USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I > Part 93
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EVOLUTION OF THE STATE SCHOOL SYSTEM
able by reason of illness or other causes. Children over fourteen years of age may be cer- tificated for employment out of school hours and on days that schools are not in session, except Sundays and holidays.
IMPROVEMENT OF INSTRUCTION-Incompetency and inefficiency of teachers were fre- quent causes of complaint and criticism of public schools in the first half of the nineteenth century, and, considering the sources of information, outweigh testimony as to the alleged perfection of the little red schoolhouse by survivors of an ancient regime. Barnard in his effort to improve the schools of Rhode Island, and particularly to build a favoring public opinion, could not afford to alienate the support of teachers. His persistent advocacy of measures to improve teaching and teachers indicated his opinion that reform was needed; advocating examination and certification of teachers, he made this sweeping summary: "The public schools will cease to be cities of refuge for those who can find no abiding place else- where, or who assume the duties because they are less onerous or more lucrative than any other employment for the brief period of three or four months." He recommended teachers' institutes, reading of books dealing with the science of teaching, a model school, a normal school, certification of teachers, reading of educational periodicals, substitution in primary schools of women for men as teachers, the last for two reasons, (I) because women were better fitted for the work of teaching small children and would lend refinement to the lower schools, and (2) because their salaries were about one-half the salaries that must be paid to men. Some progress toward the accomplishment of much of his program was made before his resignation. An educational library of at least thirty volumes was placed in every town. Barnard published his "Journal of the Rhode Island Institute of Instruction" for three years, and circulated it among the teachers of the state; it was followed by the "Educational Maga- zine," started by Commissioner Potter, and in 1855 by the "Rhode Island Schoolmaster." In 1874 the "Schoolmaster" was absorbed by the "New England Journal of Education." The three Rhode Island publications were assisted by state appropriations. Teachers' institutes were conducted by Barnard and experienced teachers under his direction. The state made its first annual appropriation for teachers' institutes in 1849. The Rhode Island Institute of Instruction, organized at Barnard's suggestion, received his hearty support and encourage- ment, and has had a continuous history since 1844, being the oldest state teachers' association in the United States. Women teachers gradually replaced men teachers. Barnard in one year helped fifty young women to positions. The normal school was authorized by the act of 1845, but no appropriation to establish or support it was made available. Commissioner Pot- ter, a persistent advocate of a normal school, in 1850 recommended cooperation with Brown University, the university to found a professorship of didactics,* with the possibility of unit- ing the office of Commissioner and professor in one person. The General Assembly appointed a committee to confer with the corporation of the university, but the committee made no report. The university acted by establishing a teacher-training department with Samuel S. Greene, then superintendent of schools in Providence, as professor of didactics. Thus Brown University was the first American college to establish a department of education. The uni- versity department was short-lived. A private normal school was established in Providence in 1852 with a faculty consisting of Professor Greene and Messrs. Russell, Colburn and Guyot, instructors, respectively, in English grammar, elocution, mathematics and geography. This normal school was a financial failure in spite of the unquestionably superior quality of the faculty. Under the direction of the Commissioner, a state-aided normal school was opened in Providence on May 29, 1854, with Dana P. Colburn and Arthur P. Sumner as instructors. This normal school was removed to Bristol in 1857, and abandoned in 1865 fol- lowing the death of Colburn. The General Assembly from 1866 supported teacher-training classes in academies until, in 1871, the Rhode Island Normal School was established in Provi-
*Old name for pedagogy.
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dence. The name of Rhode Island Normal School was changed in 1920 to Rhode Island Col- lege of Education.
