Continent is represented in the third grade of education proposed by Condorcet under the name of "insti- tute." The secondary school of his plan, as will be seen from an examination of the purpose of the school and its curricu- lum, corresponds very closely to the present higher primary school of France, the middle school of Prussia, the English central school, and, in many ways, to the American high school. Every arrondissement and every town of four thousand inhabitants was to have such a school. The curriculum was to include "some notions of mathematics, natural history, the chemistry necessary to the arts, some more advanced develop- ments of the principles of ethics and social science, and ele- mentary lessons of commerce." Here again the teacher was to be expected to give weekly lectures open to the public. The Institutes. — The third grade of instruction, the insti- tute, was the secondary school as that term is used in Europe today. It was intended as a more liberal preparation for life than could be provided in the lower schools, and as a stepping- stone to professional or scholarly studies. Of these schools there were to be one hundred ten, to be distributed among all the departments of France. The student was to be allowed 20 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 great freedom in the choice of his studies. In the distribution of professorships in the institutes, the natural and social sciences were favored over the classical studies, but oppor- tunity was furnished for the study of the classics if the student desired them. Prominence was given to ethical and social studies, as would be expected. In justification of this empha- sis, Condorcet said, "How can we hope to raise the level of public morality unless we make moral in the first place those men who can enlighten the people and are destined for leader- ship, by means of an exact and rigorous analysis of the moral sentiments, the ideas resulting from them, and the principles of conduct which are their consequence? 'Good laws,' said Plato, 'are those which the people love more than life itself.' But yet, how good would the laws be if, in order to execute them, it would be necessary to employ a force foreign to the will of the people and to bring to justice the support of tyr- anny? In order that the citizens may love the laws without ceasing to be truly free, in order that they may preserve that rational independence without which liberty is only a passion and not a virtue, it is necessary for them to know those principles of natural justice, those essential rights of man of which the laws are only the development or the application. It is necessary to distinguish in laws the implications of those rights and means more or less happily combined with them for their realization; it is necessary to love the former because dictated by justice and the latter because inspired by practical wisdom. A distinction must be made between that devotion of reason which one owes to laws which it approves of and that submission, that external support, which the citizen owes to them, even when his intelligence shows him their danger or imperfection. It is necessary that in loving the laws, we should know how to judge them." The Lycees. — The fourth grade of instruction was given the name lycee. The lycees were to be true institutions of higher learning in which all subjects of instruction were to be taught in their fullest extent. They were not to be professional schools, but schools devoted to advanced studies of science, THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND EDUCATION 21 languages, literature, and art. They were intended to be not only the medium for the transmission of learning at its highest level, but the nurseries of scholarly research. There were to be nine lycees distributed over the kingdom. No pains were to be spared to make them the equals of the best universities in Europe. National Scholars. — Condorcet planned that instruction in all four of the grades of instruction was to be free. He realized, however, that the tuition fee was not the only, or even the greatest, hindrance to universal participation in educational advantages, and in order to equalize opportunities for gifted sons of poor parents, he proposed an extensive system of scholarships. Thirty-eight hundred fifty children, chosen for their promise, were to be maintained as "national scholars" in schools of all grades. Out of each grade of school were to be chosen annually a number of the most able students for an extended period of study at public expense in the next higher grade. The National Society of Arts and Sciences. — The high- est grade of education — as distinguished from instruction, for its members were to do no teaching — was to be a National Society of Arts and Sciences. The concern of its members was to be with the perfecting, the encouragement, the application, and the spread of all useful discoveries and inventions. They were to be the instructors of the entire generation and the ac- celerators of human progress. The National Society was also to have executive oversight over the national system of instruc- tion. It was to be the head of an educational hierarchy ex- tending down to the humblest primary school. It was to be responsible, in the last analysis, for the certification and the appointment of teachers, the supervision of schools, the selec- tion of textbooks, the training of teachers, and the progress of education in general. Academic Freedom. — iThe degree of freedom which Con- dorcet proposed for the National Society of Arts and Sciences and for the higher teaching institutions deserves a great deal of attention in connection with any consideration of the prin- 22 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 ciples of education in a democracy. He said in his report, "Freedom of teaching constitutes, in a way, one of the rights of the human race. . . . Since truth alone is useful and since every error is an evil, by what right would any power, no matter what it might be, dare to determine what is truth and what is error? A power which could forbid the teaching of an opinion contrary to that which has served as the basis for enacted laws, would attack directly the freedom of thought, would contradict the purpose of every social institution, namely, the improvement of the laws, which necessarily fol- lows from conflicts of opinion and the spread of enlightenment. For that matter, the French Constitution makes such inde- pendence our rigorous duty. It has recognized that the nation has the inalienable rnd indefeasible right of reforming all its laws. . . . The intention of the Constitution is that all the laws should be discussed, that all political theories should be allowed to be taught and opposed, that no system of social organization should be offered to enthusiasm or to prejudice as the object of superstitious worship, but that all political beliefs and systems should be presented to reason as different possibilities among which she has the right -to choose. . . . Should we iiave in reality respected the inalienable inde- pendence of the people if we had permitted the government to fortify any particular system of belief with all the weight which universal instruction would give it; and would not the power which would arrogate to itself the right to choose our opinions have veritably usurped a portion of the national sovereignty?" In accordance with the sentiments expressed in the quota- tion given above, the Bill introduced by Condorcet proposed to remove the educational system from all forms of government influence by placing education in the hands of the National Society of Arts and Sciences and making that body self-per- petuating. Whether or not we would agree that the establish- ment of a hierarchy of schoolmen would make for the greatest freedom of thought and would cause the educational system to be most responsive to social change, we can at least agree THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND EDUCATION 23 with Condorcet as to the importance of keeping open all the sources of enlightened public opinion. It was not proposed, however, to extend to the teachers of the primary and the secondary schools freedom to teach what and how they pleased, on the grounds that the attainments of the teachers of these schools did not warrant giving them so much liberty. In their case, freedom would result, it was thought, in superficiality. They were to teach the materials approved by the higher educational authorities. But all teachers of the two higher grades of school and all members of the National Society were to be freed from all external control over their classroom or official utterances and to be encouraged to seek truth whatever it might turn out to be. Condorcet's Report was presented during the last days of the life of the Legislative Assembly, at a time when the mem- bers were eagerly discussing the question of war with Austria. It was voted that the Bill be printed; but it was never dis- cussed by the Assembly. Thus a second legislative body of the French Revolution passed out of existence without making any legal provision for that universal education which the Constitution called for. Estimate of the Significance of the Report. — From the standpoint of the possibility of putting into effect the plans of Condorcet at the time when they were proposed to the Legis- lative Assembly, one is almos t justified in describing them, with Duruy,^ as chimerical. France was then bankrupt, torn by political factions, without any tradition of public educa- tion, without any machinery for its realization, and with the gravest of foreign complications threatening her existence. However, the Report is of the highest value when considered as a document for succeeding centuries rather than as a law to be put into immediate effect. Judged from the standpoint of the provisions that are made for public education in many countries today, the plan is a masterpiece of prophetic insight and true feeling for the instrumentalities of democratic edu- cation. A great part of this prophecy and bill of democratic ' Duruy, L'Instruction Publiqtie et la Revolution. 24 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 educational rights has already been realized in the free coun- tries of the world, and much that has not been realized as yet is recognized as bound to come in the future if democracy is to endure. The Convention and the Directory (September 22, 1792, TO November 9, 1799) and Daunou's Law Political Composition of the Convention. — Upon the action of the Legislative Assembly in deposing Louis XVI the necessity immediately arose of calling a new representative body to determine upon a constitution. Again the radical elements were well organized and interfered with the casting of the vote through the terrorization of moderate voters. By the most high-handed methods the Paris Commune, under the guidance of Robespierre, secured the election of a violent Republican representation for the city of Paris, including Robespierre, Danton, and Marat. "The Convention was elected, the Republic proclaimed, the king executed, and the Terror established on the mandate of about six per cent of the electors of France." ' Despite the efforts of the extremist faction, the Mountain controlled only about fifty members; the Girondins numbered about one hundred twenty; while the majority were not identified with either of the first-named radical parties. The Mountain proved to be more skilful politicians and more vigorous in action than the Girondins. With the help of the Paris mob they forced through the execution of Louis Capet, ex-king of France, on the twenty-first day of January 1793. Owing to the downfall of the ministry, a Committee of Gen- eral Defense was established, which failed to develop any executive strength. Defeat on the frontier, and a formidable civil war in the Vendee, showed the necessity for an efficient executive, and on April 6 the Committee of Public Safety was established with almost absolute powers. The Mountain continued to increase its power over the Convention, largely * Cambridge Modern History. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND EDUCATION 25 through the murderous support of the mob. On June 2 the convention voted the suspension of twenty Girondin deputies under the guns of the populace. A second Committee of Public Safety, appointed July 10, was completely under the domination of Robespierre. With few changes of personnel this committee was the guiding force of the Revolution until July 27, 1794. This is the period known as the "Terror," "an era of blind and indiscriminate violence," but at the same time of great executive and military efficiency. The Commit- tee of Public Safety put down revolts within France with savage ferocity and defeated the enemy coalition on her borders. Education Proposals in the Convention. — The attitude of the Convention on educational affairs parallels closely the variations in control between the more moderate and the more radical elements. Early in its sitting it ordered reprinted the report of Condorcet and gave favorable attention to some of the provisions of a bill introduced by Lanthenas, which followed closely the ideas of Condorcet. In a bill offered by Lakanal on the twenty-sixth of June 1793, in the name of the Committee on Public Instruction, a primary school was proposed for every one thousand inhabitants which was to be controlled partly by a local committee and partly by a central administration acting under the authority of the legis- lative body. A very full curriculum was proposed, aiming at physical, intellectual, moral, and vocational training. This bill was defeated through the influence of the Mountain, and another, representing the extreme state control in matters of education, was discussed by the Convention. This bill, which had been found among the posthumous papers of Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau, was supported by Robespierre. It recognized as the most pressing educational need of France at this time the making over of the people, with the least possible delay, into the image of extreme republicanism. ^ The remainder of habit, tradition, and sentiment which held over from other less enlightened days was to be elimi- nated through the complete re-formation of the minds of 26 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 the younger generation by means of a system which closely resembled that which Lycurgus in ancient times had proposed for Sparta. The Bill to Create "National" Schools.— The Bill pro- vided that all children were to be reared at public expense in National Schools. Parents were to be given no choice in regard to sending their children to these schools, which were boarding establishments in which all were to receive the same food, the same clothing, the same instruction, the same care. The object of the instruction was to be "to strengthen the bodies of the children and to develop them through gymnastic exer- cises, to accustom them to hard work, to harden them against every kind of fatigue, to bend them to the yoke of a salutary discipline, to form their minds and hearts by means of suit- able lessons, and to give them that information which is necessary to every citizen whatever may be his calling in life." Only those children who had exhibited special talents and abilities in the National Schools were to be allowed to advance to higher education; the rest were to be put to work at the various trades or agriculture. The intellectual parts of the school experience were to be as follows: "The boys shall learn to read, write, and count, and they shall be given ele- mentary instruction in mensuration and surveying. Their memories shall be cultivated and developed; they shall be made to learn by heart some patriotic songs and the story of some of the most striking events in the history of free peoples and of the French Revolution. They shall also re- ceive some instruction concerning the constitution of their land, general ethics, and rural and household economy. "The girls shall learn to read, write, and count. Their memories shall be cultivated through the study of patriotic songs and some incidents of history designed to develop the virtues of their sex. They shall receive instruction in ethics and in rural and household economy." The major part of each day was to be employed by the children in working with their hands. The boys were to work at repairing roads, at trades, and at farming. The girls were THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND EDUCATION 27 to practise spinning, sewing, and laundering. As no domestic servants were to be employed in the National Schools, the daily domestic duties were to be performed by the children. The hours of recreation were to be given up to gymnastic exercises, with military training for the boys. Article 19 of the Bill provided: "The children shall receive impartially and uniformly, each according to his age, wholesome and frugal nourishment and comfortable but coarse garments, and shall lie on hard beds, so that whatever calling they may embrace and in whatever circumstances they may find th'^mselves dur- ing the course of their lives, they shall bring to them the habit of being able to do without comforts and luxuries and a contempt for artificial wants." Even though the bill of Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau, spon- sored by Robespierre, received considerable support, it was referred to a committee. The final action on the modified bill as reported out of committee was simply to establish a system of National Schools, while it allowed parents to keep their children at home and send them to day schools which were to be set up for that purpose. Legislation regarding Language Instruction. — There were many different French dialects spoken in the France of the Revolution period, and a number of foreign tongues were used on French soil as the language of entire regions, so that it was frequently impossible for the citizens of many sections to understand the language of citizens of other sections and equally impossible for them to read and understand the new legislation that was producing so many changes in France. It is easily seen that the possession of a uniform and generally understood language was of first rate importance for the de- velopment of a unified national consciousness, and that the presence of numerous dialects which hindered the free circu- lation of republican ideas should with justice have been recog- nized as a great hindrance to national unity and social prog- ress. Accordingly, great stress was laid in the laws of the Revolution period upon the teaching of the French language in the schools. A law of January 24, 1794, provided for the 2 8 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 appointment of teachers of the French language in each rural commune of several departments in which the low-Breton dia- lect and foreign languages were in common or practically exclusive use. It was to be the duty of these instructors to teach the youth of both sexes the French language and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. On every "tenth day" they were to give public lectures in which they were to trans- late the laws of the Republic. Radical Distrust of Higher Education. — The extreme radicals of the Terror were interested primarily in elementary education. Science, literature, and philosophy were suspect along with wealth. Higher education was thought to perpetu- ate inequality and was therefore looked upon coldly. De- mands were made that no colleges should be allowed to exist and that no one should hold an appointment as professor for life. "It is not necessary to revive the aristocracy of learned men and philosophers when we wish a democracy of sanscu- lottes; it is not necessary to give the town the advantage over the country; when we have a civil code favoring the common people we shall have no need of attorneys, advocates, and learned men." The Overthrow of the Mountain. — The violence which Robespierre had used to gain and hold power was in turn directed against himself and his supporters in the "Thermi- dorian" uprising which took place July 27, 1794. Robespierre and ninety-five of his associates were sent to the scaffold by the Moderates acting in cooperation with the Anti- Robespierrist Radicals. In the reaction which followed, the power of the Committee of Public Safety was greatly reduced, the licenses given to clubs and societies were withdrawn, the powers of Revolutionary Committees were either curtailed or suppressed, and the revolutionary municipal government of Paris, the Commune, was abolished. A decided shift back to moderate political principles occurred in the Convention, and this was only in accord with the general feeling of the nation as a whole. This reaction is well shown in the Constitution of 1795, which made the franchise dependent upon the pay- THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND EDUCATION 29 ment of taxes and established a real-property qualification for holding all offices except legislative. The Declaration of the Rights of Man was retained as the guarantee of personal liber- ties, and citizens were given the right to establish and main- tain private schools. A high degree of centralized control over local affairs continued the French tradition of centraliza- tion which had been interrupted by the provisions of the Con- stitution of 1 79 1. Conservatism of the Final Education Law. — If the French Revolution concluded, as it began, with the recognition of the full political rights of the upper and middle classes and the denial of participation in political life to the laboring classes of the population, the course of educational policy fol- lowed closely the political. There is a great contrast between the bill of Condorcet, even that of Talleyrand, and the Law of Daunou (October 24, 1795) which was the concluding and effective educational enactment of the Revolution, regarding public education. The latter did not show the fine democratic enthusiasm of the earlier bills. Compared with them, it al- most altogether neglected the matter of primary education, while it made relatively generous provision for secondary and higher education. Daunou's Law. — Daunou's Law proposed the establish- ment of one or more primary schools in every canton — which meant, in effect, that the more considerable centers of popu- lation were to be compelled to set up primary schools and that no provision was made for schools in the villages and the open country. The curriculum was to consist of reading, writing, arithmetic, and th^ "elements of Republican ethics." Each teacher was to be furnished with a house, which was to do double duty as schoolroom and dwelling. There was to be attached to the house a garden or, in default of such pro- vision, an annual sum of money was to be allowed. The re- maining support of the teacher was to be derived from school fees paid by the pupils. A reminder of the principle of free primary instruction which was included in the earlier bills of the Revolution is found in the provision of the Law that by 30 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 reason of poverty one-fourth of the pupils of each school might be relieved of payment of the school fee. The imme- diate supervision of the primary schools was to be in the hands of the municipal government, while education commit- tees were to examine and choose the teachers and mediate in administration between the municipalities and the depart- mental administration. No connection whatever between the educational functions of the departmental administration and the central government was provided for. The Law called for the establishment of secondary schools, under the name of Central Schools, in each department, with the privilege given to communes of erecting similar schools out of their own resources. The Central Schools were to comprise three sections or grades and the subject matter of instruction was decidedly modern. The attention to be given to the ancient languages was minimized, while natural science, mod- ern languages, history, mathematics, drawing, literature, and law constituted the greater part of the curriculum. The pro- fessors were to be chosen by an education committee, subject to the approval of the departmental administration. They were to be paid annual salaries by the department, with addi- tions from pupils' fees. For the Central Schools also we find the provision made that one-fourth of the pupils might be excused from payment of tuition fees by reason of poverty. The Law also provided for Special Schools for the study of astronomy, science, medicine, rural economics, the fine arts, and other subjects. At the apex of the educational sys- tem was placed a National Institute of Arts and Sciences, the function of which was to promote learning through scientific research, publication, and correspondence with learned socie- ties of foreign lands. Small Results of Daunou's Law. — While the Law of 1795 had numerous practical defects, its failure was due largely to the general inefficiency of the Directory.government. Certainly no appreciable improvement in the condition of primary edu- cation resulted from it. The destitution of the teachers and the lack of schools are indicated in the official reports of the THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND EDUCATION 31 pericMd. One such report made in the last years of the Direc- tory government informs us that the establishment of primary schools had been almost everywhere without success. The reasons given for their failure were the choice of inferior and unworthy teachers, and the lack of any assured means of support for teachers. A second report says that the primary schools were almost everywhere deserted. The administration of the part of the Law dealing with secondary schools was somewhat more fruitful of results than was the case with the primary schools. "To set up a great establishment of secondary instruction in each department, including the annexed territories, would not have been, even in ordinary times, a small matter; in 1795, with the Coalition to contend with, eight hundred thousand men at the frontiers, and a depreciated paper currency, there were great chances that that vast operation would fail." Nevertheless, within about two years, ninety-seven Central Schools were established and in working order at an annual cost to the State of two and a half million francs. But whether owing to the unpopularity of the radically new curriculum, parental distrust of irreligious schools, the lack of competent teachers, the absence of effec- tive supervision, or the general slackness of the government and the insecurity of the times, the Central Schools, drawing only small numbers of pupils, did not achieve any significant success against the opposition of the private schools allowed by the Constitution of 1795. Schools Established by the Convention. — During the year 1794 were founded the Polytechnic School, the School of Mars, the Conservatory of Arts and Trades, and the Normal School. According to the plan of Lakanal, who stood spon- sor for the Normal School, it was to be established at Paris. The most famous scientists and contemporary men of letters were to be secured for its professors. Pupil-teachers were to be sent to the Normal School from all over France and, having been imbued with good methods of teaching, were to return to their homes and in turn open training-schools for teachers. The plan was actually put into execution, but with little sue- 32 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 cess. The school had only an ephemeral existence of four months. It was later re-established by Napoleon on more durable foundations. ADDITIONAL READINGS General Historical Background. — West, Modern History; Robin- son, History of Western Europe; Hayes, A Political and Social History of Modern Europe, I; Mathews, The French Revolution. Education Source Material. — The best collection of source ma- terial for the period covered in this chapter is Greard, La legislation de Vinstruction printaire en France, I. A more complete treatment of Condorcet's educational program is given in Condorcet, Rapport et projet de dccret sur V organisation generate de Vinstruction publique, edited by Compayre. Secondary Accounts. — Compayre, History of Pedagogy; Cubber- ley, The History of Education; Compayre, Doctrines de I'education en France, II; Duruy, Vinstruction publique et la revolution; Simon, L'instruction poptdaire en France. CHAPTER III NAPOLEON AND THE IMPERIAL FRENCH UNIVERSITY French Government under Napoleon. — The rule of Napoleon falls into two periods: the Consulate (1799-1804) and the Empire (1804-1815). For our purpose, however, it is unnecessary to make definite distinctions between the two periods, since the political changes as well as the educational developments of the Napoleonic regime are but natural steps in the evolution of a thinly veiled absolutism. Even under the Consulate, the constitutional forms, while ostensibly al- lowing some degree of representation to the people, actually concentrated all the significant powers of government in the hands of the first consul. Napoleon Bonaparte. With increas- ing success and popularity the language and forms of absolute kingship or empire took the place of the earlier evasions of the fact and the government of Napoleon acknowledged itself in name what it really was — a thoroughly despotic one-man affair. From one point of view the regime of Napoleon can be con- sidered as the continuation and the consolidation of the social reforms of the Revolution. The numerous inequalities and injustices. which had been overthrown at the outset of the Revo- lution were not revived under him, and the organization of law, governmental machinery, courts, and economic institu- tions which took place under his strong leadership over a period of almost twenty years made it impossible that France should ever lose the impress of the Revolution. France was given during that time a model code of law, a strong internal admin- istration in every department of the government, and a sound financial system. From another point of view. Napoleon's rule may be con- sidered to have been a complete contravention of the prin- 33 34 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 ciples of political freedom and of participation in the business of government by the citizens at large. His rule was as auto- y cratic and absolute as that of Louis XIV had been, even though it observed all the forms of political freedom and recognized the body of voters as the source of political power. If the "equality" which the Revolution proclaimed was, on the whole, faithfully preserved by Napoleon, the "liberty" which it inaugurated was as completely subverted. The social group which Napoleon recognized as possessing the balance of power was the group which had profited most in political privileges by the Revolution, namely, the bourgeoisie. But the bour- geoisie were at that time more interested in strong govern- ment and a sound financial system than in any principle of political participation. Napoleon's general policy was directed largely to securing the loyalty of this group, and it may be said that his educational interest was almost entirely related to the schools by which that group would profit. Napoleon's Educational Policies. — The educational de- velopments under Napoleon bear a close relationship to his general political and administrative policies. He was, on the whole, indifferent to the education of the masses. In the first important education law of his regime, that of May i, 1802, the status of primary schools was but slightly changed and not at all improved. More important, however, for the im- provement of primary education than any education law passed during Napoleon's rule, was the Concordat agreed upon in 1 80 1 between Napoleon and the Pope. According to its ar- ticles, the Catholic Church was again legally recognized in France and supported out of public funds. The teaching privi- leges which the Church had enjoyed prior to the Revolution ^ were, in general, restored, with the important qualification that they be exercised only under authorization by the gov- ernment. Such improvements as took place in the condition of primary education under Napoleon were largely owing to the activities of the Brethren of the Christian Schools and other 'All teaching congregations in France were suppressed by act of the Legislative Assembly, August i8, 17Q2. NAPOLEON AND THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY 35 teaching congregations. Napoleon himself frequently lauded the work of the Brethren of the Christian Schools, and he is quoted as having been of the opinion that if they had not been under the control of a foreign head, it would be the best solution of the problem of primary education to turn it over to them.^ His Belief in National Education. — In 1805 Napoleon wrote: ^"Of all political questions, that [of education] is per- haps the most important. There cannot be a firmly estab- lished political state unless there is a teaching body with definitely recognized principles. If the child is not taught from infancy that he ought to be a republican or a monarchist, a Catholic or a free-thinker, the state will not constitute a na- tion; it will rest on uncertain and shifting foundations; and it will be constantly exposed to disorder and change." /I^-T poleon saw that the thing that mainly mattered in government was, after all, the development of a common culture, common convictions, and common ideals. /And since the part of" the population which at that time mattered most politically — in- deed, the only part that mattered at all — was the bourgeoisie and the upper classes. Napoleon attempted to realize his ideal of a national education through the schools which educated the children of those classes, namely, the secondary schools, and through the higher institutions which trained the teachers for the secondary schools. Extending State Control over Private Schools. — For the first three years of the Consulate, the Central Schools of the Law of 1795 were continued, but they were far from able to serve Napoleon's purpose as they existed. They were too few in number, too poorly attended, too loosely supervised, and unfavorably affected by the too-successful competition of the private secondary schools, which, as has been said above, were allowed full rights under the Constitution and which were in- dependent of any state supervision. In the law of May i, 1802, we can see the first step toward the realization of his educational ideal. That law provided that secondary educa- ^ Aulaffl, Napoleon I et le monopole universitcure, p. 48. 36 NATIONALISIM AND EDUCATION SINCE 17S9 tion should be carried on under close administrative con- trol, in schools established by communes or by private parties and in lycees maintained at state cost. The main difference between the new secondary school system and the one which it supplanted lay in the very significant provi- sion that all secondary schools should require government authorization. A regulation adopted soon after the law went into effect made such authorization annually subject to revo- cation. By successive regulations, the central government put itself more and more completely in control of the secondary schools maintained by the communes, until by the time of the foundation of the Imperial University, the government had a hand in the selection of their teachers, was determining their courses of study, fixing disciplinary measures, and prescribing a common costume for the students and uniform religious exer- cises. The Imperial University. — But even with such extension of influence over private and communal secondary schools, the logical ideal of state control over education was not at- tained. The Emperor would be satisfied with nothing short of a thoroughgoing monopoly in education and complete con- ^^ol over all educational agencies. Accordingly, by the"'law o? May 10, 1806, a teaching corporation was established, under the name of the Imperial University, which was to have con- trol over education in the Empire. The more detailed organi- zation of the University took place through a decree of March 17, 1808, which in effect established a national ministry of education. Again, in this latter act, the monopoly of the University over education was affirmed in specific terms: "No school, no establishment of instruction whatsoever, may be set up outside the Imperial University and without the authorization of its head." Under the University six grades of schools were recognized. Of these the faculties had the functions of the modern university and fostered learned studies and granted degrees. The lycees, supported by the state, con- stituted the highest type of secondary school and had an ex- tensive and comprehensive curriculum. The colleges were NAPOLEON AND THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY 37 municipal secondary schools of somewhat lower grade than the lycees, while the institutes were private schools of equal rank with the colleges. Boarding-schools were private schools less advanced in character than the institutes. The lowest grade of the educational hierarchy consisted of the petty, or primary, schools, in which were taught reading, writing, and the beginnings of arithmetic. Development of Strong Central Control. — That there might be no lack of understanding of the purpose of the educational system, the Decree of 1808 specifically stated: ."AH schools of the Imperial University shall take as the basis of their instruction: (a) the precepts of the Catholic religion; ib) fidelity to the Emperor and the Imperial Monarchy, which is the trustee of the welfare of the people, and to the Na- poleonic dynasty, which is the conservator of the unity of France and of all the ideas proclaimed by the Constitution; and (c) obedience to the statutes of the teaching corporation, which have as their object uniformity of instruction and which tend to the production for the state of citizens attached to their religion, to their country, and to their families." In order to insure efficient and responsive administration of the educational system, a grand master, to be the personal appointee of the Emperor, was given numerous and important powers. In his hands was to lie the appointment of all sub- ordinate administrative officials and all professors in faculties, lycees, and colleges. He was to select the holders of scholar- ships and to grant permission to open schools. All disciplin- ary measures were to emanate from him, and all admissions to the faculties were required to have his sanction. Every degree, title, chair, and position in the University was to be granted by the grand master. Perhaps nothing better shows the clean-cut intention of the entire system of education established by Napoleon than the terms of the oath prescribed for the grand master. It ran as fol- lows: "Sire, I swear to Your Majesty before God to fulfill all the duties which are imposed upon me; not to use the authority vested in me for any other purpose than the development of 38 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 citizens attached to their religion, their prince, their country, and their parents; to further by ail the means in my power the progress of enlightenment, sound learning, and good morals; to perpetuate all traditions to the glory of your dynasty, the happiness of children, and the peace of parents." A university council composed of thirty members was to serve as an advisory body to the grand master. Of these, ten, hand-picked by the Emperor, were to be appointed for life and were to constitute a permanent section of the council. The other twenty were to be chosen by the grand master. For purposes of administration, France was divided into thirty-four (181 2) academies, of which twenty-seven were for the original French territories. In each of these was to be established a council numbering ten members, who were to be chosen from among the public officials of the academy. A corps of general inspectors, numbering at least twenty and not more than thirty, were appointed by the grand master. Their function was to oversee the work being done in the schools and to report to the central authority upon it. In each academy were one or two inspectors charged with the visitation and in- spection of the schools in their districts. They also were appointed by the grand master. At the head of each academy stood a rector as chief administrative officer under the imme- diate orders of the grand master. By this same decree of March 17, 1808, provision was made for the establishment of a normal boarding-school in Paris to accommodate not more than three hundred young men chosen by examination from among the students in the lycees. Each was to study in the College de France, the Polytechnic School, or the Museum of Natural History, according to his in- tention of teaching letters or some branch of natural science. While in attendance at the Normal School, the students were to be supported by the State. By a later decree, dated May 10, 1808, there were created in each lycee of the Empire, ten full scholarships, twenty half-scholarships and twenty three-quarter scholarships. Stimulation of Secondary Education. — The results of NAPOLEON AND THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY 39 Napoleon's efforts for the development of secondary educa- tion were prodigious. In 1813, 46 lycees were in active opera- tion. At the close of the Empire the number of communal colleges was about 500. The attendance figures given in \'illemain's Report (1843) show that in 1809 there were 9068 pupils in the lycees and 18,507 in the communal colleges; in 1810, 10,926 and 22,171, and in 1811, 10,926 and 24,204 in the lycees and communal colleges, respectively. Such fig- ures indicate that the Emperor had been able to call into existence an efficient state system of secondary education. But the question remains, did it meet his hopes for a real government monopoly over the secondary instruction of the youth of France? Incomplete Realization of Napoleon's Aim. — In answer to that question, the figures for attendance in the private secondary schools are highly significant. In 1809, there were 23,508 pupils in the institutes and boarding-schools; in 1810, 32,112, and in 181 1, 32,409. It would seem from these figures that the parents of France were offering very persistent oppo- sition to Napoleon's effort to control the sources of opinion and attitude. In vain had he made concessions to the religious feelings of parents by introducing a religious school regime — they preferred to send their children to schools of their own choice where the management could be expected to be in sym- pathy with their own religious and political leanings. In the year 181 1 and thereafter Napoleon tried, through numerous and galling restrictions upon private schools, to extend his influence over private education. But the old power was slipping. Military defeats and financial problems occupied his attention and tied his hands. It is even said that Fon- taine, the Grand Master of the University, secretly sympa- thized with the Catholic private schoolmasters and failed to apply in the spirit intended the restrictive measures passed. Our conclusion must be that Napoleon's effort to bind the youth of the middle class to himself and his policies, through his state system of secondary schools, failed. The traditions of the old monarchy and orthodox Catholicism were main- 40 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 tained in schools paralleling the state schools and drawing almost equal numbers of pupils. When Napoleon's final defeat occurred in 1815, the educa- tional organization which he had developed became, almost without change, the servant of the Restoration government. The Educational Results of the French Revolution and the First Empire. — In looking back over the eventful period of French history from 1789 to 181 5, our conclusion must be that the development of France, both in the direction of national education and in that of democratic education, was arrested at midpoint. The Revolution had eliminated many age-old abuses and privileges and had established the principle of representative government. The Constitution of 1791 had given political rights to the tax-paying, property-owning por- tion of the Third Estate. The radical developments of the Legislative Assembly and the Convention were only temporary, and the Constitution of 1795, like that of 1791, placed politi- cal power in the hands of the bourgeoisie, leaving without the right of suffrage the vast majority composed of the laboring and agricultural population. The despotism of Napoleon may likewise be regarded as a temporary aberration in the opposite extreme from that of the Convention. After Napoleon, again came representative constitutional government participated in by the upper and middle classes. The educational developments of this period, we have seen, followed very closely the political. To be sure, Talleyrand's plans were more generous in their provision for the education of the common people than was the Law of 1795, but he wrote under the influence of the early enthusiasm of the Revolution for human rights, while Daunou had behind him recollections of the Commune and the Terror. Every government from the Directory to the 'July Monarchy in 1830, professed interest in primary education; but, with the slight exceptions to be noted later in connection with the Restoration Monarchy, they did nothing for it. Half-hearted support on the part of some local officials and the efforts of the religious associations account NAPOLEON AND THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY 41 for all of the meager provision made for public primary edu- cation in France until 1833. In the field of secondary education, the facts are quite the reverse. The Directory established a state secondary school system and tolerated private initiative in that field. The suc- cess of secondary education during the period of the Directory was limited, as was the success of almost everything else which that government undertook. But under the Consulate and the Empire, secondary education took on new life and pros- pered. From the very beginning of the nineteenth century the French middle and upper classes possessed the advantage of an efficient system of secondary schools. Theoretically, and to a small extent practically, there was maintained an open competitive field in which talent and ability might win out. At least the system provided a high degree of educational opportunity for the sons of the politically significant classes. In evaluating the nationalistic developments in France dur- ing the period covered in this chapter, beginning with the bill proposed by Talleyrand before the Constituent Assembly and ending with Napoleon's final educational efforts, we see in > every important educational document an effort to control the outlook and the attitudes of the oncoming generation in the interest of national unity. From the first it was recognized that in order to have a nation, there had to be developed among the people who composed it a common possession of knowledge, traditions, habits, loves and hates, and ideals. To that end it was seen that schools had to be founded every- where, within reach of all the people, and that, in order to have a system of schools teaching all the people the materials desired, there had to be organized a nation-wide system of educational administration. In examining the various projects proposed for accomplish- ing this work of cultural unification, we have discovered wide differences. Condorcet's plan literally included the education of everybody and contemplated developing each to his highest point of efficiency for service of the common national and 42 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 human destiny. The plan of Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau was intended to Hmit the expression of individual differences and the development of social distinctions, but it was even more resolute in its intention of creating national solidarity and cohesion after the extreme Republican pattern. Finally, the laws of 1795 and 1802 and the various decrees establishing the Imperial University were equally designed to give a com- mon basis of knowledge and political sympathy to the youth of the upper and middle classes, who alone were the active political constituents of the nation and whose education alone was regarded as nationally significant. Whether fortunately or unfortunately for France, the di- versities of heritage, interest, and purpose among the various political and social groups of the state were too great to be broken up and melted down into any uniform and smoothly- functioning public policy within a single generation. The most nearly successful effort of the period under discussion was that of Napoleon, but it is hardly probable that, even if he had been given time, he could have accomplished the unification of French culture in the Imperial mould. Perhaps no great country in Europe during the period since the French Revo- lution has had so many and so great diversities of political and religious faith to be reconciled before a sound and lasting basis of national life might be found, as has had France. To this condition may be traced many of the nineteenth-century developments in French politics and education, of which we shall see more in the chapters that follow. ADDITIONAL READINGS General Historical Background. — West, Modern History; Robin- son, History of Western Europe; Hayes, A Political and Social History of Modern Europe, I. Education Source Material. — Greard, La legislation de I'instruction primaire en France, I ; Recueil des lois et decrets sur I'enseignement, Paris, 181 2. Secondary Accounts. — Compayre, History of Pedagogy; Cubberley, Tlie History of Education ; Farrington, French Secondary Education; Aulard, Napoleon I et Ic monopole univcrsitaire; Liard, L'enseigne- ment supericur en France, II. CHAPTER IV THE RESTORATION MONARCHY (1815-1830) AND EDUCATIONAL CONSERVATISM Political and Economic Conditions. — By the Royal Char- ter of 1 814, which was confirmed in 181 5, Louis XVIII granted a constitutional government and retained the most important of the administrative and legal reforms of Napoleon, The king was to be advised in his legislative capacity by a parliament of two chambers, the members of the lower of which were to be elected by all Frenchmen who paid a heavy direct tax. The number of men so voting comprised about one out of seventy of the male population. Liberty of worship and the press was recognized and the Concordat and the University of France were carried over from the Imperial re- gime — the latter with slight changes in form of administra- tion and nomenclature. The period may be characterized politically as conservative, with strong liberal opposition both within the Chambers and without. During the fifteen years of the Restoration Monarchy, France made great strides in the adoption of the new in- dustrial inventions and the factory system of production. By the year 1830 the country had been largely made over in- dustrially, and the great number of small peasant proprietors resulting from the division of great landed estates during the Revolution period had caused to develop a stable and pros- perous rural life. The government of Louis XVIII made common cause with the Church and during the period of the Restoration the Church regained in large measure the influence in education which it had lost during the Revolution. Conservatism in Education. — The Restoration Monarchy 43 44 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 continued the neglect of primary education which had char- acterized all the conservative governments after the Thermi- dorian Reaction of July 1794. The Ordinance of February 29, 1 81 6, which with but slight change controlled primary education during the existence of the Restoration Monarchy, carried an appropriation of 50,000 francs for the encourage- ment of popular education. This sum amounted on the aver- age to about one and a third francs for each commune in the nation! In 1829, the appropriation was raised to 100,000 francs and in 1830, on the eve of the July Revolution, to 300,000 francs. The Ordinance of 181 6 provided cantonal committees to be in charge of the primary schools of the canton. The local cure and the mayor of the commune were entrusted with the special oversight of the communal primary school. In 1824, the constitution of the cantonal committees was changed so as to give control of the Catholic primary schools to the bishop and the clergy, while in 1828 the lay element was again re- stored to the cantonal committees and primary education was placed under the control of the University of France. An effort was made to raise the quality of the primary teachers by the provision in the Ordinance of 181 6 of a plan for the certification of teachers. The Brethren of the Chris- tian Schools, however, refused to be examined for the certifi- cate. In 18 18 their contention was allowed and thereafter "letters of obedience" were accepted in place of teaching cer- tificates gained through examination. By t-he time of the revolution of July 1830, 20,000 out' of a total of 37,000 communes had some sort of primary school or other, and the primary normal schools or schools for the training of primary teachers, had increased in number from the single normal school bequeathed to the Restoration Mon- archy by the Empire, to thirteen. Monitorial Instruction in France. — The period between 181 5 and 1830 was one of great enthusiasm in France for the monitorial system, or "instruction mutuelle," as it is termed in French. The same period, witnessing the develop- BOURBONS AND EDUCATIONAL CONSERVATISM 45 merit of the factory system, as was stated above, saw develop also the need for some institution to care for the little chil- dren who had been made motherless through the demands of the factories for the services of women. The French counterpart of the English infant school has a history ex- tending back to the labors of Oberlin in the commune of Ban de la Roche in Northwestern France in the latter part of the eighteenth century. The work of Pastor Oberlin was imitated in Paris by Mme. de Pastoret in 1801. This philan- thropic woman established under the name of ''salle d'hospi- talite" a school in which children whose parents were kept away from home all day long by the demands of labor and who had been allowed to run wild were received and taught. This first experiment in Paris proved a failure and for some years nothing further was done in the way of schools for very young children. In 1825 the success of the English infant school caused a renewal of interest on the part of Mme. de Pastoret in the possibilities of infant education. Under her presidency a committee of women was formed and the first "salle d'asile," or infant school, on the English model was opened in Paris in 1826 under the name ^'salle d'essai." There- after the movement developed rapidly until in 1837 ' the "salle d'asile" was recognized by the government as a part of the system of primary schools. ADDITIONAL READINGS General Historical Background. — Hayes, A Political and Social History of Modern Europe; Hazen, Europe Since i8ij. Education Source Material. — Greard, La legislation de ['instruction primaire en France, I. Secondary Accounts. — Arnold, Popidar Education in France; Compayre, History of Pedagogy ; Farrington, French Secondary Schools; Greard, Education et instruction; Simon, L'instruction populaire en France. * Royal Ordinance of December 22, 1837. J CHAPTER V THE UPPER-MIDDLE-CLASS MONARCHY (1830 TO 1848), AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A STATE SYSTEM OF PRIMARY SCHOOLS Political and Economic Conditions. — The Restoration Monarchy fell because Charles X (1824-1830) attempted to modify the government under the Charter so as to make the electorate narrower and to increase substantially the impor- tance of the kingship. The bourgeoisie, who had practically been disfranchised by an ordinance of July 1830, gained the support of the laboring classes of Paris, and met the decisive issue with the king by overthrowing his government and plac- ing Louis Philippe on the throne. The new government sub- ordinated the crown to the parliament; but the parliament was far from a popular representative body. It consisted of an appointive Chamber of Peers and a Chamber of Deputies elected by all males who paid direct taxes amounting to two hundred francs a year and by the professional classes. Politi- cal power during the next eighteen years remained entirely in the hands of the upper classes, while the working classes, who had supported the July Revolution, remained without repre- sentation. Republican revolts, resulting from popular dis- satisfaction over the aristocratic nature of the new constitu- tion, were vigorously suppressed by the new middle-class government, and repressive measures were adopted against the republican press. The refusal of any concessions to liberal political movements may be regarded as the settled policy of the July government as long as it lasted. The repressive attitude towards labor organizations which dated from the first Revolution, was not changed during the reign of Louis Philippe. Labor disturbances were harshly put 46 THE JULY MONARCHY AND EDUCATION 47 down and labor unions continued to be illegal. A child labor law was passed in 1841, in recognition of the iniquitous con- ditions under which little children labored in the factories; but it was not until 1848 that the establishment of state in- spection produced any important results from the act of 1841. Throughout its course the July Monarchy was a business- men's government. Industry was fostered; roads were built and canals constructed; the building of railways was encour- aged by the state; and a foreign policy of "peace at any price" was adopted in order that business might not suffer the dislo- cation that would accompany foreign wars. The beginnings of the industrial revolution which had taken place under the Restoration Monarchy (1815-1830) were expanded and de- veloped until by the close of the July Monarchy's regime in 1848, the reorganization of French industry may be said to have been completed. The period was one also of great in- crease in rural wealth and in the efficiency of agricultural or- ganization and methods. All of these developments were of essential importance to improvements in education; for in- crease in population, increase of national wealth, and improve- ment of transportation facilities, represented the economic foundation upon which alone the increased cost of better schools could rest. Primary Education in 1833: Lorain's Report. — Toward the close of the year 1833, M. Guizot, the minister of public instruction, sent out a body of four hundred ninety special inspectors to gain information concerning the condition of primary education in France. In his Report to the King, April 1834, he promised to collect and publish the information thus gained, but this promise was not carried out until the compilation of the various reports of inspectors was made by P. Loraip under the title, "A Survey of Primary Instruction in France," and published in 1837. The Survey is not to be taken without a grain of salt, for it avowedly was made with the idea of not allowing the French people to congratulate themselves unduly on the state of primary education. It is not a statistical study in the modern sense, although the re- 48 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 port is based upon the actual findings of the inspectors. The writer has rather deliberately chosen the weak spots in the French system and has limited his study almost entirely to the school conditions of the rural communes— and the worst of them at that. However, the Survey is interesting and sig- nificant if we accept it with the proper reservations. M. Lorain's report shows that the country schools were seldom housed in buildings that did not serve other public or domestic uses at the same time or during the same day. "It is a sufficiently rare phenomenon," he says, "to see in the lodgings of the teacher a room separate from the classroom which is devoted exclusively to domestic duties. It is very convenient for the teacher, while hearing some one recite the catechism, to pour a pint for the topers or to hammer the soles of the shoes which he sells in the neighborhood, to look after the preparation of his soup, or to 'sponge' off the stove, the wood for which has been furnished by the patrons for another purpose. ... So that nothing may be lacking from such un- favorable conditions, the classroom is not only his kitchen, but it is his bedchamber, his complete domicile. If some member of his family, his wife or his daughter, is ill, or some circum- stance keeps them in bed a little longer than usual, they are free, I fear, modestly to draw the curtain. . . . Why should we be astonished at the slovenliness which sometimes reigns in the schools when we sometimes see teachers voluntarily seeking horse and cattle stables in which to hold their classes in the hope of taking advantage of the heat of the beasts which are there stabled? . . . Often the school is kept in damp barns, in basements, in cellars, where one must crouch to enter, and in rooms of unbelievable smallness. . . . The school of P is only twelve feet square; in that room were crowded together in the dead of winter eighty children! When such a mass of children had no means of getting air except through a single window the size of a single pane of glass, the least disagreeable result which one could expect was that of which the teacher gave the pupils a good example, namely, of falling into a sound sleep, against which it would be impossible THE JULY MONARCHY AND EDUCATION 49 long to struggle." And so on at length M. Lorain describes the inadequate and unsanitary housing of the primary schools in rural France. The general destitution of schools and the illiteracy of large sections of the country were graphically presented. "Not only are a great many communes without schools, but it is not a rare occurrence to find whole cantons in which the inspector has been able to point out only a small number — sometimes a single one. In another case, not a single school was discover- able in a canton composed of fifteen communes. It is unneces- sary to add that in a great many villages it is impossible to find a man who knows how to read, write, and reckon with figures. When a notary is called into such a community to affix the seal on a legal document, he takes care to come with two regular witnesses whom he brings from the town, because he knows well enough that he will search in vain in those parts for French citizens who know how to sign their own names." Lorain added that it was often difficult for a commune to find a man who could read and write to serve as mayor. "As to the municipal councilors, it is the rule in certain districts, owing to lack of ability to fulfill the condition of signing their names, that they get out of the difficulty of the minutes by use of the following formula: 'Have declared that they cannot sign, such a one, such a one, etc' . . . There is a certain canton in France where you cannot find more than four per- sons who understand French." As to the attainments of the primary school teachers, Lorain said that, while all of them, he believed, knew how to read more or less badly, he was very certain that not all of them knew how to write. Among those who boasted of that ability, there were some who were unable to correct the mistakes of their pupils. It was not possible to put the legal system of weights and measures into effect, because many of the teachers were ignorant of it. "The misery of the teachers," continues the Survey, "equals their ignorance, and the public contempt of them is often merited by their shame." Among the teachers were to be found 50 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 freed convicts, criminals, usurers, men without arms, men suffering from epilepsy. The teacher was often regarded as on the same plane with the beggar. As between the herdsman and him, the preference was for the herdsman. Often he was paid in produce which he had to collect on Sundays with a wallet on his back. In this general low estimate of the members of the teaching "profession," it is of interest to note M. Lorain's estimate of the Brethren of the Christian Schools, who had to be assigned a distinctive place among French primary teachers. "The superiority of their schools, recognized by the almost unani- mous opinion of the inspectors, their moral tone, the secret discipline that governs them, their peculiar regulations, every- thing, in short, down to the oddity of their dress, distinguishes them from ordinary teachers." Even after making full allowance for the purpose and atti- tude of Lorain in preparing his report, it is obvious that there was a great amount of educational destitution in France in 1833 and that in the more backward districts conditions were almost unbelievably bad. To be sure, the more populous places had made considerable progress in primary education, espe- cially through the use of the monitorial organization, but there was a national situation in primary education that re- quired effective measures. The July Monarchy and Primary Education. — The July Monarchy may appear to be inconsistent with its generally restrictive political policies in the fact that it showed itself a consistent friend of popular education. The Charter con- tained a provision for the establishment as soon as possible of a system of public instruction. It also guaranteed liberty of teaching. As a preliminary step to fulfilling the promise of the Charter, Victor Cousin was sent to Germany by the govern- ment to examine into and report upon the system of education in operation in the various German states. He made his report in 1831. German practices considerably influenced the French in the plan of public education which they adopted. Even before the passage of the Law of 1833, which organized THE JULY MONARCHY AND EDUCATION 51 primary education, the government had interested itself in the foundation of new primary normal schools and in the strengthening of those which it had received from the Restora- tion Monarchy. By the time of the passage of the Law of 1833, the July Government had established thirty new primary normal schools, modelled closely after those existing in Prussia. Motives for Fostering Popular Education. — The ap- parent inconsistency of the July Monarchy in relation to popular education is not so real when we penetrate more deeply into its motives. The movement for a better primary school system was in the direction of democracy, to be- sure, even as all agencies that tend to spread intelligence and en- lightenment among the people make it more and more inev- itable that they should ultimately be heard in the making of laws and the adoption of national policies. It is not to be forgotten, however, that the controlling political elements in the Government of July did not deliberately plan an education that would make for political revolution, or even evolution. The system of primary education which they established was intended to serve the needs of an inferior social and political class, and they set up this system as much in the spirit of self-protection as in the spirit of benevolence, humanitarian- ism, and democracy. Lorain in his Survey of Primary Edu- cation referred to above, wrote as follows: "It is the part of a far-seeing and enlightened government to hasten that time when public instruction will have won its suit against the general apathy of the classes which ought to embrace it as a benefit, and even to anticipate it. If society had not made the gift of education to the people in order to ease their lot, to improve their customs, and to cultivate their morals, it would have had to do so for its own safety. It is not difficult to see that a nation, jealous of the new rights born of the July Revolution, would perform a perilous experiment if it should abandon the common people to their accustomed ignorance. They would then have in their hands for the future either a deadly weapon or a useful instrument accord- 52 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 ing as they would have learned or been ignorant of the right use of their new powers. And not to limit the national dangers to the field of politics, by what means could the shock com- municated to all sound beliefs by the bold speecli of false doc- trines and by the disturbances of conscience which reach down to the heart of the most peaceable classes, — by what means could that shock be absorbed and the increasing prevalence of corrupt and loose living be counteracted, except by a new education which would be less impotent than the former igno- rance to preserve in the minds of the people conservative ideas of order and of social organization? Certainly if safety is any concern of ours, we must praise the Government for hav- ing tried to secure it through public education." ^ Social Functions of the Higher Primary Schools. — The same rather moderate attitude toward the education of the common people which was expressed by M. Lorain is ex- hibited from another aspect by M. Guizot, Minister Secretary of State for Public Instruction, in his speech made in presenta- tion of the Law of 1833, before the Chamber of Deputies. Guizot had just informed the Deputies that the bill presented by the Government contained provision for two grades of primary education, higher and lower. The maintenance of higher primary schools was to be made compulsory for towns of more than six thousand inhabitants and all chief towns of departments. In supporting the proposed extension of pri- mary education, Guizot went rather fundamentally into the meaning of the three grades of instruction, elementary primary, higher primary, and secondary. His presentation of the case is so concise and so lucid that it seems profitable to quote from it directly: "We have divided primary instruction into two grades, ele- mentary primary instruction and higher primary instruction. The first grade is, so to speak, a minimum of primary in- struction, the limit below which we ought not to go, the strict debt of the country to its children. That grade of instruction ought to be common to the open country and the town; it 'P. Lorain, Tableau de I'instructioK primaire en France, pp. lo-ii. THE JULY MONARCHY AND EDUCATION 53 should be found in the most humble village as well as in the largest city, wherever there is a human creature in the land of France. You will recognize it to be sufficient for its pur- pose as set forth in the bill. By instruction in reading, writ- ing, and arithmetic, it provides for the most essential needs of existence; by instruction in the legal system of weights and measures and in the French language it everywhere implants, increases, and spreads the spirit and the unity of French na- tionalism; and, finally, through moral and religious instruc- tion, it provides for another kind of need quite as real as the former, which Providence has placed in the hearts of the poor as well as the prosperous, for the dignity of human life and the safety of society. "That first grade of instruction is sufficiently extensive to make a man of him who receives it, and at the same time suffi- ciently limited so that it may everywhere be realized. But between that grade of school and the secondary instruction given either in the institutes and private boarding-schools or in the state colleges, there is a wide gap, and there is no edu- cational institution to fill that gap. It makes necessary the choice between remaining satisfied within the narrow limits of elementary schooling and aspiring to a secondary education, — that is to say, to an extremely expensive classical and scien- tific education. "From that condition it results that a very numerous part of the nation, who neither enjoy the advantages of great wealth nor suffer the inconveniences of poverty, are wholly lacking in the knowledge and in the intellectual and moral cultivation which are appropriate to their station in life. It is absolutely necessary, gentlemen, to fill up that gap; it is necessary to give so considerable a part of our fellow-citizens an oppor- tunity of attaining a certain level of intellectual development without imposing upon them the necessity of resorting to secondary instruction, which is so expensive, and (I do not fear to express myself plainly in the presence of statesmen who understand my thought) at the same time so dangerous. In short, for some few happily talented individuals whom scien- 54 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 tific and classical instruction develops and usefully raises above the station of life in which they were born, how many medi- ocre persons there are who, in following such advanced studies, develop tastes and habits that are incompatible with the modest circumstances to which they will of necessity return; and, once departed from their natural sphere, not knowing what path in life to follow, they become, almost without exception, ungrate- ful, unhappy, and discontented beings, burdensome to them- selves and to others! "We believe that we are performing a real service to the country in establishing a higher grade of primary instruction, which, without entering upon classical and scientific instruc- tion, properly so called, gives, nevertheless, to a numerous part of the population a slightly higher degree of culture than has been provided in the primary school hitherto. . . . We have provided and organized a higher grade of primary instruction which adds to that knowledge indispensable to all men, the knowledge which is useful to a great many: the elements of practical geometry, which constitute the preparation for every industrial calling; those notions of physics and natural his- tory which make us familiar with the outstanding phenomena of nature and are so rich in healthy recreations of every kind; the elements of music or, at least, of singing, which gives the spirit a true inward cultivation; geography, which informs us about the various parts of the earth upon which we dwell; history, by means of which we cease to be strangers to the life and destiny of our species— and particularly the history of our own land, which makes us one with her; to say nothing of this or the other modern language, which, according to the province in which we live, may be indispensable for us, or at least of very great value." The Primary Education Law of 1833 If we have been compelled to interpret to a certain extent the attitude of the July Government on the matter of public educa- tion, we need have no reservations in regard to the vigor with THE JULY MONARCHY AND EDUCATION 55 which that same Government threw itself into the carrying out of its educational plans. We have already noted the activity of the Government in establishing primary normal schools and called attention to its desire to profit by the experience of the German states. Not less indicative of the new interest in pri- mary education was the increase of the state appropriation for the common schools from the 300,000 francs given in the last year of the Restoration Monarchy to an annual appropriation of one million francs iri 1831 and 1832. The greatest achieve- ment of the July Monarchy, however, consisted in the organ- ization of a national system of primary instruction by the law of June 28, 1833. The Law of 1833 defined two grades of primary instruction, namely, elementary and higher. The subjects of instruction in the elementary primary school were religion and morals, reading, writing, the elements of the French language and of arithmetic, and the legal system of weights and measures. The higher primary schools offered, in addition, instruction in the elements of geometry and its practical applications, especially in linear design and surveying, also in elementary physical and biological science as applied to life, in singing, and in ele- mentary history and geography, especially the history and the geography of France. Where desirable, instruction was to be given in a modern language, and still other extensions of the curriculum might have place. According to the terms of the law, every commune was compelled to maintain an elementary primary school, and every department, a primary normal school. For purposes of economy, permission might be granted to communes to combine in the support of the primary school and to departments to combine in support of the normal. As has been said above, the higher primary schools were to be established in the chief town of each department and in all cities with over 6000 inhabitants. The Status of Private Primary Schools. — According to the express guarantee of the Charter, private primary schools were authorized on condition that the person desiring to con- duct such a school should be eighteen years of age and should 56 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 have presented to the mayor of the commune in which he wished to open a school, two certificates. The one was a teaching certificate received as a result of. official examination; the other a certificate of good moral character signed by the mayor of the commune, or by the mayors of the communet, in which he had resided during the preceding three years. Any private teacher might, in cases of misconduct or immorality, be called before the civil tribunal of the arrondissement on complaint of its educational committee and on conviction be forbidden further practice of his calling. The Treatment of the Religious Difficulty. — An effort was made in this law to mediate in regard to the religious diffi- culty. The right that was given to maintain private schools was a very real concession to the Church, as most of the private schools were maintained by religious bodies. It was even allowed to the Minister of Public Instruction to authorize the acceptance of a Church school as the school of the commune in case local conditions permitted, but it was also definitely stated in the law that no child should be compelled to partici- pate in any religious instruction of which his parents did not approve. The state retained the right of inspecting all pri- vate schools, while at the same tim.e it gave the religious bodies places on the local committees of supervision. The privilege which members of the teaching congregations had Ci.jOyed under the Restoration Government of presenting their "letters of obedience" in place of certificates was abrogated, and by the terms of the new law they were compelled to take the offi- cial examination to prove their proficiency in the school subjects. Salaries and School Fees. — The law provided a fixed minimum annual salary of two hundred francs for each teacher in an elementary, and of four hundred francs in a higher, pri- mary school. In addition the teacher was to be furnished with a house that might serve at the same time as a school and a dwelling, and he was to receive a monthly school fee for each pupil. The fees were to be collected by the regular authorities as other taxes were collected. Alj children, however, THE JULY MONARCHY AND EDUCATION 57 who were designated by the municipal council as unable to pay the school fee were to be admitted free. A number of free places were also to be maintained in the higher primary schools, to be awarded to deserving poor on a competitive basis. The Financial Support of Primary Education. — The financial difficulties encountered in France in 1833 were the same as those encountered in any state which attempts to lift all sections at the same time to higher standards of instruc- tion at greater cost. The burdens imposed by the new law were certain to rest much more heavily on the poorer com- munes than on the more wealthy. It was good statesmanship that caused France so early in her experience with public education to distribute the costs of primary education among the commune, the department, and the state. The commune was expected to tax itself for educational purposes, if neces- sary, to the amount of three centimes on the franc. In case its resources were not thus made sufficient to meet the costs of primary education, the department in which the commune was situated was expected to tax itself if necessary to the amount of two centimes on the franc in order to make up the deficiency. In the event that the combined efforts of com- mune and department should not suffice, the balance was to be contributed by the state at large. Thus, at a stroke, the Law of 1833 established a wise and effective means of dis- tributing the costs of a nation-wide, uniform standard of pri- mary education over the nation as a whole. The plan stimu- lated, even compelled, local initiative, but at the same time it relieved pressure put upon the poorer communes out of the superior resources of those better able to pay. Local Authorities according to the Law. — Compared with later developments, the administration of primary educa- tion under the Law of 1833 was extremely simple. There was to be in each commune a local committee of supervision com- posed of the mayor, the cure or pastor, and one or more resi- dent notables. Where there was a religious division in the commune each cult was to be represented on the local com- mittee. 58 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 In each arrondissement, which corresponds roughly to the congressional district in the United States, there was to be a committee of the arrondissement, or in case the minister of edu- cation thought it desirable, several such, each with jurisdiction over certain cantons designated by him. It was to be composed of the senior mayor among the mayors of chief towns in the dis- trict, the senior cure of the district, the senior justice of the peace of the district, a minister of each of the legally recognized religious cults of the district, a representative of secondary edu- cation, one of primary education, three members of the coun- cil of the arrondissement or three resident notables designated by that council, and those members of the general council of the department who had their actual domicile in the dis- trict. The committee was presided over by the sub-prefect and the royal prosecuting attorney was a member ex officio. This committee of the arrondissement was the highest council for primary education and mediated directly between the local school committees and the national ministry of education. The business of inspection was placed in the hands of this committee, which might delegate the function to some repre- sentative. It also made an annual report on the state of the primary schools under its jurisdiction, and proposed any de- sirable changes in the system. It named the teachers of the primary schools of the communes and gave them the oath prescribed for every teacher. The committee of the arrondisse- ment was also empowered to recommend the dissolution of any local committee and its replacement by a special commit- tee appointed by the minister of education. The Powers of the Central Authority. — This last named function of the committee of the arrondissement leads us very naturally to consider the hold which the state maintained upon primary education. It was quite correctly foreseen that the new law would encounter considerable local opposition. The law met this probable difficulty by a provision that, in case a commune refused to organize itself for educational purposes in accordance with the law or in case a local committee should prove obstructive, the minister of public instruction might THE JULY MONARCHY AND EDUCATION 59 appoint a committee that would carry out the law. The state made itself directly responsible for the standards of the teach- ing certificate when it made the examining committees ap- pointive by the minister of public instruction. Finally, the state made each teacher directly responsible to the national government by allowing the last stage of his appointment to rest in the hands of the minister of public instruction and requiring him to take the following oath: "I swear fidelity to the King of the French people and obedience to the Constitu- tional Charter and the laws of the nation." Compared with the loose administration, even absence of an administrative system, which had obtained under the Restora- tion Monarchy, the Law of 1833 went far toward reducing to order and efficiency the French system of primary education. It is easily seen, however, that there was not provided an adequate system of local inspection. The arrondissement was too large an area for the committee of the arrondissement to be able to maintain close touch with local school conditions, with- out the aid of inspectors. It is seen, also, that the annual re- port of the committee of the arrondissement to the minister of education would hardly be adequate as a means of keeping that official informed concerning the educational needs of the coun- try at large or of giving him assistance in the more technical or professional side of school affairs. This gap was to a consider- able extent filled by the appointment, according to a Royal Ordinance of February 26, 1835, of an inspector for primary education, to be appointed by the minister of public instruction. The state inspectorial staff was successively increased until in 1847 two inspectors general and 153 inspectors and sub-in- spectors had been appointed. Improvement in Primary Education under the July Monarchy. — The activity of the state in the multiplication of normal schools and the efficient administration of the Law of 1833 were destined to bring about very influential develop- ments in primary education before the fall of the July Mon- archy in 1848. In 1851 there were only 2500 communes that were w^ithout primary schools, out of a total of 37,000. In 6o NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 all, there were at that time about 61,000 primary schools of all kinds distributed over France, giving instruction to more than 3,500,000 children of both sexes. The founding of new nor- mal schools in accordance with the requirement of the Law of 1833 had proceeded rapidly, and in 1838 there were al- ready in active operation seventy-six such schools with a total attendance of more than 2500 students. The appropria- tion by the state for primary education had much more than doubled between 1832 and 1847. Within about the same period the costs of primary education for the communes had increased a third and the contributions of the departments by more than a half. The success of the higher primary schools was not great and we shall see later that that institu- tion, as such, was not mentioned in the Law of 1850. The reasons given for this failure of the higher primary schools to grow in favor and in numbers are two: the state did not ex- tend to them the liberal aid which it provided in case of the lower primary schools, and the social advantages offered by them did not equal their greater cost to parents and pupils in time and money. To many it seemed preferable to bear the still greater cost of secondary education and secure the very real social and professional advantages that accrued therefrom. Development of the Infant School. — The period of the July Monarchy, as has been said above, was one of rapid reor- ganization of French industry by means of the application of mechanical power in large factories. The demand for wo- men and older children in industry took them out of the homes and led to conspicuous and shameful neglect of the young children. The growth of infant schools to take care of the younger children was steady during the last years of the Restoration Monarchy and the early years of the July Mon- archy. In 1837, 'a royal ordinance regulated the organization and supervision of the infant schools and placed them under the local and district education committees and made them a charge of the national department of public instruction. The law defined the infant schools, under the name "salles d'asile," as being charitable establishments to which children of both THE JULY MONARCHY AND EDUCATION 6i sexes could be admitted up to the age of six years in order to receive the advantage of maternal oversight and that first education which their age could profit by. The exercises of the infant school were to include religious instruction and the elements of reading, writing, and mental arithmetic. The exercises might further include instructive songs, needlework, and all kinds of manual exercises. The ordinance permitted the support of public infant schools by communes, departments, or the state. Adult Education. — A movement for adult education made rapid headway in France after 1830, which also may be re- garded as a result of the new conditions of industry. An order of March 22, 1836, regulated the conditions under which sucli schools might be conducted. The subject matter taught was that of the lower or higher primary schools, selected according to the needs of the community. Males fourteen years of age and females twelve years of age were made eligible for schools of their sex. By the year 1841 the number of adult classes in operation was 3403, with a total attendance of 68,508, and in 1848 there were more than 115,000 persons receiving in- struction in such schools. Continued Government Control of Secondary and Higher Education. — We have seen how the promise of the Charter of 1830, guaranteeing freedom of instruction, was liberally carried out in the Law of 1833 as respected lower and higher primary schools. The government in 1836 presented a bill to the legislative bodies, by means of which it was pro- posed to reorganize secondary education in the spirit of the Charter's specific declaration for freedom of instruction. The bill, however, was rejected and no change was made in the general constitution of the national university during the life of the July Government. Secondary education continued to be under strict government supervision and authorization. The four types of secondary school were the royal colleges, main- tained principally by the state; the communal colleges, main- tained principally by the communes; institutions and pensions, and secondary schools maintained by religious organizations. 62 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 The last three types were private in management and support — which means, generally speaking, that they were maintained under the auspices of religious associations. There were toward the end of the July INIonarchy 481 public and 1089 private secondary schools, with a total enrollment of almost 85.000 pupils.^ An effort seems to have been made by the government to combine the work of the higher primary school with that of the weaker communal colleges. If this had been successful, it might have represented a step toward the amalgamation of primary and secondary education in a unitary system of public instruction. No success, however, attended the pro- posals of the government, and the French secondary schools continued to be the schools of a higher social and economic class, entirely separate in administration and purpose from the primary schools, which were devoted to the educational needs of the farming and industrial population. ADDITIONAL READINGS General Historical Background. — Hayes, A Political and Social History of Modern Europe, II; Hazen, Europe Since 1815. Education Source Material. — Greard, La legislation de I'instrnc- tion primaire en France (deuxieme edition), II; Lorain, Tableau de I'instruction primaire en France. Secondary Accounts. — Arnold, Popular Education in France; Com- payre, History of Pedagogy; Farrington, French Secondary Education. ^ See Villemain, Rapport an Roi, p. 22. CHAPTER VI THE SECOND REPUBLIC AND THE SECOND EMPIRE (1848-1870) AND THE REVIVAL OF CHURCH INFLUENCE IN EDUCATION Revolution and Reaction. — The Second Republic, which was proclaimed February 24, 1848, lasted in fact until De- cember 2, 1 85 1, but in name until December 2, 1852, when the Second Empire was legally acknowledged. The events of February 1848 came in response to a very general agitation for a wider franchise and as such are to be regarded as a movement in the direction of democracy. The democratic phase of the revolution was complicated, however, with the strong Socialist sympathies of the workingmen of Paris, who exercised considerable influence on the events which took place up to the time of the election of a National Con- stituent Assembly, which met May the fourth. The political complexion of the Assembly was predominantly moderate Re- publican, while the Socialist element had almost completely lost influence through their failure to return more than a weak minority of members. The socialistic experiments of the period of the Provisional government and the bloody repres- sion of the Parisian working-class revolt during the "June days" may be followed in more general historical accounts and will not be recounted here. Financial difficulties and distrust of extreme political ex- periments disposed the great mass of the voters, which in- cluded all adult males, against the Republican party and re- sulted in the return under the new constitution in December 1848 of a strong majority of Monarchist members of the Legislative Assembly and in the election of Prince Louis Na- 63 64 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 poleon Bonaparte as the first President. With its enemies in charge of the destinies of the new repubHc, its downfall, sooner or later, was practically assured. Democratic Educational Policies of the Provisional Government. — In no field of legislation are the varying for- tunes of the democratic principle during the first few years of the Second Republic more clearly shown than in the legisla- tive acts and bills and the circulars of the government regard- ing public education. As was the case in the political dis- turbances of the same period in Germany, the school teachers were aligned with the democratic tendencies in politics. Pre- ceding the April elections to the National Constituent As- sembly, Carnot, the Minister of Public Instruction in the Pro- visional Government, had sent oat a circular to the primary school teachers urging upon them their duty to instruct the population in regard to the choice of representatives. "May our 36,000 primary school teachers rise to my appeal and immediately spread broadcast before the population this kind of instruction. I hope that my voice may reach them in even the remotest villages. I entreat them to contribute their part in the founding of the Republic. It is not a matter at present, as it was in the time of our fathers, of defending the Republic against foreign foes, but rather of defending it against igno- rance and deception ; and it is to the teachers that that task be- longs." ^ The zeal of the primary teachers merited the praise of sincere Republicans, and they were rewarded by the in- crease of the state education budget in the following year to 3,500,000 francs more than it had been in 1847, a great part of which sum was designed to improve the salaries of the teachers in the lowest grade of public instruction. The government education bill introduced by Carnot June 30, 1848, possessed many of the characteristics which we asso- ciate with the educational necessities of a democracy. It pro- vided for at least one primary school in every commune of more than three hundred population, a rich curriculum, compulsory ' Circular March 6, 1S48. DEMOCRACY TO AUTOCRACY IN EDUCATION 65 attendance of both sexes, free tuition, a liberal salary schedule for the teachers, and a house for a combined school and dwell- ing, with a yard and garden for every teacher."^ A committee appointed July 5 by the Provisional Govern- ment to inquire into and report upon the bill submitted by Carnot made its report in April 1849 in spite of the fact that r on January 5, 1849, the new government had withdrawn Carnot's bill and had on December 10 preceding appointed a new committee to report on the state of public education in the country. The report of the committee appointed in July by the Provisional Government was made by M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire. The bill which he submitted was comprehensive and extremely liberal, approximating closely the spirit of the less fully worked-out bill of Carnot. It named as state edu- cational institutions salles d'asiles, elementary and higher pri- mary schools, primary normal schools, schools for apprentices, artisans, and adults, and workhouse and prison schools." A rich curriculum was to be provided in the elementary and higher primary schools, and the conditions of education for girls were to be greatly improved. Free tuition was to be al- lowed in the primary normal schools, of which there was to be at least one in each department. Compulsory attendance up to the age of fourteen was to be the rule, with exceptions in the case of children who had received a certificate of pro- ficiency after the age of thirteen. In one respect the plan of this bill fell short of that of Carnot's, in that it proposed the continuation of the payment of school fees, with the proviso that communes able to meet the conditions of the bill without departmental or state aid, should be privileged to make pri- mary education of all degrees gratuitous. Monarchist Distrust of Liberal Educational Policies. — With the report of the committee of the new government, ap- pointed on December 10, 1848, following the return of a strong monarchical majority to the Legislative Assembly, as men- tioned above, the fortunes of the primary teacher and of state- controlled public education in general experienced a decided 66 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 reverse. Matthew Arnold says that the conquerors of the Revolution did not forget that it had made the schoolmasters its missionaries. Attack upon the Primary Normal Schools. — Central in the attack upon the school teachers led by this committee was the distrust which the political conservatives felt for the train- ing given in the normal schools. In a report on the govern- ment education bill, a parliamentary committee put itself on record as unalterably opposed to the ambitious program of the normal schools of the time. The studies were said to have taken on exaggerated dimensions quite beyond the scope of fitting primary teachers for their duties. "Could you believe," says the official report of the committee, "that in those schools they teach logarithms, algebra, trigonometry, and cosmography in the light of astronomy, and that there are given, not just the elementary and practical notions but complete and compre- hensive courses in geometry, physics, chemistry, mechanics, etc?" -■ They considered that after advanced training of this character the student was quite unfitted to turn to the nar- row and commonplace duties of a rural teacher, and was al- most of necessity committed to extreme and dangerous social and political theories as a result of his unhappiness in so humble and ill-paid a position. ^The ideal primary teacher they found to be "simple-hearted, industrious, limited as well in his needs as in his desires, and for whom his pupils and his commune were the entire world; in a word, the type of teacher which the normal schools have not given us and which they never in the world will give." ^ The extreme opponents of the normal schools did not have their way, which would have been to abolish the normal schools as a menace to na- tional strength and social stability, but the result of their agi- tation was a thoroughgoing reorganization of the studies and discipline of those schools. In an official order of July 31, 185 1, the reorganized cur- riculum of the normal schools was limited to moral and reli- 'Beugnot, Report of October 6, 1849. Cf. the Prussian Regulations of 1854. See pp. 102 ff. DEMOCRACY TO AUTOCRACY IX EDUCATION 67 gious instruction, reading, writing, the elements of the French language, arithmetic, the legal system of weights and measures, and religious music. As additional optional subjects were given practical arithmetic, the elements of history and geogra- phy, elementary facts of physics and the natural history of common objects, elementary instruction in agriculture, industry and hygiene, surveying, levelling and linear design, and gym- nastics. _,■ The selections to be read by the students under the subject of reading were limited in scope and prescribed in detail, with the expectation thatvtheir reading would be cur- tailed to the meager pattern handed down by the govern- ment and that free browsing in the library of the normal schools would be stopped.'^ An examination of the reading materials prescribed shows that religious selections greatly predominated. The "collection of selections from good authors," which was one of^he literary works allowed, was to be prepared under the eye of the government. The language studies of the normal schools were to be dictated by the aim of producing good style. Grammatical subtleties were to be shunned and exercises and examples were to be preferred to rules and theories. Out of the forty lessons to be given in geography, twenty-four were to deal with France, and of these at least six with the department in which the school was located. \ In history, out of a total of forty-one lessons, thirty- one were to deal with the history of France, but of these only three were to relate to the period following the French Revo- lution. From many points of view the developments of the primary normal schools in France under the Second Republic and the Second Empire resembled very closely the developments which were taking place at the same time in Prussia through the "Regulations of 1854." In the case of France, as of Prussia, at that time, the movement was dictated by political reaction. The restrictions upon the normal schools were restrictions upon popular education, because they tended to limit the outlook and curtail the general education of the primary school teacher and thus to limit the scope of the activities of the primary 68 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 school. As such, the developments of the fifties must be re- garded as an important stage in the evolution of French pri- mary education. They represent the hardening of the tradition that primary instruction was the instruction intended for the great mass of the people, and, as such, a thing apart from secondary instruction, which was to serve the economically favored classes and to provide, out of that group, the intellec- tual and political leadership of the nation. The distinction was not so sharp between these two institutions as it was at that time in Prussia, for French political and social life was con- siderably more liberal than that of Prussia at that time. Later changes in French education tended to lessen the distinction still more, but in 1850 that distinction was present and it has remained ever since. We are unable to understand French education of today unless we have in^mind the influence of social and economic rank which establishes one system of schools for the common people and another for the elite. The Education Law of 1850 After long deliberation, the attitude of the Monarchist ma- jority regarding education was enacted in the law of March 15, 1850. This law is chiefly to be considered from two stand- points, namely, that of the great increase of the Church's in- fluence in education, and that of the strengthening of the na- tional organization of education through the elaboration of administrative machinery. The Law of 1850 and the Church. — The July Monarchy had been more or less anti-clerical. It cannot be said to have oppressed the Church, but it had resisted at many points the aspirations of the Church for greater liberty of teaching. We have seen how the clause of the Charter of 1830, promising liberty of instruction, had been fulfilled only as respected pri- mary education, while the university monopoly over secondary and higher education had been maintained and strengthened in the face of the assaults of the clerical party. The Revolu- tion of 1848 resulted In a clear-cut issue between political DEMOCRACY TO AUTOCRACY IN EDUCATION 69 radicalism and the Church. Pope Pius IX, driven from Rome by the popular uprising of 1848 and only restored in 1849 by a French army, became and remained the unrelenting foe of the new nationalism and the new political liberalism.' Mean- while, the Socialist menace in France had thrown the bour- geois opponents of the Church clearly on the side of the Clerical-Monarchist combinationV;;/and those who had been most staunch during the July Monarchy in their resistance to the educational activities of the Church, had come to be- lieve that there was no danger in giving the Church greater influence in that field. Accordingly the Law of 1850 and the practical administering of this law favored the educational aspirations of the Church at almost every point. A very important advantage was given the Church in the matter of the constitution of the important educational coun- cils and committees provided by the law. In the Superior Council of Public Instruction there were to be four arch- bishops or bishops. As the academies (see p. 38) were in- creased in number and decreased in extent by the law to one for each department, the rector, or head of the academy, was comparatively insignificant and unable to stand up against the bishop, who was ex officio a member of the Academy Coun- cil and the big man in it. In the communal board of school supervision the cure, jointly with the mayor, was charged with the oversight and moral direction of primary instruction. Other members might be added, but the cure remained the chief figure. \ The law made further concessions to the Church in accept- ing, in the case of women teachers who belonged to religious organizations devoted to teaching, letters of obedience in place of the regular certificate, in allowing any minister of religion the right to give secondary instruction to not more than four young men who intended to enter the ministry, and in allowing existing ecclesiastical schools to continue upon con- • dition of submitting to state inspection. Abolition of State Monopoly in Secondary and Higher Education. — However, the greatest advantages which the 70 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 Church reaped from the Law of 1850 were the aboHtion of the monopoly which the University had enjoyed over secondary and higher education since 1808 and the simphfication of the conditions under which private schools of all kinds might be maintained. The law stated that any Frenchman, twenty-five years of age, with a clean court record, might organize a secondary school, after due notice given, upon presenting to the rector of the academy (a) a certificate of experience, stating that he had performed, for at least five years, the duties of professor or inspector in a public or private secondary school; (b) either a bachelor's diploma or a special certificate awarded by an examining committee; and (c) a plan of the premises of the school and an outline of the course of study. When we consider that the examining committee was appointed by the Academy Council, that the certificate of experience might be dispensed with by action of the same council, and that the bishop was the most influential member of the Academy Council, we can see that the new law was more than liberal in opening the door to church influence in secondary educa- tion. Private education in France has always, in general, meant education conducted by religious orders, and this has been especially true in the case of secondary schools, for which private resources have been inadequate. Private Primary Schools. — In the case of private primary education, the limitations as to the preparation and proficiency of the teacher were practically removed. Any Frenchman twenty-one years of age might conduct a primary school if provided with a certificate of capacity, a bachelor's diploma, a certificate of experience, or a certificate stating that he had been admitted to a state professional school, or bearing the title of minister of one of the religions recognized by the state. Furthermore, a private school in any commune might be ac- cepted by the Academy Council as the public school for that comm.une on condition that the commune pay in that private school the tuition fees of all indigent children. The law • practically encouraged the Church to extend its system of private primary and secondary schools as far as it was able and DEMOCRACY TO AUTOCRACY IN EDUCATION 71 to supplant, wherever possible, the public schools of both grades of instruction with schools under religious auspices. Unification and Elaboration of the Central Authority. — The Law of 1850 represents, however, in spite of its favors to the Church, a very real development of public education, especially in the elaboration and improvement of administra- tive agencies. In place of a system of education divided in control between the authorities for primary education and the University, the law set up a single state-system with a Minister of Public Instruction at its head and a Superior Council of Pub- lic Instruction from which he was to take advice and with which he divided supreme authority. The composition of this Su- perior Council is of considerable significance because it shows the purpose of securing a body representative of the general public opinion in the country at large. The twenty-eight mem- bers were partly appointive and partly elective. The President named eight members for life from among professional edu- cators in the service of the state and also three representatives of private instruction as a permanent section. Four mem- bers represented the Catholic Church and there was one mem- ber each for the Reformed, Lutheran, and Jewish churches, chosen by the appropriate church bodies. There were three Councilors of State, chosen by their colleagues; three members of the Court of Appeal, chosen by their colleagues; and three members of the Institute, chosen in the general assembly of that body. The elective members were chosen for three years. The number of members of the Superior Council and the broad basis of their selection indicate an effort to secure a body rep- resentative of a wide range of public opinion and competent to give sound advice on educational policies. In the permanent section of the Council there was provided an expert group charged with the preliminary examination of matters to be presented to the Council as a whole, while the Council was expected to give its opinion on all educational measures ema- nating from the office of the Minister of Public Instruction. It was particularly to be consulted on all regulations regarding examinations, courses of study, and the supervision of primary 72 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 schools, on the creation of new university faculties and new public secondary schools, and on the textbooks that were to be allowed in the public schools and those which ought to be for- bidden in private schools as subversive of good morals, the constitution, and the laws. It also had important judicial functions in school cases appealed from lower authorities. The sequel will show that this Superior Council was too liberal an agency to suit the autocratic desires of the President, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, who materially changed its composition by the Organic Decree of March 9, 1852. The Academy and Its Administration. — For educational purposes the state was organized by the Law of 1850 into acad- emies, one for each department. The administrative head of the academy was the rector, who was assisted by one or more inspectors. An Academy Council stood in the same relation to him as the Superior Council did to the Minister of PubHc Instruction. The Academy Council was broadly representative of religious and official, and to a slight extent of educational interests, chosen by the groups represented. It had important functions in connection with the teaching, the discipline, and the administration of public schools, business accounts, the cer- tification of teachers, the opening of private schools, the fixing of school fees, and the making out of the salary lists of teachers. Increase of Inspection. — In the matter of inspection of schools, the Law of 1850 represented real development toward a national system of education. The law called for four types of inspectors: (a) general and superior inspectors, (6) the rectors and academy inspectors, (c) inspectors of primary education, and (d) the cantonal deputies, and the communal mayor and cure. The three higher classes of inspectors were appointed by the Minister of Public Instruction, thus insuring respon- sibility to the central authority and uniformity of purpose. The inspection of private schools, primary and secondary, was limited to matters connected with morals, hygiene, and health. The Academy Council appointed examining committees to grant certificates. It also designated several persons residing in each canton, known as cantonal deputies, to exercise lay DEMOCRACY TO AUTOCRACY IN EDUCATION 73 supervision over primary education and make reports on the general conditions of primary education to the Academy Council. Other Noteworthy Provisions of the Law of 1850.^ — The Law of 1850 did not mention the higher primary schools, but gave as optional subjects in the primary schools practically those which had comprised the curriculum of the higher pri- mary schools under the Law of 1833. Two forms of public secondary schools were named: the lycees, established and maintained by the state, with the cooperation of departments and towns, and the communal colleges, established and main- tained by the communes. The Minister of Public Instruction maintained control, having in mind the advice of Superior and Academy Councils, over the discipline, curriculum, and finan- cial management of all public secondary schools. The law continued the wise provisions for assisting the weaker communes and departments in meeting the costs of education that had been made in the Law of 1833. In many ways the new law exhibited an improvement in the status of teachers and of the profession in general. The mini- mum salary of the communal teacher was set at 600 francs a year. He was also to be provided with a suitable building to serve as a school and a dwelling. A system of teachers' pen- sions was promised in the law. The list of schools recognized as permissive at public cost was enlarged by the addition of infant schools and schools for adults and apprentices. It was further provided that every commune of 800 inhabitants, when it could do so out of its own resources, should have a separate primary school for girls. New and higher standards of instruction were implied in the provision for adjunct teachers in those schools in which, in the judgment of the Academy Council, the number of pupils called for them. The provision of the earlier law that all indi- gent children should be admitted free of tuition, was continued in the Law of 1850, and the significant advance was made of allowing any commune that could do so out of its own re- sources, to support one or more entirely free schools. 74 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 Government and Education after December 2, 1851 Almost from the date of his election as President in 1848, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte showed signs of desiring to make his power supreme in the state, and there were many ele- ments in the political and economic situation that favored his ambition to retain his office after the expiration of the legal term. The coup d'etat of December 2, 1851, which gave him dictatorial powers under the title of Prince-President, was in general well received by the great mass of the population. Under the new constitution, which he drew up, a show of popu- lar representation was maintained, but in all essentials the will of the Prince-President was not interfered with. On December 2, 1852, he had himself proclaimed Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, thus realizing in name what he had been for a year in fact. The control of the government by Louis Napoleon after December 2, 1851, was as autocratic and absolute as had been that of his uncle. Napoleon I. The Legislative Body, elected every six years on the basis of uni- versal suffrage, had no real power, while the Senate, composed of the Emperor's appointees, merely echoed his own purposes. The catalogue of powers vested in the Emperor comprised the real source of government. Following the coup d'etat, the press was brought completely under government control through the requirement of official authorization for any news- paper or periodical. Any journal could be suppressed at will — a power freely exercised. Freedom of assembly was denied in the same way. Furthermore, the Emperor fostered a system of publicity and propaganda which was designed to make him strong before the public. The Organic Decree of March 9, 1852, is the correlate in the field of education of this treatment of the press and the rights of public assembly and free discus- sion. By means of this decree the Prince-President aimed to secure as complete power over the means of forming the on- coming generation through the schools as he had secured over the means of forming public opinion in the existing generation. DEMOCRACY TO AUTOCRACY IN EDUCATION 75 Louis Napoleon Bonaparte Gains Autocratic Control over Education. — The Decree of 1852 gave to the -Prince- President, without qualification or appeal, the power to name and to dismiss "the members of the Superior Council, the general inspectors, the rectors, the professors of the faculties, of the College de France, of the Museum of Natural History, and of the School of Modern Oriental Languages, the members of the Bureau of Longitude, and of the observatories of Paris and Marseilles, and the managers and curators of the public libraries. 1^' The Minister of Public Instruction, who was ap- pointed by the President and responsible to him alone, was given the power to name and dismiss "the professors of the National School of Archives, the academy inspectors, the mem- bers of the Academy Councils who formerly have been elec- tive, the officials and professors of preparatory schools of medi- cine and pharmacy, the officials and professors of public sec- ondary education, the primary inspectors, the employees of public libraries, and, in general, all the persons attached to establishments of public instruction appertaining to the state." "Directly and without appeal," the Minister was further em- powered to pronounce upon members of public secondary in- struction: "reprimand before the Academy Council, censure before the Superior Council, removal from one position to another, suspension from duty, with or without total or partial loss of salary, and recall of the privilege of teaching." He was given power to make the same pronouncements against the officials and professors of the faculties, with the exception of the recall of the privilege of teaching, which was reserved to the President, ^o complete the chain of powers over edu- cation, the rectors, by delegation of power from the minister, were given the function of naming the communal teachers. The power given to the government by the Decree of 1852 was exercised to close the mouths of all the professors who dared to protest against the usurpations of the Prince-Presi- dent. A number of prominent professors were dismissed for "having given instruction troublesome to the public peace." All teachers were compelled to take an oath of loyalty or to 76 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 resign, and their activities were closely observed. As an example of the petty tyranny to which the teachers of the faculties were subjected, an official order commanded them to cut off their moustaches and thus to remove from their faces, as from their minds, the last vestiges of anarchy. Not content with such control of persons^ the government attempted a control of ideas, removing as far as possible from the cur- riculum those subjects that would invite consideration of contemporary political problems. In the Regulations for the Higher Normal School of September 15, 1852, we read that "dangerous or worthless books are not allowed in the school. The reading of daily papers, with the exception of The Monitor,^ is forbidden as foreign to good study." Further Administrative Reorganization. — An important modification of the administrative system was brought about by the law of June 14, 1854, which extended the area of the academy so that thereafter the country should be divided into sixteen academies only, instead of one academy for each de- partment. The rector of the academy was still to remain the head of all three grades of education for that administrative unit, but the department council was given new educational functions, and the prefect, the civil head of the department, was made the head of primary education. The new law gave the prefect all the powers in respect to primary education which the rector had exercised under the Law of 1850, the most important of which was probably the power of appointing the primary teachers. With the direct control of primary education in the hands of the prefect, the system of govern- ment control of education was complete and immediate from the highest to the lowest point. The development of a system of public education so highly organized and so responsive to the will of the individual who exercised autocratic control as Emperor of the French people, is of more than immediate interest. It represents, to be sure, the power which Napoleon III exercised. More than that, it represents the development of a set of educational institutions ' The Monitor was the official newspaper. DEMOCRACY TO AUTOCRACY IN EDUCATION 77 that was found to be serviceable under the Hberal government of the Third Republic after 1870. The instrument, organized in the interest of tyranny, was acceptable to the French desire for centralization and logical organization. We shall see later how it was adapted to the uses of the Republic. Material Prosperity under the Second Empire. — Until a dangerous and vacillating foreign policy wrecked the Second Empire, the government succeeded in maintaining internal peace and in fostering a high degree of economic prosperity. The period 1850- 1870 was characterized by rapid extension of banking facilities, by almost feverish activity in building railways, constructing highways, and excavating canals, by great development of the ocean-carrying trade in vessels driven by steam, and by the general improvement of agriculture through the reclamation of waste lands, the introduction of improved farming machinery, and the adoption of modern, scientific methods of tillage, cropping, and animal husbandry. It was the material prosperity of the fifties and sixties that enabled France to pay off so quickly what was regarded as the staggering indemnity imposed upon her by Prussia after the War of 1870. This increase of wealth was more immediately related to the matter of education in making possible the improvements in public education that came in the period of the Second Empire and also the tremendous stimulation of public education which came with the great series of laws following 1879. The Later Years of the Second Empire. — We have already seen how the financial status of the primary teacher was improved by the Law of 1850 and how the permissive clause of that act enabled communes to support at their own cost entirely free primary schools. A law passed in 1867 en- couraged communes to establish free primary schools through an offer of state aid for that purpose. The same law com- pelled all communes of five hundred inhabitants and over to maintain a separate school for girls. Under the ministry of M. Duruy, the restrictive attitude toward the primary normal schools was quite definitely altered and the efficiency of that 78 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 branch of education greatly improved. In general, the period of the Second Empire saw a pronounced improvement in the material conditions of education, including the improvement of the living conditions of the teacher and the improvement of school buildings, also in the sta^ng of the schools, the extension of new forms of education brought under public control and given public support, and the elaboration of the means of inspection and supervision of the instruction given in the schools. The later years of the Second Empire are frequently de- scribed as its liberal phase, during which Napoleon III showed signs of wishing to ameliorate the tyranny which he had established. It is even sometimes asserted that if the War of 1870 had not intervened, France might have undergone a gradual evolution in the direction of representative democratic institutions without any violent break with the Second Empire. Such a change was not, however, destined to occur. The very insecurity of his position as a political usurper tempted Napoleon III to try to keep his popularity through military and diplomatic ventures. In this ambition he suffered one defeat after another and lost his imperial title in the crushing defeats of Sedan and Metz. ADDITIONAL READINGS General Historical Background. — Hayes, A Political and Social History of Modern Europe, II; Hazen, Europe Since 1815. Education Source Material. — Greard, La legislation de I'instruction primaire en France (denxieme edition), IV and V. Secondary Accounts. — Arnold, Popular Education in France; Far- rington, Public Primary School System of France; Farrington, French Secondary Schools. CHAPTER VII THE THIRD REPUBLIC AND FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS OF NATIONAL EDUCATION (1870 TO PRESENT) Political Conditions Following the Franco-Prussian War. — Upon the military defeat of his armies and the capture of Emperor Napoleon III by the German forces, a Republic was declared in France. Of the parties which had united to form a republican form of government, the Republicans wished to continue the war against Germany in the interest of better terms of peace, while the Monarchists were in favor of an early peace and the restoration of normal economic and indus- trial life. When elections to a National Assembly which was to treat for peace were held, an overwhelming majority of Monarchists was returned. This result indicated rather that the people were desirous of an early peace than that they were in favor of monarchical institutions, but since the National Assembly elected to decide upon terms of peace lengthened its life for four years and made itself into a constitutional assem- bly, the power of the Monarchists was prolonged until the elections of 1877 and 1878, when Republican majorities were elected to both the Assembly and the Senate. The Political Institutions of the Third Republic. — In the new government erected after the overthrow of the Second Empire, the local institutions which had been developing since the period of the French Revolution, were continued practi- cally without change. The high degree of centralization which had been characteristic of French political institutions for some centuries and had reached an extreme form under Napoleon III, was carried over into the Third Republic. Under the Republic, however, means were provided of discovering the 79 8o NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 national will through the suffrage. The French seem to have adopted the principle that there must be, and is, a discoverable national purpose, and that effective means of carrying out that purpose in detail through efficient machinery of government must be provided. After 1870, manhood suffrage became the basis of all elections and the British parliamentary principle of the responsibility of the Cabinet to the legislative body was adapted to French conditions. In order to keep open all the sources of enlightenment that are essential to the development and the self-correction of public opinion, liberal press-laws were passed by the new government and full rights of associa- tion, public meeting, and freedom of speech were guaranteed. Finally, upon the assumption of control by the Republican majority following the elections of 1877 and 1878, a system of elementary education was provided for the French people that was related to the demands of democracy and full manhood suffrage. Reprisals against the Church. — Before considering the important educational legislation of the eighties, it is necessary to recall the conflict which had developed between the Republi- cans and the Clerical Party. We have already pointed out the alliance between the Church and conservative or reactionary political parties which had existed during the Second Empire. The same condition obtained in intensified form during the Third Republic. From the outset, the Church was allied with the Monarchists, so that Monarchist and Clerical became almost synonymous. The intensification of feeling for and against the Church which ensued upon the papal encyclical and the Syllabus of Errors^ which accompanied it in 1864, and the vigorous participation of Pope Pius IX in the fight against liberalism and nationalism during the years that fol- lowed, up to his death, entered very definitely into the align- ments of French domestic politics. Gambetta, in the cam- paign of 1877, made anti-clericalism the main issue, and the triumph which was achieved at that time was no less a victory ^ See Hayes, A Social and Political History of Modern Europe, Vol- ume II, 226-30. Also p. 184 of this book. NATIONAL EDUCATION 8i for the republican form of government than it was a decisive defeat for the Church. A New Primary Normal School Law. — The first of a series of education laws by which France came nearer to the educational objectives that had been the aim of liberal political parties since the forties, at least, was passed in 1879. This law had as its object the creation of improved facilities for the training of teachers in the primary schools and it called for the establishment of separate normal schools for men and women in each department. The law provided that the President of the Republic, with the approval of the Superior Council of Public Instruction, might authorize two depart- ments to combine for the establishment and maintenance of one or both of their normal schools. By the terms of this law the departments continued to bear the expense of the normal schools. Primary Education Made Free. — Four laws fundamental in the establishment of a national system of primary education were passed in the eighties. They are usually spoken of as the Ferry Laws, from M. Jules Ferry, the Minister of Public Instruction at the time of their passage, whose influence was powerful in the educational revival which took place under the early Republican government. The first of these, dated June 16, 1 88 1, abolished fees in the public primary schools. By the same law, the boarding expenses of pupils in the nor- mal schools were taken over by the state. Compulsory Attendance. — The law of March 28, 1882, established compulsory attendance for all children from the age of six to the age of thirteen. The law provided that a child might meet theintention of the law by attendance at a public or a private school, at a primary or a secondary school, or even by private instruction in the home. For the carrying out of the provisions of the law, school committees {commissions scolaires) were set up in every com- mune. It was provided that any child who had reached the age of eleven might take a public examination for the certifi- cat d'etudes primaires. If successful, he was to be excused 82 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 from further attendance. Children who were taught at home were compelled to undergo a yearly examination to determine whether their private instruction had been adequate and efficient. A Secularized and Expanded Curriculum, — The Law of 1882 is further important for the significant change which it brought about in the curriculum of the primary schools. In this law, primary instruction was said to include moral and civic instruction; reading and writing; the French language and the elements of French literature; geography, particularly that of France; history, particularly that of France down to and including the most recent historical events; some of the commoner notions of law and political economy; the elements of natural science, physics, and mathematics and their appli- cations to agriculture, hygiene, and the industrial arts; hand- work and the use of the tools of the principal trades; the ele- ments of drawing, modelling, and music; gymnastics; and military exercises for the boys and needlework for the girls. It will be impossible in this connection to go into the details of the application of this curriculum, but our interest in the relationship between the subject matter of instruction and the national purpose in education makes it desirable to note the uses of some parts of the curriculum to that end. Instruction for Nationalistic Ends. — It is often said that the revival of French public education in the eighties was stimulated by the very general conviction that the Prussian victory in the War of 1870 was to be attributed in considerable measure to the superior educational conditions in that country. The Prussian schoolmaster was said to have wen the war. The educational revival, coming at a time when defeat rankled in the minds of the French people and when all political thought was concerned with the problem of regaining national efficiency, exhibited strong nationalistic motives and purposes. Perhaps foremost among the subjects of the curriculum which reflected that spirit was the new subject, instruction in morals and civics, which had been substituted for the time-honored instruction in religion and morals. The purpose of the subject NATIONAL EDUCATION 83 was the socialization of the pupils in terms of French nation- alism and Republican politics. Moral and Civic Instruction In a circular dated November 17, 1883/ the Minister of Public Instruction addressed himself to the primary teachers of the country to explain the meaning and purpose of the new subject of moral and civic instruction. He said that the law of 1882 affirmed "the desire of establishing for ourselves a national education and of founding it upon conceptions of duty and justice which the law-maker does not hesitate to inscribe among the number of fundamental truths of which no one is at liberty to be ignorant." The teacher was not expected to be a philosopher or an extempore theologian, but was rather expected to pass on to the rising generation "that good old-fashioned morality which we have had handed down to us from our fathers and which we consider ourselves honored in following in the relationships of everyday life without stopping to discuss its philosophical foundations." The method advised was to use no definitions, no abstract principles, but a great many illustrations, particularly those taken from within the pupil's own experience. The Minister indicated the general interest that had been exhibited in the new subject by saying that philosophers and publicists, among them the most distinguished of that generation, had con- sidered it an honor to be co-laborers with the teachers and were contributing almost weekly some new book for the pro- posed moral and civic instruction. The Minister's circular reflected throughout the immediacy of the quarrel with the Church. At one point we read: "It depends upon you, sir, to hasten through your own activities the day when this in- struction will everywhere be not only accepted, but appre- ciated, honored, and loved, as it deserves to be. Those very persons whose discontent some have tried to excite will not ' See Greard, La legislation de I'instruction primaire en France, V, pp. 5S0-SS. 84 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 long resist the experience which is daily before their eyes. When they will have seen you at work; when they will have realized that you have no ulterior motive other than to make their children better informed and better behaved; when they will have noticed that your lessons in morals begin to have the effect of causing their children to come from your school with better habits, gentler*, and more respectful manners, more honesty, more obedience, a greater taste for work, greater submissiveness to duty, and, in short, all the signs of a con- stant moral improvement, then the cause of the lay school will have been won." As organized for practical use in the schools, the subject matter for instruction in morals was arranged in four grades to be taught in the infant section, the primary section, the intermediate section, and the higher section, respectively.