History of Fillmore County, Including the Explorers and Pioneers of Minnesota, Part 30

Author: Edward D. Neill
Publication date: 1882
Publisher:
Number of Pages:

USA > Minnesota > Fillmore County > History of Fillmore County, Including the Explorers and Pioneers of Minnesota > Part 30

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RESULTS OF THE RELATED SYSTEM.

meaning of "a thorough and efficient system of public schools, operative alike in each township in the State." And this interpretation of our legis- lature is in harmony with the several acts of Con- gress, and particularly the act of July the second, 1862, granting lands to the several States of the Union, known as the Agricultural College Grant. The States receiving said lands are required, in their colleges or universities, to "teach such branches of learning as are related to Agriculture and the Mechanic arts, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including mil- itary tactics, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and pro- fessions of life."

And the Legislature of Minnesota has already established in its University, optional or required courses of study fully meeting the limitations in the congressional act of 1862. In its elementary department it has three courses, known as classi- cal, scientific, and modern. In the College of Science, Literature, and the Arts, the courses of study are an extension of those of the elementary departments, and lead directly to the degrees of Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science, and Bach- elor of Literature. In the College of Mechanic Arts the several courses of studies are principally limited to Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engi- neering, and Architecture. In the College of Ag- riculture are: (1) The regular University course, leading to the degree of Bachelor of Agriculture. (2) The elementary course, in part coinciding with the Scientific course of the Elementary Depart- ment. (3) A Farmers' Lecture course. (4) Three special courses for the year 1880-81. Law and Medicine have not yet been opened in the State University for want of means to carry forward these departments, now so much needed.

Our State constitution has therefore been prac- tically interpreted by the people, by a test that cannot be misconstrued. They have fortified their opinion by the payment of the necessary tax to insure the success of a thorough and efficient system of public schools throughout the State. This proof of the people's interest in these schools appears in the amounts paid for expenses and in- struction. From the school fund the State of Minnesota received, in 1879, the full sum of $232,187.43 The State paid out the same year,

the sum of $694,737.71. The difference is $162 .- 550.28, which was paid out by the State more than was derived from the government endowment fund. And it is not at all likely that the endowment fund, generous as it is, will ever produce an amount equal to the cost of instruction. The ratio of the increase of scholars it is believed will always be in advance of the endowment fund. The cost of in- struction cannot fall much below an average, for all grades of scholars, of eight dollars per annum to each pupil. Our present 180,000 scholars en- rolled would, at this rate require $1,440,000, and in ten years and long before the sale of the school lands of the State shall have been made, this 180,- 000 will have increased a hundred per cent., amonnting to 360,000 scholars. These, at $8.00 per scholar for tuition, would equal $2,880,000 per annum, while the interest from the school fund in the same time cannot exceed $2,000,000, even should the land average the price of $6.00 per acre, and the interest realized be always equal to 6 per cent.

SOME OF THE RESULTS

In these infant steps taken by our State, we can discern the tendency of our organism towards a completed State system, as an element of a still wider union embracing the nation. To know what is yet to be done in this direction we must know what has already been done. We have, in the twenty years of our State history, built 3,693 schoolhouses, varying in cost from $400 to $90,- 000; total value of all, $3,156,210; three Normal school buildings at a cost of (1872) $215,231.52; a State University at an expenditure for buildings alone of $70,000, and an allowance by a late act of the legislature of an additional $100,000, in three yearly appropriations, for additional build- ings to be erected, in all $170,000, allowed by the State for the University. Add these to the cost of common school structures, and we have already expended in school buildings over $4,800,000 for the simple purpose of housing the infant organ- ism, our common school system here planted. We have seen a movement in cities like St. Paul, Minneapolis, Stillwater, and Winona, towards the local organization of a completed system of home schools, carrying instruction free to the University course, with a total enrollment of 13,500 scholars and 265 teachers, daily seated in buildings, all in the modern style of school architecture and school

" UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO !!!!

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STATE EDUCATION.

furniture, costing to these cities the sum of $850,- 000 for buildings, and for instruction the sum of $118,000 annually.

We have, in addition to these schools in the cities named, other home and fitting schools, to whom have been paid $400 each, under the law for the "Encouragement of Higher Education," passed in 1878, and amended in 1879, as follows: Anoka, Austin, Blue Earth City, Chatfield, Cannon Falls, Crookston, Duluth, Detroit, Eyota, Fari- bault, Garden City, Glencoe, Howard Lake, Hast- ings, Henderson, Kasson, Litchfield, Lanesboro, Le Sueur, Lake City, Monticello, Moorhead, Man- kato, Northfield, Owatonna, Osseo, Plainview, Red Wing, Rushford, Rochester, St. Cloud, St. Peter, Sauk Centre, Spring Valley, Wells, Waterville, Waseca, Wabasha, Wilmar, Winnebago City, Zum- brota, and Mantorville.

