History of Houston County, Including Explorers and Pioneers of Minnesota, Part 30

Author: Edward D. Neill
Publication date: 1882
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 547

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THE RELATED SYSTEM.

We have now seen the position of the Univer- sity in our system of Public Schools. In its po- sition only at the head of the series it differs from the grades below. The rights of the scholar fol- low him throughout the series. When he has completed and received the certificate or diploma in the prescribed course in the High School, ar- ticulating with any course, optional or required, in the University, he has the same right, uncon- ditioned, to pass to the higher class in that course, as he had to pass on examination, from one class to the other in any of the grades below. So it fol- lows, that the University faculty or teacher who assumes the right to reject, condition, or re-exam- ine such student, would exercise an abuse of power, unwarranted in law, arbitrary in spirit, and not republican in character. This rule is better and better understood in all State Universities, as free State educational organisms are more crystal- ized into forms, analogous to our State and na- tional governments. The arbitrary will of the intermediate, or head master, no longer prevails. His will must yield to more certain legal rights, as the learner passes on, under prescribed rules, from infancy to manhood through all the grades of

school life. And no legislation framed on any other theory of educational promotion in republi- can States can stand against this American con- sciousness of equality existing between all the members of the body politic. In this conscious- ness is embraced the inalienable rights of the child or the youth to an education free in all our public schools. In Minnesota it is guaranteed in the constitution that the legislature shall make such provisions, by taxation or otherwise, as with the income arising from the school fund, will secure a thorough and efficient system of public schools in each township in the State." Who shall say that the people have no right to secure such thorough and efficient system, even should that "thorough and efficient system" extend to direct taxation for a course extending to graduation from a Univer- sity ? Should such a course exceed the constitu- tional limitation of a thorough and efficient sys- tem of public schools ?

INTERPRETATION OF THE CONSTITUTION.

The people, through the medium of the law- making power, have given on three several occa- sions, in 1878, 1879 and 1881, an intimation of the scope and measuring of our State constitution on educational extension to higher education than the common school. In the first section of the act of 1881, the legislature created a High School Board, consisting of the Governor of the State, Superintendent of Public Instruction, and the President of the University of Minnesota, who are charged with certain duties and granted certain powers contained in the act. And this High School Board are required to grant State aid to the amount of $400 during the school year to any public graded school, in any city or incorporated village, or township organized into a district which shall give preparatory instruction, extending to and articulating with the University course in some one of its classes, and shall admit sudents of either sex, from any part of the State, without charge for tuition. Provided only that non-resi- dent pupils shall be qualified to enter some one of the organized classes of such graded or high school. To carry out this act, giving State aid directly out of the State treasury to a course of education reach- ing upward to the common school through the high school to the University, the legislature appropriated the entire sum of $20,000. In this manner we have the interpretation of the people of Minnesota as to the meaning of "a thorough

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RESULTS OF THE RELATED SYSTEM.

and efficient system of public schools, operative alike in each township in the State." And this interpretation of our legislature is in harmony with the several acts of Congress, 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 uni- versities, to "teach such branches of learning as are related to Agriculture and the Mechanic arts, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, in such manner as the Legislatures of the States may re- spectively prescribe, in order to promote the lib- eral and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions 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 clas- sical, 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 De- partment. (3) A Farmer's 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 for- ward 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 instruction. From the school fund the State of Minnesota received, in 1879, the full sum of $232,187.43. The State paid out, that same year the sum of $394,737.71. The difference is $162,-

550.28, which was paid out by the State more than was derived from the government endow- ment fund. And it is not at all likely that the endowment fund, generous as it is, will ever pro- duce 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 instruction cannot fall much below an average, for all grades of scholars, of eight dol- lars per annum to each pupil. Our present 180,000 scholars enrolled would, at this rate, re- quire $1,440,000, and in ten years, and long be- fore the sale of the school lands of the State shall have been made, this 180,000 will have increased a hundred per cent., amounting 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 school houses, varying in cost from $400 to $90,- 000; total value of all, $3,156,210; three Normal Schoool 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 al- ready expended in school buildings over $4,800,- 000 for the simple purpose of housing the infant organism, 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 furniture, costing to these cities the sum of

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STATE EDUCATION.