^ In each of these sections the same round of moral conceptions was treated in accordance with the maturity and capacity of the children. To take up the work of the intermediate section in greater detail, we learn from the official program of the primary schools that it consisted of talks by the teacher, read- ings and interpretation, and practical exercises. The class work and the reading done by the children were to be co- ordinated so as to include all of the following points: I. (a) The child in the family; duties toward parents and grandparents: Obedience, respect, love, gratitude. Help the parents in their work; relieve them in their illness; come to their aid in old age. (b) Duties of brothers and sisters: Love one another; protection of the younger children by the older; responsibility for setting a good example. (c) Duties toward servants: Treat them politely and with kindness. (d) Duties of the child at school: Regular attendance, ^ For full statement of subject matter see Buisson and Farrington, French Educational Ideals of Today, pp. 27-31, from which the extract which follows is taken. NATIONAL EDUCATION 85 obedience, industry, civility. Duties toward the teacher; duties toward comrades. (e) The fatherland: France, her greatness and her mis- fortune. Duties toward the fatherland and toward society. II. (a) Duties toward oneself: Care of the body, cleanliness, sobriety, and temperance. Dangers of alcoholism; weakening of the intelligence and of the will; ruin of the health. Gymnastics. (b) Material goods: Economy, avoidance of debt, evil effects of the passion for gambling; duty to avoid immoderate desire for money and gain; prodigality; avarice. Work; economy of time; obligation of all men to work; nobility of manual labor. (c) The soul: Veracity and sincerity; never lie. Personal dignity, self-respect. Modesty; recognition of one's own faults. Evils of pride, vanity, coquetry, fri- volity. Shame of ignorance and sloth. Courage in danger and misfortune; patience, spirit of initiative. Dangers of rage. (d) Treat animals with gentleness. Do not let them suffer uselessly. The Grammont law; societies for the protection of animals. (e) Duties toward others: 'Justice and charity; the Golden Rule. Never injure the life, person, property, or reputation of another. Kindness, brotherhood. Tolerance, respect for the beliefs of others. Little by little alcoholism entails the violation of all duties toward others (laziness, violence, etc.).^ III. Duties toward God: The teacher is not required to give a course tx projesso on the nature and attributes of God. The instruction which he should give to all without distinction is limited to two points; ' In this whole course the teacher should assume the existence of con- science, of the moral law, and of moral obligation; he should appeal to the feeling and idea of responsibility. He does not undertake to demonstrate any of these by theoretical exposition. 86 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 First, he teaches his pupils not to speak the name of God thoughtlessly. He clearly associates in their minds a feeling of respect and veneration for the First Cause and the Perfect Being; and he accus- toms each one to surround the idea of God with the same respect even when it is presented to him in a form different from that of his own religion. Then, and without paying attention to the ordi- nances peculiar to the different religious beliefs, the teacher endeavors to make the child understand and feel that the first homage he owes the Divinity is obedience to the laws of God revealed to him by his conscience and his reason. The efforts of the teacher of morals and civics were from the first supplemented by the use of reading books in those subjects which had been prepared, in many cases, by scholars and literary men among the most noted and influential of France. No single book is prescribed for use in all the schools, but all books must have passed through a critical examination on the part of the educational authorities before they are placed on the list of books that may be used in the public schools. The wide variety of books that have been used in connection with the teaching of morals and civics and that are at the present time in use, makes it impossible to say from an ex- amination of the books alone what is the predominant spirit of this instruction. However, much as they vary in detail, certain safe generalizations may be made from them. All of these reading books aim at the socialization of the individual in terms of French nationality and of the republi- can form of government. Many of the virtues taught might apply in any modern Western country, such as industry, tem- perance, neighborliness, and kindness to animals; but the instruction inevitably leads to an emphasis on the duties of the citizen to his nation. The pupil is never allowed for long to forget that he is a Frenchman caught up in the net of a competitive national organization which necessarily and in NATIONAL EDUCATION 87 justice makes heavy demands upon his time and his pocket- book and which may, in the last resource, ask him to sacrifice his life for his country. The type of patriotism varies in the various books, but in those which have had the largest popu- larity as indicated by sales, it is of a warm emotional nature that aims directly at maintaining national feeling at a high pitch. It is very evidently the purpose of this instruction to cause the French boys and girls to realize the necessity for a large and efficient army and navy^ for the upkeep of which they must pay heavy taxes, and to make them willing to bear their share of the national burden because they prize their institutions, their language and their traditions — which can be protected only by military force. Many passages found here and there in the pages of these manuals of moral and civic instruction very definitely recall the wrongs which France has suffered at the hands of Germany and either directly or by implication aim at reviving in the young French citizen a hatred of the Prussians. At times the motive is very plain and its exposition is accomplished with a maximum of bitter- ness, but in fairness it must be added that in many of the manuals this note is silent. On the positive side, the virtues of the French institutions, the glories of the historic past and present greatness of France, and the everyday affection for one's home and countryside are so emphasized as to make the child feel the practical advantages that result from his member- ship in the French nation and the honor of participation in her collective life. No less prominent in this instruction than the desire to promote patriotism is the purpose of making the child feel the superior excellence of the political institutions of the Third Republic. Many of the manuals contain liberal extracts from the "Declaration of the Rights of Man" or reproduce it in full, for this statement — which was a part of the Constitution of 1 79 1 — has since then been associated in France with political liberalism. The official program of studies also makes it a special exercise to explain the meaning of the Republican motto, "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity." The manuals 88 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 give many indications of the purpose of the present government to perpetuate its existence through the inculcation of Republi- can principles upon the youth. To this end, the disadvantages of the "old regime" of privilege and autocracy are used as foils for the description of the enlarged personal opportunity and security under the present system of political organization. The competition which the Third Republic has had to meet has not been limited to the menace of a possible return to monarchy, but it has included as well the perhaps more real menace of Socialism. Against the Socialist political theories the school instruction in morals and civics has carried on as definite a campaign as against the monarchical principle. The Third Republic has undertaken to tutor the youth of France not only in regard to what they should believe concerning kings, but also in regard to what might ensue upon laboring- class control and a radical disturbance of the existing financial and industrial organization of society. Les Enfants de Marcel. — One of the most interesting and widely used of the reading books for the classes in morals and civics is Les Enfants de Marcel, written by Mme. Fouil- lee under the pen name, G. Bruno. This book succeeds in weav- ing into a narrative of the fortunes of a French soldier and citizen and his family all the required materials in morals and civics according to the official program of studies. With a keen sense of dramatic values, Mme. Fouillee opens the story with a scene from the later days of the Franco- Prussian War. A French army, with all hope of victory gone, is trying to escape capture through reaching neutral territory in Switzerland. The Prussian forces are close upon the heels of the retreating French, and a force of the French army has been detailed to hold a certain position in order to delay the enemy long enough to allow the rest of the army to reach their goal of safety. Among this command is the veteran sergent Marcel, who is lying awake at night with his disquieting thoughts. Beside him is his fourteen-year-old son, Louis. The boy's mother had been a cantiniere of the regiment to which his father was attached and she had died only a few days NATIONAL EDUCATION 89 before. Marcel felt that, in spite of the pleas of Louis to remain, he ought to be sent back home in the absence of his mother. Torn with personal loss and the uncertainty of his domestic situation, Marcel's grief is increased by the thought of his country's unhappy plight. Louis' insistence is rewarded with permission to remain and do what he can to serve his country in the stirring days that lie before them. When morning comes the engagement is resumed, in which both father and son exhibit the greatest gallantry and, with their comrades, exemplify the best tradi- tions of French military history. Marcel is wounded in the right arm and has difficulty in reaching the Swiss border, but this is finally accomplished, and surgical attention is secured for him. Amputation becomes necessary. Throughout the rest of the book, Marcel with his empty sleeve and an impos- ing collection of medals for military gallantry, is the imper- sonation of modest, uncomplaining self-sacrifice in the service of his country. An interesting example of Mme. Fouillee's ability to weave desirable information into the narrative occurs in connection with an incident of the enforced stay in Switzerland. Louis and his father find good friends in a Swiss family in which the old grandfather, still living, had served in the Swiss Guard of Louis XVI. He is led to recount the conditions which he had personally observed while journeying on foot to Versailles to enter service, and by means of his dramatic description the inequalities and injustices under which the peasants of the time suffered are exhibited in sharp contrast with the luxury of the Court. The old Swiss tells as an eyewitness about the stirring events of t'he French Revolution, having been present on the memorable August night when the representatives of the old order renounced the privileges and erased the inequali- ties which had come down into modern France from the middle ages. His narrative is a most effective treatment of the meaning of the French Revolution. When the Marcels, father and son, return to France, the incident is made the occasion for a passionate appreciation 90 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 of the land of France and the old home. Marcel experiences the beneficent care of the government for those who have served their country, in being made local postmaster, with his eldest daughter, Annie, for his assistant. With the change to civil life a different set of virtues is given opportunity to come into prominence, and it is needless to say that the Marcel family, through the practice of industry, honesty, devotion to duty, neighborly sympathy, sobriety, civic interest, and family affection, experience a high degree of happiness and a moderate degree of economic prosperity. The writer of the story uses neighborhood incidents to serve as introductions to fairly comprehensive descriptions of the various aspects of civil government. An accident in a quarry, for example, serves as a peg on which to hang the account of communal govern- ment and its relation to the administration of the department; the trial of a thief, apprehended through the coolness and courage of Louis and Marcel, is the occasion for the description of the judicial machinery of France; and in like manner all the important aspects of civil administration are covered. Finally, the receipt of a legacy in Algeria causes the family of Marcel to remove to this French colony and opens the way for a description of the colonial system of France and a lively appreciation of its importance for the mother country. At times the machinery of the narrative creaks a bit and sometimes the patriotic sentiment seems a bit forced, but in general the little book is extremely vivid and convincing, and one would expect it to make a strong impression upon a young and uncritical reader. It is described here at such length because it so well illustrates the distinctive quality of morals as conceived from the French educational standpoint and the purpose of civics as a school subject. Morality in the French primary curriculum is not taught as an abstract philosophy of elementary grade, but it is tied up, through illustrative his- torical incidents and concrete personal experiences, with the everyday life of the child. In reality it is an elementary treat- ment of political philosophy in which the child is considered as an actor in the destinies of the nation and as an apprecia- NATIONAL EDUCATION 91 tive and responsible participant in a set of domestic and po- litical relationships. It is difficult to estimate the success of the method, but it has been in use for forty years and is likely to be continued for a long time to come. No doubt the con- stancy and solidarity of the French during the late war had other contributing sources, some of them probably more im- portant than the instruction which the French children for a generation past have had in civic virtues. Many French edu- cators believe, however, that the moral and civic instruction in the schools has made an important contribution towards national unity and national devotedness. History in the Primary Schools. — While the moral and civic instruction was particularly designed to engender civic virtues and patriotism, French history, as included in the cur- riculum given in the Law of 1882, was likewise intended to strengthen the child's affection for his country. By means of this study, the child was to be made familiar with the great names and the significant events of the national past. He was to be made to feel a personal sorrow in the misfortunes of his fatherland and to take pride in the heroism of earlier genera- tions. At the same time, aberrations of national policy were to be acknowledged and national failings were to be recognized so that they might be guarded against in the future. The general principle that the evolution of the French nation was toward better things was accepted as basic, and national weak- nesses or temporary failures were to be interpreted as episodes in a triumphant drama of national self-realization. The spirit of the instruction in history was to be neither that of muck-raking nor ot chauvinism. Perhaps it might be described as a scientific attitude modified by patriotism. There was no doubt as to the purpose of the instruction in history: it was to make better citizens as the children were made familiar with the national past presented in such a way as to arouse their enthusiasm, pride, and loyalty. But that past was also to be presented in such a way as admitted imperfec- tion, failure, and selfishness, and revealed national weaknesses of temperament or of policy. The work in history was to 92 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 strengthen the child's love of his country, but no less to develop his critical sense in the judgment of national policy, foreign or domestic.^ At the same time the stern realities of the international situation were not to be forgotten. The chil- dren in the primary schools might well enough be called on to engage in a war for the nation's safety before they reached maturity or had passed beyond the age of military service. In that event they must be prepared to face the thought of war, with its attendant self-sacrifice, and they must be instructed in the French tradition of courage, loyalty, and national pride. Centralization of Educational Administration The Organic Primary Education Law of 1886. — The third of the great primary education laws passed in the eighties, namely, that of October 30, 1886, remains the organic law governing primary education in France. It should be considered in connection with a law passed February 27, 1880, by which the composition of the Superior Council of Public Instruction and the academy councils was modified. The dis- cussion of the educational machinery developed under the Third Republic naturally connects with that of the institutions bequeathed to the Republic from the Second Empire. We have noted in an earlier connection (see p. 75) the high degree of centralization of power over education in the hands of one man which the laws of the Second Empire achieved, the place of advantage given to the Church, and the very special status of private education. The treatment of these same matters by the new government may with profit be discussed if we are to gain a fair understanding of educational administration in France at the present time. In regard to centralization of educational authority, that principle has been adopted by the Republic, but with impor- tant modifications of its application as found under Napoleon III. The hierarchy of the Second Empire was perpetuated in the education laws of the eighties and the state continued to ^ See Pizard, L'histoire dans I'enscignement primaire, pp. 91 ff. NATIONAL EDUCATION 93 maintain that absolute control over the local authorities which had been developed to such a high point. The Minister of Pub- lic Instruction retained his large powers of appointment in the fields of higher, secondary, and primary education and the prefect retained the power of appointment of primary teachers which he had been given by the Law of 1854. The effective system of inspection which had been elaborated under Napo- leon III was retained and strengthened. The organization of the academies was taken over practically without change. The departmental council of education, which has jurisdiction over a comparatively large area, was made in effect the local authority for primary education and was given many powers in that field, such as the determination of the number of schools and teachers required by any commune, the deciding voice in any consolidation proposal, the preparation of the list of teachers eligible for appointment, the decision in matters of litigation affecting primary instructors both private and public, and the opening of private primary schools. In short one may say that education was organized under the Third Republic on national lines and as a single unit. From the Minister of Public Instruction and the Superior Council down to the communal council and the communal teacher, the entire system was bound together in a graduated hierarchy of powers and controls which enforced upon all grades of education a uniform purpose, uniform conditions of exercise, and uniform privileges and safeguards. Education was regarded as an important social function, on a par with the army and navy and the police power in its national significance. Its problems were conceived from a single national point of view. Its administration was organized as a single national unit. The result has been the most highly centralized school system developed in any first rate Western nation. Local initiative in school affairs has dwindled to a disappearing minimum, while central authority has assumed a maximum of importance and influence. It may be seen from the nbove paragraph that the develop- ments of educational administration which took place under 94 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 the Second Empire have proved to be in accord with French tastes and inclinations or, at any rate, with the exigencies of the political situation, and that the absolute control which that government assumed has been taken over without any weakening by the Third Republic. There is, however, a very important difference between the two educational regimes. Whereas the laws of the Second Empire removed all restric- tions upon the absolute exercise of authority by the Emperor and his agents and gave them personal control over the edu- cational institutions of all grades, the Third Republic has thrown many and important safeguards around the exercise of authority and has provided means whereby the public will may be discovered and enforced. The Superior Council. — The means whereby this safe- guard against tyranny or caprice was established, center largely in the composition of the various educational councils and the powers which they exercise over the executives who depend on them for advice and permission to act. We have seen how Napoleon III made a rubber stamp of the Superior Council and removed practically all the control which it had formerly exercised over the acts of the Minister of Public Instruction. The law of February 27, 1880, reinstated the Superior Coun- cil in a position of power over the Minister and made of it a body truly representative of French educational opinion. At present the members of this council number fifty-seven. Of these, thirteen are appointed by the President of the Republic, nine representing public and four representing private instruc- tion. The remaining members are chosen from among the important educational interests and institutions by their col- leagues. The representation on the Superior Council is strictly educational and distributed in such a way as to insure the presence on the Council of a representative competent to speak sympathetically and intelligently for practically any educa- tional interest that may come before it. Its advice must be sought by the IVIinister on courses of study, methods of teach- ing, examinations, disciplinary and administrative regulations NATIONAL EDUCATION 95 affecting public schools of all grades, the regulations governing the examinations for degrees and the granting of the same, the regulations for the inspection of private schools, the inter-; diction of school texts on the basis of their being contrary to good morals, the Constitution, and the laws, and other matters besides. It also possesses important judicial functions in con- nection with appeals in cases of discipline brought up to it from the lower councils. A favorable two-thirds vote of the Council is required before any regular professor of public secondary or higher instruction can be dismissed or suspended, before any regular professor of higher education can be re- moved to an inferior position, before any person may be excluded from the right of teaching in or directing a public or private school, or before a student may be expelled from a public or private school. These extensive powers given to the Superior Council constitute a very real check upon the will of the Minister. It was just the absence of any such safe- guards that meant unrelieved autocracy under the regime of Napoleon III. It is their presence that means centralized administrative efficiency without absolute tyranny under the Third Republic. A further safeguard against too extensive ministerial pre- rogatives is discovered in the very definite prescriptions of eligibility for the various teaching positions filled by the Minister. The details of academic training and experience, the possession of certain degrees, the careful, almost minute, classification of teachers, are conditions which the Minister is bound to take into account in his appointments to vacancies. The teacher in the public secondary and higher institutions, as well as the primary teacher, is a public official, fortified in his position, as far as may be, against injustice and personal spite. It is needless to add that the office of the Minister of Public Instruction is adequately organized to fulfill the numerous func- tions which it performs. Directly under the Minister are twenty-five bureaus dealing in a specialized way with the 96 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 business of all grades of education and fine arts, while a large number of general inspectors serve as the eyes and ears of the central education authority and represent it directly in the country at large. The Administration of the Academy. — The academy administration was taken over without any considerable change from the Second Empire. There are at present seventeen academies in France, each with a rector at its head and pos- sessing a council which has much the same duties with refer- ence to the rector that the Superior Council has with reference to the Minister of Public Instruction. In addition there is a University Council which advises him with reference to matters of higher education alone. In the case of the Acadeipy Coun- cil we find again a very ample representation of all the higher educational interests of the academy and a combination of ex officio, elective, and appointive memberships which makes the Academy Council much more than the creature of the government. The rector is the head of higher, secondary, and primary education in the academy, but most of his activities in regard to primary education are delegated to the academy inspector and are limited to the pedagogical side. Indeed, the chief educational interest of the rector is secondary education, al- though this interest is shared with higher and primary educa- tion as well. The rector touches primary education mainly through his connection with the normal schools, of which he has special charge. He is also ex officio president of the governing board of each lycee and college in his academy. Departmental Administration.— The Law of 1886 made the department — of which there are ninety in France — the chief administrative area for primary education. The prefect, who is an official of the Ministry of the Interior, is also the chief educational officer. He appoints all public primary teachers, although in his choice of candidates he is limited to those nominated by the academy inspector. The chief influ- ence of the prefect is felt in connection with school finances, over which he exercises considerable control. His connection NATIONAL EDUCATION 97 with matters of curriculum and methods in the primary schools is negligible. In the case of the Departmental Council we recognize again the admirable principle of selection of members which is characteristic of the educational councils under the Republic. Of the fourteen regular members of each council, the prefect and the academy inspector are ex officio president and vice-president, respectively, four are elected by the primary teachers from among their members, four are members of the General Council of the Department — chosen by their col- leagues — two are appointed by the Minister from among the primary inspectors and two are ex officio heads of the normal schools of the department. This council, as has been said above, is really the local authority for primary education, as the Academy Council is the local authority for secondary and higher education. Its most important functions have been mentioned above (see p. 93). The powers of the academy inspector over primary education are very great, particularly as affecting the choice of teachers. He personally supervises the examinations of candidates for entrance to the normal schools and the examinations given at the close of the normal school course. In this way he has great control over the list of probationary teachers, who must serve two years before they are eligible to permanent appointment. It is only when a teacher has thus been approved and placed on the depart- mental list that he is eligible to appointment by the prefect. Other Local Authorities. — The school committees {com- missions scolaires) have been mentioned in connection with the Law of 1882, and the cantonal delegates may be considered as retaining under the Law of 1886 their former functions. The municipal councils, which have educational as well as other civil functions, have little educational authority. They are compelled to provide funds 10 meet the obligatory expenses connected with primary education, and they may increase this minimum to any extent for which they can secure popular ap- proval. We shall take up their share of the total expense of primary education in connection with a later discussion of the financial law of 1889. 98 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 The Curtailment of the Educational Influence of the Church. — We have already mentioned the complications of politics which placed the Republican party squarely in oppo- sition to the Catholic Church and have recalled the decisive victory gained by the Republicans over the Monarchist and Church party in and following 1877. It is but natural to expect that the Republicans would make use of their newly- won power to weaken the extremely great influence wielded by the Church over education through the laws of the Second Empire. The first notable development in this struggle was the practical elimination of the Church representatives from the various councils of education. Only two ecclesiastical members out of a total of fifty-seven were provided for the Superior Council and in the academy councils the only eccle- siastical representatives were the heads of the Catholic and the Reformed Church theological seminaries. The influence of the Church was completely eliminated from the depart- mental councils and the local cure was no longer named as the inspector of the schools of the commune. We have already noted the laicization of the curriculum, accomplished by the Law of 1882. The Law of 1886 made any member of a relig- ious association ineligible as a teacher in a public school. It also established a uniform requirement for the state's cer- tificate of eligibility to teach in any school, public or private, and removed the chances of collusion in the granting of such certificates by bringing the entire matter of teacher examina- tion and certification under the authority of the rector and the academy inspector. Equally important is the requirement of the Law of 1886 that every commune, either alone or in conjunction with another adjoining, shall have a public pri- mary school. For this purpose, unlike the case in the Law of 1850, a private school cannot be designated by the commune. Private Schools. — As the status of private schools relates closely to the influence of the Church in French education, the conditions of private instruction deserve consideration at this point. The Law of 1886 did not forbid private schools, but it considerably restricted the freedom with which they NATIONAL EDUCATION 99 might be opened. We have seen how in the Law of 1850 the bars were let down and the opening of private schools, primary and secondary, was made easy. The new law, on the contrary^ established very effective safeguards about the private schools. The procedure in opening a private primary school is as follows: The teacher who wishes to open such a school must declare beforehand his intention to the mayor of the commune in which he wishes to teach and designate the premises which are to be occupied. A notice of this intention is posted on the door of the town hall for one month. The mayor may oppose the opening of the school on the ground of unsatis- factory premises. The petition is likewise addressed to the prefect, the academy inspector, and the public prosecutor, and attached to it for the academy inspector are the applicant's birth certificate, health certificate, his teaching certificate or diplomas, a copy of his court record, a statement of the places where he has lived during the preceding ten years and the callings he has followed in that time, the plan of the proposed school premises, and, if he belongs to a religious association, a copy of the statutes of that association. The academy inspector, either ex officio or on complaint of the public prose- cutor, may oppose the opening of the school on moral or hy- gienic grounds. When there is no opposition, the school is opened at the expiration of a month without other formality. In case of opposition, both sides are heard by the Depart- mental Council, and appeal may be made by either party to the Superior Council, which has final jurisdiction. Opening or conducting a school without having fulfilled the conditions named is a misdemeanor and is subject to punishment by a fine. A second offense makes the offender subject to impris- onment and a heavier fine. The directors of private schools in France today are alto- gether free in the choice of methods, programs, and books, with a reservation in regard to those books which have been prohibited by the Superior Council as contrary to good morals, the Constitution, and the laws. Any private teacher may, on complaint of the academy inspector, be summoned before the 100 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 Departmental Council by reason of grave fault in the exercise of his duties or misconduct or immorality, and he may be censured or suspended by that body. In case of suspension he has the right of appeal to the Superior Council. The state reserves full right of inspection of all private schools with reference to morality and hygiene. Its inspection of instruc- tion goes only so far as to see that it is not contrary to good morals, the Constitution, and the laws. When one recalls, however, that most of the private schools were before the passage of the Law of 1904 maintained by the Church inter- ests, and that the clerical party was on principle opposed to the Constitution of the Third Republic, this provision means a great deal more than it might seem to on the surface. Private Secondary Schools. — The provisions of the Law of 1850 in regard to private secondary education were carried over without change into the Third Republic. Private sec- ondary schools have full legal rights of existence and self- government according to the terms of the law as described above (see p. 69). The change of composition of the Su- perior and the Academy Council under the Republic less- ened the influence of the Church in matters relating to secon- dary education just as it had in those relating to primary education. Recent Curtailment of Church Influence in Education. — A series of incidents, centering about the court-martial and conviction of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew, of the crime of selling military secrets to Germany, raised in the nineties a storm of popular agitation. The Church and the Monarchists were allied in opposition to the Republicans and the Jews, who asserted the innocence of the convicted officer. Dreyfus was convicted and sentenced in 1894. In 1897, his case was re- opened and it was found that the true culprit was an avowed Monarchist. The military court decided for a second time against Dreyfus, but then Emile Zola made a truly national issue of the scandal through a fulminating article against all those who had had a part in the trials of Dreyfus. Confession of one of the Monarchist principals caused the case again to NATIONAL EDUCATION loi be reopened in 1899. The case was finally settled by action of the Supreme Court in 1906, which unconditionally exoner- ated Dreyfus and restored him to his position in the army. This case was of national importance and caused, as has been said above, a thoroughgoing cleavage of political parties. Upon the triumph of the Dreyfusard party, drastic reprisals were made upon the Church, which had been found guilty, in the judgment of its enemies, of plotting against the Republic. By the Associations Act of 1901 religious orders were com- pelled to secure governmental authorization, which the govern- ment only very sparingly granted. As the law provided that no member of an unauthorized order should be permitted to teach in any French school, it had the effect of immediately and greatly reducing the number of religious engaged in teach- ing in private schools. The law of July 7, 1904, eliminated the official church and religious associations from the schools of France. According to its provisions, no member of a relig- ious association, whether authorized or unauthorized, was to be allowed to engage in the work of teaching. All religious associations with the title of "religious associations exclusively devoted to teaching" were to be suppressed by 19 14. The final acts in the carrying out of the law were somewhat inter- fered with by the outbreak of the war in 1914, but there has not developed any intention on the part of the government of receding from the position taken in the law. The legal restric- tions placed upon private education and the elimination of the official church from teaching have resulted in greatly lessening the number of private schools in France. Financial Support of Primary Education. — The law of July 19, 1889, relating to the financial support of public primary education and the salaries of the educational staff, is the last of the four "Ferry" laws, named above as being most influential in establishing the French national system of primary education. In some respects it represents more sig- nificantly than any of the others the extension of the national interest in the primary schools, for by its provisions the nation made itself responsible for the salaries of all members 102 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATIQN SINCE 1789 of the teaching force and the administrative 'staff connected with primary education. Ever since 1833, the communes, the departments, and the state had cooperated, where necessary, in the support of the public primary schools, and this arrange- ment has essentially continued, with the difference that the state has taken over directly a greater share of the total cost. According to the law, the following costs v^ere to be charged to the state: the salaries of members of th^ staff of ecoles maternelles, elementary primary schools, higher primary schools, ecoles manuelles d'apprentissage, and normal schools, the salaries of members of the administrative and supervisory force, the expenses of inspection, and the maintenance charges of all pupils in the normal schools. The following costs were designated to be borne by the departments: an allowance for the primary inspectors; the maintenance and rental, if any, of the normal schools; the maintenance and the renewal of the furniture of those schools and of the school supplies; the rental and upkeep of the departmental offices of public instruc- tion and that of the academy inspector; and certain other minor charges. The communes were to be charged with the maintenance and rental, if any, of the school premises and the living quarters for the teachers, the expense of heating and lighting of classrooms, the costs of janitorial service, and the purchase, the maintenance, and the renewal of school furniture and supplies. In the same law careful classification was made of teachers on the basis of professional qualifications and length of service, and salary schedules were adopted to apply to the various classes of teachers and officials. As a result the salaries of teachers in the primary schools and of education officials do not depend upon local conditions of wealth or the liberality of various local authorities, but upon professional equipment and experience. The law also favorably modified the existing provision for retirement allowances. Secondary Education. — The Third Republic, as has been implied or specifically stated earlier in this chapter, exhibits the same high degree of centralization with reference to secon- NATIONAL EDUCATION 103 dary instruction as it does with reference to primary. The two forms of secondary school are the lycecs, maintained entirely by the state, and the colleges, maintained principally by the communes in which they are located, but receiving some aid from the state and possibly from the department. In the case of both forms of school, however, the Ministry of Public Instruction prescribes uniform programs of study, uniform disciplinary regulations, and uniform requirements for the teaching staff. The teachers in both types of school are ap- pointed by the Minister of Public Instruction and are equally the civil servants of the state. The seven years of the course in a secondary school lead to the examination for the baccalaureate, which dominates all secondary school work. The examinations are conducted under the control of the Minister of Public Instruction and are held at the university centers at which there are faculties of arts and sciences. The Minister also grants the diplomas awarded to the successful candidates. No less than the state schools, the private secondary schools are governed by this examination in the arrangement of their programs of study and in their standards of instruction, for their students must pass the state examination in order to secure the privileges of the baccalaureate. Without the baccalaureate no student is eligible to follow higher and professional studies in the uni- versities. The baccalaureate may be regarded both as a certification of the fact that the holder has had a general education and as a permit to undertake university work. Quite in contrast with the conditions existing in the Ameri- can high school, one can tell within a narrow range what studies any possessor of the French baccalaureate may have had. The program of studies of May 31, 1902, which is now in force, divides the seven-year course into two cycles. In the first cycle of four years the student may elect the work of the first section, in which the classical languages are stressed ; or that of the second section, in which Latin and Greek are absent, and in which French, science, drawing and mathematics are empha- sized. The second cycle offers four groups of courses in which 104 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 the following subjects receive emphasis respectively: (i) Latin and Greek, (2) Latin and modern languages, (3) Latin and sciences, (4) modern languages and sciences, without Latin. If one knows what section and group of each cycle the student has elected in his secondary school, in whatever part of France, one can count on that pupil's having had a very specific range of instruction. In other words, the French organization of secondary instruction provides a highly uniform culture for its educated class. Its leaders of opinion will have experienced practically the same conditions of discipline, subject matter, and instruction. While some of the pupils will have had instruction in the classics and others will not, and while some will have spent more time on science, mathematics, and modern languages than others, no pupil can follow the official seven- year program of studies leading to the baccalaureate without having had some acquaintance with all the significant aspects of modern culture. All will have had elementary mathematics, all will have had at least one foreign language, all will have spent an equal amount of time in the study of modern history and of geography, all will have been made acquainted with the main facts and principles of the sciences, and all will have spent practically an equal amount of time in the study of the French language and its literature. The French system of secondary education represents probably the highest achieve- ment of a standardized culture for the leading educated class that exists in any modern Western land. Secondary Education for Girls. — The Third RepubHc established by a law of December 21, 1880, a system of secondary education for girls. The new girls' schools were of two sorts, lycees and colleges, following the terminology of the secondary schools for boys but having only a five years' course. They were, however, exclusively day schools, but boarding departments might be attached at the expense of the principal or the municipality.^ Higher Education. — The mobilization of the intellectual ^ For more complete discussion of secondary education for girls see Farrington, French Secondary Schools, pp. 309-344. NATIONAL EDUCATION 105 forces of the state which was consciously aimed at by the Third Republic, was carried out in the field of higher educa- tion by the establishment in 1885, in each academy center, of a General Council of Faculties. The function of this coun- cil was to consider the common interests of the faculties of the academy and to organize programs of courses and lectures. In 1896, the faculties were given the name of universities and the name of the Genera;l Council of Faculties was changed to that of University Council. This council was given power over the discipline and internal organization of its university. By this law of 1896 the universities acquired corporate exis- tence, with the right of possessing and administering property, of disciplining any of its members, of receiving student fees for the uses of the university and of controlling their own budgets. The professors of the universities are appointed by the Minister of Public Instruction, on nomination of at least two candidates by the faculty in which the vacancy exists. The professors are safeguarded in their positions by minute regulations and they have the pension privileges of all civil servants. The state pays the salaries of the entire university staff and grants a liberal subsidy for maintenance. The facul- ties elect their own deans, the appointment of whom is ratified by the Minister. A law of ]\Iarch 18, 1880, extended the principle of freedom of teaching to higher education. This had been a bone of contention even since the Charter of 1830, which promised free- dom of teaching. We have seen (p. 61) how the provision of the Charter was never carried out with reference to higher education. Indeed, no change was made from the status of higher education under the university monopoly of the First Empire, until 1880. At that time, the right of establishing private, or "free," faculties was given; but the right was re- served to the state to grant degrees. Any student in a private faculty must observe the same rules of study and present the same academic requirements as students in the state univer- sities and must submit to examination by the professors of the state universities. io6 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 Vocational Education and the Higher Primary School In describing a matter so complex as a national system of education, cross-classifications are inevitable. It would have been desirable from some standpoints to treat the higher pri- mary schools in connection with primary education. Our earlier treatment of the primary school, however, was in con- nection with the realization of a national system of public edu- cation and there mainly as an aspect of centralization of control. A no less important aspect of national education is the effort made by a modern state to cause its educational institutions to minister to the health and prosperity of its economic life. The type organization around which the French development of vocational education has taken place is the higher primary school. The higher primary school will be recalled in connection with the Law of 1833 (see p. 55). It was not mentioned as such in the Law of 1850, although complementary courses in advance of the minimum for primary schools were allowed in any commune which cared to bear the expense of them. In 1833, Guizot had thought of the higher primary schools as a natural and necessary extension of educational opportunities for the lower social classes. While the instruction to be given in them was practically related to the needs of everyday life, it was not highly technical. It was even considered advisable and proper that the higher primary instruction should be connected with the weaker secondary schools. However, in the period of the Second Empire, during which very pronounced industrial development occurred, the character of the instruction given in the complementary courses tended to become more defi- nitely vocational. Under the Third Republic the higher pri- mary school has been regarded as a school preparing the picked children of the elementary primary schools for more effective participation in industrial, agricultural, and commercial life, to the end that the nation may be better fitted for successful economic competition with other industrial nations. The NATIONAL EDUCATION 107 higher primary school was revived in the organic law of 1886 and was mentioned in that law, along with infant schools, infant classes, elementary primary schools, cours complhnen- taires, and manual apprenticeship schools, as an establishment of primary education. The manual apprenticeship schools (ecoles manuelles d'apprentissage) had been established by a law of December 11, 1880. This law took account of an existing situation when it said, "The schools of apprenticeship founded by communes or departments to develop in the youth who expects to enter manual trades, the necessary skill and technical knowledge, are placed in the number of establish- ments of public primary education. The public schools giving supplementary primary instruction, the programs of which include vocational studies, are designated as manual appren- ticeship schools." Such schools were allowed to receive sub- ventions from the Ministry of Public Instruction and the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce. In 1881 and 1882 three schools under the name of national vocational schools {ecoles nationales projessionelles) were legally established for the purpose of training foremen and artisans. It is seen that the Third Republic, early in its existence, recognized the national importance of stimulating the produc- tion of better trained privates and non-commissioned officers for her industrial army. This aspect of national strength has not been developed in France to the point which it has reached in Germany, but, compared with American practice, France has made conspicuous progress in this form of education. The higher primary school may be taken as the central point around which vocational education is organized, and the school from which special vocational schools vary and to which they approximate in character. The cours complementaire is less fully organized than the higher primary school proper, but, like the latter, it aims at taking the pupil from the elementary primary school and pre- paring him for more efficient entrance to a gainful occupation. The higher primary school proper was not at first highly specialized for vocational training, although the official pro- io8 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 gram stressed applied science, mathematics, and drawing, be- sides giving extended instruction in the social subjects of the elementary curriculum. The local authorities were encouraged to modify the curricula of the higher primary schools in such ways as favored the predominant vocational interest of the community. Thus, in some cases the higher primary school offered courses fitting for agricultural life, in others for indus- trial occupations, and in still others for commercial life, while the courses for girls clearly and definitely reflected the voca- tional or domestic needs of their sex. The tendency has been for some higher primary schools to become more highly specialized than others in vocational train- ing, and there has thus come about the definitive division of the schools on the basis of curriculum. The higher primary schools that showed marked vocational emphasis were desig- nated in 1897 as ecolcs pratiques de commerce ou d'industrie and placed under the control of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. The manual apprenticeship schools also in large part were assimilated to this type and placed under the man- agement of the one ministry, namely, of Commerce and Indus- try. However, some of the former manual apprenticeship schools remain under the condominium of the Minister of Education and the Minister of Com.merce and Industry. The schools which stress the general intellectual side of the cur- riculum are under the exclusive control of the Minister of Education. The complaint has been rather general that the higher primary schools proper were not connecting up with the com- mercial, agricultural, industrial, and household needs of the state. They were turning out too many lower state officials and clerks and were not in sufficient degree training the boys to be farmers, foremen, and skilled artisans, nor the girls to be efficient housewives. Accordingly a decree of July 26, 1909, established sections of vocational instruction alongside of the sections of general instruction in every such school and provided for practical work closely related to the theory taught. However, the iiitention of the government is not to NATIONAL EDUCATION 109 make these higher primary schools narrowly vocational. The Director of Primary Education, M. Gasquet, in explaining the intention of the decree mentioned above, said that it was not the purpose of these schools to form apprentices or specialists fit immediately to be utilized in commerce or industry. Rather they were to reveal the child to himself, to give him a taste for work with the hands and to make him familiar with the tools of every trade. They were to prepare the boy, by reason of thorough preparation in theory and principles, to become, after a period of apprenticeship in industry, commerce, or agriculture, an under-officer susceptible of improvement and capable of adapting himself to the various and ever-changing needs of vocational life.^ It is hopeless to undertake in this connection a description of the rich provision which has been made in France through the cooperation of state and local authorities and private parties and associations for all forms and grades of vocational education. It is probably no exaggeration to say that no aspect of vocational efficiency is unprovided for in an appro- priate educational institution, although, of course, for some phases the distribution is unequal and inadequate. A full catalogue of such institutions would embrace maritime schools of every grade, schools of public works, schools of mines, in- dustrial schools of every kind, special and general, higher^and lower, technical and practical, schools of agriculture ranging from the farm-schools to the National Institute of Agronomy, veterinary schools, and schools of fine arts that bear a very definite relationship to the high artistic quality of the product of the French factories and shops. The Continuation Education Bill of March 12, 1917. — We have been considering at some length the development of the national system of education in France under the Third Republic, and it seems appropriate to conclude that topic with mention of a bill introduced in the Chamber of Deputies during the late war, on March 12, 191 7. This bill has not become law and may not for some time to come. It represents, ^ See Vuibert, Anniiaire de la jeunesse, 1917, p. 52. no NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 however, the promise of a most significant extension of the educational activities of the state and may be considered as a proposal to lift national education to a higher level all along the line. The bill proposed continuation instruction for all boys and girls who cannot show that they have taken or are taking an equivalent for the same, in physical exercises, voca- tional subjects, and subjects of general culture. The period of compulsory attendance is to be extended beyond the re- quirements of the Law of 1882 to the age of twenty for boys and eighteen for girls. This time is divided into two periods. The first period, extending to the age of seventeen for boys and sixteen for girls, calls for a minimum of three hundred hours a year, to be divided as follows: fifty hours for general education, one hundred fifty hours for vocational education, and one hundred hours for physical exercise. The courses and exercises of general and vocational nature are to be given during the legal working day and the physical exercises on Sunday. The second period, extending from the age of seven- teen to the age of twenty for boys, and from the age of six- teen to the age of eighteen for girls, calls for a minimum of two hundred hours. Marriage exempts from further attend- ance. Of this total one hundred hours of instruction are to be given to both boys and girls in subjects of general culture, such as French, history, geography, and civics, with household economy for the girls. The second hundred hours are to be devoted, in the case of boys, to physical and military exer- cises and, in the case of girls, to handwork, lessons and exer- cises in hygiene, practical medicine, and the care of children. Pupils in schools giving courses the equivalent of the higher section of the elementary primary schools are considered as satisfying the conditions of the bill; but in case they leave such school before the age of eighteen, they will be expected to attend the continuation courses. This form of education is shown to be considered as an aspect of primary education by reason of the fact that it is gratuitous. This interesting bill has not become law at the present writ- ing and it may be that the financial difficulties following the NATIONAL EDUCATION iii war may delay its passage for some time. But judging from the extension of the educational facilities provided for the youth of France during the history of the Third Republic, it is not too much to expect that steps will eventually be taken to expand, by means of post-adolescent part-time instruction, the necessarily limited acquisitions of the pupil in the elemen- tary primary school. Democracy in Education under the Third Republic The government of the Third Republic is representative of all the people, being based on a system of universal suffrage. The utmost freedom of thought, press, and discussion is legally safeguarded, and the principle of freedom of teaching, with the exception of the case of religious congregations, is recog- nized by law. Every Frenchman before the law is as good as any other, and the social and political inequalities of the Old Regime or of the governments immediately following the First Republic have no legal existence in France today. However, the government of France feels the direct influence of the popular suffrage much less than does the government of the United States. The government of France is truly a repre- sentative government. The people exercise their power through the election of representatives who themselves consti- tute the government. Thus the people elect directly the mem- bers of the municipal and departmental councils and the Chamber of Deputies, and indirectly the Senate. No direct popular vote is cast for any judicial or administrative officer. The prefects are appointed by the central government; the President of the Republic is elected by the two houses of the National Assembly. The Ministry stands or falls on the vote of the legislative body. The central government is a highly organized bureaucracy with powers extending down into the minutiae of local administration. We have observed the organi- zation of the educational system in France, which may be taken as typical of the entire administration. The government is thus seen to be considerably removed from direct control 112 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 of the people. Furthermore, in practice, the bourgeoisie con- trol the government. Almost without exception, the members of the legislative body are capitalists, landowners, or profes- sional men, and the baccalaureate is the prerequisite of a professional or official career. In spite of the absence of any legal definitions of social status, there are clearly defined social classes in France. The producers — those who work with their hands — constitute a class which is at the bottom of the social scale. There is a social stigma attached among the French to manual labor as it is considered to be servile and, in some sense, degrading. Those persons who earn their living in the manual trades or industries or in agriculture recognize their social inferiority. In many cases it is the ambition of a workingman to raise his son to one of the sub-classes of the bourgeoisie. The Bourgeoisie. — The bourgeoisie is described by M. Guerard ^ as comprising anyone who wears decent clothes and uses decent French. It includes everyone in France today above the toilers, for a bourgeois is essentially a capitalist, v/hether titled or not. The bourgeoisie is divided into lower, middle, and upper, and includes all grades of occupation and conditions of wealth from the small shopkeeper to the profes- sional classes and the great bankers and captains of commerce and industry. There remains, as well, the social distinction of noble descent. "The social line between smock-frocks and frock-coats is much sharper than in America, where many a wealthy man remembers his blue-jean days." And yet, while not so rapid as in America, transition from one social class to another is possible. The process of change of social status occurs in terms of generations, while with us it is likely to take place within the lifetime of a single individual, aided mainly by his own gifts and energy. Class Division of Schools. — The relationship of the French system of education to these underlying and condi- tioning facts of the nation's social and political hfe, is very 'See Guerard, French Civilization in the Nineteenth Century, p. 176. NATIONAL EDUCATION 113 clear. The schools are, practically speaking, divided under the Third Republic according to class distinctions. No mem- bers of a class above the lower bourgeoisie will avail them- selves of free education for their children. They regard it as diminishing their self-importance to have their children mingle indiscriminately with the crowd of children which the oppor- tunity of free education will attract. Primary education means free education. It draws its clientele mainly from the laboring classes, and to a certain extent from the petite bourgeoisie. The great mass of French children attend the primary schools. Social classifications in France are so stable that the primary system of education is provided for a group of children that will occupy practically the same social position as their parents. It is not expected that this group will furnish the future leaders of public opinion to any extent worth consider- ing. Accordingly, the French system is not organized with the expectation of revealing or developing in the primary school pupil those qualities and abilities that deserve opportunity for further growth and expansion through higher studies. Rather is he schooled in certain classes of information and in social attitudes. The Social Influence of the Higher Primary Schools. — We have observed the social conservatism of Guizot in 1833, when he desired to provide some extension of educational op- portunity for the members of the lowest social class, without, at the same time, infecting them with the desire for change of social status. The present purpose of the government with reference to the higher primary schools seems to be little different from that of Guizot. These schools, as we have seen, are fundamentally the means of preparing their pupils for advantageous entrance into the vocations and for the minor posts of industrial leadership. And yet the results of that in- struction, as indicated by the careers followed by the graduates of the higher primary schools, indicate that those intermediate schools serve to a considerable degree in aiding the more gifted children of the common people to improve their social status. 114 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 In other words, the higher primary school is a democratic agency in that it gives opportunity for ambitious and able children to rise into higher social stations. In 19 10 an investigation was made of the post-school careers of 11,879 boys and 6765 girls leaving the higher pri- mary schools. It was found that of the boys, 696 had entered other primary schools and 353 had entered secondary schools, 962 had gone to primary normal schools, and 225 had taken positions as teachers or surveillants in schools; 1073 had en- tered special schools preparatory to various vocations; 707 were employed in minor official posts of the state, the depart- ments, or the communes; 197 were employed in the railway service, mainly at desk-work; 2463 were engaged as clerks or bookkeepers in offices; 1279 were employed as workmen or ap- prentices in factories or on farms; 497 were employed in banks; 2079 had followed family occupations, of which 537 were indus- trial; 659, commercial; and 903, agricultural. These figures in- dicate better than almost anything else can the influence of the higher primary schools in the social redistribution of its pupils. About 3 per cent of the pupils went into the secondary schools; about 10 per cent were primary teachers or evidently intended to become such; about 33 per cent were engaged in or preparing for industrial or agricultural work; and about 39 per cent were working in "white-collar" commercial positions or preparing for such. When it is recalled that the petite bourgeoisie avails itself generally of the higher primary schools and in some sections the higher classes of the bourgeoisie to a considerable extent, the amount of social re-alignment brought about through those schools must be very critically estimated. The state offers 545 whole or partial scholarships including board — and, in some cases, an allowance to the family to reimburse it for the lost earnings of the child — to boys in the higher primary schools, and 551 such scholarships to girls. These scholarships are awarded on competitive examination and represent the intention of the state to aid ambitious and gifted youth of the lower social group. However, the total amount of aid so given NATIONAL EDUCATION 115 cannot be regarded as a very considerable amelioration of the inequalities of educational opportunity. Coordination of Primary and Secondary Education. — The reform of secondary education which took place by reason of the decree of INIay 31, 1902, exhibits a desire on the part of the lawmakers to coordinate more closely the work of the pri- mary and the secondary schools so as to encourage passage from the former to the latter. The first article of the decree states that secondary instruction is so coordinated with pri- mary instruction that the lowest class in the secondary school follows directly upon the ordinary fourth year of the primary schedule of studies. In practice, however, the study of for- eign languages is begun in the highest preparatory year of the secondary school, while no foreign language is taught in the first four years of the primary school. The result is that the pu- pil entering from the primary school is severely limited in his choice of secondary subjects. The state also offers numerous scholarships (1251 for boys and 315 for girls in 1913-1914) which are open to children of all social classes upon competitive examination and sustained excellence of school work. However, the costs of the careers opened through the secondary schools are so heavy that the children of the social classes lowest in the economic scale do not often take advantage of them. Pupils holding such scholarships have been known to give them up because of the inability of their families to see them through to the professional goal ahead. The French secondary school is the school for the well-to-do. Anyone may enter who can pay the fees and maintain the necessary style of living. Only the upper and middle bourgeoisie are willing or able to meet this expense for their children. As has been often enough pointed out by writers on French education, primary and secondary education represent two separate systems between which there is, practically speaking, a great gulf fixed. The distinction between them is not one of age of pupils, as is the case in the United States, for the secon- dary system has its preparatory classes which look after the earliest education of the children whose parents are willing to ii6 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 pay for the privilege of keeping their children away from those of their gardener, their chauffeur and their greengrocer. These two systems of schools draw their clientele from different so- cial classes and point their pupils and graduates into different social and economic paths. The practical caste organization of French education appar- ently has exerted a subtle, but nevertheless powerful, influence on the internal economy of the schools. The primary instruc- tion leads to a leaving-examination necessary for the pupil who wishes to engage in a gainful occupation at the expiration of his eleventh year or to a system of competitive examinations for scholarships in special primary schools. The secondary cur- riculum leads to the baccalaureate, which, it may be repeated, is no less a permission to enter certain lines of higher training in official service than it is a mark of a liberal education. By reason of these definite objectives, with their social impli- cations, French education has been very much a matter of teaching a syllabus of studies and of preparing for examina- tions. As a result of this same emphasis on examinations, the purely academic side has been stressed at the expense of physical education and the informal side of pupil life. The highly centralized control of education in France also works in the direction of imposing subject matter upon teacher and pupils and reducing the initiative of the teachers and the schools in the matter of selecting subject matter related to local needs or particular occasions. From the point of view of the ideal France has failed, as have all other countries to a greater or less extent, of realizing a democratic system of education. Ideally considered, democ- racy in education implies generous opportunity for every child, in spite of social distinctions and economic handicaps, to profit by educational opportunities that will enable him to develop his ability as far as possible to the ultimate advantage of him- self and of society. It implies, furthermore, that the internal economy of the school is to be such that each child may dis- cover his best capacities and find the means of developing them; and, finally, it means that the objective of school prac- NATIONAL EDUCATION 117 tices is the increase of intelligence in the pupil about everyday situations and the growth in power to meet the problems of citizenship in a critically intelligent spirit. Many of the existing limitations of a democratic system of education are recognized by some of the contemporary French educators and statesmen as problems calling for solution.^ The wooden memory-work of the schools, the lack of stimula- tion of the pupil's judgment and initiative, the over-emphasis upon passing examinations, the unresponsiveness of the pro- gram of studies to local needs and particular interests — all these matters are up for consideration in France today. The lack of social opportunity afforded by the dual system of edu- cation on caste lines and the essential waste to the nation at large in choosing its leaders in science, in literature, in gov- ernment, and in law on the basis of the wealth of parents, is being pointed out on all sides, and means of remedying this condition are being sought. One of the ways and means of enlarging the opportunities for secondary and higher education centers about a proposed ecole unique, which shall have as its foundation the elementary school, alike in its curriculum whether free or fee, and upon which may be built a varied structure of cultural, scientific, or technical education, open without economic or social restriction to all the children of all the people. It seems that the necessity which confronts France as a result of the war, of developing all the possible sources of economic productivity and spiritual leadership is pointing her to a reconstitution of her educational agencies in the spirit of Condorcet's prophetic words: "To offer to every individual of the human race the means of providing for his wants, of insuring his well-being, of know- ing and exercising his rights, of knowing and fulfilling his duties: "To insure to each the means of improving in his daily task, of making himself better fitted for the social functions to which he may rightly be called, to develop the entire array of gifts ' See Kandel, Education in France in igi6-i8, U. S, Bureau of Educa- tion, Bulletin, 1919, No. 43. ii8 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 which he has received at the hand of nature, and thereby to establish among the citizens an equality in fact, making real the political equality recognized by the law; "Such should be the predominant purpose of a national sys- tem of instruction, and, from that point of view, it is a fit func- tion for the state to undertake. "To direct education in such a way that the perfection of the arts will increase the happiness of the people at large and the prosperity of those who labor; in such a way that an ever-increasing number of persons will become better fitted to perform the work necessary to our social existence; in such a way that progress, keeping step with enlightenment, shall open an inexhaustible source of supply for our wants, of reme- dies for our ills, and of the means of individual happiness and common welfare; "To cultivate, finally, in each succeeding generation, all the powers of body, mind, and conscience, thereby contributing to the comprehensive and gradual perfecting of the human race — the final objective toward which every social institution should be directed: "Such should be, I say it again, the purpose of education; and it is a duty imposed upon the state by the common interest of society and of humanity at large." ADDITIONAL READINGS General Historical and Institutional Background. — Hayes, A Political and Social History of Modern Europe, Vol. II; Hazen, Europe Since i8i^; Guerard, French Civilization in the Nineteenth Centtiry. Education Source Material. — Greard, La legislation de I'instniction primaire en France, V; Annuaire de la jeimesse; Manuals of Moral and Civic Instruction in use in the French schools, among which may specially be mentioned G. Bruno, Les enjants de Marcel. Secondary Accounts. — Cyclopedia of Education, ed. by Monroe, article, "France, Education in" ; Farrington, The Public Primary School System of France; Farrington, French Secondary Schools; Hope, "Edu- cation in France," in Sandiford, Comparative Education; Scott, Patriots in the Making; Kandel, Education in France in 1916-18, U. S. Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 1919, No. 43. PART II PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE CHAPTER VIII THE REGENERATION OF PRUSSIA AND THE ORGANIZATION OF AN EFFICIENT NATIONAL SYSTEM OF EDU- CATION (1807-1840) Progress toward a State System of Education in the Eighteenth Century. — In some ways it is unsatisfactory and even incorrect to accept the reforms that followed the Peace of Tilsit as the beginning of national education in Prussia. As early as 1716, Frederick William I had published a rescript which made attendance at the village schools compulsory for all children not otherwise provided with instruction. A more thoroughgoing attempt to regulate school affairs is to be found in the "General Regulations for Village Schools," issued by Frederick the Great in 1763. In this official announcement, the earlier order for compulsory attendance was repeated, the school term and the school day were definitely organized, the curriculum was prescribed, clerical supervision was provided for, and many other matters relating to the conduct of the school were touched upon. A further step in the direction of nationalizing education in Prussia was taken in 1787 when the direction of school affairs was taken out of the hands of the consistories of the church and placed in the hands of an Oberschulkollegium, a board consisting of a group of state officials charged with the spe- cialized duty of school control. The effects of the legal change were nullified, however, on the succession of Frederick Wil- liam II, who was a violent opponent of the forces of national- ism and secularization. His appointments to the Oberschul- kollegium insured the continuance of the old church control over education in spite of the change in official organization. In 1794, when a codification of Prussian civil law was pub- 12 2 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 lished under the name Allgemeines Landrecht, the principle of state supremacy in education was definitely recognized. Indeed, a careful study of the numerous paragraphs of the Code that deal with education will show that the foundations upon which the later national system of education was built were firmly laid at least as early as 1794. The Code reiterated the principle of compulsory attendance and prescribed it as a duty of the school patrons to maintain a public school. The local officials of the church were recognized as the supervisors of the schools in their parishes, while the principle of non- discrimination against pupils on the grounds of religion was clearly set forth. Not only from the standpoint of legal enactments but from that of unambiguous educational thought, the national concep- tion of education had been fostered in Prussia years before Fichte spoke in Berlin on the same theme. Von Rochow, von Zedlitz, Basedow, and others had during the latter part of the eighteenth century advanced the political and secular impor- tance of education and had advocated it as an instrument of economic and social improvement. Frederick the Great had seen in education an important means of improving the eco- nomic condition of his country. He also saw the value of a gen- eral diffusion of elementary instruction in the preparation of non- commissioned officers for their duties in his army. He no less recognized the impossibility of bringing all his domains under a uniform legal and administrative system without the more general diffusion among his subjects of ability to read the official German language. Universal Education in' a Mediaeval Society. — It is of more than passing importance that the conception of universal elementary education should have received so great devel- opment in Prussia at a time when the social, economic, and political institutions of the country were so completely medi- aeval. Universal education under any absolute monarchy, even though the latter may be characterized as a "benevolent des- potism," is likely to exhibit the main characteristics of such a political regime. Prussia in 1763 and up to the date of the A NATIONAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION 123 reforms following the Treaty of Tilsit (1807) was extremely backward in its social and political institutions. There ex- isted numerous and heavy restrictions upon the cities, upon industries, upon individuals, and upon the land. Society was organized according to a rigorous class system. Education, too, reflected the mediaeval status of the people. No one was more concerned than Frederick the Great himself to see that the education of the people should stop short of that which would make them discontented with their lot and cause them to aspire to greater social, economic, and political freedom. (See Alexander, Prussian Elementary Schools, pp. 14-19.) Prussia had, at least theoretically, come to the principle of uni- versal education under national control, before its general social organization had been at all touched by the spirit of political liberalism; that is to say, before education had come to be thought of as a means of bringing to his highest potential human worth every child in the nation. The theory, and in part the practice, of a state system of education devoted to maintaining the status quo had gone into effect. The people of the lower classes, according to this conception, were to be educated for piety, morality, economic efficiency, and willing social subordination. Within limits they were to be improved, but care was to be taken that the education given should in no way tend to make them unpleasantly conscious of social inequality and ambitious for social change or the improvement of their individual positions in the social order. No Efficient National System before the Nineteenth Century. — The main justification for regarding the decade after the Treaty of Tilsit as the real beginning of national educa- tion in Prussia lies in the fact that the school system before that time existed largely in the statute books. German his- torians are unanimous in their statements that the schools for the common people were in a very inferior condition until after the agrarian reforms of vom Stein and Hardenberg had been put into effect. The miserable condition of the farming and laboring classes and the stagnation of industry made it im- possible for the state and the communities to support a plan 124 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 of universal education as contemplated in the laws. The pri- mary schools until well into the second decade of the nine- teenth century exhibited the meager religious curriculum and the brutal and repressive discipline that had been the rule dur- ing the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The teaching personnel still remained a nondescript collection of tradesmen, disabled and superannuated soldiers, and minor church ser- vants — frequently of doubtful morals and invariably with the slenderest imaginable equipment of school knowledge and skill. In the field of secondary education the traditional church control still obtained in spite of the statutory changes of the eighteenth century. Standards were not only low, they were non-existent. The teaching force consisted largely of young ministerial candidates waiting for places, and secondary educa- tion was administered rather as a branch of church work than as a civil function. It can thus be seen that in spite of the apparent development of a national system of education during the eighteenth century, there was nothing worthy of the name of national education in Prussia up to the time of the reforms that followed upon the Peace of Tilsit. National Disaster and the Treaty of Tilsit. — It is im- possible in this connection to relate the political and the mili- tary events which led to the defeat of Prussia at the hands of Napoleon and to the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807. It is suffi- cient to say that the highly efficient bureaucracy and the vic- torious army which had been organized through the administra- tive and military genius of Frederick the Great and kept at a high pitch of efficiency through his tireless industry, had through the nerveless guidance of Frederick William II, become but the hollow, dry-rotted outlines of their former power. His successor, Frederick William III, after his succession in 1797 to the throne of Prussia, made little improvement in the condi- tions of the government until the inglorious events of 1806-7 compelled him to consider drastic proposals regarding ways and means of bringing Prussia out of the degraded national condition into which she had fallen. A NATIONAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION 125 The Treaty of Tilsit deprived Prussia of all the territorial gains she had made at the expense of Poland since 1772, stripped her of all her territories west of the Elbe, laid upon her an indemnity of 120,000,000 francs, and compelled her to support an army of occupation of 150,000 soldiers. By a condition laid upon her the following year her army was limited to 42,000 men. The Birth of German Patriotism. — Here again in Prussia as in France in 1792, we may see the extremity of national need and the degradation of national pride operating to rally to new life the dispersed and inactive potentialities of the people. The tremendous developments which took place in Prussian life following the Peace of Tilsit are often described as a resurrection. In view of what was accomplished in a few years in the way of practical reforms and change of spiritual attitudes, the use of such language does not seem extravagant. An extremely important, if not the fundamental, change which occurred in Prussian and all German thought and feel- ing at this time, was the rapid growth of patriotism under the stimulation of German philosophers and poets. The great intellectual figures of the late eighteenth century in Germany had been indifferent to nationalism. Lessing, Herder, Kant, Goethe, — and, in their earlier years, Schiller, Fichte, and Hegel — were cosmopolitan or international in their thinking. Kant's writings are full of an ideal of perpetual peace and uni- versal brotherhood to be brought about through the gradual and peaceful penetration of benevolent ideas. Goethe even professed a great admiration for Napoleon, describing him as a "Weltgeist zu Pferde" and thus cataloging him among the cosmic forces leading to better conditions of human existence. Schiller, in one of his letters written in 1789, said that the philosophic spirit could not tolerate the limitation of its politi- cal thought to the unit of the nation, which he described as a form of human nature "arbitrary, fluctuating, accidental." He said further: "The most powerful nation is but a fragment; and thinking minds will not grow warm on its account, except 126 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 in so far as this nation or its fortunes have exercised influence on the progress of the species." ^ In general his early writings reflect a cosmopolitan rather than a national interest. Fichte, in a series of lectures given at Berlin in 1804- 1805 on "The Char- acteristics of the Present Age," considered the whole of Europe as a social unit and did not at all recognize nationalism as a valid political motive. Hegel is said to have written the con- cluding pages of the "Phenomenology of the Spirit" undisturbed in his study while the guns of the battle of Jena were sounding the knell of Prussian independence. But with the defeat of Prussian arms and the threatened disappearance of German national identity the thinkers and poets of German lands rallied to the Fatherland. Out of the very completeness of the disaster arose a greater, more com- prehensive conception of German nationality. The former congeries of three hundred states, most of them petty and in- significant, had been unable to call forth enthusiasm, and in place of that inglorious political system the poet and the philosopher turned to the conception of a united Germany. The appeal was made to all who spoke the German tongue and who were descended from the old German stock that had successfully resisted the Roman legions, to unite for the pur- pose of throwing off the yoke of French tyranny. The easy cosmopolitanism of the later eighteenth century became foreign to German literature. Kleist, Uhland, Korner, and Arndt made their passionate poetic appeal to the people at large, the phi- losopher Fichte found a hearing among the intellectual class. During the winter of 1807- 1808, while French soldiers policed the Academy of Science at Berlin as he gave his lectures, Fichte delivered a series of fourteen "Addresses to the German Na- tion" which, perhaps more clearly than any other document of the time, set forth the conception of nationalism and pro- posed education as the means of national regeneration. Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation. — Fichte made his appeal directly to the spirit of patriotism which he was certain existed in the hearts of millions of his fellow country- ^ Rose, Nationality in Modern History, p. 39. A NATIONAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION 127 men. He did not try to prove the existence of this sentiment; he even admitted that such an attempt would be futile. But he relied upon the presence in others of an emotion which in his own breast was all-consuming. Fichte laid the blame for Prussia's and Germany's misfor- tunes upon the excessive development of individualism which he called by the plain name of selfishness. The insularity of the little political groups, the divisions among social classes, the lack of cohesion among the individuals who composed the states, the passion for money-getting and individual success, were all symptoms of the single devastating national disease. To combat the mental illness with which the state was afflicted, it was necessary to substitute for the principle of self-seeking, the principle of self-devotion to a social organism which was to be coextensive with the prevalence of the German language. Fichte, however, did not rest his appeal entirely upon the emotion of patriotism. He drew arguments out of the unique character of the German people. The German race alone of European races, he said, had been able to keep itself pure from Roman elements. It was an Urvolk with a character all its own. Its continuance was a part of the Divine plan of the universe, because the German people had been put upon the earth to express its own particular genius. It would be un- thinkable that it should perish, because in the nature of things it was intended to endure. In general, however, Fichte's appeal was to an emotion which he helped largely to create — an emotion of whole-hearted, de- voted love of fatherland. It was the same appeal which had stirred France in the nineties of the preceding century to unex- ampled efforts of resistance against foreign invasion. It was, in short, that emotion of patriotism which gains little from an attempt at analysis or explanation, but which we can recog- nize as so potent a social force in past ages and as undimin- ished in the present. Fichte recognized the fact, however, that the flame which animated him did not bum in everyone, else Germany would not have fallen into such a low estate. The first business 128 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 before the nation was to teach the majority of the citizens the meaning of patriotism and in order to be sure of a major- ity, all would have to be taught. Thus arose one of the very definite reasons why a universal state system of education was necessary, namely, in order to inculcate blameless, ardent patriotism within the oncoming generation. Fichte considered nationalistic propaganda one of the most important functions of a state system of schools. In his adoption of the dominant principle of nationalism Fichte did not break completely with his own earlier thought life. He still considered the purpose of all political organiza- tion to be the freeing of the individual for self-development and self-expression. He complained of Pestalozzi's use of the ex- pression, "education of the common people," and desired that there should no longer be any common people in the sense of a lower and vulgar class. He conceived of a caste system of schools as being incompatible with German nationality and desired that every youth should be given the opportunity, ir- respective of his social origin or economic condition, of partici- pating as fully as his abilities would permit in a well-rounded plan of moral, intellectual, vocational, and physical education. Fichte thus is seen to have combined, in his "Addresses to the German Nation," the two dominant conceptions of nine- teenth century political development — namely, nationalism and democracy. The nation, he taught, is to be accepted as the unit of social organization. It must have and know its char- acter and destiny. It must achieve that character and that destiny through the conscious control of the education of all its youth. That education must liberate in each son of all the people the potentialities for national service that exist within him. Legal Changes in Social and Economic Conditions. — Parallel with the revolutionary changes in popular feeling which ensued upon a realization of the peril to German life and institutions that lay in the military successes of Napoleon, there occurred a series of administrative, economic, and social reforms which went far to remove Prussia from medisevalism. A NATIONAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION 129 It may be said that the spirit of Baron vom Stein, and in part, his own efforts, entered into the entire program of Prussian rehabilitation that was effected during the first two decades of the century. Vom Stein saw that Prussia's military organization had to be made over. With the compulsory restriction of the army to 42,000 men a plan was followed of having. 42,000 different men every year receive training and go into reserve. This was the beginning of the present Continental program of mili- tary training. It was developed and put into successful opera- tion by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau with important effects when Prussia took up the sword in 1813 to recover her lost inde- pendence. Through vom Stein's labors the financial system of the state also was reformed and put upon a firm basis. The Emancipating Edict of 1807 abolished the status of villeinage and made all persons free. It also removed the burdensome restriction upon the sale and exchange of land whereby thereto- fore "noble" land had had to remain in the hands of the nobles, "civic" lands in the hands of citizens, and "peasant" land in the hands of peasants. Furthermore, it broke up the pre- vailing caste distinctions of persons and occupations so that any one could engage in any calling to which his talents and in- clinations might call him. In 181 1 an important agrarian law removed troublesome fixed dues and quit rents upon the land and greatly stimulated the growth of a class of peasant pro- prietors. By the Municipal Act of 1808 towns were freed in local affairs from the control of feudal lords and the central government, and were given the right to elect councils for the administration of local business. The Organization of a National System of Education Legislative Reorganization of National Education. — No less important for the resuscitation of Prussia than the economic and social changes mentioned above were the steps taken to establish a strong national system of education. In 1807 a Bureau of Education was erected in the Ministry of 130 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 the Interior; and in 181 7 a separate Department of Educa- tion was created in the Ministry of Religion, Education, and Public Health. In 181 1 "Instructions for the Formation and Management of City School Deputations" were issued, ac- cording to which local boards of oversight and control for primary education were given a great deal of authority in school matters in towns and cities. The general introduction of local school authorities in the rural districts took place after 181 2 through the rescript of the royal Department for Religion and Public Instruction dated October 28 of that year. Through regulations issued in 181 7 and in 1825 the adminis- trative system in the provinces and the counties {Regierungs- bezirke) was established. Important reforms of secondary education were brought about during this same period. By a rescript of 'July 12, 1810, a special examination conducted by the state was made com- pulsory for all candidates for teaching positions in the secon- dary schools. Two years later, in 1812, revised regulations for graduation (leaving examinations) were published for secon- dary schools. Only such higher schools as were authorized to hold the official Jeaving examination were to be classified as gymnasiums, and only graduates from such recognized secon- dary schools were accepted for university studies without fur- ther examination. An account of the system erected in this legislation is pre- sented in a report made in 1831 by M. Victor Cousin, who was sent to Prussia by the French government of that time, namely, the July Monarchy, to examine the educational system of that country. The account may be regarded as authentic and as offering a good description of the educational machinery which Prussia had erected in the first quarter of a century following the Peace of Tilsit. We shall follow Cousin's account pretty closely for a description of the Prussian system of education in the period under consideration. Education Officials Representative of the Nation. — Education was represented in the King's Council of Min- isters in the person of the Minister of Religion, Education, A NATIONAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION 131 and Public Health. A Department of Education was one of the three departments organized in this ministry, and from 181 7 to 1840, at the time of his death, it was presided over by Baron von Altenstein. The educational authority of the state had direct control over the universities, of which there were seven, including the University of Berlin erected in 1810 at the time of Prussia's deepest national gloom. The appoint- ment of all university professors lay directly in the hands of the Minister of Education, but the election of deans, rectors, and other university authorities was left to the professors them- selves. Provincial School Administration. — For administrative purposes Prussia was divided into ten provinces. Each prov- ince was organized into lesser divisions known as Regierungs- bezirke. The Regierungsbezirke were subdivided into Kreise or circles and the circles into Gemeinden, or communities. The civil administration of each province was in the hands of a consistory, presided over by an Oberprdsident, and each consistory was divided into three sections corresponding to the three fields covered by the Ministry of Religion, Education, and Public Health. The section of the consistory in charge of education was called the Schulkollegium, or school board. It was largely lay in its personnel and its spirit was civil rather than ecclesiastical. The members of the consistory, in- cluding the members of the school board, were nominated di- rectly by the Minister. All correspondence dealing with edu- cation was carried on for the school board through the Ober- prdsident. The main business of the school board was with secondary education, although it was also responsible for the establishment and maintenance of teacher training insti- tutions for the primary schools and had a voice in all the more important decisions concerning primary education. Attached to the school board was an examination commission which was in charge of the examinations imposed by the laws of 18 10 and 1 81 2. The first of these, it may be recalled, set up a uni- form standard of proficiency for candidates for teaching posi- tions in secondary schools, and the second established the 132 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 standards of graduation from the gymnasium and admission to university study. Regency Administration. — The Regierungsbezirke, or administrative counties, into which the provinces were di- vided had each its president and its council. The council was composed of several councillors who divided among them the full range of official work. Among the councillors was the Schulrath, or school councillor, who was the special officer of the council for matters relating to public education. He was nominated by the Minister of Education. He corresponded, through the president of the council with the higher educational authorities of the state and directly with the subordinate offi- cials of the educational hierarchy. The Schulrath was the real director of primary education in each Regierungsbezirk . The close connection of the government as a whole with education was furthered by the fact that the Schulrath as a member of the council was at one and the same time an official of the in- terior department and of the public education department. Local Inspection and Administration of Schools. — For purposes of school inspection the Regierungsbezirke were subdivided into Kreise, or circles, each of which had its Kreisschulinspector, or circle school inspector. His authority extended to all the primary schools in his circle, and he was in close communication with the local inspectors and school officials. He was practically always a clergyman, and in Catholic parts the dean. The circle inspectors for Protestant schools were nominated by the provincial consistories and con- firmed by the Minister of Public Education. For Catholic schools they were first proposed to the consistories by the bishops and then presented by the consistories to the minister. The final administrative subdivision was the Gemeinde, or commune, parish, or school district. Each Gemeinde, accord- ing to law, was compelled to maintain at least one primary school. In the rural Gemeinde the local school authorities were called the Schulv or stand, or committee of management. The committee consisted of the school patron, the church, the clergyman of the parish to which the school belonged, the A NATIONAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION 133 magistrate of the Gemeinde, and one or two householders who were members of the Schulverein, or school association (see below). In every such association comprising persons of dif- ferent religious communions, care was to be exercised that each communion should be represented according to its num- bers. Certain members of the Schulvorstand, namely, the patrons or founders (if there were any), the clergyman and the local magistrates, formed the managing committee of the school. These managing committees had cognizance of all school matters, internal and external, but the ecclesiastical members alone had authority in all that belonged to the in- ternal order of the school and the superintendence and direc- tion of the schoolmasters. The civil representative had charge of the financial side of the school. The local pastor was thus officially designated as the local inspector of primary education, and he was expected to visit the school frequently and keep in close touch with it. In urban parishes with more than one school, each had its own managing committee and in addition there was erected a comprehensive body called the Schulkommission {Schuldepu- tation), or school commission, which was to have general juris- diction over the primary schools of the town. The same pre- dominance of official and ecclesiastical membership obtained in the Schtilkommission as was the case in the Schidv or stand. Likewise, all members of this, as of the other body, had to be approved and confirmed in their office by the provincial con- sistories. The Financial Support of Primary Education. — The maintenance of the local primary, or folk, schools was by means of Lands chtdvcreine, or country school associations. The Schulverein was under the direction of the local school authori- ties. It was composed of all persons owning real estate, whether or not they had children to send to school, and of all the householders living in the parish whether or not they were landowners. The formation of a Schulverein was not a voluntary matter, but was the legal organization of the means of school support. The fees levied upon the members were 134 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 collected as ordinary taxes. All landowners, tenants, and householders, without distinction, contributed in proportion to the income of their respective properties lying within the area of the association or to the product of their industry. They paid this contribution either in money or in kind or, if they could do no other, in building materials or labor. It should be pointed out in this connection, however, that every child attending school was expected to pay a fee, the Schulgeld, which was used toward defraying the expenses of the school. If pupils were too poor to pay the fee, they were given gfatuitous instruction and, in case of great need, were furnished with schoolbooks and other necessary school sup- plies. ^ An Efficient System of Compulsory Attendance. — In speaking of the duty of parents to send their children to school. Cousin says in his Report, "This duty is so national, so rooted in all the legal and moral habits of the country that it is expressed by a single word, Schulpflichtigkeit (school duty, or school obligation). It corresponds to another word, similarly formed and similarly sanctioned by public opinion, Dienstpflichtigkeit (service obligation, that is military service). These two words are completely characteristic of Prussia: they contain the secret of its originality as a nation, of its power as a state, and the germ of its future condition." The age of compulsory attendance was six to fourteen. In case the child had completed the course of study before reaching the age of fourteen, he could be excused from further attendance by the Schulv or stand. In general it was expected that he should attend school until the time of his church confirmation. In order to make effective the provision for school attendance, careful lists of all children of school age were compiled by the local authorities. In case of delinquency the police au- thority was brought to bear upon the parents of the delin- quent children. Permission was given to parents to provide elsewhere than in the public school of their own association for the education of their children, but this did not absolve them from the duty of paying their association dues. A NATIONAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION 135 Private Primary Schools Brought under State Control. — Private primary schools were allowed, but under very defi-' nite conditions and with adequate state supervision. The teacher had to submit to an official examination, usually by the circle school inspector, to show that he was intellectually competent to perform the work well. His moral record was examined with equal care. If the provincial consistory on re- port of the subordinate officials, found no fault with the appli- cant's credentials, it provided him with the necessary permis- sion to maintain a given school at a given place. When the license had been granted to open a private school, the school was assigned by the school commission to one of its members for his special supervision. This supervision extended to in- struction in the studies as well as to morals. The particular plan of instruction, the choice of books, of methods, and of rules for the school were to be left to the masters and mis- tresses. But in case anything was discovered that might tend to endanger the morality or piety of the pupils and in case bad masters or books should be employed, the inspectors were given power to lay a complaint with the provincial consistory, which had power to withdraw the license for the school and close it down in case such action seemed for the public good. The Certification and Appointment of Teachers. — No person was eligible to teach in a primary school without possessing a certificate of his fitness, obtained through examina- tion by official authorities. This examination was taken both by the students at the teachers' seminaries, or primary normal schools, as we usually speak of them, and by those candidates who had made their preparation in other ways. The secular and religious parts of the examination were separate, the latter being conducted by a church official of the sect to which the candidate belonged. A candidate who had been found on examination to be competent had his name placed on a list comprising all those from a given Regierungsbezirk. These names were officially published every six months. It was ex- pected that preference in the selection of teachers would be given to the candidates with normal training. 136 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 The election and nomin tion of the rural teachers lay in the hands of the Landschulvereine or school associations, which had the privilege of choosing any one from the official list. In towns the choice of teachers lay in the hands of the municipal and local education authorities. The nominating authorities gave each teacher chosen a certificate of nomination which had to be countersigned by the royal authority before it would possess validity. In the case of Catholic teachers, the bishops had the right to make objection to the ratification of the ap- pointment of any candidate. Only when the teacher had in his hand the certificate of nomination with its royal ratification, could he be regularly installed as teacher in a primary school. Once installed in office, the teacher was eligible to promotion and secure in his tenure. In case of professional neglect or moral delinquency he could be punished in various degrees and finally removed from office, but very definite safeguards were set up to provide against injustice. Provisions for Teacher Training. — A very important aspect of the national educational revival in Prussia in the first quarter of the nineteenth century was the strong effort made to improve the teaching personnel. The use of examina- tions to insure efficiency and the care used in appointments have already been mentioned. In addition, Prussia led the way in its effort to provide a thoroughly trained and profession- ally enthusiastic corps of primary teachers through its estab- lishment of Schidlehrer-seminarien, or primary normal schools. Even before the national disaster at Jena, Prussia had sent a representative to Burgdorf to observe Pestalozzi's methods. This representative. Seminary Inspector Jeziorowski, was ex- pected to bring back to those Polish territories belonging to Prussia as the result of the second and third divisions of Poland; methods of teaching which might hasten the relief of the educational destitution which existed in those territories. Later, in 1809, three young men, Preuss, Kawerau, and Hen- ning, were sent by the government to Yverdon to observe Pesta- lozzi's work. In the same year the government called Karl August Zeller, a Pestalozzian disciple, to be Schtdrath (see A NATIONAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION 137 p. 132) in East Prussia. He est'tolished a normal school at Konigsberg and later on he founded normal schools at Karalenei and Braunsberg. Eleven other government scholars were sent about this same time to Yverdon to learn Pestalozzi's methods and appropriate to themselves his spirit. These young repre- sentatives of the Prussian state returned to found normal schools and to take other important positions of leadership in the Prussian school system. It is thus seen that at the time of the greatest national enthusiasm and of the most liberal political thought that has ever existed in Prussia, the influence of Pestalozzi was brought into the Prussian primary school system. Later, we shall try to estimate the influence which this spirit was able to exert against the reaction which followed upon the Congress of Vienna in 181 5. Thus a very definite and practical result of the contact of Prussian officialdom with the genius of Pestalozzi was the establishment of seminaries or normal schools for the training of primary teachers. In 1831, according to Cousin, there was not a single Regierungsbezirk in any province of Prussia, without a teachers' seminary. The number of such schools was 38 in 1840. The cost of maintenance of the seminaries was borne by the provinces and the state. Students, however, were charged a moderate sum for tuition and board, which amounted to about one-half of the cost of their education. The institution as described by Cousin was a boarding school, usually with a model or practice school attached or easily available. Within the school an almost military discipline obtained and the general atmosphere was said to have been much like that of a barracks. Religious observances were fre- quent and the entire institution exhibited a strong religious tone. It was thought indispensable that pupils who were to become the teachers of the youth should be permeated with the spirit of religion. The moral and religious aspect of the normal training was easily placed first. A report of one of the great seminaries of this early period reads as follows: "We have abundant proof that the well-being of an individual, like that of a people, is nowise secured by extraordinary intellec- 138 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 tual powers or very refined culture. The true happiness of an individual, as of a people, is founded on strict morality, self- government, humility, and moderation; on the willing per- formance of all duties to God, his superiors, and his neighbors." The indication is very plain that the instruction in religion was to serve both as an instrument of personal piety and social conservatism. Religion showed the proper respect for the existing political and social orders; hence it was an important aspect of an instruction which was intended to improve the lot of the individual in the state, without in the slightest degree making him dissatisfied with his condition or desirous of changing existing institutions. Patriotism in the Teachers' Seminaries. — The seminaries were founded in considerable numbers during the period when Prussian national feeling ran highest under the insult of French sovereignty. It is to be expected, as was the fact, that they should be impregnated with the spirit of patriotism. Harnisch, director of the seminary at Breslau, chosen captain in the War of Liberation and enlisting with forty of his pupils, is only a conspicuous example of patriotic zeal which animated both instructors and pupils in the normal schools of Prussia. The spirit of national patriotism pervaded the instruction in the German language and literature, home geography and history and was made socially effective through the emphasis on group singing of popular patriotic songs. In the regulations of the small seminary at Pyritz, piety was to be shown, among other ways "by respect for the king, our sovereign, and by unshaken fidelity to our country." The Curriculum of the Seminaries. — The work of the larger seminaries was outlined to cover a period of three years, although many students left before completing the full course. The curriculum of the primary normal school at Potsdam is reported by Cousin to have been as follows: In the first year, under the heading religion, an introduction was made to bibli- cal and ecclesiastical history. German language was studied throughout the year; reading, arithmetic, geometry, and mathe- matics, writing, drawing, singing, thoroughbass and organ, A NATIONAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION 139 and violin. In the second year the instruction in religion was continued as a study of Christian faith and morals. German language study was continued. The other subjects mentioned as given in the first year were continued in the second, with the addition of general, physical, and mathematical geogra- phy, with a little of natural philosophy, and an introduction to natural history, including botany. In the third year, the students practised German composition and carried to a higher state of perfection their exercises in writing, drawing, and music, including musical composition. In addition they studied the "most important parts" of psychology and the sci- ence of methods of teaching, zoology, botany, and mineralogy, ancient, mediaeval, and modern history with special emphasis upon the history of Germany and Prussia, and particularly Brandenburg, and finally some introductory studies of physics. Such a curriculum as the one just described may justly be regarded as extremely liberal, and as likely to stimulate the pupils to independent thinking. To be sure the smaller normal schools did not have so extensive a course of study, but the larger ones were unable to escape the condemnation of numer- ous critics as offering entirely too extensive training to the men who were intended to teach in the primary schools. The Conflict between Liberal and Conservative Political Opinion We can see readily enough why the normal schools later on became the battle-ground of conservative and radical opinion. The primary school was a school for an inferior, politically im- potent social class. Its virtues were to be those of submission and loyalty. The normal school's mission was to provide teachers for the primary schools, and there was seen to be real danger in equipping those teachers with too extensive a training, and too independent an outlook upon life. The crisis in the history of Prussian public education was bound to turn upon this very point. Furthermore, it was inevitable that a crisis should arrive because of the necessary contradiction be- 140 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 tween education considered as a means of human development and education considered as an instrumentality to strengthen an undemocratic political and social regime. The point is so important for an understanding of Prussian education that it deserves extended consideration. Before the reforms that followed the Treaty of Tilsit, Prus- sia was thoroughly mediaeval in its social organization. We have already referred to the series of administrative and eco- nomic reforms brought about through Baron vom Stein and those who caught inspiration from him (see p. 128). These reforms removed the shackles of feudalism from Prussian so- cial life, but vom Stein was unable to remain in office long enough to carry out the plans which he had in mind of gradu- ally establishing a set of representative political institutions in Prussia and to give that country a constitutional govern- ment. The warmth of feeling generated by the consciousness of national disaster tended to unite all classes of society and to soften social distinctions. It was in the glow of this enthusiasm that the primary school system was planned and got under way. Fichte perhaps went farther than most of even the more liberal thinkers of Prussia, when he said that he did not wish to see schools established for the specific service of the lower social classes, but rather desired to have schools for all that could as rapidly as possible eliminate social distinctions denoting in- feriority and superiority. To educate every individual to his fullest possibilities in order that the state might enjoy the service of such unrestricted powers, — that was Fichte's ex- tremely democratic ideal. Mingled with a strong patriotic element this democratic ideal seemed to be influential in the earliest revival of Prussian public education. Siivern's Sketch of a General Education Law. — No offi- cial document more strongly substantiates the view that the motives underlying the early foundation of public education in Prussia tended to be liberal, than the sketch of a. general education law which was prepared by Councillor Siivern in 1819 on the order of the King. The outline was submitted by von Altenstein, the head of the department of education, to A NATIONAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION 141 various influential groups in the government, and on one ground and another it was opposed. The result was that the general education law as presented by Siivern was never promulgated. SUvern proposed that public education should be organ- ized in three successive grades. The lowest of these was to be called the common elementary school. It was to concern itself with the earliest systematic development of human capacities and thereby with the increase of intelligence, knowledge, and skill as suited to the educational needs of the lower social classes in the city and the country. The second grade of school was to be called the common city school and in it the education of the youth was to be carried to that turning point at which are customarily exhibited ability and inclination either for higher learned studies or for special preparation for a middle class occupation. The third grade of education was to be called the gymnasium, the objectives of which should be the laying of the foundations of a broadly cultural education and the preparation for the higher and specialized studies of the university. All three of these grades of education were to be so organized as to form an organic whole, and the lower were to serve as a preparation for the next higher. All pupils with- out discrimination were to be accepted for the common in- struction provided they were at all able to learn and prepared to undertake with profit the work of the grade for which they applied. The implication of Siivern's plan of organization is that the primary school was to serve as a preparation for more ad- vanced instruction, which in turn was to lead to the gymnasium and thereafter to the university. In other words he proposed to organize education as a "ladder leading from the gutter to the university." He desired to make it possible for any boy of the humblest social class in Prussia to rise as easily as pos- sible from that class to the highest official and professional callings and thus to improve his social position as far as his abilities and character allowed. And this plan seems to be a logical development of the educational ideas of Fichte and the social and political purposes of Baron vom Stein, 142 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 The Spirit of Political Reaction. — In order to understand the coolness with which SUvern's democratic proposal was re- ceived, it is necessary for us to recall that the overthrow of Napoleon by the alliance between England, Prussia, Russia, and Austria, was the beginning of a period of political reaction toward conditions as they had existed before the French Revo- lution and the victorious campaigns of Napoleon. The sym- pathy with any social developments that tended to restore their lost advantages, of those orders of the population whose prerogatives and privileges had been curtailed through the overthrow of the "old regime" was assured in advance. Be- sides this discontent of the nobility, the clergy, and the rulers, there was the strong desire of the middle class merchants, manufacturers, and bankers to see stable economic conditions restored. The ruling classes of the population had come to associate the economic losses and the personal privations of war with the principles of political liberalism; and they were willing to give their support to any system of government which promised the return of European society to a condition of peace and economic productiveness. The dominating spirit of the era which followed upon the Council of Vienna, 18 15, was Metternich. He was an implacable enemy of any move- ment toward the increased recognition of the common people and any tendency to augment their influence in the control of the government. Largely due to his influence, the reorganiza- tion of Europe in 181 5 took place through the use of the prin- ciple of restoring as far as possible the territorial boundaries and the form of political and social organization which the tremendous events of the preceding twenty-five years had dis- turbed. Attitude of Frederick William III. — In no country in Europe was the tendency towards political reaction more marked than in Prussia. A few of the South German States, Baden, Hanover, and Saxony, had granted constitutional char- ters to their citizens like that which Louis XVIII granted in France, but in Prussia the movement toward political liberal- ism began to show signs of defeat after 181 5. King Frederick A NATIONAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION 143 William III had never been in complete sympathy with the, liberal program of vom Stein, his great minister, and it was only the exigency of threatened, even accomplished, national disaster, that won his assent to social, political, and economic changes that barely brought Prussia out of the feudal organi- zation of the Middle Ages. As soon as the pressure of im- pending national ruin was removed, Frederick William III exhibited himself in the congenial role of "father of his people," interested in improving their condition, but staunchly inimical to any extension of political privileges to his subjects. His dilemma over the matter of popular education is well shown in the following quotation out of his "Self-confessions": "In respect to the loud and ever louder demand for popular edu- cation by means of improved schools, I find myself in a dis- agreeable position which causes me considerable uneasiness. It must be granted that popular education is the foundation upon which the welfare of the people must rest. A neglected, uncouth, illiterate people can be neither a good nor a happy people. Therefore I have given the good-schools interest a free hand and supported it as far as the economic condition of the state allowed. I have also been pleased to hear the many reports of progress in the Prussian territories. I have also had satisfaction in hearing the comparison made between my own land, in which the great majority of the children receive in- struction, and other lands of Europe in which no schools what- ever exist. "But just where educational conditions are most advanced, all kinds of doubts and forebodings force themselves upon me. May one ask himself regarding popular education whether or not it has its limits? If it has no bounds, then we are not justified in interfering with, hindering, or restricting its devel- opment, but must let it take its natural course. That, how- ever, I cannot approve without reservations. The answer be- comes still more difficult when one wishes to set up limitations and then tries to say where they are to be and whether or not they can be established. ^ "We do not confer upon the individual or upon society 144 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 any benefit when we educate him beyond the bounds of his social class and vocation, give him a cultivation which he cannot make use of, and awaken in him pretensions and needs which his lot in life does not allow him to satisfy." \J The old King wished to see his common people happy, but he could not see how they could be happy or the state be prosperous unless they remained common people and accepted the position of social inferiority to which their birth had called them. Public education made for the happiness of the com- mon people; but, unfortunately, it also had a tendency to cause them to aspire to be other than common people. It made them want to be merchants, bankers, poets, artists, uni- versity professors. It changed them from peaceful, dutiful, loyal subjects, working industriously at the vocation to which their fathers' birth had committed them, into restless critics of the government who talked much about the desirability of a Prussian constitution and some form of government through which their voices might be heard. No wonder the old King was in a dilemma, for his benevolence was checkmated by his conservatism. Official Conception of Folk Education. — The very nice balance which the Prussian government wished to see main- tained between cultivation and repression, is shown in the fol- lowing General Order sent out by Baron von Altenstein, Min- ister of Education, and the Minister of Finance: "According to my view of the matter, the primary schools have only to work to the end that the common people {das Volk): "i. May grasp and appreciate the Christian faith, simply and according to the gospels, but with vitality and inwardness of experience; "2. May find in this belief the basis and motive for a moral and happy Christian life; "3. May be intelligent in regard to all matters within the narrow sphere to which God has called them; * Tews, Ein Jahrhundert Preussischer Schulgeschichte. A NATIONAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION 145 "4. ]\Iay learn to express themselves concisely and logi- cally in regard to those same matters; "5. May be able to express themselves easily and correctly upon such more extended experiences as directly touch upon their sphere of life; "6. May learn to read, write, reckon, and sing; "7. May love their rulers and their fatherland, be informed, according to the needs of their social position, of the institu- tions and laws of their country, be contented with their social status, and live peaceful and happy in their lot; "8. May learn the indispensable and practically useful facts of nature, their application and use, the knowledge of hygiene, etc.; "9. And, to sum up all very briefly, may know how to serve and wish to serve God, the King, the fatherland, and themselves with strong, skillful bodies, awakened intelligence, and good conscience. "According to these principles I regard popular education as truly something more than a scanty instruction in the bare in- strumentalities of culture — reading, writing, and arithmetic. On the other hand I do not think that the principles enunci- ated will raise the common people out of the sphere designated for them by God and human society. I think rather that they are able to make the common man's lot agreeable and profitable to him." ^ The Liberal Conception of Popular Education. — In contrast with the halting assent of the King to a program of popular education which was leading he' knew not whither, and the statement of his INIinister of Education regarding what he thought the folk schools should accomplish and were ac- complishing, we may consider briefly the attitude of Adolph Diesterweg, one of the most liberal educational leaders of his generation. In a description of the conditions of popular education in Prussia about 1845,- Diesterweg regards as cause ^ Tews, Ein Jahrhundert Preussischer Schtdgeschichte . ^Diesterweg, Heinrich Pesldozzi, Rheinische Blatter, 1845. 146 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 for congratulation the improved schoolbuildings, the trained professional teachers, the liberal curriculum, the mild and beneficent discipline, and the patriotic and religious spirit which were to be found as characteristics of the primary schools. He describes a rich curriculum, including religion, music, arithme- tic, reading, language exercises, writing, geography, history, and elementary science. He says that the school had become an institution for the cultivation of human nature, in which men were built from within outward through the sound use of school materials and methods. His fundamental pedagogi- cal precept was that the young of the human species should be led and developed with reason and toward reason to the end that they may become truly men. Diesterweg certainly looked upon primary education in a very different way from von Altenstein. Diesterweg seemed to have no intention of maintaining, or trying to maintain an established social order. He was not afraid of social change. He did not look aghast at the ambition of the children of the common people to rise to a better social and political condi- tion. Rather he seemed to regard education as the means of removing as far as possible the burdensome restrictions which poverty and lowly birth imposed upon those children. The Actual Conditions. — The real situation in Prussia, as far as primary education is concerned, between about 181 7 and 1840, seems to be that the initial impulse of the heroic days of the Regeneration was strongly taken up in the institutions and personalities of primary education. The normal schools were founded with a liberal curriculum and they retained it during the period named above. Von Altenstein was con- servative in politics, but hardly a reactionary, and it would seem that he did not seriously interfere with the liberal ten- dencies of the primary normal schools, which were passed on to a considerable portion of the teaching personnel. However, as we shall see later, not all the educational leaders of the day were in accord with Diesterweg. Indeed, some of the most ar- dent propagandists of reaction in public education were found among the most important schoolmen. The crisis which arose A NATIONAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION 147 from this division of attitude occurred after the death of von Altenstein and his old master, King Frederick William III, in 1840. SUvern's proposal of 18 19 to establish an educational ladder beginning with the primary school and leading to the university was not accepted, for reasons which must by now be per- fectly plain. Official, governing Prussia was not ready for such a democratic step. Rather the distinction between folk education and secondary education tended to be more sharply drawn as the years passed. Mention has already been made (see p. 131) of the reform of the leaving-examination in 181 2, whereby the work of the gymnasium was standardized. At the same time the leaving-examination of the gymnasium was ac- cepted as a test for university entrance and only those secon- dary schools which were classified as gymnasiums were quali- fied to present their graduates, without further examination, for university matriculation. However, for years the door to the universities was kept open by the practice of admitting persons to university study who might have passed examina- tions given in the university after they had made preparation in other ways than through study in and graduation from a gymnasium. It was only in 1834 that the monopoly of the gymnasium over university entrance was made complete. The effect of this change was practically to eliminate the children of the common people from professional life and the civil service. The Carlsbad Resolutions. — The year 1819, in which Suvern's proposed law was submitted to the government, was also the year in which the Carlsbad Resolutions were passed by the German Diet. Thus the year which saw the most liberal development within German school officialdom, saw the application of most severe restrictions upon academic freedom in German secondary schools and universities. Greatly aroused by some minor disturbances among students of the universities, Metternich induced the Diet to pass a compre- hensive set of measures designed to eliminate root and branch in the higher educational institutions ^ any movement in the ^ See Robinson, Readings in Modern European History, II, pp. 547-50. 