National school

“ It is a group of State school systems, having in the aggregate a certain National character. We cannot insist too strongly that education is primarily a concern of the States. This group of State school systems represents a combination of public and private agencies, for our State institutions are supplemented by many institutions privately supported and controlled. It represents an extraordinary unity as between elementary education and the higher education, as between the democracy of the lower schools and the science of the universities. ”

“ In the second place, this movement recognizes the maturity of pupils in a variety of ways. It adopts a form of discipline which throws responsibility on them. It departmentalizes the teaching and offers electives, thus securing the advantages of specialization. The movement promises to reorganize our whole school system in such a way as to give us a new kind of national education. America has at the present moment a closer approximation to a continuous educational ladder than any other country, but the ladder needs a little splicing. ”

“ In time, though, the desirability of common, free, tax- supported, non-sectarian, state-controlled schools became evident to a majority of the citizens in the different American States, and as it did the American State School, free and equally open to all, was finally evolved and took its place as the most important institution in the national life working for the perpetuation of a free democracy and the advancement of the public welfare. ”

“ The national schools have accordingly been compelled to give attention to the needs of these new elements in the population, and to direct their attention less exclusively to satisfying the needs of the well-to-do classes of society. Educational systems have in consequence tended more and more to become democratic in character, and to serve in part as instruments for the assimilation of the stranger within the nation's gates and for the perpetuation and improvement of the national life. ”

“ Because of the things that have been done, we can make college as universal in the 21st century as high school is today. And, my friends, that will change the face and future of America.
We have opened wide the doors of the world's best system of higher education. Now we must make our public elementary and secondary schools the world's best as well--by raising standards, raising expectations and raising accountability. ”

“ Development of the American System of Education.—With its final development in the South during the last decade of the nineteenth century, the distinctly American public school system may be said to have been fully 331 elaborated. The educational ideals and institutions imported from Europe in the colonial period have gradually been modified and adapted to the needs of America. Universal education, state support and control, high schools replaced academies, colleges non-sectarian, and state universities established. Schools have become public and free in the modern sense. ”

“ The best argument is simply an appeal to facts. All this inane declamation flies at once before it. In what States of our Union are common schools most flourishing? Precisely those, we answer, in which the best support is given to the higher institutions of learning. Who will venture to charge the Pilgrim Fathers with anti-popular tendencies? and yet, in laying the foundation of a system of national education, they began with the college. ”

“ Let our common schools which penetrate everywhere be placed on as sound a basis as possible; let high-schools be established in centers where they can be vigorously and generously sustained; let our colleges and universities be proportioned in number to the need actually existing for the highest culture, and let them have such support as national and individual interest in such culture prompts—and we shall then have all the necessary means for making the American people the equals in education of any other nation in the world. ”

“ Deciding clearly where the nation was to go and the route it was to follow, and that education for national ends was one of the important means to be employed, the different parts of the educational systems in the States—elementary schools, secondary schools, universities, normal schools, professional schools, technical schools, continuation schools— were carefully integrated into a unified state system, thoroughly national in spirit, and given a definite function to perform in the work which the Nation set itself to carry through. ”

“ Then, supported and fed by, and inspiring all below, should be the college, the school of higher education. Justice to a race long oppressed, obligation to meet more than half way those states that make generous appropriations to this end, and safety to the nation, demand that these should be liberally furnished with such buildings and grounds as health and comfort require, with libraries and apparatus equal to the best, and an efficient corps of teachers, so paid that their best energies may be given to instruction. ”

“ In this connection, we must recognize the role that private schools have in our educational system. Their contribution to the country should be geared at all times to the public interest and their activities attuned to our national objectives. ”

“ The period following the Civil War also saw the beginnings of the high school, a characteristic American educational institution which arose to take the place of the older Latin grammar schools and the private academies. Normal schools for the training of teachers, and colleges and universities for higher education, developed rapidly after 1880. Today there are more than three quarters of a million teachers in the United States, instructing more than 25,000,000 students in institutions ranging from kindergarten and elementary schools to colleges and universities. ”

“ The American school is a wonderful institution. In its absolute universality and impartiality, in its fine spirit of democracy both of teachers and pupils, there is nothing like it elsewhere in the world. It is a product of the genius of our people. ”

“ The state supports a university with 14 different schools and colleges, six normal schools, two preparatory schools for the state's university, a school for the deaf and the blind, a reform school for boys and an industrial school for girls. ”

“ The principle of higher education by taxation of all the people is no longer questioned; it is no longer an experiment. The state university is relied upon to furnish the country with the leaders of the future—and leaders will always be in demand, for they are always sorely needed.
Progress in Normal Schools.—While the state universities have been enjoying this marvelous development, nearly every state has been establishing normal schools for the professional preparation of teachers. The normal school as an institution is also modern. ”

