USA > Kentucky > History of Kentucky, Volume II > Part 29
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12 Lewis, History of Higher Education in Kentucky, 110-114.
18 American Almanac, 1834, pp. 238-242; Lewis, History of Higher Education in Kentucky, 14, 15.
14 Letters on the Conditions of Kentucky in 1825, P. 39.
15 Ibid., 38.
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thereby render our free institutions more endurable, but, by thus dif- fusing the benefits of government throughout the body politic, it will be strengthened in the affections of the people." Such sentiments were enlightened and forward-looking, but worthless if they should lead no- where. Realizing this, Slaughter advanced a plan for financing this wider diffusion of education : he would build up a fund by using for- feited and escheated lands, and levying a tax on "banks and such other corporations as from their nature are proper subjects of taxation, and such parts of the dividends on the bank stocks of the state as can be spared without materially increasing the public burdens." 16
The following year Governor Slaughter became even more specific in his plans for common schools. He recommended the arrangement and adoption of "a plan extensive, diffusive, and convenient to every portion of the community." He would have all the settled parts of the state divided into school districts varying from five to six miles square, with a school in each one "free to all poor children, and to be supported, if not entirely, in part, at the public expense. We have many good schools, but nothing short of carrying education to the neighbor- hood of every man in the state can satisfy the just claims of the people or fulfill the duty of the government." A great potential asset of the state, he believed, was being neglected; genius and future greatness de- pended not upon riches if given the chance that was due them. Such schools would "develop the mental riches of the commonwealth. The experience of the world has proved that genius is not confined to any particular order of men; but Providence, in bestowing her choicest gift, intelligence, as if to mortify the pride and vanity of those who from their birth and fortune would exalt themselves above their fellow men, delights to raise up the brightest ornaments of humanity from the most obscure and humble conditions of life. To instruct and improve the rising generation is among the first duties of every American statesman. The American people, in establishing their independence and republican form of government, have done much; but much more remains to be done. These states are but recently transplanted from the nursery of freedom and, although in a thriving and promising condition, they have not acquired such maturity and strength as no longer to need the care and skill of the political husbandman. To give success to this experi- ment of freedom, the youth of our country should be qualified to under- stand and enjoy its blessings. In vain have our ancestors bled; in vain did they hazard everything on the issue of the revolutionary contest ; in vain has our country been distinguished by the most sublime and elevated patriotism, if the inestimable boon which they achieved is to be lost by a neglect of the means necessary to its preservation and prog- ress. While the utility and importance of education is generally ad- mitted, yet, either because the beneficial effects appear remote or uni- versal, the subject does not seem to excite that lively interest and zeal which are usually awakened by questions of a local or personal char- acter. When we reflect that this government has no need of a standing army to sustain or enforce its authority, but for its efficiency essentially reposes on the patriotism and intelligence of the great body of the people, how obvious is the necessity of providing a system of instruc- tion calculated to improve the minds and moral habits of the rising generation." 17
Others took up the cry for bringing the masses into an educational system. Amos Kendall carried on a campaign in the Argus in 1819 for common schools.18 With his characteristic appeal to and dependence
16 Niles' Register, Vol. II, p. 392.
17 Niles' Register, Vol. 13, 386-388.
Autobiography of Amos Kendall, 225.
