Houston County, Minnesota - Chapter 29: Time Saved by the Graded School System - Division of Labor the Greatest Cause of Growth, 1882

Natural And National Rights Of Pupils

TIME SAVED BY THE GRADED SCHOOL SYSTEM - DIVISION OF LABOR THE GREATEST CAUSE OF GROWTH - LOCAL TAXATION IN DIFFERENT STATES - STATE SCHOOL SYSTEM KNOWS NO SECT - IGNORANCE INHERITED, THE COMMON FOE OF MANKIND - THE NATURAL AND NATIONAL RIGHTS OF PUPILS.

The organic elements that regularly combine to form governments, are similar to those organic elements that combine to form systems of mental culture. The primitive type of government is the family. This is the lowest organic form. If no improvement is ever made upon this primitive element, by other combinations of an artificial nature, human governments would never rise higher than the family. If society is to advance, this organism widens into the clan, and in like manner the clan into the village, and the village into the more dignified province, and the province into the State. All these artificial conditions above the family are the evidences of growth in pursuance of the laws of artificial life. In like manner the growth of intellectual organisms proceeds from the family instruction to the common school Here the artificial organism would cease to advance, and would remain stationary, as the clan in the organism of government, unless the common school should pass on to the wider and still higher unit of a graded system reaching upward to the high school. Now this was the condition of the common school in America during the Colonial state, and even down to the national organization. Soon after this period, the intellectual life of the nation began to be aroused, and within the last fifty years, the State common school has culminated in the higher organism of the high school, and it is of very recent date that the high school has reached up to and articulated in any State with the State University. On this continent, both Government and State schools started into life, freed from the domination of institutions grown effete from age and loss of vital energy. Here, both entered into wider combinations, reaching higher results than the ages of the past And yet, in educational organization we are far below the standard of perfection we shall attain in the rapidly advancing future. Not until our system of education has attained a national character as complete in its related articulation as the civil organization of towns, counties, and States in the national Union, can our educational institutions do the work required of this age. And in Minnesota, one of the leading states in- connected school organic relations, we have, as yet, some 4,000 common school districts, with an enrollment of some 100,- 000 scholars of different ages, from five to twentyone years; no higher in the scale than the common school, prior to the first high school on the American continent. These chaotic elements, outside of the system of graded schools now aided by the State, must be reduced to the same organized graded system as those that now articulate in their course with the State University.

Our complete organization as a State system for educational purposes, equal to the demands of the State, and required by the spirit of the age, will not be consummated until our four thousand school districts shall reap the full benefits of a graded system reaching to the high school course, articulating with some course in the State University, and a course in common with every other high school in the State. The system thus organized might be required to report to the Board of Kegents, as the legal head of the organization, of the State School system, not only the numerical statistics, but the number and standing of the classes in each of the high schools in the several studies of the uniform course, established by the Board of Regents, under the direction of the State Legislature. To this system must finally belong the certificate of standing and graduation, entitling the holder to enter the designated class in any grade of the State schools, named therein, whether High School or University. But this system is not and can never be a skeleton merely, made up of lifeless materials, as an anatomical specimen in the office of the student of the practice of the healing art. Within this organism there must preside the living teacher, bringing into this organic structure, not the debris of the effete systems of the past, not the mental exuvia of dwarfed intellectual powers of this or any former age, but the teacher inspired by nature to feel and appreciate her methods, and ever moved by her divine afflatus.

Every living organism has its own laws of growth; and the one we have under consideration may in its most important feature be compared to the growth of the forest tree. In its earlier years the forest tree strikes its roots deep into the earth and matures its growing rootlets, the support of its future trunk, to stand against the storms and winds to which it is at all times exposed. When fully rooted in the ground, with a trunk matured by the growth of years, it puts forth its infant branches and leaflets, suited to its immature but maturing nature; finally it gives evidence of stalwart powers, and now its widespreading top towers aloft among its compeers rearing its head high among the loftiest denizens of the woods. In like manner is the growth of the maturing State school organism. In the common school, the foundation is laid for the rising structure, but here is no branches, no fruitage. It seems in its early infancy to put forth no branches, but is simply taking hold of the elements below on which its inner life and growth depends. As the system rises, the underlying laws of life come forth in the principles of invention, manufacturing, engraving, and designing, enriching every branch of intellectual and professional industry, and beautifying every field of human culture. These varied results are all in the law of growth in the organism of State schools carried on above the common schools to the University course. The higher the course the more beneficial the results to the industries of the world, whether those industries are intellectual or purely physical, cater only to the demands of wealth, or tend to subserve the modest demands of the humblest citizen.

