USA > Indiana > Vigo County > History of Indiana from its exploration to 1922, Vol II > Part 10
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to make this ten cent levy the state would have been compelled to quit the field of education. From this point the centralization and improvement of the schools have gone on steadily. Without it the state made no progress from 1816 to 1852.
Having provided the means of education, the law makers next took up the matter of organization. At the head of the intended system was placed a state board of education, an advisory board to the state su- perintendent, consisting of the superintendent, the governor, the secretary, treasurer and auditor of state. This body was to meet once a year to discuss and review the general conditions of the schools. There had been a great many suggestions offered for constituting this board. Caleb Mills had urged a board consisting of one superintendent from each congressional district. In the original bill of 1851 Mr. Owen had divided the state into fifteen circuits, each presided over by a superintendent, like elders in the Methodist church, who should meet at the capital annually as a state board.
The state board has never come up to the expecta- tions of its founders and so far as its influence is con- cerned has until recently been a negligible quantity. There had been some suggestion by the school men looking toward the creation of a bureau of education by the state, whose function it would be to gather and publish information concerning the schools, not only for the use of the General Assembly but also for teachers and trustees. This would have been some- thing similar to the United States bureau, though of course on a much smaller scale. The law of 1849 pro- vided that the state treasurer should perform this duty. J. P. Drake, state treasurer, 1850 and 1851, made two reports under this law, neither of which has any value.
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The burden of the state management has fallen on the state superintendent of public instruction. There is a long step between the old treasurer of state act- ing as state superintendent and this new officer by the latter name under the law of 1852. The latter was on a salary and traveled at the expense of the state, spending at least ten days annually in each judicial circuit where he superintended teachers' institutes, counseled with teachers and trustees and delivered lectures ; who selected texts for the school room and books for the libraries, who heard and determined all appeals; who was general controller of the school fund and distributed it to the various counties; and who, finally, himself or by deputy, licensed all the teachers in the state who drew money from the com- mon school fund. However, his most important duty was and still remains the collection and distribution of information concerning the schools of the state.
The county government was not utilized in the new school system further than in the management and distribution of the taxes. Each county was made liable for that part of the common school fund en- trusted to it, on which it had to pay interest at seven per cent. The board of township trustees was re- quired to report all its proceedings to the county auditor who placed the township levy on the county tax duplicate and returned the money together with the due proportion to the township. The state super- intendent also distributed the common school fund to the townships through the county auditor and treas- urer. It was a part of the auditor's duty to loan the county's portion of the permanent school fund, tak- ing real estate mortgages. The old board of county school commissioners was abolished and its duties turned over to the county auditor.
The actual management of the schools was with
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the board of township trustees. It was essentially a township system. Each civil township was incorpor- ated as a school township, taking the place of the old congressional township which disappeared as a cor- poration. The new unit, the civil township, through its board of trustees, clerk and treasurer located school houses, built them with money raised by a township tax levy, took the enumeration, drew the money from the county treasury, hired teachers and dismissed them for cause, inspected the work and heard all complaints against the teacher. This was a great reform and an era of schoolhouse building followed. Not only was the school given a home, but the community was provided with a house for church, singing school, political and social meetings of all kinds. A state tax of one quarter of one mill on the dollar was laid for township libraries, to be provided by the state superintendent and placed in the custody of the board of township trustees and kept at a place determined by the voters of the township.
