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CHAPTER XXXIX.

THE AMERICAN COMMON SCHOOL IN NEW ENGLAND

FROM 1790 TO 1840.

By Rev. A. D. MAYO, M. A., LL. D.

In a speech in the British Parliament, on the "Government plan of education," in 1847, Thomas Babington Macaulay said: "Illustrious forever in history were the founders of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; though their love of freedom of conscience was illimitable and indestructible, they could see nothing servile or degrading in the principle that the State should take upon itself the charge of the education of the people."

We have traced the New England idea of universal education from its incorporation in the earliest colonial law of 1642 till the formation of the constitution of the State of Massachusetts, in 1780, the first time the duty of the State to educate the whole people was placed in the written fundamental law of a Commonwealth. Beginning now with Massachusetts, we are to follow the working out of this origi nal ideal through what may be called the period of conflict; for through the first half century of the Republic the great enterprise, so bravely inaugurated and persisted in for one hundred and fifty years by the foremost colonies of New England, of schooling the entire population by the aid of a people's government, found itself beset with new difficulties and somewhat arrested in its logical development. No study can be more instructive in the peculiar method by which a characteristic American State, by means direct and indirect, encounters, deals with, and finally overcomes a great public peril than the story of the American common school during this most critical period in its career. For it must be evident to every careful student of the national history that had this fundamental institution of the New England civilization gone down in the struggle, the final establishment of any satisfactory scheme of universal education for the whole people of the United States would have either been an impossibility or have suffered an "indefinite postponement."

The victory in the war for independence and the mighty effort of organizing the new nationality of the United States were not achieved without the reaction on society, inevitable from every supreme effort of human nature. One of the most important of these results was the final breaking up of the virtual unanimity of religious belief and ecclesiastical administration which, for almost two centuries, had held the New England people in a grip of iron, and was the central inspiration of all activities in church, state, education, and social life. Even before the breaking out of the war the indications of this great change were apparent. Indeed, after the first forty years in the Massachusetts colony, the attempt to found a government on a theocracy of the Old Testament pattern had been abandoned with the abolition of the religious test of the suffrage. There still remained a personal tax imposed on every citizen for the support of public worship; but in time this was modified by the permission to appropriate it according to the ecclesiastical convictions of the taxpayer. But this was not felt to be a hardship in a community as

completely of one mind in religious matters as has ever been seen in any intelligent portion of Christendom. It has already been explained how, because of this unanimity in theological belief and church polity, the "religious question," which beyond the Hudson River for generations prevented the establishment of any general system of public instruction, did not appear as an obstacle in the leading New England colonies. For, while, as a matter of course, there was a good deal of religious teaching in all the schools, it did not provoke dissent, and, below the organism of the ecclesiastical congregational polity, the people had their own way in all public affairs. Until the period now considered the schools were all essentially public, being to a greater or less extent supported by State or local aid and always dependent on the legislature for their final status.

But the prodigious agitation of the Revolutionary epoch, with the intimate mingling of the New England soldiery, the majority in the field, with the people of the other colonies, brought in a loosening of the bonds of religious uniformity and filled the land with dissent and contention in the most vital concerns of the public welfare. Already, half a century before the Revolution, Harvard College, the theological barometer of Massachusetts, had been shaken by frequent outbreaks of what were regarded by the extreme religious party as "unsettled and heretical views" in matters religious. The old severe type of student discipline, imported from the British schools, had been overthrown. The offensive discrimination in social standing in classing the students had been done away with. An important official of the university had been chosen from the laity. In every struggle between the more stringent and liberal elements in the election of president and members of the faculty the victory more and more inclined to the broad-church side. It was a striking fact that even in the days of complete outward unanimity of religious sentiment and in the relentless application of a severe creed even to the affairs of social life neither Harvard University nor the grammar schools that were tributary to it were bound by any theological test. It was the inevitable development of this ideal of the freedom of education that now for a time came in, and, by its sharp collisions with the principle of denominational control of schools, greatly embarrassed the entire system of public instruction in New England for half a century.

The first result of this movement was the dissent of a considerable branch of the New England people from the dominant church and the coming up of the Baptist, Methodist, and Independent organizations. The Revolutionary epoch left a great deposit of open and secret unbelief in any form of Christianity, which the intimate connection of the American people with France and the popular sympathy with the earlier phases of the French Revolution intensified. The extreme republican views of Thomas Jefferson and the rising party in public affairs that owed allegiance to him provoked a strong reaction in the New England States, and the Puritan clergy became, in large measure, his most decided opponents.

The first educational demonstration was the effort to present Yale College in Connecticut to the people as the theological rival of Harvard, and for several years this institution contained the larger number of students. As early as 1762 the attempt to establish a rival college in Massachusetts alarmed the friends of Harvard. But it was not till 1795 that the free school, supported by the legacy of Col. Ephraim Williams, who lost his life in the French war in 1755, appeared as a challenge to Harvard in Williams College, in the northwest corner of the State.