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upon the common people, he raised the cry that the masses were being left out, while the state was liberally building up a university which meant nothing to the great majority of the people. "What is it to them," he said, "that our university and seminaries are liberally endowed? It only widens the distance between them and the more opulent citizens. It adds the aristocracy of learning to that of wealth, and increases the influence of the few over the minds of the many." Kentucky must have schools for the masses, and she could pay for them, even as many other states were doing. A real educational awakening in Kentucky would not "be equalled in true glory by the most splendid military achievement." 19
Kendall and others who had sought to array the people against the university were met in their argument by Governor Adair, who, while admitting the masses should be educated, believed that it could best be accomplished through making a greater Transylvania, "the great head or fountain from which stream will flow to fertilize and improve the human mind in every section of the state." "By aiding our uni- versity," he said, "by putting it in its power to become useful in every department of science which it is prepared to teach, you will promote the real interest of the community at home, and give dignity and weight of character to the state abroad. Thus we may reasonably hope in a few years to see our primary schools furnished with well qualified teach- ers, raised and educated amongst ourselves, possessing the morals, man- ners and habits of our country. Such men, too, from their connections in the state, will have a weight of character to support, not always at- tached to itinerants." 20 He did not want to appear unfriendly to com- mon schools, but he felt that the university was the best beginning. In 1821 he strongly advocated that Transylvania, which was now through recent legislation unsupported by the state, should be immediately given aid. Unaided by the state, it would soon cease to flourish and perhaps cease to exist. Annual appropriations ought to be made, "sufficient to supply the deficiency of its actual receipts to meet its ordinary expendi- tures." But at the same time he would have "a system of general and cheap instruction which, in its details, shall pervade every part of the community, and bring home the blessings of a substantial and business education to the poor of every family." Such a plan, he believed, was not beyond the means of the state. "It is due to the present age and to posterity that the attempt should be made." 21
The Legislature was no less awake to the necessities of the situation. It appointed a committee, on which were William T. Barry and John Pope, among others, to investigate the school systems of other states and report one suitable for Kentucky. This committee immediately set to work and prepared for the next Legislature a report with recom- mendations for Kentucky. They would have the school system to be all-inclusive, from the university down to the common school, for the masses. The idea was not new; the common schools should prepare pupils for the academies and the academies for the university. All should be in a state system, supported by the state as far as possible and controlled by it. It would have less of the idea of poor schools, where children were singled out as poor children and thereby given a certain stigma which the proud spirits of many refused to bear by not going to school at all; and more emphasis should be placed on the edu- cation of all, as far as possible, through state appropriations and local taxation. A report from George Robertson was included, together with letters on the desirability of an educational system supported by the state, from John Adams. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Robert
19 Ibid., 249, quoting the Argus for September 13, 1821.
20 Niles' Register, Vol. 19, pp. 170, 171.
21 Ibid., Vol. 21, pp. 187, 188.
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Y. Hayne. It was further recommended that some official, such as the secretary of state, should be placed at the head of the schools and be known as the superintendent of schools.22 The Legislature received this report with good intentions, but it never mustered up enough courage to carry it out, which was also true of the succeeding legislatures. How- ever, it did a certain amount of good by having the report printed and distributed, and thereby attracting the attention and enlisting the inter- est of people widely over the state.
But good intentions and resolutions on the great value of education were not the only products of this period. Some substantial efforts were made, which resulted, however, in little lasting progress. The same Legislature which appointed the committee to report on a school system also set aside a "Literary Fund, for the establishment and the support of a system of general education." One-half of the net profits of the Bank of the Commonwealth were to be set aside and distributed in just proportions among the different counties. The higher institu- tions of learning, including Transylvania and Centre, were given per- centages of the profits of certain branch banks. Within a few years the Literary Fund was yielding annually about $60,000, but the schools received little benefit, as this fund was levied upon for almost every other purpose than schools.23 Transylvania University received from the state during the period, 1821-1825, about $20,000.24 In almost every instance, schools were linked up with banks or internal improvements in such a way as to always be the lesser concern-in fact, schools were generally the tail to some kite. So-called school funds aided banks or roads primarily, and then, if the conditions of these other interests per- mitted, some of the money trickled through for schools.
