"The whole people must take upon themselves the education
of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not
be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a
charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people
themselves."— John Adams, U.S. President, 1785.
After the Revolution, northern states especially emphasized
education and rapidly established public schools. By the year 1870, all states
had tax-subsidized elementary schools. The US population had one of the
highest literacy rates in the world at the time. Private academies also
flourished in the towns across the country, but rural areas (where most people
lived) had few schools before the 1880s.
In 1821, Boston started the first public high school in the
United States. By the close of the 19th century, public secondary schools began
to outnumber private ones.
Over the years, Americans have been influenced by a number of
European reformers; among them Pestalozzi, Herbart, and Montessori.
Women, as intimate and
concerned observers of young children, were best suited to the role of guiding
and teaching children. By the 1840s, New England writers such as Child,
Sedgwick, and Sigourney became respected models and advocates for improving and
expanding education for females. Greater educational access meant formerly
male-only subjects, such as mathematics and philosophy, were to be integral to
curricula at public and private schools for girls.
By the late 19th century, these institutions were extending and
reinforcing the tradition of women as educators and supervisors of American
moral and ethical values.
The ideal of Republican motherhood pervaded the entire nation,
greatly enhancing the status of women and supporting girls' need for education.
The relative emphasis on decorative arts and refinement of female instruction
which had characterized the colonial era was replaced after 1776 by a program
to support women in education for their major role in nation building, in order
that they become good republican mothers of good republican youth. Fostered by
community spirit and financial donations, private female academies were
established in towns across the South as well as the North.
Rich planters were
particularly insistent on having their daughters schooled, since education
often served as a substitute for dowry in marriage arrangements. The academies
usually provided a rigorous and broad curriculum that stressed writing,
penmanship, arithmetic, and languages, especially French. By 1840, the female
academies succeeded in producing a cultivated, well-read female elite ready for
their roles as wives and mothers in southern aristocratic society.
The 1840 census indicated
that of the 3.68 million children between the ages of five and fifteen, about
55% attended primary schools and academies. Many families could not afford to
pay for their children to go to school or spare them from farm work.
Beginning in the late
1830s, more private academies were established for girls for education past
primary school, especially in northern states. Some offered classical education
similar to that offered to boys.
Data from the indentured
servant contracts of German immigrant children in Pennsylvania from 1771–1817
show that the number of children receiving education increased from 33.3% in
1771–1773 to 69% in 1787–1804.
French
sociologist and political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) traveled
to the United States in 1831 to study its prisons and returned with a wealth of
broader observations that he codified in “Democracy in America” (1835), one of
the most influential books of the 19th century. With its trenchant observations
on equality and individualism, Tocqueville’s work remains a valuable
explanation of America to Europeans and of Americans to themselves. He
complimented us on being very literate.
Additionally, the same
data showed that the ratio of school education versus home education rose from
.25 in 1771–1773 to 1.68 in 1787–1804. While some African Americans
managed to achieve literacy, southern states largely prohibited schooling to
blacks.
Teaching young students
was not an attractive career for educated people. Adults became teachers
without any particular skill. Hiring was handled by the local school board, who
were mainly interested in the efficient use of limited taxes and favored young single
women from local taxpaying families.
This started to change
with the introduction of two-year normal
schools starting
in 1823. Normal schools increasingly provided career paths for unmarried middle
class women. By 1900 most teachers of elementary schools in the northern states
had been trained at normal schools.
Given the high proportion
of population in rural areas, with limited numbers of students, most
communities relied on one-room school houses. Teachers would deal with
the range of students of various ages and abilities by using the Monitorial System, an education method that became
popular on a global scale during the early 19th century. This method was also
known as "mutual instruction" or the "Bell-Lancaster
method" after the British educators Dr Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster, who each independently
developed it about 1798. As older children in families would teach younger
ones, the abler pupils in these schools became 'helpers' to the teacher, and
taught other students what they had learned.
(This was the most
successful model ever used in the US. It was born of necessity and clearly
continued to make the students responsible for their own education.)
Upon becoming the secretary of education of Massachusetts in
1837, Horace
Mann (1796–1859)
worked to create a statewide system of professional teachers, based on
the Prussian model of "common schools." Prussia was attempting to
develop a system of education by which all students were entitled to the same
content in their public classes. Mann initially focused on elementary education
and on training teachers. The common-school movement quickly gained strength
across the North. Connecticut adopted a similar system in 1849, and
Massachusetts passed a compulsory attendance law in 1852. Mann's crusading
style attracted wide middle-class support. Historian Ellwood P. Cubberley asserts: No one did more than he to establish in the minds
of the American people the conception that education should be universal,
non-sectarian, free, and that its aims should be social efficiency, civic
virtue, and character, rather than mere learning or the advancement of
sectarian ends.
An important technique
which Mann had learned in Prussia and introduced in Massachusetts in 1848 was
to place students in grades by age. They were assigned by age to different
grades and progressed through them, regardless of differences of aptitude. In
addition, he used the lecture method common in European universities, which
required students to receive instruction rather than take an active role in
instructing one another. Previously, schools had often had groups of students
who ranged in age from 6 to 14 years. With the introduction of age grading,
multi-aged classrooms all but disappeared. Some students progressed with
their grade and completed all courses the secondary school had to offer. These
were "graduated," and were awarded a certificate of completion. This
was increasingly done at a ceremony imitating college graduation rituals.
Arguing that universal
public education was the best way to turn the nation's unruly children into
disciplined, judicious republican citizens, Mann won widespread approval for building public
schools from modernizers, especially among fellow Whigs. Most states adopted one version or another of the system he
established in Massachusetts, especially the program for "normal
schools" to train professional teachers. This quickly developed into
a widespread form of school which later became known as the factory model school.
