USA > Kentucky > The history of Kentucky, from its earliest discovery and settlement, to the present date, V. 2 > Part 34
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This provision of the Constitution was strongly resisted in the convention by Benjamin Hardin and Willis B. Machen. It was attempted to divert the convention from the passage of this important article concerning education by argument, fun, and the relation of ludicrous anecdotes. The leaders in the convention in favor of the educational clause were John D. Taylor, Larkin J. Procter, Ira Root, Thomas J. Hood, William K. Bowling. Charles A. Wickliffe, and Thomas J. Lisle. To these men the people of Kentucky owe the consecration of the school fund to purposes of education, as shown by the records of the debates in the convention.
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
A question of the greatest importance was still unsettled, as to whether the common-school fund should be considered a part of the State debt, pay- able out of the sinking fund. Governor Helm had refused to treat the in- terest as so payable. His reasons for so doing were :
First-That by section I. article XI., of the Constitution, it was provided that the interest upon the school fund should be paid by taxation, and not out of the sinking fund.
Second-That this was the true construction of the Constitution as inter- preted by the men who framed it.
The grounds in support of his objections were well set forth in two able messages to the Legislature. This position of the governor was endorsed by like opinions from George Robertson. James Guthrie. John W. Steven- son, Elijah Hise, and perhaps others. The opposite opinion was maintained by Dr. Breckinridge in a spirited communication to the Legislature. In March, 1850, an act was passed declaring the sinking fund was liable for the principal and interest of the common-school debt. and directing the interest to be paid by the commissioners of the sinking fund. The act soon after- ward became a law, notwithstanding a strong veto by Governor Helm.
The provisions of this law were afterward executed by Governor Powell, and the gratifying announcement made to the people of Kentucky that the matter was finally settled, and that hereafter the interest upon the school debt would be paid annually by the commissioners of the sinking fund. The same act also declared that the principal of the school debt was paya- ble out of the sinking fund. The effect of the law was to pledge the entire internal-improvement stock of the State to the payment of the school bonds. This was an act of inherent justice. As a large part of the school fund had been applied to the improvement of our roads and rivers, it was right to appropriate their income to pay the interest on the school fund, and to pledge the stock in same for the payment of the principal at maturity.
In 1852, the statutory law of the State was thoroughly revised. Some great changes were then made in the school system of Kentucky. These statutes made our common schools free schools. Prior to this, our schools had been common schools, in opposition to private and select schools, but not in opposition to pay schools. This change in the system was strongly opposed by Dr. Breckinridge. He urged that the change would overthrow the State system of common schools. ยท Another important alteration made by the revised statutes was that hereafter the books to be used in the schools were not to be selected by the parents of the children, but by the State Board of Education. This new feature was borrowed from the New England and New York systems. It was bitterly opposed by Dr. Breckinridge, but has since become the settled policy of the State.
The third and greatest change made by the revision of 1852 was that the educational fund of the State should be used exclusively for the promotion
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705
CLOSE OF DR. BRECKINRIDGE'S ADMINISTRATION.
of elementary education. Prior to this, pecuniary aid to colleges, semi- naries, and higher institutions of learning had been a part of our State policy, but the rigid definition of a common school as made by the statutes * of 1852 seems to exclude all aid to universities and colleges. This close definition of a common school was carried forward into the revision of March, 1865, and into the general statutes of 1873. It has been supposed by many that the definition of a common school as made by the statutes of 1852 was its true meaning as required by the Constitution of 1849. This dedication of the school fund to a system of public instruction in elementary schools was believed by Guthrie, Wickliffe, Dixon, Taylor, and Clark to be enjoined by our present Constitution. Men equally as great, such as George Robertson, Dr. Breckinridge, Charles S. Morehead, and John L. Helm, have held that the Constitution of 1849 admitted universities and colleges to be an essential part of our common-school system. It is, perhaps, proper also to remark just here that the act of December 18, 1821, directing Will- iam T. Barry and others to prepare a plan of schools of common education for the State, declares that "in a well-regulated system of general education different grades of schools ought to be established." The latter view seems to be more in accord with sound policy and with the proper historical view of the meaning of a common school as used in the Kentucky system. If the question was, Which is the most important, popular education or the exist- ence of colleges, it would hardly admit of dispute. Happily, their pros- perity is intimately connected, and an impulse given to one is felt by both.
