USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I > Part 72
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97 | Part 98 | Part 99 | Part 100 | Part 101
LOTTERIES TO AID EDUCATION -- The initiative in promoting the legislation of 1800 had come from Providence, and the primary purpose of the movement had been accomplished in the establishment of the Providence free public school system. Other towns thereafter, as
421
REVIVAL OF EDUCATION
before, were content to advance educational interests within their borders as indicated in the summary presented above. The General Assembly granted lotteries for educational purposes as follows : 1759-1760, to aid in replacing a library destroyed by the fire that razed the Colony House in Providence in 1758, with the condition that the library thereafter should be acces- sible to members of the General Assembly; 1767, to complete the parsonage of the Baptist Church at Warren, because "Dr. Manning* hath now under his care several pupils to be educated in the liberal arts, who cannot be accommodated in the said house in its present con- dition"; 1774, to the inhabitants of East Greenwich to raise money to build a schoolhouse in the town, to the, committee of the "Baptist or Antipaedobaptist Society," to build a meeting- house "for the worship of Almighty God and holding the public commencements in"; 1795, to thirty-six citizens of Newport, as trustees, to rebuild Long Wharf, build a hotel, and apply the rents and profits to the maintenance of a public school for the children of Newport; 1796, to Rhode Island College, "for cogent reasons assigned," to raise not exceeding $25,000 for use of the college; 1797, to aid Bristol Academy; 1801, to build an academy at South Kingstown ; 1803, to aid Washington Academy at Wickford, to aid Warren Academy; 1804, to build a schoolhouse and meetinghouse near Cory pond in East Greenwich, to build a school- house and meetinghouse at Charlestown; 1805, to finish a meetinghouse and schoolhouse at Hopkinton City, to aid Frenchtown Seminary, to build a schoolhouse at Four Corners in North Kingstown; 1806, to raise $3000 for Redwood Library, Newport; 1808, to aid an academy in North Providence on Smithfield pike, to the Smithfield Academy Society; 1810, to Smithfield Academy; 1811, to Brown University,t to build a house for the steward and promote various objects of the institution ; 1812, to the Greene Academy in Smithfield ; 1817, to Scituate and Foster Academy; 1823, to the inhabitants of Old Warwick, to erect houses of worship and for the education of youth; 1825, to Redwood Library, Newport, increasing the amount to be raised under the grant of 1806, to build a schoolhouse in Rich- mond; 1829, to James Stevens, to aid in publishing a map of the state; 1830, to the Rhode Island Historical Society, to aid the Providence Bar Library. This library was afterward taken over by the state, and formed a nucleus for the present Rhode Island Law Library.
A FRESH MOVEMENT-Governor Nehemiah R. Knight, in a message to the General Assembly in October, 1818, recommended action by the state to provide schools for youth employed in factories, thus :
While the general government protects and encourages agriculture, commerce and manufactures, the legislatures of the several states are the immediate guardians of the public morals and education; to them is more particularly entrusted the duty of providing for the cultivating and enlightening of the mind, a trust so essential in all good societies and especially so in a government where all power is vested in the people, and all the acts of the public functionaries are weighed and tested by public opinion. It is true that many persons have done much by establishing Sunday schools in the neighborhood of the manufacturing villages of the state; but when we reflect how small a portion of time is appropriated to education by Sunday schools alone, we must be sensible that the acquirements of the youth who labor in these factories must be extremely limited. And it is a lamentable truth that too many of the rising generation who are obliged to labor in those works of almost unceasing application and industry, are growing up without an opportunity of obtaining that education which is necessary for their personal welfare, as well as the welfare of the whole community. I am well assured that a plan can be devised and carried into effect by the aid of the legislature, and without any expense to the state, that shall educate them in a manner that will make them not only useful to their country, but also to themselves, and will enable them, not only to exercise the privileges of freemen, but be capable of estimating these blessings.
*President of Rhode Island College. The students were preparing in the University Grammar School for entrance to the regular classes of the college.
¡Name of Rhode Island College had been changed to Brown University.
