Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

tem of public schools and the bringing up of the schools in weak sections to a general standard; (4) the creation of the position of assistant State superintendent of education at a salary of $1,500.

In his report for 1901, covering the operations of the school system from July, 1900, to July, 1901, the following statistics appear: The average annual salaries for teachers were $188.91 for white and $80.30 for negroes; in Charleston County the annual average salary was $504.78 for white and $196.22 for colored. The average length of school term was, for white, 21.17 weeks; for negroes, 14.12 weeks. The enrollment was 127,230 white and 157,976 colored, with 94,548 average attendance for white and 113,566 for negroes. The total school population of the State in 1900 was 560,773, of whom 50 per cent were enrolled and 37 per cent in average attendance. The superintendent declares: "Allowing for students in colleges and private schools, and for all boys and girls over 16 years of age, we still should be alarmed at the number of children who don't attend school." He urges a compulsory education law which should require every child between the ages of 8 and 12 to attend school at least 12 weeks in the year. Forty-four summer schools for teachers were held, namely, for white, 1 State and 36 county schools; for negroes, 1 State and 6 local schools. The enrollment of whites for 1891 was 1,729. "Nearly every white teacher in the State has attended a summer school for teachers." Manua! training, school physics, drawing, and kindergarten methods were among the subjects treated in these schools. The venerable Doctor Carlisle, formerly president of Wofford College, gave in six lectures personal reminiscences of men and conditions in South Carolina before the war. Dr. William H. B. Burnham, of Clark University, lectured on pedagogics. An effort was made to induce the county superintendents to attend these schools. A fatal weakness in the administrative system is the appointment of local trustees by the county boards of education every two years, with a probability of an entire change of policy. The superintendent returns again to the discussion of the county boards of education and the county superintendency, repeating his recommendations that the county superintendents should be appointed by the county boards. "By the law of 1900 schoolbooks are sold to the children at the lowest price at which the books are sold anywhere outside of the State to dealers at wholesale." Several important meetings of teachers of different departments of the school system have been held during the year. The recommendations of the superintendent are: (1) the school fund should be increased; (2) immediate provision should be made that teachers' salaries shall in every district be paid, without discount; (3) terms of members of boards of school trustees should expire at different times; (4) county boards of education should be composed of five members elected by the people, the term of only one member to expire in any one year; (5) members of school and college boards should not by reason of such service be disqualified to hold office; (6) the office of county superintendent of education as now established should be abolished. The county boards should be charged with the responsibility of employing a county superintendent as supervisor of schools for the county, and fixing his salary. (7) The salaries of the present county superintendents should be increased. (8) The law in regard to teachers' certificates should be changed. (9) An ap propriation of $200 should be made to enable the State superintendent to secure the services of an architect in designing plans for suitable schoolhouses for the country and for small towns. (10) Normal scholarships for teachers, two from each county, of the value of $150 each, should be provided in the normal department of the South Carolina College. (11) School districts should be authorized to vote upon themselves bonds for the erection of suitable schoolED 1904 M- -67

houses. (12) A law should be enacted to require, with compulsory penalties, that all children between the ages of 8 and 12 years should attend school each year. (13) The compensation for clerical services and necessary assistants in the office of the State superintendent of education should be $1,200 for the chief clerk and $600 for the stenographer and typewriter.

With this picture of the system of public education supported by the State of South Carolina this essay closes. It is unnecessary to multiply the details of the different departments. It is, however, evident, that at the close of the century the State of South Carolina had encountered the same problem which the State of Massachusetts was called to face during the decade previous to the year 1900. These two States, so different in some respects and so unlike from the beginning in other tendencies, had resembled each other in their stubborn attachment to the idea of local school government. In both these States, in Massachusetts from the beginning and in South Carolina from the beginning of its present system of public instruction, the emphasis of administration and operation has been on the school district. Horace Mann declared that the law incorporating the single school district in the New England town was the most mischievous ever placed on the statute book relating to education. Only within the past twenty years has the State of Massachusetts been thoroughly awakened to the fact that under the policy of supporting public schools chiefly by local taxation, with little help from the State, an increasing number of its 350 towns were being left in a condition really less favorable to educational success than half a century ago. By the great effort of a succession of State superintendents and almost a campaign from town to town, the State is now attempting, without imposing a considerable levy for general distribution, to assist the smaller towns by special appropriations and to place them under a vigorous local supervision. All this is comparatively easy in a State with the great wealth of Massachusetts, whose people for two hundred and seventy-five years have been trained in the policy of universal education. In South Carolina, with its various disadvantages of sparseness of population, preponderance of colored citizens, and only the recent dawn of financial prosperity and progress, the problem is far more difficult. But since the administration of Superintendent Thompson, who organized the system from 1876 to 1880, no superintendent has done more valuable service than Mr. John J. McMahan, by placing before the legislature and people the actual condition resulting from the same policy, and predicting the consequences of persistence in the isolated method of educating the people.

