PART SECOND.

THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD.

CHAPTER IV.

ELEMENTARY EDUCATION IN THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD.

FROM the first vigorous colonial resistance to English aggression it took America fifty years to establish an independence among nations. The Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 were two culminating incidents in the conflict. How much more than this was necessary before national equality was granted, how much of diplomacy and invention, advancement in learning, and domestic control, can scarcely be estimated. The period was not altogether one of revolution; but the ideas and the type of men dominant in 1783 ruled still in civil and administrative and social affairs for quarter of a century. They enacted laws, erected schools, shaped education, and gave direction to sentiments of industry and refinement and the means of progress. In a history of culture, the period of the Revolution in America may be said to include the War of 1812. Indeed, the next period, that of reorganization, can not be said to have had a recognized beginning until twenty-five years later (1837).

The two chapters flowing seek to sketch the conditions of elementary, seco1 dary, and collegiate education during the period named.

1. "Pauper Schools."

Francis Adams, speaking for his own country, recently (1875) said: "Our public elementary schools of England have always been regarded as charitable schools."

The same idea prevailed for many years in this country, in Pennsylvania, almost wholly throughout the South, rarely in the West, but more or less in New England, though not extensively in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Rhode Island held that elementary instruction might not safely be interfered with by the State except in the interest of those who were unable to provide for their own; and, contradictory as it seems, when John Howland and his mechanic friends undertook (1785) to establish the free school in Rhode Island, it was objected to chiefly "by the poorer sort of people."

A generation later, Governor Hammond, of South Carolina, in his annual message, animadverting upon the common schools, but evidently speaking in the atmosphere of a local unfriendly sentiment, took occasion to say: "The freeschool system has failed. Its failure is owing to the fact that it does not suit our people, our government, our institutions. The paupers for whose children it is intended need them at home to work." The sentiment was not peculiar to this State: Governor Hammond was only more emphatic. In half the original colonies the idea was a ruling factor in more or less of the educational legislation through the early constitutional period. By the Maryland act of 1723, and following, visitors for the counties were empowered to select certain children to be taught gratis. The literary fund of Virginia (1810) was set apart for the exclusive benefit of the poor, as was a special Georgia appropriation of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars seven years later. In the same year also New Jersey began the foundation of a

"Free Schools of the United States," p. 52.

Rev. James Fraser's report, p. 10; quoted there from an address by Dr. B. G. Northrop, delivered 1864.

school-fund, but almost immediately provided for an optional taxation of townships " for the education of paupers." Even Ohio, as late as 1821, attached a charity clause, and so defeated the purpose of an otherwise liberal enactment. In Pennsylvania, also, throughout both the colonial and the early constitutional periods, the public-school idea was compassed by the care which it was thought the State should take of the dependent and unfortunate classes. Public schools in the early history of Pennsylvania were "pauper schools." This appeared in the Penn School, Philadelphia, and was reaffirmed in the Constitution of 1790.

Such schools raised and maintained a well-meant, charitably intended, but unfortunate distinction between rich and poor, so as in time to frustrate the design of the schools and the generous charity of their founders. The poor despised the provision as a public badge of their debasement; the wealthy shunned them as degrading. That this was not merely the bias of legislation imposed upon the public appears in the constant misinterpretation of the spirit and function of the common schools by the people themselves. Not till far into the present century was even Philadelphia freed from the invidious distinction, while the emancipation of the rural districts came later.

Elsewhere a similar antipathy resulted from very different conditions. The "school fees" in England and the "rate-bills" in the United States were designed to throw a part of the burden of maintaining the schools upon patrons. While doing this they had the effect in every State where tried either to exclude those from the privileges of the school who could not afford them, or to subject them to the odium of pauper patrons" when school fees were remitted. In either case the "odious rate-bill" has been the occasion of setting off society into classes, excluding some, and so limiting the efficiency of the schools.*

*See this question of rate-bills discussed, in the light of both English and American experience, in Mr. Adams's "Theory of Free Schools," "Free-School System," pp. 45-57.

These fees took on various forms. They were not always assessed in money, though in cities they were usually so. In country districts in most States, both East and West, the rate frequently included board for the teacher. In Rhode Island, pupils were assessed for fuel as late as 1833, fee-bills being entirely abolished fifteen years later. In Vermont they remained until 1864, in New York three years and in Connecticut four years longer, and in New Jersey until 1871.

2. Teachers.

In

In general, the teachers of the last century were poorly qualified for their work. But of the majority of the teachers, of what generation, since Adam Roelandsen, Dutch schoolmaster under Wouter Van Twiller, at Fort Amsterdam, and Brother Philemon Purmont, in Boston, might the same not be said? The cause is not difficult to find. What with the material urgencies of a new country, the dangers without and want within, a professional spirit was not to be expected. Contemporary conditions show less excuse. a pamphlet, published in 1791, the teacher of the period is characterized as generally "a foreigner, shamefully deficient in every qualification for instructing youth, and not seldom addicted to gross vices."* Dr. William Darlington, also, of Pennsylvania, describes the country school-teachers (1788) as "often low-bred, intemperate adventurers of the Old World," but generally on a par with the prevalent estimate of the profession. For some years before, and again soon after the War for Independence, the Atlantic States were at times overrun with English adventurers or Irish immigrants, many of whom occupied the interval till they should find employment, in teaching. Some came, as did other laborers, indentured for their passage-money. One Boucher, a royalist, in an address (1763),† is reported as saying that

See "American Journal of Education," vol. xiii, p. 752.

+ See Neill's "Maryland Colony," p. 212. Thomas Scharf, in his "History of Maryland," vol. ii, p. 22, says, of the same period, "Probably much

"at least two thirds of the contemporary Maryland education was derived from instructors that were either indentured servants or transported felons. Not a ship arrives," he said, "either with redemptioners or convicts, in which schoolmasters are not as regularly advertised for sale, as are weavers, tailors, or any other tradesmen."

With such standards of intellectual and literary excellence among the people, no prominence could be expected among their servants-the teachers, and yet the case was not wholly bad. In each of a dozen colleges were a few men of ability and noble influence-men to know whom, and to live in whose atmosphere, was an education. Of this character, without exhausting the list, or excluding others, were Dwight and Stiles, of Yale, and a little later Prof. Silliman; Dr. David Tappan and Prof. Sewall, of Harvard; Maclean, of Princeton; President Wheelock, of Dartmouth; and, somewhat earlier, Prof. Hugh Jones, of the College of William and Mary. In the academies there were Masters Moody and Doddridge; Ebenezer Adams, of Leicester; and Dr. Thomas Rowe, the teacher of Isaac Watts. Benjamin Abbot began in this period, also, his long career at Exeter. Concerning the common or elementary school-teachers, however, the story is different. Exceptions were few. The learning of the day was not of the school-room. The period was one of activity, not thought. Life was conduct: culture was valued, not less; but doing, more. The years were full of a wisdom suited to the times. The needful teachers were new institutions, an unbroken continent, impoverished treas uries, menacing neighbors, and the care that belongs to venture without precedent. All these the period had; and from their influence, in season, came both men and scholars.*

66

more than half the population, not including slaves, were totally illiterate and grossly ignorant," and still further that there was no general education, no free circulation of books, no emoluments and distinction of literature."

* For a vivid and entertaining sketch of life and culture in the Revolutior ary period, see McMaster's "History of the People of the United States