Education

SINCE the inauguration of the Educational Department of The Atlantic, the Superintendents of Public Instruction of thirty States and four Territories have courteously sent us their latest reports. Most of them are bulky volumes, one third of each being taken up with county and town educational statistics, another third with the reports of county and town superintendents and school committees, while the remaining third consists of the report of the State superintendent, or secretary, himself.

Beginning with those from New England, of which we have all but that from New Hampshire, one is surprised to find within this smallest group of the Union, in area, almost the two extremes of our American Common - School System; Massachusetts leading not only New England, but nearly all the country, in the privileges she freely affords to her children, and Vermont coming in this regard behind many of her Northern, and even some of her Southern sisters. Such is the apathy of her citizens on the subject, that, as one of them remarks in the report before us, her schools are just where they were twenty-five and fifty years ago. The number of school-houses reported as “ unfit for their purposes ” is seven hundred and six, which is nearly one, third of the whole. In her chief city, Burlington, out of forty-one teachers only two were graduates of a normal school, and only six had certificates from a teachers’ institute. The town examinations for teachers do not equal in difficulty those for the admission of grammar-school children into the leading high schools of other New England States. There is no high-school system in Vermont. The report represents the “ cheap teacher ” as everywhere sought after with avidity. Ordinary “ wages,” as they are called, range from $1.50 to $4.00 a week for women, and from S4.00 a week and upward for men. No wonder, then, that one committee-man reports it as almost impossible to procure teachers for the district schools, and says that young women only take charge of them to “accommodate ” their neighbors. The Superintendent of Maine reproaches his State for paying less to her teachers than any other State in the Union, but when we turn to the last published report of the National Educational Bureau (1872), we find that Vermont had discreetly sent no average at all. She seems to be the only New England State whose report does not bear witness to increased interest and liberality on the part of her citizens toward the public schools, and it is to her a deep disgrace, not yet wiped off, that some years ago she appropriated her educational fund to pay her outstanding debts !

The topics touched upon by the State superintendents and secretaries are various, but relate rather to what we should call the externals — the form — of education, than to its substance. They speak much, for example, of the ways and means of compassing the school attendance of all school children of school age ; they draw up the most careful totals and averages from their statistics ; they lay great stress on normal schools and teachers’ institutes, and on the attendance by inexperienced teachers upon the latter when held in their vicinity. They discuss the pros and cons of free text-books and of uniformity of text-books, and suggest ways and means of increasing and regulating the school moneys of their respective States. They are anxious for the proper ventilation of school-rooms, and two of them give plans and portraits of school - houses of every grade, from the rustic to the grandiose. They magnify the office of town and county superintendent, and believe the efficiency of the public-school system to depend more on the way in which it is carried out than on any other agency. Singing and drawing have been introduced by law into the schools of Massachusetts, and are taught to some extent in the urban schools of Rhode Island, Maine, and Connecticut. In view of the importance of one of these arts in industrial education, all the New England superintendents more or less desire legislation regarding them similar to that of Massachusetts. A free Kindergarten is in experimental operation in the city of Boston, and sewing has been made a part of the course in the girls’ schools of that city, — the former having been brought about by the disinterested ardor and effort of Miss Elizabeth Peabody, and the latter by the quiet perseverance for many years of a small knot of Boston ladies, — though neither fact is alluded to in the report. Sewing, singing, and drawing are also taught in the new and important undertaking of " vacation schools ” lately started in the summer season in Providence, Rhode Island, which were attended voluntarily by over one thousand children for more or less of the six weeks during which they were kept. The teaching in these schools is “ mostly conversational,” and “ daily lessons are given in morals, and in the courtesies and amenities of life.” Evening schools are a regular feature of the educational system in the larger towns of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, and half-time schools are being tried in the manufacturing districts with satisfactory results. From Rhode Island comes an official protest against the overcrowding in primary schools, and from Connecticut a timely article on the “ declining towns ” of that State, with excellent suggestions borrowed from the experience of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, as to the ways and means of their recuperation. The admirable essay of its author, Hon. B. G. Northrop, in a previous report, Should American Youth be Educated Abroad? ought to be placed in the hand of every rich parent in our land. All the State superintendents favor the placing of women on the school committees, and one of the town superintendents in Vermont is a woman. In Maine and Vermont the town and the district systems for the regulation of the schools are still contending for the supremacy, though the obvious advantages of the former must give it the victory in the end. The fact that the educational interests of Vermont were long “ in the keeping of from thirty to one hundred local officials for each district ” would alone account for the backwardness of education in that State. By law the Vermont Board of Education prescribes the textbooks for the schools once in five years, and the secretary gives the list of the last changes. They are not cheerful. Maine has had a long discussion on the question of uniform text - books, but never a law on the subject; and now the towns are sagely settling the matter for themselves by conferring the use of text-books free upon all scholars. The system was first introduced in Bristol, Rhode Island, but there it has not as yet had the effect of inducing the children to go to school any more than they did before. The reverse is the result in Maine. Some space is given in the Maine Report to suggested courses of study for the various grades of public schools, and from Rhode Island we have the courses followed in the high schools of Providence and Newport. Other than these, the State superintendents hint very little, as to what the children are really getting from our educational system; yet one would think that the discussion of the objects that were being attained by all this stupendous machinery was of more importance than the display of the machinery itself.

