The History of Education Part 73

CHAPTER XXVII

EDUCATION BECOMES A NATIONAL TOOL

I. SPREAD OF THE STATE-CONTROL IDEA

THE FIVE TYPE NATIONS. We have now traced, in some detail, the struggles of forward-looking men to establish national systems of education in five great world nations. In each we have described the steps by means of which the State gradually superseded the Church in the control of education, and the motives and impulses which finally led the State to take over the school as a function of the State. The steps and impelling motives and rate of transfer were not the same in any two nations, but in each of the five the political necessities of the State in time made the transfer seem desirable. Time everywhere was required to effect the change. The movement began earliest and was concluded earliest in the German States, and was concluded last in England. In the German States, France, and Italy the change came rapidly and as a result of legislative acts or imperial decrees. In England and the United States the transfer took place, as we have seen, only in response to the slow development of public opinion.

This change in control and extension of educational advantages was essentially a nineteenth-century movement, and a resultant of the new political philosophy and the democratic revolutions of the later eighteenth century, combined with the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century. A new political impulse now replaced the earlier religious motive as the incentive for education, and education for literacy and citizens.h.i.+p became, during the nineteenth century, a new political ideal that has, in time, spread to progressive nations all over the world.

The five great nations whose educational evolution has been described in the preceding chapters may be regarded as having formed types which have since been copied, in more or less detail, by the more progressive nations in different parts of the world. The continental European two-cla.s.s school system, the American educational ladder, and the English tendency to combine the two and use the best parts of each, have been reproduced in the different national educational systems which have been created by the various political governments of the world. The continental European idea of a centralized ministry for education, with an appointed head or a cabinet minister in control, has also been widely copied. The Prussian two-cla.s.s plan has been most influential among the Teutonic and Slavic peoples of Europe, and has also deeply influenced educational development among the j.a.panese; English ideas have been extensively copied in the English self-governing dominions; and the American plan has been clearly influential in Canada, the Argentine, and in China. The French centralized plan for organization and administration has been widely copied in the state educational organizations of the Latin nations of Europe and South America. In a general way it may be stated that the more democratic the government of a nation has become the greater has been the tendency to break away from the two-cla.s.s school system, to introduce more of an educational ladder, and to bring in more of the English conception of granting to localities a reasonable amount of local liberty in educational affairs.

SPREAD OF THE STATE CONTROL IDEA AMONG NORTHERN NATIONS. The development of schools under the control of the government, and the extension of state supervision to the existing religious schools, took place in the different cantons of Switzerland, and in Holland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, somewhat contemporaneously with the development described for the five type nations. The work of Pestalozzi and Fellenberg, and of their disciples and followers, had given an early impetus to the establishment of schools and teacher-training in the Swiss cantons, most being done in the German-speaking portions.

In Holland, where the Reformation zeal for schools largely died out in the eighteenth century, the organization of the "Society of Public Good," in 1784, by a Mennonite clergyman, did much to awaken a new interest in schools for the people and to inaugurate a new movement for educational organization. In 1795 a revolution took place in Holland, a republic was established, and the extension of educational advantages followed. From 1806 to 1815 Holland was under the rule of Napoleon. A school law of 1806 forms the basis of public education in Holland. This a.s.serted the supremacy of the State in education, and provided for state inspection of schools. In 1812 the French scientist, M. Cuvier, reported to Napoleon that there were 4451 schools in little Holland, and that one tenth of the total population was in school. In 1816 a normal school was established at Haarlem. Both the const.i.tutions of 1815 and 1848 provided for state control of education, which has been steadily extended since the beginning of the revival in 1784. Today Holland provides a good system of public instruction for its people.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 210. THE SCHOOL SYSTEM OF DENMARK]

In Denmark and Sweden the development of state schools has been worked out, much as in England, in cooperation with the Church, and the Church still a.s.sists the State in the administration and supervision of the school systems which were eventually evolved. In each of these countries, too, the continental two-cla.s.s school system has been somewhat modified by an upward movement of the transfer point between the two and the development of people's high schools, so as to produce a more democratic type of school and afford better educational opportunities to all cla.s.ses of the population. The annexed diagram, showing the organization of education in Denmark, is typical of this modification and extension.