Such was the school law of 1852. Its framers hoped to see a schoolhouse in every neighborhood and it seemed their hopes would be realized. What buildings there were in 1852 were bad.25 New build- ings were erected at the rate of about 600 a year. These were the little "red bricks" of literature, though as a matter of fact nine out of ten were log or frame. The arbitrary district lines which patrons dared not cross were now a thing of the past and chil- dren could attend that school which was most conven- ient, though they crossed district, township or even
25 First Annual Report State Superintendent, 1852, p. 297. "Most of them are dilapidated log buildings, located in some out of the way place in the woods, frequently in the midst of the largest and deepest mud hole of the country, surrounded on every side by stagnant pools and heaps of logs and underbrush,
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county lines. Tuition was absolutely free so that all children could attend during the whole session. The township libraries were intended to place good liter- ature at the disposal of all and now a set of uniform text books were contemplated so that schools might
infecting the air with their deadly miasma, and rendering it almost an impossibility to reach the house, and when there, equally problematical whether it will ever be possible to get away ; a place fit for nothing else, and of course not for a school house, but selected for this purpose because the land can be turned to account in no other way. The house itself is a little square cabin, with a rickety door with broken hinges, which, not allowing it to be moved in either direction, keep it constantly half open upon the mudhole without. The windows, long and narrow, placed wherever chance might suggest, without regard to the distribution of light, with half the panes broken out, curtainless and shutterless : the floor of puncheons, loose, uneven, with many and large holes interspersed, somewhat resembling in surface our corduroy roads, and forming a fine substitute for the rack or stocks of our ancestors; the half-filled crevices, the gaping door, the broken windows and open floor, admit the air on every side, which, rushing through the room and up the huge chimney, render the house a fitting temple of the winds, while the sieve-like roof affords many a shower bath, and is the only means ever used to clean the house. All these things could be endured, even the air, cold as it is, is the pure breath of life, and though the ventilation be excessive, the strong constitution of farmers' children can endure it far better than none at all, were other arrangements made with any view to comfort. But when to these things we add the seats we usually see, the whole becomes unendurable. Narrow puncheons, scarcely better than rails, so high that with their utmost capacity of stretching the feet cannot be induced to touch the floor, and find that support they so much need; affording no kind of support to the hack; these are the seats we find in these houses, giving rise, by the contortions and stretch- ings which the limbs and backs of the pupils undergo in seeking that rest which they never find, to the whole catalogue of crooked limbs, spinal diseases and round shoulders with which our land is afflicted. These seats are arranged, when anything in the shape of a desk is to be found, to face the wall, so that the eyes are exposed to the full glare of the light, the back of the pupil
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be graded into classes.26 Finally it was hoped that by a judicious selection of teachers and by training in teachers' institutes the reign of brute force in the school room might be brought to an end.27 Women were beginning to enter the work of teaching and in-
is turned to the teacher, and his actions cannot be sufficiently watched, and great inconvenience arises in changing positions, and leaving and returning to the seat, from the necessity of climbing the high barrier which it offers. The capacious fireplace, shedding good cheer over the room, so efficacious in preserving the purity of the air, and so convenient for warming and drying the feet, cold and wet from the long walk through mud and snow, is one good feature of which modern improvement threatens to deprive us. Such are the structures in which yet a great portion of our children receive their early education."
26 The State Board of Education, Nov. 15, 1853, adopted a full set of textbooks-McGuffey's Readers and Speller, Webster's Dictionary, Butler's Grammar, Ray's Arithmetics, and Mitchell's Geographies. Indianapolis Journal, Nov. 16, 1853.
27 First Annual Report, Superintendent of Public Instruction, 1852, p. 308. "The time is come when the old system of tyranny, with all its abuses of cuffing, shaking, hair pulling, ear snapping, feruling, and whipping, should be abjured, discarded, wholly abolished, in our schools, in which are trained reasoning and moral beings, and instead thereof, there should be substituted the discipline of moral suasion, of love, of honor, of appeal to the moral sense and the conscience, and to the sense of self- respect. Flogging, and other forms of corporeal punishment, may be necessary in public schools, but, if so, the necessity is found in the erroneous notions of parents, or the want of mental, moral and practical qualifications of the teacher, rather than in the nature of children. If, under the prevailing public sentiment, and the existing habits of teachers and children, corporeal pun- ishment be ever necessary, it should be inflicted very sparingly. On a child of splrit, and of self-respect, whipping is a very dan- gerous experiment. It may utterly break down his spirit, de- molish his sense of honor, and destroy his self-respect. Then the child is hopelessly ruined, rendered utterly worthless and in- capable ever after of manly sentiment, and of virtuous action."
