The forces that governed American economic and social development after the Civil War shaped American thinking, its culture and industrialization altered it ways of looking at life and at the same time transformed ways of making a living. Technological advances revolutionized the communication of ideas and the growth of cities provided a favorable environment for intellectual and artistic expression. The materialism that permeated American attitudes toward business also affected contemporary education and literature.
After about 1870 American education reflects the impact of many social and economic forces. Horace Mann & Henry Barnard laid the foundations for state supported school systems during the age of Jackson, but these systems did not become compulsory until after the Civil War. In the 1860’s about half the children in the country were receiving some formal education. School sessions were short and many students dropped out of school after only one or two or three years of classes. As late as 1870 the average American had received only four years of schooling.
In the beginning there was opposition from those who considered education a private concern, from the taxpayers who objected to paying for the education of other people’s children, and from religious groups that maintained their own schools. Support came from practical people in an increasingly commercial society, where more and more occupations required the ability to read and write and cipher. It also came from those who believed that mass education was essential to a political system based on manhood suffrage. Further support came from those who viewed public education as a means of providing the common man with better opportunities to advance. Because of support the states by 1850 were committed to making tax-supported public education available to all. Some of the states had already passed laws requiring local communities to establish elementary schools and most of the others had at least required that when schools were established they must admit all children whether they were able to pay or not.
The movement in the south was impeded by rural conditions and the indifference of the planters class. Nevertheless, a steadily growing number of children found free public schools available to them. Compulsory attendance laws had not been passed, school terms were still short, the curriculum was thin, and teaching methods were still based on rote memorization and corporal punishment. The state of Massachusetts changed this by establishing a State Board of Education under the direction of Horace Mann who did much to improve the curriculum and teaching methods, lengthen the school year, raised teacher’s salaries, established the first state-supported school for teacher training and organized a state association of teachers. Other states appointed their own boards or superintendent of education to achieve similar reforms.
For most students education ceased after a few years in elementary and secondary education was limited to those who could afford to pay. In higher education a few colleges began to emerge throughout the country.
Southern schools lagged behind the rest of the nation, because section was poor and still predominately rural. The restoration of white rule in the 1870’s brought about abrupt halt to the process in negro public education that reconstruction governments had made. Church groups and private foundations supported negro school after 1877, including two important experiments in vocational training, Hampton Institute and Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute which is still in existence today.
Steady growth and improvement caused attendance in public schools to increase from 6.8 million in 1870 to 15.5 million in 1900. Public expenditures rose from $63 million in 1870 to $145 million in 1890 and $234 million in 1902. The national rate of illiteracy declined from 20 percent in 1870 to 10.7 percent in 1900. Most of the states outside the south had compulsory laws by 1900, and over the years they were extended to cover broader age groups and longer school sessions. There was in increase in the number of schools and colleges because the industrial society created demands for vocational and technical training, progressive education was needed and necessary because the gains made in public education before 1900 were more quantitative than qualitative.
Education in Connecticut
The puritans who founded Connecticut were dedicated to the principle of education for their children for the primary purpose of reading the Bible and interpreting it. Schools were opened in Hartford and New Haven. Each town with fifty families was required to hire a schoolmaster to teach the children to read and write. When a town reached one hundred families it was required to establish a grammar school. Throughout the colonial period educational opportunities were limited in spite of compulsory laws. In 1799 the Connecticut School fund began to yield income and it continues to do so. In 1798 Legislature transferred control of public schools from the ecclesiastical societies of the towns to new school societies. The new system worked badly because towns relied heavily on the school fund and became indifferent to educational needs and standards.
In 1865 the General Assembly created a state board of education with powers of general supervision and control of the educational interest of the state. The work of this board has expanded with the population increase and the rising expectations of the people for improved educational services. From the early beginnings Connecticut has had the most distinguished groups of private schools in the nation. Among them are, Hopkins Grammar, Cheshire Academy, Pomfret, Choate, and there is a large system of Roman Catholic Parochial Schools. The state department of education operates several vocational-technical schools and institutes. There are also several four year colleges and Universities located in the state.
The determination of Connecticut to provide education for everyone stands out as a unique cultural experiment. Part of the impetus for this effort was piety, the children who could not read would not be able to read the Bible. When one looks at education in Connecticut in the early nineteenth century and judges it by current standards, one will find it far inferior. The one-room schoolhouse has rough unpainted clapboards, upon a wooden frame with the corner set off as a cloakroom. This one-room schoolhouse meant that all the pupils, from the lowest to the highest grades had to learn in a single room with a single teacher. True, children could learn from each other, older students helping younger ones made concentration and study difficult because of the noise level and confusion.