Finland should also be cla.s.sed with these northern nations in matters of educational development. Lutheran ideas as to religion and the need for education took deep hold there at an early date (p. 297). A knowledge of reading and the Catechism was made necessary for confirmation as early as 1686, and democratic ideas also found an early home among this people. In consequence the Finns have for long been a literate people. The law making elementary education a function of the State, however, dates only from 1866, and secondary education was taken over from the ecclesiastical authorities only in 1872.

Similarly, Scotland, another northern nation, began schools as a phase of its Reformation fervor. During the eighteenth century the parish schools, created by the Acts of 1646 (R. 179; p. 335) and 1696, proved insufficient, and voluntary schools were added to supplement them.

Together these insured for Scotland a much higher degree of literacy than was the case in England. The final state organization of education in Scotland dates from the Scottish Education Act of 1872.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 211. THE PROGRESS OF LITERACY IN EUROPE BY THE CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY]

The map reproduced here, showing the progress of general education by the close of the nineteenth century, as measured by the spread of the ability to read and write, reveals at a glance the high degree of literacy of the northern Teutonic and mixed Teutonic nations. It was among these nations that the Protestant Reformation ideas made the deepest impression; it was in these northern States that the Protestant elementary vernacular school, to teach reading and religion, attained its earliest start; it was there that the school was taken over from the Church and erected into an effective national instrument at an early date; and it was these nations which had been most successful, by the close of the nineteenth century, in extending the elements of education to all and thus producing literate populations.

THE STATE-CONTROL IDEA IN THE SOUTH AND EAST OF EUROPE. As we pa.s.s to the south and east of Europe we pa.s.s not only to lands which remained loyal to the Roman Church, or are adherents of the Greek Church, and hence did not experience the Reformation fervor with its accompanying zeal for education, but also to lands untouched by the French-Revolution movement and where democratic ideas have only recently begun to make any progress.

Greece alone forms an exception to this statement, a const.i.tutional government having been established there in 1843. Removed from the main stream of European civilization, these nations have been influenced less by modern forces; the hold of the Church on the education of the young has there been longest retained; and the taking-over of education by the State has there been longest deferred. In consequence, the schools provided have for long been inadequate both in number and scope, and the progress of literacy and democratic ideas among the people has been slow.

Despite the beginnings made by Maria Theresa (p. 475) in the late eighteenth century, Austria dropped backward to a low place in matters of education during the period of reaction following the Napoleonic wars, and the real beginnings of state elementary-schools there date from the law of 1867. The beginnings in Hungary date from 1868. The beginnings of other state elementary school systems are: Greece, 1823; Portugal, 1844; Spain, 1857; Roumania, 1859; Bulgaria, 1881; and Serbia, 1882. In many of these States, despite early beginnings, but little real progress has even yet been made in developing systems of national education that will provide gratuitous elementary-school training for all and inculcate the national spirit. In many of these States the illiteracy of the people is still high, [1] the people are poor, the nations are economically backward, the military and clerical cla.s.ses still dominate, and intelligent and interested governments have not as yet been evolved.

In Russia, though Catherine II and her successors made earnest efforts to begin a system of state education, the period following Napoleon was one of extreme repressive reaction. The military cla.s.s and the clergy of the Greek Church joined hands in a government interested in keeping the people submissive and devout. In consequence, at the time of the emanc.i.p.ation of the serfs, in 1861, it was estimated that not one per cent of the total population of Russia was then under instruction, and the ratio of illiteracy by the close of the nineteenth century was the highest in Europe outside of Spain, Portugal, and the Balkan States.

