Chapter CXIII: Section 2 (18)

"On the second of July, 1862, … [President Lincoln] signed
the act of congress, donating public lands for the
establishment of colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts.
This act had been introduced into congress by the Honorable Justin
S. Morrill. … The Morrill act provided for a donation of
public land to the several states, each state to receive
thirty thousand acres for each senator and representative it
sent to congress. States not containing within their own
borders public land subject to sale at private entry received
land scrip instead. But this land scrip the recipient states
were not allowed to locate within the limits of any other
state or of any territory of the United States. The act
laconically directed 'said scrip to be sold by said states.'
The proceeds of the sale, whether of land or scrip, in each
state were to form a perpetual fund. … In the execution of
this trust the State of New York was hampered by great and
almost insuperable obstacles. For its distributive share it
received land scrip to the amount of nine hundred and ninety
thousand acres. The munificence of the endowment awakened the
cupidity of a multitude of clamorous and strangely unexpected
claimants. … If the princely domain granted to the State of
New York by congress was not divided and frittered away, we
owe it in great measure to the foresight, the energy, and the
splendid courage of a few generous spirits in the legislature
of whom none commanded greater respect or exercised more
influence than Senator Andrew Dickson White, the gentleman who
afterwards became first president of Cornell University. …
But the all-compelling force which prevented the dispersion
and dissipation of the bounty of congress was the generous
heart of Ezra Cornell. While rival institutions clamored for a
division of the 'spoils,' and political tricksters played
their base and desperate game, this man thought only of the
highest good of the State of New York, which he loved with the
ardor of a patriot and was yet to serve with the heroism of a
martyr. … When the legislature of the State of New York was
called upon to make some disposition of the congressional
grant, Ezra Cornell sat in the senate. … Of his minor
legislative achievements I shall not speak. One act, however,
has made his name as immortal as the state it glorified. By a
gift of half a million dollars (a vast sum in 1865, the last
year of the war!) he rescued for the higher education of New
York the undivided grant of congress; and with the united
endowments he induced the legislature to establish, not merely
a college of applied science but a great modern
university—'an institution,' according to his own admirable
definition, 'where any person can find instruction in any
study.' It was a high and daring aspiration to crown the
educational system of our imperial state with an organ of
universal knowledge, a nursery of every science and of all
scholarship, an instrument of liberal culture and of practical
utility to all classes of our people. This was, however, the
end; and to secure it Ezra Cornell added to his original gift
new donations of land, of buildings, and of money. … But one
danger threatened this latest birth of time. The act of
congress donating land scrip required the states to sell it.
The markets were immediately glutted. Prices fell. New York
was selling at an average price of fifty cents an acre. Her
princely domain would bring at this rate less than half a
million dollars! Was the splendid donation to issue in such
disaster? If it could be held till the war was over, till
immigration opened up the Northwest, it would be worth five
times five hundred thousand dollars! So at least thought one
far-seeing man in the State of New York. And this man of
foresight had the heart to conceive, the wisdom to devise, and
the courage to execute—he alone in all the states—a plan for
saving to his state the future value of the lands donated by
congress. Ezra Cornell made that wonderful and dramatic
contract with the State of New York! He bound himself to
purchase at the rate of sixty cents per acre the entire right
of the commonwealth to the scrip, still unsold; and with the
scrip, thus purchased by him as an individual he agreed to
select and locate the lands it represented, to pay the taxes,
to guard against trespasses and defend from fires, to the end
that within twenty years when values had appreciated he might
sell the land and turn into the treasury of the State of New
York for the support of Cornell University the entire net
proceeds of the enterprise. Within a few years Ezra Cornell
had located over half a million acres of superior pine land in
the Northwestern states, principally in Wisconsin. Under bonds
to the State of New York to do the state's work he had spent
about $600,000 of his own cash to carry out the trust
committed to him by the state, when, alas, in the crisis of
1874, fortune and credit sank exhausted and death came to free
the martyr-patriot from his bonds. The seven years that
followed were the darkest in our history. … Ezra Cornell was
our founder; Henry W. Sage followed him as wise masterbuilder.
The edifices, chairs and libraries which bear the name of
'Sage' witness to [his] later gifts: but though these now
aggregate the princely sum of $1,250,000, [his] management of
the university lands has been [his] greatest achievement. From
these lands, with which the generosity and foresight of Ezra
Cornell endowed the university, there have been netted under
[Mr. Sage's] administration, not far short of $4,000,000, with
over 100,000 acres still to sell. Ezra Cornell's contract with
the state was for twenty years. It expired August 4, 1886,
when a ten years' extension was granted by the state. The
trust will be closed in 1896."

_J. G. Schurman,
Address at Inauguration to the Presidency of
Cornell University, November 11, 1892._

EDUCATION: A. D. 1866-1869.
The United States.
Bureau of Education.