These forty-two State aid schools have paid in all for buildings and furniture the gross sum of $642,700; some of these buildings are superior in all that constitutes superiority in school architect- ure. The Rochester buildings and grounds cost the sum of $90,000. Several others, such as the Austin, Owatonna, Faribault, Hastings, Red Wing, Rushford, St. Cloud, and St. Peter schoolhouses, exceed in value the sum of $25,000; and others of these buildings are estimated at $6,000, $8,000, $10,000, and $15,000. In all they have av enroll- ment of scholars in attendance on classes graded up to the University course, numbering 13.000, under 301 teachers, at an annual salary amounting in all to $123,569, and having in their A, B, C, D classes 1704 scholars, of whom 126 were prepared to enter the sub-freshman class of the State Univer- sity in 1880, and the number entering these grades in the year 1879-80 was 934, of whom 400 were non-residents of the districts. And in all these forty-two home schools of the people, the fitting schools of the State University, one uniform course of study, articulating with some course in the University, was observed. As many other courses as the local boards desired were also carried on in these schools. This, in short, is a part of what we have done.

The organic elements that regularly combine to form governments, are similar to those organic ele- ments that combine to form systems of mental culture. The primitive type of government is the family. This is the lowest organic form. If no improvement is ever made upon this primitive ele-

ment, by other combinations of an artificial na- tnre, human governments would never rise higher than the family. If society is to advance, this organism widens into the clan, and in like manner the clan into the village, and the village into the more dignified province, and the province into the State. All these artificial conditions above the family are the evidences of growth in pursuance of the laws of artificial life. In like manner the growth of intellectual organisms proceeds from the family instruction to the common school. Here the artificial organism would cease to ad- vance, and would remain stationary, as the clan in the organism of government, unless the common school should pass on to the wider and still higher nnit of a graded system reaching upward to the high school. Now this was the condition of the common school in America during the Colonial state, and even down to the national organization. Soon after this period, the intellectual life of the nation began to be aroused, and within the last fifty years the State common school has culmi- nated in the higher organism of the high school, and it is of very recent date that the high school has reached up to and articulated in any State with the State University. On this continent, both government and State schools started into life, freed from the domination of institutions grown effete from age and loss of vital energy. Here, both entered into wider combinations, reaching higher results than the ages of the past. And yet, in educational organization we are far below the standard of perfection we shall attain in the rapidly advancing future. Not until our system of education has attained a national character as complete in its related articulation as the civil or- ganization of towns, counties, and States in the national Union, can our educational institutions do the work required of this age. And in Minnesota, one of the leading States in connected school or- ganic relations, we have, as yet, some 4,000 com- mon school districts, with an enrollment of some 100,000 scholars of different ages, from five to twenty-one years; no higher in the scale than the common school, prior to the first high school on the American continent. These chaotic elements, outside of the system of graded schools now aided by the State, must be reduced to the same organ- ized graded system as those that now articulate in their course with the State University.

Our complete organization as a State system for

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DIVISION OF LABOR A CAUSE OF GROWTHI.

educational purposes, equal to the demands of the State, and required by the spirit of the age, will not be consummated until our four thousand school districts shall reap the full benefits of a graded system reaching to the high school course, articulating with some course in the State Uni- versity and a course in commen with every other high school in the State. The system thus or- ganized might be required to report to the Board of Regents, as the legal head of the organization of the State School system, not only the numerical statistics, but the number and standing of the classes in each of the high schools in the several studies of the uniform course, established by the Board of Regents, under the direction of the State Legislature. To this system must finally belong the certificate of standing and graduation, en- titling the holder to enter the designated class in any grade of the State schools named therein, whether High School or University. But this system is not and can never be a skeleton merely, made up of lifeless materials, as an anatomical specimen in the office of the student of the practice of the healing art. Within this organism there must preside the living teacher, bringing into this organic structure, not the debris of the effete systems of the past, not the mental exuvia of dwarfed intellectual powers of this or any for- mer age, but the teacher inspired by nature to feel and appreciate her methods, and ever moved by her divine afflatus.