THE STATE-CONTROL IDEA IN THE ENGLISH SELF-GOVERNING DOMINIONS. The English and French settlers in Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritime Provinces of Canada brought the English and French parochial-school ideas from their home-lands with them, but these home conceptions were materially modified, at an early date, by settlers from the northern States of the American Union. These introduced the New England idea of state control and public responsibility for education. In part copying precedents recently established in the new American States, as an outcome of the struggles there to establish free, tax-supported, and state-controlled schools, both Ontario and Quebec early began the establishment of state systems of education for their people. A superintendent of education was appointed in Ontario in 1844, and the Common School Act of 1846 laid the foundation of the state school system of the Province. In the law of 1871 a system of uniform, free, compulsory, and state-inspected schools was definitely provided for. Quebec, in 1845, made the ecclesiastical parish the unit for school administration; in 1852 appointed government inspectors for the church schools; and in 1859 provided for a Council of Public Instruction to control all schools in the Province. The Dominion Act of 1867 left education, as in the United States, to the several Provinces to control, and state systems of education, though with large liberty in religious instruction, or the incorporation of the religious schools into the state school systems, have since been erected in all the Canadian Provinces.

Following American precedents, too, a thoroughly democratic educational ladder has almost everywhere been created, substantially like that shown in the Figure on page 708.

In Australia and New Zealand education has similarly been left to the different States to handle, but a state centralized control has been provided there which is more akin to French practice than to English ideas. In each State, primary education has been made free, compulsory, secular, and state-supported. The laws making such provision in the different States date from 1872, in Victoria; 1875, in Queensland; 1878, in South Australia, West Australia, and New Zealand; and 1880, in New South Wales. Secondary education has not as yet been made free, and many excellent privately endowed or fee-supported secondary schools, after the English plan, are found in the different States.

In the new Union of South Africa all university education has been taken over by the Union, while the existing school systems of the different States are rapidly being taken over and expanded by the state governments, and transformed into constructive instruments of the States.

THE STATE-CONTROL IDEA IN THE SOUTH AMERICAN STATES. As we have seen in Chapter XX, the spirit of nationality awakened by the French Revolution spread to South America, and between 1815 and 1821 all of Spain's South American colonies revolted, declared their independence from the mother country, and set up const.i.tutional republics. Brazil, in 1822, in a similar manner severed its connections from Portugal. The United States, through the Monroe Doctrine (1823), helped these new States to maintain their independence. For approximately half a century these States, isolated as they were and engaged in a long and difficult struggle to evolve stable forms of government, left such education as was provided to private individuals and societies and to the missionaries and teaching orders of the Roman Church. After the middle of the nineteenth century, the new forces stirring in the modern world began to be felt in South America as well, and, after about 1870, a well-defined movement to establish state school systems began to be in evidence.

The Argentine const.i.tution of 1853 had directed the establishment of primary schools by the State, but nothing of importance was done until after the election of Dr. Sarmiento as President, in 1868. Under his influence an American-type normal school was established, teachers were imported from the United States, and liberal appropriations for education were begun. In 1873 a general system of national aid for primary education was established, and in 1884 a new law laid the basis of the present state school system. Though some earlier beginnings had been made in some of the other South American nations, Argentine is regarded as the leader in education among them. This is largely due to the democratic nature of the government which, in connection with the deep interest in education of President Sarmiento, [2] found educational expression in the creation of an American-type educational ladder, as the accompanying diagram shows.

Large emphasis has been placed on scientific and practical studies in the secondary _colegios_. The normal school has been given large importance, and made a parallel and connecting link in the educational ladder between the primary schools and the universities. The Argentine school system, probably due to American influences acting through President Sarmiento, forms an exception to the usual South American state school system, as nearly all the other States have followed the French model and created a European two-cla.s.s school system.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 212. THE SCHOOL SYSTEM OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC]

In Chili, the const.i.tution of 1833 declared education to be of supreme importance, and a normal school was established in Santiago, as early as 1840. The basic law for the organization of a state system of primary instruction, however, dates from 1860, and the law organizing a state system of secondary and higher education from 1872.

In Peru, an educational reform movement was inaugurated in 1876, but the war with Chili (1879-84) checked all progress. In 1896 an Educational Commission was appointed to visit the United States and Europe, and the law of 1901 marked the creation of a ministry for education and the real beginnings of a state school system.