The only criticism that can reach the question now under consideration, is whether the graded organization tends to produce the results to which' we have referred. The law relating to the division of labor has especially 'operated in the graded system of State schools. Under its operation,it is claimed, by good judges, that eight years of school life, from five to twenty-one, has been saved to the pupils of the present generation, over those of the ungraded schools ante-dating the last fifty years. By the operation of this law, in one generation, the saving of time, on the enrollments of State schools in the graded systems of the northern States of the American Union, would be enormous. For the State of Minnesota alone, on the enrollment of 180,000, the aggregate years of time saved would exceed a million! The time saved on the enrollment of the schools of the different States, under the operation of this law would exceed over twenty million years!

To the division of labor is due the wonderful facility with which modern business associations have laid their hands upon every branch of industrial pursuits, and bestowed upon the world the comforts of life. Introduced into our system of education it produces results as astonishing as the advent of the spinning Jenny in the manufacture of cloth. As the raw material from the cottonfield of the planter, passing, by gradation, through the unskilled hands of the ordinary laborer to the more perfect process of improved machinery, secure additional value in a constantly increasing ratio; so the graded system of intellectual culture, from the Primary to the High School, and thence to the University, adds increased lustre and value to the mental development, in a ratio commensurate with the increased skill of the memtal operator.

The law of growth in State schools was clearly announced by Horace Mann, when he applied to this system the law governing hydraulics, that no stream could rise above its fountain. The common school could not produce a scholarship above its own curriculum. The high school was a grade above, and as important in the State system as the elevated fountain head of the living stream. This law of growth makes the system at once the most natural, the most economical, and certainly the most popular. These several elements might be illustrated, but the reader can easily imagine them at his leisure. As to the last, however, suffer an illustration. In Minnesota, for the school year ending August 21, 1880, according to the report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, there were enrolled, one hundred and eighty thousand, two hundred and fifty -eight scholars in the State schools, while all others embracing kindergartens, private schools, parochial schools, of all sects and all denominations, had an attendance at the same time of only two thousand four hundred and twenty-eight; and to meet all possible omissions, if we allow double this number, there is less than three per cent, of the enrollment in the State school. This ratio will be found to hold good, at least, throughput all the Northern States of the American Union. These State schools then, are not unpopular in comparison with the schools of a private and opposite character. Nor is it owing altogether to the important fact, that State schools are free, that they are more popular than schools of an opposite character; for these State schools are a tax upon the property of the people, and yet a tax most cheerfully borne, in consequence of their superior excellence and importance.

The State school, if not already, can be so graded, that each scholar can have the advantage of superior special instruction far better adapted to the studies through which he desires to pass, than similar instruction can be had in ungraded schools of any character whatever. In this respect the State system is without a rival. It has the power to introduce such changes as may meet all the demands of the State and all the claims of the learner.

The State school knows no sect, no party, no privileged class, and no special favorites; the high, the low, the rich, and the poor, the home and foreign-born, black or white, are all equal at this altar. The child of the ruler and the ruled are here equal. The son of the Governor, the woodsawyer, and the hod-carrier, here meet on one level, and alike contend for ranks, and alike expect the honors due to superior merit, the reward of intellectual culture. But, aside from the republican character of the State school system, the system is a State necessity. Without the required State culture, under its control, the State must cease to exist as an organism for the promotion of human happiness, or the protection of human rights, and its people, though once cultured and refined, must certainly return to barbarism and savage life. There can be no compromise in the warfare agrinst inherited ignorance. Under all governments the statute of limitations closes over the subject at twenty-one years; so that during the minority of the race, must this warfare be waged by the government without truce. No peace can ever be proclaimed in this war, until the child shall inherit the matured wisdom, instead of the primal ignorance of the ancestor.