In order to provide public school education, the state was divided into school societies, which in turn were divided into school districts. Each district was responsible for building and maintaining its schools. With money from land sales Connecticut was able to establish a school fund from which each school society received a certain amount for each school year. This was not popular and proved to be unworkable in the post-Revolutionary era. Several towns saw the school fund as a means of lowering taxes and promptly did so leaving the schools to survive as best they could on whatever amount was received from the fund. When the money ran out the schools closed. It was not until the 1830’s after repeated calls for reforms, that improved financing of education was begun. Connecticut’s first institution of higher learning was Yale college founded in 1701. At first it grew very slowly. In its first hundred years it graduated fewer than three thousand students.
Connecticut continued its ventures in education and led the nation in the education for the deaf, and in still another area of education, the first law school which was founded in Litchfield in 1784. Changes occurred in the system of education in Connecticut between 1763 and 1800 because new ideas and institutions could be grafted on the old. Colonial schools emphasized Christian virtue, a mixture of piety, industry and frugality. Clergy, magistrates, and citizens continued to view education as a method on indoctrinating children in the proved truths of Christianity and citizenship. The only new ingredient was the concern for a democratic republic.
Primary elementary education generally denotes the basic or introductory schooling that young children receive, usually starting at 6 years of age and continuing to 10 or 12.
The ages of starting and stopping vary. Preschool education in nursery schools or kindergartens precedes the first grade. Some school systems and primary training as early as the 5th grade, after which children who are continuing their education go on to a middle school. The break between the elementary and secondary schools comes after the 7th or 8th grade.
Primary education can be called the most universal and significant level of formal education in that far more of the world’s people get schooling at this level than at the secondary and higher levels.
Concepts of Elementary Education. In the modern elementary school, democracy is seen as a way of life rather than merely a form of government. Through the maintenance of a democratic atmosphere in the classroom, the teacher strives to encourage the child, from the first grade on, to learn to respect the rights of others, to accept responsibility to do his share of the work, and to act unselfishly and cooperate as a member of a social group.
Changing Elementary School Practices. In the early 1900’s, major social and economic changes in American life began to gather increased momentum. Advancement in scientific knowledge and industrial development was rapid. The home and church began to lose much of their force as educative agencies. The American people looked to public education to meet the challenge of a rapidly changing civilization. School enrollments increased by geometric proportions and public education became one of the greatest enterprises in the nation. The public elementary school became in truth a training ground for all the children of all the people.
Compulsory Education Laws. Compulsory education is an old concept. From ancient times societies have enjoined parents or other elders to instruct children in basic information and rules of conduct. Compulsory attendance laws requiring children to attend specified schools for a certain number of years are chiefly a modern development. In Europe compulsory attendance laws date from the 16th and 17th centuries. In America the idea of compulsory education was part of the school policy of Massachusetts in 1642. However, compulsory attendance laws were not widely adopted and enforced in the United States until the early years of the 20th century.
Connecticut law required children to attend school from age 7 through 15. Presently Connecticut requires children to attend school from age 5 to 16. Today there are laws that not only govern the public school system, but colleges and universities as well.
Unit Plan. In an endeavor to organize the learning experiences of elementary school children around worth purposes, teaching units have been widely adopted. While the term “unit” has various interpretations, it is generally understood to mean a series of activities engaged in by pupils under teacher direction to carry out some project or solve some problem.
The typical unit involves six phases. These are by no means successive steps in a cycle but rather aspects of a continuous process, and several of them may be carried out simultaneously. The phases are: (1) exploration and stimulation of interests and formulation of purpose: (2) planning and organization of methods of work; (3) acquiring skills and doing research to obtain needed information; (4) preparation of reports, exhibits and similar projects for presentation to the class; (5) sharing the outcomes of the study; (6) evaluation of learning progress in terms of skills and knowledge acquired and growth in understandings and attitudes.
Instructional Aids and Practices. Increased concern over education in the 1950’s and 1960’s resulted in the adoption of a number of new instructional aids and practices. These ranged from the use of televisions in schools to the introduction of new methods of teaching mathematics. In the 1950’s and the 1960’s grants from private foundations and federal aid provided funds for experimentation with television teaching. New instructional methods readily adaptable to television have also helped to promote its development.
Increasing enrollments, higher construction costs, and improved salaries for teachers have resulted in a tremendous increase in educational costs.
For many years the federal government has contributed in one way or another to support the schools—for example, through the school lunch program.
School Lunch Program, a federally sponsored program, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), that provides free or reduced-price lunches to students in American public or private nonprofit elementary and secondary schools. The program is authorized by the National School Lunch Act of 1946, as amended. One fifth of the cost is born by the federal government, one fifth by the state and local authorities and three fifths by the students. Schools are eligible to participate if they provide nutritious meals as determined by USDA standards and if their food service is nonprofit. The USDA also purchases some of the food used in the program. Students may receive lunches at less than the standard charge or without charge if school authorities determine a need and provided that the student is not identified in any special way (by race, for example) or discriminated against. Other federal programs have made funds available for setting and maintaining food service facilities in schools.
