THE PUBLIC-SCHOOL FAILURE.

THERE is probably not one of those various social contrivances, political engines, or modes of common action called institutions which are regarded as characteristic of the United States, if not peculiar to them, in which the people of this country have placed more confidence, or felt greater pride, than its public-school system. There is not one of them so unworthy of either confidence or pride; not one which has failed so completely to accomplish the end for which it was established. And the case is worse than that of mere failure; for the result has been deplorable, and threatens to be disastrous.

To those who have not thought upon this subject, or who have thought upon it vaguely, and without careful and considerate observation of all the facts which bear upon it, this assertion will savor strongly of temerity and folly. The belief that education-meaning thereby the acquiring of such knowledge as can be got in schools and from books-is in itself elevating and purifying, and is the most potent agency in the formation of good men and good citizens, is so general and so plausible, that it has been assumed as an axiom in that which, for reasons that do not yet quite clearly appear, has come to be called "social science." If this assumed axiom were well founded, if it were really true that book-learning and thrift, decency of life, and good citizenship, are so directly connected that they must always be found together, it need hardly be said that this sort of education would be of the first necessity in every wisely constructed and well-ordered society, and would be of supreme necessity in a country in which every man who lives outside of prison walls has a voice in the government. Hence, the assumption on this point being what it is and has been for many generations, it would be strange indeed if public education had not been a subject of grave consideration early in the short history of the United States,

and if it had not been amply provided for by legislation. The provision was early made; and public education at public cost has been so general here, and has been developed into a system so vast and so complete, that a better opportunity for testing its worth could not be hoped for. The conditions, too, under which this system has been in operation are singularly favorable. The wealth of the country, its vast expanse of uncultivated, unoccupied land, a homestead in which can be acquired at an almost nominal price, the general intelligence of the people, their freedom from burdensome taxation, the absence of privileged classes and of an established religion supported by the state, make its people one upon which education, according to the assumed theory, should have the happiest, the most benign effects. But, however great may be the intrinsic value of education as a formative social agency, the effect of that which is afforded by our public-school system has proved in every way unsatisfactory and worse than unsatisfactory.

That the system is of New England origin need hardly be said. It is a development of the New England common school, from which it has been gradually evolved under gradually accumulating influences, some of which were pure and philanthropic, but other some of which were corrupt and self-seeking. The former may be called social; the latter political-using the word in that narrow and derogatory sense which it has unhappily acquired in our discussions of public affairs. In Massachusetts, in the year 1647, and in Connecticut only three years later, it was enacted that every township of fifty householders should appoint a person within their town to teach all children that should resort to him to write and read, whose wages should be paid by either the parents or the masters of such children, or by the inhabitants in general; and it was also ordered that, in every town of one hundred families, there should be a grammar-school set up, the masters of which should be able to fit youths for the university; a grammar-school being then a school for instruction in the Latin language; English grammar and the teaching of it to English-speaking children remaining yet unimagined, and to men of that time almost unimaginable. This system of compulsory support of common schools and grammarschools spread itself over all New England and throughout those Northern and Western States which were more or less under New England influence.

The history of public education in the city of New York is of such importance as to merit special although brief consideration.

The act establishing common schools in the State of New York was passed in 1812. Before that time money was expended by the State for the encouragement and support of schools; but there was no public-school system. The law of 1812 applied to towns and villages, but not to chartered cities, with two or three specified exceptions. New York was not one of these. Public education in that city was in the hands of the Public-School Society, a voluntary association, chartered, and in its standing and motives something like the New York City Hospital. I have not been able, in the time that I could give to this subject, to find the act incorporating this benevolent society; but I find so early as the year 1807 an act for its benefit, of which the preamble is as follows:

Whereas, The trustees of the Society for establishing a Free School in the City of New York, for the education of such poor children as do not belong to or are not provided for by any religious society, have by their memorial solicited the aid of the Legislature; and whereas, their plan of extending the benefits of education to poor children, and the excellent mode of instruction adopted by them, are largely deserving the encouragement of government therefore," etc.

