CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE SOCIAL UNIT IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEMS OF THE UNITED STATES.1

Early inclusion of school affairs in New England as a part of the local civil affairs of the "town.”Birth of the district community system as population dispersed itself in the wilderness.-The form of administration this community system assumed when the boundaries of the "town" again became those of the school disirict (“ township system ").—The form of school administration in the Southern States upon the introduction of public schools after the close of the civil war (county district system).-The members of the school community.--Its area.-Its functions.

I. THE ORIGIN OF THE SCHOOL DISTRICT.

At one time or another an institution has appeared, and in the great majority of cases still exists, in almost all of the States of the Union which is probably the most communistic as well as democratic feature of our political institutions and is certainly the smallest minor civil division of our system. This institution may be called generically the school community in the United States. Its communistic feature is that wealth and occupation are taxed for the support of schools irrespective of the benefit directly derived by the individual owner or laborer and its democratic feature is that the component members of this school community form or originally formed a legislature for school affairs which votes to tax itself and elects persons to manage its affairs during the intervals elapsing between its meetings. It is evident that such a community could come into existence, at least spontaneously, only in an environment marked by the absence of well defined and acknowledged shades of social standing; 2 for a symmetrical and homogeneous organization of public education, a very democractic process, if left to develop freely is sadly impeded in a State whose population has in the course of time been segregated into nobility, gentry, trades-people, yeomen, and wanderers in search of work, as in England in the times of Henry VIII and Elizabeth, or of nobility, professional persons, tradesmen, and peasantry, as in France or Germany before the French Revolution.

There is considerable probability in the assumption that the education of the people first became an affair of political self-government in the Puritan or religious commonwealth of the New World. Every "township "3 of 50 householders was required to appoint a teacher who was to be paid by the parents or masters of those who received instruction, or by the inhabitants in general by way of supply as "the major part of those who order the prudentials of the town shall appoint." Here for practical purposes is first connected the word township with school affairs.

In 1636 the general court of Massachusetts gave public sanction to the township, an institution which had become spontaneously the political unit of the colony.+ In New England, as a rule, entire communities settled down and erected at once a township, which was not merely an aggregation of human beings nor a mere municipal organization, but a well-defined and represented political entity. It became a body corporate as well as politic, could possess and dispose of property, could sue and be sued. But it was a close corporation. Not residence but votes gave

1 By Mr. Wellford Addis, specialist in the Bureau.

2 It is noticeable how the exceptions to this remark in past times originally appeared as one passed southward from New England. In Pennsylvania, for instance, the constitution of 1790 contained the following provision: "The legislature shall provide for the establishment of schools in such manner that the poor may be taught gratis." This provision was repeated in the constitution of 1838. Mr. Wickersham refers to the provision as an "objectionable policy of educating the poor as a class." Hist. Ed. in Pennsylvania, p. 276.

It will be observed that this old law calls the New England town a township. It was so in England, the word town and township being used interchangeably.

4 Palfrey, Compendious History of New England, Vol. I, p. 172. Lodge, English Colonies in America, p. 414, Palfrey, Vol. I, p. 172. Palfrey, Vol. I, p. 274–276.

membership, and either by law or the force of public opinion every member, or freeman, as he was called, must be a member of the recognized church,' and thus voters in church meetings and voters in town meetings were the same persons, until the religious test gave way to other qualification. It has been maintained that the town meeting was merely the vestry meeting of the parish of the Anglican church adapted to Puritan needs in the American wilderness. But it must be remembered that there was more than one kind of parish in England at the time of the Puritan emigration to America. "For the purpose of civil government the term 'parish' meant a district separate from the ecclesiastical parish, from the highway parish,' and from the civil division called a township," it being especially created in 1601 as a poorlaw parish. The lay business of the New England town was not a part of the ecclesiastical proceedings, but the ecclesiastical business was a part of the proceedings of the town meeting, which was a body politic sending representatives to a general court or legislature, which also considered ecclesiastical concerns. Into this town meeting, as has just been remarked, was also carried the-at that date-church duty of education, which thus became a civil instead of an ecclesiastical function as far as English America is concerned. Education in Europe in the age of the Reformation, says Francis Adams, "was not a civil but an ecclesiastical matter, and its aim was religious, not political."3