The Brazilian const.i.tution of 1824 left education to the several States (twenty and one Federal District), and a permissive law of 1827 allowed the different States to establish schools. It was not until 1854, however, that public schools were organized in the Federal District, and these mark the real beginning of state education in Brazil. Since then the establishment of state schools has gradually extended to the coast States, and inland with the building of railway lines and the opening-up of the interior to outside influences. The basis for state-controlled education has now been laid in all the States, but the attendance at the schools as yet is small. [3]

In some of the other South American States, such as Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, but little progress in extending state-controlled schools has as yet been made, and the training of the young is still left largely to private effort, the Church, and the religious orders. The illiteracy in all the South American States is still high, in part due to the large native populations, and much remains to be done before education becomes general there. The state-control idea, though, has been definitely established in principle in these countries. With the establishment of stable governments, the building of railroads and steams.h.i.+p lines, and the development of an important international commerce--events which there have characterized the first two decades of the twentieth century--early and important progress in state educational organization and in the extension of educational advantages may be expected.

THE STATE-SCHOOL IDEA IN EASTERN ASIA. In 1854 Admiral Perry effected the treaty of friends.h.i.+p with j.a.pan which virtually opened that nation to the influences of western civilization, and one of the most wonderful transformations of a people recorded in history soon began. In 1867 a new Mikado came to the throne, and in 1868 the small military cla.s.s, which had ruled the nation for some seven hundred years, gave up their power to the new ruler. A new era in j.a.pan, known as the _Meiji_, dates from this event. In 1871 the centuries-old feudal system was abolished, and all cla.s.ses in the State were declared equal before the law. This same year the first newspaper in j.a.pan was begun. In 1872 the first educational code for the nation was promulgated by the Mikado. This ordered the general establishment of schools, the compulsory education of the people (R. 334 a), and the equality of all cla.s.ses in educational matters. Students were now sent abroad, especially to Germany and the United States; foreign teachers were imported; an American normal-school teacher was placed in charge of the newly opened state normal school; the American cla.s.s method of instruction was introduced; schoolbooks and teaching apparatus were prepared, after American models; middle schools were organized in the towns; higher schools were opened in the cities; and the old Academy of Foreign Languages was evolved (1877) into the University of Tokyo. In 1884 the study of English was introduced into the courses of the public schools. In 1889 a form of const.i.tution was granted to the people, and a parliament established. [4]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 213. THE j.a.pANESE TWO-CLa.s.s SCHOOL SYSTEM.]

Adapting the continental European idea of a two-cla.s.s school system to the peculiar needs of the nation, the j.a.panese have worked out, during the past half-century, a type of state-controlled school system which has been well adapted to their national needs. [5] Instruction in national morality, based on the ancestral virtues, brotherly affection, and loyalty to the const.i.tution and the ruling cla.s.s (R. 334 b-c), has been well worked out in their schools. Though the government has remained largely autocratic in form, the j.a.panese have, however, retained throughout all their educational development the fundamental democratic principle enunciated in the Preamble to the Educational Code of 1872 (R. 334 a), _viz_., that every one without distinction of cla.s.s or s.e.x shall receive primary education at least, and that the opportunity for higher education shall be open to all children. So completely has the education of the people been conceived of as one of the most important functions of the State that all education has been placed under a centralized state control, with a Cabinet Minister in charge of all administrative matters connected with the education of the nation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 214. THE CHINESE EDUCATIONAL LADDER]

Since near the end of the nineteenth century what promises to be an even more wonderful transformation of a people-political, social, scientific, and industrial--has been taking place in China (R. 335). A much more democratic type of national school system than that of the j.a.panese has been worked out, and this the new (1912) Republic of China is rapidly extending in the provinces, and making education a very important function of the new democratic national life. [6] In the beginning, when displacing the centuries-old Confucian educational system, [7] the Chinese adopted j.a.panese ideas and organized their schools (1905) somewhat after the j.a.panese model. Later on, responding to the influence of many American- educated Chinese and to the more democratic impulses of the Chinese people, the new government established by the Republic of 1912 changed the school system at first established so as to make it in type more like the American educational ladder. The new Chinese school system is shown in the drawing on page 721. The university instruction is modern and excellent, and the addition of the cultural and scientific knowledge worked out in western Europe to the intellectual qualities of this capable people can hardly fail to result, in time, in the production of a wonderful modern nation, [8] probably in one of the greatest nations of the mid-twentieth century.