422
RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY
A committee appointed to consider the recommendation reported that it was inexpedient to establish public schools for persons employed in manufacturing establishments.
The General Assembly appointed a committee in June, 1821, to inquire into the condition of education and ordered town clerks to "make a correct return . . of the number of schools in their respective towns, and the branches of learning taught therein; of the number of months of the year in which the schools are opened, the average expense of tuition for said schools, and the number of pupils attending the same; . a correct statement of the number and condition of the several schoolhouses . and . ... other information with respect to the public and private schools " The committee did not report. Three years later a constitutional convention drafted a constitution, which the freemen did not ratify. The proposed constitution included an article on "Education," which provided for the accum- ulation of a permanent school fund, the income of which was to be applied to support free public schools.
Earlier than 1828, when the "American and Gazette," a public newspaper, collected and printed school statistics covering the state, one other comprehensive collection was made in 1819 by the "Rhode Island Register," an almanac. Information for the statistics of 1819 was obtained as answers to inquiries addressed to town clerks; several failed to answer, and the list of towns and number of schools as printed in the almanac were incomplete. The "Amer- ican and Gazette" statistics were based upon "statements gathered from the representatives of the towns named,* the general correctness of which may be relied upon, though the state- ment is not as full as could be wished." Twenty-seven of the thirty towns in 1819 reported 192 schools and 13 academies ; no town that reported had no schools; the towns that did not report were Newport, New Shoreham and West Greenwich. Newport at the time had the Potter school, and probably not less than twenty private schools. It is not likely that West Greenwich, which had eleven schools in 1828, had none in 1819. The report for thirty towns in 1828 indicated 193 schoolhouses, 167 whole year schools, 98 winter schools, 19 summer schools, 294 schools altogether, and 16 academies. The report for 1828 included only public schools in Newport and Providence, which at the time had over 100 private schools. Without correction the figures for 1819 and 1828 warrant these significant conclusions: (1) No town that reported in 1819, and probably no town in Rhode Island in 1819, had no schools; (2) every town in Rhode Island had two or more schools in 1828; (3) there were 193 school- houses in Rhode Island, exactly the same number of schools as polling places in the biennial election of 1928; (4) the gain in the number of schools in Rhode Island in nine years from 1819 was fifty per cent., whereas the population in the nearest decennial census period increased only sixteen per cent .; (5) education was a "lively experiment" in Rhode Island in 1828, and the experiment was far from being new ; (6) there was a town system of public schools existing in Rhode Island in 1828, which had been developed in the fifty years that had elapsed since the Revolution.
FACTS ABOUT RHODE ISLAND-The most unfortunate statements about Rhode Island education have originated in Rhode Island or have been based upon ignorance of facts that has been almost inexcusable. Bad news travels in seven league boots; "the evil that men do lives after them." An editorial printed in the "American and Gazette," October 16, 1827, and in the "Microcosm" on October 19, 1827, has been reprinted many times and has fur- nished the background for the summary of Rhode Island education recurring most frequently in American "histories of education." "No man who knows anything about the subject," wrote the editor, "will deny that there are a less number of schools and vastly a less number of children engaged at school in this state than within the same extent and among an equal
*Members of the General Assembly gathered for a meeting in Providence were interviewed.
