received special grants. But it had become clear enough that national education required drastic reorganization; that the efforts for higher education must not be blighted by a technical definition of elementary education; that secondary and elementary and technical education must be coördinated, and that while a new centralization at Whitehall was necessary a new decentralization was equally essential, and that the position of the teacher must be placed on a higher So in 1899 the Education Department and the Science and Art Department were amalgamated in the Board of Education, to which new body was transferred the powers of the Charity Commissioners in relation to educational trusts.... But the creation of a real Board of Education . . . only achieved one aspect of reform. It was left to Mr. Balfour, in his great Act of 1902, to graft the educational system into the new (or rather revived) local government system, and create committees of the local authorities to take over not only the work of the School Boards, but also many duties, with more or less adequate rating powers, in relation to higher education. This Act was extended to London in 1903. In the 15 years since education once more passed into the hands of local authorities responsible for all the other social work of the district a new aspect has come over the whole subject. The great School Medical Service was introduced in 1907. A numerous class of skilled educational administrators with immense technical knowledge has grown up; a deep sense of educational responsibility in the local authorities has developed; the interrelation of education and public health has become obvious; the dependence of industry on education has become almost as obvious, and with this recognition the claims of higher education have advanced and have been recognized and especially in the regions of technical studies. In 1887 national education seemed at a standstill; real progress seemed impossible. Thirty years later we see, in the midst of the greatest war that Europe has known, progress with gigantic strides not only possible but indubitable.

During the progress of the Bill of 1902 the attention of the public was chiefly fixed on the clauses relating to religious teaching, and Mr. Balfour had to devise ways and means to meet the conflicting claims of the voluntary and the provided schools. Not only was attention riveted on this side of the case, but for ten years after, the Act suggesting legislation to amend these clauses occupied the attention of Parliament and roused the bitterest feeling among the leaders of various denominations. But all this while wider views were growing; the clauses in question in the vast majority of schools were seen in fact not to work unjustly, and the local authorities and educationists devoted themselves to the great difficulties of actual education standing in the way of a national system that should give to every child the means of freely developing his or her own peculiar gifts. The questions of child labor.

of child health, of adequate teaching, smaller classes, better schoolhouses, able and contented teachers, the coördination of grades of education, continuously occupied the attention of the Board of Education, of the local authorities, and of educationists at large. When the war came in 1914 it looked for a moment as if the labors of a decade were to be cast aside. But a trumpet call for an educational revolution came, and after more than two years of continuous effort a really great Minister of Education has been able to bring forward a measure of reform that crowns the efforts of men like Whitbread, Brougham, Macaulay, Russell, Forster, and certainly not least Mr. Balfour, who may claim to have created machinery that coördinated the ancient traditions of English education and made possible the revolution of to-day.

CHAPTER XXV

AWAKENING AN EDUCATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE UNITED STATES

THE Readings of this chapter have been selected to illustrate educational conditions and movements during the first halfcentury of American national existence, during the period of transition from colonial conditions, and before any clear educational consciousness on the part of the people had been awakened. The first group of selections describes early schools. The first of these (307) is a characterization of the schools of Boston during the period of about 1790 to 1815, by the celebrated teacher and textbook writer, Caleb Bingham. His description of the origin of the double elementary-school system of Boston is important, as is also that of the instruction and the textbooks used. In Rhode Island, the first and for long the only city to maintain schools was Providence, and selection 308 reproduces the first course of study (1800); selection 309 is a reprint of the early rules and regulations for the schools; and 310 is a memorial to the City Council from a very important society of the city praying for better schools, and giving facts as to attendance and costs.

Among the many charitable and philanthropic undertakings begun to found schools, the School Societies for day and infant schools, and the Lancastrian monitorial organizations, were the most important. Selection 311 is an appeal to the people of New York City by the newly founded Public School Society, and represents the beginnings of public education there. Selection 312 is from a Report made to the School Committee of Boston, stating the advantages of the monitorial plan of instruction over the older individual plan, and supplements the descriptions of the plan previously reproduced (297, 298). Selection 313 is the Report of the Boston School Committee which resulted in the creation of primary schools in that city. The selection which follows (314) describes the Boston elementary-school system of 1823, as reorganized early in the century and with the new infant schools added. This description is continued for the secondary schools

in 327.