But here, as in every Southern State, the interesting fact has been developed that whatever may be the changes of political policy, through whatever periodical excitements the mass of voting population may be carried, and however unpropitious and discouraging may be occasional phases of legislation, yet the mass of the people has set its heart on the education of its whole population for good American citizenship. With this present determination and the steady growth in this direction the ancient Commonwealth of South Carolina has no reason for despondency, but may look forward to the gradual reform of the weak side of her educational system and to the greatly desired harmony of races and classes in a united American citizenship.

GEORGIA.

The State of Georgia may honestly claim the honor of being the only one among the 15 Southern States that began its life as a colony by the prohibition of negro slavery and the sale of intoxicating liquors, and that signalized the

opening of its career as a State of the American Union by an educational policy which, if persisted in, would have realized the ideal of Thomas Jefferson in the establishment of the people's common school. How this great and financially able and progressive Southern State should have found itself in 1850 with 25 per cent of its 213,903 white adults unable to read and write; in 1860 with 18 per cent in the same condition and practically with no organized common school system on the ground; in 1890, after twenty years of common schools, the fifth in the Union from the bottom in general illiteracy (38 per cent), with 400,000 of its 600,000 colored people (67 per cent) in mental darkness; in 1898 engaged in a hand-to-hand conflict in its legislature to prevent the reduction of half its appropriation of $1,000,000 for public education, and only succeeding in a compromise securing a reduction of $250,000; is a problem which has always been in controversy between the friends and enemies of the common schools in the State.

The details of the rise and slow growth of the common school idea in Georgia up to the period of the outbreak of the civil war are set forth in Chapter VII of the Report of the United States Commissioner of Education for 1899-1900, relating to the history of education in the different Southern States from the year 1830 until the outbreak of the war. An attempt, after the close of the civil war, to establish and support a system of common schools for the white population of Georgia only lasted for two years and left the State indebted to the teachers and officials of the system in the sum of $300,000. In the seventeen years from 1872, the real beginning of the present system of common schools, until 1889 it is estimated that the State expended $6,070,038 for rural and $1,686,007 for city and village schools, the grand total being $8,756,623. For the forty-three years previous to 1860 it is estimated that the entire expenditure for poor white people's schooling was $1,290,000, in annual contributions such as $18,556, $12,000, and at the last $40,000 for the entire tuition of children of this sort. In short, since the establishment of its constitution, the State of Georgia had expended for common schools inside of $10,046,623 by 1889. From 1865 to 1889 it is estimated that the expenditure for colored common schools, 250,000 children, was $2,800,000. Until 1860 the education of the white people of Georgia, save the indigent poor, who received three years' tuition at public expense, and the few university students, was virtually in the hands of the different churches of the State. The colleges and academies (and numbers of the latter assumed the college title) were almost exclusively denominational. Their presidents and professors were clergymen, and almost the entire management was in the hands of church members. This type of education gave the tone largely to the entire educational life and spirit of the people, and was more than any other influence responsible for the educational policy of the Commonwealth; it was also responsible for the fact that up to 1860 the same policy as reflected in the legislature left this great old Commonwealth at the foot of the ladder of white illiteracy.

In the year 1856, after a visit of Dr. Henry Barnard, of Connecticut, to the South in the interest of public schools, a movement was made for the establishment of a system of education, open alike to rich and poor, supported by public tax, State and local, and administered by district, county, and State commissioners. The plan met with favor in the legislature, as did a similar plan in 1854, but failed to secure the needed vote. In connection with this agitation the Hon. A. II. Stiles, speaker of the house, descended from the chair and took the floor with this impassioned appeal:

Let us by the passage of this bill inaugurate a system of common schools in Georgia. In the name and in behalf of 150,000 Georgians between 5 and 20 years of age who are growing up in ignorance of the duties and relations of

civilized life I demand it. In the name of 42,000 of my countrymen over the age of 20 years who are daily hurrying to the grave without being able to read for themselves the way to eternal life; in the name and in behalf of the whole State, which we proudly call the Empire State of the South, I demand it.

"Most of the States of the South," writes Dr. Gustavus J. Orr, “in adopting new constitutions under the reconstruction acts incorporated into the fundamental law the public school policy." Georgia was no exception to the rule. In 1868, while the State was yet under the reconstruction government, the new constitution included in the most complete manner the American idea of a scheme of universal education under the direction of the whole people as represented in their political organization. This provision reads as follows;

ARTICLE VI.-Education.

SECTION 1. The general assembly, at its first session after the adoption of this constitution, shall provide a thorough system of general education, to be forever free to all children of the State, the expense of which shall be provided for by taxation or otherwise.

SEC. 2. The office of State school commissioner is hereby created. He shall be appointed by the governor, with the consent of the senate, and shall hold his office for the same term as the governor. The general assembly shall provide for the said commissioner a competent salary and necessary clerks. He shall keep his office at the seat of government.