Kentuckians realized keenly their backwardness in establishing a common school system, but they were prone to excuse it on the grounds that the Federal Government had aided all the other Western states by grants of land in setting up their schools. It was only natural then for them to ask why aid had not been given to themselves. In 1821 a committee of the Legislature was appointed to report on the question. Kentucky, it believed, had been slighted. "Why those appropriations should have stopped short of Kentucky, your committee are not able to see, especially when they take into consideration its situation in re- lation to the other states of the Union; the contest it has maintained in establishing itself, protecting at the same time the western borders of the old states, and extending the more northern and western settle- ments." Kentucky had long stood alone in the wilderness battling against the savages, "cut off from the succor and almost from the knowledge of her friends," protecting the Eastern states and giving timely aid to "those states and territories which now form the great national domain." Kentucky even should have rights in these lands not granted to other states on account of the role she has played; but the National Government could well make land appropriations for educa- tion general "without materially affecting the national revenue." She could not help believing that the magnanimity of her sister states of the West would make them unanimous in Congress for granting land in aid of education in the other states. The resolution was then offered, "that each of the United States has an equal right, in its just propor- tion, to participate in the benefit of the public lands, the common prop- erty of the Union." It was further resolved that the state's representa-
22 Lewis, History of Higher Education in Kentucky, 330; Collins, History of Kentucky, I, 502, 503.
23 McMaster, History of the People of the United States, V, 372; Lewis, His- tory of Higher Education in Kentucky, 330; Collins, History of Kentucky, I, 30, 502; Niles' Register, Vol. 29, p. 229; Vol. 21, P. 303; Vol. 23, p. 181.
24 Niles' Register, Vol. 29, p. 97.
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tives in Congress should use their efforts "to procure the passage of a law to appropriate to the use of the State of Kentucky, for the purposes of education, such a part of the public lands of the United States as may be equitable and just." 25 Failing to secure the desired results, the state again, in 1829, sought to obtain public lands from the United States "for the purpose of diffusing Education by the establishment of some general system of Public Schools, in this State." 26
Despite the apparent success of Governor Adair's drive for a public school system in 1821 and following, as seen in the thriving condition of Transylvania University, the state had really made no progress in solving the problem of educating the great body of Kentucky citizenry.27 Instead, the feeling was growing stronger that the university was being built up as an aristocratic institution which could never help, but might. perhaps, harm the great body of the common people. In 1822 additional appropriations for Transylvania were defeated "on the plea that the institution was chiefly for the benefit of the rich." 28 Governor Desha declared open warfare against it in his message of 1825. This school, he declared, had been a favorite of the state, "and had drawn with a liberal hand upon the funds of the people. Yet it is believed that in its benefits it has not equalled the reasonable expectations of the public. and that for several years its expenditures have been extravagant in amount and lavished upon objects which were calculated to make the state but an inadequate return for her almost unbounded liberality. The university, its funds and all its resources and appendages, are public property, and it is the duty of the representatives of the people to make a rigid examination into all its appropriations and accounts." It was reported that the president was receiving a salary twice as large as any officer of the state government, wholly out of proportion to his services or to the resources of the institution, and that some of the professors were being paid with little less lavish extravagance. To make up for this carnival of expense, the tuition rates had been increased "to a very high rate, which, with the habits of profusion acquired in the society of a large town, effectually shut the door of the university to a large majority of the young men of Kentucky." As that institution "is now managed, it seems that the state has lavished her money for the benefit of the rich, to the exclusion of the poor, and that the only result is to add to the aristocracy of wealth the advantage of superior knowledge." If the institutions of freedom and democracy were to be handed down to posterity, knowledge of their meaning must be disseminated wider than one college or university could do it. Schools must be carried to the people, so thickly studded over the state that children could board
