Education

To men and women who are striving to solve the problems of popular education, who feel the weight of the mighty interests at stake, and to whom the inevitable friction and the conflict of detail seem at times hopelessly perplexing, the recent study of The Free - School System of the United States, by Mr. Francis Adams, secretary of the National League for Promoting Elementary Education in England, must come as a positive refreshment.

Working each at his own scrap of the great web, and now and again conscious that the pattern we are to follow was drawn for quite other days and other threads, and seeing how some of the best of our work fades almost before our hands leave it, not a few among us will hear with gratitude this cheering voice from beyond the sea. It speaks in sympathy and charity those words of approval and of warning which every man who has ever hold a responsible position longs for, in the strong desire that some cool head and clear eye, quick to see merit, not blind to defects or failures, but yet, like one’s self, knowing all the difficulties, might closely survey the work and give an impartial judgment.

We think no such exhaustive review of our school-records has ever been made before. The authorities cited are from every part of the country, and one cannot fail to read between the lines that the citations show only a small part of the material used. The testimony for and against has heen so carefully selected and so justly balanced that we doubt if personal observation of the schools could have added to the fairness of the statement. Certainly the same comprehensive view of the matter could not have heen obtained by personal inspection, short of a life-time spent in it. And surely, we on this side have no reason to ask for more, since the verdict has been rendered upon our own showing. Our superintendents and boards of education have told their own story to their own best advantage. Mr. Adams’s attempt to make clear to the English mind the principles and working of our system has furnished us with the best résumé of our work that we have ever had.

We regret that want of space forbids us to quote from the chapters on Government, Cost, Grading, and Course of Study. We note only that wherever there is occasion to compare our system with the English, whether in scope or in result, Mr. Adams unhesitatingly pronounces for ours. His conclusious differ most widely from those of the writer in the Quarterly Review last spring, who had apparently set himself the task of finding how much of truth of detail is compatible with the largest amount of untruth and unfairness in general conclusions. We ought to be grateful to Mr. Adams for his searching exposure of its fallacies. Passing over much both of interest and of profit, we confine ourselves to the remarks on two or three of the questions now most discussed among us.

The opinion recently expressed by a high authority here, as to the effect of a too general employment of women as teachers, has been the subject of varied comments, some of them not a little absurd. Mr. Adams confirms this opinion, both from his experience in England and from his study of the facts here. At the same time, he is an unprejudiced observer, as may be seen from the following: “The extensive employment of women as teachers in America has been due partly to natural causes, but more to the conviction, which experience has confirmed, that women are better qualified for elementary teaching than men.” “ The deficiency of training is much less observable than in other countries, on account of the great natural aptitude of Americans, and especially of American women, for the work of teaching.” Nevertheless, he is compelled to observe “how brief the school-life of female teachers is, and how great a difficulty it entails upon the American system.

. . . At present it is estimated that teachers in the States do not continue in service on the average more than three years.”

Of the direct effect of the short term of service for women upon the permanency and stability of the teacher’s profession, he says, “ The large preponderance of female teachers in the States will always render the occupation of the teacher more or less a temporary one. As a matter quite of course, women do not look to teaching as a life-long career. In England, scarcely one in twenty of the female teachers reaches her tenth year of service. Of the female teachers trained at Bishop’s Stortford it has been ascertained that the average schoollife was under five years. The proportion of female teachers in America is ten times greater than in England. Female teachers may have other advantages over males, and in the United States are generally conceded to have, but the length of their school-life is not one of them.”

Of our methods of examining teachers, there are one or two pertinent sentences which we commend to superintendents and school committees: “The regulations respecting the examinations of teachers appear to he responsible, to some extent, for the frequent changes which occur, and which form a special blot upon the American system. . . . To one who intends to follow the profession of teaching for life, an annual examination must he insufferable.”

“ The fact that the examiners are not in all cases¹ teachers causes a good deal of friction at times.” “ Teachers are even too apt to believe that the leading object of the examination is to give the examiners a chance of showing off their own attainments.”

His praise of our teachers is frequent and emphatic. “ The general testimony as to the worth of American teachers is very high. Energy and enthusiasm are their predominant characteristics.” “ The cities and large towns possess a class of teachers not to be surpassed in the world.”“ In America the school-master is a civil officer, and his profession is attended by the highest honor and respect. In England he has long been a church - official of the lower grade.”So far the advantage is on our side, but he adds, “ The teachers of America and England have one bond of fellowship — they have been equally badly paid.”

Of the “ religious difficulty” Mr. Adams speaks with the determination and vigor of a man himself engaged in a hand-to-hand fight. Threatening as it looks, and demanding as it may, for the sake of greater good, the surrender of something very precions to New England hearts, it is not, at any rate, involved with so many vested rights and social traditions as in England. The question, though vital, is however simple. He says : “ In fact, if it were not for the Roman Catholics, a chapter on the religions difficulty in the States might he as brief as the famous chapter on snakes in Iceland. . . Not that the difficulty is wholly Irish or Roman Catholic; but it would be a long time before any overt manifestation appeared, were it not for the numbers and energy of the Irish faction.”

No doubt Mr. Adams would be thankful if it could be met as squarely in England as he believes it might be here. “ If it he true, as it probably is, that the Roman Catholic hierarchy . . . would not be content with anything short of the division of the school fund, the last thing they would rejoice to see would be the expulsion of the Bible from the schools. It would deprive them of their present undoubted grievance. The locus standi from which they demand a division of the school fund would be gone, immediately the Protestant custom of Bible reading were surrendered.”