BANISHING THE DISTRICT-The school district was a device for dividing municipal responsibility for the support of schools, and for associating responsibility closely with the community to be served. It was assumed that local interest in the welfare of children could not fail to assure adequate provision for education. The assumption was not justified in experience; John Kingsbury, after visiting every school in Rhode Island in his year as Com- missioner, declared that the differences that he noted in districts depended principally upon the initiative and interest of individual residents. The district system tended to produce marked inequality in opportunities for education even within towns. The Rhode Island act of 1800 ordered the division of towns into districts, and empowered districts to build school- houses and levy taxes for school support. Districting was permitted by the act of 1828, but the school committee retained the function of selecting teachers. Districts were granted cor- porate powers in 1839, and the taxing power in 1844. The Barnard act created a new school officer-the district trustee or three district trustees for each school district-with effective functions for controlling and managing district schools that weakened the school committee as repository of the town interest in schools. The care with which the Barnard act allocated functions to school committee or to district trustee was thorough, but it effectually placed the actual control of schools in the district. Town or district organization was optional under the law, as Barnard explained, "to meet the present practice of the towns of Warren, Bristol and Newport. It would be better for the cause of education if more of the towns would act under the power given in this paragraph. A classification of the children, not according to their location, but according to age, studies and proficiency, is the great object to be attained, and the facility for doing so, when enjoyed as now by compact villages, ought not to be thrown away." Barnard apparently was not conscious that the school building act of 1844 and his own school law of 1845 had so strengthened the school district in Rhode Island as to make the district an obstacle to establishing the town system. The suggestion that the Barnard act abolished existing districts and necessitated a reorganization was quieted in 1846 by a statute confirming district lines until the school committee changed them. Again, Barnard apparently neglected the legal doctrine of functus er-officio-that is, that an option ceases when it is exercised ; there was no provision in the statute whereby a town organized under the act of 1845 on either town or district system could change subsequently to the other. The school committee's power to alter district lines and to discontinue any district by division or consoli- dationg did not extend to discontinuing all or consolidating all districts. The General Assem- bly, in 1884, authorized towns to discontinue the district system, and within ten years Bar- rington, Bristol, Burrillville, Cranston, Cumberland, East Providence, Johnston, Lincoln, Newport, North Providence, Pawtucket, Providence, Warren and Woonsocket-fourteen towns were operating schools without districts. Central Falls became a city in 1895 without school districts. Jamestown and Little Compton abandoned the district system in 1899, and South Kingstown and Westerly followed in 1902. Thus half the towns had been reclaimed when the Rhode Island Institute of Instruction undertook a persistent propaganda for com- plete abolition of the district system. The General Assembly in 1903 abolished all school dis- tricts after January I, 1904, save as corporations for the purpose of winding up corporate business. The public schools passed immediately under school committee control, and the town or city became exclusively the municipal unit for school support and administration. IT Abolition of districts meant (I) a reduction in the number of school organizations or admin- istrative units from over 300 to thirty-eight; (2) reduction in the number of school officers from over 2200 to less than 300; (3) reduction in internal friction, indicated by a marked
§Bull vs. School Committee 11 R. I. 244.
¡Held constitutional. Re School Committee of North Smithfield, 26 R. I. 165.
ELISHA REYNOLDS POTTER-1811-1882
Adjutant General : Representative in Congress; Member of General Assembly ; Commissioner of Public Schools: Associate Justice of Supreme Court : Lawyer; Educator ; Judge; Legislator : Historian
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EVOLUTION OF THE STATE SCHOOL SYSTEM
decrease in the number of appeals heard and decided by the Commissioner after the abolition of districts; (4) concentration and centralization of power, but also clearer identification of the location of responsibility; (5) freedom for towns in dealing with local educational prob- lems, unhampered by the obstacle of an imperium in imperio; (6) reduction of the "vested" interest in the older organizations that were obstacles to general improvement, as districts that had provided good schoolhouses and maintained good schools defeated projects for rallying town support to weaker districts; (7) consolidation of schools and replacing ungraded with graded schools; (8) a general tendency toward the elimination within towns of marked inequality of educational opportunities.