Education in New Haven
Education is a continuous process from infancy through adulthood. It is also a two way process involving a close working relationship between the community and its schools.
A sound educational program can be planned and implemented only when business management procedures are set up in accordance with provided principles and are integrated under the general supervision of the superintendent.
Zeal for education, a prime factor in New Haven’s history from the days of Davenport, after temporary setbacks, experienced an era of renewed vigor.
In 1650 legislature was enacted requiring that elementary schools be established in all towns having fifty or more families and this included New Haven. These schools were supported by taxes on properties and by tuition fees. New Haven was founded in 1638 by English puritans from Massachusetts.
It is believed that a school house was built for Ezekiel Cheever two or three years after 1649 and he presided over it. This building was located on the now New Haven Green. Cheever built himself a house about 1640 and there he conducted his school until 1643 when a specialized school was built. During the next decade education languished in New Haven until the estate of Edward Hopkins was settled. Once the estate was settled New Haven Hopkins Grammar was established in a little wooden building on the Upper Green. This school opened in October of 1660.
As education continued in New Haven grammar schools slowly came into existence as did institutions of higher learning.
New Haven continued to offer within its boundaries educational opportunities in famous private academies and in a great, growing university. Sponsor of a pioneer high school, concerned with “charity schools” and “Negro schools,” interested in adult education through libraries and lyceums, sensitive to the demands for an American culture, the town remained true to its ancient colonial tradition.
Connecticut’s concern for the common school had manifested itself in 1795, when the state assigned to a school fund the proceeds of the sale of land in the Western Reserve. For some years generous grants went out to the local school societies whose members endeavored to supply a uniform education to everybody and, in so doing, to promote democracy. But after the War of 1812 the legislature became so interested in industrial promotion and in the need for internal improvements that it held educational allotments to a minimum. The school system rapidly declined, with local administrators unable to supply decent buildings and equipment or to pay adequate teachers salaries. When the demand for an educational renaissance became insistent during the late 1830’s, conditions had sunk to an unbelievably low level; many adults born within the state were illiterate, 5000 youngsters were growing up without any schooling whatever, and teachers were scandalously untrained and even more scandalously underpaid (the monthly salary ranged from six to fifteen dollars); while the children of the well-to-do minority attended academies at a cost which was greater than the whole amount expended by the state for the education of all the rest.
Although the Society for the Improvement of the Common Schools was founded in 1827 by Noah Webster and others, ten years passed before the agitation for action became substantial.
Despite the increase of the city’s population between 1811 and 1819, the number of public schools had declined from 21, with 841 students, to 17, with 757 children. “The greatest defect,” was “the shortness of the school year,” which varied from three to four months. The money which New Haven did receive from the state school fund was “so injudiciously applied that little or no benefit results from it to anyone.”
Recommendations urging the establishment of a single town school for all children over the age of nine, with instruction to be given “along the Lancaster plan.” The Lancasterian system involved the older pupils assuming some of the teaching responsibilities in connection with the younger children; designed with an eye to holding down expenses, it had originated with Joseph Lancaster, an Englishman. Other recommendations included: the extension of the school year to nine months and compulsory attendance by all children; a charge for tuition only to those who could afford it, while those unable to pay should also receive their books and supplies free; and the raising of taxes by the town, if necessary, to make the plan work. It was further suggested that children under nine ought to be provided with small schools in each district, run by women, probably in the manner of the dames’ schools which operated during the colonial period.
The authorities finally moved in response to a popular demand. On January 18, 1822, the Court of Common Council appointed a committee to investigate the possibility of installing a Lancasterian school in the basement of the Methodist Church, on the northwest corner of the Green. The committee discharged its obligation successfully.
On August 26, 1822, New Haven’s Lancasterian School opened. July 1852, The First School district voted to enlarge the Lancasterian building “for the purpose of grading the studies of scholars.” This appears to have been the pioneering step toward the establishment of graded schools in New Haven, and thus constitutes the beginning of the modern public school system in the city.
Actually the first “all graded school” was that opened on October 1, 1853, at the corner of George & York Streets, where a small primary institution had been located since 1844. The enlarged and remodeled structure accommodated 500 pupils and received the honored name of Noah Webster. Its immediate success prompted the school society to vote $20,000 for the erection of another “graded school” in the area “east of State Street.” With the completion of Eaton School in 1855 New Haven had indicated its choice of method in public education: the grade school superseded the Lancasterian as the model for the future. The following year on March 27, 1856, the Lancasterian School building became the home of the “James Hillhouse Public School.”