Every living organism has its own laws of growth; and the one we have under consideration may, in its most important feature, be compared to the growth of the forest tree. In its earlier years the forest tree strikes its roots deep into the earth and matures its growing rootlets, the support of its future trunk, to stand against the storms and winds to which it is at all times exposed. When fully rooted in the ground, with a trunk matured by the growth of years, it puts forth its infant branches and leaflets, suited to its immature but maturing nature; finally it gives evidence of stal- wart powers, and now its widespreading top tow- ers aloft among its compeers rearing its head high among the loftiest denizens of the woods. In like manner is the growth of the maturing State school organism. In the common school, the foundation is laid for the rising structure, but here are no branches, no fruitage. It seems in its earliest in- fancy to put forth no branches, but is simply tak-

ing hold of the elements below on which its inner life and growth depend. As the system rises, the underlaying laws of life come forth in the princi- ples of invention, manufacturing, engraving, and designing, enriching every branch of intellectual and professional industry, and beautifying every field of human culture. These varied results are all in the law of growth in the organism of State schools carried on above the common schools to the University course. The higher the course the more beneficial the results to the industries of the world, whether those industries are intellectual or purely physical, cater only to the demands of wealth, or tend to subserve the modest demands of the humblest citizen.

The only criticism that can reach the question now under consideration, is whether the graded organization tends to produce the results to which we have referred. The law relating to the division of labor has especially operated in the graded sys- tem of State schools. Under its operation, it is claimed, by good judges, that eight years of school life, from five to twenty-one, has been saved to the pupils of the present generation, over those of the ungraded schools ante-dating the last fifty years. By the operation of this law, in one gen- eration, the saving of time, on the enrollments of State schools in the graded systems of the north- ern States of the American Union, would be enormous. For the State of Minnesota alone, on the enrollment of 180,000, the aggregate years of time saved would exceed a million! The time saved on the enrollment of the schools of the dif- ferent States, under the operation of this law would exceed over twenty million years!

To the division of labor is due the wonderful facility with which modern business associations have laid their hands upon every branch of indus- trial pursuits, and bestowed upon the world the comforts of life. Introduced into our system of education it produces results as astonishing as the advent of the Spinning Jenny in the manufacture of cloth. As the raw material from the cotton field of the planter, passing, by gradation, through the unskilled hands of the ordinary laborer to the more perfect process of improved machinery, se- cure additional value in a constantly increasing ratio; so the graded system of intellectual culture, from the Primary to the High school, and thence to the University, adds increased lustre and value to the mental development in a ratio commen-

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO !!

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STATE EDUCATION.

surate with the increased skill of the mental ope- rator.

The law of growth in State schools was clearly announced by Horace Mann, when he applied to this system the law governing hydraulics, that no stream could rise above its fountain. The com- mon school could not produce a scholarship above its own curriculum. The high school was a grade above, and as important in the State system as the elevated fountain head of the living stream. This law of growth makes the system at once the most natural, the most economical, and certainly the most popular. These several elements might be illustrated, but the reader can easily imagine them at his leisure. As to the last, however, suffer an illustration. In Minnesota, for the school year ending August 21st, 1880, according to the report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, there were enrolled, one hundred and eighty thousand, two hundred and fifty-eight scholars in the State schools, while all others, embracing kindergartens, private schools, parochial schools, of all sects and all denominations, had an attendance at the same time of only two thousand four hundred and twenty-eight; and to meet all possible omissions, if we allow double this number, there is less than three per cent. of the enrollment in the State school. This ratio will be found to hold good, at least throughout all the Northern States of the American Union. These State schools, then, are not unpopular in comparison with the schools of a private and opposite character. Nor is it owing altogether to the important fact, that State schools are free, that they are more popular than schools of an opposite character; for these State schools are a tax upon the property of the people, and yet a tax most cheerfully borne, in consequence of their superior excellence and importance.

The State school, if not already, can be so graded that each scholar can have the advantage of superior special instruction far better adapted to the studies through which he desires to pass, than similar instruction can be had in ungraded schools of any character whatever. In this re- spect the State system is without a rival. It has the power to introduce such changes as may meet all the demands of the State and all the claims of the learner.

The State school knows no sect, no party, no privileged class, and no special favorites; the high, the low, the rich, and the poor, the home and for-

eign-born, black or white, are all equal at this altar. The child of the ruler and the ruled are here equal. The son of the Governor, the wood- sawyer, and the hod-carrier, here meet on one level, and alike contend for ranks, and alike expect the honors due to superior merit, the reward of intellectual culture. But, aside from the republi- can character of the State school system, the sys- tem is a State necessity. Without the required State culture under its control, the State must cease to exist as an organism for the promotion of human happiness or the protection of human rights, and its people, though once cultured and refined, must certainly return to barbarism and savage life. There can be no compromise in the warfare against inherited ignorance. Under all governments the statute of limitations closes over the subject at twenty-one years; so that during the minority of the race must this warfare be waged by the government without truce. No peace can ever be proclaimed in this war, until the child shall inherit the matured wisdom, instead of the primal ignorance of the ancestor.

