Part 67 (2/2)
When I perceive that ht to read and write in two months, who did not before know the alphabet, and that even one has accos and tendencies of this system--when I contemplate the habits of order which it forms, the spirit of emulation which it excites, the rapid improvement which it produces, the purity of morals which it inculcates--when I behold the extraordinary union of celerity in instruction and econoreat assele teacher,with unexaoal of knowledge, I confess that I recognize in Lancaster the benefactor of the hu a new era in education, as a blessing sent down from heaven to redeem the poor and distressed of this world froe to the legislature of Connecticut, a State then fairly well supplied with schools of the Massachusetts district type, Governor Wolcott said, in 1825:
If funds can be obtained to defray the expenses of the necessary preparations, I have no doubt that schools on the Lancastrian ht, as soon as possible, to be established in several parts of this state Wherever from 200 to 1000 children can be convened within a suitable distance, this , pen, will be found much more efficient, direct, and econoenerally pursued in our primary schools
The Lancastrian schools materially hastened the adoption of the free school syste people to bearing the necessary taxation which free schools entail They also made the coht and provoked discussion on the question of public education They likewise dignified the work of the teacher by showing the necessity for teacher- training The Lancastrian Model Schools, first established in the United States in 1818, were the precursors of the American normal schools
COMING OF THE INFANT SCHOOL A curious early condition in America was that, in some of the cities where public schools had been established, by one agency or another, no provision had been inners These were supposed to obtain the ele at home, or in the Dame Schools In Boston, for example, where public schools were maintained by the city, no children could be received into the schools who had not learned to read and write (R 314 a) This ht years The same was in part true of Hartford, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other cities When the monitorial schools were established they tended to restrict their h not always able to do so
In 1816 there caland, a valuable supplement to education as then known in the form of the so-called Infant Schools (p
630) First introduced at Boston (R 313), the Infant Schools proved popular, and in 1818 the city appropriated 5000 for the purpose of organizing such schools to supplement the public-school systee, were to be known as priht by women, were to be open all the year round, and were to prepare the children for admission to the city schools, which by that tirammar schools Providence, similarly, established pries of four and eight, to supple schools
THE DAME SCHOOL ABSORBED For New England the establishment of primary schools virtually took over the Dame School instruction as a public function, and added the pri school
We have here the origin of the division, often still retained at least in nararades” of the elementary school
[Illustration: FIG 197 ”MODEL” SCHOOL BUILDING OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SOCIETY Erected in 1843 Cost (with site), 17,000 A typical New York school building, after 1830 The infant or primary school was on the first floor, the second floor contains the girls' school, and the third floor the boys'
school Each floor had one large roo 252 children; the pri doors, so as to segregate the infant class This building was for long regarded as the perfection of the builder's art, and its picture was printed for years on the cover of the Society's Annual Reports]
An ”Infant-School Society” was organized in New York, in 1827 The first Infant School was established under the direction of the Public School Society as the ”Junior Departe, and using monitorial methods A second school was established the next year In 1830 the naed from Infant School to Primary Department, and where possible these depart schools In 1832 it was decided to organize ten primary schools, under woe, and after the Boston plan of instruction This abandoned the monitorial plan of instruction for the new Pestalozzian form, which was deemed better suited to the needs of the smaller children By 1844 fifty-six Prianized in connection with the upper schools of the city
In Philadelphia three Infant-School Societies were founded in 1827-28, and such schools were at once established there By 1830 the directors of the school systeislature of the State to expend public money for such schools, and thirty such, under women teachers, were in operation in the city by 1837
[Illustration: FIG 198 EVOLUTION OF THE ESSENTIAL FEATURES OF THE AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM]
PRIMARY EDUCATION ORGANIZED The Infant-School idea was soon soed somewhat to make of it an American primary school Where children had not been previously ad how to read, as in Boston, they supple a new school beneath Where the reverse had been the case, as in New York City, the organization of Infant Schools as Junior Depart schools to advance their work Everywhere it resulted, eventually, in the organization of prirammar school departments, often with intermediate departments in between, and, with the soh schools, the main outlines of the American free public-school system were now complete
These four important educational movements--the secular Sunday School, the semi-public city School Societies, the Lancastrian plan for instruction, and the Infant-School idea--all arising in philanthropy, ca the first half of the nineteenth century, suppleeneration to the idea of a common school for all
III SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND ECONOMIC INFLUENCES
It is hardly probable, however, that these philanthropic efforts alone, valuable as they were, could have resulted in the great American battle for tax-supported schools, at as early a date as this took place, had they not been supplemented by a number of other movements of a social, political, and econoed the nature and direction of our national life The more important of these were: (1) The rise of cities and of e, and (3) the rise of new class-demands for schools
GROWTH OF CITY POPULATION AND MANUFACTURING At the tiuration of the National Government nearly every one in Ae The first forty years of the national life were essentially an agricultural and a pioneer period Even as late as 1820 there were but thirteen cities of 8000 inhabitants or over in the whole of the twenty-three States at that ti the Union, and these thirteen cities contained but 49 per cent of the total population of the Nation
After about 1825 these conditions began to change By 1820up, and these frequently proved the nuclei for future cities In New England many of these places were in the vicinity of soe scale possible Lowell, Massachusetts, which in 1820 did not exist and in 1840 had a population of over twenty thousand people, collected there largely to work in the ood illustration Other cities, such as Cincinnati and Detroit, grew because of their advantageous situation as exchange and wholesale centers With the revival of trade and corew rapidly both in number and size
The rise of the new cities and the rapid growth of the older ones ed the nature of the educational proble an entirely new set of social and educational conditions for the people of the Central and Northern States to solve The South, with its plantation life, negro slavery, and absence of ed conditions until well after the close of the Civil War
In consequence the educational awakening there did not come for nearly half a century after it came in the North In the cities in the coast States north of Maryland, but particularly in those of New York and New England,in particular beca of wool, while Pennsylvania beca industries
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The develops of the breakdown of the old hoe-old apprenticeshi+p system (Rs 200, 201), the start of the cityward movement of the rural population, and the concentration ofmany hands to perfor process This in tie in educational methods It also called for the concentration of both capital and labor The rise of the factory systee scale, and cheap and rapid transportation, all coe the city from an unimportant to a very important position in our national life The 13 cities of 1820 increased to 44 by 1840, and to 141 by 1860 There were four ti had found a horicultural
NEW SOCIAL PROBLEMS IN THE CITIES The e and home life, effected by the development of the factory syste and population in the cities, also contributedthe character of the old educational problees in size and character, hoeneous in their populations, and the estion of peoples of mixed character had not as yet arisen, the church and charity and private school solution of the educational problem was reasonably satisfactory As the cities now increased rapidly in size, became more city-like in character, drew to theely unknown, and were required by state laws to extend the right of suffrage to all their citizens, the need for a new type of educational organization began slowly but clearly tonumber of citizens The church, charity, and private school system completely broke down under the new strain School Societies and Educational associations, organized for propaganda, now arose in the cities; grants of city or state funds for the partial support of both church and society schools were dean to be established in the different cities to enable them to handle better the new problems of pauperism, intemperance, and juvenile delinquency which arose
THE EXTENSION OF THE SUFFRAGE The Constitution of the United States, though framed by the ablest men of the time, was framed by men who represented the old aristocratic conception of education and government
The same was true of the conventions which framed practically all the early state constitutions The early period of the national life was thus characterized by the rule of a class--a very well-educated and a very capable class, to be sure--but a class elected by a ballot based on property qualifications and belonging to the older type of political and social thinking