Until the 1800’s the closest comparison to “public schools” were the short-term schools of the British colonies. These schools were in session for 10-12 weeks per year, providing basic instruction, charged a fee along with the collected community funding, and nearly exclusively preferred teaching white boys.
Hence schooling, costly and religious, was designed for the privileged few.
Parents were considered the primary educators, and families often relied on each other and churches for additional learning partnerships. Something about “it takes a village to raise a child…”
Around the mid 1800’s the “common schools” were born.
Common schools were the brain child of Horace Mann of Massachusetts, who was the founder and editor of The Common School Journal. Mann theorized that public education was the most effective method in converting the country’s disorderly youngsters into disciplined and obedient citizens. Common schools, reformers said, would prevent crime and poverty. Such schools, claimed Mann, needed to be: funded and controlled by an interested public, inclusive of children of diverse backgrounds, non-sectarian, and taught by well-trained professional teachers. Sounds familiar?
So it was that common schools were tuition free and paid for through local property taxes in exchange for a few state regulations. These schools welcomed both genders—of white children.
School was still only an option for select few.
There was a fear of foreign influence in the recently independent Americas. The Protestant Christians whom had sought religious freedom in this country were leery of the growing immigration of the Irish, which was bringing in an increasing presence of the Catholic Church. Added tension among the Protestants was conflicting beliefs on topics such as abolitionism, temperance, and women’s rights. This divided the Protestant churches into schisms.
This discrimination was not going unnoticed. In New York, were many poor families were Irish Catholic, a grumbling grew louder and louder about the anti-Catholic and anti-Irish attitude of the free public schools as these were almost all Protestant.
A third element in the quickly expanding cities was increasing popularity of secularism. This group was also anxious about the presence of Protestant teaching.
Bishop “Dagger” John Hughes loudly protested and demanded that the New York Public School Society would make city funds available for Catholic schools too. “These children deserve their own school,” Bishop Hughes firmly argued. He also announced that “We are unwilling to pay taxes for the purpose of destroying our religion in the minds of our children.”
In an attempt to take a neutral stance, New York legislators sided with secularism as a worldview and passed the Maclay Bill passed in 1842, which unified public schools under one board and prohibit(ed) sectarian teaching in NY Schools. So instead of making public education inclusive of all variations of faith, it simply resulted in exclusions of a new group—the believers of all sorts.
A couple of years later the (Protestant) Public School Society was no more, and the New York City Board of Education elected.
“Dagger John” was named archbishop and became the founder of the privately funded national system of Catholic schools. He had tired of fighting for Catholic public schools and decided to start his own. School choice was born.
In 1859 Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution in The Origin of Species. The philosophy was blasphemous for Catholics and Protestants alike, and quickly adopted as appropriate curriculum doctrine for secular public schools.
Speaking of which, let’s not forget about compulsory school laws, Part II in our series of history of public education.
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Mann
www.pbs.org/kcet/publicschool/roots_in_history/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hughes_(archbishop)
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…This article deals with the government-funded school provided for public education for the British public school see Independent school UK ..Public schools funded from tax revenue and most commonly administered by government or local government agencies as part of public education are the most common type of institutions in many nations. These laws were intended to give all children equal opportunity for an education but since most families could not afford tuition at private schools governments were forced to set up public schools.
“Until the 1800’s the closest comparison to “public schools” were the short-term schools of the British colonies.”
Sixty years prior to Horace Mann – Thomas Jefferson spent a considerable amount of time, money, and energy advocating for a ‘public’ school system in Virginia. The model he outlined is very similar to what would become public schools here in the U.S. (minus the compulsory attendance) and even more closely modeled in Canada.
But the ‘public schools’ of both Jefferson & Mann bore little resemblance to what we have today.
Nonetheless, quite enjoying this series.