At the end of 1852, the administration of Dr. Breckinridge, as superin- tendent of public instruction, had closed. A great work had been done for education in Kentucky. The result is substantially summarized, as follows, in the superintendent's report for December, 1853: An immense fund had been created, organized, and secured; when destroyed by an act of frenzy, it had been retraced, restored, augmented by the Legislature, and made sacred by the Constitution. A complete system of education, in its lowest stage, had been established. Hundreds of school-houses had been erected, and a deep public interest aroused in favor of education. A large part of what had been accomplished was due to Dr. Breckinridge. Much also was due to his predecessors in office. Many statesmen had done their part. Many philanthropists had done theirs : the press had done its part.
In 1853, the common-school law was in operation in every county in the State, but there were still many gross deficiencies which time and patience alone could cure. Though the system was territorially in operation in every county in the Commonwealth. the complexion of any particular school. the amount of information imparted, its influence upon the community in which it was located, depended entirely upon the character of the teacher em- ployed. First-class men could not be obtained for the insufficient salary afforded by the State fund.
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
A law was passed. at the session of 1855-56, reorganizing Transylvania University, and establishing there a State normal school, as an indispensable aid to our common-school system. This was a new era inaugurated in the history of our common schools, though the establishment of such an insti- tution had been repeatedly urged by every State superintendent of public instruction, and also by many of our governors. This new experiment was abandoned after two years' trial, on account of the drain which it made upon the funds going to the common schools, and our system was left a " body without a head."
Meanwhile, amid all the drawbacks to which our schools were subjected, there was a constant increase in the average daily attendance upon them. The vitality and energy of the system were not such as were needed in many of its practical workings. It had been administered by able superintendents. Their reports were full of valuable suggestions for the cause, but as yet the schools were imperfect. and had failed to meet the expectations and desires of the people of the State.
Our statesmen were wrestling with questions of national politics, such as the tariff, the fugitive-slave law, the acquisition of Cuba, and the glittering generalities of the Whig and Democratic platforms, but few of them made any vigorous efforts to remove the evils of illiteracy. Thomas Jefferson, after having drafted a common-school law for Virginia, spent his declining years in fostering her State university; but Rowan. Clay, Crittenden, and Underwood, passed from their political labors with no suggestions as to the proper legislation to improve our common schools, and no legislative meas- ures for the advancement of the cause of collegiate education. The subjects of roads, banks, domestic manufactures, emancipation, the Mexican war, the sufferings of Greece, South America, Hungary, Know Nothingism, and a hundred other topics, took precedence over the crying evils under which the children of the people of Kentucky were laboring from the inefficiency of our defective educational system. Superintendents Breckinridge, Matthews, and Richardson, with the limited pecuniary means at their command, were powerless to remedy the defects of a system to some extent imbecile, from the lack of sufficient pecuniary support.
1862 to 1886 .- Throughout the continuance of the late civil war our common schools were on the decline. Voluntary contributions to education almost entirely ceased. In many counties, especially those bordering upon Tennessee and Virginia. the people were deprived of the necessaries of life. The school fund, securely intrenched by constitutional restriction, was left untouched by the legislation of the war.
The act of 1864 requiring trustees, teachers, and school commissioners. to take the oath of loyalty. seriously affected the prosperity of many schools. Drawn in the spirit of some of the severest enactments of Henry VIII., it was too stringent for the people of our State. It was a remarkable specimen of unwise legislation, in its practical effects upon our educational interests.
707
DONATION FROM CONGRESS.