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telligent trustees and superintendents were appreci- ating their capability as teachers.28 The work of ten years seemed to friends of the common schools ready to bear fruit when at one stroke the whole system was ruined.29
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The enthusiasm of the friends of education was equaled by the determination of its enemies. There was opposition everywhere, not only to the necessary taxation, but also to the administration and conduct of the schools. The new officers were not familiar with their duties. The power of the township trus- tees to select teachers for the districts was regarded dubiously by the patrons. Men everywhere opposed the new taxes, especially those levied by the town- ship trustees. The courts were resorted to continu- ally to prevent the collection of the school taxes. One of these suits, filed by Alexander Black against Greencastle township, Putnam county, to enjoin the collection of school taxes, was appealed to the su- preme court, where, December 12, 1854, Judge Alvin P. Hovey, speaking for the court, held the law, so far
28 State Superintendent's Report, 1852, p. 263. "Females are not only apt to learn, but they are peculiarly apt to teach. They seem designed and fitted by nature as the appropriate educators of childhood. They seem to comprehend by instinct and by intuition the physical necessities, the intellectual wants, and the moral longings of children. And it seems their peculiar province to train, influence and govern children. It is natural for them, their instinctive propensity, to love, cherish, caress, amuse and instruct the young. And it is equally natural for children to love females, to yield to their influence, and to be persuaded by them to obedience."
29 The school laws here used will be found in Revised Stat- utes, 1843, ch. 15; Laws of Indiana, 1848, ch. CXVI; Laws of Indiana, 1849, ch. CCXXX; and Revised Statutes, 1852, ch. 98.
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as it authorized the assessment of a local tax, uncon- stitutional. The decision rested on two sections of the constitution; one of which directed the General Assembly to establish a "general and uniform" sys- tem of common schools, the other which forbade the General Assembly to enact local or special laws in certain enumerated cases, one of which was "pro- viding for supporting common schools."30 The school officials accepted the decision without protest, but from the public there was angry criticism of what the friends of public schools termed a narrow- minded reactionary court.31
Hardly had the above decision gone the round of public opinion until another part of the school law was overthrown. By the law of 1852 the congres- sional school fund was merged in the common. Springfield township, Franklin county, which had a large congressional fund, brought suit to enjoin the state from merging this and distributing it equally. In a decision by the supreme court, December 28, 1854, it was held that the congressional township fund by the terms of the grant in 1816 was limited to the use of the people living in the congressional
30 Indianapolis Sentinel, Dec. 16, 1854.
31 Madison Banner. "One of two things is clearly demon- strated. Our constitution is a prodigiousiy senseiess and imprac- ticable instrument and its makers were donkeys of unequivocal earmarks, or the supreme court of Indiana is a very incompetent set of interpreters."
Indianapolis Journal: "It is singular that every act of the legislature which aims at moral or intellectual improvement should have been destroyed by the present supreme judges. Our liquor law, defective as it was, had suppressed the traffic in this city more effectually than ever before. The court destroyed it, and called into pestilent activity a hundred doggeries. Our public
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township.82 A necessary result of this decision would have been a long term in some districts and a short term in others, thus contravening the express re- quirement of the constitution for a uniform system of schools.
The governor, in his annual message in 1855, sug- gested that the General Assembly might remedy the defect caused by the decision. The Assembly accord- ingly rewrote the law of 1852. The distribution was to be made so that those townships with small con- gressional township funds should receive an amount from the common fund to equalize them with those having the large congressional fund. It was provid- ed that no money arising from the congressional fund should be diverted from the township in which it originated. Thus the decision of the supreme court was avoided.