The wisdom of endowing the local unit of civil administration with this formerly special function of the ecclesiastical unit is unimpeachable. As early as 1616 the English privy council and in 1633 Parliament had enacted that a school should be established in every parish (ecclesiastical) of Scotland, where practical, at the expense of the parishioners, and in 1646 authoritative supervision of the schools was placed in the hands of the presbyteries. The expenses of the schools were to be borne by the landowners, though one-half of the rates might be obtained by them from their tenants. But after a century or more of irreligious wrangling between the presbyteries, who directed, and the lairds, who paid for the education of the Scotch, the former appealed to the central government at London for pecuniary relief, while the English church, after incubating the matter for a century or more, gave birth to the wild and tumultuous efforts of Bell and Lancaster, parliamentary inquiries as to the misappropriation of "foundations" for elementary education, and finally after 1870 to a rapid series of acts which established a system noted for its peculiar manner of operation and general intricacy. In 1795 a bishop of the Anglican church, from his political place in the House of Lords, naively remarked, in answer to the demand that the law-making power should be educated, that he did not know what the mass of the people in any country had to do with the laws but to obey them; which, according to him, is their raison d'être.

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In America the spirit of the political government of schools has at length spread over the whole country. But as the environment changed in which the idea was first applied it has frequently been modified to suit changed conditions. In general this modification has been made in one of two forms, one of which is called the "school district system," or more properly the school community system; the other the township system," or more properly the township school district system. The school district or community system seems to have originated somewhat in this way. As the population of each little nucleus of settlement spread itself out from the center of the original "plantation," it early became convenient in Massachusetts and Connecticut, at least, to allow neighboring families at a distance to form themselves into a school district, and this system so necessary in a growing agricultural community, such as Massachusetts was before the war of 1812, was adopted after years of use as the State system by the act of 1789, and was not repealed until manufacturing had restored those concentrations of population which in the early colonial days had invited township control of school affairs. This originated the school district community, which is the form of public school management operated in the greater number of the States.

It is evident, however, that whatever form the exigencies of each particular territorial or economic situation compelled or induced the people to adopt, the success of local self-government in school affairs depends upon the willingness of the constituent individuals of the community to tax themselves for the benefit of their children,

Palfrey, Vol. I. pp. 121, 172, 272.

*Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, Vol. I. pp. 247-248, 5th ed.; also C. J. Elton, barrister at law, in Ency. Brit., 9th ed., article quoting act of 1866, regulating the interpretation of the word "parish" in the statutes.

Elementary School Contest [in England], p. 20. This assertion of Mr. Adams is borne out by facts so familiar to students of the education of the people (popular education as it is called) in Europe, that further quotation or reference seems unnecessary, especially as the idea underlies the practical treatment of the theme in Europe during times past.

4Cf. Historical Survey of Education in Scetland, by A. Tolman Smith, Rept. Comr. Ed., 1889-90, pp. 214-235.

5 The public "poor schools" of Pennsylvania tried this cheap expedient with no direct results. G Martin, Evolution of Massachusetts Public School System, p. 92

and upon their willingness, at whatever cost, to deprive themselves of any immediate pecuniary benefits arising from the sale to others of their children's time or the personal monopolization of it at home; in general, the absence of a narrow or selfish spirit not only in the family but also in community affairs; or, to say the same thing, in other words a spirit of reasonable emulation and compromise. This desire, of course, is dependent on the value attached to education by the parent and in a measure upon the inclinations of the child. As it has been found that some communities are not always willing or able to tax themselves as highly as other and perhaps neighboring communities, a persevering attempt is being made to rectify what is considered to be not a necessity but a defect of the administration of our school systems. The question is largely dependent upon the economic condition of the locality and of the State; in other words, upon the unequal distribution of wealth and upon a general desire to distribute the highest benefits to all, irrespective of the inability of some to pay for them.1

