Education

IN the Southern country, as a whole, the public-school system is rather in a state of trying to be than of actual being, and therefore in that quarter of our Union it presents as yet no feature of interest beyond the simple fact that in this, its initial stage, it is making so good a fight for existence as to give hopes of vigorous health and a strong constitution in the future. Some of its guardians and nurses are endowed with intuitions and generalizations of liberal culture, so that it is quite possible that the mistakes of the North in elaborate text-books and narrow courses of study may be avoided by this later comer into the publicschool field. All the Southern superintendents are in sympathy with the commonschool education of the negro, not, it must be admitted, so much for his own sake as in order to mitigate and remove the curse of the ignorant ballot, which now afflicts the recent slave communities. But the superintendent of Virginia believes warmly in the “ improvability ” of the negro himself as a “ man and a brother.” Some superintendents recommend that all the taxes of every description raised by negroes should be devoted to the support of schools for their benefit. This amount could not nearly supply them with instruction, since even in Kentucky it would only reach about $15,000 annually. On the present system, says one report, “ one race bears all the burden and the other reaps the benefit;" and the popularity of the common - school system, and the zeal with which it is supported, are very much affected thereby.

In the Southern States public - school funds are raised by state instead of by local taxation, and leading superintendents are anxious that in this regard the laws of their respective States should be changed so as to allow of taxation at will for the support of schools. This is the system at the North, and it has proved successful in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. The Peabody fund is doing service of such immense value in inaugurating common-school education in the South, that the only wonder is that some other millionaire has not doubled it. This fund does not assist colleges, academies, or any private, sectarian, or charity schools, nor does it aid schools whose average attendance is less than eighty-five pupils. As a specimen of the work it is doing we quote from the last report of the superintendent of Virginia, who says, “ It may safely be asserted in regard to the majority of our one hundred and fifty-five graded schools that they could not have come into being without aid from this source; but, having been tried, and their superior advantages exhibited to the people, these schools will be permanent wherever there is sufficient population to maintain them. The aid given to teachers’ institutes was also of great value. It enabled me to send highly-qualified lecturers to instruct the teachers in a number of places.” The Peabody fund aids, too, in the publication of the Virginia Educational Journal.

No Southern State has more willingly received the modern doctrine of universal education than Virginia. She is prosecuting the common schooling of her children with vigor, and the last statistics show a gain in almost every particular. The number of teachers has increased two hundred during the past year. Improved furniture and apparatus are coming into use, and the attendance on the public schools has been greater than at any previous time. The primary public schools are rapidly absorbing the lower grades of private schools. There are nearly two hundred academies in the State, from which large classes yearly enter the colleges. The Virginians carry the family idea into the school, and there are “ few places where brothers and sisters are sent to different schools. The educational advantages of co-education as to grading, study, and manners are so great that they will prevail over a prejudice which, so far as children are concerned, is left without an argument when the school premises and supervision are what they should be.” There are two excellent colored normal schools in Virginia, but no steps have as yet been taken for the normal training of white teachers. The cities of Richmond and Lynchburg are particularly mentioned as having made the greatest advance toward the modern public-school ideal.

West Virginia has sent us no report, but from the last national report (1874) we learn that " the results of the free-school work in the State for the last two years are very gratifying, and show a steady and healthy increase in the attendance of pupils at school, as well as greater efficiency in financial and school management.” The State has established a normal school with five branches — an instance of energy and wise foresight in the right direction.

At no time in the State of Maryland, since the state school system came into existence, has there been greater activity in all departments than during the year 1874. Although the amount of public-school money received from the State was less than in any previous year, the people of the several counties, by their voluntary contributions, have made up the deficiency nearly threefold. “ An important element of educational progress in the State was the establishment, in September, 1874, of the Maryland School Journal, a monthly paper devoted to the cause of education, with the state superintendent and the superintendent of Baltimore as editors.” The schools in Baltimore, as is natural in so old a Roman Catholic city, separate the sexes from the primary schools upward. The public-school system was not inaugurated in Baltimore until 1828, when three schools were opened and 269 pupils enrolled. In nine years these had only increased to 659, but in 1837 the city and school authorities established a high school. “ The opportunities thus afforded for advancement to a higher grade of training immediately resulted in enlargement of the lower schools, so that in 1840, nine schools were in existence, with over 1800 pupils, while in 1874 there were one hundred and twenty-two schools and 39,569 pupils.” This rapid increase, doubtless due in some degree to the great growth of population in the city, was attributed by the late city superintendent mainly to the influence of the central high school.” Drawing and music form a part of the publicschool training of Baltimore, and in the girls’ schools the teachers cheerfully undertook the work of teaching sewing, knitting, embroidery, and other useful branches to the female pupils of their schools, and set apart one afternoon in each week for this purpose. The experiment was very successful. Secondary education throughout Maryland is reported in a declining condition, though the State was once noted for its numerous and excellent classic schools.