148 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 direction of liberal political thought. These measures were to include the appointment for each university of a special representative of the government who was to reside in the institution. It was to be his function to see to the strictest enforcement of existing laws and disciplinary regulations, to observe carefully the spirit which was shown by the instructors in their public lectures and regular courses, and, without di- rectly interfering in scientific matters or in the methods of teaching, to give a salutary direction to the instruction, having in mind the future attitude of the students. Lastly, he was to devote unceasing attention to everything that might promote morality, good order, and outward propriety among the students. The information provided by the special agents was to enable the government to remove from the universities or other pubHc educational institutions "all teachers who, by obvious deviation from their duty, or by exceeding the limits of their functions, or by the abuse of their legitimate influence over- youthful minds, or by propagating harmful doctrines hostile to public order or subversive of existing governmental institutions, shall have unmistakably proved their unfitness for the impor- tant office intrusted to them." No instructor expelled for such cause was to be eligible for appointment in any other public in- stitution in any country represented in the Diet. The Carlsbad Resolutions also reaffirmed the laws against student societies, especially the Burschenschajten, which had had their origin in the dark days following the Peace of Tilsit and were impregnated with a strong patriotic sentiment. Any one found to belong to such a society was to be expelled from the university and could not be matriculated at any other German university. Membership in such societies was also declared by the resolutions to be a permanent disbarment from public office. An Estimate of National Education in Prussia. — Our final estimate of the educational system developed in Prussia between 1807 and 1840 must find place for diverse and, in some cases, conflicting elements. It was national to an extent un- A NATIONAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION 149 realized either at that time or for a half-century thereafter in any other country of Europe. Its plan of organization in- cluded schools for the common people, and schools for the intellectual and social leaders in the state. It included also an effective system of administration extending in a well-knit hier- archy from the minister of education down to the teacher in the lowest school, with adequate executive, advisory, and in- spectional functions provided for. There could be no doubt that the education system had its place in the state system of administration on the same basis as the army, the police, or the judiciary. The teacher in the school held his commission from the state and was expected to be loyal to the government just as was the officer in the army. The spirit of instruction was to a considerable extent religious, but religion also was a function of the government and was conceived of as an effective means to social security and political conservatism. "God, King, and fatherland," love and service of which the schools were expected to foster, were regarded as a trinity, the mem- bers of which were more or less equal, equivalent, and inter- changeable. Furthermore, the formation of the proper attitude toward "God, King, and fatherland" was not left to casual chance or to any general expectation of satisfactory results, but the exercises of the school in religion, the German lan- guage, history, and music were definitely and specifically di- rected toward securing the loyalty of each child of the kingdom. The entire school system was intended to serve "as a nursery of blameless patriotism." It is of very great significance for the subsequent social and political history of Germany, and particularly of Prussia, that the thoroughgoing organization of a national system of education in Prussia occurred at a time when Prussia had barely emerged from strictly feudal institutions and attitudes. In a country without any system of popular representation, even as modified by conditions of wealth or birth, the installa- tion of a strong bureau of education represented simply an extension of the King's arm and constituted an additional force at his command for controlling the thought and actions of his 150 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 people. The various councils and the different grades of executives did not reflect in any sense the will or feeling of a majority, but were rather appointees of an irresponsible cen- tral government and a part of a hand-picked bureaucracy. It is easily seen that a national system of education imposed upon a people without any political rights or representative institu- tions, could with a change in the kingship result in an instru- mentality of repression or in an agency making for the spread of enlightenment and individual freedom. In this respect, Prussia stands out in sharp contrast with France, where the Napoleonic ambition to impose a national system of education upon the French people in the interests of his own power, was defeated by reason of the even division of responsible and influential public opinion. ADDITIONAL READINGS General Historical Background. — Hayes, A Political and Social History of Modern Europe; Hazen, Europe Since 18 is; Marriott and Robertson, The Evolution of Modern Prussia. Education Sources. — A rich collection of .source material for the period is to be found in Lewin, Entwicklung der Preussischen Volks- schule; Fichte, Reden an die Deutsche Nation; Cousin, Public Instruc- tion in Prussia, tr. by Austin; Stowe, The Prussian System of Public Instruction; Horace Mann, Seventh Annual Report of the State Board of Education, Massachusetts. Secondary Accounts. — Alexander, The Prussian Elementary Schools; Cubberley, History of Education; Kandel, The Training of Elementary School Teachers in Germany; Lewin, Entwicklung der Preussischen Volksschule; Paulsen, German Education Past and Present; Paulsen, Geschichte des Gelehrten Unterrichts; Russell, German Higher Schools; Tews, Ein Jahrhundert Preussischer Schulgeschichte. CHAPTER IX MIDCENTURY POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS AND THEIR EFFECTS ON PUBLIC EDUCATION (1840-1871) The Advent of a New Political Period, — With the death of the venerable King Frederick William III in 1840, a new political period began in Prussian and German national life. The rigid censorship of the press, the lack of opportunity for public assembly, the close control exercised by the government over the utterances of university professors in regard to politi- cal matters, together with the absence of representative insti- tutions in Prussia, had been tolerated, more or less quiescently, by the intellectual groups of the middle class. It may even be said that the common people hardly noticed these restrictions, for they had never been used to anything else and no pro- nounced change of economic life, except perhaps in the Rhine- land, had intervened to make them conscious of lack of politi- cal freedom. The accession of the new King -Frederick Wil- liam IV may be taken as the beginning of a period of active agitation for representative political institutions and for a recognition of certain fundamental rights of the citizen, such as freedom of speech and the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom from arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. The move- ment in the direction of liberalized institutions in Prussia was joined with a very strong effort to weld a united German state out of the political fragments whose lack of cooperation, mutual jealousy, and general impotence left them the natural prey of their greater neighbors. At no period of German and Prussian history were the two political motives of democracy and na- tionalism so closely joined together as during the first ten years after the accession of Frederick William IV. 151 152 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 The New King's Political Attitude. — In spite of the repression which had been systematically practiced following the Carlsbad Decrees (see p. 147) liberal sentiment in Germany had made considerable progress among the intellectual and the upper middle classes. This was particularly true in the Rhine provinces of Prussia and the South German states, which have always exhibited traces of the bath of democracy they re- ceived during the French Revolution and under Napoleon I. It seemed as if the new king was in sympathy with the new forces of public opinion. He loosened the censorship of the press, recalled certain distinguished Liberals to university and civil posts from which they had been driven during the pre- ceding period of oppression, and, in many ways, showed that he was opposed to the petty interference with personal liber- ties which had been in vogue before his time. However, the new king wished for a sort of political reform that rested on mediaeval conceptions of kingly benevolence. He wished to see political representation achieved through a re- newal and strengthening of the Provincial Diets and the in- stitution of a central body of representatives of the local Diets which was to serve in an advisory capacity to the king, but was to have little or no power to originate legislation and no power to block the will of the sovereign. He was violent in his denunciation of written constitutions, which would come between the king and his "children." No more staunch ad- herent to the "divine right of kings" conception has ever oc- cupied the Prussian throne. Frederick William IV was appre- ciative of a political change which the last decades had brought about and was willing to recognize the new conditions — but only in his own way, which was thoroughly mediaeval. If a parliament was conceived of as a body representative of static social units petitioning for rights, or as an advisory body, giv- ing advice when asked, he was in favor of such an institution. But it was only the pressure of violent revolution that ever caused him, for a short time during 1848, to accept a legisla- tive body actually representative of the people and to which the government was responsible. REACTION IN EDUCATION 153 The Revolution of 1848. — The succession of events lead- ing up to the decisive conflict between the liberal and the re- actionary forces in and after 1848, began with the desire of the Prussian government to secure a loan to meet the cost of con- structing state railways. In 1842 the King called a committee of delegates from the Provincial Estates and asked their authority for the loan. This the committee refused to give, thinking that it lay outside of their powers. Baffled in this attempt, the King in 1847 called a meeting of all the Pro- vincial Estates in Berlin under the name of the United Pro- vincial Diet. This body was to serve as a kind of advisory council to the King, but was to have no initiative in legislation and was to be called only at the discretion of the King. The Diet held out for a real representative body and refused the King's demand for the railway loan. Neither side would give in, and the Diet was dismissed. Meanwhile events in South Germany were stimulating the spirit of revolution and Europe as a whole was in unstable political equilibrium. The success of the February Revolution (1848) in France caused the fires of revolution to spread throughout the South German states, to flare out in Italy, and to burn with such violence in Vienna as to threaten for a time the overthrow of the Austrian government and ihe disruption of the Austrian state. In March the growth of radical feeling in Berlin was rapid. After some street fighting the King on March 17 yielded to the revolutionaries and called a meeting of the United Diet which was to propose a representative con- stitutional government for Prussia. A few days later he called for the popular election of members to a national Constituent Assembly which was to propose a form of federated national government for the German states. This body known as the Frankfort Parliament met at Frankfort the following May. We can thus see that within the years 1848 and 1849 two constitutional gatherings were deliberating over the political destinies of Prussia and Germany. The United Diet at Berlin was engaged in an endeavor to formulate a plan of government whereby Prussia might be made a modern state, with a gov- 154 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 ernment responsive to the will of the people. The National Assembly at Frankfort was striving to formulate a system of federated control by means of which a single, unified government might be provided for all the German states. In both assemblies, the principles of democracy controlled the deliberations and conclusions of the members. Failure of the Revolution. — The sittings of the United Diet and the Frankfort Parliament were without any positive practical results. The nationalistic movement broke against the impossibility of reconciling the claims of Austria and Prussia for leadership in the German nation to be formed out of the fractional Ger- man states. It did not seem feasible to admit the Slavic popu- lations of the Dual Monarchy to membership in the German nation, and Austria refused both to be divided and to allow a German nation to be formed without her participation. Thus the project of nationalization split in 1848 on a point of prac- tical politics which could not be decided by the processes of parliamentary debate. The natural leaders of German politics were Austria and Prussia. Austria found it to be in line with her policy to discourage a close union among the other German states including Prussia. Accordingly, the only hope of na- tionalization lay in the leadership of Prussia and the practical elimination of Austria from German affairs. And that meant one thing only — war. It was Bismarck who saw and accepted this alternative in the sixties. The meeting of the United Diet in Berlin as a National Assembly had not succeeded in formulating a new constitution for Prussia before the King had taken courage from the suc- cess of Austria in putting down her revolutionaries. In No- vember 1848 the King dismissed the "constitutional" ministers who had been forced upon him and turned to his army for support. The army throughout the entire year of revolution had been loyal to the King and the government and its officers had been only contemptuous of the King's weakness in bowing before the popular tumult. A few days later the Assembly was prorogued to meet at Brandenburg. When the Assembly REACTION IN EDUCATION 155 refused to budge, the army took charge of the situation and the constitutional convention was at an end. On the same day, a constitutional charter which embodied the King's con- ception of representative government was published by royal edict. The following year elections were held according to the terms of this instrument and the representatives of the people met to revise the constitution granted by the King. After fruitless discussion and much friction between the King and the Chambers, the latter were dismissed. The constitu- tion as finally promulgated by the King in 1850 was the system of government which continued in force in Prussia up to the signing of the armistice in 1918. The Constitution of 1850. — By the terms of the Constitu- tion of 1850, the supremacy of the crown was assured. The King was given the power of appointing the ministers, who were to be responsible, not to the legislature, but to himself. The powers of the legislative body were limited to the con- sideration and amendment of bills proposed by the King's government, and the King retained the right to veto any bill passed. The legislature consisted of two houses, namely a House of Lords (Herrenhaus), all members of which were hereditary, ex officio, or appointive by the crown, and a House of Representatives {Abgeordnetenhaus) , elected on principles of double election and a three-class suffrage. All adult males were to be allowed to vote for electors to choose the members of the House of Representatives, but the voters were to be divided into three classes on the basis of the amount of taxes paid by each. The voters, or voter may be, who paid the first third of the total amount of taxes for a given district, constituted one class. And so for those who paid the second and the last third of the total amount of taxes. Each of these groups voted separately for its own representatives to a convention whose business it was to elect the members of the lower house. It is seen that this system was a very frank effort to place a preponderance of political power in the hands of the wealthy and to keep it out of the hands of the great mass of city artisans and agricultural toilers. The Constitu- 156 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 tion of 1850 was thus not in any real sense based on universal suffrage, because the votes were of very unequal value. The vote of a single great landowner or industrial magnate was given as much weight as the combined votes of hundreds of the peasants on his estate or of the workmen in his factory. Prussia came down through the last half of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth with this his much restricted type of suffrage and a form of constitutional government which left the crown practically absolute in its control over public policies. This fact is significant not only for an under- standing of Prussian life since 1850, but for the better appre- ciation of German institutions as a whole, because Prussia has been a dominant power in the new Germany since 1870 and has impressed her own political nature in an unmistakable way upon the German nation. Midcentury Intellectual Movements. — So far we have considered the character and activities of Frederick William IV only from the standpoint of political movements. In order to understand the educational developments of the period 1 840- 1 8 70, it will be equally necessary to note his reaction to certain religious and intellectual tendencies of his time. The first thirty or forty years of the nineteenth century felt the predominance of idealistic philosophy. Hegel came to have almost the same standing in the Prussian secondary schools and universities as Aristotle enjoyed during the early Middle Ages. His philosophy was spoken of officially as the true philosophy and was generally accepted in intellectual circles as a valid description of reality. Hegel had come to a very satisfactory compromise with revealed orthodox religion, for in his system of thought the Christian religion was placed at the highest point of evolution of the Divine Idea in the realm of spirit, where it existed as a more imaginative, more emo- tional counterpart of pure philosophy. Thus Hegel's system absorbed orthodoxy and found a safe and honorable place for it in a rigidly philosophical description of reality. According to Hegel there was no possible conflict between religious faith and philosophical insight. REACTION IN EDUCATION 157 In the thirties, however, men began to turn away from the' idealism of Hegel and Schelling, and by the forties the tide of reaction against speculative philosophy was at flood. Scholars began lO distrust the formulation of grandiose speculative systems and to take up the patient, careful business of scien- tific research. Science became a matter of the laboratory and not of the poet's flight. History was studied more and more exclusively from the original sources. Theology adopted the methods of historical criticism. By the fifties, Hegel was as much the object of anathema as in the twenties he had been the revered object of intellecual obeisance. We may perhaps best appreciate the turmoil which ensued in religious quarters upon the beginnings of higher criticism by recalling the excitement, the disgust, the fiery denunciation, which some of our older contemporaries exhibited years ago when the claims of textual and historical criticism of the Bible first came to their notice. But even that is not a satisfactory analogy, for in our times those conceptions had become more or less familiar. Imagine the shock of outraged sensibilities that must have ensued upon the publication in 1835 of Strauss 's Lebcn Jesu or of the works of Baur and the so-called TUbingen school. It was a period when cold-blooded science and the critical historical spirit laid hands upon the sacred Christian tradition and defiled all of its treasures, casting into doubt or contempt all that men had lived by and held dear. We have come through that time, and realize that, after all, the essen- tials of religion are not affected by the application of the standards of science and historical criticism to the Bible or the person of the Christ. But in the middle of the century, the saving of all that was best in our Christian civilization seemed to the orthodox believer to be tied up indissolubly with the refutation of the newer and more dangerous heresies of "higher criticism." Frederick William IV, in company with many, probably most, of his official family and of the members of the influential social classes, was a vigorous and spirited opponent of the new attack on the ancient faith. Personally, the King was a deeply religious character, loyal 158 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 to the Church, active in his observance of religious ceremo- nials, and profoundly convinced of the socia! importance of piety among his people. Joined with the intellectual prepossessions of the ruling classes in favor of orthodoxy in religion, was an equally firm and consistent opposition on their part to the new socialistic theories, which were rapidly gaining currency in the various capitals of Europe in the fourth and fifth decades of the last century. Karl Marx, whose name is generally to be taken as a symbol of classical socialism, was the most influential German representative of the new political and economic theory. We can get some idea of the fear which the socialistic tenets aroused in the minds of sober, respectable, property-owning persons in the thirties and forties by recalling the recent hys- teria in American public life over Bolshevism and "red" doc- trines. Only in the fifties the ideas were new and conse- quently more terrifying, implying as they did political control on the part of untutored laborers under the harebrained leader- ship of university dreamers and poor garret-cats who had made a failure of the main business of life, which was to get money or its equivalent in position. Let us add that the two sets of radical ideas, religious and social, coalesced to a certain degree in the same persons. In- tellectuals, who accepted the new religious apostasy, were inclined to be liberal in politics, and no sharp lines were drawn among the various shades of political liberalism. Any tendency to change the established political and social order was suspect. On the other hand, the radical political groups were in prin- ciple opposed to the church as a bulwark of conservatism and the established order, and to orthodox religion as a council of submission to the divinely established authority set over the common people. Official Repression of Religious and Political Heresy The political and intellectual situation which we have been at pains to describe at some length must be understood if the REACTION IN EDUCATION 159 educational developments in Prussia in the reign of Frederick William IV^ are to become at all intelligible. From the very first days after his accession to the throne until insanity caused him to lay down the reins of government, the King showed his intention to combat by all the powers he had under his control, the new and dangerous tendencies in religion and politics. The old Minister von Altenstein, who had shown himself, on the whole, friendly to the expansion of the primary schools and had allowed secondary education to develop along broad neo-humanistic lines, died in 1840, and as his suc- cessor the new King appointed von Eichhorn. By Eichhom and his assistants, the schools were considered exclusively from the political and religious point of view and they endeavored from the first to make them sound in both relationships. Attack on the Teachers Seminaries. — The center of the conservative, or reactionary, attack, as one chooses to name it, was the training given prospective primary school-teachers in the normal schools or seminaries. As early as December, 1840, a ministerial circular expressed the governrnent's disapproba- tion of the current agitation among teachers for a dissolution of the existing close alliance between the State and the Church. It also placed the blame for this and other evils upon the over- ambitious programs of studies followed in the normal schools. The normal schools, it was said, were giving their students a learned education superior to that, in many cases, of pastors and of teachers in secondary schools. Such an education could only arouse ambitions in the recipient which could not possibly be realized in his calling and which would only make him discontented with his position in life and an infectious spot of discontentment for others. Thus the normal schools were failing to reach the expectations of the law-giver and were doing a disservice both to their pupils and the primary schools. The pupils were being estranged in their manner of thinking and their mode of dress and living from the severely simple conditions of existence as village school-teachers. "I am convinced," the circular runs, "that, as is true of all schools, but especially of the Volksschuleii, they must concentrate i6o NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 their efforts first upon the revealed truths of Christianity, and then upon modesty in the demand for the enjoyments of Hfe, upon fidelity to their vocational duties, and upon the virtues which result from neighborly affection, and, finally, upon that knowledge which is a part of human culture and which ad- vances and ennobles existence. Upon those conditions they will be able to form a sound and contented generation." ^ As a counterbalance to the too-ambitious academic pro- grams, the government in 1842 introduced horticulture as a required subject in the normal schools. A little later (1844), a circular prohibited to the normal school students the dele- terious unsupervised browsing in the institutional libraries which had been taking their attention from more worthy ob- jects. It was made a special task for the inspectors to see that only the "best" books were to be found in those libraries, and to find out what books were in the personal possession of the teachers and warn them against the reading of harmful literature. Special warning was conveyed against the use of Dinter's "School Teachers' Bible." Eichhorn's interference in normal school affairs reached its climax with the closing of the Evangelical Normal School at Breslau as the result of the interest which some of the students had exhibited in a course in the Polish language, and with the^ismissal_Qf_AdQlf Dies- terweg from his post as director of a normal school in Berlin. Tews, in the work quoted from above, says that Diesterweg was compelled to relinquish his office because "he bore the colors of a type of education which aimed at freeing and de- veloping the human capabilities of even the poorest child." I The Schoolmasters and the Revolution. — It was but natural in the revolutionary forties that schoolmasters, who had in large part come from the lower social and economic classes, should play an important part in the effort of those politically submerged portions of the population to gain politi- cal recognition. They were able to write and to speak and they made large use of the position of advantage which they ^ Quoted from Tews, Ein Jahrhundert Preussischer Schidgeschichte, pp. 1 1 5-6. REACTION IN EDUCATION i6i thus held in forwarding the cause of liberalism. After the fall of Eichhorn, as a result of the events of 1848, a great assembly of teachers at Tivoli, near Berlin, addressed a series of resolutions to the new government, which were concurred in by numerous other meetings of teachers throughout the countrj^ Their recommendations included a demand for the establishment of a separate ministry for education; the inspec- tion of schools by professional schoolmen; the making of education exclusively a state matter completely separated from official connection with the Church; the organic interrelation- ship of education from the folkschool, through the higher burgher school, to the gymnasium and the university; the establishment of continuation schools and infant schools; the recognition and organization of teacher-training establishments as a branch of the university, for entrance to which would be required a diploma from a higher burgher school or a gym- nasium; and the setting up of a minimum salary schedule of from 250 to 400 thalers. It is extremely significant to note that it was not until 19 19 that many of these recommendations were accepted in the Constitution of the German Republic. Frederick_William IV on Teachers Seminaries. — How suddenly the wind changed in educational quarters is shown by the proceedings at a conference of teachers in training col- leges held in 1849 under the management of Privy-councillor Stiehl after the King had regained control of the government. The representatives of the training colleges had been selected by the Ministry of Education and the matters to be discussed had been drawn up beforehand and submitted for their con- sideration. Just what the government expected of this packed conference is shown in an address made by the King in person at one of the sessions. The address is frequently quoted in part, but it is so vivid and reveals so much that it seems worth while to give a rather extensive extract from it in this con- nection.^ "All the misery which has come to Prussia during the past ^ Original taken from Tews, Ein Jahrhundert Preussischer Schttlge- schichte, p. 126. i62 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 year is to be credited to you and only you. You deserve the blame for that godless pseudo-education of the common people which you have been propagating as the only true wisdom and by means of which you have destroyed faith and loyalty in the minds of my subjects and turned their hearts away from me. Even while I was yet Crown Prince I hated in my inner- most soul this tricked-out, false education strutting about like a peacock, and while I was Regent I made every effort in my power to overthrow it. I will go ahead on this beaten path without allowing myself to deviate from it. First of all, these seminaries every one must be removed from the large cities to small villages, in order that they may be kept away from the unholy influence which is poisoning our times. And then everything that goes on in them must be subjected to the closest supervision. I am not afraid of the populace, but my bureaucratic government in which up to now I have had proud confidence, is being undermined and poisoned by these unholy doctrines of a modern, frivolous, worldly wisdom. But as long as I hold the sword hilt in my hands, I shall know how to deal with such a nuisance." Official Reorganization of Seminaries and Folkschools : Regulations of 1854. — The Constitution of 1850 promised a comprehensive law governing education in the state of Prussia. The active agitation for school reform through the promulga- tion of such a general education code kept up until Karl von Raumer became Minister of Education toward the end of the year 1850. He expressed himself as opposed to any immediate attempt to draw up a general law and proceeded to show it to be superfluous through the introduction of his educational policies through official regulations. By means of this weapon he waged war on agitation among schoolmen by forbidding attendance at the meetings of general educational associations. In place of these dangerous meetings he organized conferences at the various normal schools, which could be supervised and controlled. He made it illegal to publish the educational writings of Adolph Diesterweg and Friedrich Froebel, although his opposition to the principles of the kindergarten are said to REACTION IN EDUCATION 163 have arisen from the confusion in his mind of Friedrich with Karl Froebel, who was a political radical of the day. The culmination of this repressive policy and the complete triumph in school affairs of the party conservative in politics and or- thodox in religion, occurred with the publication of the Regu- lations of October i, 2, and 3, 1854/ These orders deal re- spectively with the organization and the curriculum of the Evangelical normal schools, the schools preparatory to the normal schools, and the one-class elementary schools. The educational organization resulting from these three Regula- tions is highly instructive as an example of a well-thought-out and carefully planned effort to use a national system of schools for the development of a desired culture among an entire people. General Principles to Govern Instruction in Teachers Seminaries. — The Regulation of October i, relating to the Evangelical Seminaries of the Monarchy, states by way of preliminary that the day of freedom for them was at an end. Hitherto they had been allowed great freedom in organizing their curricula and in choosing educational ways and means. From now on they were to accept their mission as being the preparation of teachers for the primary schools through the use of definitely assigned materials and methods of instruc- tion. Only when specific permission was given by the govern- ment were these limitations to be exceeded. The purpose of the seminary being to prepare teachers of religion, reading and language, writing, arithmetic, singing, home geography and nature study, national history, and draw- ing, in the one-class elementary schools, the instruction of the students in the seminary was to be limited to the study of the subjects he was later on going to teach. The Regulations con- demned the former tendency to increase as much as possible the sphere of instruction and to give a broad cultural training, and they specifically stated thatthe subject-matter of the elementary school was^o prevail and govern in every par- ' These Regulations are given in full in Lewin, Geschichte der Ent- wicklung der Preussischen Volksschule, pp. 258-292. 1 64 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 ticular and to constitute the main province of seminary in- struction. The practice-school was declared to be the center about which all the work of the seminary should be organized, particularly in the last two years. A larger principle of education was introduced when the Regulation stated the ultimate aim of the normal school to be not so much the teaching of facts, but rather the shaping of the mind and conscience of the student so that he might be properly fitted for his work in the primary schools "which are to help train the youth into Christian and patriotic modes of thought and into domestic virtues." Accordingly the stu- dent, while in the normal school, must be surrounded by a certain set of conditions that would form him to a particular mould. He must be made sincerely and deeply religious; he must be made patriotic; he must be made thorough master of the modes of schoolroom experience which he would be expected to pass on to his pupils in the primary schools. In order to realize the last point, the prospective teacher's ex- perience was to be very definitely limited. His instruction must take place "according to the same principles and in the fundamentals in the very form which the treatment of the same subjects would require in the elementary school." Within this limited field of subject-matter he was to be trained to quick and clear comprehension, clear and accurate reorganiza- tion, and simple and correct reproduction of thoughts read and heard. Wherever possible, printed manuals were to be made the basis of instruction and from the content of these books the teacher of teachers was not to diverge by making it the subject of criticism or the object of supplementation. Distrust of Educational Theory. — The author of the / Regulations of October i, was extremely suspicious of what had formerly been taught in the seminaries under the name pedagogy, methods, or didactics. This material was a powder mine all ready to be set off at any time by an enterprising pupil or a "radical" teacher. Hence it was eliminated from the new curriculum and two hours a week of Schidkunde (school science) were to be substituted for it. This subject in REACTION IN EDUCATION 165 the first year was to deal briefly with the history of the Prus- sian primary school and was to include a characterization of the good teacher from the moral and religious standpoints. In the second year the time w£is to be devoted to problems of school management, discipline and some general discussions of Christian education. In the third year, the pupils were "to be made cognizant of their future duties as servants of the Church and the Nation." The remaining instruction of the year in this subject was closely tied up with the work of the practice school. Strong Emphasis on Religious Instruction. — The new subject-matter in religion, in view of the danger of too much, or even of any, freedom in this field, was to be designated as instruction in the catechism. Luther's shorter catechism, or where circumstances called for its use, the Heidelberg cate- chism, was to be the text studied. What supplementation this work required was to be contained in a syllabus, which was "completely to comprise in definite form all that which pros- pective schoolmasters need to know." It was declared to be the business of the teacher in the seminary to expound the contents of this syllabus and to have it fully understood and possessed by the pupils, without adding any embellishments on his own part. Bible history was to be studied from the Bible and in the biblical language. Every student was to be expected to acquire easy facility in the accurate narration of the stories of the Bible. Much reading of the Bible and much memory work in connection with its greatest passages were prescribed for all students, who were likewise expected to learn by heart a considerable collection of church hymns. When we come to see a little farther on the importance attached to religious instruction in the elementary school, we shall better understand why the teacher needed to be grounded so thor- oughly in religious lore and equipped with such a ready, exact, and quotable knowledge of the catechism, the Bible, and sacred hymns as a part of his training. Reading and the German Language. — As a part of his preparation for teaching children how to read, the seminary 1 66 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 student was to be drilled in the correct and expressive reading of the very same materials that he would be called on to teach in the elementary school. He was to be fortified also with the knowledge of a good method of teaching reading. An intro- duction to German grammar was given in the seminary, even though formal grammar was excluded from the curriculum of the primary schools. However, philosophical comparative grammar was not attempted and only the simpler elements of language structure were handled. Control over the student's private reading was to be exercised in connection with language study. A suitable selection of reading material was to be made each year, which was not to include the "so-called classi- cal literature." Only that was to be permitted "which by reason of its content and attitude was likely to lead to ortho- dox church life, Christian morals, patriotism, and reflective consideration of Nature." The prescribed list included biog- raphies of Luther, Paul Gerhardt, Jacob Spener, and Oberlin, Piper's Evangelical Year Book, Schubert's Narratives and Lives, a number of People's Books, a Children's Book, Grimms' Fairy Tales, Werner Hahn's Patriotic Portraits, Curtmann's Fatherland, Vogel's Germania, Miiller's Mirror of Prussia, Jahn's History 0} the French Revolution and the War of Lib- eration, and a number of geographical, popular scientific, and travel books. Certainly this list of books is very instructive in regard to the purpose of the study of literature in the nor- mal schools. History and Geography. — The instruction in history and geography was to center in the Fatherland and both subjects were to be, as far as possible, interdependent. General history was declared to be unfruitful for the seminary student owing to his lack of background and the shortness of the time that might be spent upon it. y Instead a decidedly pragmatic atti- tude was taken toward the use of history as a normal school subject. It was declared to be the main business of the semi- nary teacher to make his pupil familiar, as he studied the story of the past, with memorable events, significant social institu- tions, and great personages in the history of Prussia and Ger- REACTION IN EDUCATION 167 many, and thereby to "increase his reverence and love for the ' Royal House of Hohenzollern.'^ History was to be taught thoroughly and with enthusiasm, and was to be given "fruitful connection with the life and viewpoint of the common people."7 In connection with the study of history, the great national anniversaries were to be given special prominence and to be used as the means of making the pupil familiar with the best selections of patriotic poetry and popular music. The ordinary materials of political and mathematical geog- raphy were to be included in the course of study, with emphasis upon the commercial aspects. Europe and the Fatherland were to receive the most attention. Germany was to be treated in regard to political and physical conditions in such a way that in the description of Prussia, the Fatherland in a special sense, and the local province, their peculiarities as to natural features, industrial and commercial conditions, and political institutions might receive special consideration. It would be interesting and valuable from the standpoint of the evolution of the methods and processes of teacher training to take up in some detail the treatment of the remaining sub- jects of the normal school curriculum at this critical point in educational evolution. The limited objectives of this study suggest, however, that we should be satisfied in this connection with some discussion of those subjects in the primary school, with the understanding that the work in the normal schools was intended to prepare the prospective teacher for teaching those subjects in an effective way and was, in general, limited to much the same subject-matter as they would later be called on to teach. The Regulation of October 2 dealt with the work in the in- stitutions preparatory to entrance into the normal schools. Needless to say it exhibited the same characteristics as those shown in the Regulation of October i and that of October 3. General Principles Underlying the Conduct of the Pri- mary Schools. — The Regulation dated October 3 dealt with the place of the primary or folk school in the national economy and described the ways and means, methods, and subject- 1 68 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 matter, whereby it might be made effectively to serve its pur- pose. In this general order the one-class elementary school was taken as typical and all primary, or folk schools, of more than one class were to conform to the general principles laid down for the government of the one-class schools. The school was recognized as one of a number of social institutions and in its external arrangements it was to be co- ordinated with local conditions of industry, family, church, and civil life. As to the inner life of the school, the writer of the official order clearly indicates his standpoint with refer- ence to the political and religious unrest of the times. The time had definitely arrived, he said, when a decisive change was imminent and imperative in political and religious think- ing. The elementary schools had been allowed to follow the general intellectual trend of the new century in which they had been given a new form and a larger development. It was now high time, however, to eliminate unauthorized extravagant and erroneous elements and to install in their place a truly Christian education for the common people. The experience of recent years had shown the conception of a common educa- tion for all through the development of the mind by means of an abstract content, to be worthless or harmful. What the life of the common people called for was the reorganization of the schools intended for their children on the basis of "the original and eternal realities of Christianity, which in its authorized ecclesiastical form must support, build up, and permeate family, vocational, community, and national exist- ence." To that end the folk school must be founded upon the practical life as exhibited in those aspects of life and work within that circle. And for the realization of its purpose, the elaboration of new and different methods of teaching was said to be less important than the correct choice and strict limitation of the subject-matter of instruction and the adoption of a judicious system of school discipline. According to the provisions of the new regulations, the reli- gious elements in the curriculum were to be increased, six hours •weekly being given to this subject. Emphasis was to be laid REACTION IN EDUCATION 169 upon memorizing church hymns, the catechism, and extensive selections from the Bible. The school was to cooperate with the official church in developing in the children "a clear con- ception and a believing acceptance of the principal facts of religious education and the eternally true aspects of the hi;Th- est divine and human things." The work in reading and the German language was to lead to "an ability to read aloud in an intelligible manner, to repeat clearly and connectedly what one has read, and to express one's opinion toward it in a few words." The materials for reading and language work, outside of the scriptural materials, were to be found in manuals pre- pared for the purpose. Theoretical grammar was not to be taught. Instruction in writing and in practical arithmetic was provided and singing was emphasized. It was said to be the business of the elementary school to have the children able at leaving time to sing "the most generally used church tunes and as large a number as possible of good popular and espe- cially patriotic songs which they will understand and know by heart." Three hours a week were allotted to nature study and home geography and one hour a week was allotted to drawing. Throughout all the instruction given in the folk school was to run the spirit of moral and patriotic instruction. The teacher was enjoined in the words of the official formula to "lead the youth into knowledge of the history of our rulers and our people, as also of the divine guidance which has revealed itself in the same, and to fill the minds and hearts of the pupils with love for their king, and respect for the laws and institutions of the Fatherland." Influence of the Regulations of 1854. — The Regulations of 1854 have in many ways been definitive of the character of the Prussian and the German folk school since that time. Supplementary regulations given out in 1859 and 1861 slightly lessened the amount of memoriter learning expected of stu- dents in the normal schools and the primary schools and slightly extended the instruction in elementary science and arithmetic, but the spirit of the Regulations of 1854 controlled Prussian primary education and the work of the teachers' semi- 170 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 naries until 1872. What is of greater significance, the direc- tion given to the education of the children of the common people in those days when political liberalism met its decisive defeat, held over as a settled national policy until the downfall of the Empire and the declaration of a Republic following the armistice of 1918. The upper social classes were able to main- tain the political and economic control which had come down with them out of mediaeval feudalism. Grudgingly, the middle class was admitted to a measure of political power by the Constitution of 1850, and their influential members were taken up into the governing class without any substantial gain for the political significance of the common people. The main- tenance of the social status quo became for the ruling classes the main article of their political creed. No general reorganization of the administration of education was thought to be required in the fifties, for the efficient bu- reaucratic machinery established in the first quarter of the century was found adequate to serve a purpose which succeed- ing events had not in any essential degree altered. The only difference between the two periods lay in this: at the time of the reorganization of Prussian life at the beginning of the century, liberal political conceptions fought against the old conservative habits and institutions and it was uncertain whether or not the political forms of Prussia might be changed to secure a greater degree of popular representation and whether or not the schools of the common people might be organized, following the spirit of Pestalozzi, Fichte and von Humboldt, so as to furnish a degree of democratic educational opportunity. After the defeat of the liberal forces in Prussian life in the late forties, there was no longer any doubt as to the improbability of a liberal modification of Prussian civil and educational institutions. The schools of the common peo- ple were schools for a politically insignificant class, whose virtues were officially extolled as industry, piety, neighborli- ness, patriotism, contentment with their lot, and loyalty to the Hohenzollern kings. The ways and means adopted to secure the ends of the folk school were highly efficient. That REACTION IN EDUCATION 171 those ends were subversive of sound political life and ran coun- ter to the trend of social evolution in the nineteenth century, most of us are thoroughly convinced. Changes in Secondary Education. — It will not be neces- sary for us to attempt any extensive mention of the changes which secondary education underwent during the period 1840- 1871. The secondary schools remained the schools of the upper classes who were able to pay for such education for their children. Since 1834 the Gymnasien had been the sole means of entrance upon university studies, and, accordingly, the sole gateway to a professional career or to civil service. An effort was made to make the curriculum of the Gymnasien socially and politically safe through curtailing the scientific studies, lessening the emphasis on Greek and increasing the emphasis on Latin of a formal character, and increasing the element of dogmatic religious instruction. The efforts of the government in this direction are said by Paulsen ^ to have been without any substantial results. The development of factory industry, which was steady and pronounced during the period under consideration, had shown the need for more attention to the scientific aspects of the curriculum. Many cities had fostered schools which empha- sized scientific subjects, but they had remained without official recognition. In 1859, however, a regular nine-year secondary course was outlined for Realschiden I Ordnung, in which the "modern side" was stressed and which gave the privilege of pursuing further scientific and professional studies in the higher schools of technology. A less fully developed Red- schide with a six-year course was also defined by the official regulation at the same time. Prussia under William I and Bismarck In 1857 mental disability compelled Frederick William IV to relinquish the kingship. His brother William I became regent and in 1861 succeeded to the kingship. The new King ^ German Education, p. 206. 172 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 was by profession and temperament a soldier, and he pro- ceeded, even during his regency, to make the army strong and efficient. In politics, William I was extremely conservative. He believed in the Divine Right of kings no less ardently than he distrusted the ambitions of the populace to possess a share in the government. On the second great point of political policy, namely, the formation of a united German nation, he believed firmly in the necessity of establishing such a union. He believed, furthermore, that in such a national organization Prussia ought to take the leadership even at the expense of eliminating the German parts of Austria from membership. Before the King had gone far in the reorganization of his army, he encountered obstinate opposition to that policy in the lower house of the Prussian Parliament. The majority steadily voted a refusal of the funds necessary to the fulfil- ment of the military program. At this critical juncture, the King called Count Otto von Bismarck to his aid as Minister- President. With a deadlock on the matter of army appropria- tions existing between the upper and lower houses of the Parliament, Bismarck elaborated the constitutional principle that in the case of such a deadlock, the government was privi- leged to proceed to carry out its policy as if no parliament existed. He carried out the reorganization of the army, using funds that had not been voted. This new and dominating personality in the King's govern- ment was a passionate opponent of political liberalism in all its manifestations. During the revolutionary forties he had r-tood firm against the tide of democracy. He, too, like his King, had bitterly opposed the submerging of Prussia in Ger- many, believing that the only hope for German unity lay in Prussian supremacy at the expense of Austria. A long diplo- matic and public career had made him conversant with Euro- pean politics. In the days of the Frankfort Parliament, Bis- marck had shown only contempt for the effort made by that body to talk the German states into a national union. He saw that the opposing ambitions of Austria and Prussia were irrecon- REACTION IN EDUCATION 173 cilable through the ways of diplomacy, and that the issue be- tween those two states would be settled only by an appeal to arms. As soon as he became Minister-President, every diplo- matic move which Bismarck made contemplated the forcible elimination of Austria from German politics and the firm union of the disparate German states. The Formation of the German Empire. — This is not the place to attempt to recount in detail the story of the events whereby Prussia reached the ascendancy in a united Germany. That story may be found in more authoritative and extended form in political and social histories. Suffice it to say that Bismarck utilized a dispute over the succession to the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein to isolate those territories in 1864 from Denmark under the joint control of Prussia and Austria. Taking advantage in 1866 of favorable diplomatic conditions which he had done much to create, Bismarck caused Prussia to withdraw from the Bund, that loose bond of union among German states, which he declared to be the chief source of Germany's weakness. He had war declared against Saxony, Hanover and Hesse, Austria, and all the other members of the Bund. In a short, decisive war Prussia was victorious. By the Treaty of Prague, the Bund was declared dissolved and Austria was excluded from the North German Confederation to be formed of all the German states north of the River Main. The territory of Prussia proper was increased by the annexation of Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau, the free city of Frankfort- on-the-Main, and the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein. The North German Confederation exhibited in its main lines the structure of the German Empire which was com- pleted after the Franco-Prussian War. It was a federated state in which the constituent members retained important rights over internal affairs, but which gave to the federal execu- tive, which was hereditary with the crown of Prussia, the con- trol of foreign affairs, the right to declare war and make peace, and, of course, the supremacy in military affairs. Military service was a federal, not a local duty, and it was \ 174 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 universal and compulsory. The institutions of this eariier Confederation closely resembled those of the Empire which will be described in the next chapter. William I became the first president of the North German Confederation and he appointed Bismarck chancellor in charge of foreign affairs. Bismarck believed war with France to be inevitable and prepared to put France as far as possible at a disadvantage in the matter of support from other powers. When ready for the war, Bismarck found the occasion to pre- cipitate it, — even to get France to declare war first. The out- break of the war caused Baden, Bavaria, and WUrtemburg to join the side of the North German Confederation and thus removed the last obstacle to their union with the other German states. The results of the Franco-Prussian war are soon told. The carefully trained and completely equipped armies of Prussia quickly accomplished the military defeat of France. The Treaty of Frankfort laid an indemnity of a billion dollars upon France and wrested from her Alsace-Lorraine. This forcible separation from the mother country of a large popula- tion that was thoroughly French in feeling and institutions has been one of the most potent factors in keeping alive the French hatred of Prussia. On both sides of the international boundary, Alsace-Lorraine was from that time on the incentive for war between France and Germany. France smarted under the loss of a large and valuable territory and a loyal French population, while Germany waited for and prepared against the day of France s "revanche." Drawn together by the war of 1870-71 the South German States threw in their fortunes with the North German Con- federation under the leadership of Prussia. On January 18, 1 87 1, William I accepted from his brother sovereigns in Ger- many the title of "Kaiser in Deutschland" and became the head of a united German Empire. Thus at last was accom- plished the task of unifying Germany which had been a source of active agitation since the accession of Frederick William IV in 1840. But under what different auspices than the German liberals of that day had dreamed of! They had hoped for a REACTION IN EDUCATION 175 peaceful voluntary union of all the German states under a constitution that was representative and democratic. Actually the process of unification had occurred by means of conscience- less diplomacy and three carefully provoked, even though possi- bly inevitable, wars; and the new state was under the hege- mony of Prussia, with her backward, unrepresentative political institutions and her resplendent record of military success. ADDITIONAL READINGS General Historical Background. — Hayes, A Political and Social History of Modern Europe, Vol. II; Hazen, Europe Since 1815; Marriott and Robertson, The Evolution of Modern Prussia. Education Sources. — Much material given in Lewin, Entwicklung der Preussischen Volksschule. Secondary Accounts. — Alexander, The Prussian Elementary Schools: Kandel, The Training of Elementary School Teachers in Germany; Lewin, Entwicklung der Pretissischen Volksschule; Paulsen, German Education Past and Present; Russell, German Higher Schools; Tews, Ein Jahrhundert Preussischer Schidgeschichte. CHAPTER X PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE 1871-1918 Prussia in the Empire. — The new Empire did not exhibit the submergence of Prussia in Germany, but represented rather the extension of Prussian influence over the entire nation. The constitution of the new Empire gave Prussia a degree of power and prominence that was consistent with her territory, her population and her leadership in bringing about national unity. It is beyond question that Prussian institu- tions controlled the Empire and it is, on the whole, accurate to say that a description of the educational changes in Prussia , since 187 1 may be taken as indicative of the trend of educa- tion in the Empire. Accordingly, the main emphasis in our narrative will continue to be upon Prussian political and edu- cational developments. The Imperial Constitution. — It will be necessary, if we are to understand the political quality of German national life, to consider briefly the Imperial constitution. According to its terms, the Prussian King was to be ex officio Emperor in Germany. His chief administrative officer as Emperor was the Chancellor, appointed by him and responsible to him alone. The imperial legislature consisted of two houses. The upper house, or Bundesrat, was directly representative of the twenty- six states of the federation. Its members were appointed by the governments of the constituent states and cast their votes according to instructions received from their governments and as a unit. Prussia, with seventeen votes out of a total of fifty-six, had a great deal of influence. According to a consti- tutional provision, Prussia alone possessed enough votes in the Bundesrat to block any effort at revision of the constitution. This body was the means whereby the larger states ruled the 176 PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE 1871-1918 177 Empire. It possessed important legislative, administrative, and. judicial functions. The lower house, the Reichstag, was elected on the basis of manhood suffrage. It possessed a veto on legislation and the right to initiate legislation which it practically never used. It voted appropriations, together with the Bundesrat, and its consent had to be secured to the imposition of new taxes. The popular influence that could be exerted through the Reichstag was greatly limited by the fact that the government was not responsible to the legislative body, as ministries did not fall when majorities were against them. This lack of real power caused the Reichstag to serve only as a debating society and as a mirror of public opinion, rather than as an influential organ of popular control. Thus in spite of the election of its members by manhood suffrage, the Reichstag was able to represent the popular will only in very feeble fashion. The constitution of the Empire gave the legislature and the executive, power over the army and navy, foreign affairs, com- merce and transportation, postal and telegraph service, and called for the preparation of an imperial code of civil and criminal law. The various states were allowed to retain au- tonomy over all matters not specifically mentioned as delegated to the Empire. Education was one of the provinces of adminis- tration that was left in the hands of the separate states, with certain slight exceptions that will be mentioned later. Dominance of Prussia in the National Life. — The key to an understanding of the political conservatism of Germany under the Empire lies in an appreciation of the preponderant influence of Prussia in German national life and a recognition of the impotence of representative institutions of that country. The constitution of 1850 ruled Prussia up to the signing of the armistice in 1918, and Prussia ruled Germany. By means of the controlling influence given to the wealthy commercial, industrial, and land-owning classes of Prussia, every effort at liberalizing the political institutions of that state was success- fully resisted, and, with power secure in Prussia, the ruling caste was able to maintain unmodified a highly aristocratic and 178 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 unrepresentative set of political institutions in the nation as a whole. Prussia historically was the most militaristic of all the Ger- man states. Her enthusiasm for military organization and strength was increased by the events of the sixties and the success of Prussian arms in the Franco-Prussian War. The unification of Germany, no less than the humiliation of foreign enemies, was a direct result of military prowess, and the new Empire, following the lead of Prussia, adopted the Prussian military system and made compulsory service under the colors a national, not a local, obligation. The Prussian King, as head of the Imperial army, made that army efficient after the Prussian pattern and introduced into the Empire as a whole an enthusiasm for military power which formerly had been characteristic mainly of Prussia. Foreign Policies to 1890. — With the unification of Ger- many secured, Bismarck, as Chancellor in charge of foreign affairs, consciously adopted the conception that Germany was a "satiated" state. He had no ambition to extend the bounda- ries of Germany, and he considered the main objectives of statecraft to be the stimulation of German industry, commerce, and agriculture and the improvement of internal economy and domestic administration. With these purposes in mind, the diplomacy of Bismarck was successfully exerted for the main- tenance of peace from the time when he became Imperial Chancellor in 1871 until his forced resignation in 1890. Bureaucratic Administration of the Empire. — German domestic politics has been generally petty and lacking in interest, mainly owing to the fact that the constitution of the Empire gave no real opportunity for the competition of op- posing political ideas and the development of statesmanlike qualities in the leaders of the popular parties. The adminis- tration of the Empire was an effective bureaucracy, in most of the details of its organization and conduct completely insulated against popular interference. The early years of the Empire saw the enactment of comprehensive codes of civil and crimi- nal procedure, the establishment of a uniform coinage and PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE 1871-1918 179 currency system based on the gold standard, the establishment of the Imperial Bank and a uniform system of banking, the foundation of the Imperial Railway Office with vast powers over the network of railways covering the whole Empire, and finally, the successful inauguration of one of the most efficient postal and telegraphic systems in the world. The influence of all of these changes was to introduce efficiency into those as- pects of political administration which most closely condition economic expansion. Economic Expansion under the Empire. — The real his- tory of the German Empire is the history of its economic de- velopment. Its domestic political incidents are relatively in- significant beside the story of the rapid and stupendous growth of its industrial and economic life. In 1870 Germany had hardly felt the change in industrial production which is gen- erally referred to as the industrial revolution. England had experienced the change from the domestic to the factory system of production between the years 1785 and 1830 and France by 1848 had undergone the same process of industrial change. The factory organization of German industry began in earnest only with the establishment of the Empire. In the twenty or thirty years following upon national unification, the German adaptation of factory methods had run its full course, and by 1 9 10 Germany had become a dangerous rival of England, the leading manufacturing nation in the world. In 1870 the population of Germany was predominantly rural, while in 19 10, 60 per cent of her population lived in towns of 2000 population or over. In that same period her population had increased from forty-one to more than sixty-five millions. In 1870 even the relatively small population of that time had difficulty in maintaining itself on German soil and thousands of emigrants were yearly leaving the homeland for foreign countries where economic hopes were brighter. In 1885 alone about 171,000 Germans emigrated to foreign lands. It is an interesting commentary on the industrial development of Germany that, in spite of an increase of about 60 per cent in population since 1870, the tide of emigration had been so i8o NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 completely stopped, that in 19 14 fewer than 12,000 persons left Germany to make homes elsewhere. In 1880 Germany had a foreign trade per capita of $31, while the United King- dom had a foreign trade per capita of $100. In 19 10, the figures had changed to $62 and $126 respectively for Germany and Great Britain, which represents a 100 per cent increase for the former country and a 26 per cent increase for the latter. While Germany is rather richly endowed with the mineral resources which enter so largely into industrial production, her economic growth has been mainly owing to the applications of science and art to the processes of production and to the development of factory and business organization in the inter- ests of efficiency and economy. It is mainly in the field of elaborative industry that Germany's progress has been achieved. Her economic success has come from the kind of trained labor that takes a bar of crude iron and turns it into watch-springs, or that utilizes the by-products of the coal-tar industry for the manufacture of aniline dyes. Whatever scientific management, technical training, and industrial skill could do for the im- provement of conditions of manufacture they have been called upon to do in Germany. There is no country in the world that has shown the same degree of industry and perseverance in the utilizing of science in the cause of production as has Germany since 1870. From the outset of the new national regime, the national significance of business was recognized and all through its history the Imperial Government was actively concerned in the improvement of means of transportation, the winning of new markets in the other countries of the world, the stabilizing of the sources of credit, and, in short, in all the political as- pects of economic progress. Not a small share of the credit to be given for Germany's rapid progress along economic lines is due to the government, which gathered together a body of trained and expert civil servants and utilized all their knowl- edge and insight in the guidance and stimulation of a complex industrial organism. The Response of Education to Industrial Needs. — The PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE 1871-191S 181 economic development of Germany under the Empire falls into two rather clearly defined periods. Up to about 1890, G er- many's problem seemed to be altogether a domestic one. 5he began so far behind her European competitors that her first task was to utilize her own resources and employ her own man-power. A special aspect of this problem was the improve- ment of the individual workman through technical education. Germany had made considerable beginnings in the matter of technical education before the founding of the Empire. Her lower secondary schools, with their emphasis upon science and mathematics, were scattered through all the more important towns, and as early as i^^j^uihe Prussian Government had classified the "modern'' side schools and opened to those of the higher rank the opportunity of serving as preparatory schools for higher technological studies. Even the trade school was a well-known German institution before the economic expansion of the seventies and eighties. It is difficult to give a systematic account of the development of vocational education in Ger- many, because, contrary to general opinion on the subject, most of the vocational schools in that country have developed out of local initiative. Germany was a land of schools before it was a land of factories. When it became a land of factories, schools sprang up overnight to minister to the vocational needs of the new industry. Towns, local manufacturing organiza- tions, provincial governments, administrative counties, and the states themselves cooperated in the organization of trade schools, commercial schools, lower technical schools, and higher technological institutions. The universities answered the new economic need by means of their courses in the sciences, in commerce, in engineering. From the lowest form of trade training to the highest and most technical training for the industrial engineer, Germany multiplied opportunities for the acquisition of that vocational preparation that would make the workman more employable or the manager more competent. The Vocational Continuation School. — The typical in- stitution which has been developed in Germany for the train- ing of the workman is the continuation school. These schools i82 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 take the young apprentice for a few hours a week, in many cases during the regular hours of employment, and give him such instruction in German, mathematics, science, drawing, and trade practice as will make him more skilful and intelli- gent in his work. Historically, the continuation school idea goes back far into the nineteenth century. At first it was largely intended to supply additional religious training for children and adolescents who had left the primary schools. Toward the middle of the century, when the old apprenticeship system was weakening before the factory system of produc- tion, a tendency developed to divert the training given in Sun- day and evening schools into industrial lines. In this way the general continuation school became an industrial continuation school. The Constitution of the North German Federation (1869) made compulsory the attendance of workmen under eighteen years of age at continuation schools wherever such schools existed. The same provision was retained in the con- stitution of the Empire. Twelve states out of the twenty-six had laws (19 18) requiring the larger towns to maintain such schools, and in the other states permissive laws allowed local authorities to establish such schools on the basis of compulsory attendance. The basic institution of the continuation school allows of elaboration and modification in the direction of the communi- ty's economic need. Where commercial needs are predominant, the school provides for additional training in that field. Where most of the young persons are doing agricultural or horticul- tural work, their training along those lines is furthered. In the case of a specialized industrial center training is offered that will make the young apprentice better fitted to do the job at which he is engaged. In the larger communities, with their complex commercial and industrial life, it is probable that an extensive system of continuation training will be found which is adequate to meet the needs of the community at every point. Thus, for example, in Munich, Bavaria, which may be taken as an example of the highest development of this form of education, there were in 191 1, 46 separate industrial continua- PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE 1871-1918 183 tion schools. A list of 46 continuation schools is possibly not very interesting reading, but nothing better than this list can illustrate the extent of the system and the care exercised in planning details of a comprehensive plan of vocational educa- tion of primary grades. Accordingly it is appended herewith in full. List of Industrial Continuation Schools ^ munich, bavaria A. Commercial Continuation Schools : • I. Druggists, Dealers in Sundries and Dye-stuffs 2. Commercial Employees B. Trade Continuation Schools : 3. Barbers, Hairdressers, and Wigmakers 4. Bakers 5. Workers in the Building Trades 6. Bookbinders 7. Printers and Typesetters 8. Photo-engravers 9. Decorative Painters, Lacquerers, and Gilders 10. Turners 11. Fine Mechanics 12. Hotel-keepers 13. Tanners and Glove-makers 14. Glaziers, and Glass, Porcelain, and Enamel Painters 15. Woodcarvers 16. Jewelers. Gold- and Silver-workers 17. Chimney-sweeps 18. Confectioners and Pastry-cooks 19. Coppersmiths 20. Coachmen 21. Lithographers and Hthog'raphic printers 22. Machine Builders 23. Machinists, Instrument- and Gun-makers 24. Metal-casters, Chainmakers, Engravers, and Chasers 25. Butchers 26. Photographers 2y. Saddlers and Leather-workers 28. Coopers 29. Lock-makers (Building and Artistic Locks) 30. Blacksmiths 31. Tailors ' Taken from Bulletin No. 14, National Society for Promotion of Industrial Education, New York, 191 1. 1 84 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 32. Joiners and Cabinetmakers 33. Shoemakers 34. Tinsmiths, Phnnbers. and Sheetmetal-workers 35. Stucco-workers and Sculptors 36. Upholsterers and Decorators. Fringe-makers, Cord- makers, and Related Trades 37. Potters and Oven-builders 38. Watchmakers 39. Wagonmakers 40. Tin-casters C. Agricultural Continuation Schools : 41. Gardeners D. Otlier Continuation Schools: 42. Mechanical Dentists 43. Musicians 44. Clerks and Office-assistants 45. District Continuation Schools 46. Continuation Schools for Student-assistants What has been said about the multipHcation of schools for the training of the workmen has had its close counterpart in the establishment of institutions for the training of foremen, managers, technicians, and engineers. It would be incorrect to say that there was in the German Empire or in the separate states of the Empire a comprehensive and state-controlled system of vocational education. It is highly correct, however, to say that the German people have approximated closely to the ideal of giving each individual workman in her industries a degree of supplementary educa- tion that will make him employable on higher levels of pro- duction, that will enhance the value of his time, that will in- crease his pride and intelligence in his work, and bring him better wages. The Kulturkampf. — The most important issue in Prussian domestic policies during the first decade following the estab- lishrhent of the Empire grew out of certain developments which had taken place in the Catholic hierarchy. Pius IX, who was Pope from 1846 to 1878, had good reason to fear for his temporal sovereignty in Italy in the face of ever-increasing sentiment for national unity in that country. He became, following the events of the revolutionary year 1848, a vigorous PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE 1871-1918 185 opponent of the new political liberalism, of the new critical attitude in matters of religion, and of the nationalistic move- ment in general. His opposition to the new political and scientific tendencies of his day culminated in 1864 in the papal encyclical Quanta Cura and the Syllabus of Errors, which accompanied it. In these publications he condemned the policy of the civil state to assert and extend its control over all affairs within its boundaries. The conflict between an organization like the Catholic Church, which was international in its scope and claimed authority over many matters irrespective of na- tional boundaries, and the new nation states, which were con- solidating their control over all affairs that could in any way condition national unity and national strength, was inevitable. The Pope denounced the interference of the nation states with the control of the Church, in their efforts to make the clergy loyal first to the states and secondarily to the Church, in their regulation of family life through civil marriage, and in their increasing tendency to take education out of the hands of the Church and make it a civil function. In 1869-1870, a great Council of the Church which met at the Vatican redefined and ratified the dogma of papal infallibility. The Pope's cup of woe was filled to overflowing when in 1870 the soldiers of the new Italian kingdom took Rome and destroyed all but the last vestiges of the temporal sovereignty of the Papacy. From that time on until his death, Pius IX was unceasing in his condemnation of nationalism and political liberalism. The Pope's challenge to the supremacy of the civil state was immediately taken up by Bismarck in Prussia, and during the seventies this conflict, known as the Kulturkampj , occupied the stage of domestic politics. In this struggle against the Church, Bismarck had the enthusiastic support of the National Liberal party. A series of drastic measures directed against the Church and the clergy was passed by the Prussian parlia- ment. These laws called for the expulsion of the Jesuits, made civil marriage compulsory, suppressed the Catholic Bureau in the Ministry of Religion, Education and Public Health, placed all ecclesiastical seminaries under state control, and made i86 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 eligible to church office only those Catholic pastors who were German, had been educated in German universities and had passed university examinations in German history, philosophy, literature, and classics/ and provided for the removal of school inspection from the hands of the clergy. The School Inspection Law of 1872. — The effect of the Kulturkampj upon education in Prussia was considerable. One of its immediate consequences, as mentioned above, was the passage of the School Inspection Law of 1872. By this law the inspection of all public and private educational establish- ments was declared to devolve upon the state, and the perform- ance of this function of school inspection by any authority or official whatsoever was to be regarded as a civil function. The law placed the appointment of local and district school in- spectors in the hands of the civil authority. Any appointment by the state of a supervisor in an honorary or half-time capacity was to be revocable at any time. It will be recalled that up to that time in Prussia, local school inspection had been exercised exclusively by the clergy. The intent of the new law was to make it possible for the Minister of Education to dismiss any local pastor then acting as district inspector and to replace him by means of a secular official. But as the law read it might equally well have been taken to mean that all the pastors serving as district school supervisors might be con- tinued in that capacity and be given the state appointment. Falk, the Minister of Education in 1872, applied the law in a very moderate way, dispossessing only a small number of clergymen from their postsi as inspectors of schools, and Bismarck had given up the struggle against the Church before the process of dispossession had made much headway. Down to the fall of the Empire about three-fourths of the district School inspectors in Prussia were clergymen. Accordingly, it may be said that the effect of the struggle with the Church in the seventies did not have a very radical effect upon the matter of local school inspection. ^ See Marriott and Robertson, The Evolution of Prussia, p. 397. PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE 1871-1918 187 The General Regulations of 1872 Very much more important than the school inspection law were the changes introduced in the curriculum of the teachers seminaries, the preparatory schools, and the folk schools of the monarchy. The official orders by means of which these changes were accomplished are ordinarily referred to as the General Regulations of October 15, 1872. They occur in four parts corresponding to the provisions relating to the three institu- tions mentioned above and to a new type of school, namely, the middle school. The spirit of the General Regulations differed greatly from that of the Regulations of 1854, which they superseded. In the fact that they lessened the emphasis to be placed upon religious material and greatly increased the amount of scientific and secular material they reflected the attitude of the government in its struggle against the Church, which was at its height in 1872. The Regulations of 1854 were the act of a government in a state of panic, which was attempt- ing to set back forcibly the political and religious thought of its generation to the conditions of an age of authority in mat- ters of faith and social control. In order to secure stability it was willing to sacrifice efficiency and progress. The General Regulations reflected, on the other hand, the attitude of a government which was confident of its ability to control and utilize the forces which its system of education might engender. New Regulations for Teacher Training. — In the training prescribed for the teachers seminaries attended by the pro- spective primary school teachers, we can note a very consider- able extension of the curriculum. Instead of limiting the in- struction of students to the materials of primary instruction and endeavoring to make them letter-perfect in that material, the new curriculum evidently aimed at the production of broadly educated individuals. In mathematics, for instance, .the instruction was to include, besides the more elementary work, square and cube root, proportion, simple equations, quadratic equations, and, if possible, progression and loga- i88 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 rithms. Two hours a week in the first two years of a three- year course were to be devoted to geometry. The General Regulations did not show the same distrust of pedagogical subjects that characterized those of 1854. Besides a course in the history of education, which included the reading and study of pedagogical classics, the students were to have courses in the general theory of education and instruction, as well as psychology and the elements of logic. The work in German was to include a thorough treatment of grammar, a study of the various literary forms, and a very extensive acquaintance with the best of German, especially classical, literature. A broad general course in history was provided, which culminated in a detailed study in the highest class, of Prussian history since the Reformation. Special attention was to be paid to the science studies and optional courses were provided, where circumstances would permit, in a foreign language, preferably French. Without attempting to make a detailed statement of the normal school work inaugurated by the General Regula- tions, the points mentioned will suffice to show its scope and quality. It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that because the predominantly confessional nature of the normal training course was relaxed in the new regulations, the instruction in religion was neglected. The teacher of Prussian children was to be thoroughly grounded in the history and geography of the Old and New Testaments, in the lives of biblical saints and heroes, in the catechism of his faith, and in church history. His mind was also to be liberally stored with Bible selections and with sacred hymns. The curriculum of the normal schools of Prussia followed the General Regulations without change until 1901, when still further extensions of the curriculum were made. The govern- ment, however, up to the events of 19 18 resisted any effort to connect the normal schools with higher education. The system of training for primary teachers was a closed system. It connected up at the bottom with the system of primary schools and prepared its graduates for returning as teachers PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE 1871-1918 189 to the primary schools. No cross connections were provided with secondary education and no progress was contemplated into the universities 'for professional studies. The recruits of the primary school staff were sons of the lower social classes and it was expected that they would serve in their turn in educating the children of those same social classes. The Primary Schools. — The part of the General Regula- tions of 1872 which dealt with the primary or folk schools exhibited a substantial extension of subject-matter, the elimi- nation of the extreme religious emphasis, an effort to curtail the amount of memory work required of pupils, and a general improvement of standards of organization and equipment. At the head of the new curriculum was retained religious in- struction. It included Bible history, some elements of church history, the catechism, and sacred hymns. The Prussian child is born into a church and church membership is taken as an aspect of citizenship. The Protestant religious instruction in the schools was said by the General Regulations to have the purpose of making the child acquainted with the Bible and the creed of his community, so that he might be able to take an active part in the church services and the church life. Protes- tant and Catholic and Jewish schools were recognized and each community was served with the type of religion in its schools which corresponded to the predominant religious faith. Where the community was divided, but fairly evenly divided, as to religious faith, if possible, one school for each religion was pro- vided. Where neither of these plans could be followed, chil- dren of all religions were taught together, and special pro- vision was made for religious instruction by the ministers of the various confessions. It has been as much a matter of course that the German child should be taught in the public schools the religion of his parents as that he should be taught the German language or arithmetic. The new curriculum of the primary schools laid great em- phasis on the German language, including reading, writing, composition, oral expression, grammar, and the study and memorizing of German literary classics. This subject was 1 90 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 expected to play an important role in the general purpose of nationalization. The language taught in the schools was the High German as opposed to the various dialects spoken by the children in different localities. An effort was to be made to introduce a single national tongue as a bond of union among the diverse parts of the kingdom. We shall probably agree with the school authorities of Prussia as to the value of a common language and its literary treasures in building up in the people a consciousness of a common culture and in provid- ing them with the sense of a common heritage. When we add the influence of patriotic classics in filling the child with love for the fatherland and its heroes and admiration for deeds of self-sacrifice in its behalf, we can recognize the nationalistic possibilities of the work in the German language as second to none in importance among all the school subjects. The new program of studies laid considerable stress on arithmetic, which was combined in the upper grades with the more practical aspects of geometry. Drawing was listed as a separate subject. Considerable time, six to eight hours a week, in the middle and upper divisions was to be given to history, geography, and elementary science, grouped together under the head of "Realien." Singing was a stated subject, to which two hours a week were devoted in the middle and upper divisions and one hour in the lower division. Gym- nastics for the boys and needlework for the girls completed the curriculum. Without essential change this was the scope of the subject-matter used in the instruction of the primary school children down to the political changes of 1918. The Middle School. — The General Regulations of 1872 provided for the development of a new type of public school to be known as the middle, or intermediate, school. This school was to be higher in grade than the common folk school, and it was expected to meet the needs of a class of society, higher than that which sent its children to the folk school, which would be able and willing to pay larger fees for a more ad- vanced training for its children, extending over a longer period of time. Particularly in the cities there had developed a con- PRUSSIA AXD THE GERMAN EMPIRE 1871-1918 191 siderable class of smaller merchants and higher industrial workers whose ambitions for the education and future calling of their children were not met by the folk school, while they were at the same time unable to bear the burden of secondary education. The new school was intended to come in between the two types of school just mentioned. Its curriculum, dis- tributed through either five or six grades, included religion (as a matter of course), German, arithmetic, geometry, natural science, physics and chemistry, geography, history, French (or some other modern language), drawing, singing, and gymnastics. In 19 10, the organization of the middle school was expanded to include nine grades and the privilege of one-year voluntary service was extended to its graduates, if they passed an addi- tional examination in a foreign language. The General Regulations as an Expression of a New National Spirit. — We have introduced the discussion of the General Regulations of 1872 in connection with the Kultur- kampj, the influence of which to a certain extent they reflect. It would, however, be only a very partial appraisal of their historical significance to regard them exclusively from that viewpoint. They are rather the expression of a new German national spirit, even as the Kulturkampj itself grew out of the Bismarckian government's desire to assert its Independence over any external force that might attempt to contest the state's control over its entire life. That new national spirit was self- confident and self-conscious, proud of its past achievements and eagerly looking forward to a more glorious future. The part to be played in the new national life by the schools was of a piece with the new efforts for administrative, military, and economic efficiency. The new curriculum for the normal schools was designed to furnish eventually a broadly educated staff of teachers for the primary schools. The new opportuni- ties given through the General Regulations for professional promotion into positions in the middle schools, the higher schools for girls, and the normal schools, instilled new ambition and energy into the primary school teachers. The middle schools were an addition to popular educational opportunities 192 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 and provided the means for certain portions of the population of improving their social and economic condition. The change in the primary school was from a meager and predominantly religious, to a relatively rich and predominantly secular cur- riculum; from a system of tutelage in social submission to a system of engendering active patriotism and conscious enthusi- asm for existing civil institutions. The Fight against Social Democracy The result of the passage of the series of drastic laws against the Church in 1872 was to arouse a storm of Catholic opposi- tion. The Catholics refused to obey the laws and the Catholic party in the Reichstag developed an extremely effective opposi- tion to Bismarck and his policies. As years went by the oppo- sition to the enforcement of the "May" laws gained^rather than lost strength. In this political struggle, Bismarck eventually saw himself beaten. His parliamentary allies in the Kultur- kampf, the National Liberals, were becoming more and more insistent upon political reforms that would make the Prussian constitution truly representative of the people and the ministry responsible to the legislature. In the meantime, also. Social De- mocracy had become increasingly influential in Prussian politics and Bismarck considered the danger of social radicalism greater than that to be apprehended from the Church. Accordingly he gave up the struggle against the Church and gained the support of the Catholic Center party in his effort to .stamp out Social Democracy. In 1878 two attempts upon the life of the aged Emperor William I brought to a head the conflict between Bismarck and the growing Socialist party. In that year the Imperial Parliament, to eliminate Socialist propaganda, forbade all meetings and publications for the spread of socialistic ideas. The police were given power to expel from Germany any sus- pected Socialist; even the reading of socialistic literature was forbidden. The law of 1878 was twice renewed and remained PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE 1871-1918 193 in effect until 1890. At the same time the government at- tempted to cut the ground away from under the Socialists through legislation intended to improve the living conditions of the working class. The Sickness Insurance Law was passed in 1883, an Accident Insurance Law in 1884, and another in 1885, and the Old Age Insurance Law in 1889. While the government was opposed to a system whereby the great mass of the people should carry through reforms intended to better their living conditions/ it was in favor of a system of State Socialism inaugurated by the government and carried out as a means of making the people more prosperous and better con- tented, and, as a result, more loyal citizens of the Empire. Suffice it to say that the sop offered to the Social Democrats was accepted by them only as a promise of a more thorough- going reorganization of economic and political life. Their agitation was not lessened as a result of the passage of these laws; rather their political activity increased in energy and gained new and greater successes. The ten years which saw the more violent phase of the gov- ernment's warfare on Socialism, were lean years for the Prus- sian schools. The prevalence of radical political and economic notions was largely blamed by some of the conservatives on the too ambitious education given in the schools of the people. For a time there was almost a return of the feeling against popular education which the conservatives had held in the revolutionary period of the forties. The annual income of teachers decreased on an average of five marks iri Prussia be- tween 1878 and 1886 ^ and shameful conditions of overcrowd- ing were allowed to exist. It was only after the resignation of Bismarck that any large constructive measures relating to public education were passed. The Ideas of Emperor William II respecting the Social Studies. — INIeanwhile the young Emperor William II, who had become King of Prussia and Emperor in Germany in 1888, had made known his expectations as to what the schools ^Tews, Ein Jahrhundert Preussisclier Sclmlgeschichte, p. 196. 194 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 might do to combat the spread of socialistic ideas. In his cabinet order of May i, 1889/ he gave expression to a vigor- ous plan for supplanting socialistic propaganda by means of specific instruction in economics intended to expose the falla- cies of that political and economic theory. This document is so clearly illustrative not only of a theory of social and political organization but also of the use which the Prussian govern- ment has made of the schools in forming public opinion, that a translation of the same is herewith given in full: "For a long time I have been considering ways and means of making the schools in their various grades more useful in combating the spread of socialistic and communistic ideas. In the first place the school will have to lay a foundation for a sound understanding of civil and social relationships through the cultivation of a fear of God and a love of country. But I cannot rid myself of the idea that in a time when social-demo- cratic errors and misrepresentations are being spread abroad with increased zeal, the school should make more vigorous ef- forts to further a knowledge of what is true and real and prac- tically possible. It must make a special effort to furnish even the youth with the conviction that not only are the teachings of social democracy contrary to the commandments of God and to Christian morals, but also impracticable of realization and dangerous to the individual and to society at large. More than has formerly been the case, the school must include in the course of study modern, even contemporary history and give proof that state authority alone can protect for the indi- vidual his family, his freedom, and his rights. It must make the youth conscious of how the kings of Prussia have labored to improve the living conditions of the workingman in a pro- gressive evolution, beginning with the legislative reforms of Frederick the Great and the abolition of serfdom down to the present day. Further, through the use of statistics it must show how essentially and how constantly during the present century the wages and living conditions of the working class have im- proved under the guiding care of the Prussian kings. 'See Lewin, Entwickiung der Preussischen Volksschiile, pp. 379-80. PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE 1871-1918 195 "In order to reach this goal, I count upon the full coopera- tion of my cabinet. While I request that the matter should be worked out in detail and specific plans developed, I should not omit the recommendation of the following points of special importance. "i. In order to make the religious instruction in its essen- tial meaning more effective it will be desirable to bring the ethical aspects of the same more into the foreground and to limit the memoriter material to the most necessary things. "2. The history of our country will have to treat with spe- cial emphasis of the history of our social and economic devel- opment and legislation from the beginning of the nineteenth century up to current socio-political legislation, in order to show how the Prussian kings have always regarded it as their special mission to confer upon that portion of the population which is destined to labor with its hands a protection that was consistent with the title "father of the country," and to in- crease its physical and spiritual well-being, and how in the future as well the workingman can look forward to just and secure pursuit of his calling only under the protection and the solicitous care of the king at the head of a well-ordered state. Especially important will it be from the standpoint of prac- tical utility to have it made clear to the youth through the use of striking concrete examples that a well-ordered political economy under firm monarchical guidance is the indispensable condition of the security and prosperity of the individual in his legal and economic life, and that, on the contrary, the teach- ings of social democracy are impracticable of realization, and, if they -were practicable, would subject the individual even in his domestic and private life to an unbearable constraint. The alleged ideals of the Socialists are exhibited with sufficient clear- ness in their own expositions to appear forbidding to the feel- ings and the practical good sense of the youth. "3. It is to be taken for granted that the duty thus de- volving upon the school must be circumscribed according to the scope and aim of the various grades of schools and that, accordingly, only the simplest and most easily grasped concep- 196 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 tions must be placed before the pupils in the folk schools, while this exercise is to be handled more seriously and in greater detail in the higher grades of educational institutions. Thereupon it will become especially necessary for the teachers to become qualified to undertake this task with enthusiasm and see it through with professional skill. For this purpose the teacher training colleges must have their curriculum corre- spondingly expanded. "I am not ignorant of the difficulties which will stand in the way of carrying out this plan and I realize that it will re- quire more extended experience to discover the correct means and methods. But such considerations need not restrain us from approaching through zeal and persistent effort a goal which, according to my opinion, is of capital importance for the welfare of the nation." It is perhaps superfluous to add that there were immediately forthcoming the ministerial orders which provided for carry- ing into effect the purposes of the government. The curriculum of the secondary schools was modified in the desired direction. The normal school instruction was rearranged so as to give the prospective primary school teachers adequate instruction in economics and economic history so that they might be fitted to cope with socialistic theories. Even the curricula of the middle schools, the primary schools, and the continuation schools were revamped to include anti-socialistic propaganda. Militant Nationalism after 1890 As has been said above, Bismarck regarded Germany, after the events of 1870-1871, as a "satiated" state. He was not interested in the acquisition of additional territory nor even in the extension of German "influence." In his mind, Ger- many's main problems were domestic and related to industrial, agricultural, and administrative development. As long as Bis- marck remained at the helm that policy was generally ad- hered to. He might encourage England and France to extend their colonial interests; as for Germany, she had territory PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE 1871-1918 197 enough. It may be said, in opposition to this position, that' Germany did make the beginning of a colonial empire in 1884 when the protection of the government was extended to German citizens in Africa. At that time she began her coloni- zation in South Africa, and in 1890 Germany took part in the agreement between the important colonizing nations of Europe in regard to the division of Africa and the demarcation of possessions and "spheres of influence." But Bismarck's heart was not in the colonial venture and, under his leadership, Ger- many did not become an aggressive competitor for colonial possessions. However, with the accession of William II a thoroughgoing break with the old political policies gradually took place. Bis- marck resigned, on request, in 1890 and from that time on new counsellors had the ear of the Emperor and new and more aggressive policies gained the ascendancy. The new ten- dencies were the outgrowth of the stupendous economic devel- opment of Germany since the seventies. As a matter of fact, by 1890 Germany was no longer a "satiated" state confronted mainly with problems of internal development. She had be- come a competitor in the markets of the world, was searching restlessly for new purchasers for the products elaborated by her industries, was importing great quantities of raw materials and foodstuffs, and was anxiously trying to solve the problem as to what should be done with her rapidly increasing popula- tion. Dr. Paul Rohrbach, a German economic geographer, describes the problem of national expansion and international policy as follows: "The increase of our population is 800,000 yearly (1903). No ingenuity and no exertion can bring the food of these 800,000 people out of the ground. The number of those who must live on foreign corn increases, and the increase will soon be a million a year. Whoever cannot get rid of this million is bound to answer the question how otherwise he will feed them than by the produce of our industry in the manufacture of raw materials brought from abroad and the sale of our own products to foreign nations, or the produce of the capital igS NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 created here and invested abroad. If that is so, then for Ger- many all questions of foreign politics must be viewed from the standpoint of the creation and maintenance of markets abroad, and especially in transoceanic countries. For good or ill we must accustom ourselves in our political thinking to the application of the same principles as the English. In England the determination of foreign policy according to the requirements of trade, and therefore of industry, is an axiom of the national consciousness which no one any longer dis- putes. If the possibility of disposing of its industrial prod- ucts abroad were one day to cease or to be visibly limited for England, the immediate result would be, not merely the eco- nomic ruin of millions of industrial existences on both sides of the ocean, but the political collapse of Great Britain as a Great Power. Yet the position is not materially different for ourselves." ^ This is not the place to attempt a detailed account of Ger- many's losing race for colonial possessions. She was late get- ting into the game and was unsuccessful in administering such colonies as she secured. By 1906, however, her overseas colonies fit for European colonization amounted to an area equal to twice that of the Empire, and those unfit for white habitation, to three times that of the mother country. Coincident with the colonial expansion which was an im- portant principle of German policy after 1890, took place the stupendous growth of the overseas trade of Germany, the rapid increase in her merchant marine and the mushroom development of the Imperial navy. "During the last twenty-five years the tonnage of Germany's marine has increased 250 per cent, a quarter of which has been in the last five years, from 1908- 1913." - The Imperial navy was always one of the main in- terests of William II, and from the first year of his reign he used all means in his power to foster its strength and efficiency. It was only in 1900, however, that the large navy party achieved a definite triumph. By that time even the Socialists ' Quoted from Dawson, The Evolution of Modern Germany, pp. 337-8. ^Gibbons, The New Map of Europe, p. 52. PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE 1871-191B 199 had come into line and were enthusiastic supporters of unprece- ' dented appropriations for naval expansion. By the time of the outbreak of the World War, Germany's fleet stood second only to that of Great Britain. Either as an aspect of her colonial policy or as a substitute for unsuccessful colonial projects, Germany turned to the Near East. Her diplomacy aimed at cementing friendly relations with Turkey and gaining an overland route to the Persian Gulf that would not be at the mercy of English sea-power. In spite of her feverish efforts, Germany's navy remained a bad second to that of England, which had persisted in laying down two naval vessels for every one begun by Germany. The German project of forming a strong inland league was decidedly interfered with by the developments in the Balkans in 19 1 3, out of which Turkey emerged with lessened terri- tory, and as a result of which Serbia, a Slav state traditionally hostile to Austria-Hungary, gained in territory, population, and prestige. INIoreover Serbia was the main highway to Con- stantinople, Bagdad, and the Gulf of Persia, and any increase in the power of Serbia spelled defeat for the plan of a central empire reaching from the Baltic Sea to the Persian Gulf under the control of Berlin. The assassination of an Austrian Arch- duke at the Httle town of Serajevo in 1914 was the shock that alone was necessary to crystallize the troubled mixture of European national rivalries. So much has been said of the international situation following 1890 for the sake of at least indicating the tremendous interna- tional tension which existed in Europe. The entire situation is so intricate that such a sketchy treatment seems more or less futile, but it is hoped that what has been said may at least furnish a background for a discussion of the nationalistic emphasis in German schools. We can agree that Germany was the unsatisfied element in the European international mixture, that the final cataclysm was the direct result of Germany's aggressive steps toward her "place in the sun," and that the final responsibility for the devastating War of 1914-1918 rests upon Berlin. Our present purpose, however, is to discover, 200 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 if possible, the way in which Germany used her educrtional system to consolidate national feeling and belief in favor of her international policies. In this effort at understanding the nationalistic organization of German schools we shall con- tinue to take Prussia as a key. State Contributions to Public Education in Prussia. — The history of the development of a national system of edu- cation in Prussia exhibits an apparent inconsistency in that, whereas the state very early secured extensive control, only in the most recent times has it contributed substantially to the expenses, of public education. Even as early as 1716, the state prescribed compulsory attendance at school. The power of the state was successively extended by the Rescript of 1763, the Allgemeines Landrecht of 1794, the comprehen- sive reorganization of education following the Treaty of Tilsit, and the other pieces of school legislation which have been re- ferred to in previous chapters. By these various developments, the state had acquired a very complete control over all phases of education. It had established standard qualifications for teachers, uniform curricula, and uniform administration and had compelled the establishment of pension schemes for teach- ers. The Constitution of 1850 had declared (Article 25) that the support of the folk schools was to be provided by the local communities, but promised state aid if the community was unable to maintain, out of its own resources, the schools at the standard set. The same article promised a fixed salary for the teachers, which was to be regulated with reference to the cost of living, and the elimination of fees in the folk schools. The detailed working out of the constitutional promise was left to subsequent legislation. We have seen (p. 162) how the government after 1850 resisted the efforts of the Liberal friends of education to have a general education law passed. The provisions of the Constitution were ac- complished only piecemeal and after long delay. A law passed in 1869 called for the annual contribution by the state of 60,000 thalers for pensions for widows of school- teachers. In 1873 the state allowed a considerable sum for the PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE 1871-1918 201 improvement of the salaries of primary school teachers, for the establishment of new teaching positions, and for retirement al- lowances for teachers. In 1871, the total contribution of the state to the primary schools was about one and a half million thalers.^ This sum was increased by the new law to four and a half millions in 1873, to about six millions in 1875, and to six and a half millions in 1877. In 1 880-1 881, the state in- creased its contribution to the salaries of primary teachers and to teachers' and teachers' widows' pensions. In 1885, a teachers' pension law placed all folk school teachers on the same pension basis as other state officials, guaranteeing them a fixed non-contributory pension on the basis of years of ser- vice. By the law of 1888, school fees in the primary schools were abolished and the state undertook at the same time to pay a portion of the salary of every teacher. For meeting the ex- penses of the law, the state set aside 20,000,000 marks. In 1893, the state contributed two million marks for the erection of schoolhouses. In 1897 the salary law was revised. Ac- cording to the provisions of this law. there was adopted a basal salary, with increments for length of service and allowances for lodging. Further salary increases were provided by a law of 1909. In 1907, the pension law was revised, with the state accepting as its share of the costs the first 600 marks of the pension of each teacher. The remainder of the pension was to be paid by the civil communities. The result of all these changes in the payment of the costs of primary education had been to increase greatly the proportion of the total cost borne by the state, but up to 1906 no thor- oughgoing reorganization of the maintenance of the primary schools had occurred. In that year the school societies (see p. 133), which up to then had been responsible for the main- tenance of the folk schools, were abolished and school cor- porations (Verbande) took their place. By this change school maintenance ceased to follow religious, or sectarian, lines and became an exclusively civil function. At the same time, the state accepted certain very definite financial responsibilities, * The thaler was equivalent to three marks or seventy-five cents. 202 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 in addition to those mentioned above. The new contributions of the state were intended to help out the poorer communities. A sum of five million marks was provided for the equalization of resources among the poorer corporations that were adversely affected by the law. Subsidies were given to poorer communi- ties having fewer than twenty-six teachers for general costs of education and for building purposes. An unrestricted ap- propriation wa3 also made for creating new teaching positions. As a result of all these state aids that have resulted from legislation during the last sixty — mainly during the last fif- teen years, before the Revolution of 19 18 — the central author- ity was paying in Prussia a little less than one-third of the total cost of primary education. The same proportion of state to local contributions was true for Germany as a whole. The main share of the state's contribution was paid in terms of teachers' salaries and pensions. The system of state subsidy followed in Prussia may be seen to have aided the poorer communities to come up to the standard set for the country at large. It practically eliminated very bad, or even bad, schools. At the same time, such a plan failed to encourage communi- ties to strive for a degree of excellence that exceeded the standard. It will be impossible in this brief study to attempt to give the details of the state's participation in the support of other grades of education. Suffice it to say that in 1911 the state of Prussia paid, in round numbers, 148,500,000 out of a total of 560,000,000 marks toward the expenses of elementary, middle, and secondary schools, or 26 per cent. For the Empire as a whole, the share of the costs of these three grades of edu- cation borne by the various central authorities amounted, in 191 1, to abouv 33 per cent. The Machinery of Educational Control. — The general organizalion of Prussian educdtion took form early in the nineteenth century along the lines in which it persisted down to 1 9 19 (see pp. 129 ff.). At the head of the system stood the Minister of Religion and Education. Under his imme- diate control was a comprehensive bureaucratic organization PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE 1871-1918 203 which had cognizance of all grades of education from the uni- versities down to the primary school. The appointment of university professors was directly in the hands of the minister and their salaries were paid mainly out of the national treasury. The Germans have long boasted of the " Lehr-und-lern-jrei- heit" or academic freedom enjoyed in the universities and in so far as this applied to technical research, the boast was jus- tified. But those lower university teachers who gained noto- riety for their liberal political or radical economic ideas did not receive promotion or the marks of government esteem in the shape of orders and decorations. The government was thus able so to control the development of political and economic theory and the teaching of history in the universities that only such teachings as were satisfactory to the government could receive any considerable support from university professors. Educational Administration Bureaucratic. — It is worthy of emphasis that educational administration was bureaucratic from top to bottom. There was no national council, as in France, to be consulted by the government; there was no effort at securing a measure of popular control over the national educational policies through even a selected representative council. The minister of education was appointed by the king and he appointed his immediate assistants out of the official family. He also appointed the members of the provincial council and the county school boards, thus carrying down the national bureaucratic organization to the secondary and the lower schools. The Provincial School Board. — Prussia was divided into twelve provinces each with its school board. The provincial school boards appointed, on the nominations of the local authori- ties, the teachers of secondary schools and had general charge of the affairs of secondary education. Their connection with the lower schools was limited to the examination of teachers and oversight of the normal schools. It may be said that the actions of the provincial council were all subject to the veto of the minister of education. Another important body operat- ing within the provincial area was the examination commission, 204 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 whose members were appointed by the minister and whose du- ties were the examination of candidates for ehgibility to teach in the secondary schools. The provincial councils were com- posed of seven or eight trained schoolmen appointed by the minister, and they were the official inspectors of the various grades of education in their charge. This board also had charge of the official examination of the teachers of the lower schools and of candidates for the diploma from secondary schools. County School Boards. — The provinces were divided into Regierungsbezirke, or administrative counties, each with its school board composed of seven or eight appointive officials. Some of these officials were professional schoolmen and had the title and functions of superintendents of schools. They exercised general supervision over primary instruction in the county. In regard to the lower schools^ the county boards were directly responsible to the minister of education. Local Inspection. — For purposes of local inspection the administrative counties were divided into Kreise, or school in- spection districts. Several of these districts grouped together were under a county superintendent, while each district had its own local inspector. The actual conduct of the lower schools came under the eye of the district inspector, who was the direct representative of the government in seeing that the laws and regulations regarding the schools were fully carried out. Fitly enough, considering the system as a whole, the dis- trict inspectors were appointed by the minister of education. Up to 19 19, as has been said above (p. 186), about three-fourths of the district inspectors were clergymen. In 19 12 only about three-tenths of the total number of district inspectors were giving full time to this work. In addition to the district inspector each school was fur- ther supervised by a local inspector, usually a pastor, or in the case of a large school with several teachers, by the principal of the school. The local inspector was appointed by the county board and was the official representative of that board in the membership of the local authorities. Local Education Authorities. — There were two forms of PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE 1871-1918 205 local authorities. In cities the local authority was called the school deputation and in rural districts the school board, or Schulvorstand. The composition, mode of selection, and the strictly qualified powers of the local school authorities con- stitute a significant detail of German educational administra- tion. The school deputation of the cities was usually com- posed of the mayor, who was a civil official appointed by the government, and not more than two additional members of the municipal government, appointed by the mayor; an equal num- ber elected from the city council by the members of the city council; an equal number of men acquainted with the work of the primary schools, including a principal or teacher of a primary school; one representative each of the Evangelical, Catholic, and Jewish churches; and the ex officio representative of the county school board, namely, the district school in- spector. The representatives of primary education in the depu- tation were chosen by the representatives of the city adminis- tration and the city council. All members had to have the approval of the county school board and all the acts of the deputation might be vetoed by the same body. Rural communities had school boards composed of the chief magistrate of the community, pastors of the religious denominations represented in the community, a teacher ap- pointed by the county board, and several members of the com- munity elected by the community council. As in the case of the city deputations the elective members had to receive the approval of the county board, which also had the right to veto any acts of the board. The composition of the local authorities thus guaranteed the carrying down to the local schools of the purposes of the central government. As a matter of fact the power left to the local authorities was very slight and related principally to externa. The local authorities had the right to nominate teachers out of an official list, but the nominations had to be ratified by the county board in the case of teachers in the lower schools and by the provincial school board in the case of secondary teachers. When a city deputation desired to add a 2o6 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 secondary school it had first to convince the provincial school board that the kind of school desired was necessary and could be supported. The deputation might decide upon the kind of school it wanted, might supply the buildings and equipment, and nominate the teachers out of lists of eligible candidates prepared by provincial authorities. Once the school was in operation, however, the local authority had practically no con- trol over it. The teachers were inspected and disciplined by the provincial officials, the curriculum followed the prescrip- tions of the minister of education for that type of school, and the internal conduct of the school followed a course which could not be interfered with by the local authority in any de- tail. With only slight change of terminology, the same held true of the relationships between the local authorities and the lower schools. It will be readily enough seen that the bureaucratic organiza- tion of Prussian education provided for the central government a machine nicely designed to carry out its will. At no point in the entire system was any opportunity allowed for the in- troduction of practices or purposes running contrary to the policy determined upon by the ruling powers in Berlin. Where local officials were given authority it was usually restricted to control over external affairs, such as buildings and equip- ment, the time schedule, and the calendar, and all functions so delegated were hedged about by official regulations and subject to veto by a bureaucratic school board of higher rank and authority. The will of the group of officials in the ministry of religion and education could be put into effect in every edu- cational institution under its control without friction and without delay. The Influence of Teacher Training. — The perfect organi- zation of the machinery of educational administration found a valuable counterpart in the teachers in the schools. They were state officials, paid in large part by the state, and respon- sible to state officials in every detail of their duties. They had been selected and trained for their social position and their professional work. The primary teacher, coming as he did PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE 1871-1918 207 from the lower social classes, was made letter-perfect in the subject-matter, and habituated in the motives, of primary edu- cation. He was competent to carry out his task and enthusias- tic over what he considered his official mission. The secondary school teacher was a higher state official, usually a reserve offi- cer, drawn from the middle social classes and secure in the social prerogatives gained from his official status. He was the product of secondary school and university education and ad- mirably adapted to maintain in his pupils their accepted sense of social superiority, while at the same time he was carefully selected on the grounds of professional skill, academic prepara- tion, and political outlook. Private Education. — Private education had very slight development in Prussia, but private schools were allowed to exist, subject to official approval. They had to be open to government inspection and in no case were they allowed to continue if they fell below government standards. In secon- dary education, the curriculum of the public schools had to be adhered to and the teachers were subject to the same con- ditions of eligibility as those of the public schools. For prac- tical purposes, private education in Germany may be ignored in any effort to understand the national system of education. Its influence was negligible. Nationalistic Propaganda by means of the Schools. — It will be impossible in this brief sketch to attempt to indicate the rich and varied developments of Prussian education by means of which it ministered to the educational needs of a complex modern civilization. It seems desirable, however, to indicate how the control of the government was exercised to inculcate in German youth a passionate devotion to the father- land, and to show how the government attempted also to de- velop in the youth an equal loyalty to the monarchical form of government and the ruling house. We have seen in following out the history of German edu- cation since the Treaty of Tilsit that the nationalistic and dy- nastic motives have always been prominent. There was no occasion for a diminution of zeal along those lines after the 2o8 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 Franco-Prussian War, for during the interval between 1870 and 19 14, Europe was an armed camp in a state of constant alarm over wars or rumors of wars. Following the accession of the former Emperor William II, this condition was accen- tuated by the aggressive attitude of Germany in world affairs and the unsatisfied demands on her part for increased outlets for her marvelous economic expansion. The German boy and girl have been educated in an emo- tional atmosphere of patriotism. The instruction in German has been designed to fill them with pride in their native tongue and make them conversant with its masterpieces, particularly those which strengthened the spirit of devotion to the fatherland. The German patriotic poems, sometimes set to thrilling music, have woven their spell over youthful minds for more than a century, and every effort has been made, through the selec- tion of suitable materials and the emphasis placed upon learning them by heart, to build up in the boys and girls an emotional set that would cause them unhesitatingly to give themselves without reservation at their country's need. Those old poems, with their glorification of national virtues, their recalling of ancient hatreds, their passionate praise of courage and self-sacrifice in the national cause, have done much to mould the German people into national unity. The German schools, and particularly the lower schools, have exhibited in a preeminent degree the pragmatic as op- posed to the scientific conception of the teaching of history. The German schools have taught history not so much to get at the truth as to inculcate a point of view, not so much to develop the power of making sound judgments in regard to social problems as to establish a certain emotional bias that might even resist the admission of new data capable of modi- fying that bias. In this type of history teaching the Prussian teacher has enjoyed an advantageous position, for Prussia, down to the year 1918, had experienced only one successful political tradition. The rise to territorial, military, and eco- nomic greatness of Prussia and Germany has taken place under the Hohenzollern dynasty and under social institutions which PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE 1871-1918 209 have been the least modified in the direction of liberal democ- racy of any of the Great Powers of Western Europe. One may well imagine the difficulty, and possibly in some cases, the dismay, of a veteran Prussian teacher who is now teaching history after the events of 19 18. Prussian history has been such that the teacher did not need to be critical. He might explain away difficulties, such as the partitions of Poland and the seizure of Alsace-Lorraine, on the basis of military neces- sity or missionary zeal. He might paint up the occasional non- entities of the Hohenzollern line, whitewash the eccentrics and the debauchees, and laud the characteristics and achievements of the really great. But never before the present has he been compelled to recognize a complete overturn of authority and the practical registration in his nation's history of a repudia- tion of what had gone before. We know from our own na- tional experience that it is easy to accept a complimentary bias toward one's own country, and can well understand the same fact as respects Germany. The German teacher of his- tory could exhibit France as a rapacious conqueror in taking Alsace and Lorraine, with their predominantly German popu- lation, and use that fact as justification for the taking back on Germany's part of the "lost provinces." In the same way he could minimize the taking of so large a share of the terri- tory of the assassinated nationality of Poland on the ground that if Prussia had not taken it Russia would have done so to the great danger of Prussian interests. How easily, too, the social and political ameliorations which have taken place since the Treaty of Tilsit might be attributed to the benevolence of the ruling house. Through following such methods, the teacher of history in the Prussian primary school has been a preacher of patriotism and the official apologist of the reigning dynasty and of the established social and political order. The teaching of geography has also ministered to national unity. The question, "What is Germany?" is reported to have been asked in a German school, and the answer prompted by the teacher was, "Germany is a land entirely surrounded by enemies." The incident in its details may be true or not, but 2 10 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 it certainly illustrates aptly enough the use which that subject has been put to in the German schools. The nationalistic in- fluence of geography begins with the emphasis which is placed on national and local geography, tied up as it is with the study of history. The pupil thus comes to love not only the national heroes but the very ground on which they walked. We in America have difficulty in appreciating this factor for our cities and towns are all so new. They have little of stirring history and tradition connected with them. The case is different in Germany where almost every city and countryside have been the scene of some striking historical episode. The German boy and girl were not left ignorant of the great geographical factors which conditioned national life. The difficulty of defending eastern Prussia against Russian attack was no less known to the children on the benches of the primary schools than it was to the Imperial War College at Berlin. The menace to Germany, under the necessity of importing food and raw materials from overseas, of the un- disputed naval power of Great Britain, became an argument in the child's mind for naval expansion and the acquisition of a colonial empire. The teaching of geography was carried out, in part at least, with the intention of making the child intelligent about national economic and military problems and convinced of the necessity and the justice of national policies. Method in Primary Schools. — Close observers of primary education in Germany have been impressed with the small amount of initiative allowed the pupil and the minimum use of textbooks and reading references. The teacher was for the most part the text. He decided, subject to minute official regulation of the material of instruction, the subject-matter of the lesson. He introduced illustrative material, questioned the pupil on what had been seen and said, and drilled the pupil in what he was expected to retain. Little room was left for the independent activity of the children. However, it must be said for the teacher that he was well-informed for his task, thoroughly prepared for the lesson, and generally animated and interesting in his presentation of material. The net result of PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE 1871-1918 211 such instruction was that the child learned thoroughly and accu- rately what he was expected to know, but had not been taught to think for himself even in those provinces where self-activity was genuinely possible. It would seem that the predominance of such methods of teaching fitted in with the subservient social and political position of the primary school pupils. Address of Emperor William II. — As to the nationalistic tendencies in the curricula of secondary schools we can get no better conception than from that historic address of Em- peror William II at the Conference on Secondary School Re- form in 1890.