From 1860 to 1865, school districts in the State, to the number of seven hundred and twelve, had been discontinued. On the 30th of January, 1864, the common-school law had again been amended and seriously changed. The plan of sustaining the schools partly by public funds and partly by pri- vate contributions, as introduced by the law of 1845, was now found to be impracticable. Experience had shown that Dr. Dillard was right, when he said a great State system of education could not be rested upon volun- tary contributions. Much good had been accomplished by this method, but it was always an unreliable plan of sustaining the schools. It was a feeble substitute for the vigorous system of local district taxation which has produced such satisfactory results in many of our sister States. It was not a part of the original common-school law, as drafted by Judge Bullock, and founded on the report of Benjamin O. Peers. It was a stranger to the sys- tem proposed in the great state paper of Barry, in 1822. The Morehead school law of 1830 rested upon no such insecure foundation.
At the close of the war, it was admitted by Dr. Stevenson. then at the head of our common schools, that the system was strikingly deficient in many respects. For the last thirty years, the progress of ideas in relation to popular education had been very marked in the United States, but Ken- tucky had profited but little by it. Dr. Stevenson declared that our system was still substantially what it had been a quarter of a century ago. The number of children was increasing, but the State pro rata was decreasing.
In 1862, Kentucky had again been offered an additional donation from Congress. The State was given three hundred and thirty thousand acres of land, which was sold by Mr. Madison C. Johnson, as its agent, for one hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars. The amount received was invested so as to yield an annual income of ninety-nine hundred dollars. The low price obtained for the land was a disappointment to many of the friends of education. Other States had been more successful in the results obtained from like donations, and the sale of our land at the price named occasioned much dissatisfaction.
The object of this donation by Congress was the establishment and en- dowment of a State agricultural and mechanical college. The institution contemplated by the gift was located at Lexington, in 1865, as one of the departments of Kentucky University, but, as the agricultural college did not long rest in that connection, it was subsequently made a separate State institution. As a return for the annual endowment of ninety-nine hundred dollars received from the State, the Agricultural College is required to fur- nish free tuition to three pupils from each legislative district. It was claimed by Governor Blackburn, in one of his messages, that the Agricultural College had thus, in fact, become a part of the common-school system of the State. It has been aided by a small State tax levied in its behalf. This aid by State taxation to a college, as a part of our common-school system, is at war with the idea of a constitutional-school system, as interpreted by the revisers
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708
HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
of 1852, but accords with the views of the system entertained by Dr. Breck- inridge and others, as already stated.
The great loss of property occasioned by the overthrow of slavery, ac- companied by the increase of the number of children to be educated, had now produced a serious decrease in the income of the school fund. The system, after the close of the war, was not working as desired. Mr. Z. F. Smith had been elected to fill the office of State superintendent, as succes- sor to Dr. Daniel Stevenson. Mr. Smith attributed this lack of successful operation to a want of sufficient means and certain defects in the existing organization of the counties. He insisted that our common-school system needed remodeling throughout on the basis of modern reforms. He urged that an additional tax of fifteen cents on the one hundred dollars was neces- sary as the basis of a vigorous system.
The proposition to increase the school tax from five to twenty cents on the one hundred dollars' worth of property was submitted to a vote of the people of the State, and carried by a majority of 24,677 votes. The super- intendent then drafted a bill embodying his ideas of the needed reforms in our school system ; but the Legislature rejected the enlarged plans and poli- cies of reform as proposed by Mr. Smith, and adopted a bill perpetuating many of the features of the old law, with such changes as were deemed proper. The law thus enacted, notwithstanding its defects, was a great im- provement on the old law.
The historian, Dr. Richard H. Collins, justly says that the material results of the reforms introduced by the efforts of Mr. Smith were great improve- ments in the quality of education given, in the character of teachers obtained, in the number of schools taught, in the amount of school fund distributed, and in the average attendance upon the schools.
Much advancement was also made under the succeeding administration of Dr. H. A. M. Henderson.
The remodeling of the law to suit the wants of the State, the organiza- tion of teachers' institutes, and other improvements, received much attention under his administration.