The State school system, in our government, is from the necessity of the case, national. No State can enforce its system beyond the limits of its own territory. And unless the nation enforce its own uniform system, the conflict between juris- dictions could never be determined. No homo- geneous system could ever be enforced. As the graded system of State schools has now reached the period in its history which corresponds to the colonial history of the national organization, it must here fail, as did the colonial system of gov- ernment, to fully meet the demands of the people. And what was it, let us consider, that led the peo- ple in the organization of the national government "to form a more perfect union?" Had it then be- come necessary to take this step, that "justice" might be established, domestic tranquility insured, the common defense made more efficient, the gen- eral welfare promoted, and the blessings of liberty better secured to themselves and their posterity, that the fathers of the government should think it necessary to form a more perfeet union?" Why the necessity of a more perfect union? Were our fathers in fear of a domestic or foreign foe, that had manifested his power in their immediate pres- ence, threatening to jeopardize or destroy their do- mestic tranquility? Was this foe an hereditary enemy, who might at long intervals of time invade

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CONCLUSION.

their territory, and endanger the liberties of this people? And for this reason did they demand a more perfect union? And does not this reason now exist in still greater force for the formation of & still more perfect union in our system of State schools? Our fathers were moved by the most natural of all reasons, by this law of self-defense. They were attacked by a power too great to be successfully resisted in their colonial or unorgan- ized state. The fear of a destruction of the sev- eral colonies without a more perfect union drove them to this alternative. It was union and the hope of freedom, against disunion and the fear of death, that cemented the national government. And this was an external organism, the temple in which the spirit of freedom should preside, and in which her worshippers should enjoy not only do- mestic but national tranquility. Now, should it be manifested to the world that the soul and spirit, the very life of this temple, erected to freedom, is similarly threatened, should not be the same cause that operated in the erection of the temple itself, operate in the protection of its sacred fires, its soul and spirit? It would seem to require no admoni- tion to move a nation in the direction of its highest hopes, the protection of its inner life.

And what is this enemy, and where is the power able to destroy both the temple and the spirit of freedom? And why should State Education take upon itself any advanced position other than its present independent organic elements? In the face of what enemy should it now be claimed we should attempt to change front, and "form a more perfect union to insure domestic tranquility, and promote the ¿ eneral welfare," to the end that we may the better secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity ? That potent foe to our free institutions, to which we are now brought face to face, is human ignorance, the natural hered- itary foe to every form of enlightened free gov- ernment. This hereditary enemy is now home- steaded upon our soil. This enemy, in the lan- guage of the declaration made by the colonies against their hereditary foe, this enemy to our government, has kept among us a standing army of illiterates, who can neither read nor write, but are armed with the ballot, more powerful than the sword, ready to strike the most deadly blow at human freedom; he has cut off and almost en- tirely destroyed our trade between States of the same government; has imposed a tax upon us

without our consent, most grievous to be borne; he has quite abolished the free system of United States laws in several of our States; he has estab- lished, in many sections, arbitrary tribunals, ex- cluding the subject from the right of trial by jury, and enlarged the powers of his despotic rule, en- dangered the lives of peaceable citizens; he has alienated government of one section, by declaring the inhabitants aliens and enemies to his supposed hereditary right; he has excited domestic insur- rections amongst us; he has endeavored to destroy the peace and harmony of our people by bringing his despotic ignorance of our institutions into con- flict with the freedom and purity of our elections; he has raised up advocates to his cause who have openly declared that our system of State Educa- tion, on which our government rests, is a failure ;* he has spared no age, no sex, no portion of our country, but has, with his ignominious minions, afflicted the North and the South, the East and the West, the rich and the poor, the black and the white; an enemy alike to the people of every sec- tion of the government, from Maine to California, from Minnesota to Louisiana. Such an inexora- ble enemy to government and the domestic tran- quility of all good citizens deserves the oppro- brium due only to the Prince of Darkness, against whom eternal war should be waged; and for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we should, as did our fathers, mutually pledge to each other, as citizens of the free States of America, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

We have thus far considered the State school system in some of its organic elements, and the nature, tendency, and neceseary union of these elements; first in States, and finally for the forma- tion of a more perfect union, that they may be united in one national organization under the con- trol of one sovereign will. The mode in which these unorganized elements shall come into union and harmony with themselves, and constitute the true inner life and soul of the American Union, is left for the consideration of those whose special duty it is to devote their best energies to the pro- motion of the welfare of the Nation, and by statesman-like forethought provide for the domes- tic, social, civil, intellectual, and industrial pro- gress of the rapidly accumulating millions who

*Richard Grant White in North American Review.

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STATE EDUCATION.

are soon to swarm upon the American continent. We see truly that

"The rudiments of empire here Are plastic yet and warm: The chaos of a mighty world Is rounding into form!

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History of Fillmore County, Including the Explorers and Pioneers of Minnesota, Part 30

Author: Edward D. Neill Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Number of Pages:

Author: Edward D. Neill
Publication date: 1882
Publisher:
Number of Pages: