WISCONSIN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION. VOL. IV. NOVEMBER, 1874. No. XI. ACADEMIC CULTURE IN THE STATE SYSTEM. | numbers of our people than that afforded CULTURE BY PROF. A. SALISBURY, WHITEWATER. by the common school. That there is a great and increasing demand for secondary culture as an end, (Paper Read before the State Teachers' Associa- and also for increased facilities for the tion, July 16, 1874.) In entering upon a discussion of this subject, a definition seems to be the first thing demanded. The word Academic will not be used in that wide sense which includes the culture given by a college or university. The culture in question is that sometimes designated by the term "secondary," and covers all the ground lying between the ordinary district school and the college, classical or scientific. Moreover, it is purposed, in this discussion, to guard carefully against that very common view which makes this secondary culture simply the bridge from the common school to the college. To the great majority of those who demand academic culture, and for whom it must be provided if provided at all, it is not simply a means, but an end. training preparatory to the different collegiate courses, is one of the most unmistakable facts of the educational present. Let him who has not yet seen the sure indications of this, but glance over the reports of the Bureau of Education, the National Association, and lesser bodies and authorities. Or what is nearer home, let him go among and converse with the hundreds of youth about him, on every hand, who are hungering for even the crumbs of a higher culture than is accessible to them. I shall not occupy myself very largely with the well-discussed question of wheth er the State has the right to give a culture above that of the primary school. It is sufficient for the present purpose, that in our national policy the ground seems to be already conceded and the question I cannot insist too strongly upon this settled; else, what mean our State univerpoint. The culture given by schools sities and other institutions aided by gov. stops at all possible stages, according to ernment grants? It surely cannot be, the circumstances of the getters, and that government may provide for both while the number of those who wish to extremes of education, but must ignore go beyond the common-school stage, is the middle ground. And what justificaconstantly increasing, but a small per tion can be offered for the academies at cent. of these will ever arrive at the col- West Point and Annapolis, which cannot lege door. Academic culture means to be brought to bear with equal force upon us, then, not only preparation for college, the question of State provision for genbut a considerably higher culture for large eral academic instruction? Has the na tion a direr need for leaders in war than | fewer and stronger. But it is only a half in peace? Is a technical knowledge of truth that is thus preached. It is cer military affairs possessed by the few a tainly desirable that our upper schools better safeguard than the liberal intelli- should be strong, but they must not be gence of the many? few. The great hindrance to the higher education of large numbers of our youth is not the cost of tuition, whether that be high or low; it is not the lack of intellec tual appetite; it is not the lack of strong and efficient institutions, if the young men and women could but get to them and support life in them. And the State cannot safely leave this work to private endeavor. The children whom the State should desire to educate for leadership are not the rich only, who are able to take care of themselves, but also the vigorous and intellectually hungry children of the poor. Those who are able to appreciate and wisely use the higher culture are, all too often, those who are not able to acquire it even with the utmost of toil and sacrifice. It is not within their reach. And we cannot afford to wait for private effort to bring secondary culture within the reach of all who crave it, as the State has done with the primary, even it were able ever to do so. It is now over 200 years since Massachusetts, at least, opened this question, and in not another State of the Union has private enterprise made any approach to an adequate provision for the kind of culture that we are considering. No cause in the whole land has drawn out more blessed examples of benevolence and selfsacrifice than that of private or denomi-profit by learned lectures from renowned national education. But the field is too wide and the practical difficulties too many and great. But there seems to be still other failure on the part of the private academies than that of failing to reach the whole people. They seem, somehow, not to meet the popular want, for throughout the whole country, not excepting New England, the rapid decline of the private academic system is a noticeable fact. In our own State I think not a single acad emy is as flourishing as it was ten years ago, while several are quite defunct. Nor do I believe that this decay results from any lessening of the public demand for for the culture which these institutions should afford. There are those who charge this, and other evils, to the multiplying of feeble institutions, public and private, and who consequently cry out for consolidation or combination, that these schools may be I have often been made thoroughly indignant by the grand talk in print on the need of heavily endowed colleges and universities. One would gather from it that the land is swarming with those who, having abundant gold in their purses, seek in vain for places where they can buy with it the superior instruction for which they are supposed to be already prepared. Never does it seem to have entered the mind of any of these writers that, to the majority, the one insurmount able hindrance to the pursuit of higher courses of study than that of the common school is simply the cost of subsistence, of bread and butter and