25 Niles' Register, Vol. 21, p. 253; American State Papers, Public Lands, III, 503, 504.
26 Acts of Kentucky, 1828, p. 192.
27 In his message to the Legislature in 1822, he said: "The state university continues to flourish. Its recent growth is unrivaled; and the benefits it dispenses are diffused far beyond the limits of our own state. When we consider how large a sum of money it retains among us, which would otherwise be expended abroad in educating our youth in habits and opinions, not the most happily adapted to render them useful at home; and that it attracts from other states considerable amounts that could not in a different mode be obtained, this institution might well be esti- mated, by avarice itself, as worth all the care and expense it has cost. But when we regard it as a distinguished seat of science, affording all the means for the attainment of knowledge, which are common to any seminary of learning in the United States, the advantages of its rich and imperishable contributions to our moral strength and intellectual acquisitions, are not to be calculated by the standard of wealth, but of glory. We may be permitted to felicitate ourselves on the rapid and general dissemination of useful and liberal knowledge, through all classes of society, and to hail with sentiments of deep delight the auspicious era, at which Philosophy and the muses claim a residence in the wilderness of the west." Niles' Register, Vol. 23, p. 171.
28 Niles' Register, Vol. 21, p. 304.
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at their homes and wear such garments as the family manufactured. "On this plan, and this only, can the patronage of the Government be extended equally to all and the benefit of literature be diffused through- out the whole body politic, and a sufficient degree of popular intelligence be preserved in future generations to ensure the preservation of our free and liberal institutions. On this plan, too, all the great geniuses of the country will be brought out to public usefulness; whereas, by the pres- ent plan, the most energetic intellects remain bound in the chains of ignorance and borne down by poverty, whilst thousands of both public and private funds are lavished, in many instances, on those whose minds nature never formed for greatness." Locate the schools in the coun- try away from the distracting and immoral influences to be found in the towns, and the student would develop habits of labor and study. Adair declared: "Every consideration, moral, political and religious, urges us to go earnestly to work to put into operation a system of com- mon schools." The system was promulgated several years ago, and it seemed that the people everywhere were enthusiastic, but still no schools existed. He feared that traitors existed: "But there are some grounds for the suspicions of many that although some were sincere in the promotion of common schools, the project was published more as a feint to content the people with large appropriations of public money that were then made to Transylvania, than with any view to carry it into actual operation."
It was time that the people's money should be used for their own benefit. "They have felt themselves taxed to aid in educating and ac- complishing the sons of the wealthy, and now there can be no difficulty in correcting the principle and adapting it to such a system as will re- quire the wealthy to contribute something toward maintaining schools whose advantages all can share. I beseech you then to enter upon the work with earnestness and with a zeal which becomes the great cause of learning. In means there can be no difficulty, if you determine on the end."
Desha declared that he was not hostile to the university in its proper uses and, properly conducted, he believed it had a part in the educa- tional system of the state, but it should not be allowed to rob the state of a system of common schools.29
The results of this rivalry between university and common school, which it was claimed existed and which was so bitterly discussed, was to greatly injure the former and to bring very little aid to the latter. In 1829 the Legislature called upon Rev. Alva Woods, president of Transylvania, and Benjamin O. Peers, another eminent educator, to communicate to it any suggestions or information that would be of value in devising a plan of common schools. They made a report, and in 1830 the state made another effort to give the people at large a system of schools. This law provided that the county court might lay off the county into districts of convenient size, that there should be three com- missioners to manage the schools, and that the people of the county might vote not over 50 cents poll tax and 61/2 cents on the $100 for school purposes. This law threw the responsibility directly on the counties, both in organization and providing revenues. There was not the slightest chance of such a system succeeding at that time, for the people in general were not informed on the subject and their conscious- ness had not been aroused. Education would have to be first popular- ized, and even then it should be directed and managed centrally through the state, with state funds to assist it.30
Educational conditions, while being far from satisfactory in 1830,
29 Niles' Register, Vol. 29, pp. 222, 223.
30 Collins, History of Kentucky, I, 35; Lewis, History of Higher Education in Kentucky, 331-333 ; Niles' Register, Vol. 37, p. 400.