^ On that occasion he said that the main fault with secondary education was that a national basis was want- ing. "The foundation of our gymnasium must be German. It is our duty to educate young men to become young Germans, not young Greeks or Romans. . . . We must make German the basis, and German composition must be the center around which everything else revolves. . . . There is another point which I should like to see more developed with us; that is the 'National' in questions of history, geography, and heroic tradition." Democracy in German Education. — We have already had occasion to describe the thoroughly bureaucratic nature of Prussian school administration, which is to say, German school administration. The schools were administered just like an army or like most industrial corporations, without any recognition of the rights of the people in determining educa- tional policy at any point other than their general and limited power of voting in state and national elections. Perhaps no single point better illustrates the insulation of the schools against popular control than the fact that parents were allowed to visit schools only after securing an official permit. In spite of the introduction of popular representation and the forms of parliamentary government, Germany had not essentially changed in the period between 1807 and 1918. The upper classes, military, landowning, capitalistic, and pro- fessional, were the real rulers, and at his accession William II 'See Educational Review, Vol. I, pp. 200-8. 212 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 reiterated the seventeenth century formula of the divine right of kings. In spite of the growth in numbers of the industrial proletariat, the political institutions of the several states and the Empire denied them influence. It is highly probable that the tense international situation of the later nineteenth cen- tury, with its demands for national solidarity of opinion and military strength, delayed long after its logical time the natural entry of the industrial workers into political power and the reorganization of antiquated political forms. In a very real sense the military establishment was the soul of German life. No citizen escaped its influence through ser- vice with the colors or taxation for its support. The imperial government set the standard for voluntary one-year service at the ability to pass an examination which corresponded to the work of. a six-year secondary school. Those who passed this examination were forthwith eligible to promotion into the most select and influential social class, namely, that of the military officers (in the reserve). Those who could not pass it were compelled to serve as privates and could not expect promotion to the rank of commissioned officer. As secondary education was too expensive for the great mass of the people, it resulted that the children who attended the primary schools were marked from the first to service in the ranks. The Primary School. — The main characteristic of German schools under the old regime, from the social standpoint, was their closed-in character. There was no practical opportunity for a boy to pass from the primary school to a secondary school after the fourth year, owing to differences of curriculum, and the secondary schools were practically the only avenues of entrance into the higher technical schools and the universities. Russell says ^ that not one boy in ten thousand who completed the primary school entered the gymnasium. A round- about way was provided for the boy who had finished the pri mary school to enter the university through preparing privately for the official matriculation examination. The privilege of one-year voluntary service in the army was also allowed to * German Higher Schools, p. 135. PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE 1871-1918 213 the graduates of the normal schools. The boy who entered and finished the primary school came from the lowest industrial and social class and was expected more or less inevitably to continue in about the same condition as that of his parents. From the primary school he entered the lower forms of voca- tional school, probably of the continuation type, became an artisan or common laborer, and did his two years of military service. Ninety per cent of all German children received their education in the primary schools. The Middle School. — The middle school was intended for the use of children whose parents were fairly prosperous but not wealthy and who did not like to have their children asso- ciate with the children of a recognizedly lower social class. The fees in this school were smaller than those of the secon- flary school; the course of study was more extended than that of the primary school, and it gave its graduates the highly esteemed privilege of one-year voluntary service, on passing an additional examination in foreign languages. The middle Fchool pupil came from what the French would call the petite bourgeoisie, and might be expected to become a bookkeeper or merchant or to enter some industry with advantage after having prepared himself through further study at a lower technical school. The middle school did not prosper greatly following its organization in 1872 — only three-tenths of one per cent of all Prussian children receiving their education in this type of school. Secondary Education. — The secondary schools have al- ready been sufficiently characterized in contrast with the lower school. They were the schools attended by the children of parents who were wealthy, or members of the higher official and professional classes. They furnished the great majority of the one-year voluntary service men and practically all the officers in the army and navy. They represented the only practicable and direct way of matriculation at the universities. The social significance of this is clearly seen when we remember that the state governments of Germany do not allow any one to become a minister of religion, a higher judicial or administra- 214 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 tive official, or a doctor or lawyer who has not studied in a university and passed the required official examinations for such functions. The Strength and Weakness of the German System. — Sufficient has been said to indicate the undemocratic nature of the German system of education under the Empire. That does not, however, convict the system of failure, for it was not intended to be democratic. It was intended, rather, to serve the needs of a state which was organized according to principles that were frankly distrustful of popular influence. The predominant principle of German political organization was that the elite should rule and that the people should con- sent to be governed from above by their social betters who alone were competent to control the national destinies. In gen- eral one must be sympathetic with a plea for the necessity of trained leadership and must recognize the high degree of technical efficiency which was developed in Germany under that system of education and government which it has lived under for the more than a century covered by this narrative. But, at the same time, we must be profoundly distrustful of any system of social organization which designates its elite on the highly adventitious grounds of wealth and birth. It would be eminently desirable for philosophers to be kings, but it is a prime fallacy to classify kings ex officio as philosophers. Once the privilege of receiving the highest form of development is limited to Lhe members of a given social class, the smallest in number and set apart by reason of circumstances which in many cases had their origin in mediaeval days, the state is denied the opportunity of utilizing the full quota of its human resources. The government suffers from inbreeding. It be- comes impervious to new motives that well up out of the experience of its millions. This deprivation is made more extreme, as was the case in Germany, when the predominant social and political influence is wielded by a case-hardened, routinized, saber-rattling military caste. If Germany gained in efficiency from the educational system which she erected, she lost in human insight and in responsiveness to the broader PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE 1871-1918 215 social and international motives of the century and particularly of our generation. The Liberal Element in Education. — Our account of German political institutions and education under the Empire has exhibited only the dominating conditions and tendencies. It would be obviously unfair, however, to conclude the discus- sion without at least indicating the existence of a strong mi- nority tendency in politics which aimed at the liberalizing of political life and the realization of representative government on the basis of manhood suffrage. In the field of education as well, there were many intelligent critics of the existent sys- tem. There was much agitation for the opening up of univer- sity careers to the normal school graduates and for organizing the training of primary teachers as a branch of higher educa- tion. The restrictions placed upon free movement of pupils in the primary into the secondary school system were opposed in liberal circles and proposals were made and some practical schemes organized to develop a unitary school {Einheitsschule) which would remove at least curriculum difficulties from the path of the aspiring and gifted poor child. There were numer- ous critics of the drill-sergeant methods of instruction in use in the schools. Among other demands of a considerable group of school men were the secularization of the curriculum and the installation of strictly professional school inspection. The real strength of this minority tendency may be estimated from the educational changes proposed in the constitution of the German Republic. The German Republic The abdication of Emperor William II was announced on November 9, 1918. From that date Germany was declared a republic. The Imperial Parliament was dissolved and the monarchical heads of the federal states either abdicated or were deposed. Elections for a National Constitutional As- sembly were held in January 19 19, in which all Germans, women as well as men, over twenty years of age were eligible 2i6 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 to take part. On February 11, the assembly elected Friedrich Ebert, a former saddler, the first president of the new republic. The new constitution was adopted July 31 and has been effective since August 13, 191 9. The constitution of the German Republic reproduces prac- tically all the more prominent administrative features of the Em- pire. The new nation is composed of the same federated states as the old, with the exception of the imperial territory, Alsace- Lorraine, and it exercises the same functions over the separate states as did the Empire with some extensions of the federal power. It is too early to say whether or not the new state has lost the administrative efficiency of the old. In spirit, however, the new constitution represents a thor- oughgoing change from the old. The institution and all the trappings of monarchy are destroyed. The Reichstag, elected on the basis of manhood and womanhood suffrage, is the center of political power in the Republic, while the popular houses in the various states have a like balance of power allotted to them. The principle of parliamentary responsibility of the executive branch is adhered to, supplemented by a provision for new elections when a party has been overthrown by a loss of support in the Reichstag. Direct referendum to the people is provided for in case of an opposition equalling at least one- third of the members of the Reichstag. A strong bill of rights makes all Germans equal before the law and puts them in possession of fundamentally the same civil rights and duties. Titles of nobility are no longer to be conferred, as is also the case with honorary orders. The right of emigration is maintained. Foreign-speaking people within the boundaries of the nation are allowed unrestricted use of their language, even for instruction in the schools. Arbitrary arrest and imprisonment are forbidden. Within the limits ol general legislation, freedom of speech, of assembly, and of the press are guaranteed to all German citizens. It may be said that on paper the new constitution of Germany is as liberal as any other extant. It places the control of the government PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN EMPIRE 1871-1918 217 much more directly in the hands of the people than does the- constitution of the United States. Educational Provisions. — One would natural!}' expect a rather thoroughgoing change in many features of German edu- cation, under the new political institutions. Many of the changes which are proposed recall the demands of the teachers made three-quarters of a century ago during the revolutionary forties. At last the training of teachers of all grades is to be made a part of higher education. Supervision of schools is to be conducted by technically trained officials. Instruction in the primary schools is to be free and the principle is reaffirmed of compulsory attendance up to the age of fourteen in a school for general education, to be followed to the age of eighteen by attendance in a continuation school. "Upon a basic school for everyone is erected the middle and higher school system. For this superstructure the rule for guidance is the multiplicity of life's callings, and the acceptance of a child in a particular school depends upon his qualifications and inclinations and not upon the economic and social position or the religion of his parents." As far as possible the confessional organization of schools is to be adhered to. A separate clause gives the promise of aiding poor children through scholarships to take advan- tage of education in the middle and higher schools, including maintenance allowances for the parents of especially gifted chil- dren. Private schools are to be allowed, subject to state ap- proval and open to state inspection, provided that they main- tain standards equal to those of the public schools. The constitution further declares that "moral education, civic sentiment, and personal and professional service in the spirit of German patriotism and international reconciliation are to be striven for in all the schools." It is impossible at the present time to estimate the signifi- cance of the political and educational changes which the new constitution inaugurates. The problems of the reconstruction period are numerous and difficult in Germany as they are in many other countries deeply affected by the war. It will be 2i8 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 some time before we can be certain that the liberal promises of the new constitution will be redeemed. ADDITIONAL READINGS General Historical and Institutional Background. — Hayes, A Political and Social History of Modern Europe, Vol. II; Hazen, Europe Since 181 5; Marriott and Robertson, The Evolution of Modern Prussia; Dawson, Tlie Evolution of Modern Germany; Howe, Socialized Ger- many. Education Sources. — Much material is to be found in Lewin, Ent- wicklung der Preussischen Volksschnle ; Translation of General Regula- tions of 1872 is to be found in English Special Reports, Vol. I, and in Perry, German Elementary Education ; "The German Emperor's Address at the Berlin School Conference, iSqo" is given in Educational Review, Vol. I, and in Report of the United States Commissioner of Education, i8go. Vol. I. Secondary Accounts. — Alexander, The Prussian Elementary Schools; Kandel, The Training of Elementary School Teachers in Germany; Kandel, Education in Germany, in Sandiford, Comparative Education; Lewin, Entwicklung der Preussischen Volksschule; Paulsen, German Education Past and Present; Russell, German Higher Schools; Russell, "Education for Citizenship," Teachers College Record, March, 1Q19; Scott, Patriots in the Making; Tews, Ein Jahrhundert Preussischer Schulgeschichte. PART III ENGLAND CHAPTER XI THE OLD ORDER AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION (FROM ABOUT 1785 TO 1832) Economic Conditions. — In most respects the England of 1785 remained the England of the Revolution of 1689. It continued to be dominantly rural and to produce, except in off-years, more grain than it consumed. The century which pre- ceded the application of steam to manufacturing operations had seen, indeed, tremendous developments in the textile and other industries, and much progress in respect to finance and com- merce; but those changes took place through the extension of familiar conditions, — the multiplication of instances rather than the development of new forms of organization. Before the invention of the spinning jenny (1764), Ark- wright's spinning machine (1769), Compton's "mule" (1779), Cartwright's power loom (1784), Whitney's cotton gin (1792), and Watt's steam engine (1785), all the processes of manu- facture were carried on by hand. The hand machines were owned either by small masters or by large masters who rented them out to smaller masters and journeymen. In the same way, the raw materials might be purchased by the small master, who would sell the finished product for what it would bring, or they might be provided by a merchant clothier, who would pay wages for the manufacturing- process and take all the profits that would accrue to the entire series of transactions from purchase of raw materials to sale of finished goods. Manufacturing was carried on in the home of the master, who worked side by side with his journeymen and apprentices. Practically all industrial processes were carried on in rural villages, and the weaver, or spinner, or maker of nails, was at one and the same time artisan and farmer. He kept a cow that pastured on the commons and cultivated a small patch of 22: 222 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 ground for his own use. The manufactured articles were gathered together from the rural villages, chiefly in northern and eastern England, and eventually found their way to the seaports where they became the cargo for a foreign commerce that reached the entire world. In the cities and large towns, the old guild system had come entirely under the control of the wealthy masters, who reaped large profits out of the ex- panding domestic and foreign trade. Between masters and workmen a sharp distinction had come into existence and it had become practically impossible for any journeyman or small master to break into the close corporation of the liveried mas- ters. In rural England, conditions that had come about largely during the last years of Elizabeth's reign continued without significant change. Titled landowners and the landed gentry owned most of the land, which they rented to those who farmed it. The small farmer, or yeoman, had lost the social impor- tance which he had enjoyed in the earlier history of England, and landless farm laborers made up the bulk of the rural popu- lation. Social Classes. — The economic conditions which have just been described had their counterpart in a rather definite sys- tem of social classification. Social importance continued to reside in the ownership of land. Accordingly the large land- owning nobility were the head of the social system, with the landed gentry following them in order. The man who had become wealthy in trade or manufacturing acquired land for the sake of the social position which land ownership carried with it and which could be attained in no other way. The city merchant and manufacturer thus became identified with the landed gentry. Below the social groups named, there were the small masters and the small independent farmers or important renters. Below them came the shopkeepers, the artisans, the domestic servants, and the agricultural laborers. This social classification was not absolute. There were no legal restric- tions upon the individual as there were in Prussia at that time. If he had ability and character he could change his PHILANTHROPY IN EDUCATION 223 social position. Indeed, the rapid increase in the total wealth of England through the development of manufactures, gave business opportunities that could be translated into social ad- vancement. The journeymen under the conditions of the domestic system might become independent masters, and the small master might prosper, become wealthy, and buy land, thus securing social recognition. As compared with eighteenth century conditions in Prussia or in France before the Revolu- tion, the individual in England enjoyed considerable oppor- tunity of improving his social position. As compared with the like opportunities offered under the conditions of life in America in the nineteenth century, English society was com- paratively static. There were social classes with pretty definitely fixed limitations. There was some social movement, but, in general, the individual found himself born into a social group and only in exceptional instances did he get out of that group. He accepted the classification which society prescribed for him and found in it a considerable measure of security, comfort, and self-respect. There was, however, great dis- proportion in the distribution of wealth. There was a vast army of poor and poverty was on the increase. The English Government. — English government in the eighteenth century was pointed to by French liberals of that period as ideal. As compared with the continental monarchies of that day, England's king was largely shorn of power and his prerogatives were closely defined in constitutional charters. The real seat of government was in the Parliament, which was composed of an hereditary and ex officio House of Lords, and a representative House of Commons. The judiciary was independent of royal removal. Parliament had control of the army and the revenues. The king's ministry was the execu- tive department of government and it was composed of mem- bers of the two houses of Parliament. The principle had been firmly established that the ministry stood or fell as it retained or lost the support of a parliamentary majority. It is quite common to speak of the English government in the eighteenth century as a democracy; but that term so ap- 224 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 plied is only a relative designation. If democracy is taken to mean constitutional control of the acts of the king and govern- ment by representatives of the people, then England was a democracy in the eighteenth century. When, however, we come to consider the source and mode of selection of the repre- sentatives of the people, it is obvious that that democracy was extremely limited. The House of Lords was composed of the hereditary nobility and the princes of the Church. The members of Parliament were returned from boroughs in a variety of ways, but usually by the wealthy men who enjoyed the borough franchise or were members of the close borough corporation. In the counties, the franchise was practically limited to large landholders. The disposition of seats among the boroughs was largely traditional and many boroughs that had become unimportant continued to send their representa- tives to the House of Commons, while others, larger and more important in every way, were not represented at all. The tremendous growth in urban population which resulted from the industrial revolution after about 1785, accentuated these discrepancies and led eventually to the Reform Act of 1832. Thus it is seen that, while England had representative govern- ment in the eighteenth century, that government continued up to 1832 to represent only the large landowners and those who had become wealthy in trade. The small farmer, the renter, the shopkeeper, the small master, the artisan, the domestic servant, and the farm laborer, were without any voice in the government whatever. By about 1785 a strong reform movement was well under way. The religious labors of the Wesleys and Whitefield had brought about a far-reaching spiritual revival. Literature had abandoned the heartless technical perfection of the age of Queen Anne, and under the leadership of Goldsmith, Gray, Robert Burns, and Crabbe had begun to picture the virtues and hardships of the common people. Even in Parliament a new sensitiveness to the unfairness of social and political con- ditions was shown in the passage of a new law governing the PHILANTHROPY IN EDUCATION 225 relief of paupers in 1782, the grant of legislative independence to Ireland in the same year, and in the Reform Bill introduced by the Duk^ of Richmond in 1 780. which provided for annual parliaments elected by manhood suffrage. The political changes which took place in France after 1789 and the ex- cesses committed by the popular party, soon brought about in England a deep-seated distrust of government by the people. As a result even the friends of reform grew cold to proposals of political and social change, and soon the death-grapple with Napoleon absorbed the energies of the entire nation. A gen- eration was to pass before political reform again began actively to be considered. Local Government. — Local government in the counties, except for the chartered boroughs was in the hands of the justices of the peace. The justices of the peace, meeting in the Court of Quarter Sessions, were the judicial as well as the administrative officials of the counties. They were appointed by the Crown and were chosen almost exclusively from among the large landholders. The parish constituted a civil division which was of signifi- cance mainly as the area for the administration of the poor law. In parish meetings attended by all the inhabitants or freemen, churchwardens and overseers of the poor were elected by the voice of all The overseers of the poor and the churchwardens ex officio administered the aid given to the poor by the parish. The parishes did not follow county lines, sometimes being in two counties The boroughs were separate units of local government, but in many cases they were subordinate in certain matters to the county justices of the peace. Some boroughs lay in two counties, and they might include parts of three or four parishes without including all of any single parish. The boroughs were given certain rights of self-government by special charters, and up to 1835 there was no uniformity whatever in their administration or in the legal privileges which they enjoyed. As has been said above, in many cases the governing 226 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINGE 1789 body of the borough was a self-perpetuating corporation. It might be added that frequently enough it governed to the advantage of the class which enjoyed political power. Education under the Old Order. — In the aristocratic social organization of eighteenth century England, education was practically reserved for the members of the ruling classes. Education was regarded as a voluntary affair, to be had by those who desired it for their children and could pay for it. The courts had ruled that at common law no parent was under compulsion to give his children a literary education, however meager. The government refused to consider education to be a matter in which the state should participate. Such schools as existed were the result of private benevolence or initiative. They did not draw a penny of support out of the national exchequer. They were the result of no government plan or statute, and they were not controlled by the government in respect to curriculum or discipline. Only in one particular had the government interfered in their operations, namely, to see to it that the grammar school teachers were orthodox Anglicans and that they should swear it to be a treasonable act to take up arms against the ruling prince. Even this control had been greatly relaxed by court decisions in the late seventeenth century and by various acts passed about the same time in the interest of religious toleration. A large proportion of the English secondary schools that came down into the nineteenth century had their origin before the Reformation and had successfully weathered that trying educational crisis. The oldest of these in the list prepared by the Schools Inquiry Commission' (1868) was founded in the reign of William II (1087-1100) and two of the most famous of the great public schools, Winchester and Eton, were founded in 1387 and 1441 respectively. By far the greater part of them, 558 in number, originated in the period covered between the reigns of Henry VIII and 'James II (1509-1688). Many of the Tudor foundations were simply reorganizations 'See report of Schools Inquiry Commission, 1868, Vol. I, appendix IV. PHILANTHROPY IN EDUCATION 227 and refoundations of funds that had been devoted to the sup- port of schools in monasteries and chantries before those in- stitutions were repressed by legislation of Henry VIII. Many also were new foundations arising from the educational zeal of private philanthropists. The founding tendency did not cease with James II. for we note in the list named above that there were 185 grammar school foundations established in the period between 1688 and 1865. The comparison between the earlier and the later periods of secondary school foundation is apparently unfavorable to the later period ; but the difference is probably more than offset by the many elementary schools that were established out of private benevolence and the very ex- tensive contributions made to charity schools during that time. There was a small number of grammar schools that came to draw their student body from all over England, and were the richest and the most largely attended. They were with a few exceptions boarding schools and by the end of the eighteenth century each had developed its own store of school tradition and was governed by an intricate set of schoolboy "mores." Among the great public schools were Winchester, Eton, Harrow, and Rugby. The public school was, however, only a variant from the general type of grammar school. Aristocratic Nature of the Grammar Schools. — As one reads the record of the title deeds of these grammar schools there can be little doubt as to the democratic intentions of the founders. The schools were established to provide educational facilities in a society that did not have enough schools to supply the demand for educated men. They were likewise established to help poor boys to an education. But even from the beginning the word "poor" as it occurred in title deeds was interpreted in some cases to mean poor sons of gentlemen, but when in other cases even that interpretation was impos- sible, other means of evasion were found. Laurence Sheriff, for example, who founded Rugby School by his will in 1567, intended it to be a school for the boys of his home and one or two other parishes. Himself a successful grocer and coming from the common people, he intended his benefaction to serve 2 28 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 17S9 the needs of the class from which he came. Gradually, how- ever, Rugby School began to acquire a national clientele and the care of the boarders taken by the master came to be much the more important phase of the school's activities. The sons of the local butcher and grocer were out of place among the gentlemen's sons and they gradually ceased to attend. In order to meet the legal requirements of the deed of trust the managers of the school finally provided an independent ele- mentary school for the local boys. In many of the grammar schools, and this was especially true of the larger public schools, the tuition and maintenance scholarships were taken up by boys of the upper classes exclusively, or the supple- mentary fees were made so high that only a fairly well-to-do family could take advantage of them. In some of the smaller grammar schools, the attendance of local boys from poor fami- lies justified the benevolent intentions of the founders, but even in those cases, where the master was allowed to take addi- tional pupils for pay to maintain a boarding establishment, the free pupils suffered under invidious distinctions.^ The hardening of class lines in England was progressive, beginning definitely with the reign of Elizabeth. It is no less true that the upper classes progressively took over the gram- mar schools for the education of their own children to the practical exclusion of children of the lower orders of society. By the end of the eighteenth century the larger public schools were possessed by the upper classes and were attended by the sons of the nobility, the country gentry, the merchant princes, and the professional class. The smaller and more local gram- mar schools were largely patronized by the members of the middle commercial class and by the poorer members of the landowning and professional groups. The Nationalizing Influence of the Great Public Schools and the Universities. — Certainly there was nothing in the curriculum of the great public schools of England in the ^See Reports of the Public Schools Commission, 1864, and the Schools Inquiry Commission, 1867. PHILANTHROPY IN EDUCATION 229 eighteenth century that could be described as nationalistic. The studies had no national flavor whatever. There was no instruction in the English language or literature, in English history, geography, or civil government. As far as the subjects of instruction were concerned, the grammar schools might as well have been in any other country. The boy's entire scholastic effort was expended in learning Latin grammar, writing Latin prose or verse, and construing Latin classics, or in similar exercises in Greek. Even that limited academic content was poorly mastered. But there were other aspects of the life in a great public school that must have been of very great national significance. The sons of the ruling class of England, who in turn were to possess the seats of Parliament, wear the bishops' lawn sleeves, stand at the king's elbow in the Ministry, captain the men-of- war, lead the king's armies, control the administration of far-off subject empires, — all these youth, with unimportant exceptions, were gathered into the larger public schools. There, by the peculiar form of discipline followed in those schools, they were given practice in self-government. They learned how to obey and how to rule. They learned respect for their class code. They learned to reach agreements, to effect compro- mises, and somehow to get along with the business of the schoolboy day. They made personal acquaintances and con- tracted friendships among the group that was destined by its very selection to furnish the future rulers of England. Every school had its long list of "old boys" who had helped to make English history. Their names were carved into the walls of the schoolrooms and the private studies or on the table-tops in the refectory. The very walls of those great public school i were reminiscent of the glories of England's past and eloquent of the duty of national service. There may have been no in- tention of creating a national atmosphere or of preparing the youthful generation for national service, but who can doubt that the great public schools exerted tremendous influence in giving the sons of the ruling class a national unity, a na- 230 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 tional loyalty, and a preparation for national service? One can easily understand the remark attributed to Wellington that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. The characteristics developed in the great public schools were carried on to the two old and only English universities, Oxford and Cambridge. The slender intellectual baggage that had been picked up in the secondary schools was also trans- ported thither, but it is generally agreed that it was not greatly augmented, in most cases, by the period of university resi- dence. There were, to be sure, brilliant exceptions to the gen- eral indifference to serious intellectual work. The universities were, however, largely given over to social and mildly intel- lectual pursuits. They were the meeting place, on a maturer level, of the sons of the rulers who had assimilated the code and the tradition of their class in the great public schools, and the friendships of the secondary school were expanded to include a larger portion of the socially and politically important. The university graduates went out from Oxford and Cambridge to take over their patrimony and to rule half the world. Provision for the Education of Poor Children. — As has already been said, the education of his children continued to be the private concern of the parent up to and long after 1800. To a limited extent the children of the poor enjoyed the oppor- tunity of attending the elementary classes offered in local schools founded by benevolent testators. Where such schools did not exist, it seems to have been a common practice for private parties, usually "school dames," to open elementary schools in which only slight fees were charged and in which the studies taught were rudimentary. It is probable that many of all except the poorest, sent their children to such a school for a longer or shorter period. The children of the working class were expected to gain the training that was needed for their social and economic role under the system of apprenticeship. The boy who was to become a weaver entered the home and the employ of a master Aveaver and learned from him his art. The girl who was to become a domestic servant was early in life put out to PHILANTHROPY IN EDUCATION 231 service. The arts were simple and to be learned by rule of thumb. Little education was needed for proficiency in the various hand occupations, for the day when drawing was neces- sary to the mechanic or chemistry to the farmer, had not yet come. As for the duties of citizenship, those were not for the common man. He was ruled by his social superiors in the lot to which God had called him. It began to be seen, however, at the end of the seventeenth century that large numbers of the children of the poorest orders of society were not securing even a minimum of school- ing; and philanthropic persons cooperated in founding and maintaining "charity schools" to teach morals and religion through teaching the children how to read the Bible and to say the catechism of the Established Church. The charity school movement received great acceleration in the last years of the eighteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth when long years of war and the economic adjustments that followed in the train of the industrial revolution, had increased the numbers and the moral delinquency of the children of the very poor. More extended consideration of the philanthropic movement in education may better be taken up after a glance at the epoch-making industrial changes which England under- went after about 1785. The Industrial Revolution Earlier pages of this book have taken account of the indus- trial revolution, but it seems appropriate to treat that great social phenomenon in a little more special detail in connection with the country where it first occurred. Of course we cannot do more than point out some of its more obvious features and their bearing, immediate and more remote, upon the field of education. In the words of Arnold Toynbee, "The Wealth oj Nations ^ and the steam engine (with the great inventions, like the spin- ^A book by Adam Smith which first gave to English readers the laissez-faire economic theory. 2 32 XATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 ning jenny and the power loom, which accompanied or fol- lowed it) destroyed the old world and built a new one. The spinning wheel and the handloom were silenced, and manu- factures were transported from scattered villages and quiet homesteads to factories and cities filled with noise. Villages became towns, towns became cities, and factories started up on barren heath and deserted waste. . . . Rapid as the evolu- tion was, it did not come at once. In the cotton trade, for instance, first the hand wheel was thrown away, and mills with water frames and spinning jennies were built on the sides of streams; then the mule was invented, which supplied the weaver with unlimited quantities of yam, and raised his wages and increased the demand for loom-shops, causing even old barns and carthouses hastily pierced with windows to be adapted to that purpose; finally there came the introduction of the power loom, the general application of steam to drive machinery, and the erection of the gigantic factories that we see around us at the present time. By these last changes, the final blow was struck at the little master, half manufacturer and half farmer, and in his place sprang up the great capitalist employer, the owner of hundreds of looms, the employer of hundreds of men, buying and selling in every market on the globe." ' Social and Political Effects of the Industrial Revolu- tion. — The industrial changes which constituted the industrial revolution brought in their train a number of important social and political effects. In the first place the new methods of manufacturing in creating a new capitalistic class distinct from the landowning and commercial aristocracy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, disturbed the old basis of political control. The new class of rich men for the most part had their property and their residence in the older boroughs which were rapidly increasing in population or in new cities that had sprung up almost overnight. In the case of an older borough which had representation in the House of Commons, the choice of members might lie in the hands of the city corporation with ' Toynbee, The Industrial Revolution, p. i8q. PHILANTHROPY IN EDUCATION 233 its exclusive self-chosen membership, from which the new manufacturing interests might be excluded. In this event the new capitalist and mill owner was not represented in national politics. It might even be that the town in which his fac- tories were situated had no parliamentary seat allotted to it. In the case of purely local administration the new order of rich business men might find themselves equally powerless with the borough council. As a result of these disadvantages, the class made wealthy by the industrial revolution began to demand franchise reform and the redistribution of seats in the House of Commons. They demanded to be added to the list of those who ruled England. In turn their sons were to be added to the group of those who sought their education in the great public schools and the universities. A second social result of the industrial revolution was to make more hard and fast the line between master and work- man. In the old days, the little master had worked beside his men. He was approachable and his way of life was not greatly different from that of his employee. It was even pos- sible, under favorable conditions, for the thrifty workman in turn to become small and, mayhap, in time, great master. With the change to great factories, with stock-company-owned machinery, the master was removed to a different world from that in which his workmen lived. It even became difficult in a joint-stock undertaking, to know who a man's master was. And it became almost impossible for a workman ever to be- come more than the tender of a machine. As a further result of the factory system, the owner- employer was at a great advantage in the matter of the con- ditions of employment. The workmen could bargain with a man, but they were at a decided disadvantage when it came to bargaining with a system. They found that the only way to gain any advantage was through the formation of labor- unions. Through organization they hoped to be able to do as a group what they were powerless to do as individuals. They were interested in wages and hours and conditions of labor. In time they, too, came to demand representation in 234 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 the law-making bodies so that the law might be made to serve their own peculiar class-interests. They needed to have labor organizations made legal and they desired to have a new inter- pretation put upon the industrial strike. The aspiration of the laboring man for political power was to a certain extent paralleled by his desire for an education for himself and his children. Increase of Child Labor. — The last social effect of the industrial revolution to be named here is the one which se- cured the most immediate response. The new machinery run by steam and water power, made possible the employment of large numbers of women and children. They could do much of the work required as well as men could or even better, and they could be secured for smaller wages. In some families the mother and all the children above seven or eight years of age were employed in textile mills, while the father of the family was by necessity out of work. "In 1802 Sir Robert Peel directed the attention of Parlia- ment to an abuse which was perhaps the grossest of the day, i.e., the miserable condition of apprentices in cotton mills, and did it with such force that he was able to bring about the enactment of the first statute in English history relating to factory employment. In their anxiety to relieve the ratepayers, the authorities of the parishes, it developed, were accustomed to dispose of pauper children as apprentices, transporting them to the mills, where, while nominally learning a trade, they were reduced to veritable slavery. Men made a business of pro- curing and supplying apprentices, bringing together groups of workhouse children from neighboring parishes and conveying them by wagons or canal boats to factory districts where they were likely to be in demand, and subsequently disposing of them on the best terms possible to factory owners in need of 'hands.' Apprentices were lodged and fed, under conditions that were execrable, in cheap houses adjoining the factories; they were placed in charge of overseers whose pay was de- pendent upon the amount of work they could compel to be accomplished; they were flogged, fettered, tortured, and in gen- PHILANTHROPY IN EDUCATION 235 eral subjected to repression and cruelty. . . . Meager pay was sometimes provided, but as a rule the apprentice's only com- pensation was poor and insufficient food, the cheapest sort of clothing, and a place to sleep in a filthy shed." ^ The First Factory Education Provision. — The Health and Morals of Apprentices Act, 1802, which passed in response to the conditions which had been revealed, made illegal for factory labor the apprenticing of children under nine years of age; limited their working hours to twelve a day; forbade night work; required attendance at church services at least once a month; and laid down the following educational pro- visions: "That every apprentice shall be instructed, in some part of every working day, for the first four years at least of his or her apprenticeship, in the usual hours of work, in reading, writing and arithmetic, or either of them, according 'to the age and ability of such apprentice, by some discreet and proper person, to be provided and paid by the master or mistress of such apprentice, in some room or place in such mill or factory to be set apart for that purpose; and that the time hereby directed to be allotted for such instruction as afore- said shall be deemed and taken on all occasions as part of the periods limited by this Act, during which any such apprentice shall be employed or compelled to work." The carrying out of the provisions of the Act was left to justices of the peace and "visitors" whom they were to desig- nate. Ogg, in the work quoted above, says that the local authorities did not take their duties seriously and that it is the general consensus of opinion that, in the main, the law did not achieve its purpose. The Act, however, is the first of a long series of English employment acts which have definite bearing on the subject of education. In 18 19 the employment of children under the age of nine years in cotton mills and factories was prohibited; but the educational clauses of the Act of 1802 were not extended to employed children. * Ogg, Economic Development of Modern Europe, p. 373. 236 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 Philanthropy in English Education With the removal of the process of manufacturing from the semi-rural surroundings of the domestic system to the cities, the living conditions of the workmen underwent a notable deterioration. The crowded streets and filthy alleys, the con- stricted living quarters with loss of personal privacy, and the grind of machine operation unrelieved by rural avocations, led to a great increase in the consumption of high-test alcoholic liquors and in the amount of visible vice. The children were subject to all the impressions of this heightened depravity. They were also largely let loose from parental oversight and correction, where such would have been beneficial, because the adults of the family were at work, or at least the mother was. Added to the hardships caused by the transition from country to city life, as city life then was, and the rigors of early factory labor, there was a vast amount of orphanage and poverty-caused neglect of children owing to the demands made upon England at that time for carrying on the wars against Napoleon. In response to these shocking conditions existent among the less fortunate members of the working classes, private philan- thropy exerted itself to do something to improve the situation. Common opinion turned to the years of childhood as the most fruitful for the improvement of society at large. If some way might be found, it was thought, to remove the children from the degradation and vice which were their only environ- ment, the oncoming generation might be placed in a position to improve in habits of self-control and industry. The first extensive English attempt at regeneration of the neglected children of the very poor through education, if we leave out of account the work of the Society for the Propaga- tion of Christian Knowledge founded in the last years of the seventeenth century, was the Sunday School movement, initiated by Robert Raikes in the slums of Gloucester in 1780. The main objective of these Sunday Schools was to quicken the PHILANTHROPY IN EDUCATION 237 moral and religious feelings of the children whom they reached. To teach the pupils to read the Bible, to spell, and to write, and to have them absorb practical principles of religion and good conduct, were the outside aims of these schools. The Sunday School movement rapidly spread over England and in 1785 there was founded a Sunday School Society. Before 181 1, when the founder of the first Sunday School died, there were nearly five hundred thousand pupils in such schools in the British Isles alone. However, the greatest development of philanthropic education did not take place through those Sun- day Schools, which came to stress more and more the religious side of instruction, but through other associations which aimed at setting up real elementary schools for the children of the poor. Chief among these associations are "The National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Prin- ciples of the Established Church," commonly referred to as the "National Society," and "The British and Foreign Society." The work of the British and Foreign Society may be traced back to the setting up of a school in Southwark, London, in 1798, by Joseph Lancaster, for the purpose of counteracting the vice and illiteracy of the youthful city population. In this school Lancaster put into operation a monitorial system of organization by means of which the older pupils were utilized to assist in the instruction of the younger children. There was a great deal of contemporary dispute as to the priority of Lancaster's discovery and application of this system, which had been either previously or simultaneously described by Dr. Andrew Bell, whose work was the origin of the other society named above — the National Society. After Lancaster had conducted his schools and his propa- ganda in their favor for ten years, he found himself hope- lessly in debt. His work had commended itself, however, to a group of philanthropic and liberal thinking men ^ho put him on his "feet again through the incorporation of the "Royal Lancasterian Institution" in 1808. Within a few years there- after Lancaster withdrew from the "Institution" and later on from England, but the society under the name of the British 238 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 and Foreign Society continued and enlarged the work that had been begun. From the outset and to the conclusion of its long period of activity, the British and Foreign Society was non-sectarian in its management and in its religious instruc- tion. It was just this non-sectarian quality of the Lancasterian schools that attracted the sympathy and aid of such liberal thinkers as Bentham, James Mill, and Francis Place, and, at the same time, aroused the fears and opposition of the more conservative in politics and religion. Accordingly, the "Na- tional Society" was founded in 181 1 by the church party to use the same monitorial system as was used in the Lancasterian schools and to reach the same neglected part of the popula- tion. Its long and honorable history, paralleling that of the "British and Foreign Society," will be seen to be closely con- nected with the development of English popular education throughout the whole of the nineteenth century. Yet another movement, namely, the Infant School move- ment, for education of the children of the poor had its incep- tion from their unfortunate condition. It had an independent development in the British Isles and exhibited contemporane- ous development in other countries. With the factory system and its increased employment of women and children, the smaller children of the household were allowed to suffer unbelievable neglect. With the purpose of doing something to relieve their unhappy condition, Robert Owen established an Infant School in 181 6 at New Lanark, Scotland, in connection with the manufacturing establishment of which he was part owner. This school was designed primarily to take care of children from the age when they could walk alone and did not require the constant attention of an older person. These little children were to be collected in suitable school sur- roundings and provided with an environment which was to be not only morally wholesome and sanitary, but educative in the rudiments of reading, writing, number, and common school subjects. This school soon was imitated in England, and be- fore long Samuel Wilderspin became chief exponent of the PHILANTHROPY IN EDUCATION 239 principles of this type of school. In 1824 the "Infant School Society" was founded and had an active existence for sixteen years. Infant schools later became a part of the school sys- tem of Great Britain. Early Parliamentary Interest in Education In 1807 Whitbread introduced a bill in Parliament, known as the Parochial Schools Bill, which provided for the estab- lishment of a system of rate-aided parochial schools. "The scheme provided for two years' free schooling for all poor chil- dren between seven and fourteen years of age, in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and for girls, in addition, needlework, knitting, etc.; schools were to be established by the vestries, or failing these, by the magistrates, with power to levy a local rate not exceeding is. for maintenance. The clergy and parish officers were to be the managers. The Bill raised for the first time in Parliament the question 'Whether it was proper that education should be diffused among the poorer classes.' In introducing the measure its promoter anticipated the usual objections that education would make the poor despise their lot, that it would make them indolent, and refractory, and would set a premium on seditious books. He pointed out that if the schools were not to educate, the gutter would. But in vain. The Bill was unpopular in the country. INIany petitions were presented against it and not a single one for it. Parlia- ment as a body did not believe in popular education, and though the Bill passed the Commons it was rejected by the Upper House." ^ The Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons. — In 1816, Mr. Henry Brougham, afterwards Lord Brougham, succeedsd in having appointed a Select Committee of the House of Commons "to inquire into the education of the lower orders of the Metropolis." The scope of the inves- tigation was later extended to cover the whole country. The ^ Birchenough, History of Elementary Education in England and Wales, pp. 45-6. 240 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 Committee secured a great deal of information in regard to the lamentable state of public education, and made a number of wise recommendations regarding ways and means of remedy- ing existing conditions, but no action was taken by Parlia- ment at the time. The evidence given before the Select Committee of the House of Commons indicates that the education of the children of London was taken care of, to the extent to which it was done at all, by private schools maintained by the fees of pupils, by endowed schools, some of which were exclusively charity en- dowments, by charity schools of the older type, maintained by private subscriptions, by charity schools of the newer type, maintained by private subscriptions and using the monitorial system of instruction, and by Sunday Schools. By all these means combined, in many populous districts of London, less than half the children were securing an "education," if that word may be applied to the acquisition of ability to read badly in the Testament and the memorizing of snatches of religious dogma. The same conditions were to be found in all the newer industrial cities of England and pretty much for the country as a whole. Limited Objectives of Philanthropic Education. — It may not be amiss to say again that England at this time did not consider the education of children as a public matter. It was the concern of parents, or of philanthropic minded per- sons who wished to relieve from their own purses the educa- tional destitution of the country just as they did its economic or moral destitution. Moreover, even the philanthropists had an extremely limited view of the purpose of education for the children of the "lower orders of society." Illiteracy was to them only an aspect of general moral delinquency, and educa- tion was attached to the program of social reform only as a means to the larger end of removing profligacy, drunkenness, and crime. Education, indeed, was intended mainly to serve as a means of opening up the Scriptures to the degraded chil- dren of the very poor. The narrow curriculum of the philan- thropic schools, its very limited extent, its highly religious PHILANTHROPY IN EDUCATION 241 content, indicate that teaching children to read was only a part of the larger problem of making them temperate, indus- trious, thrifty, modest, clean, and interested in church attend- ance and social respectability. Indeed, much of the appeal for support of charity schools lay in the fact that they offered so meager, rather than so extensive, instruction in school sub- jects. The educational motive was not to provide opportuni- ties for the children of the lower classes to raise themselves to superior social stations, but to make them less of an eyesore in the face of respectability, less of a challenge to the moral susceptibilities of good people, and less open to the blandish- ments of political radicals and the temptation to violent social disturbance. Political Reaction after 1815.— The political attitude of Metternich was thoroughly exemplified in England after the close of the Napoleonic wars by the Tory majority in Parlia- ment and the reactionary Prince Regent, who later ruled as king from 1820 to 1830. The peace of 181 5 was followed by general business depression and violent labor disorders. The radical political agitation which went hand in hand with the current economic distress was ruthlessly repressed. A group of six acts of Parliament passed in November 1819 among other repressive measures, restricted and regulated the right of pub- lic meeting, interfered with the freedom of the press, providing banishment as the penalty for a second publication of seditious matter, and sternly repressed any preparation for armed resist- ance. After 1822 the force of reaction was somewhat abated and within ten years thereafter some of the new political forces created by the Industrial Revolution had become so strong as to throw off the Tory control. Meanwhile the philanthropic agencies described above continued to grow in importance and to increase the opportunities for the education of the poor in England. During these reactionary years, the champion of popular education in Parliament, Lord Brougham, continued his agita- tion for government interference. Successive Parliamentary committees were appointed to investigate conditions and re- 242 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 ports were submitted. In 1820 Brougham introduced a Bill "for the Better Education of the Poor in England and Wales." Owing to general opposition, he withdrew the Bill without al- lowing it to go to a vote. Up to the close of the third decade, England had done nothing as a government in the direction of the establishment or the support of any form of public ele- mentary schools. ADDITIONAL READINGS General Historical Background. — Cheney, Social and Industrial History of England; Hayes, A Political and Social History of Modern Eiirope; Hazen, Europe Since 1815. Education Sources. — Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons, 1816; Report of the Public Schools Commission, 1864; Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission, 1867; Lancaster, Improvements in Education. Secondary Accounts. — Birchenough, History of Elementary Educa- tion in England; Cubberley, History of Education; DeMontmorency, Progress of Education in England; DeMontmorency, State Intervention in English Education; Graves, History of Education in Modern Times. CHAPTER XII A BENEVOLENT ARISTOCRACY AND EARLY STATE INTERVENTION IN EDUCATION (1832- I 867) The New Spirit of Political Reform. — Early in the twenties it became evident that a new spirit of reform was coming into the public life of England. A law passed in 1823 reformed the barbarous penal code which remained upon the statute books, but which had in practice consistently been shorn of its horrors. By this act the death penalty was re- moved from about one hundred minor offenses. A law passed in 1824 made it legal for workrhen to enter into combinations for the purpose of securing better wages and conditions of labor. Up to that time drastic penalties were imposed by a long series of statutes running back to the time of Elizabeth upon any combinations of workmen for any purpose whatever. The year following, 1825, the extremely liberal law of 1824 was repealed and replaced by a law which greatly curtailed the freedom of labor unions and associations as given by the law of 1824. The new law made it lawful for workmen to meet for a discussion of hours and wages, but out-and-out organiza- tion was forbidden and the use of the strike as an economic weapon was made punishable by imprisonment. While, under the law of 1825, labor unions continued to be illegal, to belong to one was no longer a criminal act. A third evidence of some change of heart in the Tory government was the Catho- lic Emancipation Act of 1829, which gave Catholics practically full political rights. Most significant of all, however, was the overthrow of the Tory government and the coming into power of the Whigs in connection with the agitation for suffrage re- form which culminated in the Reform Act of 1832. 243 244 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 The Reform Act of 1832. — This is not the place for a detailed discussion of the Reform Act of 1832, but it is essen- tial to our purpose that we should note the change which it brought into English political life. By the Act of 1832, the county franchise was extended to include all male copy-holders and lease-holders of land that would rent for ten pounds a year, and all tenants-at-will holding land that would rent for fifty pounds a year. Before that only free-holders of land that would rent for forty shillings a year had been allowed to vote. In the boroughs, the right to vote for members of Par- liament was extended to all men who rented a shop or other building at an annual rental of at least ten pounds. The result was an increase in the number of persons eligible to vote in the counties from 247,000 to 347,000 and in the boroughs from 188,000 to 286,000. The proportion of electors to general population was raised by the terms of the Act to about one out of twenty-two.^ By the same Act there was brought about a considerable change in the distribution of seats in the House of Commons. Some of the smaller towns were deprived of their representation or had it reduced, and a number of the larger towns had their quota of members increased or were given representatives for the first time. The most significant political change brought about by the Act of 1832 was that it added the new capitalistic class to the group that ruled England. This in turn meant that the power of the old landowning oligarchy was lessened, and that the interests of the new industrial order and the social conditions which that order was bringing in its train, would receive recognition in national policies. The extension of the franchise stopped short of giving the vote to the working-classes. They had been active in support of the Reform Bill and were disappointed in failing to be given political representation. Almost immediately after 1832, they began to agitate anew for a widened franchise which was to include all adult males. Between 1838 and 1848 the working ' Hayes, Political and Social History of Modem Europe, Vol. II, p. 107. BENEVOLENT STATE INTERVENTION 245 class movement for further reform was known as the Chartist Movement. The Chartists demanded universal manhood suf- frage, annual parliaments, equal electoral districts, vote by ballot, removal of property qualification for members of Par- liament, and payment of members. Chartism came to a con- clusive failure in 1848. After that time the return of commer- cial prosperity largely removed the causes of political and social unrest. It was not until the sixties that the demand for work- ing class suffrage again became vigorous and widespread. Development of Laboring-class Consciousness.— The years between 1848 and 1867 were, however, vastly important for the development of laboring-class consciousness. The workingman was interested in learning to read and write and took advantage of such opportunities for schooling as were to hand. A series of acts of Parliament which brought about the penny daily press made it possible for the first time for the workingmen to publish their own organs of publicity. Up to 1836 there had been a stamp tax of four-pence on every newspaper, periodical, or pamphlet printed, which had been imposed from motives of controlling radical agitation. In that year the tax was reduced to one penny and even the penny stamp tax was abolished in 1855. With the repeal of the advertisement duty in 1853 and the paper duty in 1861, the so-called "taxes on knowledge" were entirely done away with. The effect of this upon the education of the workingman in respect to his class interests was very great. "Trade-unionism grew rapidly, solidified itself, perfected its machinery, and discussed and clarified the demands of the laboring class. The effect of this education was apparent later. Workingmen were receiving in their unions a kind of education in politics and management that was a valuable training for the suffrage when they should get it, as they did in 1867." ^ Middle Class Social Reform. — The new Whig government was firmly set against any further tinkering with the fran- chise, but they were alive to the need of much general social reform. The period between the two great reforms of 1832 ' Hazcn, Europe Since 1815, p. 457. 246 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 and 1867 has been characterized as one of bourgeois benevo- lence. The ruling classes no less felt their divine right to rule England than they had before 1832, and the social legislation which they put upon the statute books reflected the preju- dices and the conservatism of a wealthy aristocracy. But it must be no less admitted that for the most part those laws exhibited a truly benevolent intention and were enacted in the interest of a broadly-conceived common welfare. In 1833 slavery was abolished in all British possessions, and in the same year the first effective steps were taken to mitigate the system of human slavery which was being carried on in the new industrial plants in England. The Act of 1833 aimed a blow at the truly frightful conditions of factory labor, espe- cially as concerned the employment of little children. By the terms of the act, the employment in spinning and weaving factories of children under nine years of age was prohibited; the hours of labor were limited for children of nine to thir- teen years of age to eight hours a day and for young persons of thirteen to eighteen to twelve a day; the children were to be given two hours of schooling a day and an hour and a half for meals; and a system of state inspection was established to see to it that the law was lived up to. By the Coal Mines Regulation Act of 1842 the employment underground of women and children, and of boys under ten in any capacity, was prohibited. The Factory Act of 1844 supplemented the conditions of the Act of 1833 and made them apply to substan- tially all textile factories. Finally, by the "Ten Hours Act" of 1847, the maximum number of working hours for all women and young persons in textile industries became fifty-eight a week, which, with the part-Saturday holiday, meant an average of ten hours a day. With the extension of the state's control over the employment of children through this series of acts, more definite provisions regarding the education of working children were made. No child under eight years of age was to be employed in a factory at all, and no child under thirteen years could be employed for more than six hours and a half in a day, or ten hours on alternate days. A child working BENEVOLENT STATE INTERVENTION 247 every day had to attend school three hours and a child work- ing alternate days had to attend five hours. Penalties for non-compliance were laid upon both parents and mill-occupiers. The employer was compelled to pay the schoolmaster for the child's tuition (which might be deducted from his wages). Inspectors were given power to determine whether or not the schools attended by the working children were satisfactory. In spite of all the provisions of the laws, however, the New- castle Commission in 1861 had to report a very unsatisfactory condition in respect to the education of children under the Labor Acts. A political reform carried out by the new party in power that eventually had large indirect bearing upon the improve- ment of education was the reconstitution of borough govern- ment through the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835. This act created a responsible local government in the boroughs, elected by all the taxpayers and ten pound renters. While the franchise in borough elections was thus limited to the middle and upper classes, it took municipal administration out of the hands of the narrow city-corporations and created a responsible local authority for the cities. The rapid growth of the cities as a result of the industrial revolution had brought about the need for many improvements in city administration. The new form of government made possible the inauguration of systems of lighting, fire protection, policing, sanitation, water supply, and other necessities of city life. Incidentally, it led to consideration on the part of municipalities of the urgent need of schools and of ways and means to get them. New Local Authorities and Extensions of Central Control. — If the reconstruction of the boroughs is to be re- garded as a step in the direction of restoring vitality to local government, the general tendency of political administration during the middle part of the nineteenth century was quite the opposite. Indeed, the fifty years between the passage of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 and the Local Government Act of 1888 saw a marked increase in the amount of public business that was initiated or controlled by the national gov- 248 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 ernment. The English had had a long tradition of almost com- plete autonomy on the part of the county justices of the peace and the borough corporations. But a new period had arrived when a new set of social conditions called for a type of social controls which the old authorities were not likely to supply. The new problems of poor-law relief, factory inspection, sani- tation, and so forth, were met in part by the erection of new local machinery of administration; but in addition the central government supervised the work in the new fields of administra- tion and, in general, maintained control over the acts of the local authorities. In return- for the interference of the central government in local affairs, the local authorities were finan- cially assisted out of the national treasury. The new Poor Law of 1834 called for the creation of a new area of local government, namely, the poor-law union, con- sisting of groups of parishes. The unions were mapped out by the Poor Law Commissioners, who were given power to regu- late in very great detail the actions of the local officers, known as the board of guardians. The local justices of the peace were ex officio members of the board of guardians; the remaining members were elected by the rate-payers. In rapid succession thereafter, new local authorities were provided for a number of specific purposes, such as the maintenance of highways and bridges, the provision of cemeteries, and the administration of sanitary measures. These various local authorities were constituted without reference to county, or parish, or borough lines and without reference to already existing local authori- ties. They were created ad koc, that is to say, for a particu- lar purpose, and did not constitute an authority with any gen- eral powers beyond those with which they were created or which were added to them by later laws. This intricate variety of local areas of government had a center in some one or other of the new departments of the national govern- ment that were created to have cognizance of equally specific fields of interest. The result was a very great increase in the amount of government which the people were under, and a thoroughgoing change in its location. Whereas, in the BENEVOLENT STATE INTERVENTION 249 eighteenth century the central government hardly interfered at all in local affairs, the third quarter of the nineteenth cen- tury saw it guiding, even coercing, local authorities in a wide range of activities and paying a large part of the local budgets. The First Parliamentary Grants for Education The extension of the interest of the central government in education is a very clear illustration of the tendency in the preceding paragraph. The unfavorable state of the education of the poor was a matter of common knowledge when the Reform Act brought the new Whig party into power. It was consistent with their general humanitarian attitude that the Whigs should take some action in regard to it. Their first step was cautious and experimental, consisting in the appro- priation of twenty thousand pounds "to be issued in aid of private subscriptions for the erection of school houses for the education of the poorer classes of Great Britain." This action was taken in 1833, and for six years thereafter the same sum was annually appropriated. No special machinery of adminis- tration was set up and the money so set aside was paid out to managers of schools of the National Society and the British and Foreign Society by ordinary treasury procedure. As the demand for aid was immediately greater than the supply, only the largest schools in the most populous places came to be given any grants and then only when two school places were supplied for every pound of the government grant. No guar- antees were exacted of the recipient and no state supervision was provided. Agitation for Increased Government Participation in Education. — It was generally recognized that the small annual contribution made by the government was an altogether inade- quate solution of the problem. Parliament during the years immediately following the passage of the first grant was the scene of active agitation over the education question. Between 1833 and 1838 no less than four committees were appointed to mrike returns on the educational conditions of the country. 2 50 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 The year 1833 saw the formation of the Manchester Statis- tical Society, and the next year of the London Statistical Society, which bombarded Parliament and the general public with information concerning the social, moral, physical, and educational conditions of particular districts. Report of the Select Committee of 1838.— The Select Committee of 1838 made a "Report on the Education of the Poorer Classes in England and Wales," which revealed the educational destitution of the larger towns. As there were no local education authorities anywhere, the Committee depended for its information largely on the reports of local societies, such as those mentioned above, that had made educational surveys. They also used the annual reports of the two great school societies and sent out questionnaires to individuals in the larger towns. All this material was brought together in the report made to Parliament. ' The Select Committee accepted as the standard of school attendance the proportion of one school child out of every eight of the population and declared that there ought to be school places in like proportion. It was reported that in the five parishes of Westminster, London, one child out of four- teen was receiving some sort of schooling, a third of which number were in worthless dame schools. It was shown that in the parish of Bethnal Green there were from 8,000 to 10,000 children "not only without daily instruction, but for whom no means of daily instruction are provided." Less than one in twenty of the population of that populous parish were in school. The figures given for Liverpool, Manchester, Bir- mingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds, and other important indus- trial towns exhibited equal or greater lack of schools. With this situation before them, the Committee agreed to the fol- lowing resolutions: "i. That in the Metropolis and the great towns of England I and Wales, there exists a great want of education among the ' children of the working classes. "2. That it is desirable that there should be means of suit- able daily education (within the reach of the working classes) BENEVOLENT STATE INTERVENTION 251 for a proportion of not less than about one-eighth part of the population. "3. That the amount of assistance afforded by Government should be regulated as heretofore, subject to modiiication of their rules in cases where the poverty of the district was proved to require it, the special ground being reported in each case. ''4. That under existing circumstances and under the diffi- culties which beset the question, your committee are not pre- pared to propose any means for meeting the deficiency beyond the continuance and the extension of the grants which are at present made by the treasury for the promotion of education, through the medium of the National and the British and For- eign School Societies." "Under existing circumstances and under the difficulties which beset the question!" What could have been the circum- stances and what the difficulties besetting the question, one is impelled to ask, that so thoroughly frightened the committee and paralyzed their judgment? Disagreement in Parliament concerning Ways and Means. — All parties were pretty much in agreement with the members of the Select Committee that the education of the poor was in dangerously bad state and that something should be done to improve it. But they were in complete and bitter disagreement as to the ways and means. While the Estab- lished Church party and the Dissenters agreed that education should be essentially religious and under church direction, the Dissenters were unwilling to have the education of all English children placed under the domination of the Established Church. Both Anglicans and Dissenters joined in opposition to the Liberal party, which desired to see religious and secular education separated, with the latter under the control of a government board of commissioners. There was no lack of belief in education for the children of the poor, or of interest in it, or of will to provide it. The English public after 1838 were thoroughly aroused to the necessity for making some headway in the provision of elementary schools for that class 2 52 XATIOXALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 of children. The government itself desired to do something, but could not without jeopardizing its Parliamentary ma- jority. Committee of Privy Council on Education Created. — At this juncture there 'was created a Committee of the Privy Council on Education "to superintend the application of any sums voted by Parliament for the purpose of promoting public education." The creation of the Committee of Council on Education was a political move to enable the Government to make progress in the matter of public elementary education as it could, without waiting for a definite solution of all the difficulties that beset the passage of an act of Parliament. The Committee of Council began its work by voting to establish a teachers training college under government control out of a fund of 10,000 pounds that had been granted in 1839. In this school non-sectarian religious instruction was to be pro- vided and no religious distinction was to be made in the admis- sion of students. vSpecial provision for religious instruction by ministers of the several sects was made. However, the opposition that arose to this proposal was so great that the Committee of Council rescinded its action and gave the money provided for the purpose of teacher training to the National Society and the British and Foreign School Society for the assistance of like schools which they were maintaining. The Committee of the Privy Council on Education further declared that it would aid schools not connected with either of the two great school societies, and that it would not give any money for the support of normal schools or any other .'^chools "unless the right of inspection be retained, in order to secure a conformity to the regulations and discipline estab- lished in the several schools, with such improvements as may from time to time be suggested by the Committee." It added, "A part of the grant voted in the present year may be usefully applied to the purposes of inspection, and to the means of acquiring a complete knowledge of the present state of education in England and Wales." ^ 'Minute? of Committee of Council on Education, June ,■>,, 1839. BENEVOLENT STATE INTERVENTION 253 The Committee of Council was compelled to continue the policy of government aid to education through voluntary or- ganizations, but it began to lay down very definite conditions under which such aid would be given. It prescribed conditions of administration and set up standards for housing and equip- ment. It organized a corps of state school inspectors, who were to see that the grants were earned. As years passed without any change in the deadlock between the supporters of a "voluntary" and those of a state system of education, the Committee decided to attempt a considerable extension of its operations through a new policy set forth in the Minutes of 1846. The Minutes of 1846. — The mechanical character of the instruction that was being given the children under the moni- torial system had long been recognized. As a possible im- provement on the monitorial plan, the Committee of Council proposed in 1846 to develop a supply of pupil teachers who would be apprenticed to the schoolmasters and be given special instruction over a long period by them. The Committee drew up an elaborate statement of the conditions of eligibility to become a pupil teacher and a detailed outline of the in- struction which the pupil teachers were to receive year by year. Each such pupil teacher was given a stipend which in- creased with length of service, and each master was paid a stated sum for each pupil teacher whom he instructed. A lower class of assistants, called stipendiary monitors, was also provided for at lesser rates of subsidy. Yet another means was adopted for improving the staffing of the schools. The teachers training colleges were awarded substantial grants for each pupil passing the examination of each year of the course. Exhibitions, or scholarships, were provided for all pupil teachers who should pass creditable entrance examina- tions for the training college and these were continued through- out the three-year course. The Committee further offered to add from fifteen to twenty pounds a year to the annual salaries of teachers in service who had attended the training colleges for one or more years. 2 54 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 It is easily seen that the powers of the Committee of Coun- cil under the new Minutes had become greatly enlarged. From a mere committee for dispensing government grants it had changed into an agency that was standardizing educational performance wherever the government money went. It was maintaining a system of inspection out of the central office. It was stimulating the managers of schools to improve their teaching methods and their teaching staff. Naturally the new powers arrogated to itself by the Committee had to be sup- ported by increased government grants. In 1847 the educa- tion vote was raised to £100,000 and thereafter mounted steadily. By the year 1856 the work of the Committee of Council on Education had become so important that it was made into a Department and an act was passed providing for the appointment of a Minister of Education. Agitation for Aid to Education out of Local Taxation. — The years between 1846 and 1858 were marked both within Parliament and without by strong agitation for aid to popular education out of local taxes, which in England are called rates. The National Public School Association, founded in 1850, established branches all over the country and undertook an active campaign to mould public opinion in favor of schools supported out of the rates and open to all children free of charge. The activities of the friends of free, tax-supported secular schools were met by a storm of opposition on the part of those who were in favor of the voluntary system and did not wish any further extension of the powers of local or cen- tral authorities. A number of education bills were presented in rapid succession in Parliament following 1850, but none of them had sufficient backing to secure its passage. Meantime the sums voted annually by Parliament were becoming larger and larger. _ Beginning at £20,000 in 1833, the government subsidy had reached £30,000 in 1839, £100,000 in 1846, £260,- 1 000 in 1854, £540,000 in 1857, and almost £800,000 in 1860J Without anyone ever having decided upon a system, a system was in operation and becoming more firmly fixed each year. Yet neither side to the education controversy was satisfied. BEXEVOLENT STATE INTERVENTION 255 As a means of clearing the air and finding out how matters really stood the first of three great education commissions was appointed in 1858 under the chairmanship of the Duke of Newcastle "to inquire into the present state of popular educa- tion in England, and to consider what measures, if any, are required for the extension of sound and cheap elementary in- struction to all classes of the people." The Report of the Newcastle Commission In 1 861, after three years of careful and laborious inquiry, the Newcastle Commission presented its report. The major part of the Report dealt with "the education of the independent poor" as opposed to that of paupers, vagrants, and criminals. The children of the independent poor were to be found in infant schools, public and private, in day schools, public and private, in evening schools, and in Sunday Schools. A public school was one maintained by a religious or charitable organi- zation, as opposed to a school maintained by an individual for gain. The word public did not necessarily imply any connec- tion, financial or otherwise, with local or central government authorities. Infant Schools. — Of the infant schools the Report says: "Infant schools fall into two well-marked classes: the private, or dames' schools, and the public infant schools, which fre- quently form a department of an ordinary day school. Dames' schools are very common both in the country and in towns. They are frequently little more than nurseries, in which the nurse collects the children of many families into her own house insteacl of attending upon the children of some one family. The general character of these schools is the same in every part of the country. Women are always the teachers. They are generally advanced in life, and their school is usually their kitchen, sitting and bedroom, and the scene of all their domestic operations. . . . The dames' schools are apt to be close, crowded, and dirty. . . . Public infant schools present a different appearance. Great attention has been bestowed 2S6 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 upon their organization. They not only aim at, but in fact accomplish a great deal more than the simple object of keep- ing children out of mischief. ... In the best infant schools, much is done and even much is taught. . . . There are evening schools in which the upper classes, consisting of children under seven, read a simple book, such as the New Testament, flu- ently and intelligently, write on a slate in a fair round hand, know many of the simple properties and relations of numbers, set down on a slate any number under 100,000 correctly from dictation, are acquainted with the main features of the earth's surface, and of English geography, have definite notions of all ordinary forms, and possess an appreciable amount of in- formation on natural history and objects of general utility." Public Day Schools. — The Report ' saw in the public day schools the most important part of the provision made for the education of children of the independent poor. These schools had been established and were maintained by persons who derived no personal advantage from them and were actuated in their foundation by charitable and religious mo- tives. Such schools were almost universally religious in char- acter and under the influence and care of ministers of relig- ion of various denominations. Though the public day schools had contributed more than any other cause to the diffusion of secular knowledge among the poor, this had seldom been the sole or even the leading object of those who were chiefly instrumental in founding and supporting them. Their leading object had been and then was the improvement of the poorer classes in a moral, and, above all, in a religious point of view. The general principle upon which almost everyone who for the last half century had endeavored to promote popular edu- cation had proceeded, had been that a large portion of the poorer classes of the population were in a condition injurious to their own interests and dangerous and discreditable to the rest of the community; that it was the duty and the interest ' The writer has closely followed the language of the Report in the following digest. BENEVOLENT STATE INTERVENTION 257 of the nation at large to raise them to a higher level, and that religious education was the most powerful instrument for the promotion of that object. The parents of children, on the other hand, had been interested mainly in the advantage of their children and had attached a higher importance than the managers and promoters of schools to the specific knowl- edge that would be profitable to the child in life. Private Day School Teachers. — The efficiency of the private day schools depended largely upon the teachers. They had rarely been in any way trained to their profession and they had almost always selected it either because they had failed in other pursuits or because., as in the case of widows, they had been unexpectedly left in a state of destitution. The worst conditions with respect to private schools were found in London where, one of the assistant commissioners said, none was too old, too poor, too ignorant, too feeble, too sickly, too unqualified in any or every way to regard himself and to be regarded by others as unfit for schoolkeeping. Among the class of private teachers were to be found domestic servants out of place, discharged barmaids, venders of toys or lollipops, keepers of small eatinghouses, of mangles, or small lodging- houses, needlewomen who took in plain sewing, milliners, con- sumptive patients in an advanced stage, cripples almost bed- ridden, persons of at least doubtful temperance, outdoor paupers, men and women of seventy and even eighty years of age, and persons who spelled badly, who could scarcely write, and who could not cipher at all. The evening schools were most frequently departments of regular day schools and were mainly used for supplying the deficiencies of early education. The work was confined almost entirely to elementary subjects, writing being the favorite. A large proportion of the students were young or mature men who found their business advancement hindered by the lack of elementary education. The Sunday Schools had by i860 become much less impor- tant than they had been at an earlier time as agencies for 2s8 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 secular instruction. Incidentally, reading continued to be taught in them and occasionally writing, but for the most part their primary object was religious instruction. The Financial Support of Education. — The government grants to the schools that received aid amounted to about a quarter of their total income. The fees of the children provided from about a quarter to as much as three-fifths of their income. The remainder was made up out of private con- tributions. In manufacturing sections the employers of labor were likely to contribute to the support of schools and not in- frequently they compelled the persons in their employment to contribute also by means of weekly stoppages from their wages. In the rural districts, the landowners were not generally inter- ested in the schools and their support fell almost entirely on the parochial clergy, who were ill able to afford it. Of the total number of public schools about twelve-thirteenths were sup- ported by religious denominations. Out of a total of 1,675,158 pupils in public schools, 1,549,312 were in schools supported by religious denominations. Omitting certain classes as being outside the object of the government grants, there were in i860, 1,592,410 scholars in public schools for which grants were intended. Of this number 917,255 were in schools which actually received government grants while 675,155 were in schools which received no grants. The private schools in- structed 573,536 of the children of the independent poor, for whose education the government grants were intended. These, added to the scholars in unassisted public schools, made a total of 1,248,691 children to whose education the annual grants were expected to contribute and did not. In round numbers, the annual grants promoted the education of 920,000 chil- dren, while they left unaffected the education of 1,250,000 others of the same class. Supply of Schools. — The Commission reported that most of the children who, being able to attend did not belong to any school, appeared to be the children of out-door paupers, or parents viciously inclined. With these exceptions, almost all the children in the country capable of going to school re- BENEVOLENT STATE INTERVENTION 259 ceived some instruction. Wherever the assistant commissioners went, they found schools of some sort and failed to discover any considerable number of children who did not attend school for some time at some period of their lives. No doubt many of the schools were exceedingly bad, the Report acknowledged, and the attendance frequently so irregular as to be of little value. Teacher Training Colleges. — The Report showed that there had been established by i860 in England and Wales thirty-two training colleges, all of which except two were under government inspection and received government assistance. Practically all the teachers training colleges were connected with central religious societies. Their officers for the most part consisted of a principal, who was usually a minister of religion of the denomination with which the college was connected; a number of tutors, some of whom were lecturers in receipt of grants of 100 pounds a year from the government; and a number of certified assistants who were schoolmasters holding certificates of merit. Practising or model schools were usually attached to the institution with a "normal master" in charge, whose special business it was to give instruction to the stu- dents in the art of teaching. All of these training colleges had come into existence in 1839 or later, with one exception. The large part that the government grants played in their success was indicated by the fact that of 2,056 students in training colleges in 1858, 1,676 were Queen's scholars. The govern- ment grants constituted 53.3 per cent of the total income of these schools. Attendance. — The inquiry which the Commission made into school attendance revealed that about one-third of all the children who were on the rolls of the denominational schools attended less than 100 days. The children of the great bulk of the poorer classes were found to attend school for several years between the ages of three and twelve aad generally speaking between six and twelve. The Commission's reaction to this amount of school attendance was as follows: "This state of things leaves great room for improvement, but we do not think that it warrants very gloomy views or calls 26o NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 for extreme measures. Even under the present conditions of school age and attendance, it would be possible for at least three-fifths of the children on the books of the schools . . . to learn to read and write without conscious difficulty, and to perform such arithmetical operations as occur in the ordi- nary business of life. This knowledge they might receive while under the influence of wholesome moral and religious dis- cipline and they might add to it an acquaintance with the leading principles of religion and the rules of conduct which flow from them." The Commission's Attitude respecting Compulsory Attendance. — The Commission found that almost all parents appreciated the importance of elementary education and that the "respectable" parents were anxious to obtain it for their children. They also stated that the parents were not willing to sacrifice the earnings of their children for this purpose and that they accordingly removed them from school as soon as they had an opportunity of earning wages of an amount which added in any considerable degree to the family income. In face of the unfavorable conditions of attendance the Com- mission felt that the difficulties and evils of any general measure of compulsion would outweigh any good results which could be expected from it under the present state of things. They added that neither the Government nor private persons could effectually resist, or would be morally justified in resisting, the natural demands of labor when the child had arrived, physically speaking, at the proper age for labor, and when its wages were such as to form a strong motive to its parents for withdrawing it from school. They recommended that public effort should be directed principally to increasing the regu- larity of attendance rather than to prolonging its duration. They believed that under the present circumstances of society, a satisfactory point would have been reached when the chil- dren of the independent poor went to the infant school at the age of three, and from the infant school to the day school at the age of six or seven, and remained in the day school till ten, eleven, or twelve, according to the circumstances of their BENEVOLENT STATE INTERVENTION 261 parents and the calling to which they were destined. This amount of schooling would suffice, provided that the children attended at least four hours a day for five days a week for thirty weeks a year. Such a period of school attendance would enable them "to learn to read and write with tolerable ease and to cipher well enough for the purposes of their condi- tion in life," besides grounding them in the principles of religion. The Limitation of the Commission's Viewpoint, — The Report of the Newcastle Commission exhibits clearly the benevolent intentions of the English ruling classes with respect to the education of the children of the- poor, but it no less re- veals the limitations of their viewpoint. They accepted the existing class divisions of society as more or less permanent. The poor they should always have with them and the poor were to be accepted somewhat as a means of grace to those set in superior positions in life. The education proposed for the chil- dren of the poor was that of an inferior social class. The general attitude of the Commission was one of surprise and self-congratulation that so much had been done in the way of giving educational opportunities to the children of the poor. They hoped that there might be improvement along all lines, but certainly the situation was not one that "war- ranted very gloomy views or called for extreme measures." The Revised Code of 1861. — The weight of the recom- mendations of the Commission was rather in favor of chang- ing some of the details of the existing system of state grants in aid of voluntary effort, than of changing the system in prin- ciple. As a result of the Report, and largely as an embodiment of the recommendations contained therein, the Education De- partment drew up a new statement of the conditions that were to govern state grants. This is known as the Revised Code of 1861,^ and it inaugurated what was known as the system of "payment by results." Perhaps no other feature of Eng- lish government as it developed between 1835 and 1888 ex- hibits more clearly the new powers taken over by the cen- 'Sec Education Department Report, 1S60-1S61 (England). 2 62 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 tral authorities at the expense of local initiative and con- trol than does the system of payment by results in the schools. Payment by Results. — The Code stated that the object of the parliamentary grants was to promote the education of children belonging to the classes who supported themselves by manual labor. The money was to be distributed in aid of local voluntary exertion in the establishment or maintenance of schools and in the training of teachers. In defining the condi- tions under which grants would be made to aid in building new elementary schools, it was stated that such aid would be allowed only when the Committee of Council was satisfied that there was a sufficient population of the laboring class in the vicinity which required a school; that the religious de- nomination of the school would be suitable to the families to be relied upon for supplying pupils, and that the school would be likely to be maintained efficiently. The grants were to be limited very definitely in respect to the amount of voluntary contributions. The plans and specifications, site, title, and trust deed must be satisfactory to the Committee, whose con- trol was carried out even in respect to minute details. For the maintenance of schools, the sum of four shillings was to be paid for each scholar in average attendance throughout the year at the morning and afternoon meetings of their school, and two shillings sixpence for each scholar at the evening meetings. For every pupil who had attended more than 200 morning or afternoon sessions, eight shillings were to be paid, subject to examination, if he were more than six years of age, and six shillings sixpence if under six years. The children under six were not examined but their satisfactory condition must be reported by the inspector. In case the child over six years of age, for whom eight shillings was claimed, should fail in the examination in reading, writing, or arithmetic, one-third of that amount was deducted for each failure. In order to have a clear definition of what was to be expected of the children, the Education Department established a series BENEVOLENT STATE INTERVENTION 263 of six standards in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Inspectors were empowered to withhold grants from the managers of schools on general grounds as well as for the failure of pupils in examinations. The old basis of aiding teachers with addi- tions to their salaries out of the grants was dropped, and there- after all grants paid in respect to the qualifications of teachers were paid directly to the managers of the schools in which they were employed. The teacher pension plan was likewise abro- gated. The effect of the new policies of the Revised Code was to discourage tendencies to expand the elementary curriculum, which had become not exceptional, and to limit the work of the school to a great deal of drill on the subjects for which grants were paid/ namely, reading, writing, and arithmetic. The study of geography, grammar, and history was discouraged. "The whole arrangement was ridiculously simple, and educa- tional administration was reduced to a question of arithmetic. The child became a money-earning unit to be driven; the teacher a sort of foreman whose business it was to keep his gang hard at work." - The system of payment by results on the basis of examina- tions given by Central Office inspectors was thoroughly bad. It resulted from the attempt of a central authority, which was without any coercive control, to supervise education through negative means. The English were not willing to accept out and out centralization of educational administra- tion. Such would have been contrary to their national habits and sense of values. But they did put up with a high degree of practical tyranny in the carrying out of the Revised Code. The principle of local autonomy required the erection of an adequate type of local education authority before it could have substance and secure efficient results. As we shall see, that was accomplished partly in 1870, still more fully in 1902, and conclusively in 19 18. ^See Birchenough, ^2stor>' oj Elementary Education, pp. 275 and ff. "Ibid., p. 281. 264 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 Secondary Education Influence of Industrial Changes. — The industrial revolu- tion had sharpened the contrast between the conditions of employer and workman, but it had also introduced greater va- riety into social classification and had accelerated movement from one social rank to another. The great mass of workmen had not notably profited by the vast increase of wealth brought about by the new industrial conditions, but the middle class had experienced great increase in numbers and in wealth. The great capitalists of the new order advanced their pretensions to equal those of the old landed aristocracy. They were tak- ing their places beside the hereditary rulers of England in Parliament and in the municipal governments. The middle class in general had been admitted to political power by the Reform Act of 1832 and the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835. The increase in the gross amount of commerce had multiplied the number of those who might aspire to the moder- ate respectability of clerical positions. The new industrial sys- tem had brought about gradations in the ranks of workmen and created the degrees of skilled mechanic, foreman, and works manager. As a result of these new conditions more persons were asking for education beyond the rudiments and" each social group had its own special educational demands. In the absence of any government activity in the provision of secondary schools, it was left to private initiative to supply the various forms of education desired. A new period of founding public schools began in the forties and saw the ad- dition of a number of important proprietary institutions that were intended to serve as rivals of the old public schools. Private schools, advertised to supply the educational needs of the lower middle classes at small cost, were set up by the score. Attendance at the older and better known schools rap- idly increased. But, even so, the conditions in respect to secondary education satisfied scarcely anyone. It was known that many of the old endowed grammar schools were out of BENE\'OLEXT STATE INTERVENTION 265 touch with the wants of the communities they were supposed to serve. Much of the private school effort was suspected of superficiality and in spite of the new founding activity there was felt to be a deficiency in the supply of secondary schools. The general conviction that secondary education was a fitting subject for government investigation increased until it culmi- nated in the appointment of two great Parliamentary com- missions. In 1 86 1 a commission under the chairmanship of Lord Clarendon was appointed to inquire into "the nature and the application of the endowments, funds and revenues belonging to or received by" nine Great Public Schools, namely, the boarding schools of Eton, Winchester, Westminster, Charter- house, Harrow, Rugby, and Shrewsbury, and the day schools of St. Paul's and Merchant Taylors'. As a result of the in- vestigations of this commission, it was seen to be desirable that a much more extensive inquiry should be made into the secondary school situation. Accordingly, another commission, known as the Schools Inquiry Commission, under the chair- manship of Lord Taunton, was appointed in 1864 to inquire into the education given in all schools not comprised within the scope of the inquiry conducted by the Newcastle Commis- sion on elementary education or that of the Clarendon Public Schools Commission, and to "consider and report what meas- ures (if any) are required for the improvement of such edu- cation, having special regard to all endowments applicable or which can rightly be made applicable thereto." The Public Schools Inquiry Commission. — The Claren- don Commission dealt with a comparatively simple problem, namely the education of the sons of the ruling classes. As the schools which it investigated had long histories and had con- tinued with slight change or unchanged, practices which had been inaugurated two or three hundred years before, there was obvious need for administrative reform. The Commission suggested reorganization of the governing bodies of the schools and revision of their rules and regulations. It called for the broadening of the course of study to include mathematics, 2 66 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 modern languages, history, and geography and natural science. It also insisted that the boys should be compelled to work harder at their lessons. "We have been unable to resist the conclusion," so runs the Report, "that these schools, in very different degrees, are too indulgent to idleness, or struggle ineffectually with it, and that they consequently send out a large proportion of men of idle habits and empty and unculti- vated minds." On the whole, however, the Report concluded strongly in favor of the existing system of secondary educa- tion. Its defects were minor and could easily be remedied. Its virtues were capital. The Commission, in concluding its general recommendations, gave the following estimate of the public schools, which is the attitude of the class whose sons attend them today: "Among the services which they have rendered is undoubtedly to be reckoned the maintenance of classical literature as the staple of English education, a service which far outweighs the error of having clung to these studies too exclusively. A second, and a greater still, is the creation of a system of government and discipline for boys, the ex- cellence of which has been universally recognized and which is admitted to have been most important in its effects on na- tional character and social life. It is not easy to estimate the degree in which the English people are indebted to these schools for the qualities on which they pique themselves most — for their capacity to govern others and control themselves, their aptitude for combining freedom with order, their public spirit, their vigor and manliness of character, their strong, but not slavish respect for public opinion, their love of healthy sports and exercise. These schools have been the chief nurs- eries of our statesmen; in them, and in schools modelled after them, men of all the various classes that make up English society, destined for every profession and every career, have been brought up on a footing of social equality and have contracted the most enduring friendships and some of the ruling habits of their lives. And they have had perhaps the largest share in moulding the character of an English gentleman." BENEVOLENT STATE INTERVENTION 267 The Schools Inquiry Commission. — The task which the Taunton, or the Schools Inquiry, Commission faced was in- comparably more complex and extensive than that of the Clarendon Commission. It was to make recommendations concerning the supply of education of all varieties between the work of the elementary schools aided by national grants and that of the aristocratic public schools. It was within these limits that the new educational demands, introduced in the train of the industrial revolution, were operating. The Taunton Commission frankly recognized the existence of social classes and based its definitions of education upon the needs and desires of those classes. The highest grade of secondary education which it recognized was that intended for the sons of the wealthy and the professional classes. It was given in the public schools and a few of the more im- portant proprietary and endowed grammar schools, and was expected to continue to the age of eighteen. This was the grade of secondary education which was to serve as preparation for university study. The chief difficulty which the Commission found in respect to this grade of education was its expensiveness. The clas- sical education of the highest order was every day to a greater degree quitting the small grammar schools for the great public schools. Those who wanted such education could no longer find it, as they could in the preceding century, close to their doors, all over the country. ' They were forced to seek it in boarding schools and generally in boarding schools of a very expensive kind. The second grade of secondary education was that which was expected to end at the age of sixteen. It was the type which was then found to be serving the needs of the larger shopkeepers, the rising men of business, and larger tenant farm- ers. In this grade of school, Latin was probably desired by the parents, but not Greek, and they were especially desirous of a very thorough knowledge of important modern subjects. The boys attending these schools were preparing for the army, for the medical and legal professions, civil engineering, and like 2 68 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 callings. In other cases, the reason for concluding the boy's education at sixteen was the necessity of his beginning to earn his living in whole or part. The mercantile and trading classes did not care to have their sons study the classics, as they were not going to the University. They wanted them to study mathematics, chemistry, and modem languages and the rudi- ments of physical science. The third and lowest grade of secondary education, which ended at about fourteen, belonged "to a class distinctly lower in the scale, but so numerous as to be quite as important as any; the smaller tenant farmers, the small tradesmen, the superior artisans." It could be described as a "clerk's educa- tion"; namely a thorough knowledge of arithmetic and the ability to write a good letter. It was intended to supply the basis of sound general education upon which alone technical instruction could rest. No other type of education was so important with respect to the industrial prosperity of the na- tion, and no other type was so completely lacking. One of the most striking recommendations of the Commis- sion was that Latin should be a part of the instruction given in all three grades of secondary school so that boys who might be compelled by force of circumstances to begin their educa- tion in the lowest grade might be able to offer Latin as the means of continuing their studies in higher schools in case the opportunity should arise. The Commission regarded it as highly essential that the door be kept open to bright poor boys to prepare for and enter the universities. It recom- mended that some of the weaker foundations be applied as exhibitions for poor boys in higher grades of secondary schools and in the universities. As to the existing supply of schools, the Commission reported that there was a sufficient number of public boarding schools of the highest class and a moderate number of public boarding schools of the second class. Of public day schools there were a great many, but they were in many cases in "languid condition, unwilling to relinquish classics, unable to give them full play, struggling feebly to accommodate themselves to the discordant BENEVOLENl STATE INTERVENTION 269 aims of the several parts of the community." "In at least two-thirds of the places in England named as towns in the census" there was "no public school at all above the primary schools, and in the remaining third the school" was "often insufficient in size or in quahty." In the prevailing lack of public educational facilities, private initiative was active in establishing schools of all sorts. There were some good schools among these private schools, but many were inexpressibly bad. The worst feature of this situ- ation was that there was no way for parents to tell which schools were good and which bad, and in many instances they were spending their money to worse than no effect. The Commission recommended that some authority should be created with power to look into the endowed schools to see whether the endowments might not be redirected to better educational ends. In some cases the funds that were separately maintaining weak schools could be combined to maintain a single efficient school. Where, according to trust deed, schools in industrial sections were offering classical instruction where English and arithmetic were needed by the pupils who could or would attend them, the authority should be empowered to change the work of the school. In short, the authorities were to be given a pretty free hand in reorganizing endowments and applying them to meet modern educational demands. The Commission also recommended the creation of a central author- ity to be assisted by local authorities. The latter were to have a certain amount of jurisdiction in proposing schemes for the reform of endowed schools within their area and in ad- ministering them. There was also proposed a Central Council of Education charged with the duty of classifying and standard- izing secondary schools through examinations and inspection. The private and proprietary schools were to be offered the privilege of being registered and classified by the Council of Education. The Commission further recommended that towns and parishes should be given power to "rate," that is, tax, themselves for the establishment of new secondary schools. The action of Parliament in regard to these recommendations 2 70 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 was limited to the passage of the Endowed Schools Act in 1869 whereby a body called the Endowed Schools Commission was established with powers of making schemes for the better management and government of endowed schools. This action promised to put the old educational foundations to more effi- cient use, but it did not promise any adequate or even consid- erable increase of secondary schools. The Science and Art Department. — The new demands for scientific, mathematical, and technical subjects that were re- flected in the curricula of the two lower grades of secondary education, came about, as has been said, in response to the changes wrought by the industrial revolution. The period be- tween 1832 and 1867 saw also the beginnings in England of government aid to distinctively technical education. In 1836 Parliament donated £1,500 for the establishment of a normal school of design in London under the direction of the Board of Trade. Five years later £10,000 were set aside for assistance to manufacturing localities in maintaining similar schools. The need for better technical education for English workmen was iemphasized by the exhibits of foreign goods at the International Exhibition held in London in 1851, and as a result there was established in 1852 a Department of Practical Art in the Government. The year following, the scope of the Department was broadened and a division of Science was added, the en- larged department now going under the name of the Depart- ment of Science and Art. When the Department of Education was created in 1856, the Science and Art Department was transferred to it from the Board of Trade, but continued to be independently administered. After 1853 aid was granted to in- dividual schools for the teaching of science as well as art sub-' jects, but it was only in 1859 that a general system, making grants applicable to the whole country, was inaugurated. A special minute passed in that year enabled any place to estab- lish science classes and to obtain state aid for instruction offered in geometry, mechanical drawing, physics, chemistry, and other subjects. Aid was given to individual schools on the basis BENEVOLENT STATE INTERVENTION 271 of the number of pupils who passed the examinations set by the Department, as well as on the basis of other considera- tions. This was the first application in English education of the principle of payment by results. In 1862 Organized Science Schools were established with special Department aid. "By 1872 there were 948 (such) schools with 36,783 pupils in 2803 classes, the direct payments on results to which amounted to £25,201." ^ This type of government aid to technical edu- cation continued to be the measure of government participa- tion in that educational field until the passage of the Technical Education Act in 1889. 'J'he Universities.— The old universities, Oxford and Cam- bridge, continued to enjoy the practical monopoly of higher education during the period under consideration. There was, however, an active spirit of reform present in them and they were beginning to seek ways and means of making themselves more widely serviceable and more truly national institutions. The early beginnings of the great university extension move- ment, although technically later, were made in the fifties with the inauguration of the Middle Class examinations, through which work done in technical schools, secondary schools of the lower grades, and mechanics' institutes might be given rank with respect to university studies. A Royal Commission was appointed in 1850 to inquire into the state, discipline, studies, and revenues of the university and colleges of Oxford. As a result of the recommendations of the Commission, many salutary reforms in government, studies and regulations were made, beginning in 1854. In that year the degree of bachelor of arts and the scholarships were thrown open to all candidates "irrespective of religion and two years later the degree of master of arts was also cleared of religious restriction. In 187 1 still further changes were made by law which threw open all uni- versity and college offices, with some slight exceptions, to all Her Majesty's subjects. Some beginnings of university exten- * Calendar, History, and General Summary of Regulations of the Department of Science and Art, i8g5. 2 72 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 sion classes and lectures were made before 1867, but the great development of that democratic movement has occurred since that time. The University of London had been established as an exam- ining and degree-granting, but not a teaching, university in 1836. Men who had pursued higher studies outside of the older institutions were thus enabled to enjoy the advantages of higher degrees. In i860, the University of London estab- lished the degrees of bachelor of science and doctor of science, whereby full recognition was given to the newer subjects. Before the close of the period under discussion higher tech- nical schools had been established in a number of the larger industrial cities, which, during the next generation, were to be incorporated as colleges connected with some of the pro- vincial universities then established. All along the line of higher, technical, and secondary educa- tion, the English universities and schools were beginning by 1850 to lose their exclusive, narrow character and to prepare for the democratic renaissance which they experienced after the Reform Act of 1867. ADDITIONAL READINGS General Historical Background. — Hayes, A Political and Social History of Modern Europe; Hazen, Europe Since 181 5; Lowell, The Government of England. Education Sources. — Report of the Select Committee of Parliament, 1838; Report of the Newcastle Commission, 1861; the Revised Code of 1861 in Education Department Reports, 1861-1862; Report of the Public Schools Commission, 1864; Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission, 1867. Secondary Accounts. — Birchenough. History of Elementary Educa- tion in England; DeMontmorency, Progress of Education in England; Kay-Shuttleworth, Four Periods of English Education; Sandiford, The Training of Teachers in England and Wales. CHAPTER XIII POLITICAL DEMOCRACY AND THE ACHIEVE- MENT OF A NATIONAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION (1867-1905) Further Political and Social Reform. — As has been said « in an earlier connection, the franchise reform of 1832 placed the political control of England in the hands of the middle class, while it left unrepresented five out of every six men in the nation. Several bills had been introduced during the fifties which provided for an extension of the franchise, but it was only in 1866 when Gladstone, the leader of the Liberal party in the House of Commons, introduced a bill having such a change in view, that any serious effort had been made by the party in power to secure representation for the laboring classes in the cities. While the new franchise bill was the cause of defeat for the Liberal ministry, the division was so close that Disraeli, the Conservative prime minister who came into office following the new election, introduced a bill extending the franchise and allowed it to be amended by his parliamen- tary opponents until it was more liberal than had been the bill introduced by Gladstone. The new Reform Act of 1867 gave the vote in the borough to all householders and to all lodgers who had occupied for a year lodgings for which, un- furnished, they had paid a rental of ten pounds a year, and in the counties to all owners of property which was worth five pounds a year and all renters who paid a rental of at least twelve pounds a year. The passage of this Act has justly been regarded as the turning point in later English political history. While it gave the vote to only two and a half millions of voters out of a population of over thirty-one millions, it placed the power of affecting legislation in the hands of the working classes 273 2 74 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 of the cities and was the entering wedge of practically universal manhood suffrage as later achieved. While it was a long time before Labor was represented in Parliament by an influential Labor Group, the effects of the enlarged franchise were soon felt. Even when the Liberal Party went out of power, the Conservatives who succeeded to the Government continued the passage of acts that improved conditions for the working class. The Liberal Government under Gladstone's leadership, which was given a large majority in the first general election follow- ing the passage of the Reform Act of 1867, placed a conspicu- ous amount of advanced social legislation on the statute books. In 1 87 1 an Act of Parliament placed trade unions on a strictly legal basis for the first time, allowing them to hold property and accumulate funds. In 1872 the introduction of the Aus- tralian ballot and secret voting guaranteed to the voters of the country the unrestricted use of their newly-won political representation. The national army was made more democratic through the abolition of the purchase of commissions, and the civil service was thrown open to all when the lower division of offices was placed on the basis of competitive examination. The Conservative Government under the leadership of Dis- raeli enacted a comprehensive Factory and Workshop Act (1878), which consolidated and systematized the large mass of factory legislation which had been passed in the more than seventy years following the passage of Peel's Act of 1802. The Act also provided more effective enforcement of the fac- tory regulations. This great labor code laid down specific re- quirements, among other things, for the sanitation of buildings, the fencing of dangerous machinery, the limitation of hours of labor, not only for women and children, but for men also, the attendance of children at school, and the report of accidents. The minimum age at which children might be employed con- tinued, however, to be ten years. This minimum was raised to eleven years in 1891. The Elementary Education Act of 1870. — 'Of all the measures making for social reform which were passed shortly POLITICAL DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 275 after the extension of the franchise, perhaps the most important and far-reaching was the decision of the Government to play a more influential part in popular education. The working classes had long favored better educational opportunities for their children, and when their membership was given parlia- mentary representation through the suffrage, it broke the dead- lock that had so long existed between the supporters of church and the supporters of civil administration of schools. The upper classes realized that it had become essential "to educate their masters." The Government in 1870 introduced a "Bill to provide for public elementary education in England and Wales." In rising to ask for leave to introduce this Bill, Mr. Forster, the Vice-President of the Council, said that in the preceding year, outside of the expenses of the central office of the Department of Education, of inspection, and of aid to nor- mal schools, the annual grant for primary schools was about £415,000. That sum was spent to aid about 11,000 day schools and 2000 evening schools, which had on their registers about 1,450,000 children. /But only two-fifths of the children of the working classes between the ages of six and ten years were on the registers of the government-aided schools and only one-third of those between the ages of ten and twelve. Of those between six and ten the government grants had helped about 700,000 and had left unhelped 1,000,000; while of those between ten and twelve they had helped 250,000 and left un- helped at least 500,000. This situation was the more serious when it was recognized that the schools that were not aided and inspected by the Education Department were, for the most part, extremely inefficient. In the large cities the failure of the method of maintaining schools that had been depended on was most complete. In Liverpool, for example, out of 80,000 children that ought to receive an elementary education, 20,000 attended no schools whatever and 20,000 attended schools in which the education they received was worthless. In ]\Ian- chester 16,000 out of 65,000 children went to no school at all, and conditions in Leeds and Birmingham were equally bad. Mr. Forster pointed out the results of the state-aided volun- 2 76 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 tary system as follows: "(The results) are what we might have expected; much imperfect education and much abso- lute ignorance; good schools became bad schools for children who attend them for only two or three days in the week, or for only a few weeks in the year; and though we have done well in assisting the benevolent gentlemen who have estab- lished schools, yet the results of the State leaving the initia- tive to volunteers is that where State help has been most wanted State help has been least given, and that where it was desirable that State power should be most felt, it was not felt at all. In helping those only who help themselves, or who can get others to help them, we have left unhelped those who most need help. Therefore, notwithstanding the large sums of money we have voted, we find a vast number of chil- dren badly taught, or utterly untaught, because there are too few schools and too many bad schools, and because there are large numbers of parents in this country who cannot, or will not, send their children to school." The majority party's response to this condition of public elementary education is given in his continuing remarks: "Hence comes a demand from all parts of the country for a complete system of national education, and I think it would be as well for us at once to consider the extent of that demand. I believe that the country demands from us that we should at least try to do two things, and that it shall be no fault of ours if we do not succeed in doing them, — namely, cover the country with good schools and get the parents to send their children to those schools." ^ The School Boards.