Clifford J. Dudley
OBJECTIVES: Students will learn how Connecticut schools began to decline in the 19th century. They will learn the reasons for this and how the trend was reversed, through a study of primary sources commenting on buildings and curriculum.
SUMMATION: A new period of education in Connecticut began in 1795. In that year Connecticut parcelled and sold off to private purchasers areas of its Western Reserve in the Ohio Territory. The money from this sale was originally to be used as funds for the ministry. However, this idea met with so much opposition that the General Assembly decided to set aside this money for perpetual educational use,
1
and it became the base for the state’s first School Fund.
2
In 1798, the legislature transferred control of the public schools from the ecclesiastical societies of the town to the newly formed school societies.
3
From now on, the schools would be maintained by a civil authority. A board of managers was established to control the public fund, and under James Hillhouse the board showed an annual dividend of nearly $50,000 after 1800.
4
However, things did not go along as smoothly as hoped. It soon became clear that towns relied too much on the school fund. They became indifferent to the need for local funds to meet school needs and maintain standards. In 1821 the state property tax was discontinued thereby cutting off a major source of financial support.
As a result of this local indifference and fiscal neglect, schools declined in academic and physical quality. Roger Minto Sherman of Fairfield established the first, “society for the improvement of common schools” in 1827.
5
These societies stressed the importance of keeping records of school performance. The idea of School Visitors, officials charged with the supervision of district schools, was implemented, and these new supervisors discovered some disturbing conditions. They were distressed that parents showed little interest in the workings of the school, apparently too preoccupied with other matters.
6
The Visitors also found teachers to be poorly qualified and perhaps worth only the average salary of $14.50 monthly for men and $5.75 monthly for women (exclusive of board).
7
Nevertheless, Visitors deplored the low wages. A wide variety of textbooks were also in use within the same class because teachers changed almost every year, with each new teacher likely to require parents to buy different texts annually. It is not hard to imagine the difficulties for student and teacher alike to work on the same lesson while using different books.
By 1839, observers reported high absenteeism in the public schools. The Report to the Board of Commissioners of Common Schools for that year states that 17,000 students were absent from a possible enrollment of 67,000. This was due to many reasons. Many young people had to work to help support the family, many families still regarded education as more of a luxury than a necessity, and since public schools still charged tuition poorer families found it a financial strain to educate their children at the schools.
The school buildings themselves were in horrendous condition. Architectural structure, as well as instruction, had changed little from the early colonial Period. Of the one hundred and three schools examined in the 1830s only thirty-one could be classified as in good repair and only seven as really comfortable. The majority were still quite small, with the average room size being twenty square feet with an eight foot ceiling. Stoves or fireplaces provided heat, but only three schools in one hundred and four school districts surveyed had an out-house. The walls and desks were, “ . . . cut and marked with all sorts of images, some of which would make heathens blush.”
8
Most rooms were without maps, globes, or other supplies. It was this area that Henry Barnard was to regard as in most need of immediate action:
In the whole field of school improvement there is no more pressing need of immediate action than here. I present with much hesitation the result of my examinations as to several hundred school-houses in different parts of the State. I will say, generally, that the location of the school-house, instead of being retired, shaded, healthy, attractive, is in some cases decidedly unhealthy, exposed freely to the sun and storm, and in nearly all, on one or more public streets, where the passing of objects, the noise and the dust, are a perpetual annoyance to teacher and scholar; -that no play-ground is afforded for the scholar except the highway, -that the size is too small for even the average attendance of the scholars, -that not one in a hundred has any other provision for a constant supply of that indispensable element of health and life, pure air, except the rents and crevices which time and wanton mischief have made; that the seats and desks are not, in a majority of cases, adapted to children of different sizes and ages, but on the other hand are calculated to induce physical deformity, and ill-health, and not in a few instances (I state this on the authority of physicians who were professionally acquainted with the cases) have actually resulted in this -and that in the mode of warming rooms, sufficient regard is not had either to the comfort and health of the scholar, or to economy.
9
Henry Barnard was born in Hartford, and along with Horace Mann in Massachusetts and John Pierce in Michigan, was one of America’s early advocates of education for all children.