Other than the political and corporate side of the school community there is another which has reference to the territory over which its jurisdiction extends. In Massachusetts the early judicial and administrative relations of the towns were with the central authority called the General Court. For the purpose principally of judicial convenience, the New England colonies were at various times after 1643 divided into counties, the administrative and representative functions of the towns not being interfered with. Like the General Court of Massachusetts, the House of Burgesses (borough representatives) of Virginia was composed of members representing "hundreds and plantations," but in 1634, when the population of Virginia had increased to 5,000 and had spread itself over the land with the view of finding eligible tobacco fields, then shires or counties were created and the burgesses were thereafter returned as representatives of the counties. The community of Virginia was a series of plantations which were indistinguishable from one another inasmuch as tobacco culture gave them the same character by tending irresistibly to promote the constant expansion of the area of each plantation, which thus became in area a small principality containing a squire, his family, and their numerous servants-in short, the Latifundia of the later Roman Empire. In Virginia, therefore, the county is made the unit of administration which was under the jurisdiction of the "commissioners of the county court" with a grand jury to move attention to defects in county administration. In the public lands of the West it is true that the blocks of land that were laid off into counties as they get a sprinkling of population are divided with mathematical regularity into squares of 36 square miles called townships, but it is particularly necessary to note that the New England settlers of these squares of lands are careful to distinguish them from real "towns" by calling them Congressional townships because the survey of the original wildnerness was authorized by the act of Congress of 1786.

II. LEGAL AND POLITICAL CHARACTER OF THE SCHOOL DISTRICT. Although the law books insist that the school district is a quasi corporation, in almost every State the legislature has specifically made it or its executive body a body corporate and in three States (Ohio, Illinois, and Kentucky) a body politic and corporate. The circumstance that has caused the law writers to use the term "quasi corporation" seems to be the original formation of the district in New England, where the district school probably was looked upon as an educational succursal or outlying post of the original "town" school, tolerated as it were by reason of the distance that attendance at the village or town" school proper would require to be traveled. Thus when a neighborhood built its own school and formed itself into a body for managing its own school affairs without legislative sanction, as was originally in New England the case, it was called a quasi corporation to accommodate the fact to legal necessities.

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As beyond doubt the school district is a body corporate, it remains to inquire if it be not as it exists to-day also a body politic. It is admitted at the outset that it is a body established for a special purpose and that it is unrepresented as such in the State legislature. But on the other hand, it embraces all the inhabitants within a series of well-defined areas which together form the area of the State, and though in some cases it excludes nontaxpayers and in others it includes women, nevertheless practically its voters are the voters of the State. The particular fact, however, that goes to show that the school community is a body politic is the power it possesses

"No sooner had the towns taken the schoolhouses than the same people who, in the district meetings had resolutely opposed any improvements, came forward and demanded new houses in the district." (Martin, Evolution of Massachusetts Public School System, p. 209.)

2 Cooke, Virginia, p. 202, footnote.

3 Bruce, Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century.

Doyle, English Colonies in America, Vol. I, p. 217.