^ — The bill which Mr. Forster intro- duced for the Government proposed to make use of the agen- cies which had already accomplished much under state aid and guidance, while it also provided for the introduction of addi- tional and new machinery. The aid given by the state to vol- untary agencies was to be continued and the education societies were encouraged to maintain and even increase their activities. But in addition to their efforts, school districts were to be ^Education Debate, 1870, as published by the National Education Union. POLITICAL DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 277 established with school boards elected for the purpose of pro- viding and supervising elementary education wherever the existing supply was found to be inadequate. Compromise regarding Religious Instruction. — The traditional religious difficulty was encountered in the Govern- ment's effort to pass the Bill, and a compromise was effected whereby the Voluntary schools under the same management as before were aided by the state and allowed to give such relig- ious instruction as the managers desired, with the provisos (c) that no religious condition should be imposed on any child desiring admission to the school, and (b) that the time for such religious instruction should be at the beginning or the close of sessions so that parents who so desired could re- move their children from the school during this part of the school day without loss of the instruction in subjects other than religious. For the Board schools the famous Cowper- Temple clause provided that in such schools "no religious catechism or religious formulary which is distinctive of any particular denomination is to be taught." However, even in the Board schools, the bill allowed "Bible reading without note or comment." Mr. Forster's Bill became the Elementary Education Act of 1870. It is to be regarded as an important step in thei direction of a national system of education for England. It might be noted that this Act did not make elementary educa- tion free, although it gave school boards the power of remitting the fees of necessitous children (Article 17). Nor did the Act establish compulsory attendance, although, with the ap- proval of the Education Department, boards were empowered to make by-laws requiring parents to send their children to school within the age limits of five and thirteen years (Ar- ticle 74). The Elementary Education Act of 1870 created a new set of ad hoc authorities. The districts for the purposes of edu- cational administration were to be designated by the Education Department, and the division of territory for this specific civil function was* made without respect to the areas already 2 78 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 organized under local authorities for other purposes of govern- ment. The school boards were to be elected in the boroughs by the persons whose names were on the roll of electors and in the parishes by the rate-payers. In order to safeguard the wishes of minorities and almost to guarantee them some repre- sentation on the school boards, every elector was entitled to a number of votes equal to the number of members to be elected and could give all his votes to one candidate or dis- tribute them among the candidates as he saw fit. The mem- bership of the school boards might range from five to fifteen. It may be said that the creation of the school boards represents the culmination of the tendency to establish new local areas and separate local authorities for every conceivable kind of social function (see p. 248). The Act of 1870 provided for the creation of school dis- tricts under school boards only where a deficiency of elementary school places was found to exist. The Voluntary societies were given a period of six months to endeavor to supply any such deficiency pointed out by the Education Department, and it was only after it had been shown that a sufficient supply of schools would not be forthcoming as a result of Voluntary ef- fort that the school districts were to be created. In 1872 Vol- untary effort provided over a thousand new schools. "By 1876 the number of school places in England and Wales was found practically to have doubled in seven years, and of the increased accommodation two-thirds had been provided by Voluntary schools." ^ During the next five years, the accom- modation was further increased by a half. Compulsory Attendance Achieved. — The deficiency of the Act of 1870 in failing to make attendance compulsory was partly remedied by the Elementary Education Act of 1876, in which occurs the statement that "it shall be the duty of the parent of every child to cause such child to receive effi- cient elementary instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic." That Act also provided that no child should be employed under the age of ten years unless he had passed Standard IV ^ Birchenough, History of Elementary Education, pp. 140-1 POLITICAL DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 279 as the work of that grade was outlined by the Education De- partment, or had made 2 50 attendances for each of five years. For the carrying out of the Act the school boards were desig- nated where there were such. Where there were no school boards, the Act provided for the creation of school attend- ance committees, which were to be appointed in boroughs by the borough councils and in the parishes by the guardians of the Poor Law Union comprising the parish. The Elementary Education Act of 1880, commonly referred to as Mundella's Act, made compulsory attendance nation-wide by requiring local*education authorities to frame by-laws which would com- pel the attendance of children at school. In default of action by the local authorities, the Education Department was em- powered to make compulsory attendance by-laws which would have effect in such delinquent locality. Mundella's Act also made it necessary for children between the ages of ten and thirteen to secure a certificate of having passed a certain standard in the schools before they should be eligible for half- time employment. The standard of school proficiency re- quired was left to the local authorities. I The Act of 1876 extended somewhat the principle of free elementary education. It provided that any parent, not a pauper, who was unable to pay the ordinary school fees for any child at a public elementary school, could apply to the guardians of the poor for his district, and that the guardians should pay the school fees. Such assistance, the Act stated, was not to be regarded as making of such parent a pauper, as did the acceptance of aid under the Poor Law. As a mat- ter of practice, however, a certain stigma was felt to be at- tached to such application for payment of school fees, and many parents for whom such payment was a hardship, refused to take advantage of the Act. The Third Reform Act and the Reorganization of Local Government. — In 1884 a third franchise Reform Act was carried by Mr. Gladstone's Liberal Government. By this Act the privilege of voting for members of Parliament, which had been given to the greater part of the laboring population 28o NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 in the cities by the Act of 1867, was extended to the laboring class in country villages and on the farms, and through it England achieved practically universal manhood suffrage. The Municipal Corporations Act of 1882 consolidated the many Acts respecting the powers and the administration of boroughs that had been passed following the Act of 1835. The year 1888 saw a fundamental reorganization of county government. The tendency to create separate local authori- ties for specific purposes which should be in close relationship with the central government had gone on unchecked until 1872. This system had served so long as it was desired only to apply special requirements to certain specific districts at a time when the universal application of those requirements was felt to be unnecessary. The creation of school boards by the Act of 1870 is a case in point. In 1872 it came to be recog- nized as necessary to apply certain standards of sanitation to the entire country, and not only to congested city areas. For the administration of the sanitation law no new local authori- ties were created, but existing local authorities were made to take on additional functions. There was even then, how- ever, a bewildering maze of local authorities. "The country was now divided into counties, unions, and parishes, and spotted over with boroughs, and with highway, sanitary, Improvement Act, school, and other districts. Except for parishes and unions, none of the areas bore any neces- sary relation to any of the rest, and each of them was under an authority of its own, often wholly independent of all other organs of local government and sometimes selected on a plan quite peculiar to itself." ^ The ever-increasing intricacy of civil administration cast greater and greater burdens upon the central authorities, and it began to be seen that the improve- ment of local government would depend upon the creation of a system of responsible local authorities that would stand midway in the system of administration between the smallest units and the national government. The Local Government (County Councils) Act of 1888 did away with the ancient form ^Lowell, The Government of England, Vol. II, p. 35. POLITICAL DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 281 of county government (see p. 225). The justices of the peace, appointed by the Crown, were discontinued as the governing board of the counties and elective councils were set up in their place. The duties of the justices of the peace and substantial new powers were transferred to the county councils. Accord- ing to the terms of this Act all boroughs having a population of 50,000 were called county-boroughs and were separated from the rest of the county for administrative purposes. The form of government which was created for the counties was also applied to all county boroughs. The reorganization of local government as concerned the maze of smaller authorities was completed by the Act of 1894. By the changes introduced in this Act, the boundaries of counties, districts, and parishes were reorganized; the smaller divisions were made true subdivisions of the county govern- ment; and the powers of the county councils with reference to the subordinate local authorities were clearly defined. Almost immediately after the creation of the county councils, the passage of the Technical Instruction Act (1889) gave them power to lay a small tax for the support of technical and manual education within their respective counties and the passage of the Local Taxation Act of 1890 placed at the dis- posal of the county councils large annual sums arising out of the customs and excise duties. The reorganization of the local administration of education was not accomplished, however, until the passage of the Education Act of 1902. The Report of the Cross Commission. — By 1886 it seemed to be desirable that the operation of the great edu- cational experiment which had begun with the passage of the Elementary Education Act of 1870 should be inquired into. For this purpose the Cross Commission on the working of the Elementary Education Acts was appointed. Its volumi- nous Report, issued in 1888, showed that the measures of the past eighteen years had covered the country with elementary schools and had brought into them, with commendable regu- larity of attendance, almost all the children who were legally compelled to be there. The schools under government inspec- 282 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 tion had increased from five thousand to almost twenty thou- sand, while the number of school places had increased from something over a million to something over five millions. The school boards in sixteen years had provided more new school places than had the Voluntary associations, but there still were two places in Voluntary schools to one in board schools. The Cross Commission on "Payment by Results." — The report of the Cross Commission was largely devoted to questions of the quality of school work done and most of its recommendations dealt with matters of internal school econ- omy. As the present work is largely limited to the considera- tion of problems of educational administration, only a few of these recommendations will be mentioned here. The system of payment by results as the basis of government inspection was carefully considered, and while the Commission were "unanimously of opinion" that the system was being carried too far and was being too rigidly applied and that it ought to be modified and relaxed in the interests equally of the scholars, of the teachers, and of education itself, they believed that it had to be continued. They thought that the distribu- tion of Parliamentary grants could not be wholly freed from its dependence on the results of examination without the risk of incurring graver evils than those which it was sought to cure. Parliament required some guarantee that the quality of the education given justified the expenditure. The reason why the system of payment by results was con- tinued so long after the best educational thought had recog-. nized its weaknesses is to be found in the inadequate system of local school administration under which England so long suffered. There were occasional school boards who were able to employ clerks having professional fitness. Under such con- ditions a system of true local supervision could be developed. In general, however, the atomic division of responsibility and powers among school boards and the boards of managers of Voluntary schools, made it impossible to secure the expert supervision and management that are essential to a high quality POLITICAL DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 283 of school work. Without expert local school administration the central authority was long unwilling to give up the control which it exercised through the system of state examination and payment by results. The moderate recommendations of the Cross Commission in respect to the relaxation of "payment by results" were almost immediately taken up by the Board of Education. The cast- iron system of standards, with the accompanying narrowness of curriculum and cram methods of instruction, were modified in new Department regulations, and in 1890 a new Code was adopted which abolished the system altogether. "The Code was based, as far as the actual teaching of the children was concerned, on two main principles. The first was to substitute for the bald teaching of facts, and the cramming which was then necessary in order that children might pass the annual examination and earn the grant, the development of interest and intelligence and the acquirement of real substantial knowledge. Then the aim was to educate the children in such a manner that, instead of becoming temporary repositories of useless so-called knowledge, which was immediately forgotten, they might, at the end of their school lives, take away with them . . . training and character which would tend to make them good citizens in after years." ^ Existing Divided System Approved. — The Commission was satisfied that the divided system of schools, part of which were maintained by local authorities and part by Voluntary associations, and all of which were aided by national grants, should be continued. They agreed that Voluntary associations should be given the opportunity to supply school deficiencies where such were discovered to exist just as they had been according to the terms of the Act of 1870. Furthermore, they saw no reason why the Voluntary schools should not receive support out of the local taxes just as the board schools did. Secondary Instruction in Elementary Schools. — Another ^ Kekewich, The Education Department and After, p. 53. 284 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 important recommendation of the Cross Commission dealt with the tendency of elementary schools to offer instruction in secondary school subjects. However desirable higher elemen- tary schools might be, the principle involved in their addition to the system should, if approved, be avowedly adopted. Their indirect inclusion in the existing system was thought to be injurious to both primary and secondary instruction, the distinction between which deserved close legal defini- tion.^ The Elementary Schools Made Free. — The Cross Com- mission had declared in favor of having parents who could afford it continue to contribute a substantial proportion of the cost of the education of their children in the form of school fees. The tendency toward gratuity of elementary schooling, which had been exhibited in earlier partial measures, was gaining strength, however, -and in 1891 an Act was passed which provided that free education in the government-aided schools could be demanded by parents for their children. The parliamentary grants were at the same time increased to meet the reduction of school revenues incurred through the loss of the school pence. As a result of this Act, the great majority of the public elementary schools became free and in those schools which retained the payment of fees, the fees were greatly re- duced. Extensions of Elementary Education. — An Act passed in 1893 made provision for the elementary education of blind and deaf children in suitable institutions. A similar Act passed in 1899 made it a duty of local education authorities to make proper arrangements for the education of defective and epi- leptic children. In 1893 the age for partial or total exemption of children from school attendance was raised to eleven years, and in 1899 to twelve. An Act passed in 1898 provided a system of retirement annuities and disability allowances for elementary school teachers. The pension funds were made up partly out of stoppages from teachers' salaries and partly from state contributions. ^ For further discussion of this topic see pp. 287 ff. POLITICAL DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 285 Secondary Education as Affected by New Social and Economic Conditions The twenty-five years which followed the Report of the Taunton Commission on secondary education (1867) were, asi has been seen, tremendous years in respect to the growth of I English democracy. The old narrow aristocratic control of public affairs had given way to a suffrage so liberal as to in- clude practically every adult male. What is more, England was not only becoming a political democracy, but she was rapidly becoming a democracy in a social sense. To be sure, as compared with the almost absolute social equality which has been characteristic of American conditions, the opportuni- ties of the individual to improve his position were limited, movement from lower to higher class was relatively infre- quent, and upper and middle class dominance continued. But as compared with conditions in the early years of the reign of Victoria, social movement had become greatly accel- erated. The industrial and commercial life of the times was inviting the individual to improve his position by preparing for more important and better-paid service in the ever-expand- ing economic organization. And society was responding to the changed situation by endeavoring to supply the educational opportunities that at once served the aspirations of the indi- vidual and the needs of business. Inadequate Provision of Secondary Schools, — We have already considered the small results in terms of legislation that followed upon the recommendations of the Taunton Commis- sion. They may be summed up for practical purposes by say- ing that they were limited to the creation of an Endowed Schools Commission, which was given power to make "schemes" for the better management and government of the endowed grammar schools. In 1874 this Commission was merged into the Board of Charity Commissioners. By 1895, this Board had framed schemes for the reorganization of 902 endowments. Faults of management had been corrected and the educational 286 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 work and character of the schools affected had been improved. The work of the Board of Charity Commissioners was, how- ever, mainly remedial, and, while the redirection of badly used endowments increased the actual supply of secondary school facilities, that body was in no position to meet ade- quately the pressing demands of contemporary England for more secondary schools. Work of the Science and Art Department. — Meanwhile a considerable number of agencies were actively engaged in efforts to increase the supply of educational opportunities be- yond the elementary schools. One of the most important of these, the Science and Art Department, was mentioned in the account of the preceding period of English education. Its activities had not only been continued, but vastly increased. It gave aid in the establishment and maintenance of science and art schools and classes, day and evening. It did not actually maintain any schools, but operated through local agencies and aided their efforts. Such agencies might include local committees approved by the Department, county coun- cils, school boards, or the governing body of an endowed school. Subsidies were paid to local authorities for the main- tenance of science and art schools and classes and scholarship grants were made to pupils. Up to 1894, the payments of the Science and Art Department were strictly on the basis of re- sults as shown by the success of pupils in passing examinations. Any approved local body might establish an "Organized Sci- ence School," in which instruction in science should be car- ried on methodically for three years, according to a course pre- scribed by the Department and provided fifteen hours a week ^ should be allotted to subjects recognized by the Depart- ment. By regulations introduced in 1894, the organized sci- ence schools were largely freed from the system of payment by results and greater liberality was shown by the Depart- ment in respect to the inclusion of non-technical subjects. Even music, political economy, and the science and art of teaching were defined as technical subjects in order to bring * After 1894, it was thirteen. POLITICAL DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 287 them within the scope of the grants. Classes in science and art that were being subsidized by the Department were to be found in higher elementary schools, endowed grammar schools, mechanics institutes, and still other types of school. Expansion of the Elementary Curriculum into the Field of Secondary Education. — The Education Department was gaining year by year more important connections with secon- dary education of the third, or lowest, grade as defined by the '/ Taunton Commission. The Elementary Education Act of 1870 had defined an elementary school as one at which elemen- tary education was the "principal part" of the instruction given, and in the case of evening schools not even the prin- cipal part of the instruction had to be elementary in order that the school might participate in the grants. The tendency was for evening schools to give mainly secondary school in- struction, and the day schools were expanding their curriculum into the secondary field. The secondary instruction offered in the day schools was mainly given in what were called "higher grade elementary schools." The school boards, with their superior resources, first began this process of extending the work of the elementary schools, and to meet the new situation the Education Department created a new standard, the Seventh. But this additional standard was not enough to meet the situation. Some school boards instituted "ex- standard classes," which went beyond the range of instruction outlined by the Education Department, while others organized a new type of school, called the higher grade elementary school, in which instruction was offered in such subjects as history, grammar, French, mathematics, and science. The same ten- dency to create "ex-standard" classes and higher grade ele- mentary schools was seen on the part of Boards of Managers of Voluntary schools, especially after the passage of the Free Elementary Education Act of 1891, which released for other purposes the funds that had gone to the payment of children's school fees. This whole tendency of the public elementary schools to undertake instruction beyond the Standards of the Education Department constituted an important source of 288 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 supply of the third grade of secondary instruction. In 1894 there were 69 higher grade elementary schools, of which 39 were Organized Science Schools. The County Councils in Education. — The Acts of 1889 and 1890, which drew the county and county-borough councils into the administration of secondary education, have already been referred to. By the Act of 1889, such councils were per- mitted to levy a tax not to exceed one penny in the pound for the support of technical and manual education. Few councils took advantage of the privilege granted by the Act and small progress in technical education resulted from it. The Act of 1890, however, had great significance. It gave to the county and county-borough councils the residue of the excise and customs taxes on beer and spirits, all or part of which might be applied to technical education. The sum handed over to the councils according to this Act was, for the four years fol- lowing its passage, over 1,680,000 pounds, practically all of which was spent on technical education. The councils aided technical institutes, special industrial classes, and other strictly technical forms of education, but they also paid out large sums to secondary schools as educational units, and gave liberally to establish scholarships in secondary schools, to support eve- ning continuation classes, and to assist the training of elemen- tary school teachers for evening schools. University Extension. — Perhaps there is nothing that bet- ter indicates the educational change which had taken place in England by 1890 than the development of facilities for higher education. The old universities had inaugurated after 1873 definite plans for university extension in the form of local lectures in various towns throughout the country, to be fol- lowed by examinations for credit. This work had been taken up by the provincial universities and university colleges and by the University of London. In 1893-4, more than 60,000 persons attended university extension courses in different parts of the country.^ ■^See Report Secondary Education Commission, 1895. POLITICAL DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 289 Through the cooperation of the universities and local repre- sentatives or authorities, systematic and sometimes ambitious courses of higher instruction were thus conducted. In gen- eral, however, the university extension movement contributed mainly to the supply of higher secondary education for the middle classes. The universities were also doing an important service in standardizing the work of secondary schools through the ex- aminations which they conducted throughout the country. The older universities held local examinations for boys and girls. Three grades were recognized, with pass and honor certificates. The requirements of the highest grade represented practically the work of a second grade secondary school. Under certain conditions, passing the University Board examinations ex- empted the student from the examinations otherwise conducted by the General Medical Council, the Institute of Civil Engi- neers, and other technical or professional institutions. A larger number of schools set the standard for their work in accepting the matriculation examination of the University of London as their leaving, or graduation, examination. University Colleges and Provincial Universities. — While university colleges and provincial universities are not, strictly speaking, a part of secondary education, for a long time they gave considerable secondary instruction and their connection with secondary education was so close that they may be briefly mentioned here. The origin and activities of the Uni- versity of London have been mentioned in an earlier connec- tion, and they represent the first defection from the monopoly of the old universities. In 1868, there were only three uni- versity colleges in England. In 1891 their number had in- creased to eleven. They originated in the great industrial centers, such as Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Manches- ter, largely as the result of private benevolence. A university college is a teaching institution of university grade, but the college is unable to grant degrees. To give the degree granting power as the final stage of higher education in Owens College, Victoria University was founded in 1880 with its seat at 290 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 Manchester. At the time of its incorporation, Owens College, Manchester, was the only college connected with the Univer- sity, but University College, Liverpool, was admitted in 1884 and Yorkshire College, Leeds, in 1887. The University of London, with a large number of affiliated colleges and profes- sional schools, was organized as a teaching university in 1898. The rapid development of these local institutions of higher education in a sense popularized university studies in making them available for large numbers at small expense. Day Training Colleges in the University Colleges. — The University Colleges were given a close connection with secondary, and even elementary, education, when in 1890 day training colleges for teachers were established in them by the Education Department. In 1894-5 there were twelve day training colleges in connection with universities and uni- versity colleges. This innovation linked up the training of elementary teachers with the institutions of higher education, and was symptomatic, equally with the interrelationships of secondary schools, of the growing democracy of English edu- cation. It afforded a sharp contrast with the conditions con- trolling primary teacher training in France and Prussia at the same period. In those countries there was a definite divi- sion between primary and secondary education, while in Eng- land the two grades were tending to run together. The ab- sence of any clear definition in England of what constituted a secondary school, or of the various grades of secondary school, was paralleled by the absence of any standard for the preparation of secondary school teachers. The teachers of the higher grade secondary schools were practically all gradu- ates of the old universities, who had had their secondary school preparation in a great public school. At the other end of the scale, it was natural for the efficient teachers in elemen- tary schools to be promoted to positions in the higher grade elementary schools, which were, in effect, the lowest grade of secondary education. For the secondary schools in between these grades the condition with respect to teachers was ex- tremely uncertain, and it was generally recognized that some POLITICAL DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 291 competent authority, in addition to the voluntary agencies that had arisen to serve that purpose, was called for to under- take the classification and registration of secondary teachers. The Report of the Bryce Commission on Secondary Education. — In 1894, a Royal Commission on Secondary Edu- cation, Mr. James (later Lord) Bryce, Chairman, was ap- pointed "to consider what (were) the best methods of estab- lishing a well-organized system of secondary education in England, taking into account existing deficiencies, and having regard to such local sources of revenue from endowment or otherwise as (were) available or (might) be made available for this purpose, and to make recommendations accordingly." The Commission presented its Report in 1895. The descrip- tion of the state of secondary education as given in the pre- ceding pages is mainly taken from the facts presented by the Bryce Commission. Its estimate of the situation and its rec- ommendations remain to be considered. Of the first grade schools, namely, those preparing pupils for Oxford and Cambridge, there was held at the time to be a suffi- cient supply, at least for boys. It was in the second grade which carried the education of boys and girls up to about six- teen, and in the third grade, which carried it up to about four- teen, that the greatest deficiency was found to exist. The higher grade elementary schools were doing much to supply third grade secondary education, but in many places, espe- cially in rural districts, the supply was far from adequate. The greatest need for schools of the second grade was in the towns, especially the smaller ones. The Bryce Commission made no recommendation that secon- dary education should be made free; and that is hardly to be wondered at considering that elementary education had been made so only four years previously. It did, however, recom- mend a substantial increase in the number of scholarships in secondary schools whereby boys and girls of promise in the elementary and higher grade elementary schools might be given the opportunity of attending higher grade secondary schools. The example of Bradford Grammar School was 292 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 pointed out for emulation, where numerous scholarships were offered to pupils in elementary schools, while at the same time the successful pupils of the Grammar School were eligible to numerous scholarships at Oxford and Cambridge. Such an open pathway for merit exhibited in poor children was de- scribed as the ideal toward which English education should develop. Lack of Coordination among Secondary Education Authorities. — The Commission pointed out as an obvious and grave defect of the existing condition the lack of coordination among the various authorities for secondary education. The Board of Charity Commissioners, the Department of Science and Art and the Education Department were central authori- ties with strictly limited provinces and among them there was no organic connection. They might cooperate to a certain extent, but they were ultimately independent of one another. "A grammar school may be worked under a scheme framed and administered by the Charity Commissioners; it may be earning grants, or may also include an organized science school, subject to the regulations laid down by the Department of Science and Art; and it may be receiving scholars from ele- mentary schools, whose earlier training has followed lines pre- scribed by the Education Department." ^ Matters were no better with respect to the local authorities. The county and county borough councils could aid secondary education only under the terms of the Technical Education Act of 1889 and the Local Taxation Act of 1890 (see p. 281). The school boards, boards of managers of Voluntary schools, committees of proprietary schools, governing bodies of endowed schools, and other agencies besides, were contributing to the local supply of secondary education, each without any connec- tion with the other and without any dependence upon a central authority with power to coordinate their activities. The problem as the Commission saw it was how to provide a single central authority which should supervise the interests of secondary education in England as a whole; how to provide ^Report Secondary School Commission, i8q5. POLITICAL DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 293 local authorities, representative in the most complete sense, which should in their respective areas regard those interests with a similarly comprehensive view; and, reserving a large freedom of action for such local authorities, to reconcile the ultimate unity of central control with a system sufficiently elastic to meet the almost infinite variety of local require- ments.^ The more specific recommendations of the Commission called for the creation of a comprehensive central authority for all grades of education in the national government and for the erection in all counties and county boroughs of local authori- ties appointed for the most part by the councils. The Board of Education Created. — In i8qq, t he first step was taken in the direction of introducing a larger degree of order into the chaotic educational situation, which was also the first response to the recommendations of the Bryce Com- mission. By the Board of Education Act of that year all the educational authorities of the government were concentrated in a single board. The Department of Education, including the Science and Art Department, was merged in the Board of Education and provision was made for transfer to the Board of Education by executive order of educational functions exer- cised by the Charity Commissioners or the Board of Agricul- ture. At the same time the powers of the Board of Education were made wider than those of the superseded Department of Education by its being given the power of inspecting any secondary schools "which desired to be inspected." A Con- sultative Committee of the Board of Education was also pro- vided by the Act which should consist of an indefinite number of persons, "at least two-thirds of whom were to be persons qualified to represent the views of Universities and other bodies interested in education." The main duty of the Consultative Committee was to advise the Board of Education on any mat- ter referred to it. As the real work of the Education Depart- ment had always been carried on by a permanent secretary assisted by a permanent staff, the new administrative arrange- " Secondary Education Commission Report, I, 65. 294 NATIONALISM 'AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 ment did not bring about any considerable change. It was mainly important in the fact that it created a single govern- ment agency that was to have cognizance, not only of elemen- tary education, or of the grants for the teaching of science and art classes, but for secondary education as well. To be sure, the newly-created Board had little to do with secondary edu- cation for some years after its creation, but it was at least a body to which such functions might be added. Special Aid for the Voluntary Schools. — Meanwhile pressing problems in connection with the Voluntary schools kept coming up with greater and greater insistence. The voluntary schools were finding it impossible to keep up with the board schools, as the latter were able to draw upon the ever-increasing resources of local taxation. The effect of local taxation was also to reduce somewhat the willingness of pri- vate individuals to give money for the support of schools. They were paying rates for the support of one kind of ele- mentary schools. Why should these rates not be applied equally to the support of the Voluntary schools, which were performing identically the same social function as the board schools? The Church party, which was almost identical* with the Conservative party, began to agitate for an equal share in the funds raised by local taxation, which was exactly the solu- tion arrived at in the Education Act of 1902. But before the Government had decided to adopt a policy of assisting volun- tary schools out of the rates, Parliament had passed a tempo- rary measure in 1897 which gave the Voluntary schools extra grants out of the state treasury not to exceed in the aggre- gate five shillings for every scholar on the rolls. The same Act exempted the school property of Voluntary Associations from being taxed by local authorities. The Cockerton Judgment. — In 1901 a legal decision was handed down by the Court of Appeals that made inevitable some early action by the Government in respect to secondary education. We have already discussed some few pages back the tendency of school boards and the managers of Voluntary schools to expand the curriculum into "ex-standard" classes, POLITICAL DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 295 and also to create special schools called higher grade elemen- tary schools which were in effect the lowest grade of secondary education. Mr. Cockerton, an auditor of the Local Govern- ment Board, disallowed expenditures made by the London School Board in providing day and evening science and art classes. He took the ground that the expenditures which had been disallowed had not been devoted to elementary education and hence the funds raised by local taxation could not be ap- plied to pay them. When the Board contested the decision of the auditor the matter was carried to the Court of Appeals, and the judges in the case decided that the authority of school boards was limited to providing education for children and that applying board money to adult education was clearly ille- gal. The judgment did not clear up the ambiguity which ex- isted regarding what should constitute elementary education, and as neither the Education Department nor the Education Acts had satisfactorily defined elementary education, the posi- tion of the boards was little more definite than it had been before. The judgment showed the insecurity of the position of many boards which were providing higher elementary, that is to say, lower secondary education out of the rates. Parliament came at once to the relief of the school boards with an Act (1901) which legalized for a year the acts of such authorities in connection with "ex-standard" classes, and in 1902 renewed the Act of 1 90 1 for another year. The Education Act of 1902 The increasing difficulty which the Voluntary Societies were havmg in keeping up the Voluntary schools without aid from the rates and the necessity of doing something to relieve the ambiguous position of the school boards in the matter of the higher grade elementary schools, led the Conservative Govern- ment then in power to introduce the Education Bill of 1902. This Bill was a further embodiment of the recommendations of the Brjxe Commission. It proposed, in short, to make the support of Voluntary schools a charge upon the rates equally 296 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 with the board schools, and to create local education authori- ties that would have adequate power over secondary educa- tion. The Bill aroused the violent opposition of the Liberal party, who protested against what they considered the injus- tice of making all persons, irrespective of their religious creed, pay for the support in Church schools of a specific type of religious instruction. Feeling ran high on the Bill both within Parliament and outside of it, but the Government's majority was sufficient to force the Bill through to a passage. New Local Authorities for Education. — The county councils and the councils of county-boroughs (that is the boroughs of 50,000 population or more) were constituted the local authorities for higher and elementary education within their areas. Councils of boroughs having over ten thousand inhabitants and urban districts with more than twenty thou- sand were constituted the local authorities for elementary edu- cation alone. The local authority was to act in respect to education matters through an education committee, to which all educational affairs should be referred. A majority of the education committee were to be members of the council, and the remaining members were to be chosen from among per- sons with experience in education and acquainted with local school needs. The council was empowered to delegate to the education committee any of their powers under the Act except the powers of raising a rate or borrowing money. In other words, the education committee was made responsible for the professional, while the council retained responsibility for the financial, side of educational administration. As happens largely in all branches of English local government, the actual administration of education is in the hands of the clerk of the committee and his permanent staff. There has developed out of the provisions of this Act the increasing tendency for edu- cation committees to employ a professional educational ad- ministrator with the title director of education. The county councils and the county-borough councils had authority over a sufficiently extensive area and had command over sufficiently large resources to make it possible to plan POLITICAL DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 297 for secondary and higher education, in which was included the teacher training colleges. The local authorities were em- powered and directed by the Act to "consider the educational needs of their area and take such steps as seem to them desirable, after consultation with the Board of Education, to supply or aid the supply of education other than elementary and to promote the general coordination of all forms of edu- cation." They continued to apply the funds granted by the Local Taxation Act of 1890 (see p. 281) and were further em- powered to levy a rate not to exceed twopence in the pound, or a little less than one per cent, for secondary and higher education. By this new arrangement the councils were en- abled to increase the number of secondary schools and to supply deficiencies of certain kinds of secondary education. What is equally important, the Act enabled the local authori- ties and the central authorities as well to give assistance to secondary subjects of a general nature. Under the operation of the Technical Instruction Act and the Science and Art grants, the technical and scientific subjects had received the lion's share of public aid. Subterfuges had been practised in order to allow aid to all subjects except the classics, but even so the general education subjects had suffered. The Act of 1902 established authorities that were competent to provide that general cultivation of secondary grade upon which alone technical education can profitably be erected. The Act abolished the school boards and the school attend- ance committees and transferred their powers to the new local authorities. The board schools were taken over by the local authorities and thenceforth were to go by the name of provided schools. The Voluntary schools were designated as non-pro- vided schools. The latter were to be administered by boards of managers of whom two-thirds were to represent the Volun- tary Society and one-third were to be appointed by the local authorities. The rates were to be applicable without distinc- tion to both types of school and the national grants con- tinued as before to be given to both. Special provision was made for extra national grants to poorer local authorities. 298 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 The Treatment of the Religious Difficulty. — The local authorities were given complete authority over both provided and non-provided schools as far as secular instruction v/as concerned. They could inspect both types of school and pre- scribe courses of study, methods of teaching, and the qualifi- cations of teachers. The provided schools were to offer relig- ious instruction in accordance with the Cowper-Temple clause (see p. 277) while the non-provided schools were allowed to give religious instruction according to the religious faith of the Society which maintained them. They were, however, made subject to the conditions of the Elementary Education Act of 1870 regarding the time at which that instruction was to be given and were not allowed to discriminate against any pupil on religious grounds. The managers of the non-provided schools were made responsible for the maintenance of the buildings. Dissatisfaction over the Act. — The indignation of the Nonconformists and the Liberals over the Education Act of 1902 was extreme. They felt that the Established Church interest had gained an extremely important advantage in hav- ing the burden of maintaining their schools (for most of the non-provided schools were Church of England schools) trans- ferred to the public funds. In return for the aid of the rates, the managers of the non-provided schools had placed their school buildings at the disposal of the local authorities and had given the local authorities representation on the local boards of managers. But it was thought that the bargain was an unequal one, driven through at the expense of a large part of the public by the Conservative and Church of England group. Many rate-payers refused to pay the rates, allowing their property to be sold or even going to jail as a protest against the Act. The general dissatisfaction over the Educa- tion Act of 1902 was one of the most important of the forces that caused the downfall of the Conservative Government in 1905. The Progress of Thirty Years. — The generation which had followed the passage of the Second Reform Act in 1867 POLITICAL DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 299 had seen important changes in English policies respecting public education. The passage of the Elementary Education Act of 1870 represented the nation's decision that it was the business of the government not only to aid elementary educa- tion, but to insure universal opportunity for attendance at that grade of school. Later legislation made school attendance compulsory and opened the elementary schools to all children free of charge. The new social conditions that had long been making demands on secondary instruction had finally been recognized as lit object of governmental concern, and local authorities had been established with the function of supply- ing that type of education. The educational activities of the nation, which had long been allowed to operate without central coordination, had finally been brought under the guidance of a central authority. In the years that have ensued since the passage of the Education Act of 1902 there has been relatively small change in the administration of education. The con- spicuous educational progress which has taken place has been the result, rather, of increased enthusiasm for the improvement of existing agencies and the extension of democratic educa- tional opportunities. ADDITIONAL READINGS General Historical Background. — Hayes, A Political and Social History of Modern Europe; Hazen, Europe Since 1815; Lowell, The Government of England. Education Sources. — English Education Acts since 1870 in Edu- cation Department Reports; Report of the Cross Commission, 1886; Report of the Bryce Commission, 1895. Secondary Accounts. — Birchenough, History of Elementary Edu- cation in England; DeMontmorency, Progress of Education in England; Jackson, Outlines of English Education. CHAPTER XIV THE NEW LIBERALISM AND THE FISHER ACT 1906-1918 New Political Alignments. — The Conservative Party had been continuously in power since 1895, at which time the Liberals under Gladstone's leadership had been shipwrecked on the Irish question. There were, however, many causes that contributed to a general state of dissatisfaction with Conserva- tive policies and led to the decisive overthrow of the Conserva- tive Party in the elections of 1906. The system of land owner- ship and land tenure which had continued down out of me- diaeval times into the present was unfavorable to the tenant farmers, and stifling to the ambition and initiative of the farm laborer class. The labor unions had become alarmed over the decision of the House of Lords in the Taff Vale case, 1901, which made the property of trade unions liable for damages for acts committed by its members. The general public was aroused over the revelations of fraud and incompetence in connection with the Boer War, and a considerable section of public opinion was opposed to the war altogether. The Lib- erals and Non-Conformists, who are, generally speaking, the same group, continued to smart over what they considered the injustice of the Education Act of 1902. The examination of recruits for the Boer War had shown a terrible deterioration of the physical fitness of the population of the factory towns. A large proportion of the young men who were examined were shown to be undersized, under weight, deformed, and diseased as the joint result of poor heredity, bad housing, malnutrition, and vice. These revelations convinced many voters that the government would have to adopt a more vigorous policy of social legislation. 300 THE FISHER ACT 301 The Liberal Party became a party of social reform and de- clared an implacable warfare "against poverty, vice, and dis- ease." The labor interests took on new life and succeeded in electing fifty-four members that could be regarded as the direct representatives of the working classes with a mandate for con- structive industrial and social legislation. The elections of 1906 thus introduced for the first time an important Labor group into Parliament. In coalition with the Irish-Nationalists and the Labor group, the Liberals found themselves in pos- session of a majority in the House of Commons, which was maintained until the outbreak of the war. During their long- continued tenure they succeeded in passing, even against the will of the obstructionist House of Lords, a long list of impor- tant social, economic, and political measures. The spirit which has actuated this legislation is sometimes called by the name of the New Liberalism. It must never be forgotten that Eng- land is an old country, where traditions and vested interests maintain their hold with great tenacity and that the New Liberalism will but slowly find its way into the habits of thought of the nation. But it is none the less true that within the last fifteen years laws have been put upon the statute books that must inevitably in the course of time lead to a fuller and richer conception of democratic government in England. A rapid sketch of this legislation is given below. Social Legislation since 1906. — In 1906 the principle of compensation for workmen who had sustained accidents in pursuit of their occupations was extended to cover all indus- tries. In 1908, the Old Age Pensions Act was passed, which guaranteed to all persons over seventy years of .age a pension amounting to five shillings a week in case their yearly incomes were not more than twenty-one guineas. It may be noted that one person out of every eighty-six in England and Wales laid claim to the pension. In order to meet the enlarged expenditures which the govern- ment was making, the budget of 1909 contained provisions for a graduated income tax, an inheritance tax, taxes on luxuries of many descriptions, and on the unearned increment of land 302 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 values. Thus in effect the rich were taxed much more heavily than those of moderate income. The Labor Exchange Act of 1909 set up government bureaus to give information to unemployed workmen as to where work might be had. This was intended to counteract some of the evils and hardships of unemployment. By the National Insur- ance Act of 191 1; England went still farther in the attempt to protect the workman against unemployment. A system was put into effect whereby the workman paid a small sum each week, which was supplemented by his employer and the state. He was then entitled to receive six or seven shillings a week when he found himself out of work. The other provisions of the Act compelled the workman to lay aside each week a small sum, to which the employer and the state added, to insure him- self against sickness. Additional benefits under the Act were free medical attention and free treatment at hospitals. The Trade Disputes Act of 1906 made it impossible for the courts to assess damages from strikes against the funds of trade unions, and granted pickets in strikes the right to use peaceful persuasion to keep fellow-workmen or strike-breakers from working. In 1909, by the Trade Boards Act, boards were set up composed of workmen and employers in equal numbers to determine the minimum wages to be paid workers in the sweated industries. This principle of the minimum wage was extended to cover the wages of miners by the Mini- mum Wage Act of 191 2. The Housing and Town Planning Act of 1909 aimed at the improvement of the bad housing conditions in the great cities. It gave local authorities the right to demolish unsanitary tene- ments and to purchase land on which to build sanitary ones. The Small Holdings and Allotments Act of 1907 was the first effort of the Coalition in the direction of eliminating the agrarian evil of large landlordism and of giving to all laborers on the soil a share in the land they made productive. Political Changes. — In the political field, a number of im- portant changes have occurred. Since 191 1, members of Parliament have been paid annual salaries. This has made it THE FISHER ACT 303 easier for the working classes to be represented by men of their own social and economic condition, instead of almost exclusively by men of superior social position who were able out of their private means to meet the heavy financial demands of membership in the House of Commons. In the same year, a blow was struck at the veto power of the House of Lords. Composed of hereditary and elective peers and the bishops of the Established Church, this body had succeeded in retarding social evolution in England during the entire period with which this study is concerned, and in no province more than in matters relating to popular education. By the Parliament Act of 191 1 it was provided that the House of Lords could not suspend the passage of money measures passed by the Commons, and that other laws, in spite of the negative vote of the House of Lords, might become law if passed in three successive sessions of Parliament. The power remaining to the House of Lords to retard social legislation continues to be large, but public opinion tends to become more and more impatient of the restraints imposed by this privileged aristo- cratic body upon the clearly indicated will of the voters. Educational Legislation after 1905. — The new spirit in English government as exhibited in the above-mentioned legis- lation was but tardily reflected in the field of public educa- tion. The political coalition which came into power in 1906 tried to secure the passage of measures that would result in the separation of Church and secular interests in the public schools. The Liberals took the ground that it was no proper function of the state to pay for the instruction of pupils in the principles of religion and proposed that such instruction should be separately given and exclusively paid for by the Voluntary school societies. The House of Lords, however, succeeded in interposing its veto, and until the present time the state's support continues to be applied for religious in- struction in the tenets of specific cults. There has been, however, a great deal of educational legis- lation which extended to the children in the schools the spirit of social welfare work. These laws represented a parallel to 304 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 the important Acts other than educational named above, and embodied the Liberal motive of improving the living conditions of the economically disfavored classes. The Education (Provision of Meals) Act of 1906 authorized local authorities to formulate plans whereby meals might be provided at public expense for indigent children attending public schools. The scope of this measure was broadened by a later law passed in 19 14. By the Administrative Provi- sions Act of 1907 local authorities were authorized to set up and maintain vacation schools and classes and recreation cen- ters for children in the public schools. The same law made it incumbent upon local authorities to provide for the medical examination of children upon their admission to a public elementary school and for follow-up work designed to remove physical defects and to increase health and vitality. Along with this preventive and curative work with children of school age local authorities were allowed to organize voluntary "schools for mothers" for the instruction of mothers in the care of infants. Permission was also given to establish nur- sery schools to afford little children, usually under three years of age, the desirable care which they did not and could not receive in the home. Later Acts strengthened the provisions of the earliest ones (see p. 284) dealing with the education of mentally defective and epileptic children. The Children Act of 1908, while it was not specifically educational, deserves to be mentioned in this connection, because it placed upon the local education authorities increased responsibility, particu- larly in regard to the school attendance of children and to juvenile reform education. The Reform Act of 19 18.— In the history of education in England, there has been a close parallel between the adoption of more democratic educational policies and the extension of the franchise. The developments of 19 18 show the same rela- tionship, although in this instance the Education Act preceded by a few months the Reform Act. In 19 18, a Reform Act was passed which gave all men the vote on condition of their being twenty-one years of age and having resided or occupied THE FISHER ACT 305 business premises in one place for six months. Any woman wlio was thirty years of age and either a local government elector or the wife of one was given the vote. The number of votes which might be cast by an elector in a general election was limited to two. Nomination day was to be the same in all constituencies and all polls were to be taken on one day. At the same time an increase in membership of the House of Commons and a redistribution of seats were provided for. The Education Act of 1918, Commonly Called THE Fisher Act If one has been inclined to disparage the English system of public education, it would be well for him to examine the provisions of the Fisher Act before forming his final opinion. England was slow in making the beginning of public education and for many years was halting in its progress toward an effi- cient system of educational administration. The sequel seems to indicate, however, that the English principle of respect for personal liberty and the English system of progress through compromise, are sound guides in the development of a na- tional policy of education. From the standpoint of maintain- ; ing a proper balance between initiative on the part of local ' education authorities and central control, between local and national financial responsibility, and between the individual's freedom of choosing the education to be given his child and the demands of the state with reference to that child's edu- cation — from the standpoint of these major conditions of sound educational policy, it is probably no exaggeration to say that the system to be brought into existence through the Fisher Act is the most satisfactory to be found in any modern nation. The Fisher Act does not represent a great deal of actual innovation, but rather develops to a more extreme degree prin- ciples and practices that have been familiar. Provisions that were common enough in kind were changed in the extent of their application. Some powers that had previously been exercised by education authorities at their option were made 3o6 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 compulsory. Functions that have long been exercised were redistributed. Many of the clauses of the Act represent a consolidation of the education acts that had been passed after the Act of 1902. And, yet, when the whole sum of changes is added up the Fisher Act represents a profound change in the spirit and considerable innovation in the administration of English education. Education Authorities. — The Education Act of 19 18 con- tinues the education authorities of the Act of 1902. At the head of the system is retained the Board of Education with its Consultative Committee and its permanent staff. The county and county-borough councils are the local authorities for both elementary and higher education, and the councils of non-county-boroughs and urban districts are local authorities for elementary education within their areas. Local authorities are given power to federate for any specific educational pur- pose or for carrying out all their responsibilities under the Act. This change allows a desirable degree of flexibility in the plans for providing teacher training colleges or any other form of higher education which it is uneconomical for any single local authority to furnish. Balance of Power between Central Authority and Local Authorities. — All councils of counties and county-boroughs are placed under the practical, although not statutory, neces- sity of submitting to the Board of Education "schemes," or general plans, which will show how they "propose to use their powers and perform their duties with respect to the progressive development and comprehensive organization of education in their areas." The authorities for elementary education are likewise expected to propose schemes to the Board of Edu- cation covering their powers and duties under the Act. Pay- ment of tjie national grants to any local authority depends upon the acceptance by the Board of Education of the scheme proposed. When a scheme is accepted it is the duty of the local authority to see that it is efficiently carried out. In case the scheme submitted is not acceptable to the Board of Edu- cation; and in case, further, the central and the local authori- THE FISHER ACT 307 ties cannot agree after a public inquiry, the matter is to be referred to Parliament. The inspection by the Board of Education of schools main- tained by the local authorities is continued, and the Board may reduce the grants to local authorities in case its condi- tions are not complied with. The new Act does away with the many statutory grants according to which the state had aided local authorities and in place of them consolidates all payments under a "substantive" grant. The computation of this grant follows a rather complicated formula. Thirty-six shillings are allowed for each average attendance, which is the quotient of the total number of attendances divided by the number of school sessions. To this sum is added three-fifths of the cost of teachers' salaries, one-half of the net expenditure for special services (school medical inspection, provision of meals, schools for special classes, physical training, evening play centers, and nursery schools) , and one-fifth of the remain- ing net expenditures. From the sum so arrived at, there is deducted the amount that would be produced in the local area by a rate, or local tax, of seven pence in the pound upon as- sessable value. The result is the amount of the grant. That is to say, the state expects each local authority to levy and collect a local tax of seven pence in the pound, before it will contribute anything. Thereafter it will pay the local authority on the basis described above, not more than two-thirds nor less than one-half of the total expenditure for education. If the sum arrived at according to the formula does not reach the lower proportion, the state will make it up through what is known as a deficiency grant. Provision is further made for increased grants in highly rated (taxed) areas. The distribution of powers and responsibilities between local authorities and the central authority which the Fisher Act brings about, is to be regarded as a highly satisfactory solu- tion of the difficult problem involved. It gives the local au- thorities a large amount of freedom in organizing education to suit the special needs of their areas and encourages them to exercise initiative in securing local improvement. At the same 3o8 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 time it gives the central authority general supervision over the schools of the entire nation and puts it in a position to guide and stimulate and, if need be, coerce, local effort. The method of allocating state grants fits well into the administra- tive purposes. It stimulates local generosity at the same time that it assists the weaker communities. It places upon the state a large share of the costs of the minimal school require- ments while at the same time it holds out the state bounty as a stimulus for local authorities to undertake improvements that are only permissive under the Act. Attendance Provisions. — The Act raised the upper limit of compulsory school attendance, to go into effect after the close of the War, to fourteen years, and gave local authorities power to raise the age limit to fifteen at their option. At the same time all fees for attendance at public elementary schools were abolished. Provision was further made for the part time attendance of children at continuation schools until the age of eighteen, but the full operation of this part of the Act cannot go into effect until at least seven years after the war, — that is, until i^2h.\ Such young persons as have passed the matriculation examination of one of the uni- .versities or an examination recognized by the Board of Edu- cation as an equivalent, are exempt from this provision, as are also those who have been under instruction up to the age of sixteen in some school recognized by the Board of Education as efficient. Employers are compelled to make arrangements whereby young persons will be enabled to attend the continuation schools during the hours between eight in the morning and seven in the evening of working days. Em- ployment of all children under the age of twelve in any ca- pacity is forbidden, and the employment of children over twelve years of age out of school hours is definitely limited. The enforcement of all child-labor and compulsory attendance regulations is put into the hands of the local education au- thorities. Social Service Provisions. — The Fisher Act extended the system of medical inspection which had been inaugurated with THE FISHER ACT 309 respect to the elementary schools by the Act of 1907. Here- after local education authorities may provide medical exami- nation of children in public secondary and continuation schools and even in private schools within their area if so requested. Additional provision is made for schools for mothers, in which training is to be given in prenatal care and the care of infants. Local authorities are given permission to provide holiday or school camps, as well as centers and equipment for physical training, playing fields, swimming pools, and other facilities for social and physical training to be enjoyed either in the day or in the evening. Another of the powers enjoyed by the local authorities which may be considered under the general caption of health work, is the permission which they are given to establish nursery schools and classes for children over two years of age. Public Contribution to Denominational Schools Con- tinued. — The Fisher Act did not essentially change the situa- tion brought about by the Education Act of 1902, whereby the public support is given to schools under religious denomi- nations in which specific religious dogmas are taught. In other words, both local and state revenues continue equally to be applied in the support of provided and non-provided, or Voluntary schools. Closer Official Relationships with Private Schools. — The Act substantially changes the position of private schools and tends to bring them much more fully under the cognizance of civil authorities. All private schools are compelled to forward to the Board of Education on a blank form which it provides, a statement of name, location, and activities, in accordance with the particulars required by the Board of Education, Financial penalties are attached to non-compliance with this regulation. The Act recognizes attendance in private schools as fulfilling the compulsory attendance requirements, but only on condition that the school is open to inspection by the local education authority or by the Board of Education. In the case of secondary schools, they can be accepted as supplying education in place of that given in continuation schools only 310 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 in case they are inspected by a university or by the Board of Education. Any private school may request inspection of the Board of Education, which may be supplied without cost to the applying institution. The practical advantages of such inspection have led to very general request for it on the part of governing bodies and headmasters of private schools. Provision of Scholarships in Secondary Schools. — The Fisher Act does not make secondary education free, but it contains a very definite expression of liberal attitude on the point: "In schemes under this Act adequate provision shall be made in order to secure that children and young persons shall not be debarred from receiving the benefits of any form of education by which they are capable of profiting through inability to payJees." The Act further empowers education authorities to pay not only the fees of students in higher and secondary institutions, but maintenance allowances as well. Although there are other details of the Fisher Act that de- serve attention, we may not undertake more extended discus- sion of it in this connection. Post-war conditions have inter- fered with putting its provisions into effect, and the unfavor- able financial conditions that are the direct result of the war will long delay the full realization of the program outlined. But it must be evident, even from the cursory view of the Act which we have been permitted to take, that "it inaugurates a new era as embodying 'the first real attempt ever made in this country (England) to lay broad and deep the foundations of a scheme of education which would be truly national.' " ^ It is an Act which "represents the new democracy rising to a recognition of the function of education in preparing healthy, intelligent and responsible citizens." ^ A Brief Social and Political Survey of England Today- — This historical account of later English education, which must now be rapidly concluded, has shown us an old and firmly established set of aristocratic institutions undergoing the transformation indirectly wrought by the industrial revolu- ^ Kandel, "Educational Progress in England," Educational Review, Vol. LVI, No. s. THE FISHER ACT 311 tion. In the year 1800 the large landowners and the city magnates were dominant in every phase of the national life. The working classes were unrepresented in government. Cor- responding to this social arrangement, the governing classes alone were educated, except as benevolence prescribed a mini- mum of moral and religious instruction for the children of the poor as a form of social prophylaxis. For the education of the ruling caste there were the public and the better grammar schools and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. For the poor there was an accidental and altogether inadequate provision of charity or dame schools. In England today the franchise is universal, and government is "of the people, by the people, and for the people." Education, also, has corre- spondingly broadened to mean the preparation of all orders of society for the efficient performance of a wide range of political and economic functions. From the political standpoint, England today has a system of government that responds more immediately to the common will than does that of the United States, and its franchise is almost equally broad. With the exceptions of the power re- tained by the House of Lords, of the privileges enjoyed by the Established Church, and of the institution of royalty, England in a political sense, is thoroughly democratic. And yet from the social point of view England presents a complex picture of mingled aristocracy and democracy. The working classes, through the political power they enjoy and through the advantageous labor legislation which has been passed within the last twenty years, are gaining in power and influ- ence, and they are to a certain extent ambitious to gain the cultivation and breadth of view which they recognize as the marks of social superiority.^ They have their own represen- tatives in the House of Commons, but for the most part they prefer to be represented by persons of place and wealth. Social movement is comparatively free, but there are at the same time recognized social classes. The real rulers of Eng- land continue to be those who go from the public schools and 'See New Republic, Supplement, Feb. 16, 1Q18. 312 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge into the appointive positions of the Civil Service and to the House of Commons. The middle class tends to enter more freely into politics, but usually after a long period devoted mainly to business. The great mass of the people, as must be practically the case in any great industrial society under present conditions, are the sub- jects of political guidance and remain in a position of eco- nomic and social inferiority. The main difference between the United States and England lies in the greater number of exceptions from the rule in the former country and in the franker acceptance in England of the terms of social classifi- cation. The upper classes know that they are the upper classes and the lower classes know that they themselves are the lower classes. Between the two extremes there is a ceaseless inter- change of position and every conceivable gradation of eco- nomic and social rank. Which is to say that England is an aristocratic society maintained on the basis of wealth and birth and position, but undergoing rapid transformation toward a freer social organization. England has achieved her democracy through deliberate reorganization of her institu- tions in response to the new demands of an industrialized society, and many of the traditions and estimates of value that belong with aristocracy have continued over into the pres- ent. The United States found its democracy in the fertile fields of the boundless frontier, and such aristocracy as exists in the United States is a development out of a broad sub- structure of complete social equality. The English System of Schools. — The strong survival of aristocracy in English society is definitely reflected in the edu- cational system. "The son of a parent in the middle classes is never by any chance found sitting cheek by jowl with the laborer's son on the benches of the public elementary school. The laborer's son invariably begins his education in the free elementary school, although, in the later stages of it, he may, through the munificent provision of scholarships, pass through both the secondary school and the university. The son of a parent in the upper middle class just as invariably begins his THE FISHER ACT 313 education either at home under a tutor or, as is more frequently the case, in a private preparatory school, where he remains until he is old enough to be transferred to a secondary school." ^ Elementary education is separate from secondary education and parallels and overlaps it. The elementary school pupil does not complete the work of that school as the basis of promotion to the secondary school. In case he leaves the elementary school it is on condition of meeting a competitive standard and usually before the end of the course, say not later than his twelfth year. He transfers from one to the other; he is not promoted from the elementary to the secondary school. For the work that must be done preliminary to undertaking secondary school studies, the pupil who does not enter from the elementary school is taught by a private tutor or in a preparatory school. Fees are charged in the preparatory school and it is a part of the secondary rather than of the elementary school system. The son of the laborer, artisan, or lower-middle-class parent attends the public free elementary school. If he shows any particular promise or ambition he has an excellent opportunity to gain a tuition scholarship in a secondary school. Most of the secondary schools that received grants from the Board of Education under the arrangement which existed previous to the passage of the Fisher Act, were compelled to maintain at least twenty-five per cent of all places free of tuition cost and open to pupils from the elementary schools. The spirit of the new Act guarantees at least the continuance of this propor- tion of free places, and contemplates an increase. It is said that under present conditions practically any boy who so desires and possesses fair ability is assured of free secondary school tuition, and once the secondary school is reached, his chances of entering the university are dependent on his industry and his capacity. After the system of continuation schools which is provided for in the Act of 19 18 will have been estab- lished, the elementary school pupil who has not entered a secondary school will continue his education at the same time ^Sandiford, Comparative Education, p. 202. 314 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 that he is working for his living up to the age of sixteen, and ultimately eighteen years. In the continuation school his general education will be extended and he will be given work that will be broadly preparatory to his vocation. We have in an earlier connection (see p. 287) described the efforts of local education authorities to provide a more ex- tended course of study in the elementary system which went under the name of higher grade elementary school. That general type of school has continued, but it tends to take a different form of organization and the name central or inter- mediate school. The curriculum of these schools corresponds pretty closely to that of the French higher primary school and partly to that of the American high school, and it is designed to furnish a broad foundation for specific commercial and industrial training to be given later. The teachers in the central schools are usually superior to those in the elementary schools and the work done in the central schools is in quality more like that of the secondary schools. The pupils of these schools are selected from the elementary schools. The system of secondary schools in England, if it is a system at all, is extremely complex, as we are prepared to believe from the study we have already made of its origins. There are the following kinds of secondary schools to be taken into account: ^ (i) the first-grade public schools, which are chiefly boarding schools; (2) the first-grade schools, public and endowed, which are chiefly day schools; (3) the second- grade endowed schools; (4) high schools for girls; (5) secon- dary schools maintained by county and county-borough coun- cils. Besides these pretty definite types there are large num- bers of private secondary schools of uncertain character. The preparatory schools have already been mentioned as giving only the studies preliminary to secondary instruction proper. The First-Grade Public Schools. — The first-grade public schools, of which there are about sixty, continue to be the ^ Based on Sandiford, "Education in England," in Sandiford, Com- parative Education, and Norwood and Hope, Higher Education of Boys in England. THE FISHER ACT 315 schools of the upper and wealthy classes. There is nothing in the American system of education which corresponds to them more closely than the old "prep" schools like Phillips Exeter and Andover, but even here the analogy is not close. In the English schools, which are boarding schools, the boys, selected in the first place from an aristocracy of wealth, or brains, or both, come under the influence of well-established tradition. They are in close contact with men who are them- selves the product of the public school-university system and who believe that system to be well-nigh perfect. The new boy is caught up into a set of school boy "mores" and is moulded by them to know "good form," to practice "good form," and to believe "good form" to be the supreme standard of conduct. He learns there, or he strengthens, habits of speech which will mark him the rest of his life as having attended a public school. This mark of caste is so clearly recognized that a spe- cial dictionary has been prepared to indicate the ways of pro- nouncing the English language according to the public school mode. A considerable part of his time is given to the practice of outdoor games. His intellectual education continues to be predominantly classical, although the modern side is given considerable attention. The tradition of self-government among the boys of the public schools is continued to the present time and is regarded as one of the most important of agencies for the formation of character. Other Secondary Schools. — The public and endowed day schools, which may be generally described under the name grammar schools, are less expensive and exclusive than the public boarding schools and they are also more responsive to local needs as respects curriculum. Many boys find their way from these schools to the older universities, while many others pass from them into the provincial universities. The secondary schools maintained by the county and county-borough councils have had vigorous development since the passage of the Act of 1902, which provided for their estab- lishment. By 1914 there were 433 such schools recognized by the Board of Education as efficient. They are mainly coedu- 3i6 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 cational and their pupils are the children of the lower middle class and the brighter and more ambitious children of the laboring class. The teachers of these schools are largely drawn from among the graduates of the provincial universi- ties. It is with this class of schools that the extension of democracy in English education mainly rests. Their phe- nomenal growth and the lively interest which public authori- ties exhibit toward them promise rapid future development in their number and influence. The Older Universities. — The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge still continue to represent the last stage of the education of members of the upper classes and they continue to be the main avenues to political opportunity. They are, however, much more than just higher schools for completing the education of gentlemen and cloistered retreats for schol- arly research. They have definitely accepted a share of re- sponsibility for the prosecution of modern scientific and pro- fessional research and are constantly enlarging their activities in that direction. Their connection with the secondary schools through the examinations and the school inspections which they conduct has been and is a great public service, while their activities in the field of university extension carry their influence over all of England and put them in touch with all classes of English society. Provincial Universities and University Colleges. — The older universities exercise less and less a monopoly over higher education. They continue to maintain a unique place, but the very uniqueness of their educational service is a limitation. The growth of provincial universities and university colleges goes on apace. At present there are eleven universities besides the old ones of Oxford and Cambridge. These institutions emphasize professional and technical research while at the same time providing for general education of a high type. They correspond closely to the x'\merican university. They are not exclusive in the social sense and they provide the higher education demanded for all except the sons of the upper classes. It is this type of higher institution that the middle THE FISHER ACT 317 class or even lower class scholarship holders are likely to attend. The Schools and Social Opportunity. — English education may be seen to correspond to the general social conditions of the country. The old aristocracy is represented in the public schools and the older universities. The universal franchise and the new spirit of social welfare are reflected in the univer- sal provision of free elementary schools and all the "good works" that are carried on in them. The social opportunity for the poor boy or girl is to be found in the system of scholar- ships in secondary schools which are intended to reward ability and stimulate ambition. The vast unclassifiable por- tion of English society who are included between the upper and lower extremes find educational opportunities to meet their social aspirations and their financial means in the almost bewildering variety of secondary schools and in the provincial universities. Nationalism in English Education. — It is a noteworthy fact that England seems to have used the schools hardly at all as a means of nationalistic propaganda. In this respect that country stands out in strong contrast with Prussia and France. It is not to be forgotten, however, that the conditions which led those countries to turn the schools into nurseries of patriots were largely lacking in England. England had been a nation for centuries while Germany continued to be a "geographical expression." At the beginning of the nine- teenth century England already securely had what Prussia consciously started out to get. English national unity runs back at least as far as the time of Elizabeth. German national unity only began to be thought of after the disaster of Jena and the Treaty of Tilsit. In order to attain what was regarded as a political necessity, Prussia created a system of schools which from the beginning exhibited the motive for their crea- tion. History was taught to make patriots, as were geography and literature and any other school subject that might by any chan.:e be impressed for that service. The English, on the other hand, have taken national unity 3i8 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 and patriotism for granted on the part of all the people. They have tried to make the children of all the people morally better and more intelligent through the schools, but they have never used the schools for nationalistic ends. The worst you can say about the English in this respect is that they seem pretty consistently to have ignored the existence of other nations in their school instruction, but for that matter they have almost as completely ignored the study of their own past as a people and the social studies that deal with con- temporary problems of citizenship. Under the iron rule of the system of payment by results, the elementary schools up to 1890 drilled away on a narrow curriculum of the "three R's." History, geography, English literature, and elementary science were little taught, or, when taught, suffered from the preva- lent practice of drill on facts. In the short time that has elapsed since the removal of the examination system, the curriculum of the elementary schools has been broadened and better methods of teaching have been introduced. The old tradition to a considerable extent, however, continues to exert its influence. The system of administration which has been in vogue in England has made it difficult for any national program of patriotic instruction to be instituted by the central authori- ties and it is doubtful if those authorities would have insti- tuted such a program in case it had lain within their power. The entire tradition of English education and even the very traits of English character seem to oppose the notion of pa- triotic propaganda through the schools. Like demonstrations of personal affection, expressions of love for country seem to be regarded as contrary to good form. The public school boy would probably regard fervid expressions of love of country as "swank"; but he would nevertheless go out to die in the mud and slime of "Flanders' fields" as a matter of course. The English elementary history books contain expressions like "with true British pluck," or "as gallant British seamen should," but they exhibit few or no examples of national THE FISHER ACT 319 boasting and they do not distort the facts of history for nationalistic ends. It is possible that the English have avoided the use of the schools for purposes of nationalistic propaganda on the basis of principle. It is possible that they have done so as a result of the accidental evolution of their national system of schools. What England will do in respect to civic and nationalistic instruction after the war remains to be seen. There is some feeling being expressed that it should be given more attention than it has been given in the past. The Germans have overdone patriotic instruction, it has been said, but the English have not done enough in that direction. But whatever change occurs, it is not likely that the English, considering their con- nections with a truly international Empire, will consciously adopt a narrowing and provocative type of civic instruction in the public schools. ADDITIONAL READINGS General Historical and Institutional Background. — Hayes, A Political and Social History of Modern Europe; Hazen, Europe Since 1815; Lowell, The Governmetit of England. Education Sources. — The Education Act of 1918 in United States Bureau of Education, Bulletin, igig. No. g, Kandel, Education in Eng- land and Ireland. Secondary Accounts. — Kandel, see previous reference; Kandel, "Educational Progress in England" in Educational Review, December, 1918; Norwood and Hope, Higher Education of Boys in England; Sandiford, "Education in England," in Sandiford, Comparative Education, PART IV THE UNITED STATES CHAPTER XV THE NEW FEDERAL STATE AND THE PASSING OF AN OLD POLITICAL ORDER (1789-1828) The Degree of Political Union among the Thirteen Original States. — When the thirteen Colonies had broken the ties of political connection with the mother country, they regarded themselves as independent not only of England but of one another. Among them there was little feeling of politi- cal union. They were a group of American republics and not in any sense a single and unified nation. Owing to the ab- sence of easy means of intercommunication there had been little trade carried on among the Colonies. There had been small interchange of printed matter and little correspondence among individuals living in widely separated sections. The Colonies had been closer to England as the result of ties of commerce and intellectual exchange than to one another. They possessed no common cultural tradition, and to some extent were sepa- rated by antipathies based on historical prejudice and on widely differing economic and social conditions. On the other hand, it is not true to say that there was a complete absence of feeling for all the states regarded as a political whole. While the Declaration of Independence de- clared the states separately independent of Great Britain, the action taken was a joint and concerted manifesto of the repre- sentatives of the thirteen states sitting as a Continental Con- gress. The enthusiasm engendered in the struggle against a common opponent produced expressions of unity among the states, led to concerted action, and brought about immediately and as a matter of course a frame of government that was nationwide in its jurisdiction although limited in its powers. 2>22> 324 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 From the beginning of the struggle against the home govern- ment there was a very definite recognition of common griev- ances and the strong presupposition of a common administra- tion of the mihtary effort undertaken to put an end to those grievances. Loose Political Union under the Articles of Confedera- tion. — The indefinite nature of the central government which sufficed in the thirteen states between 1776 and 1789 is indi- cated clearly enough in the powers given to the Continental Congress in the Articles of Confederation. This frame of government was ratified in 1778 by all the states except Maryland and remained valid until the ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America in 1789. Ac- cording to its terms, Congress was given complete jurisdiction over foreign and military affairs. All decisions in the Con- gress were made by the votes of state representations taken as a unit, and for an affirmative vote the assent of nine states was required. But when a decision was made by the Conti- nental Congress, its effectiveness depended upon the acquies- cence and the executive efficiency of the several states. Con- gress could vote to raise an army of so many men and allot to the various states their proportionate quotas, but the actual enlistment of the soldiers depended upon the action of the states. The same condition held in respect to the raising of funds for meeting the expenses incurred under the prerogatives vested in Congress. Congress could negotiate a treaty, as it did, which called for the reimbursement of British subjects for losses incurred during the War of Independence; but the legislation and the administrative action which were necessary on the part of the state governments to put that agreement into action, were in many cases refused. So long as the War of Independence continued, the practical necessity for agreement impelled compromises and cooperation and enabled the Congress to carry on with a semblance of authority the functions with which it had been entrusted; but when the war was over and foreign and military affairs became relatively unimportant. Congress found itself impotent THE NEW FEDERAL STATE 325 in a political situation in which domestic issues over which it had no jurisdiction became predominant. Desirous of meeting their financial obligations by other means than direct taxa- tion, the individual states erected customs barriers against their neighbors which were the source of endless and violent hos- tihty. Territorial disputes, such as that over the possession of the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania, almost led to open war. More threatening than anything else was the financial chaos into which the country fell as the result of unprotected issues of paper money by the various states. Credit abroad was destroyed, coin disappeared from circulation, and a gen- eral war between debtor and creditor classes seemed imminent. The Constitution of the United States.— By 1786 the commercial situation in the states had become so critical that an informal gathering was called in Annapolis to propose means of improvement. This convention was poorly attended and accomplished little except to pave the way for a later convention called at Philadelphia in 1787 to devise provisions "necessary to render the constitution of the federal govern- ment adequate to the exigencies of the Union." Out of the deliberations of this body arose the Constitution of the United States. The chief difficulty which the Constitutional Convention had to deal with was the unwillingness of the several states to relinquish in any degree their independent sovereignty. The small states feared the domination of the large states and all in common feared the possible oppressive use of power on the part of a strong central government. Yet practically all agreed that the existing chaotic situation could not be allowed to continue. The details of the compromise arrived at between these opposing interests are too many and intricate to be enumerated in this connection. Suffice it to say that the in- strument of government finally prepared and presented to the states for ratification provided for a federal government which was given all powers necessary for the conduct of foreign affairs. In their dealings with foreign governments the states agreed to act as one and placed the negotiation of treaties and 32 6 NATIONALISM AND ELUCATION SINCE 1789 the control of the army and navy in the hands of the central government. The financial and commercial difficulties of the period following the Revolution led the Convention to make the coinage of money and the imposition of excise and customs duties a national concern. The question as to the power of the central government to coerce a state through military oper- ations was left unanswered. The erection of a bicameral legislative body relieved the difficulty between the large and the small states. In the Senate representation was to be by states on an equal basis, while the House of Representatives was to be composed of members allotted to the states on the basis of population. The chief executive function was vested in a President, to be chosen by an electoral college equal in numbers to the combined repre- sentation of the states in the Senate and the House. A Vice- President was provided to serve in case of the death or disa- bility of the President. The Constitution implied the exist- ence of executive departments, four of which, — the Depart- ments of State, Treasury, and War, and the Attorney General- ship, Congress at once instituted. The judicial power in the new nation was to reside in the Supreme Court and such in- ferior courts as Congress might see fit to establish. The status and functions of the Supreme Court were not clearly deter- mined in the fundamental law and this branch of the govern- ment within the three decades following the adoption of the Constitution developed a significance and strength not at all contemplated by the Constitutional Convention. The Supreme Court has been one of the most influential agencies in our country's history operating in the direction of strong central authority. Question regarding the Powers of the Federal Govern- ment. — Whether the new instrument of government provided a highly unified national government or a loose federation of states which retained much of their sovereign power, was un- known at the time of its adoption. Its supporters included both those who desired to set up a strong national government and those who desired a large degree of state autonomy. Ap- THE NEW FEDERAL STATE 327 parently both of these opposing parties saw in the Constitu- tion an instrument which embodied their own political ideals. The question of the relationship between state powers and national sovereignty came up again and again in our early history and was finally settled only with the defeat of the South in the war between the states. In general it may be said that the new national government was one of "enumerated powers." In theory it possessed only such powers as were specifically given to it in the Constitu- tion. In order to make this point more emphatic, the tenth amendment, adopted almost immediately after the Constitu- tion went into effect, that is to say in 1791, specifically stated that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Con- stitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, were reserved to the states respectively or to the people. The Federalist Party, which first essayed to pilot the new ship of state, believed that the Constitution gave the national government all the powers that were essential to efficient and vigorous public policy. The Republicans, who succeeded to power in 1800, believed that the powers necessary to the central government for its effi- ciency, were rather limited. The practical differences between the two parties in their use of the Federal authority were not great. Indeed, the second administration of Thomas Jefferson, a Republican, was notable for the active participation of the federal government in what might justly be interpreted as state concerns. Early Threats against National Unity. — The early years of the new nation did not pass, however, without serious threats against the unity achieved under the Constitution. The Vir- ginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 affirmed the right of the individual states to declare void any federal legislation that interfered with fundamental liberties not covered in the enumerated powers of the federal government. The War of 18 1 2 found the New England states in a condition of almost open revolt against the national government and in 18 14 the Hartford Convention, composed of representatives of the states of the New England section, debated the advisability of with- 328 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 drawing from the Union. It was probably only the disap- pearance of their grievances with the conclusion of the war that averted their open break with the Union at that time. In spite, however, of these threats against national unity, the frame of the federal government proved strong enough to withstand such shocks as it was called upon to endure in the course of these early years. The Federal Constitution and Democracy, — If democ- racy is considered to mean representative government the new constitution was democratic enough. All the powers of gov- ernment were derived therein, more or less directly, from the consent of those who possessed the right to vote. If democracy is taken to mean manhood suffrage and the immediate response of government to popular will, the new government of the United States could hardly have been classified as democratic. The men who represented the various states in the Constitu- tional Convention were almost without exception representative of the wealthy classes of the population and sympathetic with their demands for a strong government that would protect property. The economic conflict which was raging between the debtor and creditor classes even while the deliberations of the Convention were taking place, had lessened the enthusiasm for extreme democracy which many leaders of public opinion had temporarily experienced in the first years of the War of Independence. Optimism regarding popular sovereignty had given place to a deep distrust of the exercise of political powers on the part of those who did not possess the balancing motive of property ownership. It is not a matter of surprise, then, that the Constitution should exhibit many devices designed "to check the sweep and power of popular majorities." The election of the President by an electoral college was proposed as a means of keeping the selection of the chief magistrate in safe hands. The electors, equal in number to the total number of Senators and Repre- sentatives in Congress, were to be chosen according to a method to be prescribed by the individual states. Incidentally it may be mentioned that up to the year 1800 the electors were directly THE NEW FEDERAL STATE 329 voted for by the people in only four states out of sixteen. In all the others they were chosen by the legislatures or by some other restricted group. The constitutional provision for the election of the members of the Senate by the legislatures was likewise intended to keep at least one house out of the immediate control of the people. The long tenure of office pre- scribed for senators and the large powers given to the Senate may also be considered as a bulwark against precipitate popular demands. The records of the Convention show that there was a strong desire among the delegates to impose a real-property restriction upon the right to vote for members of the House of Representatives, but the necessity of getting the new instru- ment of government ratified by the people of the separate states compelled the adoption of the suffrage provisions of the sep- arate states as the basis of eligibility to vote for national repre- sentatives. In this way the most liberal provision for the exercise of the suffrage contained in the Federal Constitution was only as liberal as the suffrage provisions in the various states. The real key to an understanding of the political tem- per of the times is, accordingly, the suffrage clauses of the state constitutions. The Suffrage in the States. — Of the thirteen original states at the time of the adoption of the Federal Constitution, only four, namely, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Delaware, did not make the ownership of real property a qualification of the elector, and even in these four states only those who paid taxes were allowed to vote. In the restrictions placed upon the exercise of political power we see the same principle that was exhibited in the provisions of the French constitutions before 1848 and in British political practice until 1884. Certainly it was not a political axiom in the early years of our political history that manhood suffrage should be the basis of political representation. On the contrary, there was exhibited in the conditions governing the exercise of the suffrage a universal conviction that landless men, non-taxpayers, persons that had no property stake in the government, were unfit to participate in the making of laws and in their adminis- 330 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 tration. It has been estimated that taking the country as a whole, less than one-iifth of the entire white male population enjoyed the right to vote in 1789. If property qualifications in most of the states controlled the mere right to cast a vote, the provisions regarding eligibility for office were still more restrictive. The higher the office, the higher was the property qualification. Longer residence re- quirements than those necessary for voting were usual, and the religious qualification, which had been eliminated before 1789 in all the states as far as mere voters were concerned, was apparently regarded as a valuable safeguard to the efficiency of public service, for it was retained as a qualification of eli- gibility to the offices of representative, senator and governor in almost all the states. The general tendency in the states in 1789 was to make the legislature the center of the government. The governors of states were not uniformly given the veto power and in some states they were elected by the legislatures. The members of the judiciary were generally appointed by the legislatures to hold office during good behavior. All which provisions indicate the intention of keeping the control of government somewhat removed from popular enthusiasm and of curtailing the powers of the general run of voters. The attitude of the men who framed the federal 'Constitution and the contemporary state constitutions had about it a good deal of the Old World tradition, even though the restrictions upon political representation had been considerably relaxed. The great changes in American political theory and practice which came to full sweep in the election of 1828 were dependent upon economic and social conditions which, even before the framing of the Constitution, were beginning to be felt. Ameri- can democracy is the child of cheap land. To see and compre- hend its origins we must turn to the American frontier. The Frontier and Democracy. — The term frontier is de- scriptive partly of the area of cheap — in fact, almost free — land lying beyond the older and more highly developed settle- ments, and partly also of the spirit of adventure, hardihood and THE NEW FEDERAL STATE 331 equality which animated the men and women who lived on the outposts of civilization. In 1800 more than two-thirds of the population of the United States lived within fifty miles of tidewater. The remainder were scattered throughout the back country in sparse clus- ters of settlements separated by wide stretches of virgin forest. The southern and eastern parts of Vermont and the greater part of New Hampshire were pretty well filled up with New England settlers. Maine was yet in large part a wilderness and western New York was quite unoccupied. A thin wedge of settlement had poured through the passes of the AUeghenies into Tennessee, Kentucky, and the Ohio River Valley. Even these outposts were separated by a wide stretch of practically uninhabited territory and beyond them lay the wilderness. The Pioneers. — The men and women who went into the virgin lands of the back country to find homes for themselves and their children did so with high hopes of bettering their condition. Cheap land and the prospect of independence con- stituted the prize which led them to forsake the comparative comforts of life in the settled areas and pit their unaided strength of body and ingenuity of mind against the labors and perils of pioneering. Men who had been unsuccessful in business in the East, tenant farmers who despaired of ever being able to own their own farms in the older country, arti- sans who were dissatisfied with the conditions of labor and its rewards, — these and many other types, at once discontented and ambitious, pressed into the open West where not only a living but a more dearly prized independence were almost cer- tainties for the stout of heart. On the frontier, life was simple, even harsh. Social distinc- tions, which were perhaps inevitable in the more complex east- ern society with its economic differences, disappeared in the substantial equality of the individuals making up the western settlements. Each householder was on his own land and prac- tically every family was limited to the use and enjoyment of what it could produce. Industry, courage, loyalty, and friend- liness were the prized qualities of character and no adventi- 332 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 tious badges of birth or place could serve as substitutes. A flank movement was turned on the suffrage conditions of the older sections of the country, since in the new country almost without exception citizen meant freeholder and taxpayer. Furthermore, the class who in the older regions had for gen- erations assumed control of all political duties, had been left behind, and the new communities were compelled to organize for themselves such local political agencies as were sufficient for the small needs of pioneer existence. As a matter of course, in communities so uniformly constituted there was no bar to the participation of all in the common political life. Manhood Suffrage a Product of the Frontier. — It has been frequently enough pointed out that the back country of the older states was as truly frontier as the new lands opened up for settlement beyond the Alleghenies. The same economic and social conditions were there present and the same political tendencies were active. These frontier regions were, however, tied up to the conservative eastern parts of the same states and changes in institutions were slower there than in the new communities independent of precedent and vested interest. Democracy based on manhood suffrage was born on the fron- tier. As early as 1772 the settlement of Watauga in what is now Tennessee, adopted Articles of Association in which man- hood suffrage and religious freedom were provided for. In 1777 Vermont, a frontier New England state, adopted a con- stitution containing a provision for manhood suffrage. In 1791 Vermont was admitted to the Union with the same rule gov- erning the franchise. In 1780 the Cumberland settlements adopted a social compact which was signed by every adult male settler and which likewise provided for full manhood suffrage. Kentucky, admitted in 1792, had the same suffrage provision; Tennessee, admitted in 1796, retained the freehold qualification, but did not specify value of holdings, and under the conditions which obtained in the state at that time, this meant next to no restriction. Ohio, coming in in 1803, and Louisiana in 1812, retained the provision that the citizen must have paid taxes to be allowed to vote. In the year following THE NEW FEDERAL STATE 333 its admission, Ohio repealed even this moderate quahfication. With the exception of Mississippi, every state admitted to the Union after 181 2 provided for manhood suffrage in its original constitution. Government Made Responsive to Popular Will. — Equally as important as the new basis for the exercise of the right to vote, was the determination exhibited in the consti- tutions of the new states that political administration should be directly responsive to the popular will. In the older states, the legislatures were the center of government and in many cases chose the governor and other important officials. In the new states the governor, elected by the people, was given the power to veto legislative acts. The number of offices to be filled by election was greatly increased. Even judges were to be chosen by the vote of the people for specific terms. Of- fice holding came to be regarded more or less as a political right like that of the suffrage. Special qualifications for office were eliminated and the practice of rotation in office began to operate as a political principle of the highest merit. Democratic Changes in the Older States. — It was to be expected that the older states would feel the political influ- ence of the frontier, for in an economic sense they were in direct competition with it. Following the Revolution, but especially after 1800, a steady stream of emigrants made their way into the back country of New England and New Yorjc in the region west of the mountains. It is reported that even whole villages with their pastors and schoolmasters moved into the new land of promise. The older communities began to see in their loss of population and the rapid growth of the newer sections not only economic decay, but the loss of political representation in national affairs. Certainly one of the motives that operated in the reform of the suffrage in the New England and Middle States was the desire to make political conditions at home as liberal as they were in the new country that was calling so invitingly to every person with a grievance. The first of the older states to remove the last restriction 334 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 upon voting was New Hampshire, which did so in 1792. Such a change was to be expected in that state, because the condi- tions of life there were so much like those of Vermont, which was a true frontier state and the first to enter the Union on the basis of manhood suffrage. Delaware removed the prop- erty qualification in 1792, while retaining the tax-paying pro- vision. Maryland in 1809 abolished all property and tax quali- fications and South Carolina did the same in the year following. Connecticut adopted a new constitution in 18 18 in which tax- paying or militia service was made to serve as alternative to a small freehold for the right to vote. In New York a con- stitutional convention held in 182 1 abolished the property qualification but retained a tax-paying qualification with such alternatives as practically nullified it. A referendum in 1826 abolished even this slight restriction on the suffrage. Massa- chusetts in 1820 relaxed the real property in favor of a tax- paying qualification. Rhode Island alone, among the northern states, retained her colonial constitution with its restricted franchise until the middle of the century. In the southern states, other than those mentioned above, suffrage reform did not occur until after the Jacksonian political revolution, and then with such qualifications as were consistent with the con- servative political temper of that section of the Union. By way of summary, it will be seen that before 1828 every state north of Virginia, with the exception of Rhode Island, had either achieved manhood suffrage or had lowered the re- strictions upon voting to such an extent that practically every white male, not a pauper, who had established his residence in a community, was entitled to vote. In the southern states, the development and extension of the plantation system in the raising of cotton after 18 10, which was in turn bound up with the maintenance and extension of slavery, introduced a social and economic regime that tended to resist popular politi- cal control. This differentiation of economic and political con- ditions, with its important influence on education, will receive consideration in a later connection. The Simplicity of Early American Life. — During the THE NEW FEDERAL STATE 335 period under consideration, which extends from the adoption of the federal Constitution to the first election of Andrew Jack- son in 1828, life in the United States was overwhelmingly- rural. In 1790 only three and one-third per cent of the popu- lation lived in towns of eight thousand inhabitants or over; in 1820, slightly less than five per cent; and in 1830, about six and three-fourths per cent. Slight beginnings had been made in the introduction of the factory system of manufacture in the New England states, where textile mills developed dur- ing the first and second decades of the new century; but the rapid spread of the industrial revolution throughout the states began with the twenties. The organization of the Me- chanics Union of Trade Associations in Philadelphia in 1827 is said to represent the real beginning of the American labor movement. During the period under discussion the conditions of labor, the processes of manufacture and the tools used in the occupations were about the same as they had been during the colonial period. Agriculture was the principal pursuit. With the exception of the extension of steamboat travel in the navigable rivers, the means of communication had improved but little over those which had been available for the traveler of Revolutionary times. But little was produced on the farms that was not consumed there, and little was consumed that was not produced in the home or on the home farm. The most important articles of export were the tobacco and the cotton of the South, while during the period of the embargo and the War of 1 81 2 there grew up considerable commerce with the southern and western states in the commodities manufactured in New England. Life in general was simple. Outside of the cities of the sea- board it could well have been characterized as rude and harsh. Local communities carried on the small amount of necessary public business with little interference on the part of the state and national governments. The conditions of life did not call for a great deal of "book-learning." Manual trades followed by rule of thumb, and household and farm processes un- changed in any essentials from those in use in the England 336 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 of Elizabeth, constituted the occupation of the great majority of the population. Many of the men and most of the women of the period who lived outside of the cities found it no dis- grace and little inconvenience to be unable to read and write. The work to be done was mainly manual and for the occupa- tions of leisure time there were few books and almost no peri- odicals to provide recreation and self-improvement. In the larger centers of population the demands of trade and commerce called for a higher degree and a more general spread of education, while demands for professional training also stimulated the provision of the higher schools and col- leges. The general extension of the franchise and the removal of special qualifications for office holders opened the way for poor men of ability and industry to win office and influence and this in turn led to the founding of such schools as would serve the needs of ambitious youths. American Democracy Different from That Which Has Developed in Europe.- — In our survey of the development of political institutions in the older European nations, we have seen how in England and France political reform has followed the development of class-consciousness among the industrial workers of the factory system and how even in Prussia, al- though long delayed, manhood suffrage came about largely through the active agitation of the labor elements. What has taken place in those countries would be analogous to what would have happened in the northern states of the Union if there had been some insuperable barrier within one hundred miles of tidewater that would have made impossible any spread of settlement to the westward, while the population had in- creased and the energies of the people had run into channels of production and trade under factory conditions. Under such circumstances, the social distinctions that were common in early colonial society would have been continued, entrenched and strengthened. Our country would have had its sharply defined aristocracy, middle class, and proletariat, with nom- inal opportunities for change and improvement of social and economic position. Ws should, in turn, have gone through the THE NEW FEDERAL STATE 337 progressive development of democracy within that stiff setting as a result of the increasing power of the laboring class to get what they wanted through organization and persistent, long-continued effort. And even after political reforms would have been achieved we should have had such a residuum of class prejudices and social distinctions as exists today in the Continental countries in spite of manhood suffrage and univer- sal free public education. American political conditions have been affected from the beginning of our national history by relatively easy economic conditions, which in turn have facilitated social change. The son of the poor man, if endowed with fair ability and stimu- lated by adequate ambition, has found it possible to control the conditions of business success or to acquire the education that would open to him a professional, and, if he so desired, a political career. Consciousness of such opportunity and the constant experience of its realization have caused the Ameri- cans to discount the initial advantage of wealth and social position. This factor of social and economic opportunity oper- ated without restraint in the earlier history of our country. It was the correlate of the wide-spreading frontier. Early Ameri- can democracy was not democracy by legislation, but by eco- nomic and social constitution. It was achieved almost without contest and, in point of time, before vested social and economic interests made change of mental attitudes obstinately slow to conform with new political forms. Democracy and Public Education. — The relation of this social factor to public education in the United Slates is highly important. It somewhat reverses the relationship between the extension of the suffrage and the provision of schools which has obtained in England and France, where public education has developed as a means of protecting society against the possible bad political effects of a diluted franchise. In our own history the franchise belonged to all adult white males as a right before any persistent agitation for free public schools began. Progress toward universal provision of public schools and the improvement of education has waited upon the politi- t i 338 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 cal education of a great number of persons who had not en- joyed the opportunity of school-attendance and did not see that they were much worse off without school learning than they would have been with it, or who, if they had gone to school, did not appreciate the desirability of better schools for their children than those which they had attended themselves. Educational progress in our own country has taken place piece- meal and by the improvement of conditions in small areas. It has resulted from the effort of the progressive and enlightened members of communities to convince their neighbors of the desirability of some change for the better. Local changes add- ing up to represent the practice of a state would then receive permissive sanction in act of legislature, and almost universal achievement of a desired goal would pave the way for a compulsory law that was intended to bring the entire political unit up to an achievable minimum. When compulsory action taken by a state legislature was too advanced for the general run of local communities, the possession of immediate control over their lawmakers made it possible for the majority of the citizens to secure repeal of obnoxious school legislation at the next meeting of the legislature. As a result of this fact, the record of educational legislation in the states of the Union is like the course of a skipper against an unfavorable wind. Progress too hastily assumed was inevit- ably followed by the repeal or the modification of unpopular laws. Then, after a new period of educating the public and of or- ganizing support, the friends of educational improvement would secure the passage of laws that achieved the lost cause of ten years before. In the long run change has meant conspicuous progress in public education, but progress in education has been dependent on the education of the voting public in favor of ^ better schools. The Federal Government and Education I The Constitution of the United States is silent on the subject 'of education. Apparently the men who framed it did not con- THE NEW FEDERAL STATE 339 sider it to be either feasible or desirable that the national government should be made the agency for the development and the administration of educational facilities. By implica- tion of the tenth amendment (1791) education took its place alongside of all other powers not specifically granted to the federal government as being the exclusive prerogative and in- terest of the several states. Before the Constitution had been adopted, however, the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation had contracted obligations which led the federal government into important connections with public education in the states. A number of the individual states of the Federation had held conflicting claims to the great unoccupied territory lying be- tween the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and the Great Lakes. Between 1780 and 1785 these state claims were given up and the territory came under the jurisdiction of Congress to be administered as a national domain under the name of the Northwest Territory, The Ordinance of 1785. — Almost immediately after the close of the War of Independence, a group of New England military leaders approached Congress to secure favorable terms for the acquisition of large areas in the Northwest Territory for settlement and for the development of a new state. The original army plan of settlement fell through, but owing to pressure on Congress to make the land available for sale, an ordinance was passed in 1785 calling for the survey of the new territory. The land was to be laid off into townships six miles square and each township was to be subdivided into thirty-six lots or sections. The Ordinance of 1785 further pro- vided that the sixteenth lot of each township was to be re- served to the inhabitants of the township for the maintenance of schools. This provision of the Ordinance of 1785 is justly famous as the basis for the subsequent bountiful land endow- ments which the new states that were formed out of the na- tional domain have received from the national government. The educational clause is directly traceable to the influence of the New England group who were most actively interested in 340 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 the settlement of the new territory. The generosity of Con- gress was motivated, in part at least, by the desire to make the»conditions of settlement in the new lands attractive to those who were leaving behind them the advantages of schools.^ The Ohio Company. — In 1786 a meeting was called for the first day of March in Boston at which was formed the Ohio Company. This group of New Englanders proposed to purchase a large tract of land in the Northwest Territory and elected directors to negotiate with Congress regarding terms of sale. The prospect of a large sale to the Ohio Company stimulated Congress to provide a satisfactory frame of govern- ment for the new territory, which was accomplished through the Ordinance of 1787, usually referred to as the Northwest Ordinance. During the time when the Northwest Ordinance was being formulated, Manasseh Cutler, the shrewd repre- sentative of the Ohio Company, was in Philadelphia and in close contact with the members who were active in framing it. There can be little doubt that the Ordinance as finally drawn reflected to a considerable extent the wishes of the New England group who were interested in the Ohio Company. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787. — The Northwest Ordinance provided that new states should eventually be formed out of the Northwest Territory, following a graded development of the powers of local government. This colonial policy promised the new states ultimate membership in the union of states on an equal footing with the older states and liberty to frame their own constitutions and governments. Thus was assured the progressive and frictionless spread of the American nation over a continental area. It is of interest to note that when the newly-organized areas would have reached the status of territories, the exercise of the suffrage was to be made dependent on the ownership of land. The possession of a freehold of fifty acres was to be necessary for the right to vote for a representative, with graded increases in amount of freehold for the right to serve as representative, ^ Knight, History and Management of Land Grants for Education in the Northwest Territory, pp. 11-15. THE NEW FEDERAL STATE 341 senator, and governor. If this suffrage provision was sypmto- matic of a restricted democracy, the provision made for the equal division of property among the heirs of a person dying intestate, reflected the intention of the founders to do away with the system of primogeniture with its aristocratic old- world implications. Six articles of compact written into the ordinance guaranteed freedom of religion and religious wor- ship, reiterated the main terms of Anglo-Saxon personal lib- erty under the law, and prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory. In addition the third article said: "Religion, mo- rality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged." A few days after the passage of the Northwest Ordinance, the bill of sale to the Ohio Company of one and a half million acres of public land was drawn up. In accordance with the provisions of the Ordinance of 1785, lot number 16 of each township was donated by Congress for the support of schools. But this donation was not considered sufficiently liberal by Dr. Cutler, who asked for lot number 29 for the support of religion and "two townships near the center and of good land to be given by Congress for the support of a literary institution to be applied to the intended object by the legislature of the state." Congress demurred for a few days, but fearing that Cutler would make good his threat of buying the desired amount of land elsewhere from some individual state, finally accepted the exact terms that he proposed.