423
REVIVAL OF EDUCATION
number of population in any state in New England. The consequence must be, unless it can be shown that learning is intuitive, that the youth of Rhode Island are not so well educated as the children in any other state, where free schools are established. . . . ' The thoughtful reader might wonder where was the man who knew "anything about the subject," in view of the fact that official reports on education based on official statistics were almost unknown in 1827. Again, a thoughtful reader might wonder what state had established free schools in 1827, to furnish a basis for comparison. A later editorial published in the "American and Gazette" showed that the editor himself did not know "anything about the subject" when he wrote the editorial of October 16, 1827; in 1828 he had become acquainted with real facts about Rhode Island education and had changed his view completely. On January 18, 1828, referring to the summary of school statistics gathered from members of the General Assem- bly, the editor wrote: "There is a much larger number of schoolhouses erected than has been generally supposed, and but few additional ones will be required" to put into effect a state sys- tem, which he was advocating. The editor continued : "We have another reason for publish- ing this statement-to show our sister states that there is by no means an indifference to the subject of education in this state. The greatest deficit is the want of a regular, well-digested system, an extension of the present means of education, and an equalization of its burdens." The editorial of January 18, 1828, slumbered in the files of the "American and Gazette," almost "born to blush unseen and waste its fragrance" for ninety years.t
Rhode Island was on the verge of a new educational experiment in January, 1828, and the "American and Gazette" and its able editor, B. F. Hallett, were supporting the movement as it approached fruition with all the resources of the paper. The General Assembly, in 1828, referred a bill "for the establishment of lotteries for the purpose of raising a fund for the sup- port of free schools" to the next session. Rhode Island had derived so early as the middle of the eighteenth century a portion of its revenues from profits on lotteries in excess of the amounts specified to be raised. Lotteries were investigated on occasion, among them those granted to Smithfield Academy, 1810, and Scituate and Foster Academy, 1817. Indeed, peti- tions for charters for academies warranted suspicion, in some instances, that petitions for lot- teries were to follow, and that the seemingly quickened interest in secondary education in some sections of the state was stimulated by and was a cloak for a deeper interest in legalized gambling. The bill of 1825 was "for the establishment of lotteries"; yet it capitalized a ris- ing public sentiment strongly favorable to public schools. "It would be a fine opportunity, calmly and seriously, to take up the subject of free schools, and provide a fund from lottery patronage and other taxes or surplus revenue. There is on the docket no business of great importance," said the "American and Gazette" on October 20, 1827. For the time being the General Assembly was granting franchises for lotteries for a consideration to be paid into the treasury, and the editor saw in the surplus revenue accumulating an opportunity. A bill to raise a fund for public schools by lottery was included in the unfinished business at the Octo- ber session, 1827. Memorials or petitions from the towns, including Burrillville, Cumberland, East Greenwich, Johnston, Providence, Smithfield and South Kingstown, requested action favorable to free schools. A set of resolutions proposing the establishment of a permanent school fund was presented, and laid upon the table; the vote was favorable to free public schools immediately, because the effect of creating a fund at the time would have been post- ponement of speedy realization of the public school project.
The committee to which the town petitions had been referred reported on November I, 1827, a bill providing for the appropriation of revenues derived from lottery and auction fees for the support of public schools. This was the first draft of the public school law of 1828; it made no further progress until the January session, 1828. Meanwhile the "American and Gazette" had taken up the fight for public schools in earnest. "There is one subject of much
Reprinted first in Carroll's "Public Education in Rhode Island," 1918.
424
RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY
more importance to Rhode Island than the election of a President," wrote the editor on Janu- ary 4, "and that is the establishment of free schools. To be sure, those who would favor a military despotism would not be anxious to disseminate education, but this is a question involv- ing the dearest interest of present and future generations, and all others ought to be made to yield to it." A week later the editor returned to the same subject, writing, in anticipation of the opening of the January session of the General Assembly: "Among all the subjects which will come before them, the bill for establishing free schools stands preeminent. This deserves an early and deliberate consideration. Happily no real difference of opinion exists as to the expediency of establishing free schools, and we do not believe that if the question were taken by ayes and noes, a single member of the House would answer in the negative. There are three or four members in the Senate we should anticipate a negative vote from, in accordance with their uniform objection to every measure of public opinion and improvement. The only question that will produce difference of opinion is the mode of