"Educators, political economists, and statesmen felt the need
of some central agency by which the general educational
statistics of the country could be collected, preserved,
condensed, and properly arranged for distribution. This need
found expression finally in the action taken at a convention
of the superintendence department of the National Educational
Association, held at Washington February, 1866, when it was
resolved to petition Congress in favor of a National Bureau of
Education. …
{736}
The memorial was presented in the House of Representatives by
General Garfield, February 14, 1866, with a bill for the
establishment of a National Bureau on essentially the basis
the school superintendents had proposed. Both bill and
memorial were referred to a committee of seven members. …
The bill was reported back from the committee, with an
amendment in the nature of a substitute, providing for the
creation of a department of education instead of the bureau
originally proposed. Thus altered, it was passed by a vote of
nearly two to one. In the Senate it was referred to the
Committee on the Judiciary … who the following winter
reported it without amendment and with a recommendation that
it pass, which it did on the 1st of March, 1867, receiving on
the next day the approval of the President. By the act of July
28, 1868, which took effect June 30, 1869, the Department of
Education was abolished, and an Office of Education in the
Department of the Interior was established, with the same
objects and duties. … The act of March 2, 1867, …
established an agency 'for the purpose of collecting such
statistics and facts as shall show the condition and progress
of education in the several States and Territories, and of
diffusing such information respecting the organization and
management of school systems and methods of teaching as shall
aid the people of the United States in the establishment and
maintenance of efficient school systems and otherwise promote
the cause of education.' It will be perceived that the chief
duty of the office under the law is to act as an educational
exchange. Exercising and seeking to exercise no control
whatever over its thousands of correspondents, the office
occupies a position as the recipient of voluntary information
which is unique."

_C. Warren,
Answers to Inquiries about the United States Bureau
of Education, chapters 2-3._

EDUCATION: A. D. 1867.
New York.
Public Schools made entirely free.

The public schools of the State of New York were not entirely
free until 1867. In his report to the Legislature made in
February of that year, the State Superintendent of Public
Instruction, Honorable Victor M. Rice, said: "The greatest defect
in our school system is, as I have urged in previous reports,
the continuance of the rate bill system. Our common schools
can never reach their highest degree of usefulness until they
shall have been made entirely free. … To meet this public
demand, to confer upon the children of the State the blessings
of free education, a bill has already been introduced into
your honorable body. … The main features of the bill are the
provisions to raise, by State tax, a sum about equal to that
raised in the districts by rate bills, and to abolish the rate
bill system; to facilitate the erection and repair of school
houses." The bill referred to was passed at the same session
of the Legislature, and in his next succeeding report,
Superintendent Rice gave the following account of the law and
its immediate effects: "While the general structure of the
school law was not disturbed, a material modification was made
by the Act (chap. 406, Laws of 1867), which took effect on the
first day of October of the same year, and which, among other
things, provided for the abolishment of rate-bills, and for
increased local and State taxation for school purposes. This
was primarily a change in the manner of raising the requisite
funds; not an absolute increase of the aggregate amount to be
raised. It involved and encouraged such increase, so far as
the inhabitants in the several school districts should
authorize it, by substituting taxation exclusively on
property, for a mixed assessment which, in part, was a tax on
attendance. Thus relieved of an old impediment, and supplied
with additional power and larger resources, the cause of
public instruction, during the last fiscal year, has wrought
results unequaled in all the past. … The effect of this
amendment has not been confined to the financial policy
thereby inaugurated. It is distinctly traceable in lengthened
terms of school, in a larger and more uniform attendance, and
in more liberal expenditures for school buildings and
appliances."

_Superintendent of Public Instruction of the State
of New York,
Annual Report, 1869,
pages 5-6._

EDUCATION: A. D. 1867.
Maryland.
Johns Hopkins University.

"By the will of Johns Hopkins, a merchant of Baltimore, the
sum of $7,000,000 was devoted to the endowment of a university
[chartered in 1867] and a hospital, $3,500,000 being
appropriated to each. … To the bequest no burdensome
conditions were attached. … Just what this new university
was to be proved a very serious question to the trustees. The
conditions of Mr. Hopkins's bequest left the determination of
this matter open. … A careful investigation led the trustees
to believe that there was a growing demand for opportunities
to study beyond the ordinary courses of a college or a
scientific school, particularly in those branches of learning
not included in the schools of law, medicine and theology.
Strong evidence of this demand was afforded by the increasing
attendance of American students upon the lectures of the
German universities, as well as by the number of students who
were enrolling themselves at Harvard and Yale for the
post-graduate courses. It was therefore determined that the
Johns Hopkins should be primarily a university, with advanced
courses of lectures and fully equipped laboratories; that the
courses should be voluntary, and the teaching not limited to
class instruction. The foundation is both old and new. In so
far as each feature is borrowed from some older university,
where it has been fairly tried and tested, it is old, but at
the same time this particular combination of separate features
has here been made for the first time. … In the ordinary
college course, if a young man happens to be deficient in
mathematics, for example, he is either forced to lose any
advantage he may possess in Greek or Latin, or else is obliged
to take a position in mathematics for which he is unprepared.
In the college department of the Johns Hopkins, this
disadvantage does not exist; the classifying is specific for
each study. The student has also the privilege of pushing
forward in any one study as rapidly as he can with advantage;
or, on the other hand, in case of illness or of unavoidable
interruption, of prolonging the time devoted to the course, so
that no part of it shall be omitted. As the studies are
elective, it is possible to follow the usual college course if
one desires. Seven different courses of study are indicated,
any of which leads to the Baccalaureate degree, thus enabling
the student to direct and specialize his work. The same
standard of matriculation and the same severity of
examinations are maintained in all these courses.
{737}
A student has the privilege of extending his study beyond the
regular class work, and he will be credited with all such
private and outside study, if his examiners are satisfied of
his thoroughness and accuracy."