The law of 1855 made towns and cities school cor- porations with the same powers and duties which
schools were just beginning to be appreciated, and the efforts of teachers and officers had cleared the way for a profitable admin- istration of the law. The court destroys the law, and leaves our whole public school system to be rebuilt, and the rubbish to be cleared out of it again. Some days ago the supreme court decided that under the constitution, the law could not leave such school districts to assess themselves to make up any deficiency in their fund. That stopped the growth of many a school house wall, which by this time would have had a roof over it, and scholars in it, and sent many children home to idleness. Now, the court says that the most important portion of the school fund is unconstitutionally appropriated, and the districts must lose not only the right to add to their fund, but the fund itself. The decision leaves the school law a wreck. There is not enough left after the removal of the Congressional Township fund to carry on the schools a month."
32 See 6 Indiana Reports, 84; Indiana et al. v. Springfield Township.
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had been conferred on the civil townships. The de- mand for local control was too strong to be denied and the law of 1855 again turned over the control of the individual school to the patrons. This backward step of the Assembly was almost as disastrous as the adverse decisions of the supreme court. Under this provision the township trustees were required to number the school districts in their township and then each patron attached himself to whatever dis- trict he chose. On the first Saturday of October each year the patrons met at the schoolhouse, elected a director of the school, chose a teacher and began those interminable district quarrels which never ended until the old directorate system wore itself out about 1900.33
The indirection of the General Assembly in again ordering the school funds distributed equally did not long go unchallenged. The patrons of Springfield township were just as loath to see their direct taxes distributed abroad as the income from their congres- sional township fund. They immediately enjoined the county auditor and treasurer from distributing the common school fund under the law. The supreme court, however, to the surprise of the school men, held the law constitutional. Since then the common school fund has been distributed in a way to make the entire funds uniform throughout the state.34
But a more serious blow was yet in store for the common schools. The law of 1855, as noted above, had made cities and towns school corporations with
33 Laws of Indiana, 1855, ch. LXXXVI.
34 Quick et al. v. Springfield Township, 7 Ind. Rep. 506; see also, Quick et al. v. Whitewater Township, 7 Ind. Rep. 454.
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power to levy taxes and build houses. Surprising activity had been manifested in the work. It seemed that every corporation had begun a good building and had determined on a first-class school. A citizen of Lafayette, W. M. Jenners, brought suit to enjoin that city from collecting such a tax. The suit was substantially like that from Putnam county. It was attempted to show that the General Assembly had established a system of schools for the cities and towns different from the common schools, but the supreme court, holding firmly to its previous deci- sion, overthrew the law and the common school sys- tem seemed hopelessly crippled.35
In 1854 there were 938 townships, 82 cities and towns, or a total of 1,020 school corporations. The first enumeration, 1853, gave 430,929 children, and 2,491 licensed teachers, but there was no report of the number of schools or of the actual attendance. In 1854 there were reports from 2,622 schools and it was estimated that there were about 5,937, while it would require 8,915 schools to accommodate the children. It was thought as late as 1857 that not less than 3,500 districts were without schoolhouses of any kind. In 1854 there were 666 female and 2,432 male teachers. The total cost of the schools for a year was about a half million dollars. The average term in 1854 was two and one-half months. The average wages for male teachers was $23.01 per month, for women $15.62. These statistics, taken from the official re- ports, are only approximations, but they give us some idea of the conditions.
One gathers from the reports and the essays in
35 Lafayette v. Jenners, 10 Ind. Rep. 69. All these decisions are printed in the Documentary Journal, 1855, 470.
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the newspapers that it was a time of great uncertain- ty for the schools. The chief cause of this was the attitude of the supreme court. The news spread over the state in 1853 that the whole law of 1852 was invalid and in many places schools went on during the winter under the old plan. Thousands of taxpay- ers neglected or refused to pay their taxes under the impression that taxes had been abolished. Scores of township trustees had levied taxes to build school- houses, many had arranged to build one for each dis- trict, and had gone ahead until most of the houses were in process of construction, when it was rumored that the trustees had no legal power to lexy a tax for such purposes. Hundreds of the houses were aban- doned by their contractors. As a result thousands of children were huddled into leaky, dilapidated log shacks fit only for the hogs and sheep which inhabit- ed them in summer and the fleas that remained throughout the year.36 On the other hand, Fort Wayne built an $18,000 schoolhouse in 1859; Wa- bash, a $15,000 one; and Goshen an $8,000 one. Dur- ing that year 666 schoolhouses were erected at a cost of $292,820.37
Everybody seemed to take pride in the change from the district to the township system. Caleb Mills in 1854, thought the system would be almost perfect if there were a township trustee who had no duties
