IX

THE TOWNSHIP SYSTEM OF SCHOOL
GOVERNMENT

A movement to secure a larger unit than the district for rural communities was begun in 1855. The new unit was to be the township, but it was not until 1869 that an act was passed establishing the township system of school government.

THE TOWNSHIP THE SCHOOL UNIT

The township act was the most comprehensive piece of school legislation ever placed on the statute books up to that time and was considered to be in harmony with the special acts which made it possible for villages and cities to unify their school systems. According to this new system the town was to constitute a unit for purposes of school taxation and organization. The former independent districts were to be called sub-districts. The school clerks to be elected by the sub-districts were to constitute the town board of school directors.

Powers of the Town Board of School Directors. The town board of school directors had power to change the boundaries of districts, and to sell any schoolhouse or site which was no longer needed for school purposes. The board was given full power in regard to the management of all the schools, and the appointment and supervision of teachers.

The board was to select a secretary who was to have immediate charge of the schools. He was to organize and grade them and to visit each one at least twice every month and advise the teachers in regard to methods of instruction and government and make reports to the town board of supervisors and to the county superintendent of schools.

The school directors were to prepare a budget of expenses for each ensuing year, which was to be submitted to the electors of the town at the annual town meeting to be passed upon by them. All sums voted for school purposes by the town

meeting were to be assessed against all the property of the town.

The Fatal Weakness of the Law. But the act contained a fatal weakness. It declared that the legal voters of any town might at any town meeting vote upon the question of changing from the district to the "township school government," and that any town having adopted the township system of school government "might abolish the same at any town meeting." The voters, however, viewed the law with distrust. They declared that it was a curtailment of their rights, that too much power was lodged in the town board of school directors, and that the law would not lessen taxes.

Because of a lack of courage on the part of the legislature in refusing to withdraw from small educational units powers it had, during the early days of decentralization, delegated to them, the legislature of 1869 missed a big opportunity in improving country school organization and administration. Had the law been made mandatory, as its advocates urged it should have been, Wisconsin would have secured, for that early time, a fairly ideal system of school organization. There would have been a comparatively large unit of taxation and administration and all the schools of the town would have been under one board of education.

THE LAW REPEALED

The permissive feature, however, made the law ineffective. At the end of the first year after the passage of the act only four towns had adopted it, and within another year one of those voted to return to the independent district system. Several state superintendents urged the legislature to make the law mandatory, but no legislature acted upon this recommendation. By 1890 only nineteen towns were organized under the township system, and these were all in the northern part of the state. In most of these towns the new system was inaugurated because it enabled the voters to tax heavily unoccupied lands, the owners of which lived in distant parts of the state or outside of the state. After being carried on the statute books virtually as a dead letter law for nearly half a century it was finally repealed in 1911, thus again making the "independent school republics" supreme in the country school organization of the state.

X

COURSES OF STUDY PRESCRIBED BY LAW

COURSES OF STUDY PRESCRIBED BY SCHOOL TRUSTEES

The first school law passed by the territorial legislature of 1839 provided that the trustees of each district were to prescribe the course of study for the district school. The law of 1841 declared that the town school commissioners might give advice and directions to the trustees and teachers as to the government of the schools and the studies to be pursued therein. As a matter of fact the selection of subjects was left almost wholly to the teachers and the district boards, the town school commissioners rarely exercising the permissive power given them. Courses of study were rarely planned. When once the textbooks were decided upon they constituted the course of study.

THE STRUGGLE OVER FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING

The Law of 1848 and Foreign Language Teaching. It was naturally assumed that only the English language would be taught in the district schools. But naturally also much latitude was exercised by the school trustees and the teachers in the selection of subjects. It is probable that in the districts in which many of the residents were immigrants from foreign countries a desire was manifested to have the language most familiar to these people taught in addition to the English language. At any rate there seemed to have been an early demand for authority to teach an additional language in the public schools, as was evidenced by a law passed by the legislative assembly in 1848, which declared that whenever the majority of the inhabitants of a school district, at any regular meeting, should express a desire to have other languages taught in connection with the English language, it should be the privilege

of the district board to employ a teacher qualified for that purpose, and such district should have its regular share of public

moneys.

Evidence, however, has also been found indicating that immigrants from foreign countries were not responsible for the law of 1848. In the decade beginning with 1840 many young college men came to the territory from the eastern states, particularly the New England states and New York. Some of these men spent the first few years in the territory teaching school, and it is claimed that besides reading, writing and arithmetic, the standard subjects during those early years, these teachers included Latin in the course of study, and that it was probably this foreign language that was contemplated by the law.

Be that as it may, there is also no doubt that foreigners, particularly Germans and Norwegians, took advantage of the act of 1848 by introducing their language as an additional study in districts in which they constituted the majority of the voters.

General Course of Study Prescribed in 1849. The Commissioners appointed by the legislature of 1848 to codify the laws of the territory introduced a section into the school code in 1849 which for the first time, named the subjects to be taught in the district schools. The subjects enumerated were Orthography, Reading, Writing, English Grammar, Geography, and Arithmetic, but the district board was given authority to include such "other branches of education" as they might deem necessary and advisable.

Foreign Language Taught in Public Schools. The subjects included in the courses of study, as was thought, were the ones deemed essential to a good education. However, district boards were very lenient in construing the law of 1849, and foreign language instruction was continued in many schools, and in some schools some or all of the required subjects were taught in a foreign language.

The Amendment of 1852. But there was developing an increasing demand that the fundamental subjects should be taught only in the English language. In 1852 the legislature accordingly amended the law of 1849 by requiring that the

subjects named in the law must be taught in the English language.

District Boards Authorized Foreign Language Teaching. However, many district boards claimed that while the law required that the subjects enumerated should be taught in the English language, the provision authorizing them to have such other branches taught as they might determine gave them the power to include the teaching of a foreign language. Not only was a foreign language taught in many districts in addition to the other subjects in the course of study, but in many instances teachers could not be found who were sufficiently conversant with the English language to teach a public school, and this scarcity of English teachers was often made the excuse for teaching all of the subjects in a foreign language.

The Laws of 1867 and 1869. To meet this new condition the legislature of 1867 again amended the section relating to the course of study by adding the clause, "Provided, that no branch of study shall be taught in any other than the English language." This section clearly contemplated a school in which all instruction was to be given in the English language. It was held by the advocates of the amendment that the great object of the public school is to educate children so as to make them good citizens, and hence its instruction, discipline, and government must be of such a character as to prepare the people to discharge their duties as citizens of a country in which the language of the courts, the legislature, and the people is the English language.

New Certification Law. To secure the requisite ability on the part of the teachers to carry out this provision of the law, a certification measure was passed providing that "no person shall receive a certificate of any grade who does not write and speak the English language with facility and correctness." It was conceded that teachers who spoke other languages than the English language might be employed, and that their knowledge of, say, German or Norwegian, might be of use in teaching the children of these nationalities, but that every teacher must be able to speak, read and write English before he could be legally qualified to teach a public school.