_S. B. Herrick,
The Johns Hopkins University
(Scribner's Monthly, December 1879)._

EDUCATION: A. D. 1867-1891.
The United States.
The Peabody Education Fund.

"The letter announcing and creating the Peabody endowment was
dated February 7, 1867. In that letter, after referring to the
ravages of he late war, the founder of the Trust said: 'I feel
most deeply that it is the duty and privilege of the more
favoured and wealthy portions of our nation to assist those
who are less fortunate.' He then added: 'I give one million of
dollars for the encouragement and promotion of intellectual,
moral, and industrial education among the young of the more
destitute portions of the Southern and Southwestern States of
the Union.' On the day following, ten of the Trustees selected
by him held a preliminary meeting in Washington. Their first
business meeting was held in the city of New York, the 19th of
March following, at which a general plan was adopted and an
agent appointed. Mr. Peabody returned to his native country
again in 1869, and on the 1st day of July, at a special
meeting of the Trustees held at Newport, added a second
million to the cash capital of the fund. … According to the
donor's directions, the principal must remain intact for
thirty years. The Trustees are not authorized to expend any
part of it, nor yet to add to it any part of the accruing
interest. The manner of using the interest, as well as the
final distribution of the principal, was left entirely to the
discretion of a self-perpetuating body of Trustees. Those
first appointed had, however, the rare advantage of full
consultation with the founder of the Trust while he still
lived, and their plans received his cordial and emphatic
approbation. … The pressing need of the present seemed to be
in the department of primary education for the masses, and so
they determined to make appropriations only for the assistance
of public free schools. The money is not given as a charity to
the poor. It would be entirely inadequate to furnish any
effectual relief if distributed equally among all those who
need it, and would, moreover, if thus widely dissipated,
produce no permanent results. But the establishment of good
public schools provides for the education of all children,
whether rich or poor, and initiates a system which no State
has ever abandoned after a fair trial. So it seemed to the
donor as well as to his Trustees, that the greatest good of
the greatest number would be more effectually and more
certainly attained by this mode of distribution than by any
other. No effort is made to distribute according to
population. It was Mr. Peabody's wish that those States which
had suffered most from the ravages of war should be assisted
first."

_American Educational Cyclopædia, 1875,
pages 224-225._

The report made by the treasurer of the Fund in 1890, showed a
principal sum invested to the amount of $2,075,175.22,
yielding an income that year of $97,818. In the annual report
of the U. S. Commissioner of Education made February 1, 1891, he
says: "It would appear to the student of education in the
Southern States that the practical wisdom in the
administration of the Peabody Fund and the fruitful results
that have followed it could not be surpassed in the history of
endowments."

_Proceedings of the Trustees of the Peabody Education Fund,
1887-1892._

EDUCATION: A. D. 1884-1891.
California.
Leland Stanford Junior University.

"The founding at Palo Alto of 'a university for both sexes,
with the colleges, schools, seminaries of learning, mechanical
institutes, museums, galleries of art, and all other things
necessary and appropriate to a university of high degree,' was
determined upon by the Honorable Leland Stanford and Jane Lathrop
Stanford in 1884. In March of the year following the
Legislature of California passed an Act providing for the
administration of trust funds in connection with institutions
of learning. November 14, 1885, the Grant of Endowment was
publicly made, in accordance with this Act, and on the same
day the Board of Trustees held its first meeting in San
Francisco. The work of construction was at once begun, and the
cornerstone laid May 14, 1887. The University was formally
opened to students October 1, 1891. The idea of the
university, in the words of its founders, 'came directly and
largely from our son and only child, Leland, and in the belief
that had he been spared to advise as to the disposition of our
estate, he would have desired the devotion of a large portion
thereof to this purpose, we will that for all time to come the
institution hereby founded shall bear his name, and shall be
known as The Leland Stanford Junior University.' The object of
the University, as stated in its Charter, is 'to qualify
students for personal success and direct usefulness in life';
and its purposes, 'to promote the public welfare by exercising
an influence in behalf of humanity and civilization, teaching
the blessings of liberty regulated by law, and inculcating
love and reverence for the great principles of government as
derived from the inalienable rights of man to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.' The University is located on
the Palo Alto estate in the Santa Clara valley, thirty-three
miles southeast of San Francisco, on the Coast Division of the
Southern Pacific Railway. The estate consists of over eight
thousand acres, partly lowland and partly rising into the
foothills of the Santa Cruz range. On the grounds is the
residence of the Founders, and an extensive and beautiful
arboretum containing a very great variety of shrubs and trees.
The property conveyed to the University, in addition to the
Palo Alto estate, consists of the Vina estate, in Tehama
County, of fifty-five thousand acres, of which about four
thousand acres are planted in vines, and the Gridley estate,
in Butte County, of twenty-two thousand acres, devoted mainly
to the raising of wheat. … The founders of the Leland
Stanford Junior University say: 'As a further assurance that
the endowment will be ample to establish and maintain a
university of the highest grade, we have, by last will and
testament, devised to you and your successors additional
property. We have done this as a security against the
uncertainty of life and in the hope that during our lives the
full endowment may go to you. The aggregate of the domain
thus dedicated to the founding of the University, is over
eighty-five thousand acres, or more than one hundred and
thirty-three square miles, among the best improved and most
valuable lands in the State."

_Leland Stanford Junior University,
Circulars of Information, numbers 6 and 1-2._

{738}

EDUCATION: A. D. 1887-1889.
Massachusetts.
Clark University.