In Oregon it has been decided that a school district is a public corporation. (2 Oreg., 306.)

of levying taxes, especially for purchasing sites and erecting buildings and its place in the administration of the affairs of the State so far as they relate to school affairs.1 The corporate and political character of the school community having been shown, it remains to point out the several forms which it has assumed. The most widely disseminated form of the school community is the so-called "school district." In this system are found frequently a "school meeting" and always a school board of trustees or of directors, or of education, elected by the voters of the district, in whose hands is placed the administratior and the control of school affairs with the exception that teachers who have not received a certificate from a State or county authority may not, in the great majority of cases, bo employed, and the local taxation is not always entirely dependent upon the local will. Another characteristic is the changeableness of its boundaries, which may vary from year to year if certain legal provisions are complied with. Such a system as this may be called the district community system to distinguish it from another form of the district which has wholly or in practice inflexible boundaries such as the school district whose boundaries are coterminous with those of the "Congressional township" (of 36 square miles) as in Indiana or in Alabama or with the boundaries of "towns" as in New Hampshire or Massachusetts. Districts having these inflexible boundaries are usually said to have adopted the township system, but as each district or township has a board of education, trustees, or school committeemen to administer the school affairs of the township, the difference between such a system and the district community system must be found in the larger extent of territory under its control and its connection with the other civil authority whose jurisdiction is confined within the same limits as its

own.

From the foregoing it would seem that there are in every State two systems of administration, one for civil and the other for school affairs, though in both the controlling powers are the same. These powers are (1) the voters (who in the district community system form the "district school meeting"), (2) the State legislature who, though elected by the voters, may not be considered as quite the voters themselves, and (3) the boards of trustees, committeemen, or of education elected by each local community, whether district, town, township, or county, which wholly inaugurates and administers local school business, except where the district meeting is something more than a voting place. Occasionally an exception is found. In the case of North Carolina the board of county commissioners (a civil" authority) sits as a "county school board," and in the city of Buffalo the common council administers the affairs of the city public schools, but these instances must be considered lightly. This isolation of the administration of school affairs is not an anomaly in the administration of English-speaking nations from time to time. England was divided into poor-law parishes, land-tax parishes, burial-acts parishes, and highway parishes, and eventually consolidated into the "civil parish," and in America the administration of poor laws through overseers of the poor in Massachusetts and New York, but not in the Southern States, presents an analogy.

The two forms of school districts which have been alluded to in the foregoing one as the school district community system, and the other as the district township or district county school system, as the case may be, are mainly distinguished from each other by their political, territorial, and financial relations to the civil authorities; and in investigating the nature of these differences it is advisable to speak first of the constituency, then of the area of the school district community, which apparently came into being about the middle of the eighteenth century, was legalized in Massachusetts in 1789, and was endowed with the power of taxing itself in 1800. If by way of illustration school township districts are spoken of, it will be understood that the constituency and area of such districts are not being treated of as

Of Delaware it is interesting to note that each Catholic congregation or its vestrymen are made a body politic and corporate.

Mr. Martin, in History of the Massachusetts Public School System, in speaking of the evils of the district system, a system which sprang into existence spontaneously about the middle of the eighteenth century, remarks: "When the church affairs had been given to the parish, the care of roads and the care of schools to the district, there was little left for the town to do."

2 Perhaps there is another characteristic feature that distinguishes the two forms of the district system usually pitted against each other as the "township versus the district system." If this be the case the import of the other characteristic is readily inferred from the following:

"The school committee [of Massachusetts towns] are an independent body, intrusted by law with large and important powers and duties; and, although every discretionary power is liable to abuse, against which no perfect safeguards can be provided, yet we (the supreme court of Massachusetts] are aware of no substantial reason for supposing that the power of fixing teachers' salaries is more liable to abuse by the school committee than by the city council." (Bachelder v. Salem, 4 Cushing, 603, as quoted in 98 Mass., 587.)

In Indiana the supreme court has used the following language regarding the power of a trustee of a school township: The township trustee is clothed with almost autocratic powers in all school matters. The voters and taxpayers of the township have little, if, indeed, any, voice or part in the control in the details of educational affairs. So far as actual authority is concerned the trustee is the corporation, although in contemplation of law it is otherwise." (Wallis v. Johnson Tp., 75 Ind., 374; Bucknell v. Widner Tp., 73 Iud., 501.)