The difference of opinion between the head of our educational depart- ment and the legislative branch of our government, as illustrated in the case of Mr. Smith, has often been witnessed in the history of our common schools. One of the complaints of Dr. Breckinridge was that, after all his efforts for the creation and preservation of our common-school system, his cherished plans and ideas had been changed and materially interfered with by the Revised Statutes of 1852.
With the freedom of the negro, the education of the colored people resi- dent in the State began to attract the attention of the people of Kentucky. The result of our legislative efforts in this direction is thus given by Gov- ernor Knott, in his message of 1884. By the act passed in 1874, the whole taxes, together with the fines and forfeitures collected by the State from its
709
EQUALIZING THE PER CAPITA.
colored people, were devoted to the education of colored children-not a cent collected from the colored people being required to pay the expenses of the State Government. From 18;5 to 1882, the per capita accruing to each colored child amounted to from fifty to fifty-five cents. On the 6th of August, 1882, the voters of the State ratified an act of the Legislature equalizing the per capita of white and colored children. The following year the common per capita established was one dollar and thirty cents. A suffi- cient amount was taken from the white fund to equalize the two races.
The General Statutes of 1873 made important and valuable changes in our common-school law. The fundamental idea of State aid supplemented by district taxation, as developed in the Bullock law of 1838, is a striking feature of the General Statutes of IS73. This revision is justly regarded by Dr. Henderson as an advance upon all our previous statutes.
. The revision of 1884 is a still greater approach to the goal desired. It contains some admirable provisions, on which the author would be gratified to comment, but the space at his command forbids.
Our system still has many defects. Some of these were pointed out in the report of Professor Joseph D. Pickett, our present State superintendent. A number of his suggestions were adopted by the Legislature of 1884. An able report from the Senate committee on education for that year contrib- uted much to important changes in the law, and to the enhancement of the revenue going to the educational fund. The Senate committee seemed opposed to any increase of State taxation for educational purposes, and so stated in their report.
In his message of 1884, Governor Knott. in alluding to the educational condition of Kentucky, declared that we would look a long time for the golden age, when every child in the State would enjoy good schools at pub- lic expense, before it was realized at the present average of one dollar and forty cents per annum to the pupil, unless something was done to supple- ment it. He thought this could not be expected from State taxation, as he maintained that there was not another State in the Union which contributed such a large proportion of its revenues to the purposes of education.
Whether the State bonus would at present be sufficiently supplemented by district taxation in many parts of the State is a matter of serious doubt. If reliance is to be placed upon the historical facts of our system rather than upon ingenious speculations, then, so far as our limited experience has gone, the facts are against district taxation, as a sufficient aid to bring up our standard of education to the mark required by the demands of the age.
The history of district taxation, as a dependence for the system as it was developed in the laws of 1830-38 and '45, has already been given. It is proper now to add that the revisions of 1852 and 1864 omitted the right of local taxation. It was thus dropped from the Kentucky system for the period of twenty years. It was revived on a small scale in 1865. The
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HISTORY OF KENTUCKY.
odious rate-bill system appeared somewhat later, in 1870, as a substitute for district taxation. It was not until the rate feature fell, under the severe blows of Mr. Z. F. Smith, that local district taxation, after a long sleep, again reappeared in the General Statutes of 1873.
To summarize the whole matter in a few words, district taxation failed in 1830; reappeared in 1838; was rejected in the revisions of 1845-52 and '64; was restored on a small scale in 1865; disappeared again in 1871, with the rate feature as a substitute; reappeared in 1873; again reappears in 1884, under the more practical form of county taxation, first suggested by Mr. Smith, as a necessary substitute for district taxation.
According to the report of Professor J. D. Pickett, the amount raised in Kentucky by district taxation and voluntary subscription is exceedingly small. The per capita from this source, in 1880, was seventy-nine cents. Nearly two-thirds of this amount were gathered in cities and towns, where it is more than probable that its payment is due to the operations of a cor- porate government, rather than to voluntary submission to taxation by a district vote of the people.