shelter. Where a single one desires and is prepared to specialists, in million-dollared universities, hundreds on hundreds pray in vain for respectable instruction in the simplest elements of the natural sciences, the languages and the mathematics. But the bread and butter question ever returns. "Man cannot live by bread alone," but the boy cannot live without bread, and this must very, very often be eaten in his earthly father's house if the boy ever leaves the field or shop for the school. And here we come to the hardest equation to be reduced in the problem of sec ondary culture in the State System. The unknown quantity whose value is to be found is the proper geographical unit for the system. Some flatter themselves that they have guessed the result, and are confidently preclaiming that X= county academies. But in this imagined solution most important conditions have been ignored. As already stated, the main difficulty is that of subsistence. There are thousands bitious should be deprived of the high of young men and women in the State, school and dubbed by the indefinite hundreds of them within my own personal term common school, or the too definite acquaintance as a teacher and institute term grammar school-neither appropri conductor, who would eagerly enter upon ate. Perhaps we shall have to invent a higher courses of study if the schools name. were only so near that they could attend and board at home, wholly or in part. No school can possibly afford this advantage to those beyond the bounds of a ten-mile radius. My own academic training was received at an institution seven miles from my home. Despite a consuming thirst for higher culture, it is morally certain that if the distance had been twice seven miles I could never have had better advantages than those furnished by a good district school. The county, as a unit, is too large and otherwise impracticable. I would like to pay my respects still farther to this phase of the county academy question, were it not that I should be trespassing upon the ground of those to whom it has been specifically assigned. Some of the wealthier and more popu. lous townships might support each its own upper school at an expense easily borne. But in a majority of cases it would be better that from two to four well settled towns should be joined in a high school district, the school being located at the point most accessible to all its patrons. The details of the organiza. tion that I would propose need not be presented here, but these schools should be manned with teachers competent to prepare pupils for admission to the va rious colleges courses, with the single exception of Greek. Many, myself among the number, will doubt the expediency of trying to launch a full rigged and compulsory system at once. Nor is it necessary. Do not demand, but permit and liberally encourage, with State aid, and the towns will come in time, I think, to But it may justly de demanded of me that, having condemned the proposed system of county academies, I should see their own interests and act accordoffer some opinion as to what is a practi-ingly. cable means of meeting the need which I It is well to remember, however, that myself declare to be so urgent. This I the only State in the Union which has am prepared to attempt. We once heard, anything like an adequate and satisfacin this building, that "fools rush in tory provision for secondary instruction. where angels fear to tread;" and it is Massachusetts, as long ago as the early sometimes well that they do. In the first colonial days of 1647, passed a compulplace, notwithstanding the peculiar sory act in this very direction. Though wording of my topic, I believe that the anticipated by Prof. Winchell, yesterday, sooner we lay aside the term Academy, in I will give again the quotation that I had this connection, the better. The term written, that "when any town shall inhigh-school is in every way now safe and crease to ye number of 100 families or appropriate. And my deliberately formed householders, they shall set up a gram'opinion is, that the true policy is to mul- mar school, ye master thereof being able tiply high schools, not in villages only, to instruct youth so far as they may be but in townships as well. And I do not fitted for ye university." In 1692 the now mean such semi-collegiate institu- limit was made 200 families instead of tions with courses of study extending, in 100, and women were for the first time all departments but language, as high as recognized as teachers. This was the law the second year of a college course, as of the land until 1824, when towns of less may be, and happily are, maintained by than 5,000 inhabitants were released from many of our cities. All towns of proper this obligation, on condition of sustainsize should be obliged to support high ing what now constitute the common schools of a very high grade; but it does schools of the State. During the year Hot follow that those somewhat less am-1872, 179 high schools were maintained, being one to 6,900 of population. The mal pupils in Latin and General History \ same ratio would give to Wisconsin 153, or an average of three for each set tled county in the State, and five times as many as we now have. It seems to me that the lesson is plain. Wisconsin has four-fifths as great a population as Massachusetts; has she four-fifths as great influence and weight in the nation or the world? Has Massachusetts suffered from the policy of making the higher culture cheap and accessible? But we hope for the time when Wisconsin shall number her full proportion of schools reasonably high, at least; reaching to the university and colleges, if possible, but not overlapping them. And while we are waiting for a State high school system to be inaugurated and developed, there is one measure which might be adopted under existing authority, and which would be of considerable immediate advantage. Two at least of our three Normal schools are already burdened with the undesirable and incongruous