The State School system, in our government, is from the necessity of the case, National. No State can enforce its systam beyond the limits of its own territory. And unless the nation enforce its own uniform system, the conflict between jurisdictions could never be determined. No homogeneous system could ever be enforced. As the graded system of State schools has now reached the period in its history which corresponds to the colonial history of the national organization, it must here fail, as did the colonial system of government, to fully meet the demands of the people. And what was it, let us consider, that led the people in the organization of the national government, "to form a more perfect union?" Had it then become necessary to take this step, that "justice" might be established, domestic tranquility insured, the common defense made more efficient, the general welfare promoted, and the blessings of liberty better secured to themselves and their posterity, that the fathers of the government should think it necessary to form a more perfect union." Why the necessity of a more perfect union? Were our fathers in fear of a domestic or foreign foe, that had manifested his power in their immediate presence, threatening to jeopardize or destroy their domestic tranquility? Was this foe an hereditary enemy, who might at long intervals of time invade their territory, and endanger the liberties of this people? And for this reason did they demand a more perfect union? And does not this reason now exist in still greater force for the formation of a still more perfect union in our system of State - schools? Our fathers were moved by the most natural of all reasons, by this law of self-defense. They were attacked by a power too great to be successfully resisted in their colonial or unorganized state. The fear of a destruction of the several colonies without a more perfect union drove them to this alternative. It was union and the hope of freedom, against disunion and the fear of death, that cemented the national government. And this was an external organism, the temple in which the spirit of freedom should preside, and in which her worshippers should enjoy not only domestic but national tranquility. Now, should it be manifest to the world, that the soul and spirit, the very life of this temple, erected to freedom, is similarly threatened, shoal d not be the same cause that operated in the erection of the temple itself, operate in the protection of its sacred fires, its soul and spirit? It would seem to require no admonition to move a nation in the direction of its highest hopes, the protection of its inner life.

And what is this enemy, and where is the power able to destroy both the temple and the spirit of freedom? And why should State Education take upon itself any advanced position other than its present independent organic elements? In the face of what enemy should it now be claimed we should attempt to change front, and "form a more perfect union to insure domestic tranquility, and promote the general welfare," to the end that we may the better secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity ? That potent foe to our free institutions, to which we are now brought face to face, is human ignorance, the natural hereditary foe to every form of enlightened free government. This hereditary enemy is now homesteaded upon our soil. This enemy, in the language of the declaration made by the colonies against their hereditary foe, this enemy to our government, has kept among us a standing army of illiterates, who can neither read nor write, but are armed with the ballot, more powerful than the sword, ready to strike the most deadly blow at human freedom; he has cut off and almost entirely destroyed our trade between states of the same government; has imposed a tax apyn us without our consent, most grievous to be borne; he has quite abolished the free system of United States laws in several of our States; he has established in many sections, arbitrary tribunals, excluding the subject from the right of trial by jury, and enlarged the powers of his despotic rule, endangering the lives of peaceable citizens; he has alienated government of one section, by declaring the inhabitants, aliens and enemies to his supposed hereditary right; he has excited domestic insurrections amongst us; he has endeavored to destroy the peace and harmony of our people by bringing his despotic ignorance of our constitutions into conflict with the freedom and purity of our elections; he has raised up advocates to his cause who have openly declared that our system of State Education, on which our government rests, is a failure*; he has spared no age, no sex, no portion of our country, but has, with his ignominious minions, afflicted the North and the South, the East and the West, the rich and the poor, the black and the white; an enemy alike to the people of every section of the government, from Maine to California, from Minnesota to Louisiana. Such an inexorable enemy to government and the domestic tranquility of all good citizens deserves the opprobrium due only to the Prince of Darkness, against whom eternal war should be waged; and for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we should, as did our fathers, mutually pledge to each other, as citizens af the free States of America, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

We have thus far considered the State School system in some of its organic elements, and the nature, tendency, and necessary union of these elements; first in States, and finally for the formation of a more perfect union, that they may be united in one national organization under the control of one sovereign will. The mode in which these unorganized elements shall come into union and harmony with themselves, and constitute the true inner life and soul of the American Union, is left for the consideration of those whose special duty it is to devote their best energies to the promotion of the welfare of the Nation, and by statesman-like forethought provide for the domestic, social, civil, intellectual, and industrial progress of the rapidly accumulating millions who are soon to swarm upon the American Continent. We see truly that

But we must be allowed, in a word, to state the results which we hope to see accomplished, before the jostling fragments, which are yet plastic and warm, shall have attained a temperament not easily fused and "rounded" into oue homogeneous national system, rising in the several States from the kindergarten to the University, and from the State Universities through all orders of specialties demanded by the widening industries and growing demands of a progressive age. And in this direction we cannot fail to see that the national government must so mold its intellectual systems that the state and national curricula shall be uniform throughout the States and territories, so that a class standing of every pupil, properly certified, shall be equally good for a like class standing in every portion of the Government to which he may desire to remove. America will then be ready to celebrate her final independence, the inalienable right of American youth, as having a standing limited by law in her state and national systems of eduation, entitling them to rank everywhere with associates and compeers on the same plain; when in no case, shall these rights be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State or any authority thereof, on account of race, color, or previous condition of scholarship, secular or sectaria n, till the same shall forever find the most ample protection under the broad banner of national and natural rights, common alike to all, in the ever widening republic of letters.