^ The terms of Dr. Cutler's shrewd bargain with Congress on behalf of the Ohio Company were in the same year closely followed in a contract of sale between John Clark Symmes and the Board of Treasury. In this contract, one lot in each town- ship was donated for the support of schools and one for the support of religion, while one entire township was reserved for the support of a seminary of learning. Land Grant Policy Confirmed by National Congress. — Upon the admission of Ohio as a state in 1802, the grants * Knight, op. cit. 342 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 of land for purposes of higher education to the Ohio Com- pany and the Symmes interest were confirmed to the State of Ohio, and the sixteenth section grant for common schools was given state-wide application. The four other states that were formed out of the Northwest Territory received the six- teenth section for common school purposes and two or more townships for the support of higher education. In 1803 an act of Congress extended the policy of public land endowment for education to the states to be formed out of the Mississippi Territory, the area lying between the southern border of Ten- nessee and the Gulf, exclusive of Florida. In 1826 the ter- ritory acquired through the Louisiana Purchase was brought by act of Congress under the same general principle. In the case of Illinois (1818), it was specified by Congressional act that three-fifths of five per cent of the total amount realized from the sale of public lands within the state should be ap- propriated to educational uses. This specific policy did not recur in the case of any state until about 1845. ' The Significance of the Land Grants. — Some of those who believe at present that the federal government should take a larger and more direct part in education in this country seem to be inclined to read back into these early land transactions certain implications of federal participation that rather go beyond the real facts of the case. The federal government made large grants out of the public domain lying within the states for purposes not only of education but of road con- struction and other forms of internal improvement. The mo- tive of these grants combined elements of federal benevolence, federal self-interest, and regard for the rights and interests of the territories and states that were forming on the frontiers. Viewed in the large, the early federal land grants for educa- tion appear to be the act of an open-handed Mother Bountiful. Seen in smaller detail, we recognize in these earlier transac- tions between the federal government and the inhabitants of the states something of the real estate promoter who desires to make attractive the conditions of land purchase and residence in a new community. The original provision for the endow- THE XEW FEDERAL STATE 343 ment of public schools out of the public domain came in di- rect response to the proposals of prospective New England settlers who desired to have schools in the wilderness to take the place of those they were planning to leave behind them. The government saw in the vast national domain a means of paying off the national debt if settlers could be induced to purchase land in the distant frontier country. Its assent to the proposal of land endowment for schools was at least partly gained because it seemed likely to further the purpose of greater land sales and more rapid settlement. The land given free to the towriship for schools was in effect a bonus of a little less than three per cent that went with each land purchase. It was also recognized that the nation, as a whole, was in- debted to the pioneers who were creating new states in the wilderness at great personal expense to themselves. All were, in a sense, profiting at the expense of the few who braved the hardships and perils of pioneer life. To aid these pioneers in the development of the facilities and advantages of the more closely settled East was not only good business, but it was fair dealing as well. This is illustrated by the provision made at the time of the admission of Ohio as a state, and repeated thereafter in the case of new states created out of the national domain, namely, that five per cent of the net proceeds from the sale of public lands within the borders of the state in question, should be paid back to the state for the construction of roads and other internal improvements. As has been said above, in the case of Illinois, a part of this five per cent fund for in- ternal improvements was definitely devoted to educational pur- poses. Education was justly regarded as an internal improve- ment which was to the advantage not only of the home state, but to the nation at large as profiting with the state in its increase of population, wealth, and domestic commerce. Further light is thrown on the attitude of the national govern- ment in these early land endowments for education by a con- certed movement among the older states which were not re- ceiving public lands for the support of schools to participate in this bounty. The General Assembly of Maryland resolved 344 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 in 182 1 that each of the United States had an equal right to participate in the benefit of the public lands, the common property of the Union, and that the states in whose favor Congress had not made appropriations of land for the pur- poses of education were entitled to such appropriations as would correspond in a just proportion with those that had been made in favor of the newer states. Four of the other states which had not received land grants for educational pur- poses endorsed through their legislatures the resolutions of the General Assembly of Maryland, while Massachusetts and New York were opposed. In response to the petitions of some of the older states for equal participation in the school endowment policy of the national government, the Committee of Public Lands of the Senate reported adversely. In that report, the following state- ment occurs: "In receiving donations of land for the purposes of promoting education in the states in which they have been granted, in the opinion of the Committee, a consideration has been rendered therefor, on the part of those states, by the in- creased value which the population and improvement of the state gave to the unsold public lands, and by the compact not to tax the lands of the United States at any time before they were sold, nor until the lapse of five years thereafter." The Committee further declared that while it regarded it as inexpedient to grant lands in the newer states to the older states for educational purposes, it would be just and expedient to grant a percentum to a reasonable extent on the amount of sales of public lands for the purposes of promoting education in such states as had not received national land grants. On the other hand, it recommended that in case this policy should be adopted, the newer states should be allowed to tax from the day of sale all public lands sold by the national land office. No action was taken by Congress on the Senate resolu- tion of 1 82 1, nor on a House resolution of similar tenor in 1826. The agitation over land endowments for the older states for educational purposes indicates, however, that the question as to the relation of the federal government to the THE NEW FEDERAL STATE 345 states in the matter of the public domain was yet an open one. In this instance the party to the discussion that favored a liberal interpretation of the federal powers was defeated. During the period 1789 to 1828, the federal government had no administrative connection with education, and no financial connection other than that involved in the policy of land endowments for common schools and institutions of higher learning in the states created out of the national domain. State Governments and Education When Andrew Jackson was first elected President there were twenty- four states in the Union. Following the date of the formation of the Union, Vermont, and Maine had been added to the New England group. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois had been created out of the Northwest Territory and admit- ted with full powers and privileges of statehood. Tennessee and Kentucky had been recognized as independent of their more easterly mother states and admitted to the sisterhood, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama had grown into important agricultural sections and had been organized as states during the second decade of the new century, while Missouri, the first state lying wholly beyond the Mississippi River, had been admitted, with much agitation concerning the matter of slavery, in 1 82 1. The New England Public School Tradition.— Of all the sections of the new nation, the New England states, with the exception of Rhode Island, alone entered the Union with a tra- dition of public education and with what might be called a system of schools. In the case of Massachusetts the authority of the state in the matter of education had been first expressed by the order of the General Court, that is to say, the legisla- ture, in 1642, by which parents and guardians of children were held responsible for the education of their children or wards to read and understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of the country. This law was followed in 1647 by a still more significant piece of legislation, which compelled the 346 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 town officials to appoint teachers and establish schools. Every town of fifty families was to have a school in which reading and writing might be learned, and every town of one hundred fami- lies was compelled to provide a Latin grammar school, in both instances under penalty of a fine for non-compliance with the law. No specific provision was made in the law as to the means of supporting the schools called for, but it is known that it became a common practice to levy taxes on property for the partial or complete support of the schools. When Mas- sachusetts adopted its first state constitution a very specific statement was incorporated in it which made it the duty of the legislature and the magistrates to cherish education in all its grades. New Hampshire, as part of Massachusetts up to 1679, was under the Massachusetts laws and may be said to have fol- lowed the Massachusetts tradition of public education. The Connecticut Colony reproduced the conditions of the Massa- chusetts law of 1647 in its first code in 1650, and when New Haven Colony and Connecticut Colony were united in 1665, the Connecticut code was adopted by the combined colonies. In 1777 V'ermont declared itself an independent state and adopted a constitution in which the provision of a school or schools in every town was ordered. The constitution further advised the establishment of a grammar school in each county and of a university for the state. The first general school law, passed in 1782, made provision for the election of dis- trict officers to provide the schools made mandatory in the constitution. Maine as a part of Massachusetts until 1820 was under the Massachusetts laws up to that time. Its first state constitution reproduced in their essentials the general edu- cational provisions of the Massachusetts constitution of 1780. The first state school law in 182 1 provided for the statewide establishment of schools on the district plan. Rhode Island, as has been said, remained an exception to the zeal for public education exhibited in the rest of the New England section. Rudimentary Nature of State Participation in Educa- '.ion. — The question may very well be raised as to how much THE NEW FEDERAL STATE 347 of a state system of education the New England states pos- sessed during this early national period. There can be no doubt that public provision of some sort of schools or other was enforced upon the town and later the district authorities by laws possessing statewide application. Public schools were to be found widely distributed in all the New England states as the result of state legislation. The school law was enforced by the courts as other laws were enforced. But had the states created any special administrative machinery for the super- vision of education, and were they giving the local authorities any financial aid? In respect to the first question, the answer is no. In 1810, Connecticut provided for a Commissioner of the School Fund, but his duties were entirely fiscal. In 1827, Vermont made the Secretary of State an ex officio school officer to whom the towns were compelled to report school statistics. In the same year a board of five Commissioners of Public Schools was created with certain duties connected with the selection of textbooks and with the function of recommending new educa- tional laws to the legislature. This development of a super- visory body in V^ermont was a flash in the pan, for in 1833 the Board of Commissioners was legislated out of existence, /with the trivial exceptions noted above, the New England ^ states made no provision during the period under discussion for the supervision by state educational officers of the efforts of the local authorities, j With respect to the matter of financial aid on the part of the state to the local authorities, the situation presents more variety. New Hampshire as early as 1789 began to levy a state tax for educational purposes in a ratio to the town school taxes of one to five. As time went on, however, the ratio of the state to the local tax decreased. In 1821 New Hampshire created a Literary Fund arising out of a tax on banks, which was distributed in 1828 to the towns for common school pur- poses. This Literary Fund should not be confused with the permanent Common School Fund, now known as the Institute Fund, which was begun in 1867. Massachusetts had no school 348 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 fund before 1839, nor did it levy a state tax for school sup- port. Maine and Rhode Island made the beginning of such funds in 1828. Connecticut in 1795 established a permanent school fund out of the sum realized on the sale of the Western Reserve lands in northern Ohio. The amount of this fund was almost one and three-quarter million dollars in 1825, and between 1810 and 1825 the average annual amount of in- terest on the fund paid to local authorities for the support of schools was over fifty thousand dollars. By way of summary it may be said of the New England states, Rhode Island excepted, that they had state laws call- ing for the maintenance of schools by local authorities every- where throughout the several states. There were, however, no special state administrative officers provided to see that the laws were carried out or to stimulate educational advance- ment. Neither was there, with the exception of the small state tax for school purposes in New Hampshire and the Literary Fund in the same state, first distributed in 1828, any system of state aid to the local authorities out of current resources. Connecticut alone of the New England states had a permanent school fund that actually paid money during this early period to local authorities for the support of schools. Educational Administration in New York. — Of all the states New York during this early period made greatest prog- ress toward the creation of a state system of educational ad- ministration. As early as 1784 the legislature provided for a Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York to have oversight and control of higher and secondary educa- tion. In 1787, the Board of Regents was reconstituted, but retained practically the same functions which it had been given by the law of 1784 Under the new act, the Board was to consist of twenty-one members and it was to have exclusive control of all higher and secondary schools in the state. All such institutions were to be dependent upon the Board of Regents for their charters and were to be subject to its rules and regulations. THE NEW FEDERAL STATE 349 In 181 2 New York created the oflice of State Superintendent of Common Schools, who was to be independent of the State Board of Regents and whose duties were exclusively to be connected with elementary education. This divided form of educational administration in New York State continued throughout the nineteenth century. In 1821, the office of State Superintendent of Common Schools was abolished, and the Secretary of State was made ex officio responsible for the duties of that office. Abortive Development of State Systems in Georgia and Michigan. — Much the same form of state administration as that followed in New York was adopted in Georgia and the Territory of Michigan. The first state constitution of Georgia (1777) called for the establishment of schools in each county to be supported at the general expense of the state as the legislature should thereafter point out. In 1783 the state legislature chartered three academies and gave each an en- dowment of land and at the same time provided for the endow- ment in land of free schools of the county academy type in the remaining counties. Two years later the county acade- mies were formed into an administrative system under the Senate of the State University created in 1784. The uni- versity began operations tardily and never exerted a great deal of control over the schools of the state. The Territory of Michigan in 181 7 created a Catholepiste- miad, or University of Michigania, which was to serve the dual purpose of higher institution of learning and administra- tive system. The faculty of the University was given com- plete power over the schools of all grades to be established in the state. Some changes in the organization of the Univer- sity occurred in 1821, but the teaching institution was not or- ganized until 1837. Meanwhile, in 1827, a new school law had been passed which provided for a system of common schools independent of the control of the University. As the beginnings of the state systems of administration in Georgia and Michigan were largely abortive, it may be said that during this early period New York State alone showed a 350 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 significant start in the direction of comprehensive and influ- ential state control of public education. Of the remaining states we find that Maryland created the office of State Superintendent of Public Instruction in 1826 and that Virginia provided in 181 5 for a State Board with the exclusive function of looking after the Literary Fund. State Financial Aid. — The absence of administrative ma- chinery does not imply, however, a complete absence of interest and activity in educational affairs on the part of the various state governments. Before the end of the third decade of the nineteenth century, practically all the older states had created permanent literary or school funds, the income of which was designed to aid local educational effort. In many cases this fund had its origin in sales of state lands. Other sources, of income out of which the fund was increased were fines, licenses, special taxes, and forfeitures and escheats of various sorts. Several of the states organized lotteries or permitted lotteries in the interest of permanent funds or of current costs of education. New York State in 1795 began the annual distribution of $100,000 to the towns of the state for the support of the schools. This policy was temporarily discon- tinued at the end of five years, but in 181 2 the state again began a policy of aid for local effort through the distribution of the interest on the State School Fund. Pennsylvania pur- sued a policy of granting state aid to colleges and academies during this period, ostensibly in return for the free instruction of a designated number of poor children. Maryland also ex- tended the aid of the state's treasury to higher education. For a short time the state gave annual sums in support of two colleges and five academies. Later the system of aid was extended to assist academies in each county in the state. South Carolina following 181 1 provided aid to each school dis- trict for the education of poor children. Georgia, in addition to making specific money contributions, was generous with her unsold land, setting aside a large area for the support of academies, of which^ as in the case of Maryland, there was eventually to be one in each county that would profit by THE NEW FEDERAL STATE 351 the state's county. The policy of land endowment was also followed by Kentucky. Louisiana made a money contri- bution following 181 1 for buildings and annual cost of main- tenance for the purpose of erecting an academy in each parish. The aid of that state was extended in 1827 to the common schools, at which time a law was passed which called for the donation on the part of the state of the sum of $2.62^ a month for each pupil in parish schools. In return the parish was to receive for tuition free of charge all indigent children. When the total of the state contributions to local educational expenditures during this period is summed up, in the light of later developments, it is very small. No Thought of the State as a Unit for Educational Administration. — The absence of any thought during this early period of the state as a unit for educational administra- tion is shown in the wording of the grants of the Congres- sional school sections. The sixteenth section of each township in the case of all states participating in the grant up to the admission of Illinois in 1818 was granted to the inhabitants of the township for the use of schools. When Illinois was ad- mitted the grant was changed to read "to the State, for the use of the inhabitants of such township for the use of schools." While the grant to Alabama followed the earlier formula the grants to Missouri and Arkansas followed the form used in the case of Illinois. The wording of the enabling acts in all these cases, however, indicates that education was being thought of as a predominantly local affair. The government of the United States in conferring its bounty upon the inhabitants of the states passed over the head of the state governments and made its gift as directly as possible to the people of the township. Each township was recognized as having special and definite rights to its own sixteenth section for its own use and enjoy- ment. Local Education Authorities New England Practice. — Early school control in Massa- chusetts and in the New England states generally, was vested 352 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 in the town. At first this control was exercised in town meet- ing by the inhabitants, and no differentiation of educational office or function was provided for. The local ministers might be and usually were empowered to certify to the moral and educational fitness of prospective teachers. The evolution of specialized school authorities with specific functions was slow and followed no regular order. The first development away from the actual control of school affairs by all the citizens in town meeting was in the assumption by the selectmen of the functions connected with education. Another frequently fol- lowed pathway to specialized powers and the creation of spe- cial local authorities lay through the appointment of special annual or standing committees to appoint teachers, inspect schools, lay off new school districts, or to perform some other specific duty. The records show that there was little uniform- ity or continuity in the practices of the Massachusetts towns in this respect. The fact is that by 1789 many towns of Massachusetts had come largely to depend on school com- mittees to perform many of the important duties formerly looked after by the selectmen of the town meeting. The Massachusetts Law of 1789 greatly stimulated the de- velopment of school committees through its legal recognition of what had been up to that time an informal function sanc- tioned only by custom and general agreement. By this law responsibility for the certification of teachers and the inspec- tion of schools was laid upon the selectmen of the town or districts. The law of 1789 legalized the division of the town or district. In both functions the local minister or ministers were to assist the selectmen or the school committee. This law made permissive the delegation of school functions to a special committee. The Evolution of the District System. — The Law of 1789 is important in the history of the school system of IMassachu- setts not only for its recognition of the school committee as a special authority, but perhaps more so for the tendency toward decentralization in school affairs which it recognized and legalized. As has been said, the original local authority for THE NEW FEDERAL STATE 353 school affairs in Massachusetts was the town. Originally each town had had its church and school as the center of the town life. However, as settlement began to spread beyond the orig- inal village that was the official center and capital of the town, the unity of town life was disturbed and finally lost. The inhabitants who lived farther away from the town church and school found it difficult and finally impossible to attend church or have their children attend school. As the town was the unit of support of both these institutions the inhabitants who lived in outlying sections found themselves called on to pay for the support of a pastor whose ministrations they could not enjoy and of schools which their children could not avail themselves of. The result of this situation was the splitting up of the town into districts for various purposes, and the distribution among these smaller subdivisions of functions that had previously been performed by the town as a unit. In the case of the schools it became common for the town school to be maintained for part of the year in several localities in rota- tion so that the advantages of the school supported by all might be enjoyed by all for at least a fraction of the full time of its maintenance. Another tendency seen was for the town to maintain at the center a school for the entire year and to maintain inferior schools for shorter terms in the outlying districts. The law of 1789 legalized the division of the town into school districts each with its own school. A law passed in 1800 gave the inhabitants of the school districts the right to hold district school meetings to determine upon sites for school buildings and to tax themselves for the erection of school premises and the maintenance of schools. In 181 7 the districts were made legal corporations with full responsibility and power before the law. In 1827 the final step in the develop- ment of the school district was taken when all towns which were divided into school districts were obliged to choose a prudential committee of one for each district who should have responsibility for the school property and the power to select and appoint the teacher for the district. The School District as a Response to Population Con- 354 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 17S9 ditions. — The disintegration of the town in Massachusetts as the local authority for education and the evolution of the school district in its place, is a significant development in the history of American education. It is symptomatic of the type of social and political organization which grew out of the spread of population into the back country. Given a tradition of public education and a desire on the part of people to have schools, the natural tendency under conditions of incomplete or sparse settlement, was for the neighborhood to desire to control its own school affairs. The" school district is the smallest possible civil unit for the maintenance of a school. In point of numbers served and in the matter of organization, it is the nearest approach to a purely voluntary system ac- cording to which a group of private persons maintain a school for their own children. A little settlement of families, homog- eneous in their needs and standards, could be formed into a district and have a school, however poor it might be, without waiting for neighboring settlements, composing with it the next larger civil district, to come to the same desire of having their children instructed in the three R's. The evolution of the district as the ultimate unit of school maintenance and control in Massachusetts took place as an accompaniment of the spread of population into the more remote corners of the older towns and into theretofore unsettled parts of the state. The same movement of population was taking place throughout all the New England states during the same period, and when the New England settlers poured over into New York and on beyond into the Northwest Territory, they carried with them the system of local support and management of schools which had served under the same pioneer conditions in the home states. The district system has had almost universal appli- cation in the newer states of the west under conditions of in- complete settlement. The District System in the Other New England States. — As has been said above, the early national period of our his- tory saw the development of the district system in the other New England states besides Massachusetts. New Hampshire THE NEW FEDERAE STATE 355 legalized the district system, giving full corporate and educa- tional powers to the district school trustees, in 1829. The law of 1766 in Connecticut recognized the right of towns and parishes to subdivide into school districts. By a law of 1794 school districts were allowed to tax themselves for the building of school-houses and by a law of 1798 "school societies" were authorized to organize as districts. The culmination of the development toward the district system in Connecticut occurred in 1839 when the district was made a body corporate with full control of its school. Vermont legalized the district system in 1782. In 1827 there was a law passed which attempted to restore the town control of the school, but this measure was repealed in 1833, and nothing further in that direction was at- tempted for a dozen years thereafter. In Maine a law passed in 182 1 made the districts bodies corporate with power to levy taxes. In that state, however, the control of the schools on the part of the town officials was never completely relaxed. Local Authorities Shaped by Federal Land Grants. — The development of local education authorities in the states which profited by the federal grant of the sixteenth section in each township was inl!uenced by the lerms of the grant. Ohio in 1806 and 1810 authorized the organization of any school township in which there were twenty voters. Three township trustees and a treasurer to look after the school land were to be elected. At the same time the townships were to be divided into school districts and their share of the school fund was to be paid directly to the district. In 1825 the trustees of the civil township were ordered by the law to organize school dis- tricts in the township. In 183 1 the school district officers were made a body corporate. Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin followed the course taken in Ohio without signifi- cant deviation, while the practice in Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Arkansas may be roughly assimilated to the same group. Local Authorities in New York. — New York State was without local authorities for education until they were pro- vided for in the Law of 1795. Town school committees were 356 NATIONALISIM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 at that time created to supervise the schools and apportion the state grants. At the same time the towns were to be divided into school districts with two or more tnistees. By the Law of 1795 the town school committee was empowered to withhold the state grant unless the teacher employed in a given district was satisfactory to the town committee. However, in case the district was willing to forfeit its share of the state grant, it was altogether independent of the town committee. Legisla- tion of 181 2 and 1 814 further developed the district organiza- tion while at the same time it established town educational authorities to inspect schools and to examine and license teach- ers. It is thus seen in the case of New York that the decen- tralization attendant upon the full district system was moder- ated at an early date by legislation. Local Authorities in Other States. — Among the remain- ing states during this early national period, there were some that assigned no educational functions to any local authority; there were some that assigned the duty of looking after the education of pauper children to existing local authorities with general functions; and there were at least two that created special local authorities to supervise the education of pauper children. Summary. — By way of summary of the educational con- ditions in the several states of the Union during the early na- tional period, it may be said that the New England states, excepting Rhode Island, had long had a tradition of public education. True enough the schools were poor in quality, and interest in education during this period was at a low ebb, but schools there were and the policy of public maintenance was deepseated and endured through all vicissitudes. New York State early legislated itself into a favorable condition with respect to the public provision of schools. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, and South Carolina among the original states made provision for the edu- cation of pauper children at public expense in schools main- tained by private initiative. None of these last-named states compelled the maintenance of schools by any local authority THE NEW FEDERAL STATE 357 or smaller civil unit, while practically all of them exhibited interest in education to greater or less degree by some form of state grant for elementary or secondary schools. The new states exhibited in their education practices the influence of the older states which furnished the majority of their settlers. The people who settled in Tennessee and Ken- tucky largely came from the hill country of Virginia and North Carolina and they brought with them the hands-off school policy which had been followed in the mother states. Th2 early settlers in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were largely from the older southern states or from Kentucky and Tennessee, while in the twenties and thirties a strong New England influx began. The increase in numbers of New England immigrants, aided by the removal of southern born families to Missouri and other frontier slave states during and after the twenties, turned the political majorities in favor of the New England stock or its descendants. A close relationship exists between these sta- tistics of population and the progress of education in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. As long as the stock derived from the states in which there was no state action in regard to educa- tion predominated, these states did not make any significant progress in the direction of universally provided public schools. The change in sentiment is indicated in legislation which was enacted after the close of the early national period. The southern frontier states made no significant progress in edu- cation during this period both because of conditions that were generally unfavorable to the maintenance of schools and^ be- cause of the lack of a common school tradition in the states in which their inhabitants were reared. The Elementary School. — The objective of the elementary schools during the early national period was to make the children able to read and write and to give them the command of arithmetic that was necessary for the business transactions of everyday life. Shortly after the Revolution, there had be- gun a rapid change from the exclusively religious subject- matter of the Colonial days. Webster's blue backed speller, first published in 1783, displaced the New^ England Printer as 358 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 the universal text book for reading and spelling, and a consid- erable number of other collections of literary materials soon came to enjoy wide popularity. At about the same time arithmetic gained great vogue as a subject of elementary school instruction. With the publication of Colburn's First Lessons in Arithmetic in 182 1, the place of arithmetic, espe- cially "mental arithmetic," in the schools was firmly in- trenched. The three R's — "readin', ritin', and 'rithmetic" — were the staple foods of early American intellectual nurture. By the end of the early national period, grammar had come to be recognized as a standard subject in the better organized elementary schools that had higher grades. Geography was also taught in the same. Penmanship was given a place in the work of the school day, and in some of the city schools bookkeeping was offered. Needlework was very generally taught to girls. History had hardly more than appeared as an elementary school subject. As one examines the text books of this early period, he is struck with the universal character of their subject-matter. There were, it is true, a few books that reflected a definite American feeling, — particularly Noah Webster's Second Part, a Grammatical Institute; but in general there was a com- plete absence of anything that could be characterized as nar- rowly nationalistic. Webster stated on the title page of the ''Second Part," that it was his purpose in compiHng the book to be "attentive to the political interest of America." In that interest he included a number of Revolutionary War ora- tions in which bitter feeling was expressed against Great Britain. With this exception, however, the reade.rs of the period might have been used without offense in England or any other English speaking country. Virtues that possess uni- versal validity were the main burden of the selections. Politi- cal freedom and justice and good personal virtues were praised in excerpts from classical as well as from English and Ameri- can works. One is constantly reminded in going through these early books of the close dependence of early American culture upon that of England. Burke, Pitt, 'Johnson, Addison, and THE NEW FEDERAL STATE 359 Goldsmith were no less a part of the American tradition than were Patrick Henry, John Adams, Fisher Ames, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington. The early national period shows no conception of education as a means of creating a definite political culture by means of the schools. Such is most certainly the case with reference to practice. There was, as we have seen, no concerted action on the part of any central authorities to accomplish such an objec- tive, because such authorities did not exist. And as far as the local efforts were concerned, they related to teaching the chil- dren to read, write, and figure. The curriculum was universal in tone even as the spelling of words and the doing of sums are universal. It was un-national rather than international. It reflected a state of political development that preceded any strong consciousness of nationalit3^ It might be added that the material side of elementary edu- cation in those early days was pathetically crude and inade- quate. The buildings and the equipment were ugly, uncom- fortable, unsanitary, and inefficient for their purpose. This was true in the cities as well as in the villages and in the open country. As far as the teachers are concerned, they were like the general run of those who taught school in all Western countries before the state turned to education to make it a tool for creating citizens. Barely possessed of the limited informa- tion they were expected to pass on to the pupils and conscious of no superior methods of instruction, they taught the children one by one through the time honored method of showing or telling followed by the pupils' practice. Harsh discipline, if it succeeded at all, secured inactivity when the child was otherwise out of employment. The Decline of the Town Grammar School. — In the colonial days in New England, the town grammar school was an acknowledged institution. The law of 1647 made manda- tory upon all Massachusetts towns of one hundred families, the maintenance of a grammar school in which the classics should be taught. A similar law was passed in colonial Can- 36o NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 necticut. The eighteenth century was a severe period in New England history as the result of Indian and other wars, and its latter part saw great economic distress resulting from the disordered financial conditions that followed the Revolutionary War. The development of the district system in New Eng- land further undermined the resources of the towns for main- taining public secondary schools. The law of 1789 in Massa- chusetts freed from the obligation over half the towns which under the previous laws were expected to maintain such schools. The failure of the one hundred and ten towns to live up to the law of 1789 in this particular is indicated by the fact that a new law passed in 1824 exempted all but seven towns, namely, the commercial towns of the state, from all obligation to main- tain a Latin grammar school. Change in the Curriculum of the Latin Grammar School. — Perhaps more significant than the relaxation of the requirement that towns should maintain grammar schools is the fact that the grammar schools had ceased to give predom- inant attention to the classics and had filled up their courses of study with practical subjects that led into business or other professional life than the ministry. The Boston Latin Gram- mar School in 1827 was offering, in addition to Latin and Greek, reading, grammar, geography, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, the United States Constitution, history, composition, declamation, forensics, trigonometry, and chronology.' The change from the narrow classical curriculum of early colonial days that prepared the prospective minister or scholar for Harvard College, had gadually taken place in response to the demand of the larger public who supported the grammar school, and whose sons were not going to follow learned careers. By the end of the early national period, the few Latin grammar schools that had survived in New England were different from the newer secondary school, the academy, only in respect to the point of public maintenance. The Academy. — The academy may be described as the typical secondary school in the United States during the first ^ See Inglis, The Rise of the High School in Massachusetts, p. 21. THE NEW FEDERAL STATE 361 seventy-five years of our national life. It was well adapted to the conditions of sparse population, small financial resources, and loose political organization of that early day. Wherever there was promise of a clientele or the desire of a sufficient group of persons for superior educational advantages for their children, an academy might be established by a private party as a business venture, or by a religious denomination as a work of grace, or by a community as a joint undertaking. Many academies were intended to serve mainly local needs, but, on the other hand, some academies served large areas and drew students from all over the United States. An important feature of the work of the academy was its provision for the education of girls. The curriculum and the organization of the academies were extremely flexible. There might be one teacher or many. The student might enter upon his studies when he was able and quit when he pleased. He might study any or all of the sub- jects offered. The curriculum of an academy might be mainly classical, or it might be made up almost entirely of the Eng- lish and practical branches that had definite economic value for the times. The academy was not only a school that pre- pared pupils for college entrance, but it was a school that proposed to give its students a finished higher education. For example, Leicester Academy in 1824 was offering its students, besides the traditional instruction in Latin and Greek, courses in grammar, geography, arithmetic, algebra, and geometry, as well as in history, logic, rhetoric, surveying, astronomy, liter- ary criticism, psychology, and philosophy. F'rench was added in 1828.' V^iewed in the full scope of such a curriculum, the academy was in reality a freer, more modern kind of college, and the student who persisted long in .such studies could reasonably be considered an educated man for the times. As has been said, the flexibility of the academy in respect to studies and administration made it an institution adapted or adaptable to the conditions of those early days. Its utility is manifested by its rapid spread over the entire nation, from New ^See Inglis, The Rise of the High School in Massachusetts, p. 21. 362 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 England to the Gulf of Mexico, and from Philadelphia to the frontier states of the West. At a time when public men were conscious of the need for advanced education, but had not yet come to believe in the obligation of the state to furnish the means of education, the academies were frequently aided by the state legislatures out of the common treasury. Some of the states planned statewide systems of academies with at least one such school in every county profiting by the aid of the state. At a time before the distinction between public and private education had taken on political significance, public funds were frequently used to aid private academies, even those maintained by religious denominations. At a time when educational destitution was the common condition, public authorities were favorable to any institution that promised the increase of educational facilities. Higher Education. — The early colonial colleges. Harvard, William and Mary, and Yale, had been founded by the colonial governments as public institutions. The Massachusetts Con- stitution of 1780 made specific provision for the continuance of the state's connection with and interest in Harvard College. It was only following out precedent that the New Englanders who composed the Ohio Company should request of Congress the free gift of land for a university. The grant to that com- pany of two full townships for the purpose of maintaining a university was the beginning of a policy that has been followed ever since in the case of new states created out of the public domain. As the result of that action in the case of Ohio, induced largely no doubt by the shrewd persistence of Manasseh Cutler, the new states have been endowed with land for universities, which in due time have been created, manned with instructors, and opened to students. Some of the older states also during the early national period created state uni- versities. ' Higher education has never, however, been a state monopoly in the United States. The many colleges that resulted from religious zeal during the colonial and post-Revolution days, were protected in their rights by the decision in the Dart- THE NEW FEDERAL STATE 363 mouth College Case in 18 19, which placed the charters of private"'coTleges 'Beyohd impairment by act of legislature. The importance of this decision for intellectual freedom can hardly be overestimated. It has insured the independence of public opinion at its highest source. No state authority has been able to control political and economic thought through the possession of a stranglehold upon the professors or the students in colleges and universities. No more have private individuals been compelled to send their children to higher institutions of learning in which doctrines which they con- sidered noxious and unsound were bolstered up by the au- thority of the state. That does not mean that within any institution a teacher has been free to teach anything he might happen to believe, for there has been in our country a tendency for individual colleges to control rather narrowly the instruc- tion given within their classrooms and to censor the personal conduct of teachers and students according to a rigid standard. Such "Lehr-und-Lern-freiheit" as has existed in our country has come about rather through the multiplicity of educational foundations with their wide variety of purposes and beliefs. Whom the denominational college has cast out for utterances at variance with its canon some state college or university has welcomed for his vigorous intellect; and whom the state uni- versity has cast out for unacceptable political or economic teachings, some private institution has gathered to its bosom with honor and affection. The result has been a degree of intellectual independence and freedom, when the nation as a whole is considered, that has been of inestimable value in the development of science and the enrichment of pubHc life. Churches and Education. — To speak of the Church in American education would be anomalous, for there has been no single dominating religious organization in our country, taken as a whole, at any time in its history. The early New England Colonies, except Rhode Island, were Congregational, and in them the connection between government and church was so close that the terms state-church and church-state might be used interchangeably to describe it. Seven of the 364 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 Colonies accepted the Anglican as the state church. Maryland was settled by Catholics, but practiced religious toleration. Pennsylvania was also open to settlers of all faiths. By the close of the colonial period, even in New England, religious unity was badly disturbed by the growth of independent de- nominations, and by the end of the early national period the connection between church and state had been dissolved (1833). The state of Virginia, largely through the efforts of Thomas Jefferson, in 1776 established the principle of religious freedom. If in the separate states diversity of faith was tend- ing to the elimination of religious restrictions and the separa- tion of the civil and the ecclesiastical organizations, it was but logical that the union of all these states should be even less able or willing to establish a state church. The Federal Con- stitution declared against any sort of religious test or qualifi- cation for federal office, guaranteed religious freedom to all, and declared against the establishment of a state religion by Congress. In New England almost up to the time of Horace Mann, the civil control of education meant control by the Congre- gational Church, with large influence residing in the local pastors. In all the other states, much of the private initiative that operated in the provision of school was exhibited by reli- gious organizations. This was particularly true of the chari- table associations which attempted during this period to estab- lish schools in the large cities of the eastern coast. During this early period the religious question in education was in no sense acute. The various states frequently made contributions to schools maintained by religious bodies, and it was a very common thing indeed for the civil authorities in the states which pretended to give free education only to pauper children, to pay the tuition of such children in denomi- national schools. The reading of the Bible in the schools as a part of the stated school exercises was practically universal and caused no objection to be raised, because however much, or little, the various sects might differ in point of doctrine, the THE NEW FEDERAL STATE ,365 King James version of the Scriptures was their common sacred book. Philanthropic School Societies. — The early national period was the flowering time of philanthropic effort in American edu- cation. The same motives operated and to a considerable degree the same methods were followed here as in England and France in the same epoch. Before the Revolutionary War, English charitable associations had maintained schools in the Colonies, and when independence was declared, native asso- ciations were in some cases formed to take up this work. The Sunday School movement (see p. 236!) had an early de- velopment in the United States. This movement was followed in point of time by the organization of voluntary associations for the free education of poor children in the cities, which closely resembled the British and Foreign School Society in England (see p. 237). Associations of philanthropic citizens were formed to provide through annual subscriptions the means of education for the neglected children of the eastern commercial cities who otherwise would have been without either moral guidance or schooling. Like the English prototype, these societies in general made use of the monitorial system of in- struction, which made it possible for large numbers of children to be given what was for that time a commendable amount of schooling at small cost. The organization of such school societies became very general in the cities of many of the states in which the provision of education was not secured by state law, that is to say, outside of New England, with the exception of Rhode Island. In some cases these societies benefited by state aid The importance of philanthropic school societies in the his- tory of American education is out of all proportion to the meager treatment here accorded their labors. They arose in response to a social situation that challenged public respon- sibility. If this responsibility was first accepted by private individuals formed into educational societies, it remained no less a public concern. The years of continuous effort on the 366 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 part of the philanthropic societies were influential in forming the habit of supporting popular schools and tended to make education for all children seem natural and necessary. As the transition from strictly private initiative in education to uni- versal public provision of schools was mediated through the activities of the voluntary associations, the movement has large significance in the evolution of a public school system. Education during the First Thirty Years of the Nation's Life. — By way of summary of educational develop- ments up to about 1830, it may be said that the provision of schools had not yet been accepted in the United States as a public obligation. It is true that in the New England states schools were required to be maintained by law, but even there the schools had little vitality. In the greater part of the United States, the education of children was provided for by parents as their personal concern or by church groups or by philanthropic organizations. To a considerable extent, the public had acknowledged its obligation to give the rudiments of a literary education to the children of parents who were on the public charge or otherwise unable to pay for the schooling of their children. Where the schools were a quasi-public insti- tution, the imposition and collection of "rate bills" placed the burden of educating their children in actuality upon parents. The bounty of the state governments was beginning, in an experimental way, to be extended in the aid of local educational effort, but such aid was inconsiderable and altogether out of proportion to the educational destitution of the times. In the larger cities the efforts of philanthropic school societies, through the application of the Lancasterian system of instruction, were supplying a limited type of elementary education to large num- bers of children and thus preparing the way for the ultimate recognition of the obligation and the feasibility of universal public schools. The control exercised over the schools, where schools were in existence, by the local authorities was absolute. Each community had the kind of school which it was able to rise to in imagination as based upon a poor experience and which it was able and willing to pay for. In short, it may be THE NEW FEDERAL STATE 367 said that "the Fathers," up to the time of Andrew Jackson's first term as president, had not seriously considered nor prac- tically applied the conception of public education as a means of creating a national culture or of preparing the large body of citizen-voters for the responsible functions of citizenship in a democratic state. ADDITIONAL READINGS General Historical Background. — Beard and Beard, History of the United States; West, History of the American People; Johnson, Union and Democracy; Fiske, The Critical Period of American History. Education Sources. — Considerable source material for the period is to be found in Cubberley and Elliott, State and County School Ad- ministration, Source Book. Secondary Accounts. — Cubberley, Public Education in the United States; Brown, The Making of Our Middle Schools; Inglis, The Rise of the High School in Massachusetts; Reigart, The Lancasterian System of Instruction in the Schools of New York City; Suzzallo, The Rise of Local School Supervision in Massachusetts; Updegraff, The Origin of the Moving School in Massachusetts. CHAPTER XVI SECTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY (1828-1861) The Triumph of Sectionalism. — The larger issues which the unlimited American electorate was called upon to decide during the period between Jackson and Lincoln, were prac- tically all connected more or less closely with the conflicting interests of the sections which composed the country. The tariff, the National Bank, slavery, territorial expansion, inter- nal improvements, land policies, — all these were issues that had their origin in the varying and opposing interests of East or South or West. For there were really three countries living under the same flag and owning to the same fundamental con- stitution. When we consider how divergent were the interests of the South from those of the East and the interests of both those sections from the interests of the West, one is not sur- prised that during this period political separation of the sec- tions was frequently and in all seriousness proposed and finally attempted in 1861. The East. — Very slowly during the first two decades of the nineteenth century, but with pronounced acceleration there- after, the economic life of the New England and the Middle States was transformed through the development of the fac- tory system of manufacture. The first cotton mill in the United States was built in 1789 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. As late as 1803 there were only four cotton mills in the coun- try and in 1808 only fifteen. With the passage of the Embargo Act (1807) and the cutting off of the supply of foreign goods, the development not only of cotton and woolen mills, but of other kinds of factories went on apace in order to meet the demands of the home markets for commodities formerly im- ported from abroad. The number of spindles in cotton fac- 368 SECTIONALISM AXD DKMOrRACY (182S-1861) 369 tories increased from 4500 in 1805 to 130,000 in 181 5, and while the increase in cotton manufacturing was larger than in any other line of factory production, similar and pronounced gains in manufacturing of many lines were made. The great spread of the factory system of production, however, took place in the twenties and the thirties. By the end of that time flourishing towns had grown up on the streams of New England and the Middle States and the population of the open country in those parts was moving to the towns to take their places in the new industrial armies. From the twenties to the present there has been a steady gain of the city dwelling population as opposed to those who lived in towns of less than 8000 inhabitants or in villages and the open country. By i860 there were 141 cities of over 8000 population, which con- tained 12.5 per cent of the total population of the country. These cities with their factory industries and their factory population were largely in New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. There were factories scattered here and there throughout the entire country, particularly the Mid- dle West and the Lake region, but the industrial life of the country was overwhelmingly concentrated in the northern and eastern states. The eastern cities were also the gateways of commerce. Merchants of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Baltimore controlled the exchange of goods between the LTnited States and foreign lands. These towns were also the centers of capital, a great preponderance of the banking resources of the country being concentrated in them. Seated in their cita- dels of trade and making common cause with one another, the eastern bankers, merchants, and manufacturers took their toll of all the goods that passed from the West or the South to Europe; or that came from foreign shores to serve the wants of southern planter or western farmer. The interests of the working population in this section either were bound up with those of their masters or were made to seem so, since steady work and wages depended upon the general prosperity of the business and the profits of the capitalist. Naturally the manu- 370 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 facturing section desired a high tariff on finished goods to protect its wares from foreign competition. The South. — The South during this period remained pre- dominantly agricultural and its agriculture was practically limited to the production of a few staple crops. Cotton was king. The other important crops were tobacco, rice and sugar. For its manufactured goods it was dependent upon the East or upon foreign countries. For grain and meat and other staples of diet it was dependent on the West. The peculiar economic situation in the South which has just been described had a history no less definite than had the growth of the East into a predominantly manufacturing and capitalistic section. Before the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, the only cotton that could be profitably grown was the long staple or sea-island cotton, which matured only in the lowlands of the southern seacoast, but when the cotton gin made the cotton lint of the short-staple cotton easily separable from the seed, the growing of this short-staple cotton became extremely profitable and cotton farming spread rapidly into the upland regions of the southern coast states. Before large scale cotton production had begun to pay good returns, the institu- tion of slavery promised to be done away with gradually in the South as well as in the North, for slave labor was gener- ally regarded as unprofitable. Extensive cotton farming could, on the other hand, be very profitably pursued with slave labor, with the result that slave labor almost exclusively came to be used in cotton raising. As the economic prosperity of the South came to be so definitely dependent on slavery, the atti- tude of southern people toward it radically changed. The increase in the production of cotton was fabulous. In 1790 only 1,500,000 pounds were produced in the United States. By 1807 the amount had increased to 80,000,000 pounds. During this period South Carolina and Georgia con- tinued to be the chief cotton states. During the next decade and thereafter cotton raising was found to be profitable in Tennessee and the Gulf states. Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi became a new El Dorado and during the period SECTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY (1828-1861) 371 between 1810 and 1840, the population of those states in- creased from 117,000 to more than 1,300,000. By 1830 the annual production of cotton in the United States had increased from the 80,000,000 pounds of 1807 to 350,000,000. In 1840 the production of cotton by means of slave labor was the predominant industry of the vast section which extended from the southern boundaries of Virginia and Tennessee to the Gulf of Mexico on the south and well into Texas on the west. During the same period that the East was becoming an industrial section and experiencing all the social changes that the "industrial revolution" brought with it, the South was de- veloping as has been indicated, into a section devoted pre- dominantly to plantation agriculture on the basis of slave labor. Cotton was king; but tobacco, rice, and sugar also were crops well-adapted to large system farming and slave labor. The prosperity of the small farmer of the Piedmont was tied up to that of the large plantation owner of the tide- water and lowlands. The profits of the slave-owner of Virginia and the tobacco country in general were dependent on their sale of surplus slaves to the planters of the new cotton states. Slavery came to be regarded as the foundation of economic prosperity in the great Cotton Kingdom and the necessary basis of the social and political order. Southerners no longer apologized for the institution of slavery, nor even justified it on the grounds of economic expediency. They came to defend their "peculiar institution" as justified in the laws of God and human society. The professor in his chair and the minister in his pulpit built up the arguments in favor of negro slavery and between them presented a solid front against the accusa- tion of many ardent opponents in the East and in the West, who asserted that human bondage was a foul wrong against humanity and that a constitution which tolerated it was "an agreement with Hell." The South in 1845 was an economic and cultural unit. What was to the capitalist-manufacturer of New England a necessity, namely, a high tariff, was to the southern planter an abomination. He desired free markets for his raw products 372 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 and a cheap supply of the manufactured goods and agricul- tural products which he in turn had to buy. Political change occurred more slowly in the southern states than in New England and the West. Indeed, the rich tidewater planters continued until after the Civil War to control state politics in spite of the extension of the suffrage to all white males. The distribution of seats in the state legislature was such as to give a majority to the eastern, or large plantation, section of the states. The somewhat patriarchal governing class was slow in coming to the philosophy of universal public educa- tion, but by the close of the period the cause of public educa- tion seemed to be on the eve of a complete victory in many of the southern states. The West. — The predominant occupation of the West was diversified farming and stock, raising. What the western farmer wanted was better markets, and to that end he needed turnpikes, canals, and railways. The Westerners were also interested in the government's land policy. They wanted land to be free, or at least cheap, and they wanted a liberal pre- emption law which would protect the right of the squatter who had occupied and improved land without possessing title to it. The western man was also an ardent expansionist. He wanted the United States to be extended to the Pacific Ocean. Inci- dentally, he wanted the Indians to be crowded off the face of the earth. Conflict between East and South. — The entire period from the time of the first election of Jackson to the outbreak of the Civil War was taken up with conflicts between the East and the South on one issue or another, which always went back to the fundamentally different economic interests of the two sections. The tariff question brought about the Nullification Act in South Carolina in 1832 and almost precipitated a war for the preservation of the Union. The agitation over the admission of Texas was caused fundamentally by the desire of the South to augment its political influence by the addition of another great slave and cotton state. Not only did the East oppose the annexation of Texas, but it opposed the entire SECTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY (1828-1861) 373 Mexican War program and the program of imperialism which added to the territory of the United States the entire Spanish Southwest. The West supported the South in its Mexican poHcy because it wanted the support of the South in favor of the forcible seizure of the entire Oregon Territory. "All of Texas" was balanced by "Fifty-four forty or fight." The Southerners during this period wanted to buy or take Cuba from Spain and the people of the East and West desired to aid Canada in her fight against England with the idea of pos- sible union between Canada and the United States. But in all this ardent imperialism — all this assertion of the strict national interest against all foreign interests whatsoever — there was a controlling element of sectionalism. The southern politician wanted Texas not so much for the aggrandizement and profit of his country as a whole, as because he desired a new slave state with its additional political influence at Washington in determining national policies. The westerner desired Oregon, even at the cost of war with England, largely because it was an extension of his own section with its peculiar interests. During this entire period there was no development that tended to lessen the gap between East and South. The West came to be drawn ever closer to the East because of the development of means of transportation between these two sections, and the interlocking of economic interests. But the South came to be a section apart. The exigencies of politics and the frontier interests of the western South had long kept the South and the West in alliance, but when the straight-out issue developed of a Union all-slave or all-free, the West found itself standing with the East, against the South. With this new political alignment threatening its economic interests, the South declared the Union dissolved and set up a new Confederacy in which its "peculiar institution" might be pre- served and strengthened^^ No Extension of Federal Participation in Education. — The period between Jackson and Lincoln did not result in any real extension of the sense of nationality because there was not among the three clearly defined sections — East, South, 374 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 and West — any dominant common interest to serve as its foundation. The period represents rather the development side by side of two separate and widely different cultures, — East and South, with the ultimate allegiance of the West uncertain until a few years before the Civil War, when it accepted the cause of the East as its own. It is a period likewise of jealous safeguarding of the rights of the states and of strict curtailment of the powers of the central government. The policy of fed- eral aid to the states for internal improvements, begun under Jefferson, was soon discontinued as unconstitutional. The federal grant of the school and university sections of the public lands to the new states was continued, it is true. The Five Per Cent Fund, namely, five per cent of the net return from the sale of public lands within the states, continued to be given to the new states for public improvements or for edu- cation. In 1837 the surplus revenue that was accumulating in the national treasury was distributed without interest or security to the separate states. But all of these actions were to be explained not so much on the basis of federal generosity and the extension of federal control, as on the basis of states rights. There was no extension of the federal interest in edu- cation and no development of federal machinery of educational administration between 1828 and 1861. The Common People Take the Helm. — The preceding chapter has described the changes which took place with refer- ence to the franchise in the years between the adoption of the federal Constitution and the first election of Andrew Jackson as president. The latter event occurred in 1828, while many of the extensions of the suffrage in the various states had taken place long before that time. The election of 1828 marks the end of a political epoch and the beginning of a new one not because changes in the regulations governing the right to vote took place at that time, but because the great mass of the people were aroused by the issues and personalities of that presidential campaign to use their political power for the first time. The issue was largely a contest for control between the old political aristocracy represented in John SECTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY (1828-1861) 375 Quincy Adams, polished gentleman, scholar, and statesman, and the new democracy made up of the lower economic groups in the eastern states and of practically the entire population of the fourteen states of the West, whose standard-bearer and champion was Andrew Jackson, "Old Hickory," Indian fighter and pioneer. The campaign cry of the new Democrats was, "Let the People rule," and the only recognizable issue of the campaign was whether or not the will of the thousands of plain people should control the government or whether government on the part of "gentlemen who knew how to rule" should con- tinue. The enthusiasm of the campaign in itself constituted a political revolution, because for the first time a large proportion of those entitled to vote exercised this privilege. The result of the election represented a real popular mandate. No longer were the propertied and educated classes to rule as if by divine right in Washington and the state capitals. Hence- forth the povver of the plain people was to be supreme in poli- tics, and those political leaders who could carry the plain people with them were to be the controllers of our political destiny. The political history of the next thirty years of American life describes distinctly different conditions from those ex- hibited during the first forty years of the nation's existence. The old Virginia-Massachusetts hierarchy of presidents and statesmen was succeeded in national councils by men whose chief claim to power was their ability to control or follow a popular constituency. The efficient bureaucracy which had been trained in its administrative duties and continued from year to year without respect to political changes was thrown out to make places for the political campfollowers who had aided in the election of the successful candidate. The spoils system of politics came in with the rule of the people and continued in our political history unchecked almost to the end of the century. The immediate result was a decided lowering of administrative efficiency and of faithfulness to public trust. A noticeable characteristic of politics following the Jack- sonian revolution was the small part played by policies and 376 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 platforms and the large part played by political manipulation and personalities. Twice Andrew Jackson was elected with- out a settled policy or platform just because the people con- sidered him their man. William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor were chosen as candidates for the high office of presi- dent and elected on their war records without reference to political policy. The other type of man which appealed to political leaders as candidates for president was represented in Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, — men without strong convictions or definite policies. The system of nominating by great party conventions which grew up during this period was favorable to the machinations of political leaders who picked candidates and wrote platforms largely from the stand- point of vote getting. The candidate who had no damaging political record and who could swing a constituency of his own was the kind sought for. It was all the better if he had come up out of poverty. A good war record also was espe- cially desirable. As far as possible the nominating conventions sought to avoid real issues. Nothing that could cause the defection of the smallest section or the loss of a single state would be permitted to go into the statement of party purposes if it could by any possibility be kept out. Party candidates and party platforms had to be ''all things to all men," as far as such a happy consummation could be achieved. The political conditions described above are to an appre- ciable extent characteristic of the United States today, but in the days of Jackson and thereafter up to the Civil War such things were new. The class which had controlled politics in the earlier decades naturally thought that the country was rapidly going to perdition when Andrew Jackson became President and introduced his political friends to Washington society and placed them in public office. Progress in the Development of State Administrative Systems Heightened Activity in behalf of Public Education. — As a result of the new political influence which the people en- SECTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY (1828-1861) 377 joyed, the necessity of making the general run of voters more competent to exercise such high authority became evident to the better educated and more public spirited citizens. Better facilities of education did not in general result from the de- mands of those who had not enjoyed their advantages. The rural sections, where popular education was at its worst, were most obstructive to the new ideals of free public schools for all. The industrial cities in which all the conditions inci- dent to a crowded, unnatural existence early showed the need for public care of the oncoming generation, had led the way to general provision of public schools through the transitional stage of private philanthropy aided out of the public purse. In this movement the lead had been taken by public spirited individuals who had the welfare of society at heart. With the development of the labor movement in the thirties, the or- ganized workers of the cities added their voice and influence to the first-named group and demanded free public schools not as a private philanthropic undertaking, but as a public enter- prise controlled and supported out of the public funds. Public spirited men everywhere united in the effort to secure a popular mandate for public schools where none such existed and to improve such as were already in operation. Organizations were formed all over the country in the interest of public education. Educational journalism had its beginning during this period with the objective of spreading information concerning the existing educational destitution, of awakening public interest in the provision of better facilities for public education, and of making familiar to all the best examples of school administration and methods in our own and foreign lands. The teachers themselves organized in the course of the period and added the influence of their professional group for the provision of more and better schools. The American Way of School Reform. — The way in which "the battle for free state schools" was fought is symp- tomatic of our political institutions. The people v/ere defi- nitely and powerfully intrenched in their control of public policy and the public purse. They were by habit and outlook 378 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 17S9 averse to any curtailment of the individual freedom which they enjoyed, which would follow upon state action regarding the provision of schools. They were money-poor, although self- subsistent, and vigorously opposed to the increase of taxation. Booklearning was not immediately essential to the lives they led and they could with difficulty see the necessity for edu- cating their children beyond the very limited degree to which their own schooling had progressed. Added to the apathy of the general run of the voting public to better schools, there was always to be encountered the selfishness of some of the well-to-do who provided privately for the education of their children and were unwilling to pay taxes on their property for the schooling of the children of their neighbors, whom they probably regarded as shiftless or improvident. Against these twin citadels of apathy and penuriousness, the attacks of thje friends of free public schools were directed. In countries with aristocratic institutions, as we have seen, public education was provided by the ruling classes as a means of self-protection. In our own country there was no interest intrenched in political control that was able to hand out public schools as a combination of largesse and social insurance. The people who believed in public schools were compelled to educate the rest of the political public into the same belief. This they did by means of public meetings, newspaper cam- paigns, educational organizations, and agitation in season and out of season for the objective to which they were devoted. The activities of the friends of public education produced results in the twenties and the thirties which have frequently been named the Common School Revival. The Common School Revival In the New England states, outside of Rhode Island, there were already state laws requiring the maintenance of public schools, while the other states had no such laws. In New England the object was to improve and vitalize the schools required by law. Elsewhere it was to establish such schools SECTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY (1828-1861) 379 for the first time by laws compelling state-wide observance. Closely connected with the question of the supply of public schools was the matter of their support. In all sections, in- cluding New England, at least partial support of schools by fees paid by the parents of the children taught, was common. Where the proportionate cost of the school to each parent was publicly determined and the shares collected by civil authori- ties, the system was called the rate-bill system. All along the line there was a contest looking to the elimination of this "tax upon children" and to the entire support of public schools out of public funds. Among other phases of the improvement of public education during this period are to be mentioned the erection of state administrative machinery, the develop- ment or reorganization of local authorities, the fostering of schools higher than the elementary schools, the training of teachers, and the enrichment of the curriculum. All of these elements of improved school conditions were more or less closely intermingled in legislation and among the states there was no orderly evolution according to type or example. The Question of European Influence. — Our attention has frequently been called to the large interest shown among American educators during the twenties and thirties in the development of national machinery for the administration of education in foreign countries, particularly in Prussia. Nu- merous Americans at that time visited Europe to see how edu- cation was carried on there and brought back reports that had wide circulation among intelligent readers. One of the most influential of those reports was that made in 1839 by Calvin E. Stowe, who had been commissioned by the Ohio Legislature to make a report on the conditions of elementary education in Europe. Most of his attention was given to the Prussian sys- tem of school administration and teacher training as then in operation and to the comparatively rich curriculum of the elementary schools. Henry Barnard at about the same time made an extensive journey among European states in order to study their educational conditions and during the next twenty years the journals of which he was editor constituted 38o NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 178Q a fertile source of information for American educators con- cerning the best European practice. Horace Mann, while he was Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, also gave an extended and critical description of the school conditions of the most important European countries as he had seen them in 1843. This information was issued in his Seventh Annual Report, dated the same year. Earlier chapters of this book have indicated the fact that both France and Prussia had by 1833, and earlier, adopted comprehensive systems of educational administration on a national basis. Both had gone extensively into the work of improving the quality of teachers by means of normal schools and both had considerably enriched the content of studies in the schools of the common people. It is natural to suppose that the example of highly organized systems of administra- tion had its influence on American practice and such influence has been frequently taken for granted in books on American education. But that the influence was immediate or that it developed to any considerable extent is after all rather difficult to prove. It is probable that the example of the European countries, particularly that of Prussia as being the most effi- ciently carried through, served as a general example to the friends of education in the United States. To say, however, that there was any close imitation of Prussian, or even Euro- pean practice, during this period, seems to be denied by the facts of the development of •state and local machinery of edu- cational administration and by the real inwardness of the evolution of American schools. After a survey of major edu- cational changes, we can come back to the question of Euro- pean influence. State Educational Administration The Office of State Superintendent of Public Instruc- tion. — Although there were earlier examples of the creation of a state administrative function corresponding to that of state superintendent of public schools, the period from 1828 to SECTIOXALISM AXD DEMOCRACY (1828-1861) 381 1 86 1 saw the real development and general adoption of that office throughout the States. New York had provided in its law of 181 2 for an officer to be known as superintendent of common schools. His duties were to be the supervision of the system of common schools created by the law and particularly the distribution of the state aid provided for in the same act. It is said that the wrath of the politicians, which is to say the wrath of the people at large, was aroused because Gideon Hawley, the first superintendent, magnified the function of educational leadership which was implied in his commission, and as a result the office was discontinued in 1821, and what were considered its legitimate functions were entrusted to the secretary of state ex officio. Predominant Business Function of the Early State Superintendents. — The early history of the highest state edu- cational office, as exemplified in the incident just cited, indi- cates that one of the important elements that entered into the creation of the office was the necessity of having a business official to keep straight the financial accounts between the state and the local authorities. When an otherwise busy state offi- cial was made the head of the education Interest of the state it is rather obvious that the functions thus delegated to him were largely of the nature of bookkeeping. This conclusion is corroborated by a convincing array of examples. As a case in point, when Michigan in 1835 was ready to be admitted to the Union, the bad results of entrusting to town- ship authorities the administration of the federal sixteenth section grants, had already become evident. The local au- thorities, by carelessness or venality, or both, had in all too many cases frittered away what might have constituted an extremely valuable endowment of the common schools. As a result, a large part of the sixteenth sections had been lost to the townships with nothing to show for them. The Michigan convention which framed the constitution of the state upon its admission petitioned Congress that the national grant be made to the state as a whole for the use of all the schools of the state. Even before Michigan became a state there had been 382 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 provided an officer whose duty it was to look after the terri- torial school lands and his title was superintendent of common schools. In 1836, when the state was organized, this official became head of the state school system with the title superin- tendent of public instruction. The advantage of the Michigan form of administration of the federal grant for common schools was readily seen and thereafter each new state, Florida excepted, was made cus- todian of the school lands for the state as a whole. Of the states admitted to the Union following Michigan up to the outbreak of the Civil War, Iowa, Wisconsin, California, Minne- sota, and Kansas provided in their original state constitutions for the office of state superintendent of public instruction. Between the two facts of the new method of administering the common school land grants and the creation of a state superintendent of common schools, there would seem to be a close causal connection. Ex-officio State Superintendents. — In the older states, the evolution of the highest state school office outside of New England was almost uniformly through the intermediate step of making the secretary of state, or some other state officer ex officio state superintendent of schools. This occurred in Pennsylvania, New York, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Mis- souri, Arkansas, and Illinois, in all of which the secretary of state for a longer or shorter time served as superintendent of schools. In Tennessee and Texas this function was performed ex officio by the state treasurer and in Oregon by the governor. In Florida, the registrar of public lands was in 1850 made ex officio school superintendent. Further corroboration of the financial bearing of the state school superintendency in its early form is to be found in the fact that in 1842 the State of Connecticut abolished its board of education and the office of its secretary and for a short time following 1845 ga-ve the state commissioner of the school fund the title and duties of super- intendent of public schools. The implication is clear that in its beginning the office of state superintendent of public schools was largely financial SECTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY (1828-1861) 383 and statistical in its duties and powers. So long as the head of the public school system of the state was limited in his functions to supervising the distribution of such moneys as the state contributed to the aid of local educational effort, we cannot expect a great deal of active leadership for better schools on the part of the state governments. Before the Civil War period, however, new state legislation had increased the extent of the states' participation in the matter of educa- tion to an extent that made it impossible for the education work to be conducted as an aspect of the statistical and dis- tributing functions of the secretary of state. These enlarged educational duties were accompanied by the erection of the separate office of state superintendent of public instruction in many of the states before the outbreak of the Civil War. The State Board and the Secretary of the State Board of Education. — During the same period in which the office of state superintendent of public instruction was evolving as de- scribed above, a different development of state educational machinery was taking place in the New England states. In 1837 the legislature of the State of Massachusetts created a State Board of Education with power to appoint an executive secretary. The authority of the Board of Education was limited to making an abstract of the school returns from the town school committees, to reporting to the legislature annually the condition and efficiency of the common schools of the state, and to suggesting ways and means of improving public educa- tion. The duties of the Secretary of the Board, in the words of the act which created the office, were to "collect informa- tion of the actual condition and efficiency of the common schools and other means of popular education, and diffuse a3 widely as possible throughout every part of the Commonwealth information of the most approved and successful methods of arranging the studies and conducting the education of the young, to the end that all children in this Commonwealth who depend upon common schools for instruction may have the best education which those schools can be made to impart."' Neither the Board of Education nor the Secretary had any 384 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 important financial functions, for in Massachusetts at that time the only aid rendered by the state to local education authorities was through the distribution of the income from the state school fund established in 1834. The duties of the Board, and particularly those of the Secretary, were strictly educational ones. They were to endeavor by all the means in their power to improve the schools and the instruction given in them. And just what means were in their power? Did the law empower them to fix standards of teacher preparation, to specify what text books should be used, to determine the fitness of teachers by means of state-wide examinations, to draw up plans for buildings which the localities would have to adopt, or to prescribe a minimum term of school? The law did noth- ing of the sort. That would most emphatically not have been the Massachusetts way in 1837. The newly created central authority had scarcely any power that did not reside in the ability of the Board and the Secretary to arouse the conscience of the people in favor of better schools through the ordinary means of publicity, argument, and persuasion. The new office was evangelistic rather than administrative. The function of the Secretary was to arouse the people to a desire for better school conditions and to make them willing to vote the money to bring such conditions about. The twelve years of the term of office of Horace Mann, the first Secretary of the State Board of Education in Massa- chusetts, were devoted to the process of enlightening the elec- torate of Massachusetts. By means of local conventions of citizens which he addressed, by means of the Common School Journal which he published, by means of teachers' institutes which he organized, by means of the Annual Reports which he prepared, by means of exhortation, argument, and demonstra- tion directed to the public in season and out of season, the Secretary did his work. That it was a good work and that the means employed were not impotent is shown by the fol- lowing summary of the changes in the public schools of Massa- chusetts which took place during his term of service as Sec- retary: SECTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY (1828-1861) 385 "Statistics tell us that the appropriations for public schools had doubled; that more than two million dollars had been spent in providing better schoolhouses; that the wages of men as teachers had increased sixty-two per cent, of women fifty- one per cent, while the whole number of women employed had increased fifty-four per cent; one month had been added to the average length of the schools; the ratio of private school expenditures to those of public schools had diminished from seventy-five per cent to thirty-six per cent; the compensation of school committees had been made -compulsory, and their supervision was more general and more constant; three normal schools had been established, and had sent out several hun- dred teachers, who were making themselves felt in all parts of the state. "All these changes, great as they were in themselves, had their significance as indications of a new public spirit. The great work which had been accomplished had been to change the apathy and indifference of the people toward the common schools into appreciation and active interest." ^ The Massachusetts Precedent in Other New England States. — The development of state authorities in the other New England states followed generally the Massachusetts prece- dent. Connecticut in 1839 created a Board of Commissioners for Public Schools and authorized this Board to appoint a Secretary, the duties of whom were to be "to ascertain the condition, increase the interest, and promote the usefulness of the common schools." The Board and the office of Secretary were shortly afterwards abolished, but when the head of the State Normal School was made ex officio Superintendent of Common Schools in 1849, the educational nature of the highest state school office was reaffirmed. The state returned to the plan of 1839 in 1865. Rhode Island in 1843 created the office of State School Agent and in 1845 changed the title of this office to that of State Commissioner of Public Schools. Vermont in 1827 created a State Board of Commissioners for ^ Martin, The Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School System, pp. 174-S. 386 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 Public Schools with the functions of recommending textbooks to be used in the schools and of proposing desirable educational legislation. In 1856 Vermont adopted the Massachusetts plan of 1837. New Hampshire in 1846 made the beginnings of state school supervision in creating the office of State School Commissioner, who was to be appointed by the Governor and Council. The duties of this officer were practically those of the Secretary of the Board of Education in Massachusetts. In the same year Maine adopted the Massachusetts precedent, but in 1852 gave it up and two years later provided for a State Superintendent of Public Instruction to be appointed by the Governor and Council. State Boards with Duties Mainly Financial. — In the earlier part of this section dealing with state educational administration, we discussed the development of the office of state superintendent as conceived to be concerned mainly with the collection of school statistics and the distribution of school funds to local authorities. So limited were his functions that in many of the states they devolved upon some other state official in his ex officio capacity. In much the same way boards of education were created in some of the states with functions that were mainly financial. As early as 1815 the State of Virginia created a state board to look after the Literary Fund. In 1834 a State Board of Commissioners was provided in Tennessee to supervise the school fund of the state, and two years later, Kentucky created a State Board of Education from the same motive. In 1835 Missouri created an ex officio Committee for Literary Purposes. Arkansas in 1843 estab- lished an ex officio State Board of Education. Texas in 1854 constituted the Chief Justice and the County Commissioners an ex officio State School Board. Indiana created an ex officio State Board of Education in 1851 and Kansas did the same in her first state constitution in 1859. The frequency of the ex officio state board of education and of other forms of state boards with purely financial func- tions indicates that the states which had such educational boards and no other sort at the same time, had not advanced SECTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY (1828-1861) 387 very far in their conception of the power and the duty of the state to maintain a position of leadership in education. Such boards had scarcely any educational functions in the true sense of the word. They were not concerned with setting up standards, stimulating improvement on the part of local au- thorities, initiating better educational legislation, or in admin- istering an educational system. The New York Development. — When all the factors that enter into the present status of state educational offices are summed up, an important place must be found for the de- velopments that took place in New York State during this period. It is here among all the states that we find the first example of a state system of school administration which really possessed and exercised power over individual institutions and local authorities, and extended the power of the central au- thority at the expense of local prerogative. The state admin- istration was able to increase its influence because the state was making extensive appropriations to the costs of local edu- cation and because conditions were attached to state grants. In 1837 was begun the policy of giving the income from the Deposit Fund (see p. 389), to districts on condition that the school term be not less than four months in length. In 1841 a law was passed which created the office of deputy superin- tendent of common schools for each county. These deputy superintendents, while appointed by the supervisors of the counties, were to examine and license all teachers for the county, and to have general supervision of the schools in the county, subject to the rules and regulations of the state au- thorities. The importance of this new educational work called for the creation in 1841 of a Deputy Secretary of State for Schools, who to all intents and purposes was a Superintendent of Common Schools. Two years later this official was given power to grant teachers' certificates possessing state-wide validity. In 1854 a state department of education was organ- ized with a State Superintendent of Public Instruction at its head. The control of secondary education during this period re- 388 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 mained under the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York By reason of the fact that the Board of Regents had state money to distribute to secondary schools, especially in the form of subsidy to academies engaged in teacher training work, it was able to exercise considerable influence over the standards of secondary education through- out the entire state. The State Superintendency at the Time of the Civil War. — Before the Civil War, practically all the states of the sections described in an earlier connection as the East and the West (see p. 368 and following) had provided for a separate official to serve as the head of the interests of public education in the state. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Vermont still followed the usage of having a Secretary of the State Board of Education, appointed by the Board, as the state leader in education, but the other states had pretty uniformly come to the practice of having a chief educational officer who was elected by popular vote on a party platform like any other state officer, and who bore the title of State Superintendent of Public Instruction, State Commissioner of Common Schools, or State Superintendent of Common Schools. The passing of the predominantly financial function of chief school officer is indicated by the change from ex officio state superintendents which was accomplished during this period in the East and the West. The new chief school officer continued to have financial functions, it is true, and these functions increased and continued to increase as the states came to give greater sums in aid of local educational endeavor. But the State Superin- tendent of Public Schools was more than a collector of school statistics and more than a disburser of state grants. He was an educational evangelist with a roving commission to preach the gospel of better schools everywhere throughout the com- monwealth which he served. His business was to improve the facilities for public education by any means in his power, which in this early period were mainly the means of pub- licity. By his spoken and written word, by the organization of interest in education wherever he found it, by the en- SECTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY (1828-1861) 389 couragement of all movements looking to the betterment of schools, he endeavored to educate lawmakers and people to an enlarged vision of education. Among the Southern States, North Carolina, Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama, and Missouri had, before the Civil War, created the office of State Superintendent of Public Instruc- tion with that title or its equivalent. The rest of the South- ern States had failed to create a separate chief educational office, and in this group must be included Delaware. Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, South Carolina, and Georgia had no chief state educational officer whatever, and Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Florida, and Texas still remained at the stage of educational evolution where some state official was able to care for the functions connected with public education along with the other duties of his office. State Financial Aid. — The early national period had seen the beginnings of state aid to local authorities in maintaining public schools. The form which this aid took during that period was largely the distribution of income from state school funds, although direct contributions out of current state reve- nues were not unknown. The period immediately preceding the Civil War saw important increases in the amount of finan- cial aid rendered by the states to the cause of public educa- tion. In 1836, the United States government found itself in flourishing financial condition with a large surplus in the treasury. Congress decided to distribute this surplus to the individual states without interest, but subject to recall. Three quotas of the money were distributed in 1837, but before the end of that year a great financial crash had occurred and the national treasury was emptied. The panic of 1837 was due to the over-expansion of credits in every line of development and to the excessive borrowings of the state governments to carry out programs of internal improvement. When loans were called in there was no money to pay with. Some of the states had devoted all or a part of the Surplus Revenue Fund to education, either for buildings and current aid or for the 390 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 increase of permanent funds. In the financial stringency fol- lowing the panic of 1837, much of the Surplus Revenue was applied to relieve the distress of the state treasuries and even older school funds were absorbed into the general finances of the states. When good times came again and the credit of the states was restored, many of the funds which had been cred- ited to education, but which had been dissipated, were re- acknowledged as a permanent interest-bearing debt by the states. Aid to education out of the defunct funds was revived on the basis of an annual state tax for the public schools. In many other ways the states during this period extended aid to education. In fact, almost every state made specific contributions, either in the form of a state tax or through the gift of stated sums. The policy followed by New York State in aiding local education authorities has already been men- tioned (see p. 387). Connecticut during this period was con- spicuous among the states for the large share of the cost of education which was borne by the state in the form of income distributed from state funds. For a period the effect of the state's aid in Connecticut was unfavorable to educational progress, because the districts and towns came to rely wholly upon state aid and lost all willingness to tax themselves for the support and improvement of schools. Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana made annual contributions to elementary or secondary education in the form of annual grants or through assuming the expenses of educating pauper children. New Hampshire continued its policy of a state tax for public schools, although the ratio of state to local taxa- tion grew smaller year by year. In 1851, New York levied a state tax for educational purposes and in the same year the new state constitution of Virginia provided for a capitation tax on white persons for the aid of primary and free schools. Kentucky, Ohio, Louisiana, Illinois, California, Oregon, and Kansas at about the same time began the policy of state taxa- tion for schools, and Texas set aside one-tenth of its total revenue for the same purpose. SECTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY (1828-1861) 391 Local Education Authorities The period between 1828 and 1861 saw important changes in respect to the local authorities for education. In the states where there had been no local school organization, such was generally provided, and in the states where such an organiza- tion already existed many important modifications occurred. Among the states which in the early national period had made the most favorable showing in respect to the provision of public schools, a process of disintegration of the area of local control had continued to the point where the school dis- trict was practically supreme. The smallest practicable unit for school support and administration had been reached. The district school committee and the district school meeting were in a position to give the final decision in regard to the qualifi- cations of teachers, the subjects to be studied, housing and equipment, length of term, and any other point of school practice. The Way up from the District System. — Wherever the district system has been in existence in this country, the his- tory of school improvement is a record of the effort of state governments to take away some of the absolute power of the districts and to enforce standards higher than the districts, uninfluenced by higher controls, would reach by their own efforts. This result has been achieved partly by the setting up of standards by state legislatures which all districts have been compelled to reach, but the most vital progress had been made through the creation or the revival of local authorities serving larger areas and possessing larger financial resources than the atomic school district. New Powers for ,the Town School Committee in Massachusetts. — In Massachusetts the fight to curtail the powers of the school district began in 1826, when a law was passed which required every town to choose a school com- mittee, to which was given the general supervision and control of all schools in the town. This committee was empowered to choose the text books to be used in the schools and was 392 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 given the important power of examining and certificating all teachers for the town schools. For a long time, however, the customs of an earlier time prevailed in spite of the new law, and when Horace Mann became Secretary of the State Board of Education he found that school committees were frequently lacking and otherwise not performing the duties which the law of 1826 enjoined upon them. One of the great services which he renderedcto education was his work in securing the passage of a law providing compensation for school committees. Through his efforts the town school committees became the real local authorities for education in the State. To be sure, this was yet a long way from expert management of school interests, but it constituted an important step in that direc- tion. The schools were taken out of the immediate control of possible local apathy or ignorance and placed in the hands of a committee chosen to represent the town as a whole. The result was an improved personnel in charge of community education and the beginning of a tendency to apply the best standards of the time to all the schools. /changes Back to the Town System in the Other New England States. — The other New England states, except Rhode Island, followed Massachusetts, rather haltingly, to be sure, in the steps that led away from the district system. Connecticut in 1856 abolished the school societies, which were in that state a counterpart of the Massachusetts district, and transferred all the powers and duties which they had enjoyed to the town, although the school districts as such continued. New Hampshire a little later allowed the consolidation of two or more contiguous districts for school purposes. In 1827, Vermont adopted the town system of licensing teachers and provided for a superintending committee to be chosen by the town. Six years later, however, the legislature experienced a change of heart and all supervision was abolished. In 1854 Vermont came back to the town system of school control and went one better in providing for a town superintendent of schools. In Maine as early as 182 1 town school committees were created who examined teachers and exercised general SECTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY (1828-1861) 393 supervision over the schools. A few years later union town schools were authorized and in 1834 power was given to any town by general vote to abolish the school districts and or- ganize its public education as a unit. Local Education Authorities in the Southern States. — During this period most of the older southern states made the beginnings of public education and created local authorities for its control. In this section, where large plantations were the rule and always had been, the county was the traditional unit of local government, and when education came to be organized the county was generally adopted as the unit of school control. This was the case in Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Texas, while South Carolina created a special area, known as the district, for this purpose. Maryland, Kentucky, and Tennessee can hardly be said to have had a system of local education authorities before the Civil War, but their abortive efforts along that line indicated the county as the preferred unit. Among all these«states, how- ever, with the exception of North Carolina, there was little vitality in the efforts of local authorities. For example, the Virginia law of 1846 created county boards of school com- missioners who were to establish free elementary schools for white children in their counties, supported by state grants and county taxation; but this law made it optional with the coun- ties to adopt the new plan. Only nine counties in the state took favorable action. Georgia created county boards of edu- cation as a part of a comprehensive plan of free public edu- cation only two years before the outbreak of the Civil War, the coming of which, of course, greatly interfered with the development of the plan. North Carolina, often described as the least southern of the southern states, is a decided excep- tion to the general failure of the older South to develop state systems of public schools before the Civil War. In 1839, a law was passed in that state which provided for the election by the county courts of boards of county superintendents to serve as local education authorities. Local taxation was pro- vided for and state aid was allowed. The law was to go into 394 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 effect in any county only on favorable vote of the citizens of the county and it is an indication of a healthy school interest that by 1846 all the counties of the state had taken action favorable to the law. By 1858, an average four months' term of school was maintained throughout the state, with over 170,000 children in attendance. The newer southern states, with their large plantation sys- tem of agriculture, followed the lead of the older states in making the county the unit of educational administration, although there was some exception due to the influence of the federal grants of the sixteenth section to the townships. Of these newer states, Louisiana made the most conspicuous prog- ress toward a state system of public schools before the Civil War. In 1845, a- i^^w state constitution was adopted which put an end to the state's aid to private and parochial schools and proposed the development of a public school system. A law passed in 1847 created boards of directors in each parish (equivalent in area to the county), and imposed upon them the duty of maintaining schools that were to be open to all white children free of charge. Free education for all was not en- tirely achieved before the Civil War, but in i860 only one- eighth of the school expenses was met by tuition fees. Practically nothing was done by the ex officio county school boards created in Florida by the law of 1853, except to dis- tribute the thirty cents per school child that was annually distributed by the state as income from the state fund. In Alabama no local authorities were created before 1854, when three county commissioners for each county and trustees for each township were provided for. Up to the Civil War, how- ever, there was no real public school system, as all state and local effort consisted in aiding private schools out of public funds. In Mississippi, a law passed in 1846 created boards of school commissioners for each police district and gave these boards supervision of the sixteenth section lands. The law also clothed the boards of school commissioners with power to examine and license teachers and to open schools. The law, however, was operative only upon favorable vote of the inhabi- SECTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY (1828-1861) 395 tants, which in most cases was withheld. Texas made the beginnings of a state school system only in 1854, and while a generous spirit was manifested on the part of the state, and local authorities were provided for the counties, the progress made toward the realization of this system before the Civil War was very limited. In Arkansas the county commissioners served as school authorities and progress toward a public school system was much retarded. In most of the southern states during the last thirty years of the old regime, special privileges were granted to the cities and larger towns and to special districts for the organization of local systems of free public schools. In many of the more populous sections, local taxation was levied to support the common schools and free education for all white children was coming to be provided. Practice in Other States. — Pennsylvania made each ward, borough, and township in the state a school district by the law of 1834 and each district was to have a school board of six directors, elected by the people. In 1854 all township boards were given corporate powers. The practice in New Jersey ap- proximated closely to that of Pennsylvania. In the western states, the terms of the federal grant served as a strong pre- disposition in favor of the township as the area for local school administration, and many of the states in that section up to the time of the Civil War had created township school authorities. The district system was extremely well adapted, however, to the needs of that pioneer country, and we find it universally prevalent. In many cases the townships were sub- divided into school districts, with the typical district organi- zation. Ohio in 1831 made the school district trustees bodies corporate, and it was only in 1853 that the school districts were deprived of corporate powers. Missouri made each township a school district and placed the control of school affairs in the hands of a township school board. Here again the process of township subdivision occurred. After several unsuccessful ef- forts to establish a state system on the township basis, Indiana adopted the district as the local education unit in 1833, and 396 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 gave full powers to the district trustees. Illinois in 1825 adopted the district system, but in 1837 a law was passed which made optional a change to the township system, according to which each township was to have a board of trustees with full powers of school management and certification of teachers. As many of the districts refused to unite under the township plan, and no further legislation has occurred on the point, Illinois remains to this day under the divided system of part district and part township local authorities. Iowa and Michi- gan organized the local administration of schools on the town- ship basis, but provided for subdistricts. In Wisconsin, school districts were created with large powers, but a town superin- tendent was provided to examine and certificate teachers. Minnesota followed practically the same plan, but provided for township trustees who were to examine and employ teach- ers. In i860 this function of the township trustees was trans- ferred to a township superintendent. Oregon and Kansas defi- nitely adopted the district system. The New York System. — The example of New York State in the matter of local school authorities and their relationship to the state authorities stands out as exceptional during this period. As early as 1795, a combined town and district organi- zation had been begun, which gave the town authorities the last word in the selection of teachers for the schools of the districts. When the distribution of income from the state fund began in 181 2, a new law made the state contribution de- pendent on local contribution and continued the combined plan of town and district control, with the balance of power in the hands of the town authorities. Two years later town supervi- sion was inaugurated and the licensing of teachers was placed in the hands of the town school officers. An appreciable in- crease in the state's contribution to the costs of the public schools was made in 1837, with a corresponding extension of the state's influence over local authorities. The law of 1839 called for the appointment of unsalaried county boards of visi- tors and two years later a new law called for the appointment by the county supervisors of a deputy superintendent of schools SECTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY (1828-1861) 397 for each county. It was to be the duty of this officer to ex- amine and license all teachei^s and to exercise general super- vision over the schools of the county, according to the rules and regulations of the state authorities. After some intermedi- ate changes, a school commissioner was created for each legis- lative assembly district. He was to be elected by the people and was to exercise the functions formerly performed by the deputy superintendent of schools for each county. The Office of County Superintendent. — The development in New York State which has just been described, namely, the creation of an administrative office midway between the state and the local authorities, was exemplified in a number of states before the Civil War. The gap that existed between the state office and the district or township trustees was too wide for efficient administration and a need was felt for an intermediate officer whose duty it should be to observe more closely the carrying out of school laws and the application of money con- tributed by the state. The varying standards which the local authorities applied to the qualifications of teachers made it desirable for prospective teachers to be examined by some offi- cial who presumably would maintain higher standards than were in vogue among local school trustees. As a result of these needs the office of county superintendent was created. At first the duties of the office were mainly financial. Perhaps the examination of teachers was the only strictly professional duty which the county superintendent was expected to perform. He was expected to visit schools, to be sure, which could give as- surance that the school for which the state paid out a subsidy was actually in existence. But in general the county superin- tendent was a statistical and financial officer, with certain pro- fessional duties thrown in. In many cases, it was not even expected nor specified in the law that he should have had educational experience, and in the early history of the office, the incumbent was in many cases without any professional qualifications whatsoever. In many states the county super- intendent was chosen on a party ticket at the general elections. The earliest mention of the office which the writer has been 398 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 able to find is the provision for county superintendents in the Delaware law of 1826, which proved to be largely inoperative. The term "board of county superintendents" occurred in the North Carolina law of 1839, but this usage is the equivalent of county board of education. When in the following year, however, a new law provided for the choice of a chairman of the board of county superintendents we have practically the office of county superintendent as the word is generally used. New York created the office in 1841, as has been mentioned, and Pennsylvania, Iowa, Illinois, California, Oregon, and Kan- sas all created the office during the fifties. Vermont, Ohio, and Louisiana had created the office and after a short time abol- ished it. The City Superintendent of Schools. — The office of city superintendent of schools, which is a distinctively American institution, saw its beginnings before the Civil War, but the development of that office was very slight during that period. Cubberley says ^ that only twenty-five cities had appointed superintendents of schools before 1861. More extended con- sideration of the function and status of the city superintendent will be given in a later connection. The Public Schools Made Free The Free Public School Idea in the South. — Enough has been said under the caption of local authorities to indicate that before the Civil War none of the southern states, old or new, had created a state-wide system of free public schools, with the exception of North Carolina and, it seems only fair to add, Louisiana, although in the case of Louisiana a small percentage of the cost of education continued to be met by tuition fees. There were, however, many indications in some of the other southern states of strong sentiment in favor of such a system and in some cases promising beginnings had been made, as we have seen. Many of the cities had provided free public schools for all white children and exceptional rural ^ Cubberley, Public Education in the United States, p. 160. SECTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY (i 828-1861) 399 districts here and there throughout the South had done the same. It is probable that the South would have developed state-wide systems of free public schools within a short period had not the Civil War interrupted natural social evolution in that section. It is easily shown that in the East and the West, the cities were far ahead of the rural sections in their willing- ness to provide free education for all, and in the East and the West, as well as in the South, many states allowed cities and "union districts" the special privilege of supporting schools entirely by taxation long before that policy would have secured assent in the open country. As the South was predominantly agricultural in its economic life and as its population was overwhelmingly rural, the relative slowness of the South in mak- ing education altogether free might possibly be ascribed not altogether or even mainly to a different social philosophy, but largely to the fact that its public policy was controlled by rural conservatism. The Way of Progress to Mandatory Free Schools. — In no other phase of education in the United States is the prin- ciple of community independence and self-government shown more clearly than in the contest to make the schools free and supported entirely out of public money. Much of the legisla- tion that led up to free schools was permissive. A law might be passed giving townships the right to tax themselves for the support of schools if a majority of the voters so ordered. Spe- cial districts might be created for the purpose of maintaining free schools if the communities composing such districts agreed to the arrangement, and only when a sufficiently large part of the population of a state was already maintaining free schools could a mandatory law for the state as a whole be curried, or if carried be enforced. The earliest instance of state-wide provision of free schools was the case of Massachusetts, where this was made legally necessary by the law of 1827; but in Massachusetts long be- fore that date, free schools supported entirely out of local taxation had become all but universal. Pennsylvania passed a law in 1834 which allowed any school district in the state to 400 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 make its schools free, promising state aid for all districts com- plying with the law. At the same time any district that did not desire to comply with the law was empowered to continue in its old ways, but in that event it received no state aid. In 1848 the system of free schools was made mandatory for the entire state after 1105 out of 1249 districts had accepted the terms of the free school law of 1834. In New York a refer- endum was held in 1849 on the question whether or not the schools should be free and a popular majority was returned in favor of free schools, but in the following year a second refer- endum on the same question greatly reduced the majority of the free school supporters. In the evenly divided state of public opinion the legislature played safe. It allowed the con- tinued use of "rate-bills" for the support of schools, but in- creased the amount of state aid to local authorities so as to encourage the local authorities to eliminate the school fees. At the same time it provided for "union free school districts," consisting of any number of independent school districts that might desire to unite for the purpose of maintaining free and improved schools. It was only in 1867 that the legislature abolished the rate-bill system of maintenance and compelled all local authorities to maintain schools that were entirely free. The same gradual development of the free school idea that we have seen in Pennsylvania and New York occurred in all the other states, until by the time of the Civil War practically all the states of the East and the West were very close to a free school system. Vermont disallowed the use of rate-bills in 1850. In the same year the new state constitution of Ohio made the same provision, but legal actions and court decisions delayed its realization until 1867. Illinois made the schools free in 1856. By the beginning of the Civil War the cause of free schools was all but won in the East and the West, and within a few years after its close, free elementary education became the universal practice. SECTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY (i 828-1861) 401 The Extension of the Elementary School Upward In this section it is proposed to consider the development of what is generally spoken of as secondary education, or of schools of a rank higher than elementary. The caption for the section has been chosen with specific intent, because it is possible to appreciate the true inwardness of the American high school only when we understand it as the extension upward of the common elementary school. In our study of European countries, we have seen that secondary education historically has been a thing apart from the schools of the people. It has served a different constituency and led to a different way of life. It has implied a certain degree of wealth and a certain social position on the part of those who were to enjoy its ad- vantages. Moreover, it has been controlled as a separate de- partment of administration and governed by separate laws. In the United States, on the contrary, that which we call secondary education today, has developed gradually, as local conditions have permitted, out of the common school of the "three R's." It has been maintained out of the same resources and governed by the same authorities as those which have administered and sup- ported the common elementary school. It has served the needs of the children of all the people without distinction of purse or family tree. Moreover, it has been a regular catch-bag of educational purposes, from poor boy's finishing school to preparatory school for higher and professional education. The Early High School in Massachusetts. — The nature of the American high school is admirably exhibited in the Massachusetts School Law of 1827. To call it the high school law of 1827 would be somewhat of a misnomer, for the same law provided, as will be seen, for elementary schools as well as for those of a higher grade. The significant portions of the law in this connection are as follows: "Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, that each town or district within this Commonwealth, containing fifty families, or householders, shall be provided with 402 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 a teacher or teachers of good morals, to instruct children in orthography, reading, writing, English grammar, geography, arithmetic, and good behavior, for such term of time as shall be equivalent to six months for one school in each year; and every town or district containing one hundred families or householders, shall be provided with such teacher or teachers for such term of time as shall be equivalent to eighteen months for one school in each year. And every city, town, or district containing five hundred families or householders, shall be pro- vided with such teacher or teachers for such term of time as shall be equivalent to twenty-four months for one school in each year, and shall also be provided with a master of good morals, competent to instruct, in addition to the branches of learning aforesaid, the history of the United States, bookkeep- ing by single entry, geometry, surveying, and algebra ; and shall employ such master to instruct a school, in such city, town, or district, for the benefit of all the inhabitants thereof at least ten months in each year, exclusive of vacations, in such convenient place, or alternately at such places in such city, town, or district, as the said inhabitants, at their meeting in March or April, annually, shall determine; and in every city, or town, containing four thousand inhabitants, such mas- ter shall be competent in addition to all the foregoing branches, to instruct the Latin and Greek languages, history, rhetoric, and logic." ^ The law just quoted provided for three grades of schools: (a) common elementary schools; (6) a higher school in which only English branches and other subjects of everyday use- fulness were to be taught; and (c) a still more advanced school in which, in addition to the subjects taught in the school of the second grade, Latin and Greek, history, rhetoric, and logic were to be taught. The lowest grade of school might be compared with the primary school of France or the German folk school. The second grade assimilates closely to the French higher primary school as established in 1833 (see p. S2f.). The ^ Laws of the State of Massachusetts, January Session, 1827, Chapter CXLIII, Sections 1, 19, 21. SECTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY (i 828-1861) 403 highest grade, in so far as it offered the instruction that served as the preparation for college entrance, corresponded in at least some of their functions to the European secondary schools. All three grades of school were placed under the management of the same local authorities. They were supported out of the same taxes. They were open without distinction to all the inhabitants. They were free. The Law of 1827 assessed the school obligations of the local authorities on the basis of population, which is a rough and ready measure of financial resources as well as of educa- tional needs. The law exacted of every community the pro- vision of educational advantages for its children to the extent of its ability. Where a common school was the best that it could be expected to provide, that alone was asked. Whore a classical school was possible, that was demanded. And where the full range of educational opportunity could be provided, the pupil's completion of the course depended only upon his ability, his industry, and his freedom from the necessity of earning a living. The development of classes more advanced than those of the elementary schools took place in close connection with the improvement of the system of grading pupils. Naturally this first occurred in the cities, where it was early recognized as being more efficient to place all children who had reached ap- proximately the same degree of advancement in separate schools instead of continuing to instruct all grades of children in the same school. From this point it was an easy transition to the classification of pupils in each school on the basis of their school achievements. Tendency to Extend Common Schools at the Top. — During this early period, there was little or no control by state authorities over the course of study as followed in local com- munities. In some instances during this period, a minimum re- quirement as to subjects taught was made in state laws, but the required subjects had generally, by the time the law was passed, become the common practice of the best schools. There was a constant tendency for the various localities to extend their 404 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 systems at the top through the provision of classes in subjects that might be of general educational value or of specific prac- tical utility. Thomas H. Burrovves, the State Superin- tendent of Public Instruction for Pennsylvania, said in 1862 that the theory of that state in respect to education was that a common school should be provided "wherever a sufficient number of pupils can be collected together to constitute a day school for rudimentary training, and as soon as circum- stances will permit, the same common schools so graded that the highest in the series shall fit the students for the general pursuits of life, or for admission into college." ^ The Penn- sylvania theory as stated by Superintendent Burrowes may well be taken as the theory of the relation between the elementary and the higher schools everywhere throughout the nation. The fact that the high school represented simply an exten- sion upward of the elementary school is indicated clearly in the mass of special school legislation and in the language of laws creating high schools, as passed during this period. A good case in point is the law passed in 1847 by the Ohio legis- lature for the benefit of the City of Akron, by which the school directors of that city were empowered to provide a graded school system, including "a central grammar school," which was, by whatever name it was called, a high school. In 1848 a general law extended the privileges which had been granted to Akron, to every incorporated town or city in the state, when- ever two-thirds of the voters should petition the city council in favor of such a graded and extended school system. In Iowa a law passed in 1849 authorized the formation of "higher grades" in schools, and in 1857 a new law gave towns and cities the privilege of providing graded school systems "in- cluding schools in which languages other than English might be taught." A Minnesota law of 1853 authorized the creation by public school authorities of higher or grammar school classes. In the same year the Union Free School Law of New York allowed any union free school district to establish "secondary departments" in connection with the graded ele- ' Wickersham, The History of Education in Pennsylvania. SECTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY (1828-1861) 405 mentary schools. A Pennsylvania law of 1854 authorized any district to establish "graded schools and the study of the higher branches." Such examples might be multiplied, but it would seem that sufficient evidence has already been adduced to show tiiat the provision of high schools as part of the public school system in the United States was simply an extension of the activity which led to the creation of the common schools. There was not, during this period, any definite connotation of the term high school, for that was a development which took place at a later time. Any school that represented an extension of educational opportunity beyond the elementary schools could be described as a high school, whether it covered one, or two, or more years of school work, and whether that work included foreign languages or not. The academy was described in the previous chapter as the predominant secondary school of the early national period. As far as its administration and curriculum are concerned, this institution underwent little change during the years 1828 to 1 86 1, and in point of numbers, as compared with the high school, it easily retained first place. The Training of Teachers. — The period which we have taken as closing with the outbreak of the Civil War saw con- siderable progress in the matter of teacher training, but the greater development of teacher training has occurred since that time. In 1823 Samuel R. Hall opened a private school that was primarily intended for the training of teachers at Concord, Vermont. The curriculum of this school was that of a typical academy with courses in the Art of Teaching added. A few other private schools of the same sort were opened in the New England states within a few years. In 1839 two similar schools were set in operation under state auspices in Massachusetts, and in 1840 a third. By i860, twelve state and six private rormal schools had been opened. The main burden of teacher preparation during this period in so far as there was any special training at all for the pur- suit of teaching, was carried on in connection with academies, 4o6 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 The State of New York in 1827 made special appropriations to academies to promote the training of teachers, and in 1834 provided state aid to one academy in each judicial district for the training of teachers for the common schools. In 1843, when such aid was discontinued, the bounty of the State of Pennsylvania was being extended to nine colleges, sixty-four academies, and thirty-seven female seminaries. In some in- stances the condition for such aid was laid down that the institution should pay attention to the preparation of teachers. In general, the academies accepted the training of teachers as part of their function, but the professional elements of the curriculum were extremely limited, methods of teaching being little stressed, and subject-matter receiving far the greater share of attention.