establishing schools, the ways and means by which they are to be supported-whether it shall depend upon a somewhat pre- carious revenue derived from lotteries, etc., or whether to this sum shall be added an equal or proportional amount raised by the several towns in such manner as they may think proper. As to the plan proposed by Mr. Waterman,* the benefits of which are to be experienced by the children of the great-grandchildren of the present generation, no man who is a father can listen to it a moment. We do not believe in the maxim 'Let posterity take care of itself,' but it surely is a correct principle that we should first provide for the present rising generation. Let free schools be established to the extent our present means will allow, and future genera- tions will provide for preserving and enlarging the system. There is no instance in which a system of free schools, once fairly established, has been abandoned. It can, moreover, be plainly shown that the voluntary tax to be raised by each of the towns to entitle them to an equal or larger sum from the treasury, will not exceed the amount they already pay for the schools kept within their limits. Under the contemplated bill they will, therefore, receive double the benefits they now experience, at no greater expense, than they already voluntarily incur for the education of their children." Besides advocating provision immediately for public schools supported in part by appropriations from the general treasury, the editor had interpreted the movement of 1828 as cooperative. It aimed to strengthen agencies in the field, both public and quasi-public, and to bring them together into a public system. It purposed taking complete advantage of the schoolhouses and the schools already existing, of the 193 schoolhouses and 294 schools and 16 academies. "Few additional ones will be required," wrote the editor on January 18, 1828. All that was necessary to comply with the provisions of the act of 1828 as it was passed ultimately, and thus to earn the right to participate in the distribution of state school money, was transfer of control of schools from private or quasi -. public agencies to strictly public town agencies-the new school committees created by the act. Property rights and titles to school estates might remain unchanged. In this there was simi- larity to the proposal made in Providence in 1785 that the school committee, besides directing schools in the town schoolhouse, "take charge of such other schoolhouses in town as the pro- prietors may think proper to resign into the care of the town, and also of such funds as may be hereafter provided."
As the "American and Gazette" predicted, the opposition to the public school bill was veiled, although the debate proceeded animatedly through morning and afternoon sessions in the House, continuing until after 5 o'clock in the afternoon. The "American and Gazette" published a verbatim report of the debate, written by the editor, B. F. Hallett. The debate was resolved into a contest between proponents of the Tillinghast, or committee bill, provid- ing for immediate action, and those who supported the Waterman bill, providing for a per- manent school fund and the postponement of further action until the fund was earning an
*The school fund proposition of October, 1827.
425
REVIVAL OF EDUCATION
income sufficient to maintain a state school system. An attempt to substitute the Waterman bill for the Tillinghast bill was defeated decisively, and the House proceeded to debate the Tillinghast bill, section by section. It emerged from the discussion in modified form, essen- tially a compromise measure, and curiously, considering the emphatic defeat of the Water- man bill, carrying provision for the creation of a permanent school fund as well as for an annual appropriation to be made immediately. Perhaps the explanation of the compromises was the purpose of those promoting the measure to obtain an act that would arouse the least possible opposition among the freemen in town meetings after it had passed through the Gen- eral Assembly. In amended form the Tillinghast measure required no town appropriation to supplement the money to be apportioned by the state ; it could be put into operation in every town in the state without incurring the risk of refusal of financial town meetings to make appropriations.
THE LAW OF 1828-The act of 1828 (1) appropriated for the support of the public edu- cation all money paid into the general treasury by managers of lotteries and auctioneers as fees ; (2) appropriated annually from the revenue thus segregated $10,000 for apportionment to the several towns, in proportion to population under sixteen years of age, to be expended exclusively for the support of public schools; (3) provided for supplementing the specific revenue, if necessary, by transfer from the general treasury of enough money to assure $10,000 for apportionment annually; (4) appropriated $5000 from the general treasury as the nucleus for a permanent school fund, to which should be added annually the excess, if any, of receipts of lottery and auction fees over $10,000; (5) authorized town appropriations to supplement state money to an amount in each town not exceeding twice the amount apportioned to the town by the state; (6) created a school committee in each town, to be elected by the freemen in town meetings; (7) authorized the town school committee in each town to make rules and regulations for schools, including prescribing courses of study and discipline, to hire and dis- miss teachers, and to locate schools, and (8) included provisions for the administration of state revenues and expenditures in separate accounts for (a) school money, (b) permanent fund, and (c) other money, and for certification