"Clark University was founded [at Worcester] by … a native
of Worcester County, Massachusetts. It was 'not the outcome of
a freak of impulse, or of a sudden wave of generosity, or of
the natural desire to perpetuate in a worthy way one's
ancestral name. To comprehend the genesis of the enterprise we
must go back along the track of Mr. Clark's personal history
20 years at least. For as long ago as that, the idea came home
with force to his mind that all civilized communities are in
the hands of experts. … Looking around at the facilities
obtainable in this country for the prosecution of original
research, he was struck with the meagerness and the
inadequacy. Colleges and professional schools we have in
abundance, but there appeared to be no one grand inclusive
institution, unsaddled by an academic department, where
students might pursue as far as possible their investigation
of any and every branch of science. … Mr. Clark went abroad
and spent eight years visiting the institutions of learning in
almost every country of Europe. He studied into their history
and observed their present working.' … It is his strong and
expressed desire that the highest possible academic standards
be here forever maintained; that special opportunities and
inducements be offered to research; that to this end the
instructors be not overburdened with teaching or examinations.
… A charter was granted early in 1887. Land and other
property that had been before secured by the founder was
transferred to the board, and the erection of a central
building was begun. In the spring of 1888 G. Stanley Hall,
then a professor at the Johns Hopkins University, was invited
to the presidency. … The plans of the university had so far
progressed that work was begun in October, 1889, in
mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and psychology."

_G. G. Bush,
History of Higher Education in Massachusetts
(United States Bureau of Education,
Circular of Information, 1891, number 6), chapter 18._

EDUCATION: A. D. 1889-1892.
Illinois.
Chicago University.

"At its Annual Meeting in May, 1889, the Board of the American
Baptist Education Society resolved to take immediate steps
toward the founding of a well-equipped college in the city of
Chicago. At the same time John D. Rockefeller made a
subscription of $600,000 and this sum was increased during the
succeeding year by about $600,000 more in subscriptions
representing more than two thousand persons. Three months
after the completion of this subscription, Mr. Rockefeller
made an additional proffer of $1,000,000. The site of the
University consists of three blocks of ground—about two
thousand feet long and three hundred and sixty-two feet wide,
lying between the two South Parks of Chicago, and fronting on
the Midway Plaisance, which is itself a park connecting the
other two. One-half of this site is a gift of Marshall Field
of Chicago, and the other half has been purchased at a cost of
$132,500. At the first meeting of the Board after it had
become an incorporated body, Professor William R. Harper, of
Yale University, was unanimously elected President of the
University. … It has been decided that the University will
begin the work of instruction on the first day of October,
1892. … The work of the University shall be arranged under
three general divisions, viz., The University Proper, The
University-Extension Work, The University Publication Work."

_University of Chicago,
Official Bulletin no. 1, January, 1891._

EDUCATION: A. D. 1890.
United States.
Census Statistics.

The following statistics of education in the United States are
from the returns gathered for the Eleventh Census, 1890. In
these statistics the states and territories are classed in
five great geographical divisions, defined as follows: North
Atlantic Division, embracing the New England States, New York,
New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; South Atlantic Division,
embracing the States of the eastern coast, from Delaware to
Florida, together with the District of Columbia; North Central
Division, embracing Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan,
Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, North and South Dakota,
Nebraska, and Kansas; South Central Division, embracing
Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas,
Arkansas, and Oklahoma; Western Division, embracing all the
remaining States and Territories. The total taxation for
public schools in the United States, as reported by this
census, was $102,164,796; of which $37,619,786 was raised in
the North Atlantic Division, $5,678,474 in the South Atlantic
Division, $47,033,142 in the North Central Division,
$5,698.562 in the South Central Division, and $6,134,832 in
the Western Division. From funds and rents there were raised
for school purposes a total of $25,694,449 in the United
States at large, of which $8,273,147 was raised in the North
Atlantic Division, $2,307,051 in the South Atlantic Division,
$8,432,593 in the North Central Division, $3,720,158 in the
South Central Division, and $2,961,500 in the Western
Division. The total of all "ordinary" receipts for school
support in the United States, was $139,619,440, of which
$49,201,216 were in the North Atlantic Division, $8,685,223 in
the South Atlantic Division. $61,108,263 in the North Central
Division, $10,294,621 in the South Central Division, and
$10,330,117 in the Western Division. The total "ordinary
expenditures" were $138,786,393 in the whole United States;
being $47,625,548 in the North Atlantic Division, $8,630,711
in the South Atlantic Division, $62,815.531 in the North
Central Division, $9,860,050 in the South Central Division,
and $9,854,544 in the Western Division. For teachers' wages
there was a total expenditure of $88,705,992, $28,067,821
being in the North Atlantic Division, $6,400,063 in the South
Atlantic Division, $39,866,831 in the North Central Division,
$8,209,509 in the South Central Division, and $6,161,768 in
the Western Division. The total expenditure for Libraries and
Apparatus was $1,667,787, three-fourths of which was in the
North Atlantic and North Central Divisions. The expenditure
reported for construction and care of buildings, was
$24,224,793, of which $10,687,114 was in the North Atlantic
Division, $884,277 was in the South Atlantic Division,
$9,869,489 in the North Central Division, $770,257 in the
South Central Division, and $2,013,656 in the Western
Division. Reported estimates of the value of buildings and
other school property are incomplete, but $27,892,831 are
given for Massachusetts, $41,626,735 for New York, $35,435,412
for Pennsylvania, $32,631,549 for Ohio, $26,814,480 for
Illinois, and these are the States that stand highest in the
column.
{739}
The apparent enrollment in Public Schools for the
census year, reported to July, 1891, was as follows:
North Atlantic Division, 3,124,417;
South Atlantic Division, 1,758,285;
North Central Division, 5,032,182;
South Central Division, 2,334,694;
Western Division, 520,286;
Total for the United States, 12,769,864
being 20.39 per cent. of the population, against 19.84 per
cent. in 1880. The reported enrollment in Private Schools at
the same time was:
North Atlantic Division, 196,173;
South Atlantic Division, 165,253;
North Central Division, 187,827;
South Central Division, 200,202;
Western Division, 54,749;
Total for the United States, 804,204.
The reported enrollment in Parochial Schools was:
North Atlantic Division, 311,684;
South Atlantic Division, 30,869;
North Central Division, 398,585;
South Central Division, 41,115;
Western Division, 17,349;
Total for the United States, 799,602.
Of this total, 626,496 were enrolled in Catholic and 151,651
in Lutheran Parochial Schools; leaving only 21,455 in the
schools of all other denominations. Total enrollment reported
in all schools 14,373,670. The colored public school
enrollment in the Southern States was 1,288,229 in 1890,
against 797,286 in 1880,—an increase of more than 61 per
cent. The enrollment of whites was 3,358,527, against
2,301,804,—an increase of nearly 46 per cent. The approximate
number of Public School-houses in the United States, for the
census year 1890 is given at 219,992, being 42,949 in the
North Atlantic Division, 32,142 in the South Atlantic
Division, 97,166 in the North Central Division, 38,962 in the
South Central Division, 8,773 in the Western Division. The
largest number reported is 14,214 in Pennsylvania. Of 6,408
school-houses in Virginia 4,568 are for white, and 1,840 for
colored children; in North Carolina, 3,973 white and 1,820
colored. The above statistics are taken in part from the
Compendium of the Eleventh Census, published in 1894, and
partly from tables courteously furnished from the Census
Bureau in advance of their publication.

