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All this development of secondary education, respectable both in completeness and character, has been in Indiana a very natural outgrowth of the popular demand. With abundant legal grounds for existence, there is nevertheless nothing in the law directly providing for such an institution as the high school. It has no statutory existence. What most States have achieved by positive enactment, either com- pulsory (as in most New England States) or optional (as in the central West), Indiana has attained under the popular will. Almost five hundred schools of more or less complete secondary courses, in cities and towns and townships, in direct line from the elementary schools, and fitting for the higher studies, occupy well-defined places in the common system. For all these, however, there is no legally pre-
308
UNDER THE NEW CONSTITUTION, 1851-'91.
scribed curriculum, no fixed standard of qualifications for high-school teachers, no statutory relations with the univer- sity, no authoritative supervision of secondary schools, no system of separate, trustworthy statistical reports.
For the honorable position which such schools occupy in Indiana the people are indebted to the State board, whose indefatigable and self-imposed services have contributed most; to associations of teachers and college men; to local boards and superintendents; and to the people, whose gener- ous support alone has made such success possible.
But high schools in Indiana have had their opponents, as in other States. Some of the objections offered are the fol- lowing:
(1) The State which educates for citizenship only has no right to offer more than a primary education. To which Indiana, by her institutions, has replied that, as citizenship in a republic involves a possible making of good laws, as well as the patriotism to obey and defend them, the State is under obligation to educate for the larger responsibility no less than the smaller.
(2) The high school being patronized by the few only, it is unfair to levy a general tax for its support. The "few" here mentioned are sometimes the rich, to furnish a school- ing for whom, which they can not share, the poor object. Elsewhere and again it is charged that the common high school is needed for those only whose parents are unable to provide such schooling privately, and the well-to-do protest against being compelled to maintain for the improvident an expensive system of which they themselves reap no benefit. It may be said that no tax, for whatever public work, is gen- eral in the sense that all equally share its benefits; light- house and other coast defenses, the United States naval and military system, expensive highways and State improve- ments, public benevolences, and an elaborate State and na- tional judiciary-all touch directly but a minimum of sub- jects. Together they take millions of public money, freely and wisely given. How much more freely should the most
309
THE COMMON SCHOOL SYSTEM.
liberal education be supported, that shall lessen the need of defenses and make an intelligent participation in public privileges more general !
CHAPTER XXIV. THE COMMON SCHOOL SYSTEM (Continued).
10. School Text-Books.
WITH all the advantage of modern school device and the improved educational doctrine, it is still difficult for most persons, even teachers, to consider the curriculum apart from the texts used. That it was even more so in the early history of our schools may be easily understood. Geography began to be taught when there were geographies. In like manner, grammar, and speller, and reader, and arithmetic even, were identified with the text. The possession of few books dignified their service. Proficiency in a branch meant the mastery of its text, as it does not now, even among the most mechanical teachers. Teaching was synonymous with fixing the words and meaning of the author.
"The old school-masters," says a recent Indiana writer and former teacher,* "placed great stress on spelling. Twice a day the whole school stood up and spelled 'for head.' A half-day in every week was given to the spelling match. Night spelling-schools were of frequent occurrence. Every scholar was kept hammering away at the spelling-book as long as he went to school, and there were few schools in which one or more pupils had not the book by heart. The words in the elementary spelling-book were written rhyth- mically, and it was no hard matter to commit by rote whole columns of words. This book was used as a reader also. In some schools, after a pupil had learned to spell sufficiently
* D. D. Banta, in Schools of Johnson County.
21
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UNDER THE NEW CONSTITUTION, 1851-'91.
well, he was set to pronouncing the words at sight. After he was able to readily pronounce all the words in the book, he was deemed sufficiently advanced to begin reading." Another writer and teacher also adds his testimony to the American Spelling-Book as a valuable piece of property, "for it was to most pupils the only text-book in spelling, reading,
geography, grammar, and moral philosophy."
But even
before Webster's Speller there was also used in the schools, especially in northern Indiana, the Dilworth Spelling Book, to be found fifty years ago, as it had been for a hundred years before in the East and in England, from which were taught reading and grammar as well as spelling, and which held its own for a generation even against Webster and the later Elementary Spelling-Book.