Within ten years the remarkable religious movement that was the origin of the American Foreign Missionary Society gave to this new college, on the far-off border of the State, a name and fame it has never lost. Later came the establishment of Amherst College, in the valley of the Connecticut, in the year 1818, developed also from an academy founded in that beautiful village as early as 1815. Both these new colleges, with Harvard, up to the year 1840 were to a greater or less extent the recipients of the State's bounty; and, while greatly extending the application of good culture to the people, were also powerful instrumentalities in the develop

ment of the religious dissent that wrought at cross-purposes with the complete success of the people's common school.

For it must always be kept in mind that the Massachusetts policy of general education, afterwards developed into the idea of the American common school, included all grades of instruction. It began at the top, in the founding of Harvard College in 1637, by what was then a munificent endowment for a colony so small and straitened in the goods of this world. To all intents and purposes Harvard was as essentially a State university during the first century of its existence as any of the great schools called by this name later in the West. The legislature of the colony always claimed and exercised the right of changing its organization, to a considerable extent subsidized it, and, till a later period, the governor, lieutenant-governor, and a portion of the senate of the State were included in its board of overseers. arrangements and free spirit which, from the beginning, had characterized this in many respects most catholic of American universities kept it in close communication with the public grammar schools on which it depended for its student material. For many years the grammar and even the common district schools of the State were being taught by the clergy, students, and young graduates of the university and the colleges.

The liberal

These "free schools," ," "grammar schools," "academies" were the second step made by the people of the colony toward a complete system of public instruction, already a sort of university extension "dispensed to the superior people." During the entire period before the Revolution they constituted the most influential department of the common school system. With few exceptions organized by a movement of the whole people, incorporated by the legislature, their boards of administration chosen by the people or appointed in their charter, to a considerable extent supported by public appropriations, State or local, these seminaries were the ancestors of the free high school which now in Massachusetts has obtained its highest development in the Union. Ninety per cent of the children of that State live in towns where a high school is located and all towns are empowered to support students in them—the only State in which the establishment of this class of schools is made compulsory by legal enactment.

In the year 1789 the somewhat languid organization of public instruction below the free grammar schools was strengthened by the act requiring every town of 100 families to maintain 1 school for six months, or 2 or more for terms that should together be equivalent to six months, in which should be taught orthography, reading, writing, English grammar, geography, and "decent behavior." From this act dates the appearance of the "district school system" in New England, by which every town was divided into districts, to favor the attendance of the children. Towns of 200 families and upward were required to support a grammar school and teachers to obtain a certificate of good morals and reliable character. In 1800 the towns were empowered to call meetings of the people of their districts for the purpose of raising money to build and furnish schoolhouses, and in 1817 school districts were made corporations and empowered to hold property for educational purposes.

This organization of public instruction, by making the district within the town the unit of activity, was a natural outcome of the intensely independent character of the New England people, who reluctantly parted with the least fragment of local authority. It was also, in great measure, enforced upon the people by the necessities of the case; the population outside the villages living in a sparsely settled, rural country; the towns 6 miles square; rapid transit impossible from the borders over the lofty hills and through the dense forests, and during the winter greatly hindered by deep snows and the severity of the weather.

There was yet no educational State school fund, the earliest movement for this dating from 1834, and there has never been in Massachusetts any considerable State tax for education; up to a very late period all, save perhaps $150,000, of the nearly $10,000,000 expended on schools in the State being raised by local taxation, personal

gifts, or some form of cooperation. There can be little doubt that in the earlier stages of the development of the elementary department of public instruction the district arrangement was a powerful agency of success. It bound up the families of a little neighborhood district in a corporation, intensely interested in the most vital need of a community-the education of the children; made the district school the focus of public interest, even more than the sometimes distant church, and ground into the conviction of the people the all-important fact that the schools must be supported by their own ample and annual contributions. This is the first and most important condition of the success of any complete system of common schools, for, until the habit of local support is formed, there can be no security that the system of public education will have any but a variable income. The very slow growth of the public school in the new Northwest, and the present condition of the common school system of the Southern States, testify that this is the "previous question" which cuts off all others in the successful administration of this institution.

That the New England "district system" did at first accomplish this there can be no reasonable doubt. That, as the years went on, with the rapid development of village and city life, and the concentration of wealth in centers of industrial activity, serious disadvantages were developed which hindered the best results in the country district schools of New England, there can be as little doubt. The strong conservative instincts of the New England people still clustered about this, one of the most characteristic features of the old-time society. Even the fiery zeal of Horace Mann and his startling exposure of the disadvantages of the arrangement, especially after the drift of active young people from the rural districts caused by the rise of manufactures at home and the emigration to the West, could not prevail against this love of dealing at first hand with an interest so sacred as the schooling of the children. It was not till 1882 that the district system was finally abolished in Massachusetts and the town made the unit of school administration. In the remaining Now England States this system held on till a later date, and it still obtains in Connecticut to the confessed injury of its educational interests.