EDUCATION: Modern: Reforms and Movements.

EDUCATION: A. D. 1638-1671.
Comenius.

"To know Comenius [born in Moravia, 1592] and the part he
played in the seventeenth century, to appreciate this grand
educational character, it would be necessary to begin by
relating his life; his misfortunes; his journeys to England
[1638], where Parliament invoked his aid; to Sweden [1642],
where the Chancellor Oxenstiern employed him to write manuals
of instruction; especially his relentless industry, his
courage through exile, and the long persecutions he suffered
as a member of the sect of dissenters, the Moravian Brethren;
and the schools he founded at Fulneck, in Bohemia, at Lissa
and at Patak, in Poland."

_G. Compayré,
The History of Pedagogy,
chapter 6 (section 137)._

"Comenius's inspiring motive, like that of all leading
educationalists, was social regeneration. He believed that
this could be accomplished through the school. He lived under
the hallucination that by a proper arrangement of the
subject-matter of instruction, and by a sound method, a
certain community of thought and interests would be
established among the young, which would result in social
harmony and political settlement. He believed that men could
be manufactured. … The educational spirit of the Reformers,
the conviction that all—even the humblest—must be taught to
know God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent, was inherited by
Comenius in its completeness. In this way, and in this way
only, could the ills of Europe be remedied, and the progress
of humanity assured. While, therefore, he sums up the
educational aim under the threefold heads of Knowledge,
Virtue, and Piety or Godliness, he in truth has mainly in view
the last two. Knowledge is of value only in so far as it forms
the only sound basis, in the eyes of a Protestant theologian,
of virtue and godliness. We have to train for a hereafter. …
By knowledge Comenius meant knowledge of nature and of man's
relation to nature. It is this important characteristic of
Comenius's educational system that reveals the direct
influence of Bacon and his school. … It is in the department
of Method, however, that we recognise the chief contribution
of Comenius to education. The mere attempt to systematise was
a great advance. In seeking, however, for foundations on which
to erect a coherent system, he had to content himself with
first principles which were vague and unscientific. … In the
department of knowledge, that is to say, knowledge of the
outer world, Comenius rested his method on the scholastic
maxim, 'Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in
sensu.' This maxim he enriched with the Baconian induction,
comprehended by him only in a general way. … From the simple
to the complex, from the particular to the general, the concrete
before the abstract, and all, step by step, and even by
insensible degrees,—these were among his leading principles
of method. But the most important of all his principles was
derived from the scholastic maxim quoted above. As all is from
sense, let the thing to be known be itself presented to the
senses, and let every sense be engaged in the perception of
it. When it is impossible, from the nature of the case, to
present the object itself, place a vivid picture of it before
the pupil. The mere enumeration of these few principles, even
if we drop out of view all his other contributions to method
and school-management, will satisfy any man familiar with all
the more recent treatises on Education, that Comenius, even
after giving his precursors their due, is to be regarded as
the true founder of modern Method, and that he anticipates
Pestalozzi and all of the same school. … Finally, Comenius's
views as to the inner organisation of a school were original,
and have proved themselves in all essential respects correct.
The same may be said of his scheme for the organisation of a
State-system—a scheme which is substantially, mutatis
mutandis, at this moment embodied in the highly-developed
system of Germany. When we consider, then, that Comenius first
formally and fully developed educational method, that he
introduced important reforms into the teaching of languages,
that he introduced into schools the study of Nature, that he
advocated with intelligence, and not on purely sentimental
grounds, a milder discipline, we are justified in assigning to
him a high, if not the highest, place among modern educational
writers."