Vol. II-13
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were not as bad as might have been inferred from the opportunities the people had. In this year 78 out of 83 counties reported school statistics. The total number of children reported between five and fifteen years was almost 140,000. Of these, 31,834 were reported to be in school, leaving 107,328 not in school. There were 1,131 schools reported, with expenditures of $278,592. Had all the children been in school and the cost of their education been maintained on the average of those who were in school, the total expenditures for education would have been $1,200,052. The number of schools to the county varied from nine in Morgan to 53 in Henry County. Russell County had I school; Laurel, 2; Harlan, 3; Knox, 4; Hickman, 5; Floyd, 6; Butler, 7; Grayson, 8; Anderson, 9, and a large number of others were in the class under IO. However, a majority of the counties had more than 10 schools. The average salary of the teachers was from $100 to $400 for the year, and the average size of the schools was from 20 to 40 pupils. The county with the worst attendance was Morgan, with 893 children of school age and not one in school; the best attendance was in Bourbon County, where almost one-half were in school.31
Until the idea of common schools was popularized, no system of education devised could succeed. Kentuckians were becoming increas- ingly conscious of this fact. The subject must be agitated and carried before the people in every manner possible. A report on education made to the Legislature in 1823 emphasized this necessity. It suggested that if a plan were adopted before the people were prepared for it. failure would result and conditions would be worse than if the attempt had never been made.32 There had begun to develop a consciousness on the part of some of the more progressive teachers, seconded by some of the most intelligent leaders of the state, that teaching was a profes- sion which was capable of organization and betterment thereby. The idea was also held that such organizations might be valuable aids in rousing the people on the subject of common schools. An ambitious undertaking calculated to be of tremendous importance to the state was the organization of the Kentucky Educational Society. A preliminary meeting was held in Frankfort on December 22, 1829, at which Charles S. Morehead, James Guthrie and Robert Wickliffe were the leading spirits, for the purpose of organizing a force for education in the state. The plan was to have a central society with branches ramifying out into every county, "whose object shall be to promote improvement and diffusion of popular education by the circulation of information, by enlisting the pulpit and the press, by procuring the delivery of popular addresses on the subject on the 4th day of July, and in different neigh- borhoods and by other means that may be found practicable." The permanent organization was made at a meeting on the 3Ist of Decem- ber. John Breathitt was elected president. and Benjamin Mills, James Allen, Robert Taylor, John Bryan and William Owsley, vice presidents. Among the members of the board of managers elected were Robert Wickliffe, Joseph Ficklin, James Guthrie and James T. Morehead. A constitution was adopted embodying the purposes of the society and its organization. John J. Crittenden was invited to address the society at its annual meeting on the first Tuesday in January, and it was re- solved that a speaker should be selected for every county in the state to deliver an oration on education on the following 4th of July.33 This was, indeed, a splendid attempt on the part of the political leadership of the state to advance the education of the common people.
81 American Almanac, 1834, pp. 236-238; Flint, History and Geography of the Mississippi Valley, 364-367. For an account of the public schools, see Courier- Journal, Jan. 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, 1881.
32 Robertson, Scrap Book, 45-47.
33 Argus, March 3, 1830.
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Other evidence of a determined awakening of the people to the necessity of better educational conditions was a meeting of the teachers of Lexington in 1833 for the purpose of organizing a general conven- tion of teachers, with one of the outstanding points in the program to seek the establishment of a normal school where teachers might be trained. Lyman Beecher was among those who addressed the meeting. He made a plea for better educational facilities, and called on the clergy, editors and legislators for help.34 The following year another move against educational stagnation was made in the organization of the Kentucky Common School Society, with Governor John Breathitt presi- dent and Benjamin O. Peers, James T. Morehead, John C. Young, Henry B. Bascom, Thomas Marshall. Daniel Breck and seven others as vice presidents. Peers, who was now president of Transylvania Uni- versity, was very active in the movement for common schools. During the previous year he had traveled widely over the state delivering ad- dresses on popular education and arousing interest in the cause .. 35
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