Free schooling was
available through some of the elementary grades. Graduates of these schools
could read and write, though not always with great precision. Mary Chesnut, a Southern diarist, mocks the North's system of free education
in her journal entry of June 3, 1862, where she derides misspelled words from
the captured letters of Union soldiers.
By 1900, 34 states had
compulsory schooling laws; four were in the South. 30 states with compulsory schooling laws required attendance
until age 14 (or higher). As a result, by 1910, 72 percent of American
children attended school. Half the nation's children attended one-room schools.
By 1918, every state required students to complete elementary school.
As the nation was majority
Protestant in the 19th century, most states passed a constitutional amendment,
called Blaine Amendments, forbidding tax money be used to fund parochial schools. This was largely
directed against Catholics, as the heavy immigration from Catholic Ireland
after the 1840s aroused nativist sentiment.
There were longstanding
tensions between Catholic and Protestant believers, long associated with nation
states that had established religions. Many Protestants believed that Catholic
children should be educated in public schools in order to become American.
By 1890 the Irish, who as
the first major Catholic immigrant group controlled the Church hierarchy in the
U.S., had built an extensive network of parishes and parish schools
("parochial schools") across the urban Northeast and Midwest. The
Irish and other Catholic ethnic groups intended parochial schools not only to
protect their religion, but to enhance their culture and language.
Catholics and German
Lutherans, as well as Dutch Protestants, organized and funded their own
elementary schools. Catholic communities also raised money to build colleges
and seminaries to train teachers and religious leaders to head their
churches. In the 19th century, most Catholics were Irish or German
immigrants and their children; in the 1890s new waves of Catholic immigrants
began arriving from Italy and Poland. The parochial schools met some
opposition, as in the Bennett Lawin Wisconsin in 1890, but
they thrived and grew.
Catholic nuns served as
teachers in most schools and were paid low salaries in keeping with their vows
of poverty. In 1925 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Pierce v. Society of Sisters that students could attend private
schools to comply with state compulsory education laws, thus giving parochial
schools an official blessing.
Further information: Black
school, Education of freed people
during the Civil War, and History of education in Missouri
In the early days of
the Reconstruction era, the Freedmen's Bureau opened 1000 schools across the South for black children.
This was essentially building on schools that had been established in numerous
large contraband camps. Freedmen were eager for schooling for both adults and
children, and the enrollments were high and enthusiastic. Overall, the Bureau
spent $5 million to set up schools for blacks. By the end of 1865, more than
90,000 freedmen were enrolled as students in these schools. The school
curriculum resembled that of schools in the North.
Many Bureau teachers were
well-educated Yankee women motivated by religion and abolitionism. Half the
teachers were southern whites; one-third were blacks, and one-sixth were
northern whites. Most were women but among African Americans, male
teachers slightly outnumbered female teachers. In the South, people were
attracted to teaching because of the good salaries, at a time when the
societies were disrupted and the economy was poor. Northern teachers were
typically funded by northern organizations and were motivated by humanitarian
goals to help the freedmen. As a group, only the black cohort showed a commitment
to racial equality; they were also the ones most likely to continue as
teachers.
When the Republicans came
to power in the Southern states after 1867, they created the first system of
taxpayer-funded public schools. Southern Blacks wanted public schools for their
children but they did not demand racially integrated schools.
Almost all the new public
schools were segregated, apart from a few in New Orleans. After the Republicans
lost power in the mid-1870s, conservative whites retained the public school
systems but sharply cut their funding.
Almost all private
academies and colleges in the South were strictly segregated by
race. The American Missionary Association supported the
development and establishment of several historically black colleges, such as Fisk University and Shaw University. In this period, a
handful of northern colleges accepted black students. Northern denominations
and their missionary associations especially established private schools across
the South to provide secondary education. They provided a small amount of
collegiate work. Tuition was minimal, so churches supported the colleges
financially, and also subsidized the pay of some teachers. In 1900,
churches—mostly based in the North—operated 247 schools for blacks across the
South, with a budget of about $1 million. They employed 1600 teachers and
taught 46,000 students.
Prominent schools included Howard University, a federal institution
based in Washington; Fisk University in Nashville, Atlanta University, Hampton Institute in Virginia, and
many others. Most new colleges in the 19th century were founded in northern
states.
In 1890, Congress expanded
the land-grant program to include
federal support for state-sponsored colleges across the South. It required
states to identify colleges for black students as well as white ones in order
to get land grant support.
Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute was of national
importance because it set the standards for what was called industrial
education. Of even greater influence was Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers, led from 1881 by Hampton
alumnus Booker T. Washington. In 1900 few black students were enrolled in college-level
work; their schools had very weak faculties and facilities. The alumni of
Keithley became high school teachers.
While the colleges and
academies were generally coeducational, until the late 20th century, historians
had taken little notice of the role of women as students and teachers.
Summarizing the research
of Burke and Hall, Katz concludes that in the 19th century: The nation's many small colleges helped young men make the
transition from rural farms to complex urban occupations. These colleges especially promoted upward mobility by preparing ministers, and thereby provided towns across the
country with a core of community leaders.
The more elite colleges became increasingly exclusive and
contributed relatively little to upward social mobility. By concentrating on
the offspring of wealthy families, ministers and a few others, the elite
Eastern colleges, especially Harvard, played an important role in the formation
of a Northeastern elite with great power.
Comments
John Adams probably doomed education in the US by insisting on government sponsored education in 1785. The Mann
reforms in 1837 marked the real beginning of the end for quality US public education.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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