_S. S. Laurie,
John Amos Comenius,
pages 217-226._

{740}

EDUCATION: A. D. 1681-1878.
The Christian Brothers.

"Any description of popular education in Europe would be
incomplete, which should not give prominence to the Institute
of the Christian Brothers—or the Brothers of the Christian
Doctrine—including in that term the earliest professional
school for the training of teachers in Europe; one of the most
remarkable body of teachers devoted exclusively and without
pay to the education of the children of the poor that the
world has ever seen. … The Institute was established as a
professional school in 1681, and to Abbe John Baptist de la
Salle, belongs the high honor not only of founding it, but of
so infusing into its early organization his own profound
conviction of the Christ-like character of its mission among
the poor, that it has retained for nearly two centuries the
form and spirit of its origin. This devoted Christian teacher
was born at Rheims on the 30th of April, 1651. … He was
early distinguished for his scholarly attainments and maturity
of character; and at the age of seventeen, before he had
completed his full course of theological study, he was
appointed Canon in the Cathedral church of Rheims. From the
first, he became interested in the education of the young, and
especially of the poor, as the most direct way of leading them
to a Christian life;—and with this view before he was
twenty-one years old, he assumed the direction of two
charities, devoted to female education. From watching the
operation of these schools, conducted by teachers without
professional training, without plan and without mutual
sympathy and aid, he conceived the design of bringing the
teachers of this class of schools from the neighboring
parishes into a community for their moral and professional
improvement. For this purpose, he invited them first to meet,
and then to lodge at his house, and afterwards, about the year
1681, he purchased a house for their special accommodation.
Here, out of school hours and during their holy days, they
spent their time in the practice of religious duties, and in
mutual conferences on the work in which they were engaged.
About this period, a large number of free schools for the poor
were established in the neighboring towns; and applications
were constantly made to the Abbe for teachers formed under his
training, care, and influence. To meet this demand, and make
himself more directly useful in the field of Christian
education, he resigned his benefice, that he might give his
whole attention to the work. To close the distance between
himself, having a high social position and competence from his
father's estate, and the poor schoolmasters to whom he was
constantly preaching an unreserved consecration of themselves
to their vocation—he not only resigned his canonry, with its
social and pecuniary advantages, but distributed his
patrimony, in a period of scarcity, in relieving the
necessities of the poor, and in providing for the education of
their children. He thus placed himself on a footing of
equality—as to occupation, manner of life, and entire
dependence on the charity of others—with the schoolmasters of
the poor. The annals of education or religion show but few
such examples of practical self-denial, and entire
consecration to a sense of duty. … Having completed his act
of resignation and self-imposed poverty, he assembled his
teachers, announced to them what he had done, and sung with
them a Te Deum. After a retreat—a period set apart to prayer
and fasting-continued for seventeen days, they devoted
themselves to the consideration of the best course to give
unity, efficiency, and permanence to their plans of Christian
education for the poor. They assumed the name of 'The Brothers
of the Christian Doctrine,' as expressive of their
vocation—which by usage came to be abbreviated into
'Christian Brothers.' They took on themselves vows of poverty,
celibacy, and obedience for three years. They prescribed to
themselves the most frugal fare, to be provided in turns by
each other, They adopted at that time some rules of behavior,
which have since been incorporated into the fundamental rules
of the order. … In 1702 the first step was taken to
establish an Institute at Rome, under the mission of one of
the brothers, Gabriel Drolin, who after years of poverty, was
made conductor of one of the charitable schools founded by
Pope Clement XI. This school became afterwards the foundation
of the house which the brothers have had in Rome since the
pontificate of Benedict XIII., who conferred on the institute
the constitution of a religious order. In 1703, under the
pecuniary aid of M. Chateau Blanc, and the countenance of the
archbishop, M. de Gontery, a school was opened at Avignon. …
In 1789, the National Assembly prohibited vows to be made in
communities; and in 1790, suppressed all religious societies;
and in 1791, the institute was dispersed. At that date there
were one hundred and twenty houses, and over one thousand
brothers, actively engaged in the duties of the school room.
The continuity of the society was secured by the houses
established in Italy, to which many of the brothers fled. …
In 1801, on the conclusion of a Concordat between the Pope and
the government, the society was revived in France by the
opening of a school at Lyons; and in 1815, they resumed their
habit, and opened a novitiate, the members of which were
exempt from military service. At the organization of the
university in 1808, the institute was legally reorganized, and
from that time has increased in numbers and usefulness. … In
1842, there were 390 houses (of which 326 were in France),
with 3,030 brothers, and 585 novices. There were 642 schools
with 163,700 children, besides evening schools with 7,800
adults in attendance, and three reformatory schools with 2,000
convicts under instruction."

_Henry Barnard,
National Education in Europe,
pages 435-441._

"In 1878 their numbers had increased to 11,640; they had 1,249
establishments, and the number of their scholars was 390,607."