BUILDING A STATE DEPARTMENT-The Commissioner was a new officer in Rhode Island, and must find his place. Besides being (I) an educational expert competent to advise the General Assembly in its capacity as a state school committee; (2) a publicity agent for projects for school improvement; (3) an efficiency agent for awakening and maintaining public interest in schools, and (4) the amiable counsellor of school officers, teachers and par- ents, the specific duties prescribed for the Commissioner made him (5) dispenser of the state school money; (6) a state superintendent of schools with visitorial and inquisitorial powers; (7) an agent charged with the improvement of teachers and teaching; (8) a school statistician, and (9) a judicial officer whose function it was to reduce the friction of parts and attend to the mechanics of a small system of laws involving, however, a multiplicity of public interests. He must be an expert educator, a sound counsellor, an able administrator, a firm diplomat, and a just man-the last to protect himself from the entanglements with which his intimate and intricate relations with so many officers and people threatened him. His judicial power was of the utmost importance, because it strengthened his position in most other relations. It gave his advice a weight that it could not have had otherwise, for a school officer or school committee which neglected the advice of the Commissioner ran the risk of having his or their action reviewed by the Commissioner on appeal. The General Assembly established impor- tant precedents during the Barnard administration by referring to the Commissioner appeals to it for adjustment of school disputes, in decided contrast to its earlier practice of entertain- ing petitions for relief even from the judgments of courts .* Both Barnard and Potter, through careful exercise of the appellate jurisdiction conferred upon them, strengthened it. It fell to Potter, as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in 1873, years after he had resigned as Commissioner, to write the decision of the Court in Cottrell's Appeal,; holding that the Commissioner's appellate jurisdiction is not limited to complaints arising from infrac- tion of law, but extends to reviewing legal acts of school committees and reversing them as conflicting with sound educational policy. The decision overruled an earlier decision .¿ The Commissioner's finding of facts is conclusive, and may not be examined by a court subse- quently ;§ a justice is limited to reviewing only findings of law. The law does not provide for an appeal from the Commissioner's decision; he may if he wishes, and he must if he is requested, submit his decision to one justice of the Supreme Court for approval. The decision, when thus approved, is final, and may not be set aside even by the Commissioner himself, for rehearing. Following the decision in Cottrell's Appeal there was a reaction, indicated by a statute substituting review by the full bench of the Supreme Court for approval of decisions by one justice; after a brief trial, which demonstrated the wisdom of the earlier system a return to it was made. In spite of the strength that both Barnard and Potter contributed to the office of Commissioner, the latter recognized the fundamental weakness of a single execu- tive officer, and in 1855 recommended the appointment of a state board of education as a device for strengthening the education department. A board was created in 1870.
*Held unconstitutional, in re Dorr, 3 R. I. 299 ; Taylor vs. Place, 4 R. I. 324.
$10 R. I. 615.
#Gardner's Appeal, 4 R. I. 602.
§Smith's Appeal, 4 R. I. 390.
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RHODE ISLAND --- THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY
THE WORK OF THE COMMISSIONERS-Barnard's work as Commissioner in Rhode Island, monumental as it was in accomplishment, was interrupted and eventually terminated by serious illness. Of the progress achieved in six years Commissioner Potter reported that of 322 school districts 231 owned schoolhouses, and that $360,000 had been expended for rebuilding or new construction. Barnard had been confidential adviser of the General Assembly, and was rewarded by acquiescence in most of his program. Potter, who succeeded Barnard, was influential. Born in the same year, 1811, as Barnard, Elisha R. Potter was son of Elisha R. Potter, lawyer, member of the General Assembly and of Congress, who served Rhode Island in the Assembly from 1796 to his death in 1835 almost continuously, save for four terms in Congress. The younger Potter was a trained public officer, besides being a lawyer by profes- sion .* He was Adjutant General 1835-1836; member of Congress, 1843-1845; assistant to Barnard, 1846; member of the General Assembly many years, and became an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. For ten years from 1845 the chief educational office was in the hands of strong men, and progress was continuous. Potter was more than a disciple of Barnard ; he brought to the office of Commissioner the advantages of familiarity with public administration, and sound training in the law that was almost invaluable. He had a vision of higher education supported by the state, discussing in one of his reports the place of a col- lege in a state educational system. Three efforts to establish a normal school were made by him. His repression of the religious issue in 1853 at a time when Know Nothingism was rising, was followed by legislation when wiser counsels prevailed which paved the way for harmony and for bringing private education under public supervision when offered in lieu of attendance in public schools. Potter believed that Rhode Island had not made educational progress so rapidly as was possible, and was consistent and persistent in advocating educa- tional reforms, though always rather more a conservative than a radical reformer.
