PROGRAM OF STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, 1843-44 (continued)

332. The Michigan System of Public Instruction

(Tappan, Henry P., "Report to the Regents of the University of Michigan, 1856"; in Report of Superintendent of Public Instruction, Michigan, 1855-56-57, pp. 155-84)

The report of President Tappan to his Board of Regents, from which the following extract is taken, describes the system of public instruction in Michigan, as it had then been developed and conceived, and shows the unity of the state school system from the primary school to the university.

An entire system of public education comprises three grades and can comprise but three grades: the primary, the intermediate, and the university. . . . The primary school comes first. . . . All human learning begins with the alphabet.

The second grade occupies the period of youth—of adolescence or growth. This is the period when the foundations of knowledge and character can be most amply and securely laid. . . .

But let it be remembered that the intermediate grade embraces only the apprenticeship of the scholar. . . . Hence the necessity of universities, as the highest form of educational institutions. . . .

The highest institutions are necessary to supply the proper standard of education; to raise up instructors of the proper qualifications; to define the principles and methods of education. . . .

Nothing is more evident than that the three grades of education the primary, the intermediate, the university are all alike necessary. The one cannot exist, in perfection, without the others; they imply one another. . . .

It is to the honor of Michigan that she has conceived of a complete system of public education running through the three grades we have discussed above. Nor do these grades exist merely in name. She has established the primary grade of schools and made them well-nigh free. She has laid the foundation of an institution which admits of being expanded to a true university. In former days she had her "branches" belonging to the intermediate grade; and now we see rising up those invaluable institutions, the "union schools," belonging to the same grade. We say not that legislation has adequately reached the entire system, or made provision for its development; but the idea of the entire system is abroad among the people; it has not been absent from our legislation; it has appeared in the reports of superintendents and visitors, and in other documents; and the people, at this moment, unaided by any special appropriation, are organizing above the district school, the best schools of the intermediate grade, less than a college, which have yet existed among us; and are erecting large, tasteful, and convenient edifices for their accommodation. These ideas, spontaneously working in the minds of the people, these spontaneous efforts to create schools of a higher grade, must determine future legislation and indicate the grand point to which our educational development is tending.

CHAPTER XXVII

EDUCATION BECOMES A NATIONAL TOOL

THE Readings in this chapter relate to the spread of the statecontrol-of-education idea among the nations of the earth; the scientific advances of the nineteenth century; the Industrial Revolution; and the use made by nations of education for national ends.

The first Reading (333) reproduces those parts of the Swiss Federal Constitution which relate to the maintenance of education, and the relations of churches and religious orders thereto education in Switzerland, as in the United States, being left to the twenty-two different cantons to control. This is a type of what modern constitutions have ordered that governments provide, though the best examples of such constitutional provisions are found in new lands, and not among the older nations of Europe. The second Reading (334) reproduces the basic documents for Japanese education, from which both the character and the state purpose of the school system may easily be inferred. The third (335) deals with the remarkable transformation which has taken place since the beginning of the twentieth century in China. The fourth (336) is an extract from one of the celebrated Annual Reports of Horace Mann, still readable and pertinent, as to the relation between the promotion of education and the advancement of the national welfare.

The three Readings which follow the above relate to the wonderful advancement of science, invention, and intercommunication which have characterized the nineteenth century. The first (337) is an extract from Huxley's celebrated Essay; the second (338) gives a good statement as to why the human inventive faculty lay dormant for so long, and then flowered so wonderfully; and the third (339) describes a lack of world intercourse a century ago that seems almost unbelievable to-day.

The three Readings which follow deal with the use of education to promote nationality. The first (340) is an excellent statement of the influence of the struggle for nationality on educational practice; the second (341) reveals how intelligently the French have

used education as a constructive national tool; while the third (342) is a good description of the narrowly-national ends which the Germans have made it serve.

The final Reading of the chapter (343) relates to the work of the American teacher in the Philippines, and the transformation which has been effected there during the past quarter of a century.

333. The Swiss Constitution on Education and Religious

Freedom

(Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation, 1874)

In Readings 260 and 261 the early constitutional mandates relating to education in two American States were given, and in the following a similar extract from the Swiss Constitution is reproduced.

In the Name of Almighty God

The Swiss Confederation, desiring to confirm the allegiance of the Confederates, to maintain and to promote the unity, strength, and honor of the Swiss nation, has adopted the Federal Constitution following:

CHAPTER I. GENERAL PROVISIONS

ART. 27. The Confederation has the right to establish, besides the existing Polytechnic School, a Federal University and other institutions of higher instruction, or to subsidize institutions of such nature.

The Cantons provide for primary instruction, which shall be sufficient, and shall be placed exclusively under the direction of the secular authority. It is compulsory and, in the public schools, free.

The public schools shall be such that they may be frequented by the adherents of all religious sects, without any offense to their freedom of conscience or of belief.

The Confederation shall take the necessary measures against such Cantons as shall not fulfill these duties.

ART. 50. The free exercise of religious worship is guaranteed within the limits compatible with public order and good morals.

The Cantons and the Confederation may take suitable measures for the preservation of public order and of peace between the members of different religious bodies, and also against encroachments of ecclesiastical authorities upon the rights of citizens and of the State.

Contests in public and private law, which arise out of the formation or the division of religious bodies, may be brought by appeal before the competent federal authorities.

No bishopric shall be created upon Swiss territory without the consent of the Confederation.