Reading, while next in importance to spelling in the early elementary school, and the condition of all other sub- sequent work, had a less well-defined course and was less systematically pursued than almost any other subject. Readers-books compiled or written to teach reading-were few, and graded texts none, until well on toward the middle of the century. Among the earliest books so used was the English Reader, and, a little later, a more elementary text, the Introduction to the English Reader, and a supplement called The Sequel to the English Reader. These, with Prof. Bingham's Columbian Orator, were almost the sole books of the kind until the publication of P. B. Emerson's series about 1840, and the McGuffy Eclectic series soon after. Except the last, these were all issued from the East, but had large sales in Indiana also and elsewhere in "the valley." No mention has been seen of Bingham's American Pre- ceptor, much used in New England, though it was, perhaps, not unknown here also.
But learning to read was not dependent upon reading books. Whatever gave practice in calling and interpreting words was accepted as a text, and made an instrument in teaching. Better than they knew, perhaps, those old-time masters were justifying the principle that "things to be done
311
THE COMMON SCHOOL SYSTEM.
shall be learned by the doing "; to the application of which principle also modern pedagogic art is returning in the more systematic introduction of "supplementary reading." In most elementary, and very elementary, schools, the New Testament and Psalms, with other portions of the Bible, were set as common texts; books of annals and travels, dream-books, essays, Pilgrim's Progress, the Lives of Revo- lutionary Heroes, etc.
About 1825 there was published a set of books called "Torrey's Series," comprising seven volumes, as follows: (1) A primary spelling-book (18 pages); (2) Familiar Spelling- Book (120 pages); (3) Pleasant Companion for Little Boys and Girls, comprising stories chiefly (144 pages) ; (4) A Mental Museum for the Rising Generation-tales and fables (131 pages); (5) the same, Vol. II, treating of natural his- tory, the universe, etc. (180 pages); (6) the same, on moral and political philosophy (316 pages); and (7) The Moral In- structor and Guide to Virtue (300 pages). The series, as is obvious, was chiefly devoted to reading, was sold for two dollars, and somewhat extensively introduced into northern and central Indiana, and particularly into private and de- nominational seminaries.
Among arithmetics, Pike's was, perhaps, the earliest in the State, as it was one of the first used in this country. It added to its exercises in calculation a somewhat extended Introduction to Algebra, and was much used in the older counties and private seminaries. In places, however, even from the start, it was compelled to share the public patron- age with Dilworth's School-master's Assistant, for which, and for other arithmetical texts, the author was better known than for his speller, although the latter was more used in the State. Among all the texts on arithmetic, how- ever, employed in the schools, Warren Colburn's First Lessons in Mental Arithmetic, published in 1821-of which Prof. George B. Emerson said (1842): "It is the only fault- less school-book we have "-did most to improve the teaching of arithmetic, if it was not most used in our schools. The
312
UNDER THE NEW CONSTITUTION, 1851-'91.
book for many years had an average annual sale of 100,000 copies in the United States, and half as many in Great Britain. It was Pestalozzian in its method, clear in its ar- rangement, and set the standard of best arithmetical teach- ing for half a century.
The first knowledge of the earth was gained from the spellers and readers. No text in geography appeared in the United States until that of Jedediah Morse, issued in 1784, which had but a limited use in Indiana. It is mentioned in some of the older courses, but soon gave way to a more ele- mentary text by Sidney Morse (1823), and to a far better and more rational one by W. C. Woodbridge and Mrs. Emma Willard in 1822. Other early texts used were Parley's, Smith's, Olney's, Cummings', etc.
Of grammars, though less used and generally badly com- piled, there were manifold texts. From Murray's-the pro- genitor of them all-or Smith's, through Kirkham, and Oram, and Bliss, and Pinneo, and Frost, and Brook, and Ross, and Wells (all more or less used in the State), one traces a pioneer period of book-making that served every other purpose but that of the teacher, and effected nothing else so little as acquaintance with and skill in the use of English. The early English grammar, imitating the stand- ards of classical training, was sometimes an admirable book -but a poor school-text.