The third Commissioner was Robert Allyn, clergyman, and principal of East Greenwich Academy immediately preceding his appointment. He resigned in 1858 to accept the chair of languages at Athens University, Ohio, and was subsequently President of Cincinnati Wes- leyan Female College, of McKendrie College, and of Southern Illinois Normal University. He was a schoolmaster rather than an educational statesman, a pedagogue rather than an administrator. His most important service was the collection of statistics of enrollment and attendance which established forms for modern child accounting ; yet he failed, after collating the information, to make recommendations or explanations that would help the General Assembly to act. His early reports recommended restriction of textbook abuses, abolition of districts, a state teachers' certificate law, state assistance in supplying reference works and dictionaries for schools; his later reports were pedagogical, and more suitable for addresses at meetings of teachers than for reading by the General Assembly. He ranked neither with Barnard as a schoolman nor with Potter as an administrator; he lacked the clear understand- ing of school problems possessed by the former, and the legal and practical knowledge and the force of the latter. John Kingsbury was Commissioner for one year, after thirty years of service as principal of a select high school for young ladies. He visited every school dis- trict in the state, and in his report on conditions as he found them presented an interesting picture of the public schools of Rhode Island fifteen years after the beginning of the Barnard movement. His discussion of the district system in operation was illuminating as it portrayed marked inequality. He wrote: "The most remarkable circumstance to be noticed ... . is the great contrast, not so much between the structure and condition of the schoolhouses of the various towns-though there is here enough to challenge attention-as between the structure and condition of the schoolhouses of the same town, and sometimes between those of adjacent districts. . . . . In the one district you will find the schoolhouse beautiful, commodious, everything without and within being so arranged as to attract and win the hearts of the young.
*The list of lawyers who have been successful educational reformers is unique ; it includes Dorr, Barn- ard and Potter of Rhode Island ; Mann of Massachusetts ; and Draper of New York.
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EVOLUTION OF THE STATE SCHOOL SYSTEM
In the very next district everything is reversed. Instead of attraction, the prevailing principle as seen in the schoolhouse and its surroundings is repulsion. . . . It is found on inquiry that there is an equal amount of wealth in both districts, an equal number of children to be educated, and that these children are equally dependent upon their education for the stations in life which they are to occupy." There were school districts in Rhode Island in which the building of schoolhouses had become a "standing bugbear to further improvements in their neighborhood. They are," wrote Kingsbury, "like expensive dwelling houses, whose owners have so crippled themselves in building that they cannot afford to live in their houses after they are built. In respect to such schoolhouses the standing argument is, we have expended so much money in building our house that we cannot afford to tax ourselves for a good school." Kingsbury, who believed that the Barnard law was as perfect as legislation could be made, suggested no remedy.