It is doubtful if there is at present here so strong a party in favor of “purely secular schools ” as might be inferred from his words. But if ever the contest narrows itself to an alternative, one cannot question that he has truly and hopefully prophesied the result: “ Either the present basis of the common school must be abandoned and the parochial school substituted for it, or the teaching in it must be purely secular. Of these alternatives, there can be little doubt that the overwhelming majority of Americans would prefer the latter. . . . The conversion of the Roman Catholics to the common school as a national institution is more likely than the conversion of Americans to a denominational system. But it does appear probable that the common school will in time be made purely secular. Large numbers of schools are wholly secular already. The idea that the secular school is godless or infidel does not exist outside the Roman Catholic communion. . . . The fact that these secular schools do exist, and find favor with the American people, is noteworthy, especially when it is remembered that religious feeling is much more general and has taken a far stronger hold on the masses than in this country.”

Compulsory education appears to Mr. Adams to be a growing necessity for us. “Compulsion is the greatest want under which the American system labors.” Yet he does full justice to the good accomplished by our truant laws, wherever they are faithfully executed. “Greater stringency is required in Englandin the application of compulsion, since in the chief American cities (New York, perhaps, excepted) they are doing as well without compulsion as we are with it.” But he finds in these laws, as in the various attempts at indirect compulsion, a fatal want. Outside a few large cities “ there is no one whose special business and duty it is to see that a law is enforced.” The law in Michigan, for instance, “ depends for its results upon the action of amateur detectives. Amateurs do not readily come forward to undertake offices of this kind.” School officers in Michigan are required to take action upon written notice from any tax-payer of a violation of the law. But every attempt, Mr. Adams says, at indirect compulsion, even with the coöperation of employers, has shown “ that there is a class of parents who cannot be reached except by direct compulsion. The experience of England and the United States on this subject points to exactly the same conclusion.”

Mr. Adams finds also that this idea is gaining upon our people. “ The wedge of despotism,” and “ opposed to the genius of American institutions,” have been oft-repeated phrases. “But the Americans are the last people in the world to be frightened by phrases.” “So strong is the determination to have efficient schools, that Americans have to a large extent overcome their natural repugnance to compulsory schoollaws.” “ The demand for this reform has daily grown more emphatic.” “ Its universal adoption throughout the States is now, as in England, only a question of time.”

We ourselves, while gladly recognizing this growing conviction among our people, have somewhat sadly felt that this change of sentiment marks very strongly the time at which “the New England spirit” is ceasing to he the predominant one. What would the parents of the New England of forty years ago have thought of the suggestion that they needed to be compelled to send their children to school ? But the day has come when in order to follow the spirit of their teaching, in order to be as loyal as they to truth and to freedom, we must heartily adopt methods utterly alien to the letter of their precepts.

To return to Mr. Adams. We do not remember to have seen anywhere more clearly set forth the need for a general and uniform action in this matter. One community or one State cannot move alone, for the children whom we most wish to reach will be at once removed by their ignorant and short-sighted parents to places where their labor can be employed without the interruption or hindrance of school. Mr. Adams meets this by the suggestion, which is obviously the only useful one, that we should supplement local powers by state (not federal) authority. His views upon this point are, with perhaps one exception, the most remarkable in the book. For almost all foreign observers are sure to lament the want of centralization in our system, to emphasize the need of a national organization, and to deprecate the absence of federal authority in the matter.

Mr. Adams has been too sympathetic a student of our institutions and has too truly divined their spirit to make this mistake. He sees that “ the advocates of a federal law under which large powers would be vested in the National Bureau of Education are at present in a hopeless minority.”But he believes “ that of late years a disposition has been manifested to increase the powers of state superintendents and state boards of education ; and in the view of Englishmen this is a movement in the right direction. The principle of local government should be supplemented by adequate power in the executive of the State to meet those cases in winch, from public apathy or other causes, the local authorities fail to perform their duties.”But for such purposes and such only would he invoke a central authority. The plea of uniformity, which is beguiling so many of our people, has no charms for him. “It is certainly better that each district should be able to fix its own standard of education than that the State should have power to prescribe a low standard for the whole country. The results of the exercise of such a power are manifest in England to-day.”

“ That which impresses us most in regard to America is the grasp which the schools have upon the sympathy and intelligence of the people,”says Mr Adams, in another place. " The wide - spread popular regard which constitutes the propelling power appears to be chiefly due to two features : government by the people, and ownership by the people. . . . For no reason is the principle of local government more dearly prized than because of the control which it gives the people over the schools.” “ The most conspicuous feature of the American school system is its representative character. . . . The doctrine of the sovereignty of the people is carried to its furthest limits in the schools of the country. . . . The school laws are in harmony with the sympathies of the people; . . . the interposition of the government to insure provisions for education is unnecessary.

. . . The simple principle of the American school laws is that the people can be trusted to attend to their own business.”"In the United States they have actually that which Mr. Forster promised to give England by the act of 1870, but which at present we are far from the realization of, ' an education of the people’s children, by the people’s officers chosen in their local assemblies.’" Significant words these, all, to be remembered when next the friends of common schools have to defend them from disparagement and slight.

For the future, Mr. Adams has no misgiving, but the largest hope : “ If the work to be done is mighty, there is a mighty energy at the head of the system, as those who love America best are glad to know.” “ Every movement is forward. In the ultimate accomplishment of the destiny of the republic, the usefulness and success of its education-system, and its influence as a first measure in the development of national power and prosperity, are unlimited.”