This makes the original purpose of common-school education in the city of New York sufficiently clear. It was intended for poor children whose education was not provided for by any religious society. But, in fact, its benefits were gradually extended to others -children not at all dependent upon charity. The character, the spirit, and the purpose of the Society remained, however, unchanged. It sought to give elementary instruction and moral training to children who would otherwise have been more or less neglected in these respects. The benefits of a corresponding plan of education were conferred upon the people of the State at large by the law of 1812, which established a common-school system of a somewhat rudimentary nature; but the city of New York remained without provision by law for public education until the year 1842, when the Legislature passed an act extending to the city a participation in the system which prevailed in the State. But the act not only did this, it placed the schools of the Public-School Society, with those of the Orphan Asylum, of the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum, and of several other benevolent societies, under the jurisdiction and supervision of the Board of Education. Finding themselves in this position, the corporators of the Public-School Society transferred their schoolhouses, and all their other property, with their rights, to the Board of Education, and the Society ceased to exist. It was not VOL. CXXXI.-NO. 289.

37

long before other school societies followed their example. This event was a public calamity—a calamity not only to the city of New York, but to the State; not only to the State, but to the whole country. Nor has the blight of its effect upon morals, upon politics, and upon education been confined to the country in which it first was felt. At that time our present public-school system may be properly said to have begun its rapid formation. From that time public education passed rapidly into municipal politics, and became an engine at once of political corruption and social deterioration. The example of New York was widely followed, actually if not avow edly. On all sides there was a cry for higher education; and as higher education meant more teachers to be appointed and paid, more schoolhouses to be built, more text-books to be bought by the tens of thousands, and, in brief, more money to be expended, the local politicians, who with anthropomorphic devotion worshiped their own glorified and gigantic likeness in the Hon. William Tweed, did all in their power-and their power was great-to foster the higher education. Admirable, far-seeing, large-minded, philanthropic statesmen! They fostered the higher education until, as I was told about ten years ago by a publisher of school-books, there was no department of his trade so profitable as that in which he was chiefly interested, but that to "introduce" a set of two or three text-books into public-school use cost between fifty thousand and one hundred thousand dollars (for what, pray let us know, O philanthropic dispensers of the healing light of educa tion?); and until now there is a College of the City of New York, as a part of its common-school system, and a Normal School, at which fifteen hundred young women are instructed yearly in the mysteries of teaching, which but a very few of the fifteen hundred practice, mean to practice, or have the opportunity to practice; and until the sum of $3,805,000 is spent upon public education by the city of New York alone, of which sum no less than $1,009,207 is paid to teachers of primary departments.*

And such, in a great measure, has the "American" system of public education become in all the country lying north of the Potomac and the Ohio.

Nearly four million dollars taken in one year from the pockets of tax-payers of one city for education-more than a million

*These figures are from the "Report of the President of the New York Board of Education" for 1879.

dollars paid to teachers of primary schools, and a similar expenditure throughout the State and in more than half the States; and what is the result? According to independent and competent evidence from all quarters, the mass of the pupils of these public schools are unable to read intelligently, to spell correctly, to write legibly, to describe understandingly the geography of their own country, or to do anything that reasonably well-educated children. should do with ease. They can not write a simple letter; they can not do readily and with quick comprehension a simple "sum" in practical arithmetic; they can not tell the meaning of any but the commonest of the words that they read and spell so ill. There should not be need to say that many of them-many in actual numbers-can do all these things fairly well; but these many are few indeed in proportion to the millions who receive a public-school education. They can give rules glibly; they can recite from memory; they have some dry, disjointed knowledge of various ologies and osophies; they can, some of them, read a little French or German with a very bad accent; but as to such elementary education as is alike the foundation of all real higher education and the sine qua non of successful life in this age, they are, most of them, in almost as helpless and barren a condition of mind as if they had never crossed the threshold of a schoolhouse.

The testimony to this amazing and deplorable condition of the mass of the pupils of our public schools is so varied, so independent, and comes from so many quarters that it must be true; it can not be disregarded. It is given by private persons, by officers of school districts, by teachers themselves; and it comes from all parts of the country. It can not be repeated here in detail, for it would fill half the pages that can be afforded to this article. But one example of it may be given, which fairly represents the whole. Mr. George A. Walton, agent of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, in a report on the public schools of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, a county which borders upon Boston, and the inhab itants of which are somewhat exceptional in wealth and intelligence, sets forth a condition of things which has thus been graphically but correctly summarized by the Chicago "Times":

The examinations were, in the first place, of the simplest and most practical character. There was no nonsense about them. They had but one object to see if, in the common schools, the children were taught to read, write, and cipher. . . . The showing made by some of the towns was excellent, and of them we shall speak presently. In the case of others, and of