The truth must be told. If there is such a thing as a balance of the faculties, and also a natural order for their unfolding, and if it be a consummation devoutly to he wished that such education as we have should observe this order and preserve this balance as far as it goes, then we are obliged regretfully to state that the indications we glean from these reports are nothing at all of this, but are rather of a public-school system strangely unsymmetrieal, and calculated to develop a warped and ill-proportioned national mind and character. The great question of what to teach — the vital question, of course, in planning a scheme of education for the masses, and the one before which all others pale — is but little dwelt upon by those highest in authority over our own. They seem the administrative officers of a system established and settled beyond peradventure, rather than the gradual reformers of one which now for a long time has been going contrary to the dictates alike of common-sense and of enlightened experience. When five-year-old tots are taught in the city of Boston that “ the letter E is composed of one perpendicular and three horizontal lines,” American pedagogy must be far on the road to absurdity. Such are its obvious defects, indeed, that to our thinking it is much to say for it that it has given the people intelligence enough to be dissatisfied with it, — and of this we find abundant evidence when we turn to that portion of the reports furnished by the school committees and town superintendents.

To these local officers and their constituents, the mere fact of having a liberally supported public-school System is getting to be no longer a sufficient source of pride and satisfaction. And all through their reports, the increase of crime, the lowered tone of political and other morality that has of late become so conspicuous among us, and the prevailing scarcity of skilled and conscientious labor are alluded to as reasons for scrutinizing the national education more closely than hitherto. Of the seven million two hundred thousand pupils in the schools of the country, seven millions go no further than the grammar schools ; and parents are finding out that after six or seven years spent in the dry and narrow curriculum of the grammar classes, namely, reading, writing, spelling, grammar, arithmetic, and geography, the majority of their offspring leave school at fourteen knowing very little of even these few poor studies, and nothing of all the worlds of nature, of humanity, or of skill. “ Too much grammar and arithmetic ” is rapidly getting to be a popular cry, and it is one that the universities will echo ; for so far as we can gather, the leading mathematicians and philologists of the country maintain that these studies are not only overtaught in the public schools, but are taught in the worst possible way. There is a growing desire that the natural sciences, at least, shall be introduced into the grammar schools, and we are glad to say that in Prattville, Connecticut, and in Springfield, Massachusetts, botany is now being taught in such schools, while Hooker’s interesting Child’s Book of Nature is helping on the cause in the city grammar schools of Eastern Massachusetts. More frequent and more serious are the complaints of the want of instruction in morals and manners. Says a Maine gentleman, “ They are entirely neglected in our schools.” Another remarks that “ crime in our country is due more to moral than to intellectual blindness; ” a statement that is borne out by statistics, since only twenty-two per cent. of our criminals are illiterate. The radical separation which the jealousies of our foreign population, chiefly, have made between the so-called secular and religious instruction, was certainly not anticipated by the original founders of the American school system, and is a question that will some day be met more earnestly than has hitherto been the case, — not in the way of contest, probably, but of supplementary agencies. To suppose that the inexperienced youths and young girls who mostly teach in our Sunday-schools can train up a vigorous and enlightened national morale, and to leave, as is now too much the custom, this solemn duty to them, is trifling with the gravest interest of the State indeed.