^ Educational Influences of the New Immigration At the beginning of the American nation, the population was predominantly English. The Scotch Highlanders and Ulstermen, the latter commonly being known as Scotch-Irish, composed about one-sixth of the population on the eve of the Revolution. There were a few thousand French Huguenots and less than a hundred thousand Germans, who were settled mainly in central and eastern Pennsylvania. There were also small numbers of Dutch, Swedish, and other nationalities. With the exception of the Pennsylvania Germans, who had main- tained their own language and many of their customs, the population by the end of the second or third decade of Ameri- can independence had been amalgamated into a distinctly American people. From the outbreak of the Revolution until the thirties, im- migration had fallen off to only a small fraction of its former volume, but at that time a rush of homeseekers from foreign lands began that soon introduced an element of heterogeneity ^ For a good account of the early history of teacher training in the United States, see Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teach- ing, Bulletin No. 14, The Professional Preparation of Teachers for American Public Schools, by Bagley and others, Chapter III, "Origin and Growth of Normal Schools." SECTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY (1828-1861) 407 into the previously homogeneous American population. In the period preceding the Civil War, the great majority of the immigrants came from Ireland and Germany. The tide of Irish immigration had set in strongly by 1830, and continued to increase until 1845. The flood was reached in the period between 1846 and 1855, when, owing to famine and rebellion in Ireland, more than one and a quarter millions of Irish sought homes within the United States. The greater proportion of these settled down in the cities and towns of the eastern sea- board, and found their places in the industrial armies which were called for by the expansion of the East as a manufac- turing and commercial section. The German immigration of the period before the Civil War reached its height during the ten years 1846-1855, with an influx of over a million. The total foreign-born population of the United States in 1850 was 2,800,000 out of a total of about 23,000,000. In i860 it was about 5,400,000 out of about 31,000,000. The Religious Difficulty Raised. — The Irish were almost all Catholic in religion, and their leaders desired to take care of the education of the children belonging to the Catholic Church in schools maintained and conducted by the Church. They were pretty generally opposed to having their children attend the public schools on the ground that the public schools were unable to give the proper religious training and instruc- tion. More specifically they objected to the reading of the King James version of the Bible as a part of the school exer- cises, because they regarded it as a sectarian book. The leaders of the Church insisted furthermore that, as they were providing in their parochial schools for the education of a considerable part of the school population, they should receive their proportionate share of the money appropriated by 'the public authorities, state and local, for the aid of public edu- cation. This demand of the Catholics was nothing new nor unreasonable at that time, for as has been said before, during the early years of our national life, public authorities had commonly given aid to private and religious schools. The first definite contest that developed over the question of 4o8 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 public aid to denominational schools came in New York City. The Public School Society had been permitted in 1828 to levy a local tax for the support of its educational efforts, which could be interpreted as public support of sectarian schools since the schools of the Society gave moral and religious instruction, although it was intended to be non-sectarian. The Catholic and other sects applied for aid from the city for schools main- tained by them. The request of the Catholics was granted and those of the other sects were not. Then there began a burning contest over the entire issue, with certain Protestant denominations supporting the Catholics in their effort to secure a division of the school funds on sectarian lines, and others united against such a policy. The final decision of the legislature taken in 1842 was to the effect that no private or sectarian school should receive aid from state or local taxation or subsidy. If in New York City the issue had been whether or not the development of public education should take place along de- nominational lines, a few years later the question came up in Massachusetts of reversing the long established policy of public education. Here also the religious question was not a new one, as the break-up of the Congregational Church in that state into the Unitarian and the Orthodox groups, had precipitated a violent discussion over the nature and extent of the religious instruction to be included as part of the stated school exercises. As long as the Congregational Church in its early form controlled all public life in Massachusetts, there was no question as to the place of religious instruction in the schools, but under conditions of religious division, the tendency had been to curtail religious instruction and to elimi- nate everything that savored of sectarianism. The Massa- chusetts law of 1827 had definitely forbidden the use of sec- tarian books in the schools. The Orthodox party had resisted the secularizing tendency with great energy and bitterness; but when the demand came from the Catholics that they should receive their share of the state funds for the separate education of their children in parochial schools, the two factions of the SECTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY (1828-1861) 409 Congregational Church united to oppose this threat to the public school system. Feeling ran high upon the matter, and the question was finally settled by the passage in 1855 of a constitutional amendment which provided that all public funds, whether state or local, could be used only for the maintenance of regularly organized and conducted public schools. The agitation over the division of public school funds and the reading of the Protestant Bible in the schools became an important issue of national politics. The Know-Nothing Party, making platform pledges against sectarian schools in the election of 1855, carried a half-dozen states on the general issue of "America for Americans." The practical result of all the discussion was the passage of laws by state legislatures that forbade the division of public funds among sectarian groups for educational purposes. A number of states had made con- stitutional provisions to that effect before the Civil War, and that policy has since that time had universal adoption throughout the country. The Problem of Foreign Language Schools. — The lan- guage difficulty occurred frequently during this period when, in the interests of assimilating foreign population groups, it was proposed that all instruction in the schools should be in the English language. The Pennsylvania school law of 1834 made it a condition of receiving state aid that the schools main- tained by a district should use English as the language of in- struction, and for this reason, among others, the Pennsylvania German communities long and stoutly resisted the passage of the law or the acceptance of its terms. The newer western states possessed large, and in many cases, compact foreign populations, chiefly German. In those states the language question came up again and again. The foreign groups de- sired the use of their own languages in the schools of their community. The larger community, the state, opposed this on the grounds of public policy. In some of the states the issue was not definitely settled until the entry of the United States into the World War. 410 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 The American School System by 1861 In the thirty-odd years ensuing upon the first election of Andrew Jackson and concluding with the outbreak of the great intersectional war, important developments had taken place in the United States with respect to education. The decision had been reached in East and West that the provision of schools was a public obligation. The South had not so com- pletely adopted this conviction and practice, but in that sec- tion as well the cause of public education was receiving stronger support year by year. It had been all but determined that where public schools were maintained they should be free to all children. The possibility of adopting a denominational system of schools had been decisively rejected in the fifties. With respect to the administration of schools, local authori- ties had been established in practically every state. The con- ditions of sparse settlement and difficulties of communication and transportation tended to give the local school boards or committees almost exclusive authority over the little domain of the district school. The states, however, were increasing their contributions to the support of the schools and had made the beginnings of state supervision and control, mainly through the creation of the office of state superintendent of public in- struction and the establishment of state boards of education. In the office of county superintendent a connecting link was gradually being established between the state superintendent and the district local authorities. Localities favored by larger population and greater financial resources had developed systems of graded schools and had in many cases added one or more years of instruction in sub- jects higher than the elementary branches for the further edu- cation of their children. The newer states had applied the federal township grants for university purposes to the establish- ment of higher institutions of learning under state administra- tion, although the state legislatures had not as yet developed the large generosity in the support of such schools which has since that time become characteristic. The state universities SECTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY (1828-1861) 411 in respect to resources and academic offerings were much like the denominational and local colleges and universities. As in the earlier period, higher education, except in the state uni- versities, continued to be independent of any control or super- vision on the part of any public authority. In estimating the general character of American education as it had developed by the time of the Civil War, one is at once struck by its originality. Of the educational practice of any European country, it more closely resembled that of England, although by 1861, the United States had all but passed be- yond denominational controversy and decided squarely for a non-sectarian public school system supported out of public funds and controlled by public officials. In the matter of local initiative and its correlate, the absence of close supervision and control exercised by central education authorities, American practice closely resembled the early traditions of English gov- ernment. Religious denominations and private parties were free to conduct elementary schools without any interference whatever on the part of the state. Even when the law had made compulsory the maintenance of public schools, local authorities continued free to follow their own devices with ref- erence to the management of their schools. Examination and certification of teachers by local authorities for small areas con- tinued to be the rule. Little or no control had as yet come to be exercised by the state in the matter of course of study or textbooks. Such central offices of administration as the states had developed were rudimentary and limited in their functions largely to the distribution of state school subsidies on the basis of pupil or general population. The state offices were not sufficiently manned to undertake any close supervision over the activities of the local authorities, and, outside of the State of New York, little control of local authorities was contemplated. There was a close resemblance of American to English educational practice in the large amount of inde- pendence given to secondary and higher schools. In the cities where the newer type of secondary school was being developed as a public school, practically no state control was exercised as 412 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 to curriculum or qualifications of teachers. The academy, ex- cept in New York State, was almost strictly a private concern, conducted on a state charter as any other business. In the field of higher education, with the exception of the state uni- versities with their state boards of trustees, the various private and denominational interests enjoyed the same freedom as they did in the case of such elementary or secondary schools as they maintained. The resemblance of the American system of education, if system it can be called, to the educational practices of Eng- land, stopped short, however, of the strong social caste pre- possessions of the latter country. In England the activities of the Voluntary Associations had been largely in the interest of the education of the "children of the independent poor," and such contributions as Parliament was making to elementary education were almost exclusively devoted to the aid of Volun- tary effort. The state in connection with labor legislation had made the education of young children engaged in factory occupation compulsory and the poor laws had taken care of the elementary instruction of the children of paupers. Per- sons of even moderate means continued to regard the education of their children as their private concern and resented as a form of state charity any public invasion of that domain. In the United States, on the contrary, the conviction had won out before the Civil War period that public education of all was a civil function to which no stigma of pauperism could properly be attached. The schools maintained out of the public taxes were the schools of all for all, and the children of the rich sat with the children of the poor without invidious distinction. The term public elementary school was a designa- tion of the school age and academic achievement of the pupils and not a designation of a peculiar form of support or of the social origin and economic status of the pupils. In the matter of secondary education, the same conditions of equality spread with the development of publicly supported high schools. The old local academies had welcomed at small expense children of all sorts of social and economic back- SECTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY (1828-1861) 413 ground. The high school, as it increased in numbers, was the continuation of the local academy under public auspices. In the thirties and forties the great protagonists of public edu- cation had seen a danger in the growing prevalence of the private secondary school, and the tendency in that direction was checked before it had made great progress. Secondary education, as was true of elementary education, came during the period under consideration to be the name for a certain stage of progress in terms of academic proficiency, and not, as in England and other European countries, the peculiar per- quisite of a social caste. Contrast between American School Practices and Those of Prussia. — Having carried out the comparison of American education with that of England, it is unnecessary to exert a great deal of effort in pointing out how different American school traditions were from those of Prussia. In that country education had been conceived of and organized as a means of social control. The education interest was given a place in the King!s Cabinet, and from that high posi- tion it was controlled down to its most humble office and function. The supervision of the national office over the affairs of the universities was immediate and vigorous, and thus was insured the purity of political and social philosophy at its source. A hierarchy for the administration of secondary and primary education, linked at the top with the King^s personal government, standardized curriculum and teaching personnel, so that the strong hand of the central authority controlled in general spirit and in specific detail the conduct of the schools. Where private schools existed, they were compelled to come up to the standards set for the public schools. While differing in respect to all these conditions, the most striking point of variation from the Prussian system which the American schools exhibited was in the absence of caste distinctions. In Prussia the folk schools were the schools of the common people. They were for the children of the people the end of the academic road. By an effective system of academic, as well as economic insulation, the child of the common family was practically 414 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 barred from the benefits of secondary education. Even the teachers in the folk schools were a class apart, prepared for their occupation in schools from which ingress to the universi- ties was impossible. How different from that was the American common public school! Assuredly most of that which it has been said was borrowed from Prussia must have been very shortly returned with the appropriate formula, "not suitable to our fundamental social philosophy and political institutions." ADDITIONAL READINGS General Historical Background. — Beard and Beard, History of the United States; West, History of the American People; Dodd, Ex- pansion and Conflict; Dodd, The Cotton Kingdom. Education Sources. — There are no available collections of source material for the period. The volumes of Barnard's Journal of Educa- tion are invaluable, as are also the Reports of the Massachusetts State Board of Education and other reports of state education officials. Secondary Accounts. — Cubberley, Public Education in the United States; Brown, E. E., The Making of Our Middle Schools; Inglis, The Rise of the High School in Massachusetts; Brown, S. W., The Secu- larization of American Education; Cyclopedia of Education, articles on education in the various states; Maddox, The Free School Idea in Virginia before the Civil War; Martin, The Evolution of the Massa- chusetts Public School System. CHAPTER XVII MATERIAL GROWTH AND CULTURAL UNIFI- CATION (1861 TO ABOUT 1890) It has been frequently enough pointed out that the attempt to divide off the evolution of a nation or a society into periods introduces considerable inaccuracy under the guise of exacti- tude. The transitions that take place in a social order are ac- complished by the gradual heaping up of almost unnoticed small changes, which have begun long before some cataclysmic event has definitely registered the existence of a new condi- tion. In designating the years between 1861 and 1890 as a period of American history, one is placed on the defensive to a greater degree than is common when an historical period is marked off, for the changes that began in the period imme- diately following the Civil War have been so gradual and so interrelated that when a larger perspective of history is taken some generations hereafter, the entire span of years from the Civil War up to the present may appear to be a single epoch ex- hibiting unitary and indistinguishable characteristics. There is, however, nothing sacred about the division of time, and the person who attempts to write history is privileged to make pretty much the classification of events that serves his purpose. From such a point of view there seems to be real utility in the separation of the thirty years which followed the outbreak of the Civil War from the thirty years that have just elapsed. No striking change occurred at the year 1890, which divides those periods, and no great social or educational condi- tion is seen as perfectly and completely realized at that time. But there were marked differences between our national life in the generation which followed the Civil War and in the generation which saw our country engaged in the great war 415 41 6 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 against the Central European alliance. It is easily seen that during the later period a new social order had come into being, with new experiences and new purposes and with a largely altered equipment of political and social controls. A hitherto unknown national solidarity had been achieved. A new eco- nomic life had been evolved with its special problems of man- agement and adjustment. Our contacts and interrelationships with foreign countries had multiplied and become more intri- cate, until further denial of our place in international policy was self-destructive, and, therefore, impossible. We had turned from the rough work of exploitation of natural resources to problems of conservation and reclamation. In the field of education as well, the new generation had seen the status of the public school and all other educational agencies changed to meet the demands of a vastly enlarged vision of their social function. Economic Prosperity in the North. — The Civil War brought about close economic unity between the northern West and the northern East. The eastern industrial cities needed the grain and other agricultural products of the West, while the western farmer had use for the manufactured goods of the East. The necessity of producing the materials of war drove the wheels of northern industry at ever accelerating speed, while at the same time the agricultural production of the western states increased by leaps and bounds. The pro- tective tariff demands of the industrial East were acceded to by the West in return for the adoption of the generous federal land policy which that section had been insisting upon in vain for thirty years and for a vigorous and munificent policy of national aid for internal improvements. The disturbance of economic prosperity that was to have been anticipated when over a million soldiers were released from the non-productive efforts of war and returned to factory and farm, was never realized. The liberal conditions under which homesteads were granted under the new federal land laws diverted many of the discharged soldiers into the virgin farmlands of the western prairies. Those who were not thus absorbed in new agricul- GROWTH AND UNIFICATION 417 tural development were taken back into the busy factories, or were utilized in the tremendous railroad projects which during the generation following the war wove a network of steel over the entire land. Increase of Immigration. — Not only were the demands of industry and the new agricultural expansion adequate to ab- sorb without embarrassment the soldiers returned from the war, but also to find place for over 2,300,000 immigrants dur- ing the decade 1861-1870. In the next ten years following, the number of immigrants to our shores increased to over 2,800,000, while in the decade 1 881-1890, the number reached the stupendous total of over 5,240,000. By far the greater part of these newcomers found work in the factories of the cities, in the great railway construction works, in the mines or in lumber camps, or in the free homesteads of the western states. Only a small fraction, however, of the total immigra- tion of this period found its way into the South. The Annihilation of Distance. — One of the great changes that took place in the United States in the thirty years fol- lowing the outbreak of the Civil War was the spread of a vast network of railway and telegraph lines from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific and from Canada to the Gulf. In i860 there were only about 30,000 miles of railroad in the entire country. In 1890, when the peak of railway construction had been reached, there were over 163,000 miles. Great trunk lines under one management had been formed out of smaller links and finally gigantic systems covering vast areas and practically controlling transportation within those areas had been consolidated under the control of single boards of directors. The federal govern- ment and the individual states had early realized the economic importance of the railroads for opening up new areas for settlement, thereby increasing population and agricultural production. They realized also how important the railways were for the development of a many-sided industrial life. Ac- cordingly both the federal and state governments had shown open-handed generosity in their financial aid for railway con- struction. Almost as soon, however, as the railways were built, 41 8 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 it was seen that they possessed a dangerous degree of power. They could hold up the shipper for rates that practically amounted to confiscation and they could charge the traveller what they pleased. The seventies and eighties saw determined efforts on the part of state legislatures to curb the rapacity of the railroads, but with little success. The railway system cov- ered many states, whereas the jurisdiction of the state legisla- ture ceased at the borders of a particular state. A new period in railway legislation began with the recognition of the inability of single states to cope with the railways and the passage of the act of Congress creating an Interstate Commerce Com- mission in 1887. Political Significance of Rapid Communication, — The construction of railways was paralleled by the building of telegraph lines. These two agencies together have had, as is obvious, a tremendous influence upon every phase of our economic development since the Civil War. The growth of industrial production, the tendencies which that production followed, the increase of population in general and particularly its concentration in cities, the change in agriculture from sub- sistence to commercial farming and the accompanying changes in the activities of the farm home, — these are only some of the changes in our economic life which are directly de- pendent upon the improvement of means of transportation and communication through railway and telegraph. In im- portant respects the nature of our political life has been pro- foundly affected by the annihilation of distance which these agencies accomplished. It is inconceivable that a vast conti- nental area like the United States could be a cultural and political unit unless the people composing its population should be in constant and close communication with one another. Cultural unity depends upon common experience. Countless human beings might inhabit the great spaces of the Mississippi Basin, the Rocky Mountain Highlands, the Pacific Coast, the Gulf Plain, and the Atlantic Seaboard, but unless there were a constant exchange of common ideas among them and the GROWTH AND UNIFICATION 419 daily discussion of common problems they would not consti- tute a nation. When the citizen of New Orleans, of Chicago, of Denver, of Seattle, of Boston, each reads in his daily paper about the same occurrences, scans the same box-scores, fol- lows simultaneously the acts of Congress and the decisions of the President, weighs editorial discussion of the same issues, they are in a very real sense members of the same community. And when weekly periodicals published in Philadelphia or New York reach their subscribers all over the country on the same day, or when a trip from New York to San Francisco is less hazardous and time-consuming than the one from New York to Pittsburgh was in 1830, the possibility of a common culture and of the sense of fellow-citizenship are secured. Of course all modern civilization is dependent on rapid transit and long distance communication, but of no country is this more true than it is of the United States. A single nationality covering the present territory of the United States under the conditions of transportation and communication which ex- isted when the Constitution was adopted would have been an impossibility. The change in those conditions which took place in the first thirty years following the Civil War made possible and greatly increased the feeling of nationality among the citizens of the states. The generation which followed the Civil War saw the national government displace the government of the states as the all-important political bond of their existence. The Growth of Industry. — The natural growth of manu- facturing in the United States was greatly accelerated during the Civil War and in the decades following by the imposition of high tariffs for the double purpose of raising revenue and protecting home industry. In i860 the total value of manufac- tures in the United States was something less than $1,900,- 000,000. In 1894 it was $9,500,000,000. In i860 the prod- ucts manufactured out of iron and steel had a value of $36,500,000; in 1890, $479,000,000. Within that same period the value of the textile manufactures had doubled. Rapid 42 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 and colossal development had taken place in the production of flour, meat, lumber, clothing, boots and shoes, and a long list of Qther commodities. Industrial Prosperity Largely Based on a Wealth of Raw Materials. — Much of the prosperity of American indus- trial life during this period was due to the ingenuity which improved machinery and increased production at lowered cost. Much also was owing to the genius which the American in- dustrial manager exhibited in the invention of ways and means of handling large quantities of heavy material for mass pro- duction. But fundamental in the staggering total of the output of factories was the abundance of raw material which was available for use. The period between the Civil War and 1890 saw special development of the coarser forms of manu- facturing — the working over of raw materials into the first stages of transmutation. Forest, mine, and farm contributed of their native wealth to the industrial prosperity of the country. A generation was reaping the harvest of a million years, without thought of economy or conservation. Industrial Combinations. — The expensiveness of compe- tition among powerful companies led during the eighties to large industrial combinations. A number of formerly compet- ing companies would consolidate their holdings and combine their operations under a common board of trustees in the in- terest of capturing the entire supply of the commodity in which they dealt and thus controlling the market. Powerful companies thus formed were able to ruin their competitors who refused to enter that "trust" either by ruinous price wars or by other means, such as gaining rebates on shipping charges from railways. In many respects, the formation of trusts or similar large combinations favorably affected trade develop- ment, for in some industries the initial cost of the most eco- nomical methods of production would have been prohibitive to a large number of competing concerns, but was easily within the means of a powerful group of concerns operating under unified control. The trusts, like the great railway combinations, operated in many states; and hence, as in the case of the rail- GROWTH AND UNIFICATION 421 ways, the state legislatures were unable to apply to them restrictive legislation and so to control their operations. The passage of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1890 by the Con- gress of the United States is another of the indications that the beginning of a new era in the control of industrial combina- tions had begun. The Increase of Urban Population and Its Social Influence. — Between i860 and 1890 the population of the United States increased from 31,500,000 to 63,000,000. In i860, 1 6. 1 per cent of the population lived in cities of 8000 or more population, while in 1890 the population of cities of that size had increased to 29 per cent of the whole. In con- sidering the rapid growth of cities during this period we should have in mind also the fact that the bulk of the immigrant population found its way to the great industrial centers where they provided cheap unskilled labor in large quantities for factories and public works. As has been true in other Western countries, the development of factory industry in the United States saw cruel exploitation of the worker. Long hours, bad working conditions, no insurance against industrial accident, and unrestricted employment of women and children were only some of the disadvantages under which the working population suffered. The years before 1890 saw a great increase in the power of organized labor as manifested in numerous industrial strikes, some of them successful. They also saw the begin- nings of legislation intended to soften the cruelty of unregu- lated commercial competition. Massachusetts had led the way in the matter of labor legislation, having limited the work- ing hours of children in 1866 to eight per day.^ In 1869 that state established a bureau of labor statistics. Before 1880 factory inspection had been provided for and the labor of women and children under eighteen years of age had been limited to sixty hours a week. Most of the industrial states followed Massachusetts before 1890 in limiting the employment of children, but in many cases strict enforcement of the labor laws followed far be- ' Changed in 1867 to ten. 42 2 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 hind their enactment. Labor legislation affecting the adult worker occurred in general after that date. Low Level of Public Morality. — The period which fol- lowed the Civil War is pretty generally described by the his- torians as the time when public morality reached the lowest level which it has ever attained in the history of our country. To this condition many of the developments described above contributed. Lavish generosity in the gift of public lands led to dishonest manipulation of homestead rights. Unstinted aid on the part of state legislatures and Congress to the railroad companies had its reward for the poor, but dishonest, law- maker in the form of graft. Members of Congress, even mem- bers of Presidents' Cabinets, were shown to have sold their votes and influence to railroad interests, and one candidate for the Presidency never succeeded in altogether clearing his name from a similar charge. The contest among the great railways for rights of way or terminal facilities in the rapidly growing cities at once made them the prey of venal city officials and led to wholesale cor- ruption of those officials on the part of the railways. The long- drawn-out contest which state legislatures engaged in to con- trol confiscatory rates and other unsatisfactory transporta- tion conditions was a situation which easily induced the rail- ways to attempt to purchase immunity. The legislatures of a number of states during this period have been described as being "owned" by certain great railroads. The great railway lines were parties to the unfair system of rebates by means of which certain great industrial combinations secured decisive trade advantages over their competitors. The great trusts were also targets of state legislation during this period and they, too, found it profitable to maintain lobbyists plentifully sup- plied with money for too often compliant senators and repre- sentatives. The rapid growth of the cities during this period brought about the necessity for extensive public works in the form of streets, sewers, reservoirs, parks, street railways, and lighting systems, which afforded large dishonest gains to such fore- GROWTH AND UNIFICATION 423 sighted contractors as had "seen" the proper municipal authori- ties. The large influx of foreigners to the cities affected the situation in that it introduced a large voting population that was capable of being cheaply bribed and easily led. Politics became a profitable business and it was soon organized as such. The political boss came into existence to deliver the vote and insure even that honesty which must exist among successful political thieves. The large industrial corporations, of which the railroads were chief, came to deal directly with the bosses, who in turn distributed profitable opportunities among the members of the party machines. Corruption of public officials high and low was a commonplace, and wholesale purchase of votes at the polls was an established principle of party man- agement. From the elections for municipal councils to national presidential campaigns, politics was conducted ostensibly for the distribution of official places and for the protection of in- fluential economic interests. Social Energy Largely Devoted to Material Growth. — The energies of the North and the West during the generation following the Civil War were devoted largely to material growth. In the figures which describe the increase of popula- tion, the development of Industry, the extension of the network of railways, the multiplication of farm production, and the growth of cities, we recognize the adolescent growth of a giant. But the youthful giant was without much foresight of the fu- ture and rather lacking in conscience. He spent his apparently limitless patrimony with wastrel abandon. He sowed the wild oats of industrial exploitation. He frequented the so- ciety of political blacklegs and the smooth corruptionists of big business. But nothing that he did seemed to blight his glowing health or check his stupendous growth, and with the passage of years came self-control and an awakened moral sense. Two Nations under One Government. — The economic interdependence of the East and the West would have been sufficient in itself to bring about a close political union among the states which composed those geographical divisions, while the influence of the war which they carried on against a com- 424 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 mon enemy greatly strengthened the influences that led to social solidarity. The Civil War for the first time in our his- tory created a nation out of those states that were giving un- stintedly of their sons and their treasure for the sake of preserv- ing the Union. To be sure the nation thus forged in the furnace of war was but a part of the entire sisterhood of states, for the same influences that operated in binding all of the Union states together, created a like unity among the Southern states and opened a wide chasm between those sec- tions that took a generation to fill. In our discussion of the development of nationality in the United States during the period of and following the Civil War, we must make more or less complete exception of the South. Indeed, it was only with the death of most of the Civil War generation on both sides and the coming of new political and economic conditions in the South, that the Union of the American states was made complete. Up to the outbreak of the Civil War, political policies and the principles of government administration had been largely conditioned by sharp sectional differences which had their expression in the doctrine of state rights. When all the smoldering sectional suspicions and differences had burst out into the red flame of war, two nations were almost instan- taneously formed, North and South. The Civil War was a war between two nations each with its own culture and its own economic and political Hfe. When the South lost, it continued to be in the eyes of the North for at least twenty years a subdued, but unrepentant enemy, while to the South the North remained an exultant and insatiable conqueror. Increase of Centralization in Government For the reason that the North emerged victorious from the contest which was to determine whether or not there should be two political states where one had existed before, the thread of developing nationality is to be found in the political changes which took place in Washington. The exigencies of a stub- bornly contested war made heavy demands upon the federal GROWTH AND UNIFICATION 425 administration and it almost immediately took on the char- acteristics of a strongly centralized government. The financial demands of the war led to large bonding operations with the federal treasury as principal, and to the creation of a national banking system. The need for soldiers and the principle of universal military obligation led to the draft for military service. War conditions made advisable the suspension of rights of the individual which were guaranteed in the Consti- tution. Military necessity led to the participation on the part of the federal government in all sorts of matters which had previously been regarded as the domain of the states. Con- spicuous in this respect and not least among the nationalizing agencies of the period was the generous aid given by the United States in the building of transcontinental railways. The Morrill Land Grant Act. — During the years of the war, the principle of expanding federal interests had direct expression in the field of education. In 1862 the Morrill Land Grant Act was passed which gave to each of the several states thirty thousand acres of the public domain for each senator and representative in Congress from the state, for the maintenance of a college of agriculture and mechanic arts. A bill almost identical with the one that became law in 1862 had been passed by narrow majorities in each house in 1859. The support of the bill at that time closely followed political lines, the Democrats being opposed principally on the grounds that it represented an invasion on the part of the federal gov- ernment of rights that were constitutionally reserved to the individual states. When the bill came to President Buchanan for action, he vetoed it. One of the reasons which he gave for his veto was the unconstitutionality of federal participation in education. When the Morrill Land Grant Bill was reintro- duced in Congress in 1862, it passed by sweeping majorities in both houses and was duly signed by President Lincoln. Twen- ty-three of the states within five years of the passage of the act took advantage of its provisions and established colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts either as separate institutions or as departments of existing state universities. 42 6 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 A Federal Department of Agriculture. — The same year that saw the passage of the Morrill Land Grant Act saw the creation of the federal Department of Agriculture, which was even more of an extension of the acknowledged powers of the federal government. The seven government departments then existent represented functions which were entrusted to the fed- eral government by the Constitution, while agriculture was an interest which had always been considered as residing in the control of the several states. The new department was created on the ground that national prosperity and welfare depended on the success of agricultural production and that anything that so closely affected national welfare was a national concern. The friends of the new department declared that the federaV government could not use it to control agriculture in the states, but only to foster and promote agriculture in the interest cf the various states and the nation as a whole. A Federal Department of Education. — Five years aftci^ the erection of the Department of Agriculture, that is to say in 1867, Congress created a Department of Education, "foi the purpose of collecting such statistics and facts as shall show the condition and progress of education in the several States and Territories, and of diffusing such information re- specting the organization and management of schools and school systems, and methods of teaching as shall aid the people of the United States in the establishment and maintenance of efficient school systems, and otherwise promote the cause of education throughout the country." The act creating the Department of Education designated its head as the Commis- sioner of Education, provided for clerical assistance, and called for an annual report to Congress on the part of the Com- missioner. As in the case of the Department of Agriculture, the federal Department of Education was to exercise no direct control over the state governments. It had no supervisory functions, it had no authority, it had no money to distribute for the acceptance of which it could exact conditions to be fulfilled. Such influence as the Department could gain could be exerted GROWTH AND UNIFICATION 427 only through the moral advantage of a federal office and the personal qualities of the Commissioner. It was intended to serve as a clearing house of information about school con- ditions and educational administration. It is easy to overestimate the importance of the steps which the federal government took in the sixties in a direction which up to that time had been to it forbidden ground. Neither in the Land Grant Act, in the creation of a Department of Agri- culture, nor in the creation of a Department of Education did the federal administration greatly extend its prerogatives. The states were allowed to develop their colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts according to their own ideas and purposes, the only condition being that the land or land scrip appro- priated for that purpose by Congress should be honestly ad- ministered and strictly accounted for. The law laid down no details of curriculum or administration for these new children of its generosity and, as a matter of fact, the colleges which resulted from it could hardly during the first twenty years of their existence be recognized as different from other colleges and universities for general education. The Department of Education was in 1869 degraded to the status of a Bureau in the Department of the Interior, which it continues to be today, but during all the years of its exis- tence it has done a highly commendable service in the cause of education through its collection of the statistics of education in the United States and through the reports which it has made upon educational conditions in our own and foreign countries. The Department of Agriculture has had a much more pros- perous history. Almost immediately its efforts were received with approbation, its resources and personnel were strength- ened and its opportunities for conspicuous public service in- creased. As in the case of the Department of Education, it enjoyed no power of coercion over any state, but its inde- pendent investigations and its central position have given it leadership in scientific agriculture and made it the coordinating agency for the agricultural studies carried on under the auspices of the state governments. 42 8 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 The Freedmen's Bureau. — Not least among the influences that led to a notable extension of federal administration during the first half of this period was. the peculiar relationship which existed between the government of the United States and those states which had constituted the Southern Confederacy. Dur- ing the last year of the war, a Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands was created in the War Department with supervision and management of all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen. In 1866 the powers of the Bureau were extended and more closely defined. A comprehensive organization was built up, with a chief commissioner in charge and assistant commissioners for each of the Southern States, until finally the entire South was organized under a hierarchy of Bureau officials. The double purpose which the Bureau was intended to fulfill was to provide needy negroes with food, shelter, and clothing and to prepare the negro for citizenship by means of education. The educational and charitable ac- tivities of the Bureau continued until 1872. Its officials co- operated with Northern benevolent societies that were inter- ested in the organization of schools and churches for the negroes and they also extended government aid for negro schools. In all, the Bureau supervised the expenditure of over six and a half million dollars, which was largely spent in educational work. As was to be expected the presence of a large alien administrative force aroused intense dislike on the part of the Southern whites and constituted one of the elements of friction and misunderstanding which for long years kept open the chasm between North and South. Reconstruction and the South In even a more definite way than through the activities of the Freedmen's Bureau, the Federal government participated in Southern affairs for years following the War. The defeated South had accepted the Thirteenth Amendment, which freed the slaves, by virtue of necessity, but they determined that the white population should continue to govern and that the whites GROWTH AND UNIFICATION 429 should be protected in the new economic and social relations that emancipation would be sure to bring in its train. Con- sequently, the state governments in the South as soon as they were recognized by the President, proceeded to pass laws, known as the "Black Laws," which were designed to absorb the shock of a cataclysmic social change. To the Northern partisans, however, this legislation was regarded as an effort on the part of the South to continue under a new guise the condition of negro slavery. Their response to it was the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, which denied to any state the right to pass any law which would abridge the civil rights of any citizen, which meant any person bom or natu- ralized in the United States, including of course the negroes. The failure of any state to observe the terms of the amend- ment was to be penalized by a reduction of its representation in Congress in proportion to the extent of its disfranchisement of citizens. The Southern States refused to ratify this amend- ment, and the dominant Congressional group responded by organizing the South as five conquered provinces, each under the supreme authority of a general officer of the United States Army .'js The Reconstruction Act of 1867 forced negro suffrage upon the South at a time when only six of the Northern States gave negroes a like privilege, and provided a military adminis- tration that was competent to see that the negroes were al- lowed to exercise the right to vote. The organization of new governments in the Southern States was carried out under military protection. The result was a political revolution. Black votes, controlled by unscrupulous Southern whites, or "scalawags," and Northern "carpetbaggers," became the new basis of political power. The results were what might have been expected. Political administration in the South during the period of reconstruction under military auspices became a travesty upon Anglo-Saxon institutions of government. The Hoar Bill. — During this period was introduced the first of a series of Congressional bills designed to secure fed- eral participation in general education. Representative Hoar, pointing out the failure of the South before the War to make 430 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 anything like adequate provision for universal public educa- tion, in 1870 proposed the establishment of a federal system of educational aid and control. While the bill was written so as to apply to the entire United States, it was specifically designed to go into effect in the South. It provided for a system of administration centralized in Washington and operating in any state that should not by a certain date have provided "for all the children within its borders between the ages of six and eighteen years, suitable instruction in reading, writing, or- thography, arithmetic, geography, and the history of the United States." In case such provision should have been made by the separate states, the provisions of the bill were not to apply to them. But in case of failure of the states to establish sys- tems of public schools as contemplated in the bill, the Presi- dent was to appoint for each delinquent state a "State Super- intendent of National Schools." Under the State Superinten- dent were to be Division Inspectors of National Schools, ap- pointed by the Secretary of the Interior, one for each con- gressional district. There was to be a still further division of the inspection districts into school districts with Local Super- intendents of National Schools at their head, these officials also to be appointed by the Secretary of the Interior. The books to be used in the schools were to be prescribed by the State Superintendents under the direction of the National Commis- sioner of Education, and the administration and reports of the schools were to follow plans drawn up by the National Com- missioner. In the performance of all the duties imposed by the bill, the Local Superintendents were to be subject to the directions of the Division Inspector, the Division Inspector to those of the State Superintendents, and the State Superinten- dents to those of the Commissioner of Education. The financial support for the system was to be obtained from a direct tax of $50,000,000 to be levied annually for school purposes in the several states, this also to be assessed and collected by national agents. The supporters of the bill, and they were numerous and influential, saw only the educational destitution of the South, GROWTH AND UNIFICATION 431 the uncertainty of Southern sentiment with regard to edu- cation, the lack of funds to provide adequate systems of pubHc schools out of the blasted resources of the Southern States, and the unwillingness of the Southern whites to provide schools for the negroes. They saw the menace to representative gov- ernment of an ignorant — even illiterate — majority of voters. They felt the humanitarian appeal of enlightening the hordes of freedmen and had extravagant ideas of what education could and would do for the black man. In response to such demands and impelled by such motives, an educational system was seri- ously proposed and stoutly advocated that would have been in the educational field the exact counterpart of civil govern- ment under the major-generals. The schoolmen of the country as represented in the meeting of the National Educational Association in 1871 opposed the extreme centralization that was contemplated in the Hoar Bill. They evidently agreed with Superintendent J. P. Wickersham in his statement that our country could not endure one-half a republic and the other half a despotism any more than it could exist one-half free and the other half slave. The Asso- ciation, however, recognized the desirability of national aid to the Southern States on terms that would respect more thor- oughly the principle of local autonomy, and passed resolutions to that effect. The Hoar Bill failed of passage. The Southern Whites Regain Control. — When there was seen to be no relief in the law from negro political domination, the Southern white population turned to other means for re- gaining their lost political independence. Foremost among these was intimidation of negro voters, which succeeded by 1870 in four of the Southern States where the negroes were less numerous, in returning political control to the white voters. Meanwhile Northern opinion was shifting in favor of a more moderate policy toward the South, and in 1876, when only three Southern States continued under negro and "carpet- bagger" or ''scalawag" control, the military governments were removed and the Southern whites were at last able again to assume political dominance. As the chief concern of politics 432 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 was to keep power in the hands of the white race, it became almost a matter of course that a white man should be a Demo- crat. It was only after the negro was pretty generally removed from politics by legislation beginning among the Southern States in 1890, that normal divisions of the electorate on real issues put renewed vitality into political life in that section. Economic Collapse of the South. — The economic life of the South at the close of the Civil War was in desperate straits. The chief item of Southern wealth, the slaves, had been can- celled without recompense. Practically all the fluid wealth in the form of securities and public funds had been used up in the prosecution of the war. Private fortunes were ruined and the public coffers were empty. Farm buildings and dwellings had largely deteriorated or been destroyed. Tools for labor, ma- chinery, even animals for farm work, were lacking. The land alone remained. The labor population, unaccustomed to the new conditions of freedom, had to be schooled back into volun- tary industry. The venality and inefficiency of the Reconstruc- tion state governments had piled heavy loads of debt upon the people, whose burdens, already too great to be borne, 'were thus increased by confiscatory taxes. Even after the resumption of white political control had restored economy and honesty in government, the recovery of the South from the economic collapse ensuing upon the de- feat of the Confederacy was slow, especially under tariff laws that bled her for the East and pension laws that annually took from South to North many millions. Gradually, however, the new problems of free labor and small farm economy were solved. The necessary capital was found for a resumption of the orderly processes of production and exchange. Natural resources of forest and mine that had lain untouched while cotton was king now began to be utilized. The streams of the Piedmont came more and more generally to be harnessed to industrial production. Here a little and there a little the South recovered economic stability and increased its wealth, until in about 1890 what is called the New South was seen to be coming into existence. GROWTH AND UNIFICATION 433 Education under Presidential Reconstruction. — The educational conditions that existed in the South for the genera- tion following the Civil War must be considered always in the light of the economic and political conditions that wehave tried briefly to indicate. Before the Civil War, public opinion was solidly opposed to the education of negroes, and some of the Southern States had laws forbidding negroes to be taught. We have already in an earlier connection shown the growing interest before the war in public free schools for white children, although it was necessary to state that only in North Carolina and Louisiana had progress in the erection of such systems been marked. When the war ended, the States that were reor- ganized under the terms of Presidential Reconstruction made provision in the new state constitutions for comprehensive systems of public schools. In some of the states this provision applied only as concerned white children. As this was the period and these were the auspices under which the Black Codes were passed in the Southern States, it is not surprising that there was considerable uncertainty regarding the advisa- bility of providing public schools for negro children. A gen- eral tendency was exhibited in these constitutional provisions and laws regarding education to place a State Superintendent of Public Instruction and a State Board of Education at the head of school affairs in the state. Local authorities and state taxation for school purposes were provided for. Education under Radical and Negro Auspices. — The failure of Presidential Reconstruction in 1867 and the begin- ning of Congressional Reconstruction at the same time was, generally speaking, the occasion for new constitutional con- ventions. In these conventions negro and radical delegates were uniformly in the majority and the educational provisions of the new constitutions and the legislation which carried out the constitutional mandates reflected very definitely the new balance of power. The earlier provisions for state officers, local authorities, compulsory taxation were continued in the new constitutions and laws. In South Carolina and in Louisi- ana, the provision was inserted in the constitution that the pub- 434 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 lie schools should be open to all children without regard to race or color. In some of the states no decision was reached on the question of mixed schools, while in others definite provision was made for separate schools for white and black children. The authority of these radical constitutions and laws con- tinued up to 1876. In theory and on paper, systems of free schools were established, but in practice educational develop- ment during the years of Congressional Reconstruction was almost negligible. The finances of the states were disorgan- ized and influential white opinion stood aloof. In the states where mixed schools were mandatory, the white children re- frained from going to school, with the result that the public schools set in operation were attended by negroes only. In all the other states the fear of a possible system of public schools open to both white and black paralyzed public effort. No schools would be better, the white population thought, than public schools under such conditions. The general uncertainty connected with the problem of negro education and the all- prevailing poverty led to local unwillingness to vote taxes for education and laxness in collecting state taxes provided by law for school purposes. Accordingly, in spite of advanced legis- lation, little in reality was accomplished. During this period the beneficent activities of the Peabody Board were begun. Its financial assistance was contributed in the aid of local efforts everywhere throughout the South and its influence was constantly exerted to abate the partisan insanity that would have forced mixed schools upon the South. In 1876, when reconstruction under military auspices was brought to an end, a new crop of state constitutions marked the overthrow of negro and radical government. In these new basic laws, the administrative provisions of the earlier post-war constitutions were in general continued, while separate schools for the two races were universally made mandatory. Many whites had, however, conceived an opposition to public educa- tion as having been forced upon them and there was a strong tendency to set strict limitations upon taxation by means of statutory and constitutional provisions. Accordingly, in spite GROWTH AND UNIFICATION 435 of general acceptance of the principle of universal public edu- cation, the South, handicapped by economic depression and hindered in many cases by local apathy and prejudice, made but slow headway under its double burden of a dual school system. Agitation for Federal Aid to Southern Education. — In view of the difficulties under which the southern common- wealths labored, the conviction that the federal government should do something in regard to educatiopal conditions in the South gained rather than lost adherents. As long as General John Eaton served as U. S. Commissioner of Education, which was from 1870 to 1886, he included among his recommenda- tions to Congress almost as a set formula the following: "In view of the large number of children growing up in ignorance on account of the impoverished condition of portions of the country, and in view of the special difficulties in the way of establishing and maintaining therein schools for universal edu- cation, and in consideration of the imperative need of imme- diate action in this regard, I recommend that the whole or a portion of the net proceeds arising from the sale of public lands shall be set aside as a special fund, and its interest be divided annually, pro rata between the people of the several states and territories and the District of Columbia, under such provisions in regard to amount, allotment, expenditure, and supervision as Congress in its wisdom may deem fit and proper." The Blair Bill. — During the seventies and the eighties the subject of federal aid to education, especially in view of the high rate of illiteracy and the educational backwardness of the South, was constantly before the Department of Superin- tendence of the National Educational Association. The reso- lutions of that Department frequently reflected the favorable sentiment of the members for such a move on the part of the national government, and it was at a meeting of the Depart- ment of Superintendence held in New York City in 1881, that principles of national participation in education were formu- lated that found expression in the bill introduced by Senator 436 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 Blair in December 1881, before the Senate of the United States. This bill provided for the distribution of .1^77.000,000 to the various states of the Union in proportion to the number of illiterates within the states. The terms of the bill con- templated larger grants proportionately to the Southern States than to the other states of the Union and was a frank effort to aid the South with its extremely heavy — its disproportion- ately heavy — educational burdens. The tendency toward fed- eral control over the expenditure of this money, which had characterized the Hoar Bill, was absent from the Blair Bill. Instead of a high degree of centralization, the bill provided for almost complete freedom on the part of the states in their application of the national grants. The Blair Bill was passed by the Senate in three successive Congresses with large ma- jorities, but in each case it was impossible to secure favorable action from the House of Representatives. It is noteworthy that the division of votes on this bill was not on sectional or party lines. The number of Southern members who voted in favor of the bill in the Forty-eighth Congress was greater than the number voting against it. With the final failure of the Blair Bill in the Fiftieth Con- gress, the friends of the principle of federal aid to general edu- cation gave up active efforts to have such a measure passed and there was not a serious revival of effort in that direction until the second decade of the new century. State and Local School Administration Material Expansion and Consolidation the Dominant Note of Education during the Period 1861-1890. — In pass- ing on to a consideration of the developments in public edu- cation between 1861 and 1890, one will discover as the domi- nant note the slowness of educational change. The system which had recognizably come into existence by the time of the outbreak of the Civil War, was extended with the spread of population over the new areas won to statehood. The period was one of consolidation and expansion along accepted lines. GROWTH AND UNIFICATION 437 Most emphatically it was not a period of innovation nor of conspicuous improvement. The extreme application of the principle of local self-government, which had characterized our national life up to the Civil War, continued to be the rule of civil administration in school as in other affairs. The in- difference to expert service which was perhaps justifiable under the simple conditions of early American life, continued over into a period when the greater complexity of existence re- quired administration by technically trained officials. The passion for popular control, which had placed all offices of the government at the disposal of the universal electorate or made them the spoils of party politics, continued without abate- ment ^to interfere with efficient public service. In the rapid survey of the conditions of state and local school administra- tion which follows, one will discover that democracy, up to the nineties, had learned but a small part of its necessary lesson of self-discipline. Local education authorities continued to rule their little school-district or township domain with a minimum of guidance or control from state authorities, while the state as a whole had as yet failed to recognize its responsi- bility or its opportunity with respect to leadership or financial assistance. State Educational Administration. — In the preceding chapter it has been shown how the years preceding the Civil War saw the general development of the office of state super- intendent of public instruction as well as the partial accept- ance of the notion that there should be in the state some ad- visory body to look after educational interests. That both the office of state superintendent and the state board of education were pretty definite fixtures in the educational thought of the generation following the Civil War is shown by the fact that all the new states admitted between 1861 and 1890 provided for a state superintendent of public instruction, and most of them either by constitutional provision or by early legislation set up some form of state board with more or less extensive prerogatives. Further corroboration of this tendency is found in the fact that the educational reorganization which 438 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 took place among the Southern States after the Civil War followed the same lines. The OfBce of State Superintendent. — A comprehensive outline of the then existing state systems of education was published by the United States Bureau of Education as Cir- cular of Information Number 2 in 1880. The data therein col- lected showed that in twenty-one states the state superinten- dent was elected by the people, in eight states he was appointed by the governor, in three states he was elected by the legisla- ture, while in six states he was appointed by the state board under that or some corresponding title. It is thus seen that the idea of making the highest state educational officer elective by popular vote was not only the predominant but the active tendency in the eighties, for the newer states as they were admitted followed that system of choice. The best educational thought of the time, however, had already sensed a flaw in the practice of subjecting the incumbent of the office of state super- intendent to periodic campaigns for reelection on a party ticket. The National Council of Education in 1885 adopted a series of resolutions regarding the desirable state syster~ of educa- tion, following the report of a special committee on the subject, and the opinion of that body was that the best results would be secured if the selection of the state superintendent were left to a properly constituted state board of education. The con- ception of the functions of the state superintendent which the National Council of Education had in 1885 shows that the office was gaining increased educational significance with the passage of years. The resolutions referred to the superinten- dent as the commander-in-chief of the educational armies of the state and in part read as follows: "The state needs an agent to take general supervision of its schools and of its school funds and revenues. It needs a skillful superintendent to visit the various localities and awaken interest in public education; to advise subordinate officers and teachers in respect to their duties; to interpret the school law to them; to determine certain matters of general interest that may be taken to him on appeal, and to inform the law-making GROWTH AND UNIFICATION 439 power of the state concerning the condition of the schools, and to suggest such reforms as are needed to make them more efficient and valuable." Indeed the practice in some or many of the states embodied all the recommendations of the National Council of Education and other functions besides. Practically all the states ex- pected the state superintendent to make official visits in the interest of education. In eighteen of the states he apportioned the school revenues to the districts. In sixteen states he was empowered to interpret the school law and in nine states he was given the power to settle appeals in matters of school law. Seven states had entrusted the state superintendent with the right to grant state teachers certificates and six states had laid upon him the duty of prescribing or recommending text-books to be used in the schools of the entire state. In one state, Alabama, he appointed the county superintendents. /xhe State Board of Education.— Of the thirty-eight states in 1880, twenty-four had state boards of education. When one comes to examine the make-up of these boards it is seen that the educational functions of the state boards as opposed to their financial functions were receiving greater recognition, for at that time in thirteen of the states, the boards were composed mainly of teachers, or others definitely con- nected with education. In eleven states, however, the state boards continued to be made up chiefly of state officers who were designated as members of the state board of education in their official capacities. The resolutions of the National Council of Education re- ferred to above, ascribed to the state board a considerable variety of strictly educational functions. "It should be em- powered to grant life certificates to persons of superior scholar- ship and high professional ability; it should exercise super- visory control over the higher educational institutions sup- ported by the state and especially over the state normal schools; it should examine and licence all local officers author- ized to examine and licence teachers in the various school cor- porations of the state, and it should have the power to instruct 440 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 and direct these local examiners in regard to the standard of qualifications required of candidates for licences, and in regard to the preparation of questions to be used in their examination." So extensive a catalogue of educational functions was thought to call for the selection of the members of the state board chiefly from among the teaching profession, so chosen as to represent the various school interests of the state. Some of the recommendations of the National Council of Education had already been made a part of the practice of sev- eral states. In eleven states in 1880 the state board exercised the privilege of granting teachers certificates possessing state- wide validity, while in a number of other states special exam- ining boards exercised this function. In Michigan and Indiana the state board was expected to prepare the examination ques- tions for the county examiners. In three states the state board had the function of appointing the county superintendents and in two states the county boards of education. In ten states at that time state uniformity of text-books had come to be con- sidered an educational advantage and the prescription or rec- ommendation of the books to be used had been added to the duties of the state boards of education. Growing Importance of the State School Authorities. — It is seen from the foregoing account of the functions of the state superintendent and the state board of education that in the eighties both practice and theory united in a tendency to extend the power of the state school administration over prov- inces which in an earlier period had belonged exclusively to local authorities. Up to that time, however, the enlargement of the powers of the central authority had taken place piece- meal and in a sporadic way. There were signs of a trend toward greater centralization in school administration, but such a tendency had at that time experienced only very mod- erate development, and this through the allocation to the state superintendent or the state board of the functions and duties mentioned above. The general failure of local communities to rise to a satisfactory level of educational efficiency was, how- ever, causing grave concern to the thoughtful and the idea was GROWTH AND UNIFICATION 441 gaining ground that it was the business of the state "to follow the proceeds of the tax into the schoolroom, and see that it produces the end for which it was taken." And it was being more and more clearly recognized that as means to this end the state should prescribe certain definite standards as to course of study, qualifications of teachers, length of school term, and any other matter that could affect the excellence of the educational opportunities provided by the local authori- ties. Furthermore the state department of education should possess the means of knowing what was going on in the com- munities and of carrying its standards to those communities and enforcing them. These powers could be realized only through the increase of the personnel of the central authority and the employment of agents directly responsible to the cen- tral authority. Before the nineties, however, state supervision through departmental agents made little headway. Massa- chusetts back in the fifties had extended its system of state supervision through the appointment of three general agents to visit the schools and supervise school work under the au- thority of the secretary of the state board. Minnesota had provided for a state high school inspector acting under the directions of the state superintendent. New York had con- tinued its long established policy of holding local supervisors responsible to the state department, and in several of the southern states the county superintendents were closely de- pendent upon the central authorities. In general, however, the extensive development of state supervision which has taken place in the last thirty years in the United States was only experiencing its early beginnings during the generation which followed the Civil War. In the discussions of local authori- ties and financial relations which are to follow, the position of the state departments in the educational affairs of the states will be more fully exhibited. The County Superintendent, — Outside of the New Eng- land states, the office of county superintendent had become all but universal by 1880. In that year twenty-nine out of thirty-eight states had such an office. The predominant 442 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 tendency with reference to the choice of this officer was to have him elected by the people at general elections and for a term of two years. In six states the county superintendent was ap- pointed by some member or board of the state government; in six states he was appointed or elected by educational officers, and in three others by the county courts. In twenty-eight states the county superintendent was either entrusted solely with the duty of examining the teachers of the county or he was a member of the examining board. In most of the states he was expected to visit the schools of the county. The status of the county superintendent during this period indicates some uncertainty regarding his relationships. The general practice as to his selection, namely, election by the people, would indicate that he was mainly regarded as a local educational officer, whereas the practice of placing the ap- pointment of the county superintendent in the hands of state authorities would indicate that he was considered as the local agent of the state department and, as such, responsible to that department. The resolutions of the National Council of Edu- cation referred to above, called for a much closer relationship between the state department and the county superintendent than was at that time general in practice. The large powers which he enjoyed in regard to the certification of teachers, it was thought, deserved to be brought under the guidance and control of the state department, and it began to be clear that the local official upon whom the state department was bound to depend in so many matters should possess educational quali- fications, prescribed by the state department, which would attest his fitness for the duties of his office. In the New England states the beginnings of professional supervision of the town schools had been made before 1890. Massachusetts in 1888 provided by law for the union of towns to employ a superintendent of schools and offered state aid to small towns as an encouragement to employ such an officer. Rhode Island in 1871 and Connecticut in 1886 made the be- ginnings of a system of town supervision. The extensive and GROWTH AND UNIFICATION 443 effective development of that system, however, has been the product of the last thirty years. Local Authorities. — In 1880 there existed, exclusive of the cities, three fairly well-defined types of local authority, namely, county, township or town, and district boards of education or school directors. The organization of the cities for school administration followed separate lines and may best be dis- cussed by itself. The County System. — The highest development of the county system of school administration had occurred in the South, where in several states there were county boards of education with extensive powers. Many other states had county boards with limited powers, but in ten of the states having county boards they were mainly concerned with the examination and certification of teachers. In the South, how- ever, the county board was in certain states the real local authority having control of the entire county in regard to major educational functions. In four of the southern states the county board levied all local taxes; in three it employed all teachers in the county; and in three it prescribed text- books for use in the schools. The practice of some of the southern states to constitute the county boards of education the real local authority for the relatively extensive area of the civil county represents a significant educational development. By the eighties the development of the county board as a local education authority had hardly gone far enough to be describ- able as a trend or tendency; but as an experiment that was to prove successful and that was destined to have wide adoption, the early beginnings of county control should not escape at- tention. The District System. — In the eighties the school district (see p. 352ff.) continued to be the most widely used area for purposes of local school administration. In thirty states in 1880 the teachers for the local schools were chosen by the district trustees or directors; in twenty-three states the same officials had charge of the location, construction, and care of 444 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 the school buildings, and in fourteen states they levied local taxes for the support of schools. In the New England states there was some movement during the generation after the Civil War in the direction of enlarging the area for school control. Vermont in 1870 enacted a law that made it possible for towns to abandon the district in favor of the town system, and in 1884 passed a new law on the sub- ject that compelled the towns to vote upon the proposition. Rhode Island in 1884 passed a permissive law allowing towns to abolish the district system. In Massachusetts, where the town after 1826 had regained importance as a local education authority, a law of 1869 permitted the consolidation of school districts on vote of the citizens. In Connecticut, where the district was still the predominant local authority, steps toward the town system may be seen in the permissive act of 1865 which authorized the towns to consolidate all school districts under town management by a majority vote of the districts. In the following year a law was passed in the same state which made consolidation possible on the vote of the town at large. Change under these laws was extremely slow, however, and it was only in 1909 that Connecticut abolished district control. The Town or Township System. — According to the Circular of Information, 1880, No. 2, from which the figures regarding state systems are taken, there were two states in which the township school trustees or school directors levied the local taxes for school purposes, three in which they had charge of the school buildings, and five in which they appointed the teachers in the schools of the township. In all the New England states except Vermont township authorities examined and licensed all teachers. In eight states all the supervision which was given to the work of the schools was provided by town or township authorities. In general it may be said that there was little change in the constitution of local authorities during the period of twenty- five years following the Civil War. In New England there was some progress away from the unlimited district system as indi- cated in efforts towards consolidation and the establishment GROWTH AND UNIFICATION 445 of professional supervision for the towns; but the changes were slight indeed. The main difference between the almost su- preme control over educational affairs which school district authorities exercised over the schools before the Civil War and the condition existing in the eighties, consisted in the universal adoption of some form of examination and certification of teachers that placed that important educational function at least beyond the control of district trustees. In 1880, thirty- one states had placed this function in the hands of county superintendent or county examining board, six in the hands of town or township authorities, and one, Delaware, in the hands of the state superintendent. The prescription of minimum courses of study and minimum length of school term consti- tuted additional leverage which the state authorities were beginning to apply upon local authorities. The Financial Support of Schools. — In twenty-three of the thirty-eight states in 1880 there was levied a state tax to be applied to the support of the schools of the state at large, while in five other states legislative appropriations from the treasury were made for the same purpose. Ten states made no contributions to local school costs except through the dis- tribution of the income from state funds. In the southern states, the proportion of the state's contribution to the entire school budget of the local communities was relatively heavy. Four of the southern states thus contributed more than the; entire amount expended for instruction, while three others con- tributed 75 per cent or more of this total. In the South fol- lowing the Civil War, in the absence of a tradition of public education and the habit of local taxation for school purposes, the acceptance on the part of the state governments of rela- tively heavy financial responsibility seemed to be the shortest cut to the universal provision of schools. It was when new legislation allowed and stimulated local taxation among the southern states, that is to say, after the period in question, that educational progress in that section became accelerated. The all but universal rule for the distribution of state funds during the period from 1861-1890 was to pay out to each dis- 446 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 trict its share on the basis of school or general population. In some states, however, the value of setting up conditions for the receipt of state moneys by local authorities had been realized. In at least ten states, local authorities forfeited the state appropriation if they did not maintain schools for the minimum term prescribed by law. In some states, state ap- propriations depended on the raising of some equal or other stated sum by the local authorities, as in Rhode Island and New Jersey. Wisconsin in 1875 appropriated $25,000 annu- ally for aiding localities in the maintenance of high schools and in 1885 doubled the amount of that appropriation. In 1878 ]\Iinnesota began making appropriations for the same pur- pose. It is fair to say, however, that the power which the state possessed to improve educational facilities through mak- ing state contributions depend on local effort, was little ap- preciated during this period and used hardly at all. City School Administration The history of educational administration in the cities of the United States has not yet been written; indeed not even a respectable start in the direction of such a history has been made. The subject is especially difficult for a number of reasons. The city is a creation of the state government, and no uniformity of principle or practice has been exhibited in the acts of the various state legislatures which have incor- porated cities under charters giving them special powers and restraining them under special restrictions. In many states the charters of cities have been granted by special legislation, while in other states general acts for the organization of cities have been passed. For this reason historical study of even the local authorities for education and of their relationship to other branches of municipal government constitutes a labori- ous and intricate undertaking. The difficulty of such a study is increased by the fact that many of the most important changes in the actual practice of school administration do not appear in any statutes, but are GROWTH AND UNIFICATION 447 to be found only in the records of boards of education. As an illustration of this fact, the office of city superintendent, one of the most influential positions of leadership in the field of edu- cation and now universally found in city school systems in the United States, has had an almost altogether extra-legal development. In many states, the legislation which legalized the office, without clearly defining its functions, came after the appointment of a city superintendent of schools by city boards of education had become a very general practice. In some cases the legality of the office was made to depend upon court decisions, as in the famous Kalamazoo Case in INIichigan, in which the decision was handed down in 1872. In all cases the powers of the superintendent were uncertain, depending largely on the personality of the official and the traditions or interests of the school board which employed him. The his- tory of the office of city superintendent of schools is in itself a study of the first magnitude and remains to be undertaken. What the present writer will have to say on the subject of city school administration during the period under discussion will of necessity be inadequate. But it at least seems worth while to mark out the terra incognita and to skirt it as closely as possible.^ Developments in City Government. — Special forms of government for local areas have been adopted in the United States when the aggregation of population has made the rela- tively simple frame of administration of the town or township inadequate for the new conditions of existence. The multi- plication of governmental duties connected with life in highly populated areas would call for the erection of more efficient machinery of administration and a city charter would re- organize a given area under a special form of municipal con- trol. Beginning with about 1825 city government began closely to follow the outlines of state government. There was a mayor, corresponding in his functions to the governor, and ^ In the account of city school administration which follows, the writer has borrowed freely from Philbrick, City School Systems in the United States, Bureau of Education, Circular of Information, 1885, No. I. 448 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 a bicameral council, corresponding to the legislature. Both were commonly elected by the people. By 1850 the cities had become the stronghold of political power, and municipal effi- ciency had come largely to be sacrificed to the exigencies of party strength. City government became scandalous and efforts at reform resulted in changes in the form of adminis- tration. The new charters took away from the councils the administrative functions which they had continued to enjoy and even deprived the mayor of functions he had formerly enjoyed. The more important functions of city government were performed by boards appointed in many cases by the governor of the state and otherwise by the mayor alone or by the mayor and council, and sometimes elected by the peo- ple. The result was a complete decentralization of govern- ment which made it impossible to fix responsibility for fraud, negligence, or incompetency. It was during the sixties and the seventies that municipal dishonesty and corruption were at their worst. In order to correct the new evils of administration which had developed under the board system, a new type of city government began to be established in which the power of the mayor was almost supreme. He was given almost ex- clusive power of appointment of 'the executive officers of the city government and he could accordingly be held responsible for any failure of administration. New York was the first large city to adopt the "mayor plan" of government, according to which even the members of the city board of education were appointed by the mayor. City Boards of Education. — In all this record of corrupt and generally unsatisfactory city government and of reorgani- zation undertaken for the purpose of improving these bad conditions, the control of education in general remained an in- dependent interest. The tendency was for the local education authorities which had been in existence before the city had been organized as a spcial form of government, to continue, or where discontinued in favor of a general board such board had a separate basis of selection and was more or less independent of the rest of the city government. In some cities, the local GROWTH AND UNIFICATION 449 boards of the original school districts were retained as ward school boards, and as new towns were added to the city, their local education authorities were likewise continued. As exam- ples in point are Philadelphia and Boston. In the former city there were at one time thirty-one local boards each composed of from ten to twenty members each. In the case of Boston the school board had reached a membership of one hundred sixteen before a reorganization occurred in 1876. In addition to these local boards, which retained few or many of their original powers, as the case might be, there was commonly to be found a general board of education elected by the people or by the school directors of the local boards. In probably the greater number of cases, however, the or- ganization of city boards of education represented a consoli- dation of the educational interests of the municipal area under a single board. The Akron School Law passed in Ohio in 1847 for the city of Akron was shortly afterwards applied to the city of Dayton as well, and later made to apply to all incor- porated cities and towns that should by a two-thirds vote petition the town council for its adoption. This law is to be considered a landmark in the development of city school ad- ministration. It provided for the election of six school direct- ors for the city or town. The board of education so chosen was made a legal corporation and compelled to organize with a president, secretary, and treasurer. The financial powers connected with education, that is the power to buy and own land for school purposes and to levy taxes for school mainte- nance, were vested in the city council subject to the advice of the board of education. The board of education was required by the law to furnish the city council with an estimate of the amount of money needed. The determination of school sites and the construction of school buildings were placed in the hands of the board of education and other strictly educational functions were delegated to that body. In a supplementary law passed in 1849 by the Ohio legislature, extending the privi- leges of the Akron Law to any incorporated town or village containing two hundred or more inhabitants, the municipal 450 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 council was deprived of its educational functions and the fiscal aspects of school control were given over to the boards of education with the limitation of the tax rate to 4 mills and the requirement of a referendum to the people on the rate of taxation. Much of the legislation passed in other states in regard to the administration of schools in cities followed the Akron Law in its general form. By 1885 the control of education in most cities had come under a single board of education. These boards of education varied greatly in respect to number, but in general they were large boards as compared with boards at the present day. Cincinnati in 1885 had a board of fifty mem- bers, Pittsburgh of thirty-three, New York twenty-one, Boston twenty-five, St. Louis twenty-six. In some cases the boards were elected by the people at large and in some cases by the people according to wards; but almost always they were elected as a separate branch of city government by the people. The City Schools in Politics, — The all-too-general ineffi- ciency and dishonesty of city administration which has been referred to above were felt in the administration of education during this period. The office of school director carried with it possibilities of "graft" that made it attractive to venal persons and worth the attention of party organizations. In a period of tremendous expansion of the physical plant there were large possibilities of dishonest gains in the purchase of sites and the letting of building contracts. The letting of contracts for supplies furnished opportunities for smaller graft, while the appointment of janitors, even of teachers, fur- nished opportunities of taking care of political friends and henchmen. Closely connected with the venal uses to which the office of school director was sometimes put, was the form of organiza- tion and the distribution of functions of the board of educa- tion. The large boards were ordinarily divided up into a large number of subordinate committees, each intrusted with some special phase of school administration. In Cincinnati, for example, there were up to about 1885, twenty- five standing GROWTH AND UNIFICATION 451 committees of the board of education having charge of: boundaries, buildings and repairs, claims, course of study and text-books, discipline, drawing, examinations, fuel, funds and taxes, furniture, German department, gymnastics, law, lots, music, night schools, normal school and teachers' institute, penmanship, printing, reports and excuses, rules and regula- tions, salaries, stores and furnaces, supplies, and ungraded schools. Besides the standing committees mentioned there were thirty-four sub-committees on districts and schools. Then there was a "union board" composed in part of members of the board of education, which had fifteen committees. It is thus seen that in all there were seventy-four committees en- trusted with the management of the public schools of Cincin- nati. The Chicago board had seventy-nine such committees. On the other hand, there were cities that got on with con- siderably fewer standing sub-committees and without any dis- trict committees whatever. St. Louis, for example, had only twelve standing committees and no committees on school dis- tricts and schools. Fiscal Control. — In the matter of fiscal control there were all varieties of dependence on the general city administration and of independence of it. In New York the board of educa- tion was not dependent on the council either for the purchase of sites or the erection of school buildings. St. Louis gave its board practically unlimited power in the disbursement of school money. In general, however, the boards of education were limited in their expenditure of money either by the state law or by the concurrent power of some other branch of the city government. As far as the writer is aware no statistical study of the practices during this period of the various cities in respect to fiscal control has yet been published. Needless to say such a study would be of interest at the present time, when the question of fiscal dependence or independence of city boards of education is one of the large issues of school administration. The City Superintendent of Schools. — From the distribu- tion of functions and duties among the various committees of 452 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 the board of education, it is easily seen that the school situa- tion in the city was one that called for some sort of profes- sional management. The business of a city school system had become entirely too extensive for lay control. An exami- nation of the work apportioned among the committees reveals at least two types of work to be performed, — namely that which is strictly educational and that which is mainly mana- gerial. It is rather natural to suppose that a lay board would first recognize its deficiences in connection with the former class of duties. Perhaps, too, the "perquisites" of the educational functions were not so substantial as might accrue to the 'letting of building contracts and the purchase of supplies. At any rate, the first assistance called for by the boards in the man- agement of school affairs was in connection with the super- vision of instruction. When the Boston School Board for the first time in the history of that city elected in 185 1 a superin- tendent of schools, it placed at the head of his duties the following: "He shall devote himself to the study of our school system and of the condition of the schools, and shall keep him- self acquainted with the progress of instruction and discipline in other places, in order to suggest appropriate means for the advancement of the public schools of this city." Besides his distinctively educational functions, the superintendent of schools in the smaller cities had to undertake a large variety of duties of the managerial sort. Dr. Philbrick in the report referred to above (see footnote p. 447) says: "He not only acts as adviser of the board and of its individual members and supervises, inspects, and examines all the schools, but he has to provide, under the direction of the board for all the ma- terial wants of the school. He superintends the repairs on the schoolhouses and assists in devising plans for new ones; he attends to the providing of fuel ; he procures and distributes the supplies, not only of materials and apparatus for instruc- tion, but also brooms, mats, dippers, and such like; audits the bills; prepares the payrolls of teachers, acts as the secre- tary of the school board and makes an annual report exhibit- ing the progress and condition of the school." In the larger GROWTH AND UNIFICATION 453 cities the business duties had already begun by 1885 to be taken over by special agents, appointed for that work, so as to leave the superintendent free for the duties that called for an educational expert. Even in that field the demands upon the superintendent had become so heavy that assistant super- intendents and special supervisors were being provided, sub- ject to his authority. By 1885 the office of superintendent had become all but universal in the cities of the United States. The superintend- ent, however, remained insecure in his tenure of office. He was subject to periodic reelection by the board, usually every one or two years. His duties were prescribed by the board of edu- cation; but with the strong tradition of board control which persisted, his prerogatives were uncertain. In general, it may be said that his power and influence depended largely upon himself, although that factor was bound to be influenced by the maJie-up and the traditions of the board. In some cities, the appointment, promotion, and transfer of teachers rested entirely in the hands of the appropriate sub-committee of the board of education. The approved way to secure a position or a promotion was to "see" the members of the school board or of the teachers committee of the board, and not infrequently the shortest way to the desired end was through the mediation of some altogether "informal" member of the city administra- tion. In other cities the power of the superintendent was much greater. For example in St. Louis the superintendent in connection with the committee on teachers, had almost full power in the appointment of teachers and the transfer of teachers and pupils from one school to another. The chief obstacle to the standardization of the duties and powers of the school superintendent during this period lay in the personnel of the office itself. The superintendent of schools was a man generally of good education who had come up through an apprenticeship of school teaching and manage- ment. He was not professionally educated for his office, for there was no existing institution that undertook to instruct him in its duties or in how to take advantage of its practically 454 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 unlimited possibilities. The real era of the professionally trained superintendent has followed the development of uni- versity chairs and schools of education and the scientific study of educational administration. The High School The generation preceding the Civil War saw the origin of the high school, which embodied the conception of the free gift to all of opportunities of secondary education. However, for a period of about fifty years, the spread of that institution was relatively slight. In the seventies a considerable accelera- tion of activity in founding high schools began and by 1890 a stupendous development of the free public high school was well under way. Opposition to High Schools. — The cause of free public elementary education had been practically won by the opening of the Civil War and the years immediately following it saw the universal adoption of the principle of gratuitous instruc- tion in schools of that grade. The multiplication of schools giving secondary instruction under public auspices seemed to many, however, to belong in a different category; so the social groups that had opposed the free elementary school joined in their attack upon the free public high school. The social and industrial situation in the seventies and eighties was also such as to throw difficulties in the way of the free and unlimited growth of the high school movement. It is probably not an overstatement to say that the public high school in the twenty years following the Civil War passed through a crisis. Having successfully weathered the difficulties which it then encoun- tered, its recent history has been a record of unchecked and marvellously rapid growth. The business depression that followed the panic of 1873 was the cause of general dissatisfaction over heavy taxes and led to a demand for retrenchment in public expenditures. High schools, being an educational novelty and calling for a relatively heavy outlay for each pupil in attendance, came in, GROWTH AND UNIFICATION 455 for a vigorous attack. Elements at both extremes of the eco- nomic scale combined in opposition. Many of the heaviest tax- payers sent no children to the public hi3ooo. Such cases are not infrequent among the state departments. On ac- count of the low salary attached to the office, its acceptance by the best educators of the state, even when the discomforts of politics are counted out, is, to say the least, improbable. As a result the office of educational leadership may easily fall to a person of considerably less ability than it should normally attract. Another disadvantage connected with the political choice of state superintendent is found in the short term of office which so frequently goes along with that mode of choice. In an era when "instruments of precision" are being so ex- tensively applied in the business of state administration, it is difficult to understand why the bungling and uncertain method of selecting the state superintendent of schools on a political party ticket should continue to be the general rule in the commonwealths of the United States. The more modern practice and the one which is gaining ground along with the new type of state board is to leave the selection of the chief educational officer of the state to the governor or to the state board of education. Since 191 5, four states in which the chief school officer had been appointed by the governor, have changed to the system of appointment by the state board, while in one state, Massachusetts, a change 5o8 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 in the duties of the state board has led to a change from ap- pointment by the board to appointment by the governor. In Iowa, to the contrary, the same official formerly appointed by the governor is at present elected by the people. There is a strong tendency to change the name of an appointed head from that of state superintendent of education to commissioner of education. In all the more efficient organizations of state departments of education the chief school officer, whether ap- pointed by the board or the governor or elected by the people, is regarded as the professional expert and executive of the board. Where the commissioner is chosen by the board or by the governor, there is much better chance that the right man for the place will be found, especially when the law gives the appointing power the right to choose that officer from any state in the Union. The intention of securing expert service, of which such a mode of selection is evidence, has been uni- formly backed up by substantial salary inducements. The ideal arrangement, according to the best educational thought of the present time, is to give to a broadly representative and competent state board the right to choose its professional ex- pert and executive secretary from the country at large and to fix his salary at the figure that will secure the services of the best man available. State Colleges and Universities. — The support which the various states have given to the state universities and state colleges has been tremendously increased during the last thirty years. Up to about 1890 the state universities in general had experienced little development, the main exception being in the cases of Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The same statement applied to the Land Grant Colleges in the various states. In short, the state legislatures in 1890 had not yet acquired the habit of generosity to state educational institutions. In 1889- 1890, the total appropriations of state and municipal authori- ties to all universities and colleges amounted to $1,383,000, and in 1890-1891, to $2,118,000.^ In 1916-1917, the states appropriated to the agricultural and mechanical colleges alone, 'See Report U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1894-1S95, Vol. I. A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 509 for instruction and administration the sum of $21,379,900, and for their agricultural experiment stations and for extension work the additional sum of $3,900,000. The amount given to the same institutions for new buildings and equipment came to $14,400,000 more/ For 1917-1918, the sum given to the University of California by the Legislature was $2,200,000. In Illinois, a statewide tax of one mill provided the University with an income of over $2,000,000. By a similar provision of a state tax, the University of Michigan received $1,190,000 and the Michigan Agricultural College, $560,000. The total appropriations of all the states for the year ending 'June 30, 19 1 8, to their state universities and colleges, amounted to $33>539,748.- LocAL Education Authorities The Country Life Movement and Rural Education. — In estimating the important economic and social changes that have come about during the last thirty years, one should not overlook the new vitality that has come into rural life. Up to 1890, and considerably after that time, the farmer and his family had hardly felt the great prosperity which the country as a whole was enjoying. The conditions under which they existed were taken much as a matter of course. It was to be expected that the farmer and his family should work labo- riously for small returns, that they should be without con- veniences and the recreations of city or town life, and that the rural school should remain inefficient, cheap, and ugly. The rising discontent of the farmer over the unfavorable condi- tions of farm life, was manifested in the Populist movement of the early nineties, and the beginnings of legislation designed tc help the farmers resulted from their capture of the legis- latures and governments of a number of states. A steady rise in the price of agricultural commodities that began in the late nineties improved the farmer's financial condition and his "See Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 1Q18, No. 41. * Computed from tables given in Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 1918, No. 51. 510 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 ability to pay for the refinements of life that he came more and more to demand for himself and his family. Although it was not the beginning of the movement for better conditions of rural life, the Report in 191 1 of the Federal Commission on Country Life, which had been ap- pointed by President Roosevelt in 1908, had great influence in stimulating all sorts of activities that centered around the conception of making country life more profitable and humanly more satisfying. Better farming, more advantageous market- ing, improved roads, the introduction of labor-saving ma- chinery upon the farm and in the farm home, enriched com- munity life, and better schools are only some of the phases of the movement. The little single teacher school, which was universal before 1890, has given way in many localities to an architecturally attractive consolidated elementary and high school, which can employ well-trained teachers, provide super- vision, offer special courses related to the needs of rural life, and serve as the recreational center for an entire neighborhood. The conditions with respect to rural education are not yet satisfactory — in many sections they continue to be deplorable; but the Country Life Movement daily acquires momentum. Some of the means which have been employed in the improve- ment of rural schools are discussed in the preceding and in the following pages, and there can be no doubt that such means will continue to be employed more widely and more successfully until the educational opportunities of the country boy and girl are as good as those of his city cousin. Reorganization of Local Education Authorities. — In the United States, cities and incorporated towns are generally set off as separate units of local school administration and support. The main exceptions to this rule occur in the New England states, where it not infrequently happens that a town (town- ship) is composed of both city and rural areas administered as a unit, and in the South, where in some cases the aggrega- tions of population are included in the county at large for purposes of school management and maintenance. As city school administration will be considered briefly in a separate A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 511 connection, the present discussion applies only to the smaller towns and villages and the open country. Even if the last generation has seen a great development in state departments of education, it must not be taken for granted that this increase in the activity of central authorities has been accompanied by a decrease in the vitality of local authorities. Indeed, quite the opposite is the truth. The last thirty years have seen great development of the powers that have been placed in their hands. If the state's educational activities have increased, that increase has been paralleled by the new responsibilities placed upon reconstituted local boards of education. One of the outstanding problems in American education to- day is just this one of the proper constitution of a local au- thority and much progress has been made in efforts to solve it. Historical factors have determined to a considerable extent the typical developments in the local organization of educa- tional machinery. In New England, where the town is much the most important local civil institution and where, generally speaking, the population and the resources of the town make it a desirable local unit, local school administration and support have been organized on the basis of the town. In the South, where the county has been historically the basis of local admin- istration, that unit has been followed and a system of Jocal education control has been elaborated within the county-area. In the remaining states of the Union no single area has had a clear monopoly in the matter of local government and in these states we find the county, the township, and the school district dividing among themselves those school functions that are assigned to local officials. The Increasing Inadequacy of the District System. — We have seen how the conditions of pioneer life made the independent school districts the most efficient means of sup- plying some sort of school to the greatest number of children. So long as the country was only sparsely settled there was no need for an organization for school purposes except where there were children to be educated. With the settlement of the 512 NATIONALISIM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 intermediate territory between settlements, school districts and single schoolhouses were multiplied to meet the increased demand. As long as standards of education were low and only the minimal elements of an education were provided, the dis- trict system served the purpose; but as soon as active efforts began to be made to improve the quality of instruction, to extend its upward range, and to introduce vocational special- ties, the inadequacy of the district plan of organization be- came evident. The state began to extend its control over the district school officers by means of minimum requirements in the matter of school studies, length of term, and compulsory attendance. The interposition of county or town examining authorities took away still more of the one time absolute power of the district trustees. But even with those changes, partly consummated before 1890, the school district has continued to play a role for which it has become progressively more unfitted. Ordinarily the district has been too small in numbers and too poor to provide graded schools, high schools, vocational in- struction, and professional supervision. It has been seen that larger numbers of pupils must be concentrated in one school and a larger amount of money applied in that school to make it serve the new standards of education. An additional reason for extending the area of school support has been found in the extreme inequalities which the districts exhibited. Purely accidental considerations, such as the presence in a district of an oil refinery, a railroad, a salt mine, or a great manufactur- ing establishment, enabled the fortunate district on a small tax levy to provide its children with all the refinements of modern instruction, while adjoining districts, with the maxi- mum tax levy allowed by the law, could offer only the educa- tional minima. As a result of the revealed inadequacy of the pioneer instrumentality of school administration and support, many of the states in which the district system was once universal have built up strong local authorities centering in the township, town, or county. The movement away from the district system began in the section of the country where it had originated, and we have A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 513 already discussed some of the early progress which the New England states had made toward the strengthening of town control of education before 1890. Massachusetts finally got rid of the school district in 1882, and New Hampshire in 1885. The other New England states have eliminated school district control since the 'nineties, some of them very recently. Even before the legal abolition of this form of control, legislative steps were taken to induce districts of their own accord to pool their educational resources and to combine for better schools. Permissive legislation provided for voluntary consolidation of districts under town control. State bounties were offered for certain educational improvements that implied the town or- ganization. But it was only with the passage of mandatory laws that the school district disappeared as a form of local school administration in New England. The school district remains as an influential educational agency mainly in the states west of the Mississippi, where sparse population is more common, but even in that section the system is generally conceded to have long outlived its use- fulness. It continues to be the enemy of better equalization of school facilities and of the provision of better schools. Local pride and jealousy insist on holding on to their poor own mstead of combining with other communities for the provision of something better, held and enjoyed in common. Where several schools could with economy and a large net educational gain be consolidated, district control frequently prevents such change. The chances for school consolidation, for high schools, for professional supervision, are greatly im- proved where the districts voluntarily or under the compulsion of state law are combined into larger areas of administration and support. Even where the district remains as the typical local educational unit, state laws permitting consolidation of schools, union high school districts, unions of districts for supervisory purposes, usually with state aid offered for such school improvements, are gradually multiplying instances of district cooperation or consolidation and paving the way for a general reorganization of the local authorities. The district 514 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 is generally recognized as a survival from pioneer conditions which will be discarded as its inadequacies in providing superior educational facilities are more clearly exhibited and in time become unendurable. Town and Township Education Authorities. — In the more thickly populated states of the East and the Middle West, the town, or township, has been found generally useful as the local basis of better school administration. The excep- tion must be noted, however, that some of the middle western states have recently turned to the county unit as being still more serviceable. In the New England states particularly, the town school committee has developed into a vital and in- fluential local authority. The states have exerted pressure upon the richer and more populous towns to provide profes- sional supervision and secondary and special schools, and they have extended state aid to the weaker towns for the at- tainment of the same ends. Bonuses placed on consolidation, with state aid for the cost of transportation of pupils, aid for weaker towns in paying the salaries of school superintendents, compulsory payment by towns where no high school exists of high school tuition for pupils of the town, special state con- tributions for high schools and for vocational education, unions of towns for school purposes,- — these are some of the means whereby the state authorities are enabled to stimulate and to help out local effort. Powers and Duties of the Town School Committee. — The town school authorities in the New England states con- tinue to enjoy relatively extensive powers. In Massachusetts, for example, where the town school committee is elected at the annual town meeting, the duties and powers of the school com- mittee are in part as follows: to have charge of all public schools; make regulations governing evening schools, select and contract with teachers; examine teachers or accept in lieu of such examination diplomas of graduates of the state normal schools; prescribe books and courses of study and exercises for the public schools; purchase text-books and supplies and lend same tree of charge to pupils; employ a superintendent of A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 515 schools; return records to state school commissioner; publish annual reports of the public schools; and take a detailed cen- sus of all children between five and twenty-one years of age, which is to be returned to the state school commissioner. Powers and Duties of the Township School Board in Pennsylvania. — In the State of Pennsylvania the township has long been the unit of school support and management. In that state four classes of school boards are recognized, the fourth of which is the ordinary form of township organization in rural areas. This type of board consists of five members elected for six-year terms. The powers given to boards of school directors as here enumerated in part, apply to all classes of board: to maintain elementary public schools; maintain at their discretion as part of the public school system, high schools, manual training schools, evening schools, kindergar- tens, libraries, museums, reading rooms, gymnasiums, play- grounds, schools for blind, deaf and dumb, and mentally de- ficient, truant schools, parental schools, schools for adults, and public lectures; levy and collect taxes for maintaining such schools or departments; fix length of school term; adopt text- books; appoint or dismiss district superintendent, assistants, and teachers; adopt courses of study; fix salaries of super- visors and teachers. In all counties which employ a county superintendent, the school directors are directed to hold an annual convention for the discussion of school problems. A similar meeting is held for the election of a county super- intendent. These two states may be accepted as examples of the local administration of schools by town or township school officers. Outside of New England, where the town system is followed, the county is usually combined with the township as a local school unit. In such case the county is generally the basis of school supervision under the county superintendent, and in some instances the financial burdens are distributed between the two units. The County Unit of School Administration. — The county as a unit of local school administration and support 5i6 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 is growing in favor and is pronounced by many educational leaders as being superior to any other. Its comparatively large size insures the equalization of school costs and of school opportunities over a considerable area. The same factor of area makes possible advantageous consolidations for school purposes which, especially in the states having the square con- gressional township, are sometimes impossible under the town- ship system. The number of schools and teachers makes it feasible to employ special supervision that will actually attain the purpose of professional superintendence. Where a county board of education with an efficient organization and extensive powers is provided, it is likely that the type of educational leadership so achieved will be more progressive and enlightened than that afforded by a much larger number of district school officers. The county system follows the general form of or- ganization of the city systems of school control that have on the whole given such good results. As has been said, the county unit has had its widest adop- tion in the southern states, where tradition and social con- ditions make it the logical type of local authority. The county board of education, however, in its present meaning is a very recent achievement. Even where the county boards existed before 1890, their activities were not extensive, and it is since that time that most of the southern states have either created county boards of education for the first time or vastly extended the powers and duties of such boards. In connection with a county board which is a real local education authority, purely local officers are retained to look after the school premises and in some cases to participate with the county board in the selection of the local teachers. In a number of states there remains a division of powers between the county boards of education and the district or township trustees. The present period is one of experimentation to find out just what powers should be transferred to the county board and which kept in the hands of the district trustees in the interest of the largest efficiency. Where the division of powers is rather equal, the system is termed the semi-county plan. A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 517 The county has been adopted as the educational unit in a number of states outside of the South. In 191 7 New Mexico became the nineteenth state organized wholly or in part on the county system. Since then Arkansas (19 19), Delaware (1919), Kentucky (1920) and Missouri (1921) have either adopted for the first time or greatly strengthened their county boards of education, while Montana, Iowa, and Oregon have made significant beginnings in the direction of the county unit (1919). The Powers and Duties of the County Board in Mary- land. — A good example of the powers vested in a county board of education having extensive powers is shown in the case of Maryland. In that state since 19 14 the county boards have been given a wide range of functions, the most important of which are the following: To elect a person to serve as secre- tary and treasurer of the board and as county superintendent of schools; hold the title to all public school property as a corporate body; have general supervision of all schools in their respective counties; build, repair, and furnish school- houses; purchase and distribute text-books; appoint assistant teachers; consolidate schools; arrange and pay for the trans- portation of pupils; apportion state school moneys; levy a county tax for school purposes; appoint a committee to divide the county into suitable school districts; make annual reports; appoint all high school principals; reject or confirm appoint- ments of principal teachers; appoint school district trustees; select students for free scholarships; buy and sell school sites; and appoint grade supervisors and supervisors of colored schools. Serving the county board in the capacity of professional advisor and executive secretary is a county superintendent of schools. The law provides for additions to the supervisory staff of assistants and grade supervisors by the board's ap- pointment. The county board, as has been mentioned in the list of the board's powers, appoints three persons to serve as school trustees for each district. These district school trustees have Si8 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 the power to choose the principal teacher of the local schools, subject to the approval of the county board. They also have charge of the local school plant, supervising repairs and being responsible for the cleanliness and sanitary condition of the premises. In case a trustee proves inefficient, he can be re- moved by the county board of school commissioners. Examples of county organization where the county board has less power than in the case of Maryland, but where many of the advantages of the county system are attained, are to be found in the systems followed in Ohio and California. The many variations that are being tried out in various states upon the general conception of the county unit are instructive re- garding the active search among American educators and law- makers for a more vital and a more efficient system of local school control, supervision, and support.