$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, Can- non Falls, Crookston, Duluth, Detroit, Eyota, Faribault, Garden City, Glencoe, Howard Lake, Hastings, Henderson, Kasson, Litchfield, Lanes- boro, Le Sueur, Lake City, Monticello, Moorhead, Mankato, Northfield, Owatonna, Osseo, Plainview, Red Wing, Rushford, Rochester, St. Cloud, St. Peter, Sauk Centre, Spring Valley, Wells, Water- ville, Waseca, Wabasha, Wilmar, Winnebago City, Zumbrota, 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 archi- tecture. 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 school- houses, 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 an enrollment 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 1,704 scholars, of whom 126 were prepared to enter the sub-freshman class of the State University in 1880, and the number en- tering 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. Ax 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.

CHAPTER XXIX.

TIME SAVED BY THE GRADED SCHOOL SYSTEM-DI- VISION OF LABOR THE GREATEST CAUSE OF GROWTH -LOCAL TAXATION IN DIFFERENT STATES- STATE SCHOOL SYSTEM KNOWS NO SEOT-IGNORANCE IN- HERITED, THE COMMON FOE OF MANKIND-THE NATURAL AND NATIONAL RIGHTS OF PUPILS.

The organic elements that regularly combine to form governments, are similar to those organic ele- ments that combine to form systems of mental cul- ture. 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 nature. human governments would never rise higher than the family. If society is to advance, this organ- ism 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 arti- ficial organism would cease to advance, 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 unit of a graded system reaching upward to the high school. Now this was the condition of the com- mon 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 culminated 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 Gov- ernment and State schools started into life, freed from the domination of institutions grown effete from age and loss of vital energy. Here, both en- tered into wider combinations, reaching higher results than the ages of the past. And yet, in ed- ucational organization we are far below the stand- ard of perfection we shall attain in the rapidly advancing future. Not until our system of edu- cation has attained a national character as com- plete in its related articulation as the civil organ- ization of towns, counties, and States in the national Union, can our educational institutions do the

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DIVISION OF LABOR A CAUSE OF GROWTH.

work required of this age. And in Minnesota, one of the leading states in. connected school organic relations, we have, as yet, some 4,000 common 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 com- mon school, prior to the first high school on the American continent. These chaotic elements, out- side 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 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, articu- lating with some course in the State University, and a course in common with every other high school in the State. The system thus organized might be required to report to the Board of Re- gents, as the legal head of the organization, of the State School system, not only the numerical sta- tistios, 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 Legisla- ture. To this system must finally belong the cer- tificate of standing and graduation, entitling 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 life- less 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 struc- ture, not the debris of the effete systems of the past, not the mental exuvia of dwarfed intellectual powers of this or any former age, but the teacher inspired by nature to feel and appreciate her meth- ods, 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 is no branches, no fruitage. It seems in its early in- fancy to put forth no branches, but is simply tak- ing hold of the elements below on which its inner life and growth depends. As the system rises, the underlying laws of life come forth in the prin- ciples 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 claim- ed, 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 generation, the saving of time, on the enrollments of State schools in the graded systems of the northern States of the American Union, would be enormous. For the State of Minnesota alone, on the enroll- ment of 180,000, the aggregate years of time saved would exceed a million! The time saved on the enrollment of the schools of the different 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

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STATE EDUCATION.

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, secure additional value in a constantly increasing ratio; so the graded system of intellectual cul- ture, from the Primary to the High School, and thence to the University, adds increased lustre and value to the mental development, in a ratio commensurate with the increased skill of the mem- tal operator.

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 21, 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 foreign-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 agrinst 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 systam beyond the limits of its own territory. And unless the nation enforce its own uniform system, the conflict between jurisdic- tions could never be determined. No homogen- eous 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 govern- ment, "to form a more perfect union?" Had it then become necessary to take this step, that "justice" might be established, domestic tranquil- ity insured, the common defense made more effi- cient, the general welfare promoted, and the bless- ings of liberty better secured to themselves and

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CONCLUSION.

their posterity, that the fathers of the gov- ernment should think it necessary to form a more perfect union." Why the necessity of a more perfect union? Were our fathers in fear of a domestic or foreign foe, that had man- ifested his power in their immediate presence, threatening to jeopardize or destroy their do- mestic tranquility? Was this toe an hereditary enemy, who might at long intervals of time invade 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 a 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- ixed 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 manifest 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 high- est hopes, the protection of its inner life.

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History of Houston County, Including Explorers and Pioneers of Minnesota, Part 30

Author: Edward D. Neill Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Number of Pages: 547

Author: Edward D. Neill
Publication date: 1882
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 547