The State board's adoptions, in 1853 and subsequently, have been elsewhere named. And while they were very generally introduced as recommended, many other books were also used. Samuel Hannah, who was ex officio Super- intendent of Common Schools, included in his official list of the books used in 1849, besides those already named, Smiley's Arithmetic and Comstock's and Draper's Philosophies. Upon opening the public schools in 1853 the school trustees of In- dianapolis, having advised with Prof. Hoss, President Lynch, and others, adopted for their schools Denman's speller, Webb's and Parker's readers, Stoddard's arithmetics, Butler's grammar, McElligott's Young Analyzer, and Willard's his-
313
THE COMMON SCHOOL SYSTEM.
tory of the United States; but one book on the list (Butler's grammar) being among those recommended by the State Board of Education. Cobb's readers, Paley's history, and Talbott's arithmetics were also in use about the same time, as were Clark's grammar and occasional copies of Dwight's Catechetical Geography.
11. The Selection of Text-Books.
Prior to 1853 there was no legislation in the State upon the subject of the selection or introduction of text-books. In that year it was enacted that the adoption or recommenda- tion of uniform school-books should rest with the newly created State board. As has been noted elsewhere, books were recommended, but uniformity was not reached. For thirteen years the deliberations of the board went on, but no approximation to any common series was had. In 1865 all laws upon the question were repealed. Without specific jurisdiction the trustees of the several townships assumed to control the selection, doing so until the creation of the County Board of Education in 1873, when the duty was as- signed to that body, as follows: "The change of text-books . . . shall be determined by such board, and each township shall conform as nearly as practicable to its action," provid- ing at the same time against any change oftener than every three years, except by the unanimous vote of all the mem- bers of such board. By the Legislature of 1877 the period of adoption was made six years. Books once adopted were required to be used; local officers were left no option. The law aimed at both permanence and uniformity. Cities were exempted from this provision concerning the adoption and use of text-books. But it applied to incorporated towns as well as villages and townships.
By act of the Legislature (March, 1889) the law was again changed. The act of 1873, with its revisions, sought and secured uniformity in each county only. The new law re- quired uniformity throughout the State. It was radical and mandatory. Its essential provisions were as follows: The
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UNDER TIIE NEW CONSTITUTION, 1851-'91.
State Board of Education was made a Board of School-Book Commissioners, who were empowered to contract for the furnishing of books for use in the public schools in the eight legal branches. The maximum prices at which these should be furnished were fixed by law as follows:
Spellers 10 cts.
Complete Geography .. 75 cts.
First Reader.
10 1
Elem. English Grammar 25 “
Second Reader
15 4 Complete English Grammar. 40 "
Third Reader
25 4
Physiology. 35 “
Fourth Reader. 30 “
History of the United States. 50 "
Fifth Reader
40
Intermediate Arithmetic .. .35 “
Complete Arithmetic.
45 4
Copy Books each, 05 “
Elementary Geography
30 “
The law was made applicable to every school corporation in the State, in each of which the school trustee, or trustees, should certify to the County Superintendent the number of each kind of book needed; who shall thereupon make requisi- tion to the State Superintendent, and he to the contractor for the goods. The books must be delivered to the County Su- perintendent, and by him to the school trustees, who are the agents for their sale in the various localities. Returns for sales are made to the County Superintendents, who are re- quired to settle with the contractors. Immediately adop- tions were made of readers, arithmetics, geographies, and writing-books. A supplemental act was passed March 5, 1891, requiring two books in physiology-a primary and an advanced-the price of the former being fixed at thirty cents and that of the latter at sixty cents; and making the maxi- mum price of the United States history sixty-five cents. Under this law the Board of Commissioners, in May, 1891, adopted books for the remaining subjects.
12. General Statistics of Common Schools.
The following paragraph and the accompanying table have for their purpose to exhibit the growth of the common- school system, so far as the information can be had, since 1855, practically from its organization under the new system.
315
THE COMMON SCHOOL SYSTEM.
For various reasons, most of which are obvious, the earlier statistics are neither complete nor always reliable. For equally good and apparent reasons, however, the figures of the department have been made the basis of all the tables. But where errors were found, the later official revisions have been substituted for those originally published. Touch- ing a few, and sometimes vital, phases of the system, and its growth in particular lines, as the internal administration, the length of the average school period for each child, etc., the data are almost wholly wanting :
Table of Elementary Schools.