In the city of Washington there is no high school excepting a colored one called a “preparatory high school.” There is a normal school in which, “ besides a review of previous studies, the pupils have been instructed in drawing, in methods of instruction, and in all that relates to the general management of schools,” after which course the graduates must answer perfectly to Goethe’s definition, “There is nothing more frightful than a person who knows only so much as he is required to teach.” Drawing and music and a little natural science and physics are taught in the public schools, but apparently no foreign language.

The proportion of colored pupils is larger in Washington than in any other city in the country. Only twenty-six per cent. of the persons who send their children to the public schools pay any taxes for them, yet the school-tax in Washington is nearly twice as great as in any other locality. There are as yet seatings enough for only half the children. The school-houses are generally overcrowded and ill-ventilated, though two of them, the Franklin and the Jefferson schools, for white and colored children respectively, are fine buildings which took very high medals at the Vienna Exposition. There are seventy-eight private schools in Washington, of which three are kindergartens. The one under Miss Marwedal is very completely organized, having a principal and six assistants and about seventy scholars.

In Kentucky the state and county teachers' associations are thoroughly organized and united, and the recently conferred right of district taxation will enable local enterprise to develop a common-school system commensurate with the wants of the State. The greatest present want of the State is good school-houses, the complaints respecting them being universal, and the pictures drawn of some of them being disgraceful and repulsive in the extreme. Yet improvement in these has set in vigorously, one hundred and forty-one new ones having been built in the past year.

In Tennessee not one fifth of the eligible population of the State had any means of education in 1872. In some of the counties there was not a single school, public or private, in operation. Now over one half of the children are enrolled, and over one quarter are in daily attendance. As the expenditure is only $3.40 per capita, the quality and quantity of the teaching must of course be very elementary. In Kentucky and Virginia it is about $5.08. There are thirty-three “ colleges, academies, and seminaries” in Tennessee, especially “ colleges.”

According to the last Arkansas report, the superintendent could not even provide shelving for the preservation of the educational reports of the other States and of the national government. The schoolteachers were paid in state scrip, which had depreciated to thirty-five cents on the dollar. At present “ the political convulsions by which this State has been shaken appear to have temporarily paralyzed the free-school system. . . . Public-school matters in our State are now at a stand-still. But now that our political troubles are over, and this present state government is fully established, I am satisfied that both public-school and other interests will in a short time revive and be carried on with renewed energy.”

In Mississippi, owing to the teachers being paid in “warrants,” whose value ranged from nothing up to fifty cents on the dollar, many schools were closed and most were kept open only a small portion of the year. The colleges of Mississippi are for one sex. Education for women appears to be extremely superficial and defective. There are two normal schools, but only for colored teachers. The city centres are apparently doing nothing for public-school education. Only half of the children of the State went to school at all.

In Louisiana, in 1873, only one fifth of the children were even enrolled. The revenue was not large enough to cover half the current expenses for half of the children, leaving nothing for building, repairs, and furnishing. The report itself admits that “ official rascality ” has destroyed confidence in the public-school system. “In most parishes of the State the need of schoolhouses is the greatest source of embarrassment. Scholars, for want of buildings, have been taught under trees and in buildings that had no doors, windows, or floors. There are no school-buildings worthy the name in the State, with the exception of a few in New Orleans and in one or two of the older towns in the interior. Indeed, even the best of the New Orleans schoolhouses would not be tolerated in any large town at the North longer than to give time to erect others.” There is a high school at Baton Rouge, and three others in New Orleans are creditably spoken of. The financial condition of the Louisiana State University remains deplorable.

In Texas there “ is in some counties evidence of a return of public confidence in free education.” But the system is struggling with every conceivable difficulty: schoolhouses rented instead of being owned by the State, thus adding one fourth to the school expenses; the one per cent. tax peculated and misapplied ; free schools and private schools blended together ; a multiplicity of school districts; no provision for the school organization of cities and towns as such, these being under the control of county officers.

