\DOC\WEB\98\06\pubed.txt Date sent: Tue, 4 Aug 1998 03:16:57 -0400 To: professor@tricon.net From: professor@tricon.net Subject: Clearinghouse:: 'State Boards, State Departments, Legislation, Policies, & Politics' The following was just posted to the Clearinghouse:: Posted by: Name: brucec76@ix.netcom.com Email: brucec76@ix.netcom.com Subject: \"Education & the State\" - Excerpts Time & date added: 1998-08-04 03:16 Message: ECC Subscribers, Below are the first group of excerpts from E.G. West\'s book. I\'m starting from the rear, with the section on American ed that was new to the third edition. But first, I would like to provide a quote from Sir Alfred North Whitehead. It\'s similar to one I\'ve used in the past from Principia Mathmatica, which he co-authored with Bertram Russell. I\'ve been asked for more precise references, which I could not provide. This quote is from his An Introduction to Mathematics, Home University Library (1911), p. 61. This one is more general, while the one from PM was specific to math. It reads: \"It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking...\" To that, Jacques Barzun added in his Teacher in America, \"This is particularly true in mathematics, where the ability to pass rapidly from our starting point to our goal is the result of previous thinking, just as muscular power is the result of previous practice.\" Back, now, to West. From \"Part Five, A Further Case Study of Public Intervention, Chapter Seventeen, The Political Economy of American Public School Legislation\": p. 295. \"A widespread belief seems to prevail that in this case [education] the effect of legislation has been much more than marginal; that without it very few educational resources would exist; and that, in consequence, society would be engulfed in crime, ignorance, and economic catastrophe. This view may be justified, but it is based more on intuition than on empirical verification.\" p. 297. Public School Legislation before 1850 \"After the 1776 Revolution, the first governmental intervention in education in New York State was an Act in 1795, \'for the encouragement of schools.\'....The Act was...discontinued (after five years). In 1804 another Act was passed providing...a permanent fund for the support of schools....The first distribution was not made until 1814. \"In 1811 five Commissioners were authorised (West is English) to report on a system for the establishment and organisation of Common Schools....It is interesting to compare the terms of the bill with the rationale of state aid as argued in the report. The Commissioners contended that while public education was not indispensable to a monarchial government, it was so to a republic; where every act of the government was an act of the people, it was absolutely necessary that people be enlightened. Education was also essential for prosperity. Deleted - quote from the report. \"For state aid to be completely justified, however, it was further necessary to establish in what respects the people were not already securing sufficient education for their children. The Commissioners acknowledged that schooling was indeed already widespread: \'In a free government, where political activity is established, and where the road to preferment is open to all, there is a natural stimulus to education; and accordingly we find it generally resorted to, unless some great local impediments interfere.\' \"Poverty was in some cases an impediment; but the biggest obstacle was bad geographic location: \'In populous cities, and the parts of the country thickly settled, schools are generally established by individual exertion. In these cases, the means of education are facilitated, as the expenses of schools are divided among a great many. It is in the remote and thinly populated parts of the State, where the inhabitants are scattered over a large extent, that education stands greatly in need of encouragement. The people here living far from each other, makes it difficult so to establish schools as to render them convenient or accessible to all. Every family therefore, must either educate its own children, or the children must forego the advantages of education.\' \"....it was largely a problem of \'filling in the gaps.\' The logic of such argument, of course, called mainly for discriminating and marginal government intervention. To this end three methods were available. First, the government could assist families, but only the needy ones, by way of educational subsidies. Second, it could subsidise the promoters of schools in the special areas where they were needed. Third, the government itself could set up schools, but only in \'gap\' areas. The Commissioners, without discussing possible alternatives, recommended that the inconveniences could generally best be remedied \'by the establishment of Common Schools, under the direction and patronage of the State.\' \" ................ \"Thus, in place of discrimination in favour of poor and thinly populated districts, a flat equality of treatment was decreed for all areas; the public monies were to be distributed on a per capita basis............,whether its population was dense or sparse. Beyond this, each town, at its own discretion, was to raise by tax, annually, as much money as it received from the school fund.\" NOTE: One can easily see that what was originally intended as a \"fill in the gaps\" program quickly escalated to a universal one. End first post. ------------------------------- Above I posted quotes from Jacques Barzun\'s \"Teacher in America,\" and E.G. West\'s \"Education and the State.\" Some had never heard of Barzun and requested more info. Barzun\'s 450 page book was first published in 1945. I\'m reading the Liberty Press edition, published in 1981. While the numeric page count is high, the pages are smaller than average, and the print font larger. The latter is a blessing with my half-century eyes. Barzun was a history prof at Columbia who, at the beginning of a year-long sabbatical, was asked to conduct an inquiry into America\'s educational centers in 1943. What he thought was going to be a quick two weeks wound up taking almost all of his leave time. While West analyzes how educational came to be \"free,\" \"universal,\" and \"compulsory,\" Barzun looks more at pedagogy. Like West\'s book, it is amazing to me that the arguments and concerns were the same 55 years ago as they are today. The only difference is the intensity and severity. I\'m about 1/3 through the book, and the two chapters, \"How to Write and Be Read,\" and \"How to Read and Be Right\" are worth the price of the book. Back to West, same section and chapter, p. 298. We left West describing how the five-man commission report expanded the concept of \"filling in the gaps\" to universal, state-funded education. This resulted in two quick laws, one in 1812 and the other in 1814. Moving to p.301: \"Two further details of this early legislation are worthy of observation. First, there seems to have been no announced intention of making education free. Pointing out that the public monies alone would never be adequate to maintain the Common Schools, the Commissioners of 1812 observed: \'But it is hardly to be imagined that the Legislature intended that the State should support the whole expense of so great an establishment. The object of the Legislature, as understood by the Commissioners, was to rouse the public attention to the important subject of education....to bring instruction within the reach and means of the humblest citizen.\' [Next paragraph deleted.] \"The second detail of the early legislation worth noticing is that religion was regarded as an integral part of school education. The Commissioners observed: \'Morality and religion are the foundation of all that is truly great and good; and consequently, of primary importance.\' The Bible, in Common Schools, was to be treated as more than a literary work. The Commissioners particularly recommended the practice of the New York Free Schools (the charitable establishments) in \'presuming the religious regard which is due to the sacred writings.\' \"............In the report of 1821 it was stated that the whole number of children between the ages of five and sixteen residing in the State was 380,000; and the total number of all ages taught during the year was 342,479. Thus, according to this evidence, schooling in the early nineteenth century was already almost universal without being compulsory. Moreover, although it was subsidised, it was not free except to the very poor.\" Skipping to p. 303, \"......In 1832, the Superintendent of Common Schools estimated that in the State as a whole there were annually instructed in private schools about 43,000 scholars -- compared with 512,000 in the Common Schools. By this time the Superintendents were expressing complete satifaction with the whole system. On the quality of education the Report of 1836 asserted: \'Under any view of the subject, it is reasonable to believe, that in the common schools, private schools and academies, the number of children actually receiving instruction is equal to the whole number between five and sixteen years of age.\' \"The fact that education could continue to be universal without being free and without compulsion seems to have been readily acknowledged......It was felt that too large a sum of public money distributed among Common Schools had no salutary effect. After a certain point the voluntary contribution of the inhabitants declined with almost uniform regularity, as the contributions from the public fund increased. NOTE: At this point, state funds equalled about half of the typical costs -BC More later, but this history really sticks a fork in some of the shibboleths we hear from the educators and politicians as to why \"free, compulsory\" ed is a state necessity. End second post. 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