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and other centers.

Two years later a model infant school was started in Philadelphia, and in 1834 six others were organized. By 1837 there were thirty primary schools in Philadelphia alone. Several other cities started infant schools early. Hartford began them in 1827, and Baltimore in 1829. These institutions were in most cases fostered by the leading men of the community, and the ultimate service performed for American education by this form of philanthropy was considerable. Among other improvements, the infant schools developed a better type of schoolroom, secured separate rooms for different classes, inImprovements troduced better methods and equipment, encouraged a schools. movement toward playgrounds, and brought women into the city schools of the United States.

through infant

Purpose,

location,

course,

The Importance of Philanthropic Education.-Many other types of charity school arose during the eighteenth century both in Great Britain and America, but the chief movements have been described, and sufficient has been said to indicate the important part in education played by philanthropy. The moral, religious, and economic condition of the lower classes had been sadly neglected, and by means of endowment, subscription, or organized societies, a series of attempts was made to relieve and elevate the masses through education. As a result, charity schools of many varieties and more or less permanent in character arose in all parts of the British Isles, the United States, and even France. In many instances the pupils were furnished with lodging, board, and clothes. The curriculum in these institutions was, of course, mostly elementary. It generally included reading, spelling, writing, and arithmetic, while a moral and religious training was given

through the Bible, catechism, prayer book, and psalms, and sometimes through attendance at church under supervision of the master. Frequently industrial or vocational subjects were taught, or the pupils apprenticed to a trade or to domestic service. The course was usually most formal both in matter and method, but occasionally in the later types drawing, geography, nature study, physical exercises, and games were added, and the more informal methods of Pestalozzi or Froebel and methods. were partially employed. Sometimes the training was

especially intended for and adapted to children under the usual school age.

These efforts to improve social conditions by means

of philanthropic education encountered various sorts of Various sorts of opposition. opposition. Often the upper classes held that the masses should be kept in their place, and feared that any education at all would make them discontented and cause an uprising. The poor themselves, in turn, were often suspicious of any schooling that tended to elevate them, and were unwilling to stamp themselves as paupers. Moreover, the sectarian color that sometimes appeared in the religious training not infrequently repelled people of other creeds or kept the schools from receiving their children.

However, this philanthropic education may, in general, be considered a fortunate movement, although its greatest service consisted in paving the way for better things. In contrast to the negative phase of 'naturalism,' it represented a positive factor in the educational activities of the century. Instead of attempting to destroy existing society utterly, it sought rather to reform it, and when the work of destruction gave opportunity for new

Paved the way

for national

and public ed

ucation.

ideals, it suggested and even furnished a reconstruction along higher lines. Hence philanthropy in education exercised an important influence in the direction of universal, national, and public training for citizenship. It was in many of its forms merged in such a system in several countries, and in succeeding chapters references to the S. P. C. K., S. P. G., Sunday, monitorial, and infant schools will naturally appear.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, In Modern Times (Macmillan, 1913), chap. III; and Great Educators (Macmillan, 1912), chap. XII; Parker, Modern Elementary Education (Ginn, 1912), pp. 101-107. Allen, W. O. B. and McClure, E., have presented The History of the S. P. C. K. (Christian Knowledge Society, London, 1901), and Pascoe, C. F., Two Hundred Years of the S. P. G. (Christian Knowledge Society, London, 1898), while Kemp, W. W., gives a detailed history of The Support of Schools in Colonial New York by the S. P. G. (Columbia University, Teachers College Contributions, no. 56, 1913), and Weber, S. E., of The Charity School Movement in Pennsylvania (Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania). Harris, J., furnishes a good description of Robert Raikes; the Man and His Work (Dutton, New York, 1899); Salmon, D., of Joseph Lancaster (Longmans, Green, 1904); Meiklejohn, J. M. D., of An Old Educational Reformer, Dr. Andrew Bell (Bardeen, Syracuse); and Salmon, D., and Hindshaw, W., of Infant Schools, Their History and Theory (Longmans, Green, 1904).

CHAPTER XXI

THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION IN AMERICAN EDUCATION

OUTLINE

Between the 'transplantation' period and that of the purely American conception of education was a distinctive stage in American education, the 'period of transition.'

During this period Virginia and the other Southern states began to develop sentiment for universal education, and started permanent school funds and 'permissive' laws for common schools.

In the state of New York, appropriations were made for elementary education, but the public system was not really extended to the secondary field; while in New York City the way for universal education was prepared by quasi-public societies. In Pennsylvania, school districts were established at Philadelphia and elsewhere, but not until 1834 was the state system of common schools started. New Jersey and Delaware were even slower in getting their systems started.

The generous support of colonial education in Massachusetts was followed by a decline, and the control of schools was transferred from the towns to the districts. Academies were subsidized by the state and took the place of the grammar schools. A similar decline took place in the schools of the other New England states, except Rhode Island, which for the first time began to develop schools at public expense.

In the new states erected out of the Northwest Territory during this period there was a prolonged struggle to introduce common schools among those who had come from states not yet committed to this ideal, and state systems of education began to appear toward the close of the first quarter of the nineteenth century.

Thus before the educational awakening spread through the land,

Transition to

American con

ception began

about the middle of the eighteenth century.

a radical modification had taken place in the European institutions with which America began its education.

Evolution of Public Education in the United States.We may now return to our discussion of education in America. It has already been seen (chap. XVII) that the organization of schools in the various colonies was largely the result of educational ideals and conditions in the Mother Country. At first the schools of America closely resembled those of the European countries from which the colonists came, and the seventeenth century in American education is largely a period of 'transplantation.' But toward the middle of the eighteenth century, as new social and political conditions were evolving and the days of the Revolution were approaching, there were evident a gradual modification of European ideals and the differentiation of American schools toward a type of their own. America has long stood, in theory at least, for equality of opportunity, and this conception of society is apparent in its views of education. The distinguishing characteristic of the American schools has throughout been the attempt of a free people to educate themselves, and, through their elected representatives, the people of the various states have come, in harmony with the genius of American civilization, to initiate, regulate, and control their own systems of education. While the purely American conception of education cannot be fully discerned until almost the middle of the nineteenth century, there can for threequarters of a century before be clearly distinguished 'a period of transition' from the inherited ideals to those of America to-day. This intervening stage of evolution

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