In Alabama “ the provision of the constitution which requires the inviolable devotion of certain revenues and school funds to the purposes of education has been disregarded by each successive legislature. Each year an increasing percentage of the school fund has been diverted from its legitimate use to the defraying of the general expenses of the State.” The indebtedness of the State to the school fund, from this diversion of the revenues, had risen from $187,872 at the end of 1869, to $1,260,511 at the end of 1873, in which year, out of $522,810 apportioned for educational purposes, only $68,313 was paid from the state treasury, and that only in teachers’ warrants ! “ The result has been an almost entire paralysis of primary education.” In the report for 1874 the retiring superintendent says that “ during the past school year the difficulties above referred to have neither been removed nor lessened. On the contrary, new complications have arisen.” There are apparently ten institutions in the State for the training of teachers, eight of these being for the colored race and two for the white. “ With the zeal for college training which marks the Southern people, the University of Alabama has been kept in operation by the State, while the common schools have been suffered to go down.”

The superintendent of Florida reports that “ half a decade ago there were no schools outside a few of the larger towns and cities. We have now nearly six hundred scattered throughout the State. They are springing up by the highways and by-ways as pledges of future improvement and progress. Out of a total population of two hundred thousand we have twenty thousand children attending school.” Sixteen schools in Florida are beneficiaries of the Peabody fund. Three out of every four of the teachers of Florida are reported as “ unfit for their work,” and there does not seem to be a single agency in the State, except an “ academic department ” in the Peabody school at St. Augustine, capable of making them any better ; no high school or normal school, teacher’s institute or college.

Georgia has been called the Empire State of the South, and the Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Georgia Teachers Association give promise of an intellectual life within her borders which will easily enable her to maintain her supremacy. Of the eight papers read at this meeting, six—The Higher Education of Women, Modern Uses of the Ancient Languages, Scientific School Studies, A Plea for Common Sense in Education, Practical Education, and Theories of College Education — would have been considered able in any similar meeting in any part of the country. The venerable Dr. Lyscomb presided, and opened the conference with an appeal to teachers to magnify their office. “ There is a Georgia greater than the Georgia we have lost; a Georgia grander than the old Georgia was. The Georgia in our brains, under our feet, and in our hills and our rivers, will be the Georgia that will gladden the hearts and homes of our children.”

In South Carolina, of an apparent school revenue of over half a million, “ not a cent of an appropriation of $300,000 for 1873 ever reached the schools; ” and in 1874 also there was a large deficiency. Great numbers of the schools were closed, and the teachers suffered from “ great distress and privation.” In 1873 Grenville County received but $800 of the $12,252 of school funds which came into the hands of the county treasurer, a man who, being pardoned from serving a term in the state penitentiary, afterward received possession of the school funds from the state treasurer and immediately left the State! Charleston College, with its fine museum of natural history, is still in operation, and probably has to do duty, as far as the whites are concerned, for both itself and the state university at Columbia. Since 1873 the latter has been principally in the hands of negroes, and therefore abandoned by the better class of whites. A preparatory school has been added to it under its new régime, and also one hundred and twenty-four state scholarships of four years each, and each with an income of $200, — and this though the number of students in the preparatory school is but one hundred and seventeen, and in the college itself but forty-two. But the practical operation of the measure is far from favorable. " The board of trustees has likewise remitted all fees and rent hitherto imposed upon students, thus rendering the university practically free to all. The university buildings are in an unfortunate condition, and unless prompt and efficacious measures be taken to protect them from the further ravages of time and the weather, they will suffer permanent and irreparable damage.”

In North Carolina the State has not yet authorized local taxation for school purposes. It attempts to provide for the schools out of the state taxes, and the result is of course inadequate. Teachers' wages are low, and there appear to be no county superintendents. At the date of the report the state university was in a condition of suspension, and had been so for some time. At the state convention of 1874 a young colored man made a speech at the suggestion of the state superintendent, in which he deprecated the excessive multiplication of studies in the schools for colored children. His address met with a very cordial appreciation by the assembly. Three other colored men took part in the discussions and “ were heard with a friendly and respectful interest.”

For ourselves, we look for a great educational impetus to be given to the whole South when the magnificent Johns Hopkins University of Baltimore is fairly organized and in operation. It has admirable material to work upon. No observer can teach Southern schools, whether for poor or rich, without recognizing the abounding talent, as well as the docility and enthusiasm and abandon, of the Southern children.

With this number we bring our review of the school reports of all the States and Territories to a close. The present defects of our public-school system may be briefly summed up. They are an alarming absence of definite monal teaching, and a disgraceful neglect of historical studies; too much elaboration of arithmetic, grammar, and geography, and too little attention to the other elements of knowledge, together with a complete failure to impart any conception of, or taste for, English literature. Yet in all the thousands of pages of these reports which we have toiled through, only one man — a local superintendent in Rhode Island — perceived that this not teaching the masses what to read is in truth the great short-coming of our public-school system.