duty of giving instruction to purely academic students. The new school, when opened, will encounter the same hindrance, and if the third existing one has not yet encountered it to any extent, it is because of an efficient and well established high school on the ground. Time forbids to dwell upon the disadvantages resulting from the attempt to give normal and purely academic instruction in close connection. What I am about to propose would not only be the means of furnishing improved academic facilities, but would also be a relief and a benefit to the normal work proper. Let the Board of Regents reorganize and enlarge the academic departments, hardly worthy of the name since they give only primary elementary instruction-now connected with two of the normal schools. Let each of these departments have a separate professor, a separate course of study and, if need be, separate rooms for recitation. Let its course of study be shaped with especial reference to that of the university and the colleges. The instruction of the nor could be received in the classes of the Academic department; the same scientific apparatus would do the work of both schools; the Academic department would furnish an excellent school of observation to the normal pupils; while the one president over all would insure harmony in the work. The plan, to my mind at least, seems eminently practicable and truly advantageous to all concerned; though of course any normal school not now compelled to furnish instruction to pupils purely academic, might very naturally and reasonably decline to assume any responsibilities in this direc tion. Let me close this already too lengthy dissertation by recalling your minds to the main line of thought, namely, that the State of Wisconsin has resting upon it, the duty of providing for its youth the means of academic culture, in a system of high-schools well distributed throughout the settled portions of the State, and organized on wise and liberal foundations; thus bringing a higher culture within reach of the homes of all the people. So shall her sons and daughters arise and call her blessed. Are Wisconsin Teachers Fit for their Business! At the meeting of the State Teachers' Association in July, Mr. Kuntz laid down the broad proposition that ninetenths of the teachers of Wisconsin are wholly unfit for their business. If the proposition is true Wisconsin is in a sad plight indeed educationally, and we cer tainly have reason to tremble for the future. And if men and women are equally deficient in all other departments of labor, surely we are "hard up." But is the proposition true? I think not. If Mr. Kuntz had laid down the proposition that our teachers are not as well qualified for their business as they should be, we would frankly admit it. The members of all our professions are not so well qualified for their work as they should be. One of our distinguished educators has said, in substance, that a large majority of our country schools are worse than no schools. Now such remarks are and greater moral support, furnish foolish. Our teachers are as good as they them with a more abundant supply of have been for the last hundred years, and blackboards and means of illustration, in many respects are far better as a class. such as maps, globes, charts, books of Certainly school discipline has improved reference, and various kinds of apparatus, as well as the methods and the quality of secure better attendance and punctuality, the instruction given. and in many ways contribute to the excellence and the efficiency of the city schools; and thus the schools become centers of educational influence. Now, if the schools in the country could be as thoroughly organized and cared for as those in our cities, as good results would be furnished by these gravely told, are wholly unfit for their business.-R., in a La Crosse paper. The people of the Northern States, at least are tolerably well educated, and some credit for this degree of intelligence is due to the teachers of our public schools. The large majority of our people, and many who occupy positions of influence, received their entire school education in the common school. If teachers, nine-tenths of whom, we are results are not what they should be, of course it is attributed to some cause, and what is easier or more comforting than to charge the whole difficulty upon the incapacity and unfaithfulness of teachers? No matter about the causes that are altogether beyond their control. A fairer and more business-like way would be to investigate the case and thereby determine what the real difficulty is, and give every one due credit, and not visit upon one class of people this wholesale denunciation. Now the reason why country schools are poorer and less efficient than city and large village schools, is not wholly because the teachers are poorer and of less experience, but in large measure because the organization is not so perfect. And here is just the difficulty that cannot be corrected under any school system, yet adopted in these United States, except the township system. HIRING TEACHERS BY THE YEAR. school ex pre [The following observations on this sub- teaching one of the best of schools, if he Just in proportion as we perfect the organization of the city schools, and centralize the power that controls them, do we obtain better results with less expenditure of money, as well as physical, mental, and nervous force. In the cities there are Boards of Education which give more careful attention to the organization, classification, discipline, and instruction of the schools. They furnish better and far more comfortable school by years of practice that she is calculated rooms, and more cheerful surroundings. to fill the teacher's position with credit to They furnish, too, a more thorough su- herself, honor to her calling, and profit pervision of the instruction and school to those placed in her charge, then cuseconomy, give the teachers better counsel | tom should settle her in some location, |