Today’s Almanac-May 18, 2010--Part II
On May 18, 1852 Massachusetts became the first state to require education for all children. Although the Puritans in 1647 established rules that every town maintain a school and levying fines on parents who failed to enroll children, the law was never really enforced and the Bay State, like others, came to rely on a patchwork of private academies and tutors to serve the needs of its children. With a high social value placed on reading, writing and ability to do basic “ciphers” Massachusetts still had the highest literacy rate among the states. But the influx of poor, largely Irish and Catholic immigrants in the 1840’s alarmed authorities in two ways. First, they feared that an “ignorant rabble” would be a threat to domestic tranquility and republican virtue. Second, they feared the parochial schools being established by Catholics would entrench an “alien religion” in their midst. Unitarian social reformer Horace Mann, who was made the first Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education in 1837, retired from a successful political career and dedicated himself to working tirelessly to establish a Common School system. He visited every existing school in the state, established a Normal School system for the training of teachers, instituted reforms where he could, opposed corporal punishment, and constantly wrote and lectured on the need for compulsory public education. In his magazine The Common School Journal he laid out six principles: that the public should no longer remain ignorant; that such education should be paid for, controlled, and sustained by the public; that education best be provided in schools that embrace children from a variety of backgrounds; that education must be non-sectarian; that students should be taught by the spirit, methods, and discipline of a free society; and that instruction be provided by well-trained, professional teachers. In 1843 he toured Europe at his own expense to inspect educational developments there. He became enthusiastic for the Prussian System of mandatory public education. Although Mann was elected to Congress, taking the seat vacated by the death of John Quincy Adams in 1848, he remained a steadfast booster of public education. Despite being narrowly defeated for Governor in 1852, Mann was able to finally see his Common School program adopted by the Commonwealth. He then left to assume the presidency of Antioch College in Ohio, where he served until his death in 1859. He did live to see his idea spread. New York adopted the system in 1854 and it spread slowly over Northern, Mid Western, and Western states. Resistance was hardest in the South which argued that children were necessary for labor on the farm, and later in the growing textile industry. After the Civil War Southern states were also reluctant to adopt a system that would require them to educate Black children. None the less, by 1919 all states had adopted compulsory education rules. The new public education systems never did completely supplant either Catholic parochial schools or private academies. Public schools in the 19th Century often followed Mann’s dream of being “non-sectarian” only in that they were not Catholic. They often acted as a broad transmitter of the dominant Protestant culture which was enshrined in staple texts like McGuffey’s Readers and in regular prayer. The tensions between these public and private systems are still being played out in controversies over school funding and the right wing ideological movement to replace “government schools.” If Mann failed to establish universal public education, at least compulsory education laws required that all children get some form of instruction. That made the United States until the mid 20th Century the most universally literate society the world had ever known.