36 State Superintendent's Report, 1853, p. 4.
37 State Superintendent's Report, Jan. 19, 1855. "Among the pleasing signs of progress in educational matters may be named the tasteful and commodious school structures that have been erected or are now In process of erection in various parts of the commonwealth. They have arisen In all their beauty and sym- metry of proportion, not only in the towns, but they have gone up in some of the rural portions."
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but to superintend schools, ten circuit superintend- ents for the ten districts of the state, and one state superintendent. The circuit superintendent was to visit each of the townships one day, inspecting at least two schools and at night addressing the young folks on "self improvement."
The township libraries were justly regarded with great pride, but there were difficulties in the matter of their distribution that required legislative assis- tance. There were 690 libraries purchased in 1853 for 938 townships. They were to be distributed on the basis of counties. Each library originally con- tained 321 volumes and cost $213. The total 221,490 volumes cost $147,222. The books were selected with great care. A few of these libraries are still in exis- tence.38 Nor were the founders of this library system disappointed. The state never invested money more wisely. The civil war soon made it impossible for the libraries to be kept up, but the good done by those already established was incalculable.39
38 State Superintendent's Report, 1855, 738. "There is a peculiar felicity in this provision of the system, inasmuch as it will prove in no slight degree, especially in the rural portions of the commonwealth, an important substitute for the living teacher and answer the purpose of a school on uninterrupted session. These volumes will he like gushing fountains to minds thirsting for knowledge. They will furnish to our youth and adults, of every age and pursuit, intellectual nutriment and mental stimulus. The wearied apprentice, the tired ploughboy, the exhausted clerk and the secluded domestic, will find in them encouragement and solace under all their toils, privations and discouragements."
39 First Annual Report, State Superintendent, 1852, p. 273. "I can conceive of no provision within the power of law to make for the improvement of society, equal in potent influence to this township library principle of our school law. Children having
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The period from 1852 to 1873 was necessary to close the gap between the people and the educational leaders. The reports of the early state superintend- ents are flowery with visions of a millenium produced by universal free education. The writers indulged in language which common people of Indiana did not then understand and never have greatly appreciated. "Children seem clusters of flowery beauty among the stern and rugged realities of life"; speaking of the difficulty of choosing books for the libraries, State Superintendent Larrabee observed: "He must bring to the enterprise industry and patience, liber- ality and catholicity of spirit to divest himself of all sectarian and party partialities and prejudices"; even Caleb Mills could say : "There is in the super- visory provision of the school law, a strange and in- consistent hiatus between the township trustee and the state superintendent. The strange eccentricities observed in the motion of these remote bodies in their several orbits for the last two years has led to vari-
become at the free schools correct, fluent and even graceful readers, take home the book from the library, and gather about them, at the fireside, on the winter evening, the younger children of the family, and perhaps in many cases the older members, even the father and mother, and read lessons of wisdom, of enter- prise and of patriotism and philanthropy. The reader and the hearer become interested, and awakened to new sources of thought, of knowledge, of improvement and of usefulness. In other cases the parent takes from the library books and reads to his little children, thereby stimulating and encouraging them to enterprise and virtue before they have learned to read for them- selves. In this way how many a beautiful conception is begot- ten, and a firm resolve formed in the breast of the child, and how many a new idea is inspired into the mind of the parent? No adequate conception can be formed by us of the amount of profit and of improvement which our whole population must, in the course of one single generation, derive from the township libraries."
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