by town councils that the money apportioned to towns had been expended exclusively for public schools. The purpose of establishing a public school system reaching into every municipality might not have been accomplished had the statute permitted apportioning the state money for the support of schools controlled by private agencies. Another very significant feature of the legislation of 1828 was the creation in each town of a school committee chosen by the freemen, and independent of and not responsible to the town council. The act of 1828 thus deliberately separated the administration of public schools from other municipal business; the maintenance of separation and independence involved stern and unremitting resistance in later years by school committees to attempted encroachment by town councils, city councils and financial town meetings upon functions reserved for the school committees. In interpreting the statute the courts have sustained the school committee .¡
The effect of the act of 1828 was immediately the organization of public schools in towns not sustaining public schools previous to 1828, and in several towns the surrender to control and management by public school committees of schools already in operation but theretofore controlled and managed by private agencies. The act did not establish a state school system, if by that is meant an organization controlled by state officers or supervised by state officers ; nor was the law effective as a mandatory statute. Except that the certificates of town councils that public money had been expended indicate the amount thereof, no state statistics are avail- able whereby to measure the efficiency of the public school system of the period. That the several towns took action to carry the law into effect by appointing school committees appears
Hardy vs. Lee, 36 R. I. 302. Times Publishing Company vs. C. Ellis White, 23 R. I. 334. Dube vs. Peck, 22 R. I. 443. Dube vs. Dixon, 27 R. I. 115. Wilbur vs. School Committee of Little Compton, 1929.
426
RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY
on the records of the town school committees, which include also other information concerning the schools. Oliver Angell, who was a public school teacher in Providence, collected statistics of public education in 1831 as member of a committee appointed at a "public meeting of gen- tlemen interested in the cause of education who assembled in the Town House in Providence." Angell's report showed for each town in the state the number of public and private schools maintained in 1831, the enrollment of pupils in public and in private schools, the amounts appropriated by the several towns to supplement the public money received from the general treasury, the length of school year in each town, and for the state the total number of men and women teachers in public and in private schools. The number of public schools was 323, and of private schools was 269, as reported by Angell, a total of 592 as compared with 294 in 1828, a gain of over 100 per cent. Angell's report of 17,034 pupils enrolled in public schools appears to have been reached by estimation in several instances; if corrected for the whole state to conform to school committee records in instances in which these are available, an assumption of an enrollment reaching 15,000 is warranted. The length of school year varied from twelve months in Providence and Newport to one month in Little Compton. Of 465 teachers employed in public schools, 318 were men and 147 were women. Towns appropriated $11,490 in 1831 to supplement the state appropriation of $10,000. Significant indices of improvement in three years, 1831 compared with 1828, appear in the facts that (1) the total number of schools had doubled; (2) two or more public schools were kept in every town in the state in 1831; (3) the number of children receiving instruction at public expense had increased tenfold; (4) more than half the towns in the state, 17 of 31, made appropriations in 1831 to supplement the state school money; (5) the total of town appropriations exceeded the state appropriation. The state of Rhode Island never expended $10,000 annually with greater advantage or with larger immediate and permanent results than were shown in the improvement of public schools over the three-year period.
ANOTHER ADVANCE IN PROVIDENCE-The same general social force operating through- out the state to produce the gains indicated in the preceding paragraph produced in Provi- dence, where the public schools had been established a quarter-century earlier, a revival of interest and an advance. As early as 1826 the town council and school committee requested schoolmasters to report "their opinions whether any improvement may be made in the mode of instruction, and if so, to give their views of such improvement in the art of writing among the scholars of the several public schools." In the same year new textbooks were prescribed. A school for small children, under a woman teacher, was opened in 1827. It was resolved on January 24, 1828, that Francis Wayland, President of Brown University, Thomas F. Water- man and William T. Grinnell be "requested and directed to visit all the schools under the care of the common council, report the books used in each school, the studies pursued, the age at which the scholars are admitted, the average amount of absence, and whatever else may seem to them important, and suggest such alterations and amendments in the general system of instruction, and such regulations for the general government of the schools as they may deem expedient." Thus was inaugurated in Providence the first official survey of a municipal pub- lic school system made in the United States.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.