ITEMS.
1855.
1860.
1865.
1870.
1. Population
1,350,428
1,680,637
2. School census.
452,124
512,478
552,244
612,089
3. Enrollment.
206,994
303,744
413,374
462,527
4. School term ..
61
65
66
97
5. Teachers (male).
3,000
5,691
4,964
7,104
6. Teachers (female). Total.
1,000
1,666
4,349
'4,722
7. Expenditures
$500,000
$824,643
$1,338,540
$1,474,000
8. Salaries (male).
$23 76
$26 00
$31 00
$37 00
9. Salaries (females)
$16 84
$17 20
$20 50
$28 40
10. Taxables.
$300,000,000
$455,000,000
$567,000,000
$662,000,000
ITEMS.
1875.
1880.
1885.
1890.
1. Population.
1,978,362
2,192,404
2. School census.
667,736
703,558
740.949
770,722
3. Enrollment ..
502,362
511,283
504,520
512,955
4. School term ..
130
136
199
130
5. Teachers (male).
7,670
7,802
6,720
6,780
6. Teachers (female).
5,463
5,776
6,534
6,498
Total.
13,138
13,578
13,254
13,278
7. Expenditures
$1,921,085
$4,491,850
$5,218,999
$5,572,124
8. Salaries (male).
$42 40
$37 20
$44 60
$44 40
9. Salaries (females)
$38 20
$35 20
$36 80
$40 20
10. Taxables.
$898,000,000
$729,000,000
$794,000,000
$783,000,000
4,000
7,357
9,313
11,826
In general, it may be said that along with most changes of the system and modifications of its organization has gone improvement also. That it has not been uniformly so will appear in the sequel.
Along with an increase of seventy-five per cent in popu- lation, there has been an addition of seventy per cent to the school census, and a like growth (sixty-nine per cent) in the school enrollment. The length of the school term has been doubled. Whatever criticisms of the system become
316
UNDER THE NEW CONSTITUTION, 1851-'91.
necessary, let it not be forgotten that in the extension of school privileges, in the public respect for education, in the growing money investments, and the multiplication of the appliances of teaching, Indiana has made marvelous ad- vances, and has more than held her own in the sisterhood of States, for twenty years.
The ratio of the school census to the total census re- mains, after more than thirty years, practically the same. The records of 1860 show thirty-eight per cent of the entire population entitled to school privileges. Five years later the entrance age was raised from the fifth to the sixth year. In 1870, however, the enumeration was thirty-six per cent, and in 1890 thirty-five per cent. That is, in a population of something less than two and a quarter millions, there are three quarters of a million school-children. Or, to put it historically, while the population of the State has increased by nearly three fourths, the school enumeration shows a growth of nearly seventy-one per cent.
This is a greater ratio than is found in the older States, and may be expected to be diminished in Indiana as insti- tutions age and the population becomes more settled. The present condition emphasizes the relative newness of the State. Her institutions are in the process of making. Edu- cationally, she has scarcely passed her pioneer period. In the achievements of that period, Hoosiers may well take pride.
Along with this growth of seventy-five per cent in popu- lation and seventy-one per cent in school census, there has been an increase in school enrollment of a fraction less than sixty-nine per cent. In 1860, of every one hundred children between six and twenty-one years of age, fifty-nine were in school; in 1870, seventy-five and a half per cent; in 1880, seventy-two and six-tenths per cent; and in 1890, two thirds only of them. The ratio of school attendance seems to be diminishing. It is not at all certain that the discrepancy is one of fact. The legal mode of taking the enumeration; the basis upon which, semi-annually, the revenues are ap- portioned; the absence of any control or knowledge of non-
317
THE COMMON SCHOOL SYSTEM.
public school agencies; and the wish to augment the locali- ties' share of the general resources-have led, in twenty years, to considerable abuses in the way of " padded " re- turns. And, judging from instances of known exaggeration of the census summaries, it seems quite probable that the discrepancy is chiefly one of figures.