“ Every person presenting himself as a candidate must be more than 13 years of age, and, having attended a common school for 12 months, he must produce a certificate from the principal that he has passed a good examination in spelling, reading, writing, English grammar, arithmetic, geography, elementary book-keeping, history of the United States, and algebra. This institution extends to the pupils in the common schools the advantage of a free education in those higher departments of learning which cannot be acquired without considerable expense in any other college. ”

“ The future masters for the different lyceums and colleges are all educated in a special school known as the École Normale, founded under the First Republic, and where, according to the government order calling it into existence, the students have not only to receive instruction, but to be taught the art of imparting it. ”

“ Training for citizenship and the preparation of the scholar are then the twofold function of the college. To furnish professional training for lawyers, doctors, ministers, engineers, librarians, is manifestly the work of the university or the technical school, and not the function of the college. Neither is it, in my opinion, the work of the college to prepare its students specifically to be teachers or even wives and husbands, mothers and fathers. ”

“ Now this past week, I had the opportunity to sign into law the elementary and secondary education act. That bill says that while the National Government will set the standards and help to develop the measurements of whether schools are meeting them, it is fundamentally the responsibility of people at the grassroots to make sure those standards are met. We are encouraging what we know is the true magic of education, that which occurs between teacher and student, with the help of parents and principals and communities. ”

“ Schools were declared to be essentially civil affairs; their purpose was asserted to be to promote the common welfare and advance the interests of the political State; ministers of education began to be appointed by the State to take over and exercise control; the citizen supplanted the ecclesiastic in the organization of education and the supervision of classroom teaching; the instruction in the school was changed in direction, and in time vastly broadened in scope; and the education of all now came to be conceived of as a birthright of the child of every citizen. ”

“ For the present, the State must devote her energies to the building of school-houses, and the establishment and maintenance of common schools, without attempting very much in the line of higher education. ”

“ The outward organization of education which we have in our United States is perhaps, on the whole, the best organization that exists in any country. The State school systems give a diversity and flexibility, an opportunity for experiment and keenness of competition, nowhere else to be found on such an important scale. The independence of so many of the colleges and universities; the give and take of students and instructors between them all; their emulation, and their happy organic relations to the lower schools ”

“ For the high school, at least one full year’s work in American history and civics was required, and no college, normal school, university or chartered institution of learning in the state was allowed to confer a degree until a student had passed a course in American history and civil government. ”

“ It seems, also, that the examinations are so managed, doubtless partly in deference to public sentiment, that men of higher education are not encouraged to enter. In 1891, 629⁄10 per cent of those who took the examinations on the basis of a common-school education passed, 773⁄10 per cent f those who had been through high school, and only 671⁄10 per cent of the college men. ”

“ In the matter of education, America fell far short in what should be the strongest of all her institutions: the public school. A more inadequate, incompetent method of teaching, as I look back over my seven years of attendance at three different public schools, it is difficult to conceive. ”

“ And while our common schools are thus moving onward, it is no less a sign of national devotion to education that schools of higher grades are springing up everywhere. Special and charitable schools for the deaf and dumb, for the weak-minded, industrial training schools, etc., all of them upheld by the same national spirit. Nor to be forgotten are the schools for all classes at home, where by correspondence and concert of work, results which none can measure are attained. ”

“ The struggle should be perpetual and in the right direction. First, elevate your common schools so that the education there may be a sufficient basis for a course of training here. If the Normal School and the public schools shall each and all do their duty, candidates for admission will be so well qualified in the branches required, that the art of teaching will be the only art taught here. ”

“ Professional education is under the State auspices and control. The normal schools and the agricultural schools belong to the State. The public high school provides intermediate instruction. The common district school, supported jointly by local taxation and State subvention, gives elementary education to the children of all classes. ”

“ In order to particularize some of the distinctive features of the American college, we need to understand our educational system as a whole. We start with the public school and impart to the youth a primary education. In the high school or academy the pupil is introduced into a higher circle of thought and life and then passes on to the college, where the aim is to extend general culture and prepare for special work. The educational system culminates in the university, which is devoted chiefly to technical and professional education. ”

“ The academy and college take young men from the district and high schools, and furnish them with additional aids for the business of life; but the Normal School is truly the helper of the common schools. It receives its pupils from them, fits these pupils for teachers, and sends them back to superintend where a few months before they were scholars. ”

“ A restoration of American education grounded in the principles of our founding that is accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling must ultimately succeed at the local level. Parents and local school boards must be empowered to achieve greater choice and variety in curriculum at the State and local levels. ”

“ Though there is much interest in all these higher institutions of learning, as well as in the normal schools and academies, many of which are prosperous and important, yet the common schools more particularly engage the attention of the people and of the successive legislatures, resulting in a complication of school laws scarcely balanced by the improvement in the school system. ”