10
In 1838 he proposed a bill to create a state supervisory board of education. He was appointed secretary for the new board of commissioners for common schools when his friend Thomas Gallaudet had to refuse the post. He was soon disheartened by the lack of educational interest in Connecticut,
11
but determined to establish his ideas for improving education. Barnard thought that a better system of organization and administration should be developed by placing more emphasis on supervision and accountability.
12
To decrease the confusion over books, he advocated that no texts be used unless studied and then ordered by a specific committee.
13
The proficiency of the system would be upgraded by an exam-graded curriculum that included spelling reading, arithmetic, writing, geography, history, and grammar.
14
His statement that Connecticut and America should have, “schools good enough for the best and cheap enough for the poorest,” was the framework of his struggle for practical and universal education.
15
One of Barnard’s main problems was to produce an efficient school system that could manage the large population with little money.
16
The impact of the Industrial Revolution led to an increase in cities and urban population, and a general Connecticut population increase of 73% from 1840 through 1870.
17
Management problems would be eased by making the town the major authority in local educational matters. Towns were to select a group of three, six, or nine men to serve as a board of education. The board would hire teachers, buy land, build buildings, and generally see that schools were kept in good order.
Financial problems were quite difficult to solve. Barnard was not an advocate of tuition-free schools, but he did feel a need for a general state funding of educational needs. The state subsidized only a small portion of a school district’s expenses, the rest of it being made up from the tuition charged the parents. People who did not send their children to public schools did not have to contribute to their upkeep. The law on this (known as the rate-bill) stated:.
Whenever the expenses of keeping a common school by a teacher duly qualified, shall exceed the amount of monies appropriated by law to defray the expenses of such school, the committee in such district for the time being, may examine, adjust, and allow all bills of expense incurred for the support of said school, and assess the same upon the parents, guardians, and masters of such children as attended the same, according to the number and time sent by each.
18
Barnard advocated a state property tax to support the common schools and new high schools. However, Connecticut citizens never appreciated the idea of a tax. They held that the government had no right to tax one man to educate the child of another.
19
Barnard was even threatened with physical violence for proposing the tax. However, he still believed in:
. . . making property, whether it represented children or not, chargeable with their support. This is the cardinal idea of the free school system, and with the aid now furnished from the school fund which is appropriated for the equal benefit of all people, this charge cannot be considered burdensome.
20
Opposition declined as people realized that the school graduates were going on to become community leaders and respectable neighbors.
21
By 1854 a Property tax required each town to Provide an annual sum of one cent for every dollar as school support.
22
The rate-bills were abolished in 1867, by which time even free
high
schools existed in Branford, Bristol, Colchester, East Hartford, Hartford, New Haven, Middletown, New London, Norwich, Stamford, Torrington, Waterbury, and Windham.
Henry Barnard was also interested in improving education by establishing a system of public high schools. While Connecticut already had many fine academies, there were no public high schools before the 1840s. In 1841, the city of Middletown removed all students (age nine through sixteen) from the district schools and enrolled them into what was to be the state’s first public high school. In 1847 Hartford also established a high school and its basic program was to be a model for the other school districts. Course offerings were divided into three programs: the Classical Course which served as a preparation for college, the English Course which gave a practical four-year curriculum, and the Partial Course which could be completed in two years and was tailored to those students who wished to begin work early. This program was generally followed by high schools that opened in other towns. New Haven established Hillhouse High School in 1859.
23
It had two programs: a regular course of general study, and a college preparatory course stressing Latin and arithmetic. By 1861, New Haven was offering courses in: Trigonometry, Navigation, Literature, Reading, Spelling and Defining, French, German, Latin, Greek, Rhetoric, Logic, Mental and Moral Philosophy, History, Political Philosophy, the Constitution, Physical Geography, Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, Astronomy, Philosophy, Botany, Geology, and Mensuration (study of measurement).
Course work was rigid, with few electives. This was especially true in the Classical or College Preparatory courses which required studies of Latin grammar, Caesar, Cicero, Virgil, the Iliad, Phaedrus, and Ovid.
24
It would be a mistake to equate public schools at this time with an open enrollment policy. Most cities required a stringent entrance exam to demonstrate that the pupil was:.
. . . able to read fluently, and spell correctly, to bear a thorough examination in arithmetic, as far as percentage, to show a good knowledge of the elements of grammar, to be acquainted with the general geography of the world, and the history of the United States, and to be able to write in a legible fair hand.
25
Further, some school districts required the student to give evidence that he was of good moral character.