Besides, as the State becomes older, and industrial in- terests more pressing, there is an increasingly large body of youth in the later teens enumerated, but no longer really to be counted as eligible to the common-school attendance. The better the system, the sooner, within limits, will such candidates for the trades be worked off and graduated into business life.
The lengthening of the school term has been going on since the establishment of the system, but in its positive form belongs almost wholly to the period since 1870. Prior to that time the public session (there were supplementary, subscription or private schools) was seldom more than four months, and for fifteen years had averaged but three-three months of school, nine months of vacation! The average for the year mentioned (1870) was ninety-seven days. This, in five years, had increased to one hundred and thirty days, or six and a half months. Since 1865, inclusive, the aver- age term has been 115.5 days; and for the last twenty years (1871 to 1890), one hundred and twenty-five days. Never has the average for the State reached seven months. Six times only it has gone beyond one hundred and thirty days.
Even this shortness of term, however, is not in itself cause for alarm. A six-and-a-half-months school in each of a thousand townships would justify congratulation. The danger appears when it is remembered that this one hundred and thirty days represents an average and not a minimum. Taking the statistics of 1886 as typical of the success of the system in recent years (the length of the term was one hundred and twenty-nine days), forty-eight counties are found to have had less than the average amount of school- ing by almost a month. Six of these counties averaged but
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UNDER THE NEW CONSTITUTION, 1851-'91.
ninety-six days, or less than five months. One county (the lowest) reported but ninety days, and another, within fifty miles, one hundred and eighty-nine days, presenting a dif- ference of five months ! Indeed, for ten years the average difference between the two extremes of longest and shortest terms, as found in the several counties, is eighty-five days, or four and one fourth months!
Under a Constitution that concedes the beneficence of a diffusion of knowledge and learning through a community, and requires the establishment of a " general and uniform system of common schools" for the entire State, it is, to say the least, unfortunate that such differences are possible.
Another interesting, but far more encouraging, move- ment has been going on during these same years in the change of the teaching force. Against fifty-eight pupils to the teacher in 1855, and fifty-three in 1860, the average en- rollment for the last twenty years has been less than thirty- eight to each instructor. The modern requirement is a dual one. Pupils must be managed in classes, but instruction must be individual. Along with the development of the graded courses and the class system has gone a correspond- ing movement toward lessening the classes and appealing to the individual, which has worked out a relatively larger teaching force.
Again, in 1855, the public schools were chiefly in charge of men, one fourth only of the teachers being women. By 1870 the number of the latter had more than quadrupled, and they held forty per cent of the places. In 1880, forty- two per cent were women; in 1890, forty-nine per cent. As illustrating the dependence of one set of institutions upon others in the same society, it is worthy to note that the most rapid change of the teaching body in this respect came dur- ing and just following the civil war. Men were drawn from the class-room and schools, as they were from shop and office and farm, to fill up the soldier ranks. The benefi- cence of the influence of woman in the school-room could now be urged, and was urged, with telling effect. In primary
319
THE COMMON SCHOOL SYSTEM.
and advanced elementary and secondary schools women be- gan to be recognized. Their employment was, very natu- rally, first in the cities. It so remains, indeed. In the fifty- eight cities reporting to the State Department in 1888 there were 1,832 teachers, of whom less than fourteen (13.9) per cent were men. Of the 1,001 teachers in the incorporated towns (86) of the State, a somewhat larger proportion were male ; but even here sixty-three teachers in every hundred were women. From which it appears that, excluding the 1,832 teachers in the cities and the 1,001 teachers in the towns, there remain 11,369 teachers, or three fourths of the whole number, in the district and township schools ; and of these, fifty-seven per cent are men. That is, in the cities, eighty-six per cent of the teachers are women; in towns, sixty per cent; in the rural districts, forty-three per cent. In the State as a whole it remains as it was in 1888-that less than one half of the teachers are women. It may be interesting to know that Indiana is the only Northern State reporting more male than female teachers. Among neigh- boring States it appears that Michigan employs for her teach- ers three fourths women; Illinois, two thirds; and Ohio, fifty-four per cent. Throughout New England, eighty-six per cent are women; in Pennsylvania, sixty-two per cent; in New Jersey, seventy-nine per cent; and in New York, eighty-two per cent.
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