^ Local School Supervision ^ Supervision under the Town System. — While rural and village school supervision has undergone considerable change for the better in the last generation, that phase of education in the United States continues to be, outside of a few excep- tional sections, at a low stage of development. Perhaps the best conditions for any extensive section are to be found in the New England states. A Massachusetts law of 1888 al- lowed towns to unite for the purpose of employing a super- visory officer and granted state aid to the towns so combining and to the smaller towns that undertook independently to support a superintendent. Progress was made under this law and in 1902 the optional law was changed to a mandatory one. The state at present pays one-half the salaries of union dis- trict superintendents and prescribes the conditions of eligi- bility. The superintendent in rural towns has about the same ' For statements of the powers exercised by local school authorities in the various states, see Bureau of Education, Bulletin, iQiS, No. 47, Digest of State Laws Relating to Public Education. ' An excellent summary of the facts regarding rural school supervision is to be found in Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 1916, No. 46, Rural Supervision. A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 519 range of duties as a city superintendent, and the small area of his jurisdiction makes it possible for him to keep in close touch with the work of individual schools and teachers. Rhode Island made a comparatively early beginning of town supervision under a law passed in 187 1. At present every town in the state employs a superintendent. New Hampshire allowed the formation of superintendency unions in 1899. By 191 5, there were thirty such unions in existence and seventy- seven per cent of the school children of the state were attending supervised schools. Under permissive legislation Vermont had secured supervision in seventy per cent of the towns, when in 191 5 a new state law gave the state board of education power to designate supervision districts for the state at large and to employ supervisors. Towns and cities having at least twenty-five schools may employ their own superintendents. Where the state board employs the superintendent the state pays his salary, and in all cases a considerable proportion of the superintendent's salary. By an optional law, with sub- stantial state aid, Connecticut has developed town supervision since 1903 in all but a few towns of the state. Local Supervision under the County System. — Interest- ing and fruitful developments in rural super\'ision have fol- lowed the adoption of the county system in Ohio and Mary- land, to mention only two states organized under that system. In Ohio the county board (since 19 14) elects the county superintendent and is authorized to divide the county into subdistricts for supervisory purposes to include not more than sixty nor fewer than twenty teachers. The superintend- ents for the subdistricts are elected by the presidents of the village and rural school boards comprised within the district. In Maryland the plan has been followed of centralizing all supervision on the county basis and around the county super- intendent, but of allowing him assistants for the supervision of special grades and subjects. General Condition as to Local Supervision Extremely Unfavorable. — The examples so far given are intended to show the types of rural supervision that have been developed under 520 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 a variety of forms cf organization. They represent probably the best that has been achieved in the country at large, al- though many additional examples of wise state policy and considerable efficiency in rural supervision might be chosen from the states not mentioned. In general, however, it is only fair to say that the conditions of rural school supervision are deplorable. In approximately eighty-two per cent of the counties of the United States in 191 6 ^ the duty of school super- vision, outside of towns and cities having their own superin- tendents, rested exclusively upon a single county superintend- ent without professional assistance and generally without even clerical assistance. In twenty-seven states in that year the county superintendent continued to be elected by the people as a political officer. His average salary was $1400 a year, ranging from $7500 to $250. Thirty -six per cent of all the county superintendents in the nation had had no education beyond what would be equivalent to a four-year high school course. While the law makes it the duty of the county super- intendent to visit each school in the county, usually that super- vision can be only perfunctory. The average number of schools per county in the forty states having county supervision in 19 1 6, was eighty- four, with an average number of teachers per county of one hundred and thirty-two. It is easy to figure out the amount of time which a county superintendent under even average conditions could spend annually in each school- room under his supervision, in case he should devote all his time to school visitation. As a matter of fact, the large number of clerical and business functions which the county superintendent is called upon to perform, makes heavy inroads into his working time. Large Development of the Duties of the County Superintendent. — The office of county superintendent has had large development in many states, in some of which he is the most influential local authority. In Kansas, for example, where there are no township or county boards of education, the county superintendent has been given a wide range of ^ See Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 1Q16, No. 48, p. 31. A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 521 duties that would otherwise be at least shared with more broadly constituted local authorities if such existed. In that state the county superintendent is elected by the qualified voters of the county for a term of two years at a salary that ranges anywhere from $540 a year to $1800 (1916).^ A law of 191 8 provided for the employment of assistants in the larger counties. The superintendent must be the holder of at least a professional certificate and have had at least eighteen months' experience as a teacher. Among his duties are the following: to visit each school in the county every year; to attend the normal institute held annually in each county and "to en- courage the teachers to attend"; to hold a public meeting in each school district annually; to keep a record of each can- didate for a teacher's certificate and of each certificate granted; to keep a register of each teacher, where employed, salary, certificate held, and dates of opening and closing of school; keep record of apportionment of school funds; make quarterly report of his performance of duties to State Superintendent; apportion school funds; keep account of district school prop- erty; furnish county clerk with description of district boundary lines. The progress in rural supervision which has occurred in the more advanced states of which the systems have been described, points out the cardinal conditions of such progress. Smaller areas for supervisory purposes, and adequate salaries, longer terms, non-political selection, professional qualifications, and clerical assistance for the superintendent, and the employment of assistant superintendents or special supervisors, — all these are factors which have been employed to advantage in extend- ing professional oversight of schools in rural districts. The important changes which have occurred in the past generation are full of promise for future development. 'Changed in 1918 for larger counties. 52 2 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 City School Administration A Generation of Conspicuous Progress. — There is no other phase of public education in the United States which has, during the last thirty years, shown more conspicuous develop- ment than has city school administration. At the close of the eighties the cities were offering graded instruction in the ele- mentary branches and most of the more important ones were providing high school opportunities. They were, however, doing nothing to speak of along vocational lines. The number of public kindergartens was negligible. Medical inspection was unknown. The supervisory force was limited to the super- intendent or at most the superintendent and one or more as- sistant superintendents. Even the superintendent was com- pelled to expend most of his energies on clerical work and handy-man jobs. His professional powers and his relation- ships with the board of education were undefined. His per- formance of the professional duties of his office was upon an individualistic or a rule-of-thumb basis, because he had no body of approved practice or of scientific principles to guide him. At the present time all this is vastly changed. The school interest of cities has increased in complexity and magnitude until it absorbs the largest proportion of the public funds that is spent on any single aspect of city administration. To the elementary and the high school there has been added at one end the kindergarten and at the other end, in some cases, a municipal university or college, a teacher training school, or a junior college. In addition to the ordinary academic branches, provision is being made for all sorts of vocational instruction. The work of the day schools is being supplemented by the work of evening schools. Care for the mental development of the child is being supplemented by care for his physical health through medical examinations. The work of the schools with ordinary children is being extended to take care of the defective, the delinquent, and the incorrigible. A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 523 Not only is the range of the city's educational activities inr mensely greater than it was a generation ago, but those activi- ties are being carried on in a much more scientific fashion. It is not enough that there should be school buildings to house the children; it is essential that those buildings be constructed with reference to economy, educational utility, and the health and safety of the children. It is not enough to know the number of children in each grade; but we would know the facts of elimi- nation and retardation, and be prepared to make provision for those who fail to profit by the ordinary means of instruction. It is no longer sufficient to be able to give the total costs of the schools of the cit}^ for a year; but we should have at com- mand the costs of education by grades and by subject-unit as compared with like costs in other cities of like grade. Expert and adequate supervision is to be provided either by the super- intendent or by assistants and special supervisors among whom responsibility is divided — supervisors of districts, of schools, of special forms of education, of separate grades, of separate sub- jects. The development of scientific standards and tests of educational achievement makes it almost an obligation that such instruments should be applied to the measurement of the work done in the schools. The course of study is to be prepared to meet the special conditions of the city and to be changed in accordance with new and newly discovered needs. Text-books and equipment are to be chosen out of a truly bewildering array of possibilities and with reference to educational and hygienic principles. Schools and departments are to be inaugurated to meet the vocational needs of children and those children are to be assisted in finding the proper preparation for an intelligently chosen life's calling. And so one might multiply the details which make the business of public education in the cities gigan- tic and complex. The New Conception of the City Superintendent. — The changes which have taken place in the educational activities of cities have been reflected in the new position of the city superintendent. The business of handling the affairs of a city 524 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 school system calls today for a body of special knowledge which the layman does not possess and for a refinement of adminis- tration which the board of education cannot supply. The city superintendent is today, generally speaking, a professional edu- cator who is able to attack the labors of his office as an expert. As such he is employed by the city boards of education to do a technical piece of work for which general good intention and common sense alone are no longer adequate. The Relationship between City Board of Education and Superintendent. — The relationship between the city board of education and the superintendent which is coming more and more generally to be accepted as the proper and desirable one follows the general analogy of the relationship which exists between a board of directors and the chief executive whom they select. The board of directors passes upon matters of general policy and holds the executive responsible for efficiently carrying them out. It does not interfere in the details of man- agement, but gives the executive a large amount of freedom in securing efficient results. If this analogy should be applied to the administration of schools, the superintendent would be entrusted with the general management of the school system under the direction of the board of education and in accordance with principles which the board accepts, as stated in their rules and regulations. The superintendent would serve as the expert advisor of the board, and as such he would attend all board meetings with full right to take part in discussion. Com- munications to the board from any subordinate officers and teachers of the school system would be made through the super- intendent, although the right of appeal to the board might well be maintained. The superintendent would have the right to recommend to the board for appointment all subordinates that are to be engaged in the work of instruction or supervision and would be given power to assign all such subordinates to their places and to transfer them as need arose, making a report to the board of his action. The purely professional work, such as the planning of courses of study, would be left to the super- intendent with the cooperation of principals and teachers. A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 525 Recommendations regarding the adoption of text-books, appa- ratus, and supplies would come from the superintendent to the board. The superintendent would also prepare the financial budget for the school system for the succeeding year to serve as the basis for the board's deliberations. The board, on the other hand, would concern itself only with matters of general policy and would hold the superintendent responsible for the efficient performance of his duties.^ Influence of Changed Conception of Board of Educa- tion upon Membership and Procedure. — The relationship between the superintendent of schools and the board of edu- cation which has just been described represents a condition which is increasingly coming about. In general, boards of education no longer pretend to administer either the practical or the professional details of the city's school business. The latter are coming to be placed more and more fully in the hands of the superintendent and the former to be distributed among the superintendent, a buiiness manager, and the paid secretary of the board of education. The board of education comes more and more to limit its activities to general legislation upon school affairs. As a result of this changed conception of the function of the board of education, the practice once in vogue of dividing the board into a large number of special commit- tees has been changed. The board tends to act as a whole after discussion as a committee of the whole. The business with which the board is concerned is so important that it requires concerted action and full consent; while the minor details of administration are left to competent and specially designated subordinates. The new conception of the board's functions has also led to a general reduction of the number of members comprising it. The large and unwieldy boards that were common in the eighties, and that persisted for a long ^ The conception herewith described of the relationship between boards of education and superintendents is closely paralleled in the provisions of the New York law of 1917, which reorganized the boards of education of the cities of the state and redefined their powers and duties as well as those of the superintendent. See also Report U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1914, Vol. I, p. 65. 52 6 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 time after that ^ have been found unsuitable for the new method of full committee action and have practically disap- peared. In 1914," out of 1271 cities reporting with a popula- tion of from 2500 to 30,000, there were only 181 that had more than seven members, and of these only ten had more than twelve members. Out of the entire number there were 907 that had boards of from five to seven members. A similar study ^ of cities having over 100,000 population made in 191 7 showed that the median number of members of boards of education was seven, while the mode was nine. The range was from three to forty-six. Legislation in a number of states has recently been corroborative of the same tendency. In Pennsylvania, for example, a new school code passed in 191 1 classified the school districts of the state into four classes. The first class included cities of 500,000 population and over, the second class, of 30,000 to 499,999, the third class, of 5000 to 29,999, and the fourth class, under 5000. For the first class, the boards of education are to consist of fifteen members and are to be appointed by the judges of the courts of common pleas of the counties. In the cities of the second class the boards are to number nine; in the third class, seven; and in the fourth class, five. In the lowest three classes the boards are to be elected at large at regular municipal elections by the regularly qualified voters. The result of this law has been to reduce the membership of many boards of education. Philadelphia changed from a board having twenty- one members to one of fifteen; Pittsburgh from forty-five to fifteen; Harrisburg from thirty-two to nine; Reading from sixty-four members to nine; Williamsport from fifty-two members to nine. Recent legislation in other states as well indicates the tendency to reduce the number of members of city boards of education. The Pennsylvania law's provision * A study of the administration of education of 90 cities of 40,000 population or over that was made by the U. S. Commissioner of Educa- tion in 1904, showed that only 30 boards had as few as seven members while 30 had 15 members or more. Twenty-three boards had 20 mem- bers or more. ^See Report, U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1914, Vol. I, p. 64. *See Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 1917, No. 8. A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 527 for election of members of boards of education at large in- stead of by wards, as was formerly the general practice, is also recognized as being desirable. This method of selection tends to give a better personnel and to remove the members from local politics. Grov/ing Independence of Superintendent in Profes- sional Affairs. — As the professional advisor and the profes- sional expert employed by the board of education, the city superintendent tends to gain in responsibility and influence in proportion as he proves himself fit for his important posi- tion of educational leadership. The functions and powers of the office continue to depend almost entirely upon the rules of the board of education, but there is a growing ten- dency to give the superintendent more independence. With respect to the important professional function of appointing teachers, the condition in 191 7 was as follows: 'Tn nine cities of 100,000 or more population the superintendent ap- points; in seventeen, he recommends; in nine he nominates either one teacher or a list; in two he has equal say with the committee." ^ In fifty-three cities with between 25,000 and 100,000 population the superintendent recommends to a committee of the board; in thirty-five he nominates; in twenty-three appoints; in sixteen, "advises"; in one he has "no power"; in one, he "passes on qualifications."- Such a summary indicates that the superintendent in practice enjoys a great deal of power in the selection of teachers. The in- fluence of the superintendent upon his board when it comes to matters of general policy, improvement of the service, the construction of new buildings, and a wide range of other matters besides, depends upon his professional knowledge and his personal qualities of leadership. The new superintendent in order to make the most of his opportunities needs to be a trained and growing student of the application of psychology to schoolroom practice, a keen observer of economic and ^ The committee of the board on teachers. 'U. S. Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 1917, No. 8, Current Practice in City School Administration. 528 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 social tendencies, a good business man, a practical executive, and a competent publicist. In addition he must have personal qualities that enable him to work successfully with men and women. This seems to be an exacting list of qualifications. That it is not unreasonable is indicated by the rapidly in- creasing number of men who exemplify all the qualifications named above and others in addition. The man who possesses the qualifications of a good superintendent can look forward to a position of large honor and influence and incidentally to a good salary. Fiscal Dependence or Independence for the Board of Education? — In the matter of the fiscal relationships of boards of education, the cities of the United States exhibit wide variety. In general there are two plans followed. One is to set a statutory limitation upon the tax rate which the board may levy and within those limits to give the board complete financial control. The other is to have the board present its budget to the city board of estimate, city council, or some other body or official, subject to change by the re- viewing authority. "In thirty-five per cent of the cities of 100,000 or more population, the school board makes up its annual budget without referring it to any other body or officer; in twenty-five per cent the board refers it to the mayor, city council, commission, or board of aldermen; in thirty-two per cent, to a board of estimate; and in eight per cent, to the county commissioners. "In fifty-two per cent of the cities having between 25,000 and 100,000 population, the school board makes up its annual budget without referring it to any other body or officer; in twenty-one per cent the board refers it to the mayor, city council, commission, or board of aldermen; in eighteen per cent to a board of estimate; in four per cent to the county board of supervisors; in three per cent to the tax payers; in one per cent to the controller." ^ Fiscal independence on the part of the board of education ^ Taken from Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 1917, No. 8, Current Practice in City School Administration. A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 529 might seem to destroy the theoretic symmetry of a unified city administration. The consensus of opinion among in- fluential educators, however, favors the plan of fiscal in- dependence for boards of education as making for improved schools and a better system of administration. A recent study of the educational conditions in a number of cities in which either the dependent or the independent fiscal relationship existed seems to show that in the cities where the boards do not have to submit their education estimates to a reviewing body the school system is better maintained and the educa- tional results are superior.^ Where the budget as prepared by the board of education must be passed upon by the board of estimate or other city authority, it not infrequently is pared down by the reviewing authority as the city perhaps has already a large general budget which the education estimate would increase to the point where new levels of taxation would have to be reached. Accordingly, in the interest of a professed economy, the funds required for the maintenance and the improvement of schools are denied. Where boards of education are given the power to prepare their budgets and to levy taxes on their municipalities to cover the amount required, within the limitations prescribed by law, such curtailment of educational expenditures is avoided. Fiscal independence of the board within statutory limits of taxation gives the public schools in effect a first lien on the wealth of the community. There seems to be some legislative trend in the direction of fiscal independence, but no adequate his- torical studies of the situation have, to the writer's knowledge, been published. There is little doubt, however, as to the consensus of opinion of professional schoolmen: they are strongly in favor of fiscal independence for city boards of education. Public Secondary Education The American High School Different from European Secondary Schools. — As the term secondary education is used * See Frasier, The Control of School Finance. 530 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 in the United States it continues to apply to the work done in high schools or schools of like grade. It has been pointed out in earlier connections (see p. 457), that there has from the beginning been a decided dualism connected with the American high school, and as the years pass on and the high school increases in numbers and in importance, that dualism tends to become more instead of less pronounced. In our studies of secondary education in France and Germany, it was an easy matter to define a secondary school, for the secondary schools are connected closely with the higher in- stitutions of learning or with entrance to civil service. The badge of proficiency for study in the gymnasium or the lycee is standard and has a recognizable significance. Those coun- tries have also, in the interest of those who do not have any aspirations for professional pursuits or a first-class liberal education, made provision for a moderate extension of study beyond the common branches in subjects that have a bearing upon life's practical needs. The German middle school and the French higher primary school take care of this type of intermediate education, and where the education provided the pupil at the conclusion of the folk school or primary school course is frankly vocational, still other and specific designa- tions are applied to indicate that type of schooling. The High School Offers Three Distinct Types of Education. — In the United States at the present time all three grades and kinds of education separately defined in the ed- ucational parlance of France and Germany and provided for in separate types of school, — namely, secondary, intermediate, and vocational, are being offered side by side in the same high school or are offered in independent institutions to which the same class-name is applied. As a result we can come no closer to a definition of high school study than to say that it is school work of higher grade than that carried on in the elementary schools and lower than that done in colleges. It may include the classics, bookeeping, agriculture, stenography, practical cookery, trigonometry, vocal music, carpentry, modern languages, and millinery. It may be given A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 531 in a school organized for two, for three, for four, or for six years' work. All the teaching may be done by a single teacher or by men or women specially trained for each subject. It may have the approval of a state board or other certificat- ing authority or it may not. The Social Meaning of the American High School. — The reason for this wide diversity of school activities carried on under the name of a single institution, has its roots in those social and economic conditions that were the product of the frontier. As has been pointed out in earlier pages of this work, the division of schools on the basis of economic or social classes was not followed in the United States because such a division was contrary to the major facts of American life and repugnant to the spirit of American institutions. In spite of the progressive industrialization of our economic life and of ever-widening economic gaps in the population, American thought persists in the conviction that the educa- tional opportunities of all should as nearly as possible continue equal. The American high school, with all its diversification of offerings, is the institution through which the doors of individual opportunity are to be kept wide open to all. This fact alone will go far in explaining much that otherwise might seem inconsistent and superficial in connection with secondary education in the United States. It also explains the truly gigantic efforts that have been made during the last generation to bring high school opportunities home to every boy and girl. The Rapid Growth of the High School following 1890. — The multiplication of high schools and the increase of high school pupils during the years following 1890 has been prob- ably the most conspicuous development of public education in the United States during that period. In 1890 there were only a little over 200,000 pupils enrolled in public high schools. In 1900 that number had increased to over 500,000; in 1910, to over 900,000; in 1915, to over 1,300,000; and in 1918, to over 1,600,000. The total increase in the number of public high schools since 1890 is over 452 per cent. In 532 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 twenty-one states in 19 18, ten per cent or more of the entire school enrollment was in the high school. In California 19 per cent of all school pupils were in high schools; in New Hampshire 18. i per cent; and in Massachusetts, 17.2 per cent. The generous provision of high school facilities that is made in so large a proportion of the states, has come about in vari- ous ways. In centers of population the establishment of high schools began to take place rapidly after 1890, and today scarcely any town or village of 2500 inhabitants fails to have at least a partial high school course. The problem in the rural sections has been more difficult. As one reads over the legis- lative record, the first efforts to provide rural high schools, outside of the New England states, followed the lines of per- missive establishment of high schools by counties or town- ships. The New England states developed along the lines of the town, allowing or finally compelling all towns of a cer- tain population or taxable wealth to maintain high schools, and in the absence of a high school in any town, to pay the tuition of pupils in a neighboring town high school. In many parts of the country, consolidation of school districts provided first a system of graded schools and later high schools. An- other plan that has been widely followed in many states has beer the passage of laws allowing the formation of special districts for high school purposes. In many cases, the state has encouraged the establishment of high schools through the grants of state aid for the high schools as such, or for the teaching of special vocational branches in the high schools, or for teacher training classes. A number of the southern states have attempted to increase the supply of high schools through the establishment of such schools, nominally agricultural high schools, in congressional or other extensive districts. Alabama began this policy in 1889 and was followed by Georgia in 1906 and by Virginia in 1908. Other Southern states have since then taken similar steps. Naturally the number of schools so added is small. ^ 'See U. S. Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 1918, No. 23. A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 533 Nothing could be more instructive in regard to the way in which high school facilities have been multiplied in the United States than to read the record of the legislation regarding high schools which was passed by the state legislatures in the years 191 5, 19 1 6, and 19 17.' In that record, exhibiting as it does extreme differences in the high school development among the forty-eight states of the Union, one would get a resume of the various steps which the states now most advanced in respect to public secondary education have historically taken. Ala- bama, as an example of a state that is retarded in its provision of high schools, passed a law in 191 5 allowing cities and towns to make appropriations from city and town funds and to issue bonds to aid in the construction of county high schools. Arizona passed a law in 191 7 which authorized any school district having an average attendance of 200 or more or having a property valuation of $1,500,000 or more to establish a high school, or any two or more districts jointly having such attend- ance or valuation to form a union high school district. Another instructive example is seen in the Indiana law which puts pressure on sluggish townships that could have high schools but will not: "In each township having an assessed valuation of over $600,000 and wherein there is not now established a high school in such township or town therein and where there is no high school within three miles of the boundaries of such township, and wherein for the last two years there have been in said township eight or more graduates of the elementary schools, the township trustees shall (formerly may) establish and maintain therein a high school. In any township having a valuation of over $1,250,000, on petition of forty or more persons having charge of children of school age, township trustees shall establish and maintain a high school or joint high school and elementary school, at place named in petition, notwithstanding there may be a high school within three miles of the boundary of the township." - Or here again is the recent Kansas high school legislation which represents the 'See U. S. Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 1918, No. 23. 'See Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 1918, No. 23. 534 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 effort of a state having wide stretches of thinly populated country to provide high school facilities for all pupils under especially difficult conditions. The legislature of that state provided in 19 15 for the creation of special rural high school districts on the petition of two-fifths of the legal voters of proposed district followed by a majority vote of the citizens in the district affected and allowed a special annual tax levy for the maintenance of the high school established. Another law passed by the Kansas legislature in the same year provided: "In every county in which provision is not made for free high school tuition for qualified pupils, any holder of a common school diploma residing in a district not maintaining a four- year accredited high school may attend any accredited high school of the county, or the high school nearest his residence, and his tuition fees shall be paid." ^ This law was only per- missive and depended upon the favorable vote of the electors affected, but in 191 7 the lawmakers became weary of tem- porizing in the matter and passed a law which directed the county commissioners to pay the tuition of high school pupils residing in remote places where there were not enough pupils to justify the organization of a high school. Finally take the legislation of California, a state which in 1915 already had developed perhaps the most comprehensive system of high school instruction provided by any state in the Union. A dozen or more laws relating to high schools were passed by the two legislatures meeting in 19 15 and 191 7, only a few of which will be noted here. A law of 191 5 legalized the estab- lishment of "intermediate" or junior high schools by high school boards. A second law of the same year made manda- tory a county tax to provide at least $60 per pupil of average attendance in high school, or at least $250 per teacher, and a further sum, not exceeding $5 a month per pupil, to pay for he transportation of high school pupils not living in high :chool districts. Still another law compelled the complete organization of the entire area of. each county into districts for high school purposes and provided for the election of a 'See Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 1918, No. 23. A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 535 high school board for such districts. A law passed in 191 7 in California authorized the high school board of any high school district having an assessed valuation of $3,000,000 or more to provide for graduates of the high school a junior college course, or courses, of not exceeding two years' dura- tion. The provision of high school opportunities and the stand- ards of high schools vary greatly among the various states. Indeed, California with its universal system of high schools, liberally supported by the joint contributions of state and local authorities, standardized and supervised under the state de- partment of education, and offering a rich variety of instruction, presents a sharp contrast with any one of a half dozen states that occupy the other end of the high school scale. Differences in high school opportunity as great as those which are exhibited between California, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts on the one hand and South Carolina, Arkansas, and North Caro- lina on the other, are so extreme as to constitute a national weakness and to call for national action. But even such na- tional aid for the amelioration of a special situation would be bad policy if it should in any unfavorable way affect the process whereby the separate states, here a little and there a little, now permitting, now aiding the weak and aspiring dis- tricts, and now compelling the strong, but lethargic districts, have encouraged local authorities within their borders to in- crease year by year the supply of high schools and gradually to improve those already in existence. Flexibility of the High School. — The very extensive de- velopment of the high school in recent years has been largely due to the fact that it is flexible enough in its organization to meet every sort of condition. In 1917-1918 there were 3222 high schools, or 23.1 per cent of the total, with twenty- five pupils or fewer; there were 3820, or 27.4 per cent of the total, with from twenty-six to 50 pupils, and there were 632 with more than 500 pupils. There were 1856 high schools that offered only two years' work or less, 1929 that offered three years', and 10,166 that offered the standard four years'. These 536 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 schools were located all over the country, in the largest cities, in smaller cities, in villages, and at country crossroads where the schoolhouse was the only building within a mile. They served the educational needs of youth who were going to col- lege and who knew it and wanted the high school work that would enable them to enter college without condition and under- take college work with success. They served the needs of youth who were going into offices, into shops, mills, and factories, of boys who were going to be farmers, and girls who were going to be farmers' wives. They served the needs of youth who didn't know what they were going to do but were planning to get a bit more education before they got at it. Those high schools were also serving the ends of a society which desired for its youth more extended preparation for the duties of adult life and of citizenship than the short course of the elementary school would provide, and which demanded in addition that the workers who were to produce the industrial, commercial, and agricultural wealth of the nation should be better prepared for efficient workmanship. With all these different social and individual needs affecting the activities of an institution that goes by a single name, but exhibits infinite variations as to resources, equipment, teaching staff, and pupils, it is no won- der that the American high school at the present time is a central point of educational reorganization. The Junior High School. — Within the last ten years there has been a great deal of discussion regarding the proper divi- sion of the twelve years which have represented the common range of public schooling. Psychological considerations indi- cate that a division should be made at the end of the sixth rather than the eighth year. Practical experience with seventh and eighth grade pupils reveals a considerable marking of time in the last two years of the eight-year elementary course. The demands of time economy call for the earlier beginning of certain subjects than the ninth year, both for vocational and for college preparatory ends. The desire to keep open the doors of opportunity as long as possible for all children points to the desirability of greater freedom for self-discovery before A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 537 they are compelled to choose seriously and definitely a life calling. The general utility of manual education and the probability that the great majority of pupils will become in- dustrial workers or farmers, constitute a reason for greater attention to work with tools and materials. These and other reasons have prompted the organization of an intermediate or junior high school, composed of the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades or some other combination of intermediate grades, in which the various educational modifications mentioned above may be introduced. The junior high school idea is having wide adoption and promises to become the standard form of organization over the country at large for the intermediate grades. And here again we are back on oid ground ! All the children of all the people are to go to a common school and are there to enjoy as fully as possible the opportunity of making the most of their endowment. The junior high school proposes to give the child the chance to find out what he likes to do and can do. If he is cut out for a mechanical employment, says the junior high school protagonist, let him find it out early and, while keeping up his general and civic instruction and preparing him for a better use of his leisure time, give him some school work that will have a bearing on vocational fitness. If he is one of those upon whom society can profitably expend the cost of a liberal and extensive education, let that fact be revealed, and, if necessary, let him be plucked out of the travelling belt of economic circumstance and given his chance. The "Cosmopolitan High School." — But after the process of self-revelation and social selection takes place, what then? The American answer seems to be, let the high school continue to serve the individual and society by further preparing him along lines that his ability or his inclinations indicate. If he is to be a machinist, give him a course that will make him a machinist, — not more or less experimental work with tools, but real vocational education, with grease, overalls, time-clock, and part-time work in the industries. If he is to be a bookkeeper, 538 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 then let the work to be done in the last four years of his school life make him, among other things, an efficient book- keeper. If he is going to college, give him subjects he will need if he is going to do efficient college work. If the pupil be a girl and is probably not going to college, then give her four years of work that will prepare her better to perform the duties of the vocation of wife and motherhood. But let all these boys and girls attend the same high school. Let them all meet together in some aspects of their high school course. Give them a common core of knowledge and a common stock of ideals that will make them all familiar with the world they live in and intelligent about and loyal to their duties as citi- zens of the same community and nation. That is the American version of the Einheitsschtde or the ecole unique. The Commission of the National Educational Association on the Reorganization of Secondary Education has declared in favor of the closest possible union in the high school of the widest possible range of curriculums. The work of most cosmopolitan high schools in the greater American cities bears a pretty close resemblance to that expressed ideal, and the educational necessities of rural and small town life demand a wide diversity of school offerings beyond the ele- mentary grades. The great administrative problem continues to be that of maintaining a high grade of such academic work as will test and improve the powers of those who should and will follow college and university careers, while at the same time providing a rich offering of subjects that will serve the needs of the larger group of youth whose school experience will end with the high school. The High School and the College. — The statistics of public high schools for 1917-1918^ show that for the United States as a whole, twenty-eight per cent of the high school graduates continued their education in institutions of college grade while fourteen per cent in addition were attending nor- mal schools or other institutions of higher rank than the high school. In all forty-two per cent of all high school graduates ^ See Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 1920, No. 19. A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 539 for that year continued their education in more advanced in- stitutions. As a result of the large college preparatory function of the public high school it has been essential that some means be found to estimate the quality of the work done in the high schools and their fitness to ask for their graduates the privi- lege of entering upon college or university work without exami- nation. The first extensive effort along the line of accrediting high schools for college entrance was made by associations of colleges and preparatory schools (see p. 458). Following the formation of the New England Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools in 1885, the Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools in the Middle States and Maryland was organized in 1892, the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, in 1895, and the Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Southern States, in the same year. The work which these associations have done in defining or setting standards with reference to units of high school study, minimum requirements for graduation, preparation of teachers, laboratory and library facilities, buildings, number of pupils per teacher, and so forth, has been extremely influen- tial in establishing standards for high school achievement.^ State universities in the seventies began to undertake the inspection of the state high schools, but with the development of state departments of education and the all but universal appointment of high school inspectors or supervisors on the state department staffs, this work of accrediting high schools has largely been turned over to the state departments of edu- cation. In considering the movement toward standardized high school curriculums, one should not lose sight of the pioneer work done by the "Committee of Ten on Secondary School Studies," appointed by the National Educational Association in 1892.* ^ See Bureau of Education Bulletin, iqiq, No. 45, The Accredited Secondary Schools of the North Central Association. ' For an excellent summary of the recommendations of the "Commit- tee of Ten" see Brown, The Making of Our Middle Schools, p. 381 and ff. 540 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 While the curriculums recommended by the Committee never secured extensive adoption their efforts to define thorough work of high school grade did much to create common standards on higher levels. The combinations of studies included in the Committee's model programs represented a rather conserva- tive selection and did not depart greatly from the conception of the high school as mainly a preparatory school for college. The Committee was emphatic in its opinion that no matter whether or not the high school pupil expected to enter college, his high school work should be the same, which was to say, it should be made up largely of the subjects that were recog- nized for college preparation. The development of high school curriculums since the Committee made its report has taken a direction quite different from that which the Committee stood for, but the Committee's recommendation that any combination of courses, pursued with thoroughness and meeting the quantity qualification, should be accepted for college entrance, has come increasingly to prevail. The Commission on the Reorganiza- tion of Secondary Education of the National Educational Association in their report entitled "Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education," ' express this principle in full view of the large diversity of present-day high school curriculums and the great amount of vocational education given: "The tradi- tion that a particular type of education, and that exclusively non-vocational in character, is the only acceptable preparation for advanced education, either liberal or vocational, must . . . give way to a scientific evaluation of all types of secon- dary education as preparation for continued study. This broader conception need not involve any curtailment of oppor- tunities for those who early manifest academic interest to pursue the work adapted to their needs. It does, however, mean that pupils who, during the secondary period, devote a considerable time to courses having vocational content should be permitted to pursue whatever form of higher education, either liberal or vocational, they are able to undertake with profit to themselves and society." 'Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 1918, No. 35- A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 541 There is, on the other hand, a very genuine conviction among many American educators, particularly those connected with institutions of higher education and more specifically those concerned with college admissions, that any considerable amount of vocational work or of the less exacting high school studies, constitutes a dangerous lowering of the college en- trance standard and does not represent adequate preparation for the work of even a higher technological or professional institution. The tendency to make the work of the high school minister directly to the needs of practical life, as in the case of the French higher primary schools, has come about in re- sponse to insistent sociological demands and will probably continue and gain strength. To insist, however, that curricu- lums so weighted with vocational work are, by a sort of divine right of democracy, adequate preparation for higher studies, is another matter, just as the French higher primary school is not a lycee. At the present time the proper relationship be- tween the people's high school and the colleges and universities is undetermined, and the problems connected with that issue constitute one of the critical phases of American education. Vocational Education In the discussion of secondary education it has been neces- sary to touch upon the increasingly large part of the high school offering which vocational studies are coming to repre- sent, but it seems desirable to pay separate attention to that type of school work. Recognition of vocational education as an important aspect of the nation's educational task came with extreme slowness and was belated long after the time when the industrial needs of the nation were known to call for a class of trained workers for which we were in large part depending on foreign supply. The industrial developments which oc- curred in the thirty years following the Civil War created the need for better educated workmen, foremen, and managers, but it is only the last fifteen years that have seen any deter- mined effort to meet that need through the establishment of 542 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 public vocational schools. Indeed, it is true to say that public vocational education in this country has had more develop- ment in the last seven or eight years than in all the years before them. The need for additional facilities for training workmen, before the passage of the Massachusetts Law of 1906, was met, where it was met at all, largely through the maintenance of a few private trade and secondary technical schools, a small number of industrial schools maintained by municipalities, evening technical schools, and schools for workmen maintained by corporations. The entire supply of such schools in 191 1, considering the industrial need, was almost negligible.^ Be- sides the work of a strictly vocational nature offered in the schools just mentioned, a number of manual training high schools were in existence and many other high schools were offering "manual training" courses that were expected to serve as preparation for advantageous pursuit of industrial callings. In the nineties there occurred, however, a sharp break in the ranks of the advocates of industrial education. As has been pointed out in an earlier connection, there were some educators who supported industrial work in the schools on the ground of its general educative values, while others saw in manual train- ing a means of preparing industrial workers. As the demands for more specific industrial training became more pressing, those who favored manual training for industrial purposes tended to make that work more and more practical and to connect it up more closely with the actual conditions and needs of trades and factories. As a result the advocates of "real" vocational education came to eschew the manual training exer- cises as practically worthless for vocational purposes, and to demand specific vocational training in the public school sys- tem that would at once serve the needs of industry and the personal opportunity of the prospective workman. 'See National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education, Bulletin No. 11, A Descriptive List of Trade and Industrial Schools in the United States. A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 543 Early State Action in respect to Vocational Education. — The first action by any state to stimulate the development of vocational schools was the appointment in Massachusetts of a Commission on Industrial and Technical Education, which made its report in 1906. That report showed not only the needs of industry in the state for trained workmen but also revealed the fact that large numbers of boys and girls who left the elementary schools at the conclusion of the compulsory education period were drifting about doing nothing or entering "blind alley" occupations that must eventually lead to eco- nomic failure. The recommendations of the Commission led to the passage in 1906 of a law whereby the state undertook to cooperate with local communities in the maintenance of vocational schools. By the terms of the law the administration of vocational education was placed in the hands of a State Commission on Industrial Education. In 1909 the Commission was abolished and its duties transferred to a reorganized State Board of Education. A Deputy Commissioner of Education to be in charge of vocational education was provided for. Wisconsin passed a permissive law in 1907 allowing cities or school districts to maintain vocational schools and in 191 1 took the significant step of making it compulsory upon any minor between 14 and 16 years of age, who was working under "permit," to attend evening school, industrial school, or continuation school for five hours per week for six months in each year, wherever such a school existed. Employers were at the same time compelled to allow their minor em- ployees who attended such schools a corresponding reduction of hours of work. New York began its system of state aided vocational schools in 1909. By 19 14, New Jersey, Pennsyl- vania, and Indiana had also made provision for state systems of vocational schools partly supported by state aid and super- vised by state agents. In that year nine other states were making state appropriations to communities for schools offer- ing approved courses in industrial, manual, or household arts. As a result of this legislation there were developed under public 544 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 auspices a number of types of vocational school. There were full-time day schools, part-time and day continuation schools, evening continuation schools, and evening schools, giving trade preparatory courses for boys and girls, trade extension courses for adults, homemaking courses for girls, and agricultural courses for boys and girls. Results of the Smith-Hughes Act. — The appointment of the Commission on National Aid to Vocational Education in 19 1 4, the report of that Commission, and the passage of the Smith-Hughes Act in 191 7, have already been discussed in another connection (see p. 481 and p. 483). The Smith- Hughes Act has resulted, even under the unfavorable condi- tions which ensued upon its passage, in a great stimulation of the states in their provision of vocational schools. By January I, 1918, all the states had accepted the provisions of the act and had had their plans for developing vocational education approved by the Federal Board. "Federally aided vocational courses have been set up (19 19) in agriculture in forty-one states, in trade and industrial subjects in thirty-two states, and in home economics in twenty-nine states; twenty- two states have organized courses in each of these three fields; in forty-six states teacher-training courses have been organ- ized." ^ In 1919 there were 2039 vocational schools in the United States which received an average sum of $557.88 from the federal government out of the Smith-Hughes fund. That year saw a total increase in the number of teachers in voca- tional schools so aided of 1121 over the number of the pre- ceding year. In the State of Arkansas the increase was from nineteen teachers to two hundred and forty-nine, in Ohio from one hundred and sixty-six to five hundred and twenty-four, and in Illinois from seventy-six to two hundred and forty-three. The pupils attending such schools increased from one hundred and sixty-four thousand in the first year of operation of the act to one hundred and ninety-five thousand in the second year, 1919. 'See Bureau of Education, Bulletin, igig, No. 20, Vocational Edu- cation. A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 545 While the United States remains far behind many other modern nations in its provision for vocational education, a system of organization and financial support has been devised which promises rapid development in this field. Continuation Schools Before 19 19 there were only two states in the United States that compelled attendance of working minors in continuation schools. Wisconsin had enacted such a law in 19 11 (see p. 543) and Pennsylvania in 191 5. In 1919, seventeen other states passed either mandatory or permissive laws regarding the maintenance of continuation schools and the attendance of minors in such schools. At the present time (June 192 1 ) there are twenty-six states which have laws either requiring or per- mitting the establishment of continuation schools for working children over fourteen years of age. In ten states the law extends the period of compulsory school attendance to the age of sixteen, in ten, to the age of eighteen, and in the case of three other states to the age of twenty-one in case the minor is unable to read, write, or speak English. The term varies from sixteen weeks to the length of the regular school year and the hours per week vary from four to eight. The almost spontaneous development in this country of con- tinuation schools is traceable to at least two important sources. One of these is the aid held out for such schools in the Smith- Hughes Act when they offer vocational instruction. The other is the very great concern, which was one of the results of the war, for the removal of illiteracy, for better training for citizenship, and for the Americanization of aliens. We learned that vast numbers of foreign-born and children of foreign-born, who lived under our institutions, voted in our elections, and were called upon to serve in the army, were unable to use the English language and were ignorant of American traditions and current civil practices. In practically every state where there is a considerable proportion of foreign-born, vigorous efforts are being made to bring every such person into a school in 546 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 which he can learn to read, write, and speak the English language and become familiar with American government and institutions.^ The continuation school as it has been organized in the various states during the past years is not exclusively a voca- tional school. It is partly that, even largely that, but it is also being developed to serve as a supplement to the general education of the pupils who leave school to work at the earliest possible legal age. The Commission of the National Educa- tional Association on the War-Time Emergency in Education saw in the continuation school an educational agency that de- served extended development and which promised large possi- bilities of social service: "Without sacrificing in any essential way its service to industry, the scope of the continuation school should be broadened to include those elements of gen- eral and liberal education that are so fundamental to sound democratic citizenship. It should supply to the boys and girls who must leave school and go to work something of the insight, something of the broader outlook, something of the stimulus to mental growth that the full-time high schools and colleges provide. It should not be a thing apart, a cheap makeshift for the unfortunate, but rather a recognized and well-supported unit in democracy's public school system." - Compulsory Attendance While there has been steady improvement in the matter of school attendance in the United States during the past thirty years, much remains to be desired in that respect. The oppo- sition to compulsory attendance laws has continued up to very recent years in some states on the ground that such laws were un-American, undemocratic, and an interference with the per- sonal liberty of the individual. As has been said in an earlier connection twenty-six states had enacted compulsory attend- ance laws before 1890, although most of them were dead letter ^See U. S. Bureau of Education, Bulletin, igig, Nos. 76-77- ' A National Program for Education, National Education Association, Washington, D. C, June, 1918. A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 547 statutes. By 19 14 all the states except six had enacted such laws of greater or less effectiveness but in four states the laws were local option measures and applied to school districts only on the favorable vote of the people of the district. Mississippi was the last of the states to^pass a compulsory attendance law, of the local option variety, in 1918. In 1920 the law was given statewide application. A study of the compulsory attendance regulations in effect in the various states discloses great variety.^ A number of the more thickly populated states have developed their laws and their enforcement administration to a fairly satisfactory point, but in all too many states the statutory provision is faulty and the enforcement of the laws inadequate. In a number of states where there are compulsory attendance laws the period of attendance is only a fraction of the entire school year. This represents the early stage through which almost all states have passed. The provision of full-term attendance is coming generally to be demanded. Most states have also advanced to the point of calling for truant officers, but in many cases the pay and qualifications of these officers are put too low for effi- ciency. While a census of school children is pretty generally required to be made by the local authorities, such records are notoriously inexact. An accurate continuous list of all school children made by local officers under the supervision of state agents is a prime requisite to success in securing good attend- ance. But even when such a list is honestly and carefully prepared, it is possible for children of school age to escape the law through the pretense that they are attending private schools. Not until every private school is compelled to co- operate with the public education and police authorities in this matter will this difficulty be removed. A second difficulty that may arise even where a good list is maintained comes through the issuance of working permits by other than school authori- ties and the issuance of these peiTnits for a definite period. It would improve the situation greatly if child labor laws were * For an excellent discussion of the problem see Ensign, School At- tendance and Child Labor. 548 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 made to correspond to attendance requirements, and if labor permits to children of school age were issued only by a re- sponsible education authority to a specific employer who should return the permit to the issuing authority when the child leaves his employment. Finally, the tendency with local authorities seems to be to let enforcement of compulsory attendarice measures slip. The experience of states that have state agents for the enforcement of school attendance laws indicates that that is the most effective means of securing conscientious ap- plication of the laws by local school officers. Every year sees new legislation in the various states which is designed to stiffen the regulations regarding school attendance and to introduce some of the above named practices that make for efficient administration. The Professional Education of Teachers and Supervisors The changes which the last generation has seen in the num- bers and the improving standards of the high school have been definitely reflected in the normal school. With the almost universal provision of high school opportunities it has become much less necessary for the normal schools to provide classes for those who have only completed the work of the elementary grades. In more than twenty states in 1917-1918/ the en- trance requirement of the state normal schools was four full years of high school work and in many of the remaining states individual normal schools had established that entrance quali- fication. In a large number of schools, however, candidates who had finished the eighth grade were accepted as students. In other cases intermediate requirements between full high school work and eighth grade graduation were made. The tendency undoubtedly is toward high school graduation as the prerequisite of the normal school work, and as the supply of local high schools becomes more adequate the normal school will be able to rid itself of the function which it has historically 'See Bureau of Education, Bulletin, igig, No. 81, Statistics of Normal Schools. A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 549 fulfilled of providing secondary school opportunities for large districts. The character of the normal schools is in another way closely bound up with the conditions of secondary education. We have seen that high schools have naturally developed out of the elementary schools as local communities have felt able to afford the more extended curriculum. High schools of one, two, and three years have historically been common and con- tinue in existence in appreciable numbers. In many states it was long after high schools had become numerous before any attempt at standardization occurred, and in some states today there are no authoritative standards of high school work. Under such conditions it was but natural that the certificate that was good for elementary schools should be good for the high school. The teacher who was a graduate of a normal school might presumably be considered better prepared for teaching than one without such training. The better teaching opportunities were to be found where high schools were being established. As a result the graduate of the normal school was both eligible and desirable as a high school teacher, and many high schools were taught by teachers whose maximum academic preparation was that which had been acquired in normal schools. However, as standards for high schools began more gener- ally to be set up, the academic requirements of teachers tended to be placed at graduation from a four-year college course. But in many cases where different classes of high schools were recognized by the state departments of education, normal graduates were recognized as eligible to teach in the less de- veloped types of high schools. The normal schools found themselves in the position of being allowed to train teachers for two-year high schools, for example, but excluded by the state department's requirements from preparing teachers for standard four-year high schools. In face of this situation the normal schools have tended to expand their courses so as to be of four years' duration beyond high school. In other words they have become teachers colleges with the right to grant 550 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 academic degrees and to present their graduates from the four years' course as eligible for the state high school certificate. The excursion of normal schools into the field of college- grade instruction is so recent that there yet exists among the normal schools offering such work a distressing lack of uni- formity, and in some instances a deplorable absence of stand- ards of good work. Many students of education have insisted that in entering the field of preparing high school teachers the normal schools are getting out of their legitimate province. The work of preparing elementary teachers, they say, continues to be inadequately done, and that is the real work cut out for the normal schools. They would insist that normal schools remain institutions for the training of elementary teachers. Those who are in charge of the normal schools, on the other hand, dislike to give up their highest type of students, for collegiate departments attract numbers and a better type of student, and the carrying on of the higher academic work gives tone and adds vitality to the institution as an academic community. As a matter of fact, the present trend seems to be decidedly in the direction of allowing normal schools to expand into degree-granting teachers colleges. Illinois, Kan- sas, Missouri, and Colorado were among the first states to allow their normal schools to grant standard bachelor's degrees. In the last two years many states have reconstituted their normal schools on such a basis, until at the present time (March 1922), there are ninety-one teacher training institutions recog- nized by the National Association of Teachers Colleges. In spite of the uncertainties that exist in respect to the normal schools today, there has come about a practically uni- versal acceptance of high school graduation as a basis for the normal school course and for the development of two- year courses beyond high school as the minimum preparation for elementary school teachers. Three-year courses beyond the high school for elementary teachers are also coming to be more general. On the other hand, there continue to be a great many normal schools in which the entire work for the elementary A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 551 teachers' certificate is comprised in a two- or three-year course beyond the elementary school. The Preparation of Secondary School Teachers in Colleges. — With the increasing tendency to make four years of college work the minimum standard of preparation for high school teachers, the colleges have attempted to supply a cer- tain amount of professional work. Courses are given in edu- cational psychology, history of education, educational admin- istration, and other professional subjects. In many states, colleges are accredited by the state department of education for giving this professional work for prospective high school teachers, and on the completion of, say, fifteen semester hours of education courses, the graduate is granted a certificate which allows him to teach in the high schools of the state. Within the last twenty years this practice has had rapid and almost universal development, so that at present most colleges have departments of education and are assisting in the supply of secondary school teachers. In practically all the state universi- ties and in most of the larger independent colleges and uni- versities schools of education have been formed. Teachers College, New York City, founded in 1888, became a part of Columbia University in 1898. The School of Education of Chicago University was organized as a separate school in 1901. In 1902 the University of Missouri established a School of Education, followed the next year by the University of Virginia. Since that time development in this direction has been rapid. ^'he Graduate Study of Education.^The creation of uni- versity schools of education is of much wider significance, however, than the contribution which such schools make to the supply of secondary school teachers. The greatest service which such institutions have performed is to place the stady of education upon the plane of scientific research. The uni- versity school of education continues to prepare secondary school teachers, but an increasingly larger part of its work now lies in the preparation of teachers for normal schools and 552 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 colleges, and in the professional education of supervisors, city superintendents, and statistical experts. The rise in the position and influence of the city superintendent and the ex- tension of expert state school administration have been made possible owing to the scientific study of education that has been developed during the last thirty years in graduate schools and colleges of education. No one properly understands the spirit and the workings of American education unless he properly appreciates the part that is played in it by men and women trained in university colleges of education. The large amount of local autonomy which various classes of school authorities enjoy in this country gives opportunity for such trained men and women to apply freely the broader knowledge and the scientific method which their university studies have given them. In this way every man and woman trained through graduate study of education may become a center of school improvement. The university school for the graduate study of education is the capstone of democracy within the school system. The elementary school teacher, prepared for service in the normal school, can apply his normal school courses in part require- ment for the bachelor's degree. He can complete the college course either in a liberal arts college or in the school of edu- cation of a university. From that point he can continue his studies of education, after practical school experience or not, in the university graduate school and go on to the doctorate in education. The way from the humblest position as teacher of an elementary school to the most influential position of educational leadership is wide open for him without penalty or restriction, and dependent only on his native ability and his resolution. Other Teacher Training Agencies. — In spite of the rapid increase in normal schools, the supply of trained teachers has remained far below the entire number required. Normal school graduates have generally been able to enter the better paid positions, mainly in the graded systems of the cities. As a result the normal schools have done little to improve the quali- A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 553 fications of the rural teachers. In order to supply some mini- mum training for that class of teachers, a number of states have originated county normal schools, and still others have organized teacher training classes in local high schools.^ This recent development repeats the early conditions of teacher training in this country when this work was carried on almost entirely in the academies. Wisconsin is the only state that has separate county normal schools, but in 191 7 five other states had separate departments for teacher training in county or other high schools. In the same year fifteen states recognized teacher training work done as a regular part of the high school work. In 191 7 these schools graduated 16,626 prospective elementary school teachers. The Training of Teachers in Service. — When it is con- sidered that four-fifths of all the teachers in the United States have a preparation for their work of less than two years of study beyond a four-year high school, and that one-fourth of the entire number have had less than the equivalent of two years of high school,- it is easily seen that it becomes essential to attempt something in the way of improving their efficiency while they are in service. To this end teachers' reading circles have been organized in a large number of states, and the teachers' institute has become a regular part of the adminis- tration of education. Much of this work has been inefficient in the past and much of it remains so; but a tendency to make of the teachers' institute a short course with regular class exercises and group discussions promises to i'mprove its efficiency. Considerable improvement is being accomplished through the aid granted by local school authorities to enable teachers in service to attend the summer schools that are conducted in almost all normal schools and colleges. In some cases promotion and increase of pay are made to depjend upon summer school study. ^ See Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 1917, Wo. 31, Rural Teacher Preparation in County Training Schools and High Schools. ^See Keith and Bagley, The Nation and fts Schools, p. 208 and ff. 554 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 Private and Parochial Schools It is difficult to give the facts concerning private and pa- rochial schools in the United States, because only a few states require those in charge of such schools to return attendance statistics or to give any other information about their work. With almost negligible qualification it may be said that pri- vate schools are completely independent of the public educa- tion authorities. Such indifference on the part of civil authori- ties would lead one to suppose that the private schools were few and unimportant in American education; but indeed quite the contrary is true. In 191 7-19 18 the United States Com- missioner of Education estimated (for actual statistics are lacking) that there were 1,915,125 pupils enrolled in private elementary, secondary, and business schools, as compared with 20,853,516 in the public schools. That is to say, almost one- twelfth of all the children attending elementary and high schools in the United States were in private and parochial schools. In some states the proportion ran considerably higher than that. In Massachusetts almost one-sixth, in Illinois, over one-sixth, and in Rhode Island, almost one-fifth, of all the pupils were in non-public schools. The motives that lead to the maintenance of private schools in the United States are various. In the large cities with their polyglot population, where single areas served by the same school may embrace all the extremes of wealth and social background and culture, there is a growing tendency for parents to send their children to private schools if they can afford it or even when to do so requires considerable financial sacrifice. They do not wish their children to acquire the language habits, the moral standards, or the social usages of Ihe city street. This motive is hardly present outside of the large cities of the country, which is to say it is mainly confined to the cities of the East. In the smaller cities all over the country or in any city where the population is largely native and where violent extremes of culture and language habits do A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 555 not exist, the children of all the people, rich and poor, attend the public elementary and high schools. A second motive which leads to the maintenance of the private schools is the desire of certain religious sects to in- clude specific religious instruction in the day's work of the schools. They are undoubtedly sincere in their conviction that religious observances and instruction in religious dogmas are elements in the education of children that deserve first place, and they desire to maintain schools in which the chil- dren will be in a daily atmosphere of piety and will become habituated to religious attitudes. Owing to the thorough in- termingling of various religious sects in the population, religious instruction in the public school has been found impracticable and as a result the curriculum has become almost completely secularized. Accordingly, in order to give their children the religious instruction desired, a number of sects maintain ex- pensive and elaborate systems of parochial schools paralleling the public school establishment. There is a certain phase of private education as carried on by some, but by no means all, religious bodies that has come in for considerable attention during and since the War. In some cases, the religious body is composed of persons recently come from a foreign land who use their native language in their religious services and desire to have their children taught the language, literature, and traditions of the homeland. In such cases, the language of the private school has often been some other than English and the pupils have been schooled in the traditions of Germany or some other cultural unit. In an English speaking society the pupils were being taught to speak and think in a foreign language, and in America they were growing up without instruction concerning American history and institutions. Der alte Fritz, der erste Kaiser, Garibaldi, Kosciusko, or Gustavus Adolphus were their heroes and they did not know Washington, Lincoln, or Lee. We do not have accurate statistics of the private schools in which foreign lan- guages were used, but it is safe to say that thousands of pros- 556 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 pective American citizens were before the war being prepared for their duties in such restricted schools of American de- mocracy. There is little disposition in the United States to restrict either individuals or organizations in their freedom to maintain private schools. It is pretty generally regarded as the right of the individual parent to choose some special type of in- struction for his children if he so desires. There is, however, a rapidly maturing conviction that the nation has a right to demand of all private schools that they measure up to the standards of educational efficiency which the public schools maintain. Where the state is raising the standards of prepara- tion and proficiency of the public school teachers, elabo- rating the machinery of supervision, carefully organizing the subject-matter of instruction, and developing agencies for the scrupulous observance of attendance and child-labor laws, it is illogical to allow one- twelfth of all the children to remain altogether outside that farsighted and benevolent jurisdiction. If it would be inconsistent with the American spirit of indi- vidual liberty to refuse private parties and associations the right to maintain their own schools and systems of schools, it is no less inconsistent with the demands of national solidarity and efficiency, that those schools be compelled to come up to the standards of attendance, teacher-preparation, civic in- struction, and the proficiency of pupils in school work, which are set up for the public schools. As to the maintenance of any schools — public or private — in which some language other than English is the basis of instruction, that is obviously unfair and unjustifiable. It is unfair to the children to deprive them of the most adequate knowledge possible of the language, the history, and the institutions of the land they will live in. It is unfair to the adopted country to accept the advantages and opportunities which it will offer to those children, while at- tempting to maintain in their minds a major loyalty for the land from which their parents came. It is unfair to the adopted country, furthermore, because it is in effect withholding from it the fullest possible social, economic, and political service A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 557 which those children might render. In the interest of national unity and national progress, no school in the United States should be allowed to make any language other than English the basis of communication and daily instruction. Civic and Patriotic Instruction The social studies failed to receive any extensive develop- ment in the United States before 1890. History and geog- raphy were taught in the city schools and in many of the states they had been named among the subjects of study required by law. They continued, however, to be taught largely as fact subjects. As has been pointed out (see p. 470), the late eighties and the nineties saw a new quickening of the national conscience in regard to the bad political conditions that obtained in all sections of the country, but especially in the larger cities. Ballot reforms and other changes were ef- fected for the sake of political health. At the same time and prompted by the same surrounding conditions the educators of the country took to heart the possible service that the public schools might render in the cause of better citizenship. Speaking from the technical standpoint, it was the Herbartian influence, which became strong in this cotmtry after 1890, that emphasized the utility of the social studies in the development of character and the making of citizens. From that time on, the social studies began to occupy a larger part of the school time, and new conceptions of subject-matter and method were developed in the interest of making the schools more effective in performing their civic mission. The Herbartian conception of the important place to be assigned to social studies received its first general introduction to American educators through the Report of the Committee of Fifteen of the Department of Superintendence of the Na- tional Education Association, made in 1895. The Committee of Fifteen was divided into three sub-committees, one of which was detailed to report on the Correlation of Studies in Ele- mentary Education. The report of this Committee placed 5S8 NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 geography third on the list and history fourth in respect to the educational values of school subjects. The conception of his- tory study in the schools which the report exhibited was far from "pragmatic." It did not stress the inculcation of patriot- ism. It did not put history in the schools under any obligation other than to reveal to the pupil the meaning of social and civil institutions and his relationship to them as a citizen. The same philosophical and scientific attitude toward the uses of history as a school subject was taken in reports made in 1899 by the Committee of Seven of the American Historical Association and by the New England History Teachers' Asso- ciation. Those leaders among the teachers of history proposed to use that subject as a means of civic education by causing it to reveal to the student the social, economic, and political evolution of his own country in its relationships with other countries that have conditioned its life. It seems fair to say that the best thought of the present day sees the greatest use- fulness of history as a school subject to be in teaching the truth, the scientific truth, about every phase of our national evolution. As a matter of fact, the history which American boys and girls have been taught, even during the last generation, has pretty largely failed to reach the levels of the theory described above. Most of the text-books have failed to include any significant amount of material relating to the economic, social, and political evolution of our country and have devoted an excessive amount of space to wars. Political events have been treated in scrappy topical fashion and have failed to reveal any large principles of social control. The presentation of our relationships with other countries has often been partial and, for that reason, unfair. There seems to have been in this country a noticeable change during and since the war to a more conscious effort to inculcate patriotism through school subjects. Scientific history has come in for sharp criticism on the part of many persons, who are urging a frankly "pragmatic" use of the materials of history. Some of the proposals apparently reflect A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN EDUCATION 559 the Prussian attitude and practice, the results of which have previously been noted in this volume, and would introduce into the schools a consciously provocative type of civic in- struction. There is certainly justification for the desire to attach the child to the historical tradition of his country, to give him a feeling of pride in the character and the achievements of his forebears, to make him conscious of the meaning of the in- stitutions under which he lives through a sympathetic account of how they have developed, and thus to inculcate in him a love for his countr)^ and a desire to serve it in any way demanded of him. There should be no place in the public schools for instruction in history that is cynical, merely faultfinding, and full of the spirit of condescension. The child must become attached to the social family of which he is a part: then let him become familiar with and appreciative of the works of "the fathers." On the other hand, an altogether laudatory and uncritical treatment of the nation's history and of the persons that have figured in that narrative would serve us extremely ill. It would work against the attitude of fair and thoughtful examination of current social problems on their merits. It would create an excessively conservative attitude that is dangerous in a time of tremendous social change. It would tend to develop a national self-conceit that would make impossible an attitude proper in the rapidly increasing importance of our international relationships. It would tend to perpetuate and make more completely universal the bombast and evasion that pass all too often for a real treatment of important political issues. The recommendations in respect to the study of civics made by the sub-committee of the Committee of Fifteen on the Correlation of Studies in Elementary Education is instructive both as showing the small place which civics occupied in the curriculum in 1895 and as showing the very limited conception which the Committee had of the uses to be made of it. "The study of the outlines of the Constitution," so runs the re- port, "for ten or fifteen weeks in the final year of the ele- 56o NATIONALISM AND EDUCATION SINCE 1789 mentary school has been found of great educational value. Properly taught, it fixes the idea of the essential threefoldness of the constitution of a free government and the necessary in- dependence of each constituent power, whether legislative, judicial, or executive. This and some idea of the manner and mode of filling the official places in these three departments, and of the character of the duties with which each department is charged, lay foundations for intelligent citizenship." And these words constitute the complete discussion by the Com- mittee of the teaching of civics in the public schools. Perhaps there is no subject now taught in the schools in which greater progress has been made than in civics, civil government, or citizenship. The new civics treats govern- ment not as a machine, the mechanical parts of which are to be remembered, but as a living process, which is to be under- stood and felt. Stress is laid upon community civics, social and economic problems, and practical conditions of govern- ment. Where opportunity arises, the pupil is actually made a participant in some public service. The World War has revealed in a way that was never before realized in the United States the complexity of the problem of training for citizenship, and has stimulated educators to a reexamination of the objectives and the ways and means of civic education. In the educational reconstruction that will follow, it is certain that the social studies will be given a position of new and enlarged significance. To furnish the pupils of school age with a store of information that will serve for making sound judgments in regard to matters of public policy, to develop in them habits of mind that make for judg- ments and decisions on the basis of facts, to habituate them to attitudes of public service, to create in them an unselfish loyalty to community and national and international welfare, — those are the supreme objectives in the education of citizens for a democracy. INDEX Academic freedom, in Condorcet's Report, 2if. ; restrictions upon, in German Universities, i47f., 203 ; under the French Imperial University, 35!'.; under Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, 75!. Academy, the (U. S.), 36of. ; maintenance of, 361 ; curricu- lum of, 36if.; its suitability to contemporary social conditions, 361; spread of, 36 if.; teacher training in, 405f. Academy, the (France), as a unit of educational administration, 38, 56, 72, 96. Academy Council, the, 72, q6. Accrediting of high schools, state systems of, 458f,, S38f. Adams, John Quincy, 374. Addresses to the German Nation, Fichte's, i26f. Adjunct teachers, 73. Administration, bureaucratic, of the German Empire, 178; effi- cient, of, i7q; of Prussia, 203. Administration, educational, cen- tralization of, see centralization of educational administration. .Administrative county, see Regier- imgsbezirke. Administrative Provisions Act, the, 304. Admission Examinations, Commis- sion of Colleges in New England on, 458. .\dvM education, 61, 73. Agriculture, as a national inter- est, 426. Agriculture, Commissioner of, 478; Department of, see Department of Agriculture; predominance of, in early American life, 335. Akron School Law, the, 404, 44of- .\labama, high school legislation in» 533 ; organization of state department of education in, 500. 561 .Alienism, 490. AUgemeine Landrecht, 122. Altenstein, Baron von, his con- ception of folk education, i44f.; death of, 159. American conditions of education, contrast between European and, I ; European iniluence on, 379f., 4iif. American life, simplicity of early, 334f.; early, did not require much academic learning, 33Sf. Americanization, in the Smith- Towner Bill, 492. .■\nglicans, see Established Church. •Apprentices, abuse of, 234. Apprentice schools, 73. Arizona, federal grants on admis- sion of, 480; high school legis- lation in, 533 ; - organization of state department of education in, 502. Arrondissement, committee of the, 58. Articles of Confederation, degree of political union under, 324. Attendance, average, in various states, 495 ; compulsory (Eng- land), Newcastle Commission on, 26of., 277, 278, 279, 309: (France) 81; (Prussia) 134; (U. S.) 462f., S46f.; school, Newcastle Commission on, 259- Attendance committees, school, created, 279; abolished, 297. Authorities, education, central, local, state, see education author- ities, central; education authori- ties, local, state. Baccalaureate, the, I03f. Bell, Andrew, 237. Berlin, University of, 131. Bismarck, Count Otto von, made minister-president, 172; his po- 562 INDEX litical attitudes, 172; his dip- lomatic policy after 1871, 178; his conflict with the Catholic Church, 185, IQ2; his attempts to suppress Socialism, iQ2f.; dis- missed from office, ig7. Black Laws, the, 429. Blair Bill, the, 43Sf. Board of Charity Commissioners, 285. Board of Education, the (Eng- land), created, 293; powers and duties of, under the Fisher Act, 3o6ff. Board of education, the city, 1861- 90, 448f., i8qo-present, 522f.; relationship between, and the superintendent, 523f.; member- ship of, 525; procedure of, 52Sf. Boards of managers, of non-pro- vided schools, powers and duties of, 297. Board of Regents, 348, 501. Boer War, the, 300. Bonaparte, Louis Napoleon, presi- dent of the Second Republic, 62 ; Prince-President, 74; Emperor of the French, 74; educational policies of, 74f. Borough government in late eight- eenth century, 22sf.; reconstitu- tion of, 247. Bourgeois class, the, under the old regime, 8; under the Consti- tution of 17Q1, lof.; composi- tion and grades of, under the Third Republic, 112. Bryce, James (Lord), 291. Bryce Commission, the, on Sec- ondary Education, 291 ; findings of, 29if.; recommendations of, 292f. Brougham, Henry (Lord), 239, 241. Brethren of the Christian Schools, Napoleon I's attitude toward, 35 ; letters of obedience of, accepted in lieu of certificate, 44; superiority of the schools of, in 1833, So. British and Foreign School So- ciety, 237, 249, 252. Bureaucratic administration of education in Prussia, see admin- istration. Bureau of Education, in ministry of the Interior, 129; the fed- eral, 427, 488f. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 488. Burrowes, Thomas H., 404. Burschenschajten, 148. Cabinet Order of William IL, on the social studies, i93f. California, high school legislation in, 534- Cambridge Universitv, 230, 271, 316. Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, 540. Carlsbad Resolutions, the, i47f. Carnot, minister of public instruc- tion, 64; his circular to primary teachers, 64; his education bill, 64f. Caste lines in education, in Eng- land in the eighteenth century, 226f.; hardening of (France) after 1849; presence of, under the Third Republic, ii2f. ; (Prussia) in the eighteenth cen- tury, 122; Siivern proposes to abolish, 141 ; as shown in the Self-Confessions of Frederick William IIL, i43f. ; teachers propose abolition of, 161: strengthened by Regulations of 1854, 170; absence of, in the United States, 41 2f., S36f. Catholic Church, the, educational importance of under the old regime, 9; the National Assem- bly and, 11; Napoleon I. and, 34f. ; favored in education by the Restoration Monarchy, 44; under the Law of 1850, 68f.: reprisals against, 80; curtail- ment of educational influence of, under the Third Republic, 98f.; Bismarck's conflict with, i8sf.; desire of, in the United States for partition of education funds, 407f. Catholic Religion, the, a basis of instruction under the Imperial University, 37. Central education authorities, see education authorities, central, state. Central School, the, 314. INDEX 563 Central Schools, under Daunou's Law, 2Q, small success of, 31; continued under the Consulate, 35- Centralization, of educational ad- ministration (France) under the Imperial University, 37; under the Law of 1850, 7 if.; under Napoleon III, 76; in accord- ance with French policies, 76f., 92: (Prussia) after 1807, i29f.; after 1871, 202f. ; problems con- nected with, in the U. S., 493. Centralization, of government under the Third Republic, 7gf. Centralization, of state educational administration, tendency toward, in the United States, 49Sf. Charity schools, in the early eighteenth century, 231. Charter of 1830, the, and private education, 50, 61. Chartist Movement, the, 245. Chief state school officer, see edu- cation authorities, state. Churches, and education, in early national period, 363. Child labor, increase of, as result of the industrial revolution, 234; abuses of, 234f. Child Labor laws, see facto^ leg- islation. Children's Bureau, 488. Circle, as local inspection unit, 132. Citizenship, education for, see civics, curriculum, social studies, patriotism, etc. City government, 447. City school administration- (United States) 1861-90, 446ff. ; 1890- present, 522f. City superintendent of schools, be- ginning of office of, 398; status of, 1861-90, 4Siff.; status of, 1890-present, 523f. Civics, instruction in morals and, 82ff.; in elementary curriculum, 560; Report of Committee of Fifteen on, S59f.; present reor- ganization of, 560. Civil Service Reform, 471. Clarendon Commission, see Pub- lic Schools Commission. Classics, German, study of, forbid- den in seminaries, i66. Clayton Act, 473. Coalition, the, 301. Cockerton Judgment, the, 294!. Colburn's First Lessons in Arith- metic, 358. Colleges, under the Imperial Uni- versity, 36f.; communal, 61, 103; royal, 61. Colleges, state, 508; the training of secondary teachers in, 551. Commerce, Department of, 473. Commerce and Labor, Department of, 472, 3- Commission on Country Life, the Federal, 510. Commission on Industrial Educa- tion, Massachusetts, 543. Commission on Wartime Emer- gency in Education and the Pro- gram of Readjustment after the War, 491 ; on continuation schools, 546. Commissions scolaires, 81. Commissioner of education, state, see education authorities, state. Commissioner of Education, Unit- ed States, 426, 48Sf. Committee of Fifteen, Report of the, 557. Committee of Privy Council on Education, created, 252 ; policies of, 252f. ; extension of powers of, 253. Committee of Seven, of the Amer- ican Historical Association, 558. Committee of Ten on Secondary School Studies, Report of the, 539f- Committee on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, 540. Committee of management, of parish schools (Prussia), 132. Common School Journal, the, 384. Common School Revival, the, 378f. Communes, the, share of, in the costs of primary education, 102. Concordat, the, 34. Condorcet's Report to the Legis- lative Assembly, i7ff.; primary schools in, 18; secondary schools in, 18; institutes in, 19; lycees in, 20; national scholars in, 21; National Society of Arts and Sciences in, 21; academic free- S64 INDEX dora in, 2if. ; estimate of the significance of, 23. Conference on Secondary School Reform, 211. Confessional distribution of schools, 131. Congregational Church, 408. Congregations, religious, engaged in teaching, sec Brethren of the Christian Schools, Catholic Church, etc. Continental Congress, powers of, 324- Connecticut, state aid for schools in, 390. Conservation movement, the, 474. Conservative Party, causes of dis- satisfaction with, after 1900, 300. Conservatism, primary schools as agencies of, in France, Sif. Consolidation of schools, 444; see also education authorities, local. Constitution of 1791, political reforms of, 9; enlarged impor- tance of education under, iif. Constitution of 1795, 28f.; private schools allowed under, 29. Constitution of 1850, 155; influ- ence of, in German history, 156- Constitution of the United States, 32sff. ; the strength of the fed- eral government under, 32 6f.; democracy in, 328f.; silent on education, 338. Consultative Committee, 293. Continuation Education Bill of 1917, Provisions of, logff. Continuation schools (Germany), i82f.; (England), 308; (United States), 54Sf. Continental Congress, the, and the beginnings of federal land grants for education, 339; powers of, 324- Convention, the, political condi- tions under, 24f.; educational developments under, 25f.; final educational enactment of, 29; special schools established by, 36. Coordination of primary and sec- ondary education, incomplete, iiSf. Compulsory attendance, see at- tendance, compulsory. Corporations, school, created in Prussia, 201. Correlation of Studies, Committee on, in Elementary Education, 557, 559- Corruption, political, 422f. Cosmopolitan attitude, of eight- eenth century German literary men and philosophers, i25f. Costs, of education, distribution of. See financial support, state aid, grants, etc. Costs, of instruction, in the va- rious states, 495. Cotton culture, importance of, in the South, 37of.; and slavery, 371- Country Life Movement, the, 59of. County, administrative, see Regier- ungsbezirke. County board of education, powers and duties of, 5i7f. County-boroughs, 281. County-borough councils, 281 ; made local education authori- ties, 296. County councils, 28of.; educa- tional activities of, before 1902, 288; made local education au- thorities, 296. County norma! schools, 553. County superintendent, office of, beginnings of, 397 ; early func- tions of, 397; 1861-1890, 44if.; 1890-present, 520; in Maryland, 517. County unit, the, Si5f.; local supervision under, 519. Cojip d'etat of 1851, 74. Cours complementaires, 107. Cousin, Victor, Report on German Education, 50, i3off. Cowper-Temple clause, 277, 298. Criticism, higher, 157. Cross Commission on Elementary Education, Report of the, 28iff. ; on "payment by re- sults", 282 ; on the divided sys- tem, 283; on secondary instruc- tion in elementary schools, 283f. Cultural unification in the United States, 4i5ff. Cultural unity, influence of rapid communication upon, 4i8f. Curriculum, elementary, effect on, of "payment by results, 263; INDEX 56s extension of, into field of sec- ondary education (England), 2Syi., 294f. Curriculum, primary, secularized and expanded, 82 ; nationalized, 82ff. Curriculum of teachers seminaries, i38f.; 162, i87f. Cutler, Manasseh, 341. Dartmouth College Case, 363. Daunou's Law, 29. Davis, Representative, 481. Day schools, private, Newcastle Commission on, 257; teachers in, 257. Day schools, public, Newcastle Commission on, 256. Dame schools, 230, 255. Defective children, education of, 284, 304. Democracy, American, contrasted with European, 336, the result of free land, 337; nature of English, in eighteenth century, 223; political, in England, 273f., 311; social, in England, 312; in Western education, i ; favors universal education, 2 ; move- ment toward, in Prussia in the forties, 151; the federal consti- tution and, 328f.; the constitu- tions of the states and, 329f.; the frontier and, 33off . ; and public education, 337; educa- tional necessities of, recognized by the Provisional Government, 64; as represented in Carnot's Bill, 64f . ; as represented in Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire's Bill, 65. Democracy in education, the French Revolution and, 4of. ; lack of in Prussian education, 211; lack of under Napoleon I., 34f. ; limited nature of, under the Third Republic, inf.; under the German Republic, 217; in England, 3i2ff. Department, the (France), shares in costs of primary education, 57,102; council of, made educa- tion authority for primary edu- cation, 76; composition and powers of council of, 93, 96f. Department of Agriculture, cre- ated, 426; given representation in the Cabinet, 473 ; educational activities of, 487. Department of Education (Prus- sia), in the Ministry of Reli- gion, etc., 130. Department of Education, a fed- eral, created, 426; powers of, 426f. Department of Labor, educational activities of, 487f. Department of Superintendence, 435, 496. Deputy Secretary of State for Schools, 387. Diesterweg, Adolph, i46f., 160. Disraeli, 273. District system, the, evolution of, in Massachusetts, 3S2ff.; adapt- ed to pioneer conditions, 353f.; spread of, 354; early develop- ments away from, 391 f.; prog- ress away from, 444 ; between 1861-1890, 443f.; increasing in- adequacy of, 51 if., present status of, Si3f. Dissenters, 251. Divided system, not adopted in United States, 409. Domestic system, in England, 221. Dreyfus Case, the, loof. East, the, 368f. ; conflict between, and the South, 372. Eaton, General John, 435. Ecoles manuelles d'apprentissage, 107. Ecoles nationales professionelles, 107. iEcoles pratiques de commerce 011 d'industrie, 108. Ecole unique, 117. Economic conditions, in U. S., 1861-1890, 4i6f. ; 1890-present, 469f. Economic expansion under the Empire, 179, i98f. Education Act of 1902, the, 295f. ; Liberal opposition to, 296, 29S, 300. Education Act of 1918, the, 305ff.; strong points of, 305 ; local au- thorities under, 306; balance of 566 INDEX power between local and cen- tral authorities under, 3o6f.; at- tendance provisions of, 3o8f.; status of private schools under, 309; financial arrangements of, 307 ; provision of scholarships under, 310. Education authorities, ad hoc, 277. Education authorities, cen- tral (France), in Talleyrand's Bill, IS ; in Condorcet's Report, 22; under the Imperial Univer- sity, 36; under the July Mon- archy, 58, 61 ; under the Second Republic and the Second Em- pire, 71, 75; under the Third Republic, 94f.; (Prussia), after the early reform of education, i29f.; in recent times, 202f.; (England), Committee of Privy Council created, 252; Educa- tion Department, 254; Science and Art Department, 270; Board of Education, 293 ; powers of, under the Fisher Act, 3o6f. Education authorities, local (France), in Daunou's Law, 30; under the Restoration Mon- archy, 44; under the July Mon- archy, 57 ; under the Second Re- public and the Second Empire, 72f., 76; under the Third Re- public, 96f.; (Prussia), after the early reform of education, i3if.; in recent times, 203ff.; (Eng- land), the school boards created, 277f. ; under the Education Act of 1902, 296; under the Fisher Act, 3o6f.; (United States), 1789-1828: 3Siff.; 1828-1881, 30iff.; 1861-1890, 443f.; 1890- present, S09ff. Education authorities, state, 1789- 1828, 347ff.; 1828-1861, 38off.; 1861-1890, 436ff.; 1890-present, 49Sff. Education Department, 254, 293. Education Law of 1850 (France), 68ff. Education, vocational, in Ger- many, i8iff. Educational administration, see education authorities, central, local, state. Educational opportunity, equali- zation of, among the states, 492 ; inequalities of, 494f.; equahza- tion of, within the state, S04f. Educational theory, distrust of, in Regulations of 1854, i64f. Eichhorn, von, minister of educa- tion, 159; attitude of, i58f. Eiiilieitsschule, 215. Elementary Education Act, of 1870, 274f.; of 1876, 278; of 1880, 279; of 1891, 284. Elementary education (England), relation of, to secondary educa- tion, 313; local authorities for, 296; extensions of, 284; Cross Commission on, 281; supply of, increased by Act of 1870, 278; state of, in 1S38, 25of.; Report of Newcastle Commission on, 255; state of, in 1870, 27Sf.; financial support of, Newcastle Commission on, 258. Elementary education (United States) , tendency of, to extend at the top, 403ff.; early curri- culum of, 357; material side of, 359- Elementary school, extension of, upward, 401. Elementary schools, higher grade, 287. Emancipating Edict of 1807, 129. Emigration, from Germany, 179, 180. Employment of children, 235, 246. Endowed Schools Act, 270. Endowed Schools Commission, 270. England, economic conditions in, in late eighteenth century, 221; social conditions, in, 222; po- litical conditions in, 2 23f.; as showing influence of industrial revolution in society and edu- cation, 3. English education, nationalism in, 317- English government, in late eight- eenth century, 223. Epileptic children, education of, 284, 304. Equalization, of primary school opportunities (Prussia), 201; of educational opportunity in the Smith-Towner Bill, 492 INDEX 567 Esch-Cummins Act, 473. Established Church Party, 251. European conditions of education, contrast between American and, I. European influence, on American education, the question of, 379^-) 4iif. Evening schools, Newcastle Com- mission on, 257. Examination commission, of the province, 131, 204. Examinations, University' Board, 289. Executive departments, of the fed- eral government, 326, 473f. Ex officio state board of educa- tion, 386, 439, 505. Ex officio state school officers, 347, 382f. Ex-standard classes, 287, 294. Factory legislation (England), 235, 246, 274; (United States), 47Sf- Falk, Minister of Education, 186. Farm Loan Bureau, the Federal, 474- Federal aid, for agriculture and mechanic arts, 425, 478f.; agi- tation for, to southern educa- tion, 435f.; agitation for, for vocational education, 481 ; see land grants, Morrill Land Grant Act, Smith-Lever Act, Smith- Hughes Act, etc. Federal bond for Vocational Edu- cation, 483f. Federal Bureau of Education, see Bureau of Education. Federal departments, new, 473f. Federal government, the partici- pation of, in education, 338f.; 373f.; 426f.; 47Sff.; 487f-; new demands for, 48of f . ; powers of, 325f . ; uncertainty regarding pow- ers of, 326f . ; increased powers of, after 1861, 424f.; extensions of, after 1890, 472f.; new de- partments of, 473 ; increased powers of, during World War, 490. Federal Trade Commission, 473, Federalist party, 327. Ferry, Jules, 83f. Ferry Laws, the, 8iff. Fichte, his earlier cosmopolitan- ism, 126; his Addresses to the German Nation, i26f.; his empha- sis on nationalism, 127; his democratic ideal of education, 128. Financial aid, to education ; early state, 347f.; state, to religious effort in education, 364; method of allocating state, 464f. Financial support, of education, as recommended by the Newcastle Commission, 258; according to the Fisher Act, 307f.; in the United States, 44Sf. ; in Prussia, 200f. Financial support, of primary edu- cation (France), 57, loif. Fisher Act, the, see Education Act of 1918. Five per cent fund, the, 374. Folk education, conservative atti- tude toward, i39ff.; liberal at- titude toward, 128, I45ff.; actual conditions of, 1807-40, I46ff. Folk schools, general principles underlying conduct of, accord- ing to the Regulations of 1854, i67f.; curriculum of, i68f., iSgf.; nationalistic emphasis in, 190; confessional distribution of, 189; method in, 210; closed in character of, 2i2f. Foreign language, as medium of instruction, 409, SSSf. Forster, 275. Fourteenth Amendment, the, 429. Freedmen's Bureau, the, 428. Free primary education (France), permissive under Law of 1850, 73 ; encouraged under Law of 1867, 77; universal, 81. Free public schools in the United States, 398ff. ; way of progress to, 399f.; in Massachusetts, 399f . ; in Pennsylvania, 400 ; in the South, 398; practically achieved by the time of the Civil War, 400. Free tuition, in elementary schools (England), 277, 279 284; in primary schools proposed by Talleyrand, 13 ; in all academic institutions, proposed by Con- dorcet, 21; for one-fourth of 568 INDEX pupils under Daunou's Law, 30; for poor children in Central Schools, 30 ; for poor children in primary schools under Law of 1833, 56; for poor children in primary schools under Law of 1850, 73; for poor children in Prussia, 134; in folk schools, 201. Frederick the Great, 12 if. Frederick William II, 121, 124. Frederick William III, 124, i42ff. Frederick William IV, iSif., i56f., i58f., i6if. French Revolution, the, and edu- cation, 7ff.; educational results of, 4of. Frontier, the, meaning of, 33of.; life on, 33 if.; manhood suffrage a product of, 332f.; the end of, 474- Gemeinde, 13 if. General Regulations for Village Schools, 121. General Regulations of 1872, the, i87ff. Geography, in the teachers' sem- inaries, 166; nationalistic uses of, 2O0f. German Empire, the colonial pol- icy of, after 1890, ig8; Near East policy of, igg, the forma- tion of, 173; political auspices of i74f.; constitution of, i76f.; education not a concern of, 177; economic expansion under, 179!. German Republic, the, constitu- tion of, 216; educational prin- ciples of, 217. German society, exclusive consti- tution of, 2Ilf. German system of education, strength and weaknesses of, 214. Girls, separate primary schools for, 73, 77; secondary education of, 104. Gladstone, 273. Government participation, agita- tion for increased (England), 24gf. Government, central, extension of powers of (England), in late eighteenth century, 225; in middle of nineteenth century, 247f, reorganization of, 2 79f. Graded schools, 404f. Graduate study of education, S5if. Grammar schools, English, in eighteenth century, 226; in Taunton Commission Report, 267. Grandmaster, of the Imperial Uni- versity, powers of, 37f., 39. Grants, federal, see landgrants, federal ; parliamentary, see par- liamentary grants, financial sup- port of education, etc. Great Public Schools, inquiry into conditions in, 265. Guizot, 47, S2f. Gymnasium standardized, 130. Hall, Samuel R., 405. Harnisch, 138. Hartford Convention, 327. Hatch Experiment Station Act, 478f. Hegel, decline of influence of, 157. High school, the, an extension of the elementary school upward, 40if.; early, in Massachusetts,- 40if. ; 1861-90; 4S4f.; opposi- tion to, 454, 5 ; established through judicial divisions, 4SSf.; dual nature of, 457; early efforts at standardizing, 457!.; 1890- present; S29f.; offers three dis- tinct types of education, S3of.; social meaning of, 53 1; growth of, after 1890, S3if.; ways of providing, S32f.; differences in, opportunity in various states, 535; flexibility of, 535^-; the junior, 536f.; the "(2osmopoH- tan", 537f.; and the college, 538f.; accrediting of, 539; rela- tions of, with normal schools, 548f. Higher education, in France, un- der the Third Republic, i04f.; in the United States, 362f.; see also. Land grants, federal, Hatch Experiment Station Act, etc. Higher primary schools, 52f., S4f., 106 ; vocational aspects of, io6ff.; social influence of, ii3f.; American high school resembles, 402. INDEX 569 Higher grade elementary schools, 287, 295, History, in the teachers semin- aries, i66; pragmatic conception of school use of, in Prussian schools, i94f., 2of.; use of, in training for citizenship in France, gi ; in elementary schools in the United States, 557, report of Committee of Fif- teen on, 557; scientific concep- tion of 558; as actually taught, 558; present tendency to stress pragmatic use of, 558f. ; impor- tance of, for civic education, 559- Hoar Bill, the, 429. Holiday camps, 309. House of Lords, powers of, re- stricted, 303. Housing and Town Planning Act, 302. Immigration, educational influ- ences of, 4o6f.; Irish, 407; Ger- man, 407; increase of, after 1861, 417; since 1890, 469. Illiteracy, in France, in 1833, 49; in the United States, 1918, 491; the removal of, in the Smith- Towner Bill, 492. Indiana, high school legislation in, 533- Industrial combinations, states powerless against, 40of. Industrial conditions, in the United States, 1890-present, 469f. Industrial development; in the United States, 368f. ; 41 gf. Industrial education, in the United States, 459f . ; see vocational education. Industrial revolution, the, in Eng- land, 23iff. ; social effects of, 232f., 236; political effects of, 233, 244, 264; in Germany, 179; in Western education, i, 3. Industry, elaborative, source of Germany's economic progress, 180; response of education *"> needs of, i8if. Infant School, the, 44, 73, 238, 255- Infant School Society, the, 239. Inspection, school (France), 58, 59, 72, 97; (Prussia), 132, 133, 186, 204; (England), 252, 261, 306, 307, 309. Institutes, in Condorcet's Report, 19- Instruction muttielle, 44; see mon- itorial system. Intellectual movements, midcen- tury, in Germany, i56f.; oppo- sition of Frederick William IV to, 159. Intermediate school, 314; see junior high school. Interstate Commerce Commission, 418, 472, 473. Inventions, industrial, importance of, in English economic life, 221, 231. Jackson, Andrew, 374f. Journahsm, educational, begin- nings of, in the United States, 377- July monarchy, the. political and economic conditions under, 46; attitude of, toward primary ed- ucation, 5off. ; active efforts of, to improve primary education, S4f f . ; improvements in primary education under, 6of. Junior college, the, 535. Junior high school, the, 534, S36f. Justices of the peace, powers of, 225; deprived of their local gov- ernment powers, 281. Kalamazoo Case, the, 4SSf. Kansas, high school legislation in, S.53f.; powers of county super- intendent in, 52of. Kentucky, Virginia and. Revolu- tion, the, 327. King James version, the, 407. Know Nothing Party, the, 409. Kreise, see circle, education au- thorities, local (Prussia). Kiilturkampf, 184 ff . ; an aspect of nationalism, 185; its influence upon education, 186. Labor, Department of, 473. Labor, political activities of, 311; educational aims of, 311. Labor Exchange Art, 302, 570 INDEX Labor legislation, beginnings of, in the United States, 421 ; see fac- tory legislation. Labor unions (England) early status of, 243 ; legislation re- garding, 243 ; growth of, 245 ; made legal, 274. Laboring class consciousness, de- velopment of, 245. Laicity, of instruction, 82 ; of teaching personnel in public schools, q8. Lakanal, education bill of, 25. Lancaster, Joseph, 237. Land Grant Colleges, 475 ; experi- ment stations in, 478, 479; addi- tional support for, 479; in the Smith-Lever Act, 482 ; state generosity toward, 5o8f. Land grant policy, coniirmed by Congress, 34iff. ; extended to cover new territory, 342 ; signi- ficance of, 342f. Land grants, federal, for educa- tion, beginnings of, 339f.; desire of older states to participate in, 343f . ; on admission of later states, 479f. Language instruction, legislation regarding, by the Convention, 29. Language and literature, German, nationalistic use of, 208. Lanthenas, 25. Latin grammar school, see town grammar school. Law of 1881, the (France), 81. Law of 1889, the (France), loi. Law of 1789, the (Massachusetts), 352. Law of 1827, the (Massachusetts), 399, 40iff. Law of 1834, the (Pennsylvania), 309- Legislature, state, the center of political government, 330. Lehr-iind-leni-frcilieit , 203. Lepelletier de Saint Fargeau, 2 5f. Les Enfants de Marcel, 88ff. "Letters of obedience" accepted in lieu of teaching certificates, 69. Legislative Assembly, the, i6ff.; political conditions under, i6f.; and Condorcet's Report, i6f. Leben Jesu, Strauss's, 157. Leaving examinations, for gymna- sium, established, 130. Liberal element in German educa- tion, 215. Liberalism, the New, 30off.; edu- cational developments under, 303ff. Liberal Party, the, 2 73f. Local Government (County Councils) Act (1888), 28of. Local Taxation Act (1890), 281, 288. Lorain's Report, 47f. Lycees, in Condorcet's Report, 20; under the Imperial University, 36f. ; at preser.t, 103; see sec- ondary education. Maintenance allowances, 310. Mann, Horace, 384f. Manufacture, beginnings of, in the New England States, 335; see economic conditions, industrial revolution, etc. Manual training, 459, 542. Maryland, county board in, Si7f.; local supervision in, 519. Marx, Karl, 158. Massachusetts, early school legis- lation in, 34Sf . ; creates states board of education, 383 ; free public schools in 399; religious question in, 4o8f. ; beginnings of professional supervision in, 442 ; organization of state education department in, 499f.; powers and duties of town school au- thorities in, 514; local supervi- sion in, 518; vocational educa- tion law of 1806 in, 542, 543; see also education authorities, local, state; high school, etc. Meals, free, for indigent children, 304. Mediaeval society, a, universal ed- ucation in, 122. Medical examination of school children, 304, 309. Method in folk schools, 210. Metternich, reactionary policies of, 142 ; influence of, in Eng- land, 241 ; influence of, in Prus- sia, 142, 147. Michigan, creates office of state superintendent of common schools, 38if. INDEX 571 Middle class examinations, 271. Middle schools, the, igof., 213. Military establishment, the, and the German social constitution, 212. Military service, compulsory, be- gun in Prussia, 129. Minister of Public Instruction, the powers of, under the Third Re- public, 95. Minister of Religion and Educa- tion, 202. Minutes of 1846, the, 253. Mixed schools, in the South, ques- tion of, 433f. Monarchists, oppose liberal educa- tion policy, 65 ; attack primary normal schools, 66f. Monitorial system of instruction, in England, 237f. ; in France, 44f. ; in the United States, 365. Morals and civics, instruction in (France), 82ff. Morrill Act, the Second, 479. Morrill Land Grant Act, the, 425. Mothers, schools for, 304, 309. Mountain, the, and its educational interests, 25ff. Mundella's Act, 279. Municipal Corporations Act, of 183s, 247; of 1888, 280. Napoleon I, political conditions under, 33f. ; and the church, 34; educational policies of, 34f. Napoleon III, see Bonaparte, Louis Napoleon. National Assembly, the, political reforms of, 9; educational pro- posals of, 12. National consciousness in educa- tion, development of, in the United States, 468ff. National conventions, 496. National Council of Education, the, 438, 439, 442. National education in Prussia, es- timate of, i49f. National Educational Association, 431, 491, 496. National Institute, in Talleyrand's ^Bill, IS. National Institute of Arts and Sciences, 30. National organizations, 496. National Public School Associa- tion, 254. National Schools, bill to create, 26f. National Society, the, 237, 238, 249, 252. National Society of Arts and Sci- ences, 22. Nationalism in education, the French Revolution and, 4if. Nationalism, in the French pri- mary school curriculum, 82ff.; in English education contrasted with, in Prussian education, 317; indirect development of, in English public schools, 318; in- difference to, of eighteenth cen- tury literary men and philoso- phers in Germany, 125; birth of German, 125; Fichte and, i26f.; a strong political motive in the forties (Prussia), 150, i5if.; close connection of, with dem- ocracy, iS3f.; in German schools, 217,; militant, in Ger- many after 1890, i96f. ; small spirit of, in early American edu- cation, 3S8f., tempered by sec- tionalism, 373; in Western edu- cation, I ; favors universal edu- cation, 2. Nationality, development of, by Civil War, 424. Naturalization Bureau, 487. Negro children, public schools for, 433- Negro political control in the South, 433f. Newcastle, Duke of, 255. Newcastle Commission, Report of the, 255ff.; recommendations of, 261^, limitations of viewpoint of, 261. New England History Teachers' Association, Report of the, 558. New England Association of Col- leges and Preparatory Schools, 458. New England, public school tradi- tion in, 345. New Hampshire, local supervision in, S19. New York, educational adminis- tration in, 348f., 387f. ; referen- dum on free schools in, 400; re- ligious problem in, 408; organi- 572 INDEX zation of state education depart- ment in, SOI, begins a system of vocational education, 543. New South, tlie, 432, 476f. Non-county-borough councils, 296. Non-provided schools, 297, 298, 309- Normal school, see primary nor- mal school. Normal school, estabhshed by the convention, 31 ; in U. S., 405, 461, 548f.; standards of admis- sion to, 548; relations of, with secondary education, 549 ; ten- dency for, to become teachers' college, 550. Normal training classes, in high schools, 553. North, the, economic prosperity in, 416; a cultural and political unity, 424. North Carolina, development of local education authorities in, 393 ; a state system of schools in, 393- North Dakota, federal grants on admission of, 480. North German Federation, the, i73f- Northwest Ordinance, the, 340. Northwest Territory, the, 339. Nursery schools, 304. Oberschulkollegium, 121. Ohio, local supervision in, 519. Ohio Company, the, 340; terms of bill of sale to, 341. Old Age Pensions Act, 301. Old regime, education under, 9, social conditions under, yff. Opportunity, educational, see edu- cational opportunity. Ordinance of 1785, the, 339. Ordinance of 1787, the, 340. Ordinance of 1816, the, 44. Organic decree of March 9, 1852, Organic primary education law of 1886, see primary education law of 1886. Organized Science Schools, 271, 286. Orthodox Party, 408. Oswego Normal School, 460. Oxford University, 230, 271, 316. Owen, Robert. Parliament Act (1911), 303. Parliamentary grants for educa- tion, first, 249; increase of, 254; see financial support of educa- tion. Parliamentary interest in educa- tion, early, 239. Parochial schools, in the United States, see private schools. Parochial Schools Bill, the, 330. Pastoret, Mme. de, 45. Patriotism, birth of German, 125; inculcation of (France), 82ff., 91; (Prussia), 207f.; (United States), see history, civics; in- directly inculcated in English public schools, 318; future of instruction in, in England, 319- "Payment by results," 26if.; 263, 271, 282, 283. Peabody Board, the, 434. Peasants and workingmen, under the old regime, 8. Pennsylvania, free public schools in, 399, 400; powers and duties of township schoolboard in, 515. Penny daily press, 245. Pensions, for elementary teachers (England), 284; for widows of teachers (Prussia) 200; for all primary teachers, 201 ; law on, revised, 201. Permissive school legislation, 399. Pestalozzi, i37f., 460. Philanthropy, educational, in the South, 428; in English educa- tion, 231, 236f., 258, 294; in American education, 36sf. Philanthropic education, limited objectives of, 24of. Physical education, aid for, in the Smith-Towner Bill, 492. Physical training centers, 209. Pioneers, the, spirit of, 331. Pius IX, Pope, 69, i8.|f. Politics, in the city schools, 45of. Poor, the, education of (England), 230, 236f., 239, 242, 250. Popular control, lack of, in Prus- sian education, 211. Popular sovereignty, 328, 333, 338, 374, 376. Population; foreign-born (U. S.), 407. Prefect, 76, 97. INDEX 573 Primary education (France), 13, 18, 26, 2q, 34, 44, 54, S7ff-, 73, q2ff., lOlf., II2f. Primary norma! schools (France), 44, 66, 81, 102. Primary teacher, the (France), 49, 56, 64, 103. Private schools (England), 264, 269, 309; see voluntary schools; (France), 15, 29, 35!., 37!., 50, 55, 61, 70, 98f., ICX3; (Prussia), 13s, 207; (United States), 5S4f. Provincial school administration, i3if., 203. Provision of Meals Act, 304. F'rovided schools, 297. Prussia, social and economic con- ditions in, before 1807, i28f., national disaster of, 124; reju- venation of, i25ff.; educational reforms in, i2gff.; midcentury political develonments in, 151 f . ; assumes leadership in Ger- man affairs, i73ff.; in the Ger- man Empire, i76f.; influence of, on American school system, 379f., 4i3f. Public Health Service, the, 488. Public schools, English, 228, 2i4f. Public Schools Commission, 265f. Public School Society, 408. Pupil-teacher system, 253. Quanta cura, 185. Queen's scholars, 253, 259. Raikes, Robert, 236. Railroads, activity in construct- ing, 41 7f., economic influence of, 417; political significance of, 418. Rapid communication, political significance of, 418. Rate bills, 366, 379. Realschule, 171. Realscliulen I Ordnimg, 171. Rector, of the academy, 38, 72, 96. Reconstruction Act of 1867, 429. Reconstruction, and the South, 428ff.; congressional, 429; edu- cation under presidential, 433 ; education under congressional, 434- Reform Act, the, of 1832, 244; of 1867, 273; of 1884, 279; of 1918, 394f- Regency, see Regierungsbezirke. Regierungsbezirke, 132, 204. Regulations of 1854, the, i62ff. Reichstag, 177. Religious Associations Law of 1904, 1 01. Religious difficulty, the, treatment of (England), 277, 298; raised in the United States, 407ff. Restoration Monarchy, the, 43f. Revised Code of 1861, 26iff. Revolution of 1848, the, in France, 63 ; in Prussia, iS3ff. Robespierre, 24f. Royal Lancasterian Institution, 237- Rural education, the Country Life Movement and, sogf. Rural life, recent improvements in conditions of, 510. Rural schools, 463, 464, 510. Saint-Hilaire, Barthelemy, 65. Salle d'hospitditc, 45. Salle d'asile, 45, 60. Schemes, 306. Science and Art Department, 270, 286, 293. Scholarships, provided for in Tal- leyrand's Bill, 14; in Condor- cet's Report, 21; under the Im- perial University, 27; under the Third Republic, 115; in training colleges, 253; in secondary schools (England) provision of, 310, 313- School attendance committees, 279. School boards, 276f., 287, 297. School commission, 133. School district, the, see district system. School districts (England), 276. School funds, state, 347. School Inspection Law of 1872, the, 186. Schools Inquiry Commission, the, 265ff. Schools of education, university, S5if. Schuldeputation, 133. Sclndgeld, 134. Schulkollegiiim, 131. Schulralh, 132. Schtdverein, 133. 574 INDEX Schulvorstand, 132. Secondary education (England), 226f., 264, 26sf., 28s, 291, 296, 3i4f. ; (France), 14, iqf., 30, 3Sf., 69f., io2f.; (Prussia), 124, 130, 171, 211, 213; (United States), see academy, high school, town grammar school. Secondary Education, Commission on the Reorganization of, 538, S40. Second Empire, the, 74ff. Second Republic, the, 63ff. Secretary of the State Board of Education, 383 ; see education authorities, state. Sectionalism, 36Sf.; practical dis- appearance of, 470. Select Committee of 1S3S, the, 250. Self Confessions of Frederick Will- iam III, 143. Sherman Anti-Trust Act, 421, 472. Sixteenth section, 339. Smith-Hughes Act, the, 483ff., 544- Smith-Lever Act, the 48iff. Smith-Towner Bill, the, 492f. Social Democracy, effort to sup- press, IQ2f. Social studies, the, cabinet order of William II, on, i93f. see his- tory, civics. Social opportunity, the schools and, 317; large degree of, in early American life, 337. Socialism, 63, 88, 157, isSf. io2f. South, the, 37of. ; reconstruction and, 428ff.; economic collapse of, 432; the New, 432; public school system in, 433 ; federal aid for education in, 435f. ; local school taxation in, 445. Standards, 262f., 278f., 288. Standardization of the high school, efforts at, 457f. State board of education, the, in Massachusetts, 3S3f . ; ex oftlcio, 3S6; see education authorities, state. State department of education, see education authorities, state. State aid, methods of allocating, 503. State Socialism, 193. State Superintendent of Com- mon Schools, 340. State Superintendent of Public In- struction, see education au- thorities, state. States Relations Service, 483. States rights. 374, 492f. Stein, vom. Baron, i2of., 140. Sterling-Towner Bill, see Smith- Towner Bill. Student societies, restrictions upon, 14S. Substantive grant, 307. Suffrage, extension of the (Eng- land), 244, 273, 279f., 304!.; (United States), 328f. Sunday School movement, 236. Sundays Schools, 236f., 257. Sunday School Society, the, 237. Superior Council of Public In- struction, 71, 75. 94f. Supervision of schools, local, in the United States, 442, Si8ff. Suvern, 140, 147. Symnics, John Clark, 341. Talleyrand, i2f. Taunton Commission, see Schools Inquiry Commission. Technical education (England), 27of., 281, 28S. Technical Instruction Act, the (1SS9). 281, 288. Teacher training, see training col- leges, teachers seminaries, pri- mary normal schools, normal schools. Teachers college, the, S5of. Teachers" institutes, 461, 553. Teachers seminaries, established in Prussia, 136; Pestalozzian in- fluence in, i36f., i4Sf.; religious spirit of, i37f. ; curriculum of, i38f. ; the battleground of con- servative and liberal opinion, 130, 146, isof.; Frederick Will- iam I\', on, i6if.; official re- organization of, in 1S54, i62ff. ; curriculum of, 1854-72, i63f.; dominant religious and patriot- ic motive of, i6sf.; expanded * curriculum of, according to Regulations of 1872, 1S7; not connected with higher educa- tion, 1S9. INDEX 575 Teaching congregations, sup- pressed by Legislative Assembly, 17; given legal sanction by Na- poleon I, .34 ; activities of, un- der the Restoration Monarchy, 44; members of, compelled to take examination for certifi- cates, 56; suppressed by Law of 1904, lOI. Tenth Amendment, the, 327, 339. Thermidorian reaction, 28. Third Republic, the, political con- ditions in, 79f. Thirteenth Amendment, the, 428. . Town, the, break up of, as local education authority, 352f.; as the unit of educational adminis- tration, 5i4f. Town grammar school, the, decline of, 359f.; change in curriculum of, 3O0. Town school committee, the, new powers for, 39if.; powers and duties of, 5i4f. Town system, the, 447f.; local su- pervision under, 5i8f. Township, landgrants to, 351; the congressional, 339; as the unit of educational administration, 444f., si4f. Township school board, the, pow- ers and duties of, 515. Trades unions, see labor unions. Trades Disputes Act, 302. Training colleges, 252, 253, 259. Training colleges, day, in univer- sity colleges, 290. Tilsit, Treaty of, 124. Union free school districts, 400. Unitarians, 408. United Diet, the, 153, i54f. Unity, national, degree of among the original states, 323 ; under the Articles of Confederation, 324; early threats against, 327. Universities, English, 230, 271, 289f., 3i6f.; Prussian, 131, 203; state, 362f., 508. University colleges, 289, 290, 316. University council, the, 96. University extension, 288. University, the French Imperial, 36ff. ; of London, 272, 288, 289, 290; of the State of New York, Board of Regents of, 349, 501. Urban districts, councils of, 296. Urban population, increase of, 179, 236, 421, 469. Vatican Council, 185. Verhdtide, 201. Vermont, local supervision in, 519. Vienna, Congress of, i42f. Villeinage, abolished in Prussia, 129. Virginia and Kentucky Resolu- tions, 327. -Vocational education, io6f., i8if., 481, S4iff.; see continuation school, industrial education, technical education, Smith- Huges Act, etc. Vocational Education, Commis- sion on National Aid to,, 481. Voluntary schools, special aid for, proposed by Cross Commission, 283; special aid for, 294; changed to non-provided schools, 297. Voluntary societies, accomplish- ments of, 275; encouraged to extend their activities, 278; ac- tivities of, in providing sec- ondary education of lower grade, 287 ; see National Society, British and Foreign School So- ciety, philanthropy. Watauga, 332. Webster, Noah, 357, 358. West, the, 372. Wealth, taxable, inequalities of, among the states, 494; inequal- ities of, within the states, 504. Whitbread, 239. Whites, Southern, regain political control, 431. Wickersham, J. P., 431. William I, 171, 172, 174. William H, 197, 211, 215. Wilderspin, Samuel, 238. Wisconsin, vocational education legislation in, 543. Workingmen, peasants and, un- der the old regime, 8. World War, the, what it revealed, 49of. ; the schools during, 49if. Zeller, Karl August, 136.