26
It would be wrong to imagine the high schools as almost monastic in life-style. By the 1870s student activities were organized along the lines of literary, social, and athletic clubs. Hartford Public High School had developed a Shakespearean association, and Waterbury had a debate club (which like others was open only to the male students). School newspapers appeared, carrying out the basic functions that their descendants do today. The first was the
Excelsior
at Hartford, others were:.
Hartford:
Rivulet
,
The Effort
, and
High School Chanticleer
New Britain:
The Bud of Genius
Middletown:
Scholar’s Experiment
,
The Experiment
Waterbury:
The Souvenir
Bridgeport:
The School Bell
Baseball was becoming a popular sport and many schools had clubs. Since there were no organized athletic programs, schools played against non-academic clubs as well as other schools. Below is the box-score from the
Waterbury American
of a game played 5 June, 1874:
Waterbury H.S.
|
Outs
|
Runs
|
Enterprise Club
|
Outs
|
Runs
|
|
|
|
(Watertown)
|
Phelan, 3rd
|
1
|
3
|
Riley, c.
|
5
|
0
|
Bronson, s.s.
|
4
|
2
|
J. Barlow, cf.
|
5
|
0
|
Casey, c.
|
3
|
3
|
Tuttle, 2nd
|
1
|
3
|
Colley, 1st
|
2
|
3
|
G. Barlow, s.s.
|
3
|
1
|
Dickinson, lf.
|
4
|
1
|
Daines, p.
|
2
|
2
|
Haves, cf.
|
3
|
2
|
Kane, rf.
|
3
|
0
|
White, 2nd
|
4
|
1
|
W. Barlow, 1st
|
3
|
0
|
Beach, rf
|
3
|
1
|
Grant, lf.
|
1
|
3
|
Gains, p.
|
3
|
2
|
McGonan, 3rd
|
4
|
0
|
TOTAL
|
27
|
18
|
TOTAL
|
27
|
9
|
High school enrollment grew rapidly especially after 1872 by which time almost all public high schools were tuition free. By the turn of the century there were approximately seventy-seven four-year high schools within the state. It is interesting to note that many high schools did not issue diplomas at first. This idea, and the ceremonies associated with it, seems to have developed from the collegiate practice.
While Connecticut education underwent many changes in the 19th century, certain aspects remained virtually unchanged. Discipline was often maintained by physical violence. One student recalled:
I had an imperfect lesson in Olney’s Geography, and (the teacher) impressed the truth on my hand in scarlet lines that made me talk pretty hard when outside the building
28
A dunce block was often kept in order to isolate and humiliate imperfect students.
Education was not considered a female necessity. Women were often instructed at home in the “genteel arts” of sewing, cooking, and child-raising. Any woman who wished a more formal education would have to seek it at one of the private girls’ academies such as Grove Hall in New Haven.
29
It was not until 1899, when the modern compulsory attendance law was passed ordering all students between the ages of seven and sixteen to be in school, that the majority of school-age girls could be found in public schools.
30
Many schools had separate departments of study for male and female students. There were fewer high school courses required of females for graduation and they had a smaller field of electives (see Appendix VII).
The waves of immigration beginning in the late 19th century affected the schools as well. Many city schools were too small to house the increase in new students. Language was a major obstacle to most foreign students, and many were labeled “stupid” when they could not follow a lesson. The immigrants tended to stick together by nationality, and their local school districts reflected this. Rather than blending into the American culture many of these students, living in ethnic clusters, were kept separate.
LESSON SUGGESTIONS:
-
(1) In 1839 Henry Barnard found the school buildings in poor repair (see Appendix V for more details). Have your class prepare a report of their school as if they were on Barnard’s commission. They may comment on the merit of class size, arrangements made for use of the auditorium, where would they locate lockers and rest-rooms. How is the lighting, air, and safety of the school?
-
(2) Have your class take the 1854 entrance exam found in Appendix VI. What did they think of it? How did they do? Have them discuss the ability of students past and present, and why are they different. How many of them would have been allowed to attend high school, and what could they have done otherwise?
-
(3) You may use the recollections of Julia Cowles and Samuel Goodrich in the Appendix to give your students insight into student life in the 19th century. What do they tell about the people and the schools? You may have students write their own recollections. What fiction or non-fiction works concerning life in school can the class find in their library?