With the above exceptions, the main complaints of the school committees seem to be the absenteeism of children, the indifference of parents, and the inefficiency of teachers.

In regard to the first, the superintendents and committees generally favor a law making school attendance compulsory, as is the case in Connecticut, which, consequently, has a higher percentage of attendance than any other New England State. Massachusetts has a truant law, and the returns from the city of Boston show that where it is energetically carried out, it proves as efficacious as a compulsory one. Where all children are compelled to go to school, however, and corporal punishment is abolished beside, the protection of the teacher and of the orderly pupils alike requires special schools for the truants and the unmanageable, and these now exist in several of the counties of Massachusetts. As for the parents, very many of the school committees are urgent and almost pathetic in their appeals to them to visit the schools and see what is going on there for themselves. In Maine it is said to be the fact that while the population is stationary the school children decrease, and a Vermonter remarks that on account of children “ being so few now in families, they are so petted and spoiled that the teachers can do nothing with them.” Throughout the reports, parents are more blamed for any insubordination in the schools than the teachers ; apparently they often fail to uphold the teachers, and to cause them to be respected by the children. And finally, as to these same beleaguered teachers, we find no end to the complaints, and no stint to the demands, though sometimes, too, there is very generous praise. To us it would seem that a uniform system of State examinations and graded certificates is simply indispensable, unless it is expected that many of the schools of a State are to fall below its desired standard. But after all, as is the pay, so must the work be. There is no vocation that calls for such mental, moral, and emotional expenditure as that of the teacher; none which requires a longer or more thorough training before ease and mastery can be attained in it ; yet there is nothing in the pay or the position of the mass of our teachers (that is to say, the women teachers) to warrant them in bringing any more to it than they do. The drudgery of the profession, only, is freely open to them, not its prizes. For instance, Massachusetts is put down as spending $19.38 per capita oil her school children, Rhode Island S13.59, and Connecticut $11.60. Part of the excess in Massachusetts is owing to the very high average of the salaries paid to her male teachers, this being $93.50 a month, while in Rhode Island it is but $75.72, and in Connecticut but $69.03. Her female teachers, on the contrary, are at a disadvantage, their average monthly salaries being but $34.14, against $41.97 in Rhode Island, and $36.05 in Connecticut. Moreover, the average salaries of male teachers in Massachusetts have risen $8.56 a month within the past year, while those of female teachers have only gained $1.75 a month in the same time. And yet we learn from the Massachusetts Report that, beside their regular duties, the female teachers of the State are expected to qualify themselves out of school hours to teach singing and drawing, without any promise (that we can discover) of increased salaries; and this, too, when it is admitted that the new system of constant written examinations for children has immensely increased their labors ! The average salary of the principals of the high schools of the State is $1400.00 per annum, and that of the school superintendents is probably still higher. The number of the latter is not given, but of the former there are in the State one hundred and ninety-four, scarcely any of whom are women, though the female teachers are as seven to one. Of course the best women educators, therefore, must contiuually he driven to private teaching for pecuniary success, since there can he few private schools which do not dear for their principals ten or fifteen hundred a year over school expenses. In short, there is no such effectual bar to effort and progress as the shutting of the door of hope to all advancement. There are indications in the reports that women teachers are tending to he more permanent in their places than men, and the people apparently prefer them where their preparation is equal. Many of them are the self-appointed janitors of the school-rooms without extra pay, and are interested in their cheerfulness and adornment. The committee in Medford, Massachusetts, say they are “ satisfied that our teachers are much wiser than the system they feel constrained to follow, and that the text-books in common use are a delusion and a snare to all concerned.” And a Taunton critic most justly remarks, “ There is danger of too much legislation for teachers.” This is a far more enlightened spirit than that of the Boston school committee, which two years ago stigmatized the petition of some of their women teachers against the introduction of a certain text-hook, as an “ indecorum.” If school committees want slaves for their teachers, they can easily have them, but good slaves can never be good masters. Were the emoluments and dignities of the profession thrown open to all teachers alike, and could the best and most experienced of them be made members of the school committees ev officio, there would probably be a marked and rapid rise in the qualifications of ulie whole class.