_Mrs. R. F. Wilson,
The Christian Brothers, their Origin and Work,
chapter 21._

EDUCATION: A. D. 1762.
Rousseau.

"Rousseau, who had educated himself, and very badly at that,
was impressed with the dangers of the education of his day. A
mother having asked his advice, he took up the pen to write
it; and, little by little, his counsels grew into a book, a
large work, a pedagogic romance ['Emile']. This romance, when
it appeared in 1762, created a great noise and a great
scandal. The Archbishop of Paris, Christophe de Beaumont, saw
in it a dangerous, mischievous work, and gave himself the
trouble of writing a long encyclical letter in order to point
out the book to the reprobation of the faithful. This document
of twenty-seven chapters is a formal refutation of the
theories advanced in 'Emile.' … In those days, such a
condemnation was a serious matter; its consequences to an
author might be terrible. Rousseau had barely time to flee.
His arrest was decreed by the parliament of Paris, and his
book was burned by the executioner. … As a fugitive,
Rousseau did not find a safe retreat even in his own country.
{741}
He was obliged to leave Geneva, where his book was also
condemned, and Berne, where he had sought refuge, but whence
he was driven by intolerance. He owed it to the protection of
Lord Keith, governor of Neufchâtel, a principality belonging
to the King of Prussia, that he lived for some time in peace
in the little town of Motiers in the Val de Travers. … The
renown of the book, condemned by so high an authority, was
immense. Scandal, by attracting public attention to it, did it
good service. What was most serious and most suggestive in it
was not, perhaps, seized upon; but the 'craze' of which it was
the object had, notwithstanding, good results. Mothers were
won over, and resolved to nurse their own infants; great lords
began to learn handicrafts, like Rousseau's imaginary pupil;
physical exercises came into fashion; the spirit of innovation
was forcing itself a way. … Three men above all the rest are
noted for having popularized the pedagogic method of Rousseau,
and for having been inspired in their labors by 'Emile.' These
were Basedow, Pestalozzi, and Froebel. Basedow, a German
theologian, had devoted himself entirely to dogmatic
controversy, until the reading of 'Emile' had the effect of
enlarging his mental horizon, and of revealing to him his true
vocation. … Pestalozzi of Zurich, one of the foremost
educators of modern times, also found his whole life
transformed by the reading of 'Emile,' which awoke in him the
genius of a reformer. … The most distinguished among his
disciples and continuators is Froebel, the founder of those
primary schools … known by the name of 'kindergartens,' and
the author of highly esteemed pedagogic works. These various
attempts, these new and ingenious processes which, step by
step, have made their way among us, and are beginning to make
their workings felt, even in institutions most stoutly opposed
to progress, are all traceable to Rousseau's 'Emile.' … It
is true that 'Emile' contains pages that have outlived their
day, many odd precepts, many false ideas, many disputable and
destructive theories; but at the same time we find in it so
many sagacious observations, such upright counsels, suitable
even to modern times, so lofty an ideal, that, in spite of
everything, we cannot read and study it without profit. …
There is absolutely nothing practicable in his [Rousseau's]
system. It consists in isolating a child from the rest of the
world; in creating expressly for him a tutor, who is a phœnix
among his kind; in depriving him of father, mother, brothers,
and sisters, his companions in study; in surrounding him with
a perpetual charlatanism, under the pretext of following
nature; and in showing him only through the veil of a
factitious atmosphere the society in which he is to live. And,
nevertheless, at each step it is sound reason by which we are
met; by an astonishing paradox, this whimsicality is full of
good sense; this dream overflows with realities; this
improbable and chimerical romance contains the substance and
the marrow of a rational and truly modern treatise on
pedagogy. Sometimes we must read between the lines, add what
experience has taught us since that day, transpose into an
atmosphere of open democracy those pages, written under the
old order of things, but even then quivering with the new
world which they were bringing to light, and for which they
prepared the way. Reading 'Emile' in the light of modern
prejudices, we can see in it more than the author wittingly
put into it; but not more than logic and the instinct of
genius set down there. To unfold the powers of children in due
proportion to their age; not to transcend their ability; to
arouse in them the sense of the observer and of the pioneer;
to make them discoverers rather than imitators: to teach them
accountability to themselves and not slavish dependence upon
the words of others; to address ourselves more to the will
than to custom, to the reason rather than to the memory; to
substitute for verbal recitations lessons about things; to
lead to theory by way of art; to assign to physical movements
and exercises a prominent place, from the earliest hours of
life up to perfect maturity; such are the principles scattered
broadcast in this book, and forming a happy counterpoise to
the oddities of which Rousseau was perhaps most proud."

_J. Steeg,
Introduction to Rousseau's 'Emile.'_

EDUCATION: A. D. 1798-1827.
Pestalozzi.