In 1891 the independent Kingdom of Siam, [9] awakened from its age-long isolation by new world influences, sent a prince to Europe to study and report on the state systems of education maintained there. As a result of his report a department of public education was created, which later evolved into a ministry of public instruction, and elementary schools were opened by the State in the thirteen thousand old Buddhist temples. These schools offered a two-year course in Siamese, followed by a five-year course in English, given by imported English teachers. Schools for girls were provided, as well as for boys. Since this beginning, higher schools of law, medicine, agriculture, engineering, and military science have been added, taught largely by imported English and American teachers. In consequence of the new educational organization, and the new influences brought in, the whole life of this little kingdom has been transformed during the past three decades.

GENERAL ACCEPTANCE OF THE STATE-FUNCTION CONCEPTION. The different national school systems, the creation of which has so far been briefly described, are typical and represent a great world movement which characterized the latter half of the nineteenth century. This movement is still under way, and increasing in strength. Other state school organizations might be added to the list, but those so far given are sufficient. Beginning with the nations which were earliest to the front of the onward march of civilization, the movement for the state control of education, itself an expression of new world forces and new national needs, has in a century spread to every continent on the globe. To-day progressive nations everywhere conceive of education for their people as so closely a.s.sociated with their social, political, and industrial progress, and their national welfare and prosperity (R. 336), that the control of education has come to be regarded as an indispensable function of the State. State const.i.tutions (R. 333) have accordingly required the creation of comprehensive state school systems; legislators have turned to education with a new interest; bulky state school codes have given force to const.i.tutional mandates; national literacy has become a goal; the diffusion of political intelligence by means of the school has naturally followed the extension of the suffrage; while the many new forces and impulses of a modern world have served to make the old religious type of education utterly inadequate, and to call for national action to a degree never conceived of in the days when religious, private, and voluntary educational effort sufficed to meet the needs of the few who felt the call to learn. What a few of the more important of these new nineteenth-century forces have been, which have so fundamentally modified the character and direction of education, it may be worth while to set forth briefly, before proceeding further.

II. NEW MODIFYING FORCES

THE ADVANCE OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE. The first and most important of these nineteenth-century forces, and the one which preceded and conditioned all the others, was the great increase of accurate knowledge as to the forces and laws of the physical world, arising from the application of scientific method to the investigation of the phenomena of the material world (R.

337). During the nineteenth century the intellect of man was stimulated to activity as it had not been before since the days when little Athens was the intellectual center of the world. What the Revival of Learning was to the cla.s.sical scholars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the movement for scientific knowledge and its application to human affairs was to the nineteenth. It changed the outlook of man on the problems of life, vastly enlarged the intellectual horizon, and gave a new trend to education and to scholarly effort. What the scholars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had been slowly gathering together as interesting and cla.s.sified phenomena, the scientific scholars of the nineteenth century organized, interpreted, expanded, and applied. Since the day of Copernicus (p. 386) and Newton (p. 388) a growing appreciation of the permanence and scope of natural law in the universe had been slowly developing, and this the scholars of the nineteenth century fixed as a principle and applied in many new directions. A few of the more important of these new directions may profitably be indicated here.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 215. BARON JUSTUS VON LIEBIG (1803-73)]

In the domain of the physical sciences very important advances characterized the century. Chemistry, up to the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century largely a collection of unrelated facts, was transformed by the labors of such men as Dalton (1766-1844), Faraday (1791-1867), and Liebig into a wonderfully well-organized and vastly important science. Liebig carried chemistry over into the study of the processes of digestion and the functioning of the internal organs, and reshaped much of the instruction in medicine. Liebig is also important as having opened, at Giessen, in 1826, the first laboratory instruction in chemistry for students provided in any university in the world. By many subsequent workers chemistry has been so applied to the arts that it is not too much to say that a knowledge of chemistry underlies the whole manufacturing and industrial life of the present, and that the degree of industrial preeminence held by a nation to-day is largely determined by its mastery of chemical processes.

