Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

the escapades and pranks in which college life abounded. The first of these manual labor institutions were established in the New England and Middle states between 1820 and 1830, but within a dozen years the manual labor system was adopted in theological schools, colleges, and academies from Maine to Tennessee. The success of this feature at Andover Theological Seminary, where it was begun in 1826 for 'invigorating and preserving health, without any reference to pecuniary profit,' was especially influential in causing it to be extended. The 'Society for Promoting Manual Labor in Literary Institutions,' founded in 1831, appointed a general agent to visit the chief colleges in the Middle West and South, call attention to the value of manual labor, and issue a report upon the subject. Little attention, however, was given to the pedagogical principles underlying this work. As material conditions improved and formal social life developed, the impracticability of the scheme was realized, and the industrial side of these institutions was given up. The physical exercise phase was then replaced by college athletics. By 1840-1850 most of the schools and colleges that began as 'manual labor institutes' had become purely literary.

education for

A further movement in industrial education has been Industrial found in the establishment of such schools as Carlisle, racial problems, prison Hampton, and Tuskegee, which adopted this training reform, as a solution for peculiar racial problems. But the original idea of Pestalozzi, to secure redemption through manual labor, has been embodied in American institutions since 1873, when Miss Mary Carpenter, the English prison reformer, visited the United States. Contract labor and factory work in the reformatories then began

defectives and delinquents,

to be replaced by farming, gardening, and kindred domestic industries. At the present time, moreover, the schools for delinquents and defectives in the New England, Middle Atlantic, Middle West, and most of the Southern states, have the Fellenberg training, though without much grasp of the educational principles involved. Finally, there has also been a growing tendency in the twentieth century to employ industrial training or trade education for the sake of holding pupils longer and efficiency in school and increasing the efficiency of the public system. In so far as it has tended to replace the more general values of manual training, once so popular, with skill in some particular industrial process, this modern movement represents a return from the occupational work started by Froebel to the philanthropic practice of Fellenberg and Pestalozzi.

of the public

system.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Graves, In Modern Times (Macmillan, 1913), chap. V; and Great Educators (Macmillan, 1912), chap. IX; Monroe, Textbook (Macmillan, 1905), pp. 597-622; Parker, Modern Elementary Education (Ginn, 1912), chaps. XIII-XVI. The Leonard and Gertrude has been well arranged for English readers in the edition of Eva Channing (Heath, 1896) and How Gertrude Teaches Her Children has been translated by Lucy E. Holland and Frances C. Turner (Bardeen, 1898). The standard English treatises on Pestalozzi are Guimps, R. de, Pestalozzi, His Aim and Work (Appleton, 1890); Holman, H., Pestalozzi (Longmans, 1908); Krüsi, H., Pestalozzi, His Life, Work, and Influence (American Book Co., 1875); Pinloche, A., Pestalozzi and the Foundation of the Modern Elementary School (Scribner, 1901), and, more recently, Green, J. A., Life and Work of Pestalozzi (Clive, London, 1913) and Pestalozzi's Educational Writings (Longmans, Green, 1912). Monroe, W. S.,

has furnished an interesting History of the Pestalozzian Movement in the United States (Bardeen, 1907). The Institutions of De Fellenberg were fully described by King, W. (London, 1842); and by Barnard, H., in his American Journal of Education, vol. III, pp. 591-596; XIII, 323–331; and XXVI, 359–368.

CHAPTER XXIII

DEVELOPMENT OF PUBLIC EDUCATION IN THE

UNITED STATES

OUTLINE

During the second quarter of the nineteenth century a third period in the educational history of America, marked by further democratization and a great expansion of public education, appeared.

It began with an awakening generally known as 'the revival of common schools,' which was most noticeable in New England. Here, owing to the attacks made upon him by reactionaries, Horace Mann was the most conspicuous reformer; while Henry Barnard, through his American Journal of Education, enabled educators to look beyond the educational experience of America. But the influence of this awakening was also felt in every other section of the United States.

It was followed by a steady growth in universal education, state support and control, local supervision, and the organization of normal schools in New England and the Middle states.

In the Northwest, common school advocates overcame the opposition of settlers from states not committed to public education, and in the further expansion of the United States progress in common school sentiment has kept pace with the settlement of the country.

The South made considerable progress during the early years of the awakening, and while the Civil War crushed its educational facilities, the struggle for public education has since been won.

The Third Period in American Education.-Interest in the improved methods of Pestalozzi and other re

of democratic

tension of state

schools.

formers that was manifesting itself everywhere in the United States during the second quarter of the nineteenth century seems to have been but one phase of a much larger movement. It was about this time that a third period in American education, which was marked by the development of democratic ideals and the exten- Development sion of state systems of public schools, may be said to ideals and exhave begun. During the period of 'transition,' we found systems of (chap. XXI), half a dozen of the states had started an organization of common schools, and in a dozen others permanent school funds had been established, an influential minority of leading citizens were constantly advocating universal education, and public interest in the matter was evidently increasing. But the consummation of a regular system was still much hindered by sectarian jealousies, by the conception of public schools as institutions for paupers and the consequent custom of allowing private schools to share in public funds, by the unwillingness of the wealthy to be taxed locally for the benefit of other people's children, and, in New England, by the division of the system into autonomous districts and the interference of petty politics. Hence, while much progress had been made since the early days of 'transplantation' of European ideals and institutions, there was still much need of the expansion and further democratization that now began to appear. Of the rapid development that took place during this final period of Americanization, much was accomplished before the middle of the nineteenth century, but educational progress continued through the final decade.

Early Leaders in the Common School Revival.-The educational awakening with which the beginning of this

« ForrigeFortsæt »