After about 1825 the newly formed workingmen's associations began to take a prominent part in the agitation for schools, and from New York to Maryland they were particularly active. Many resolutions were adopted and reports made, of which 315, a Report of the Workingmen's Committee of Philadelphia, is reproduced as typical.

307. The Schools of Boston about 1790-1815

(Fowle, Wm. B., Memoir of Caleb Bingham. Barnard's American Journal of Education, vol. v, pp. 325-34)

Caleb Bingham (1757-1817) enjoyed an enviable reputation as a teacher in Boston during the last decade of the eighteenth century, and later became a notable textbook writer and publisher of schoolbooks. In this Memoir the writer gives an excellent picture of the schools of Boston, as reorganized by the School Committee in 1789, and as they continued for more than a quarter of a century.

(a) Schools for girls. The main object of Mr. Bingham in coming to Boston was to establish a school for girls; and the project was of the most promising description, for the town of Boston had even then become eminent for its wealth and intelligence, and, strange to say, was deficient in public and private schools for females. It certainly is a remarkable fact, that, while the girls of every town in the state were allowed and expected to attend the village schools, no public provision seems to have been made for their instruction in the metropolis, and men of talents do not seem to have met with any encouragement to open private schools for this all important class of children. The only schools in the city to which girls were admitted, were kept by the teachers of public schools, between the forenoon and afternoon sessions, and how insufficient this chance for an education was, may be gathered from the fact, that all the public teachers who opened private schools, were uneducated men, selected for their skill in penmanship and the elements of arithmetic. The schools were called writing schools; and, although reading and spelling were also taught in them, this instruction was only incidental, being carried on, we cannot say "attended to," while the teachers were making or mending pens, preparatory to the regular writing lesson.

This had probably been the state of things for more than a century, and at the advent of Mr. Bingham, there were only two such schools, while there were two others devoted exclusively to the study of Latin and Greek, although the pupils of these latter schools hardly numbered one tenth of the others. Of course, the proposal of Mr. Bingham to open a school, in which girls should be taught, not only writing

and arithmetic, but, reading, spelling and English grammar, met with a hearty reception, and his room, which was in State street, from which schools and dwelling houses had been banished nearly half a century, was soon filled with children of the most respectable families. There does not seem to have been any competition, and Mr. Bingham had the field to himself for at least four years before any movement was made to improve the old public system, or to extend the means of private instruction.

(b) The public writing schools. At that time, and for more than a century and a half, the public schools of Boston, and indeed, those of the state had been under the control and supervision of the selectmen, three to nine citizens, elected annually to manage the financial and other concerns of the several towns, without much, if any, regard to their literary qualifications. The selectmen of Boston were generally merchants, several of whom, at the time under consideration, had daughters or relatives in the school of Mr. Bingham. It was natural that the additional expense thus incurred, for they were taxed to support the public schools, from which their daughters were excluded, should lead them to inquire why such a preference was given to parents with boys; and the idea seemed, for the first time, to be started, that the prevailing system was not only imperfect, but evidently unfair. The simplest and most natural process would have been to open the schools to both sexes, as the spirit of the laws required, but this would have left the instruction in the hands of the incompetent writing masters, when a higher order of teachers was required; or it would have involved the dismission of all the writing masters, a bold step, which the committee dared not to hazard, because many citizens were opposed to any innovation, and the friends of the masters were so influential, that no change was practicable which did not provide for their support. After much consultation, therefore, there being some complaint of the insufficient number of the schools, the school committee proposed the only plan which seemed to secure the triple objectroom for the girls, employment for the old masters, and the introduction of others better qualified.

(c) Origin of the reading schools. The new plan was to institute three new schools, to be called READING SCHOOLS, in which reading, spelling, grammar and perhaps geography, should be taught by masters to be appointed; the two old writing schools to be continued, a new one established; and one of the Latin schools to be abolished. As no rooms were prepared, temporary ones were hired, so that the same pupils attended a writing school in one building half the day, and a reading school in a different building, at a considerable distance, and under a different and independent teacher, the other half. Each reading school had its corresponding writing school, and while the boys were in one school, the girls were in the other, alternating forenoon