SEC. 3. The poll tax allowed by this constitution, any educational fund now belonging to this State, except the endowment of any debt due to the State university, or that may hereafter be obtained in any way, a special tax on shows and exhibitions and on the sale of spirituous and malt liquors, which the general assembly is hereby authorized to assess, and the proceeds from the commutation for militia service, are hereby set apart and devoted to the support of common schools. And if the provisions herein made shall at any time prove insufficient the general assembly shall have power to levy such general tax upon the property of the State as may be necessary for the support of said school system. And there shall be established, as soon as practicable, one or more common schools in each school district in this State.

But it was two years later that the legislature, still under the same political administration, Governor Bullock being chief executive, passed the first free school law ever recorded in the statute books of Georgia. This law of 1870 owed its inception, and largely its enactment, to the persistent labors of the first State teachers' association. This body, not large in numbers, but strong in weight of character and influential advocacy of the common school, held a meeting at the city of Atlanta, just rising from its destruction, in August, 1869. A committee chosen to report upon a school system for the State reported to a subsequent meeting at the city of Macon. This committee was composed of Gustavus J. Orr; Bernard Mallon, the city superintendent of the public schools of Savannah; John M. Bonnell, president of the Wesleyan Female College; Martin V. Calvin, a representative to the legislature from Richmond County and a rising writer and speaker on popular education, and David W. Lewis, of the North Georgia Agricultural College at Dahlonega, and by that position a representative of the State university system of the Commonwealth.

A paper prepared by Mr. Calvin advocated not only a system of common schools for both races, but graded and State normal schools. In this he had been anticipated by Hon. William II. Stiles in 1856. Mr. Calvin still " lingered shivering on the brink" of the new departure, the education of the freedmen, and suggested that the colored race should be schooled by the appropriation of their own poll tax and other taxes and such sums as the people might see fit to donate. This paper was placed in the hands of the committee, and its ideas were largely indorsed in the report written by Doctor Orr. The report ran the gauntlet of another committee, on which we find the names of President LeRoy Broun, Superintendent Mallon, and others. Thus edited it was

brought before the State Teachers' Association, assembled at Macon several months later, which appointed a committee to put it in the form of a bill and urge it upon the legislature. A political agitation in that body suspended operations for a time, but eventually the results of this action of the teachers' association appeared in the public school act of 1870. By this law the governor, attorney-general, secretary of state, and State school commissioner were declared the Georgia State board of education and the State commissioner the chief executive official. This body was to hold all public school funds, select school text-books, and annually report to the legislature. The State commissioner was to be appointed by the governor, with the consent of the sennte. The commissioner, as the representative of the board, was authorized to prepare rules for the organization and management of the public schools, to visit the different senatorial districts in the interest of education, to distribute all school funds on the basis of the school population, and to report to the legislature. His salary was fixed at $2,500 and traveling and other official expenses, and $1,200 was voted for the salary of one clerk.

A county board of education, composed of one member from each military district and one for each ward of a city and incorporated town, was to be elected by popular vote in each county, to hold office for two years from January 1, 1871. It was authorized to divide the county into school districts and take the general charge over city and graded schools. Each school should be composed of 30 pupils. A system of ambulatory schools was suggested, by which the same teachers could "keep school" in a region surrounding their central schoolhouse. The board was the custodian of all school property. It could establish graded schools, teaching subjects in addition to the common school curriculum-orthography, reading, writing, arithmetic, English grammar, and geography-and could examine candidates for teachers according to a programme made out by the State commissioner of education. The compensation of each member was $3 per day. The trustees of the school districts were to be elected by the people after three years. They could hire teachers from the certified list, visit schools, supervise the building, hiring, and furnishing of schoolhouses, and exercise the usual functions of local school trustees. The white and colored children were to be educated in separate buildings, but afforded the same facilities for instruction. The trustees were required to report to the county commissioners. All school property was exempt from taxation. Thirty-five pupils was the minimum number which warranted opening a school. All graded and high schools should be free of tuition. Evening schools should be established for youths above 14 years of age. The schools should remain in session at least three months in the year, a district failing in this respect not receiving State aid.

The support of the system was to come from (1) a poll tax of $1 upon each voter; (2) the tax on shows and exhibitions; (3) a tax levied on the sales of liquors; (4) the tax for exemption from military service; (5) all State educational funds not belonging to the university; (6) one-half the net earnings of the Western and Atlantic Railroad, owned and operated by the State.

Under the authority of this act of October 13, 1870, an organization was effected. Gen. J. H. Lewis was appointed school commissioner by Governor Bullock and schools opened generally. But the first essay, as usual, was a leap in the dark. At the time of the opening of the schools there was not more than $75,000 of school money in the treasury of the State. An act of July 28, 1870, had opened the door of the treasury to drafts on the school fund. To secure the indebtedness to the school fund arising from the drafts made upon it under this act, a deposit of bonds of the State amounting to $268,000 was made August 6, 1870, nearly a year before the opening of the schools; no other deposit

« AnteriorContinuar »