The second colonial act for the furtherance of education, in 1647, had established a common-school system which was both compulsory on the people and free, as far as the elementary schools were concerned. This act required every town of 50 householders to support a school for all to learn to read and write; and every town of 100 families to establish a grammar school, where "youth may be fitted for the university." It is affirmed that this is the first act of any State to establish a free public school, supported and supervised by the whole people. In 1683 all towns of 500 families were required to maintain 2 grammar schools and "two writing schools;" the latter corresponding to the present elementary schools, although they gave little more than the bare elements of knowledge. The provision in the constitution of the State adopted in 1780 seems to give a much wider latitude to the legal support of education. It includes "the university at Cambridge; public schools and grammar schools in towns; the interests of literature and the sciences and all seminaries of them; encouraging private societies and public institutions by rewards and immunities for the promotion of agriculture, arts, sciences, commerce, trade, manufactures, and a natural history of the country," besides a generous measure of public supervision and encouragement of all the private and public virtues. This ideal of State oversight of the higher interests of the people was written by John Adams and stands in the constitution of the Commonwealth to-day, although by successive legislatures the sphere of governmental interference with the general mental and moral development of the people has been greatly limited. It was under the broad provisions of this fundamental law that the acts already referred to, of 1789, 1800, and 1817, were passed.

It is probable that, with the development of the district school system and the increasing expense of building houses and keeping alive a four-months school in the year, the ability of all save the few larger towns was not sufficient for the support of the old-time grammar school "to fit youth for the university." At any rate this

clause of the school law seems to have fallen into desuetude as early as the beginning of the present century. In order to meet this growing necessity of the secondary education, the general court in 1797 acted on the report of a committee, of which Nathan Dane, already identified with the great ordinance of 1787, was chairman, in which the practice that had grown up of endowing academies by the gift of wild lands in Maine, then a part of Massachusetts, was raised to a definite policy and was continued for twenty-five years. At this time 7 academical schools, 4 in Maine and 3 in Massachusetts, had already been subsidized by gifts of a township of land to each. It was further provided that half a township of land should be given to several more of this class of schools that there might be an endowed acad. emy for every 25,000 people in the Commonwealth. By this act the State reaffirmed its original policy of subsidizing the secondary as well as the higher education. These schools, first called academics by the dissenting religionists of England who were debarred from the use of the universities and great public schools by religious disabilities, were not essentially different from the free high and middle schools of Great Britain, although somewhat modified from their ancient exclusively classic character to meet the demand for the general education of all who desired to go beyond the district common school.

Besides these academies endowed by the State a large number came up by the action of the towns, chartered by the State and empowered to hold educational funds from $5,000 to $100,000; the majority not exceeding $20,000, and yet purely local in their establishment, private, or denominational. In 1800 there were 14 of these incorporated academics, but the number rapidly increased until, in 1840, there were more than 50 in the State. The benefaction of Governor Hopkins, of Connecticut, at an earlier period, had given to New Haven and Hartford, Conn., and Hadley and Cambridge, Mass., a lift in this direction. Dummer Academy at Byfield, Newbury, was the oldest of these academical schools, established in 1763. In a report to the legislature in 1859 it is stated that "no academy endowed by a town or a State is a private school. Academies are all, to a certain extent, public schools, established as such upon a legal basis of public policy."

These schools were established with the fixed intention of extending the advantages of a superior education. They were all of local importance, enabling the youth of both sexes to extend their acquaintance with letters. Many of them were noted in their day, and, like the celebrated Phillips academies, are still among the best seminaries of the country. A succession of able and often admirable men presided over them, and the generation of famous public characters in New England during the first half of the present century was largely educated therein. In respect to the teaching of the classics, even in the early colonial days, the grammar schools were not inferior to the best in England. The student was required to read, write, and speak Latin, and be well informed in the Greek grammar in order to be admitted to Harvard, and both languages, with the Hebrew, were included in the college curriculum.

And not the least of the merits of the better academies was their social influence upon their pupils. They made the towns in which they were established the proper educational and cultivated social centers of the State. Here came the ambitious boys and girls from "the whole region round about," often at desperate sacrifice, to obtain the schooling necessary to enable them to teach and fill all honorable places in the community, as well as to fit themselves for college. The discipline was good, and the intercourse between the sexes generally a model of natural and virtuous conduct. The village in which the school was located was to its pupils a great, open household, where they came and went with the confidence and enjoyment of a generous hospitality. The churches were closely connected with them, and depended largely on their teachers and older pupils for aid in music and teaching in the Sunday school. None of them gave free tuition; but the expenses were not discouraging, the wages of a district school teacher for a term of three months at $10 to $20 a month being sufficient for all charges for a corresponding term. Many

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