On October 25, 1856, under pressure of the new state education program inaugurated by Henry Barnard, the old district and society school committees disappeared from the New Haven scene. They were replaced by a local Board of Education.
The system over which this group assumed control was still in a period of transition. Graded schools included: Dixwell, on Dixwell Street; Eaton, on Jefferson Street; Hillhouse on Orange Street, Washington, on Washington Street, and Webster, on George Street. There were three partly graded units: Mount Pleasant, on Liberty Street; Wallace, on Wallace Street; and Whiting, on Whiting Street. In addition there were three primary schools, two of which were for Negroes. The total accommodations could take care of 3700 of the 6300 children in the city between the ages of four and sixteen.
Another school opened under the direction of Mr. John E. Lovell with the enrollment limited to boys. Some 380 pupils registered, of which number about 330 appear to have attended regularly. A charge of ten dollars per student was levied, to cover “rent, fire-wood, books, and stationery.” The early success of the Lancasterian School served to drive home to the citizens how inadequate their educational facilities had been and, in fact, still were. Sentiment soon developed for the erection of a separate building “to accommodate five hundred boys on the Lancasterian plan.” Public-spirited Titus Street offered his lot at the corner of Orange & Wall streets for the purpose, and the inhabitants of the First School District accepted. Joseph Lancaster himself visited the original school in the Methodist Church basement during June, 1827, and later delivered a lecture on education.
When the school moved to the new Orange Street building a year later, it added a division for girls under the direction of Miss Sarah Hotchkiss. For a time the citizens were jubilant over the continued success of the experiment, which proved far superior to anything that had preceded it. Yet it was not long before they realized that they had hardly scratched the surface in remedying the defects of their educational system. A committee investigating the city’s schools in 1831 found that only 860 pupils, between the ages of four and sixteen, were attending school out of a potential 2682; 400 boys and girls were receiving the benefits of instruction under Mr. Lovell and Miss Hotchkiss, while about 450 others were scattered among eleven substandard institutions. Thus more than two-thirds of the children remained outside the school program. Even after subtracting the small number enrolled in private academies, the figure was still disgraceful.
After the advent of Henry Barnard to the secretaryship of the new State Commission for Education in 1839, conditions began to improve more rapidly in New Haven. New structures were erected, attendance rose, and school committees began to function with alacrity. Some New Haven people felt that too much emphasis had been placed on the achievements of the Lancasterian School and too little consideration given to an expanded system of “grade schools.”
From time to time “charity schools” were organized in the city, designed to fill the education gaps which existed until the day of the “graded school system.” One such institution, sponsored by a group of ladies, sought to break down racial segregation by catering to white and Negro children of poor families. The town refused to allocate moneys from the school fund for this work, declaring it outside the state regulations which governed the fund. On the other hand, it did vote small grants from other sources.
New Haven set up its first “colored school” in 1811, and another in 1825. These received special state allotments out of the state funds, but their buildings and facilities were woefully inadequate. Local abolitionists attempted to found a Negro college in the city during 1831, but were rebuffed by public opinion. As late as 1859, when nearly all of the white schools had been graded, educational facilities were still limited to two primary schools served by three women teachers and one man. Yet from Sally Wilson’s Artisan Street Colored School came Edward Bouchet, who went on to Hopkins Grammar School and then to Yale, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. In 1876 he became Yale’s first Negro Doctor of Philosophy.
No public high school appeared in New Haven until 1859, although the demand for one had continued for many years. When Mr. Lovell’s Lancasterian School was getting its start in the basement of the Methodist Church, the town and city sought to unite and build an edifice to accommodate the Lancasterian School and a school of higher grade.
Some years later a town meeting appointed a committee “to inquire into the advisability of creating a high school.” The board of school visitors unanimously recommended the establishment of a high school in October, 1850. Its successor, the new board of education, carried the matter to fruition between 1856 and 1859.
The Public High School of New Haven commenced to function in May 1859, with 44 boys and 50 girls in the entering class, all drawn from the Webster and Eaton schools, where they had been pursuing advanced studies. The hall of the Young Men’s institute served as the home of the new school until in January of 1863, when the Hillhouse High School building opened its doors at the corner of Orange and Wall streets. The first class to receive regular diplomas graduated in May, 1866; it included 67 boys and 60 girls.
Devotion to the ideal of self-improvement ran rampant because it was believed by the citizens that one must do more than train the next generation properly, they must constantly perfect their own knowledge for reasons both moral and practical. Consistent with this urge there developed at New Haven many media for adult education in the form of libraries and lecture halls.
New Haven has continued to provide education for its citizens. Through the years numerous elementary, middle, high and vocational schools have emerged including institutions of higher learnings such as colleges and universities.