Joshua B. Chapin, who succeeded Kingsbury, was not reappointed by Governor Sprague in 1861, if for no other reason than because Chapin was a Republican and Sprague was a Democrat, for the time being. Chapin returned to the office in 1863 when a Republican Gov- ernor replaced Sprague, who had been elected as United States Senator. Civil War over- shadowed most other interests, including schools, during the administration of Henry Rous- maniere, who was Commissioner by appointment of Governor Sprague. Rousmaniere's public addresses and reports indicate thorough familiarity with school questions from the administrative rather than the teaching point of view. He reorganized the form of Rhode Island school reports, which had been made to the General Assembly and printed annually from Barnard's time, introducing changes that were followed generally by his successors in office. Joshua Chapin, Commissioner, 1859-1861, and 1863-1869, was a physician and phar- macist, and identified with a photograph gallery, which was, however, conducted by Mrs. Chapin, whose work as an artist was distinctive. Chapin advocated various reforms, among them a longer school year, professional supervision in all municipalities, increased appropria- tions for schools, modification of the district system to place more effective control of district schools with school committees, employment of women teachers in elementary schools, better salaries for women teachers, etc. Under a statute enacted in 1867 which required the Com- missioner to visit every school in the state at least once annually, Chapin travelled 1200 miles and accomplished the task; the law was repealed in 1868. Chapin was a keen and able critic, and his reports deserved better attention than they received from the General Assembly. The latter was engaged in an educational program of its own, and during his administration enacted the statute abolishing tuition and making the public schools of Rhode Island free schools.
The fifteen years from 1855 to 1870 were not marked by notable progress in public edu- cation, and the office of Commissioners had receded from the position of prominence and influence that were characteristic during the administrations of Barnard and Potter. From being an officer closely in contact with the General Assembly as its professional adviser, the Commissioner had become a supervisor of schools, and had drifted apart from the General Assembly. The political activity that had operated to remove two Commissioners with change in the political affiliations of the Governor was not helpful. Commissioner Chapin was not able to save even the normal school at Bristol as it tottered toward elimination. The need for a state board of education was more pressing in 1870 than it had been in 1855, when Potter recommended it. Even the office of Commissioner was endangered by its reputation for weakness.
Fortunately a resolute, resourceful man was available, and Governor Padelford appointed Thomas W. Bicknell as Commissioner in 1869. The heart of impetuous youth still beat in the bosom of Bicknell in his ninetieth year ; he was a young man, only 35, when he became Commissioner. Bicknell found the office of Commissioner scarcely a shadow of its former influence ; his prayerful promise to revive it was fulfilled. In five years he accomplished a
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series of improvements scarcely equalled otherwise for the same time. In his first report he renewed Potter's recommendation that a state board of education be created, and the Gen- eral Assembly established the board. "The general supervision and control of the public schools .... with such high schools, normal schools and normal institutions as are or may be established and maintained wholly or in part by the state," were vested in the new board. The Commissioner remained dispenser of state school money, state visiting and inspecting school officer, and repository of judicial powers, and he became secretary ex-oficio of the board. Instead of being appointed by the Governor, he was first nominated by the board for appointment by the Governor, but afterward elected by the board. He was directed to report to the board annually instead of to the General Assembly. The board, in turn reported to the General Assembly, thus becoming the connecting link between the school department and the General Assembly. The Governor, as President of the State Board of Education, became a responsible public school officer. Bicknell next undertook to reestablish the normal school, and was successful in 1871 in his appeal to the General Assembly, which made an appropria- tion of $10,000 available and created for the administration of the normal school a board of trustees, consisting of the State Board of Education and the Commissioner. Temporary quar- ters were hired in Normal Hall, a building previously occupied by the High Street Congrega- tional Church in Providence. The state purchased for the normal school in 1875 the original high school building in Providence, and in 1898 completed the principal building now occu- pied by the normal school under its modern name, Rhode Island College of Education. Bick- nell's campaign for a longer school year was successful to the extent that the revised statutes of 1872 established as the minimum the six months' school year already attained by most towns; the new law not only prevented reverting to a shorter standard, but brought all towns up to the minimum. His campaign to reduce illiteracy, though based upon erroneous inter- pretation of census tables,* yielded an annual appropriation for public evening schools. Bick- nell recommended and urged many other projects for advancing education; he resigned in 1874, after a career more remarkable for achievement than for invention. His success lay in his ability to accomplish his purposes; there was little of novelty in his recommendations. The Board of Education commended in Bicknell "a diligence, a wisdom, and a contagious enthusiasm, which, it is believed, has resulted in lasting benefit to the cause."
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