In Switzerland, up to the end of the eighteenth century, the
state of primary instruction was very bad. "The teachers were
gathered up at hazard; their pay was wretched; in general they
had no lodgings of their own, and they were obliged to hire
themselves out for domestic service among the well-off
inhabitants of the villages, in order to find food and lodging
among them. A mean spirit of caste still dominated
instruction, and the poor remained sunk in ignorance. It was
in the very midst of this wretched and unpropitious state of
affairs that there appeared, towards the end of the eighteenth
century, the most celebrated of modern educators. … Born at
Zurich in 1746, Pestalozzi died at Brugg in Argovia in 1827.
This unfortunate great man always felt the effects of the
sentimental and unpractical education given him by his mother,
who was left a widow with three children in 1751. He early
formed the habit of feeling and of being touched with emotion,
rather than of reasoning and of reflecting. The laughing-stock
of his companions, who made sport of his awkwardness, the
little scholar of Zurich accustomed himself to live alone and
to become a dreamer. Later, towards 1760, the student of the
academy distinguished himself by his political enthusiasm and
his revolutionary daring. At that early period he had
conceived a profound feeling for the miseries and the needs of
the people, and he already proposed as the purpose of his life
the healing of the diseases of society. At the same time there
was developed in him an irresistible taste for a simple,
frugal, and almost ascetic life. To restrain his desires had
become the essential rule of his conduct, and, to put it in
practice, he forced himself to sleep on a plank, and to
subsist on bread and vegetables."

_G. Compayré,
The History of Pedagogy,
chapter 18._

"In spite … of Pestalozzi's patent disqualifications in many
respects for the task he undertook; in spite of his ignorance
of even common subjects (for he spoke, read, wrote, and
cyphered badly, and knew next to nothing of classics or
science); in spite of his want of worldly wisdom, of any
comprehensive and exact knowledge of men and of things; in
spite of his being merely an elementary teacher,—through the
force of his all-conquering love, the nobility of his heart,
the resistless energy of his enthusiasm, his firm grasp of a
few first principles, his eloquent exposition of them in
words, his resolute manifestation of them in deeds,—he stands
forth among educational reformers as the man whose influence
on education is wider, deeper, more penetrating, than that of
all the rest—the prophet and the sovereign of the domain in
which he lived and laboured. …
{742}
It was late in life—he was fifty-two years of age—before
Pestalozzi became a practical school-master. He had even begun
to despair of ever finding the career in which he might
attempt to realize the theories over which his loving heart
and teeming brain had been brooding from his earliest youth.
… At fifty-two years of age, then, we find Pestalozzi
utterly unacquainted with the science and the art of
education, and very scantily furnished even with elementary
knowledge, undertaking at Stanz, in the canton of Unterwalden,
the charge of eighty children, whom the events of war had
rendered homeless and destitute. … The house in which the
eighty children were assembled to be boarded, lodged, and
taught, was an old tumble-down Ursuline convent, scarcely
habitable, and destitute of all the conveniences of life. The
only apartment suitable for a schoolroom was about twenty-four
feet square, furnished with a few desks and forms; and into
this were crowded the wretched children, noisy, dirty,
diseased, and ignorant, with the manners and habits of
barbarians. Pestalozzi's only helper in the management of the
institution was an old woman, who cooked the food and swept
the rooms; so that he was, as he tells us himself, not only
the teacher, but the paymaster, man-servant, and almost the
housemaid of the children. … 'My wishes [he writes] were now
accomplished. I felt convinced that my heart would change the
condition of my children as speedily as the springtide sun
reanimates the earth frozen by the winter. Nor,' he adds, 'was
I mistaken. Before the springtide sun melted away the snow
from our mountains, you could no longer recognise the same
children.' … 'I was obliged,' he says, 'unceasingly to be
everything to my children. I was alone with them from morning
to night. It was from my hand they received whatever could be
of service both to their bodies and minds. All succour, all
consolation, all instruction came to them immediately from
myself. Their hands were in my hand; my eyes were fixed on
theirs, my tears mingled with theirs, my smiles encountered
theirs, my soup was their soup, my drink was their drink. I
had around me neither family, friends, nor servants; I had
only them. I was with them when they were in health, by their
side when they were ill. I slept in their midst. I was the
last to go to bed, the first to rise in the morning. When we
were in bed I used to pray with them and talk to them till
they went to sleep. They wished me to do so.' … 'I knew,' he
says, 'no system, no method, no art but that which rested on
the simple consequences of the firm belief of the children in
my love towards them. I wished to know no other.' …
Gradually … Pestalozzi advanced to the main principles of
his system of moral education. … He says:—'Nature develops
all the human faculties by practice, and their growth depends
on their exercise.' 'The circle of knowledge commences close
around a man, and thence extends concentrically.' 'Force not
the faculties of children into the remote paths of knowledge,
until they have gained strength by exercise on things that are
near them.' 'There is in Nature an order and march of
development. If you disturb or interfere with it, you mar the
peace and harmony of the mind. And this you do, if, before you
have formed the mind by the progressive knowledge of the
realities of life, you fling it into the labyrinth of words,
and make them the basis of development.' 'The artificial march
of the ordinary school, anticipating the order of Nature,
which proceeds without anxiety and without haste, inverts this
order by placing words first, and thus secures a deceitful
appearance of success at the expense of natural and safe
development.' In these few sentences we recognise all that is
most characteristic in the educational principles of
Pestalozzi. … To set the intellectual machinery in
motion—to make it work, and keep it working; that was the
sole object at which he aimed; of all the rest he took little
account. … He relied upon a principle which must be insisted
on as cardinal and essential in education. He secured the
thorough interest of his pupils in the lesson, and mainly
through their own direct share in it. … Observation, …
according to Pestalozzi (and Bacon had said the same thing
before him), is the absolute basis of all knowledge, and is
therefore the prime agent in elementary education. It is
around this theory, as a centre of gravity, that Pestalozzi's
system revolves."

_J. Payne,
Lectures on the History of Education,
lecture. 9._