Physics has experienced an equally important development. It, too, at the beginning of the nineteenth century was in the preliminary state of collecting, coordinating, and trying to interpret data. In a century physics has, by experimentation and the application of mathematics to its problems, been organized into a number of exceedingly important sciences.

In dynamics, heat, light, and particularly in electricity, discoveries and extension of previous knowledge of the most far-reaching significance have been made. What at the beginning of the nineteenth century was a small textbook study of natural philosophy has since been subdivided into the two great sciences of physics and chemistry, and these in turn into numerous well-organized branches. Today these are taught, not from textbooks, but in large and costly laboratories, while manufacturing establishments and governments now find it both necessary and profitable to maintain large scientific inst.i.tutions for chemical and physical research.

The great triumph of physics, from the point of view of the reign of law in the world of matter, was the experimental establishment (1849) of the fundamental principle of the conservation of energy. This ranks in importance in the world of the physical sciences with the theory of evolution in the biological. The perfection of the spectroscope (1859) revealed the rule of chemical law among the stars, and clinched the theory of evolution as applied to the celestial universe. The atomic theory of matter [10] was an extension of natural laws in another direction. In 1846 occurred the most spectacular proof of the reign of natural law which the nineteenth century witnessed. Two scientists, in different lands, [11]

working independently, calculated the orbit of a new planet, Neptune, and when the telescope was turned to the point in the heavens indicated by their calculations the planet was there. It was a tremendous triumph for both mathematics and astronomy. Such work as this meant the firm establishment of scientific accuracy, and the ultimate elimination of the old theories of witchcraft, diabolic action, and superst.i.tion as controlling forces in the world of human affairs.

The publication by Charles Lyell (1797-1875) of his _Principles of Geology_, in 1830, marked another important advance in the knowledge of the operations of natural law in the physical world, and likewise a revolution in thinking in regard to the age and past history of the earth.

Few books have ever more deeply influenced human thinking. The old theological conception of earthly "catastrophes" [12] was overthrown, and in its place was subst.i.tuted the idea of a very long and a very orderly evolution of the planet. Geology was created as a new science, and out of this has come, by subsequent evolution, a number of other new sciences [13] which have contributed much to human progress.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 216. CHARLES DARWIN (1809-82)]

Another of the great books of all time appeared in 1859, when Charles Darwin (1809-1882) published the results of thirty years of careful biological research in his _Origin of Species_. This swept away the old theory of special and individual creation which had been cherished since early antiquity; and subst.i.tuted in its place the reign of law in the field of biological life. This subst.i.tution of the principle of orderly evolution for the old theory of special creation marked another forward step in human thinking, [14] and gave an entirely new direction to the old study of natural history. [15] In the hands of such workers as Wallace (1823-1913), Asa Gray (1810-88), Huxley (1825-94), and Spencer (1820-1903) it now proved a fruitful field.

In 1856 the German Virchow (1821-1902) made his far-reaching contribution of cellular pathology to medical science; between 1859 and 1865 the French scientist Pasteur (1822-95) established the germ theory of fermentation, putrefaction, and disease; about the same time the English surgeon Lister (1827-1914) began to use antiseptics in surgery; and, in 1879, the bacillus of typhoid fever was found. Out of this work the modern sciences of pathology, aseptic surgery, bacteriology, and immunity were created, and the cause and mode of transmission of the great diseases [16] which once decimated armies and cities--plague, cholera, malaria, typhoid, typhus, yellow fever, dysentery--as well as the scourges of tuberculosis, diphtheria, and lockjaw, have been determined. The importance of these discoveries for the future welfare and happiness of mankind can scarcely be overestimated. Sanitary science arose as an application of these discoveries, and since about 1875 a sanitary and hygienic revolution has taken place.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 217 LOUIS PASTEUR (1822-95)]