After forty years' trial of our system, with all the aid we have been able to get from district taxation, the practical result of the whole matter is that Kentucky still stands low on the list of illiteracy, as shown by the educa- tional reports of the United States. In this respect she presents an example of a State not to be imitated, rather than one to be followed. As shown by the first message of Governor Knott, she furnishes to the masses of her children an education worth only one dollar and forty cents per annum, while most of our sister States furnish their children with an education of much greater value. Can the poor children of our State, laboring under these disadvantages, compete successfully with the children of those States, where the education given is worth so much more than that obtained in Kentucky ? Can the poor children of the State, with an education only worth one dollar and forty cents per annum, be expected to compete suc- cessfully with the children of our wealthy citizens who sometimes give as much as two hundred or three hundred dollars per annum for the education of their sons ? These are questions which Kentucky statesmanship has yet to meet and answer, in a manner more satisfactory than has hitherto been done.
When the worst is reached, State conventions have sometimes been the last hope and refuge for improvement in our schools. Two great popular conventions, one at Lexington and another at Frankfort, introduced the common-school system into Kentucky. Another convention of the scholars and educators of the State, assembled at the call of Dr. Breckinridge, in 1852, entered their solemn protest against some of the principles announced in the revision of 1852.
A large popular convention, called together by Judge Wm. M. Beck- ner, in 1884, gave a strong impulse to the cause of education in Kentucky. It not only aroused public sentiment upon the subject, but called attention
7II
AN INTER-STATE CONVENTION.
WILLIAM MORGAN BECKNER, of Win- chester, was born in Nicholas county, June 19, 1841, of Scotch-Irish and English parents, who early removed from Virginia. His ed- ucation was in the country schools of Bath and Fleming counties, and at Maysville Sem- inary. He spent some years in teaching, and read law under Judge E. C. Phister. He located, in 1865, at Winchester, where he has pursued the calling of the law and edit- ing the Clark County Democrat almost con- stantly since, filling the office of county judge and several others in the meantime. In ISSo, he was appointed one of three commis- sioners, by Governor Blackburn, to locate "the site for a branch penitentiary, and to re- port a plan of building and system of gov- ernment for the institution. The able report was written by Judge Beckner. In 1882, he WILLIAM MORGAN BECKNER. was also appointed on the State Railroad Commission, with W. B. Machen and D. Howard Smith. He has served some years on the Democratic State Committee ; but it is in the work of education that Judge Beckner has most actively distinguished himself, especially of late years. In 1882, he delivered an address before the State Teachers' Association, ably pointing out the insuf- ficiencies of the provisions of the common schools, and urging national aid. In 1883, he was mainly instrumental in calling together and organizing the State convention at Frankfort, to consider the educational wants of the State ; and in September of the same year, calling the national convention at Louisville, of which he was president, in like interests, in which twenty-seven States were represented. Judge Beckner took much interest in, and advised upon, the work of redrafting the present school law of Kentucky, so much in advance of any preceding it. In June, 1885, he deliv- ered the annual address for the literary societies of Berea College, where all sexes and colors are admitted on an equal footing. In September after, he read a paper before the Social Science Convention at Saratoga, New York. He was elected and sat as a delegate in the late constitutional convention.
to many important defects in the system. Some of the beneficial results of this movement are to be seen in the revision of 1884.
This meeting at Frankfort resulted in a larger inter-State convention at Louisville, in which many matters of vital importance to education in all parts of the country were considered.
An education worth only one dollar and forty cents, it is believed, will not satisfy the people of Kentucky. Only schools of the very lowest grade can be obtained for this amount. First-class schools should be furnished to the children of the State. The educational convention of Virginia was right when it said: " The public schools must be good ; they must be emphatically colleges for the people. If they are not good enough for the rich, they are not fit for the poor. If made as good as the rich desire, wealthy citizens will find no reason to send their children from home for education."
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