PENNSYLVANIA. THE PUBLIC EDUCATION ASSOCIATION OF PHILADELPHIA. [From a pamphlet by Lewis R. Harley, Ph. D.] The desirability of improving the school system of Philadelphia has given rise to a number of voluntary associations, which have been actively engaged for several years in urging reforms and promoting the development of the schools in various ways. Among the most active of these organizations has been the Public Education Association of Philadelphia, founded in 1881. This association, like some of its predecessors, grew out of charity work. Its source was the Committee on the Care and Education of Dependent Children of the Society for Organizing Charity. It is the object of this association to promote the efficiency and to perfect the system of public education in Philadelphia, by which term is meant all education emanating from, or in any way controlled by, the State. They purpose to acquaint themselves with the best results of experience and thought in education, and to render these familiar to the community and to their official representatives, that these may be embodied in our own publ c-school system. They seek to become a center for work and a medium for the expression of opinion in all matters pertaining to education, as, for instance, the appointment of superintendents; the compilation of school laws; the kindergarten in connection with public education; manual instruction-how much is desirable, and what it is practicable to introduce into the public-school system; the hygiene of schools; the adequate pay and the better qualification of teachers; and, above all, to secure, as far as possible, universal education, by bringing under instruction that large class, numbering not less than 22,000 children, who are now growing up in ignorance in this city. These objects the association hope to attain through appeals to the local anthorities and to the legislature, and by such other means as may be deemed expedient. The officers of the association in 1895 were Edmund J. James, chairman; Miss E. W. Janney, treasurer; William W. Wiltbank, recording secretary. The Public Education Association has had a busy career of fifteen years. It has been a constructive period in educational work in Philadelphia, and the association has seen the following results accomplished: I. The institution of the department of superintendence, with the increase of force by which the efficiency of this department has been largely augmented and thoroughly organized. II. The selection of a superintendent. III. The introduction of sewing into the curriculum of the Normal School, and its more recent introduction, based upon the success of the earlier experiment, into the lower grades of schools, by which 25,000 girls were, in 1887, receiving regular, systematic instruction in needlework. IV. The universal acknowledgment that the most complete and satisfactory exhibition of this work ever made in the country was the exhibit of the sewing done in the public schools of Philadelphia made in the spring of 1886, at the Industrial Exhibition at New York. V. The institution of the Manual Training School. VI. The reorganization of the schools under supervising principals. VIII. The exhibition of school work in Horticultural Hall. IX. The assumption by the board of education of the kindergarten schools. X. The establishment of the chair of pedagogy in the University of Pennsylvania. XIII. The passage of the compulsory school law. The association encouraged and assisted all of these movements; it initiated and completed some of them. There are still other tasks for the association. The new compulsory school law will render a school census necessary. The school accommodations of the city will be inadequate to meet the requirements of the law, and the enforcement of the law itself will depend upon public sentiment. In all these matters the society can be of assistance. The department of education should be reorganized. The association has already made strenuous efforts to have the sectional boards abolished, and it seemed at times as if the measure would pass the legislature. The agitation should be continned until the department of education is placed beyond the reach of politics. The administration of the city schools should be committed to a single body. These are some of the subjects which should receive the attention of the association. The work of the Public Education Association is not completed. The educational welfare of so large a municipality as Philadelphia will require the continued aid of this influential organization, which in the past has accomplished so much for the advancement of the schools. SOUTH CAROLINA. [Address delivered December 13, 1894, by Hon. J. L. M. Curry, in response to an invitation of the general assembly of South Carolina.'] SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES: It has been said that among the best gifts of Providence to a nation are great and good men, who act as its leaders and guides, who leave their mark upon their age, who give a new direction to affairs, who introduce a course of events which come down from generation to generation, pouring their blessings upon mankind. Public men are the character and conscience of a people. Respect for the worth of men and women is the measure of progress in civilization. On the 16th of November, 1894, passed away one of America's purest and noblest men, one of the last links which bound the present with the better days of the Republic. For South Carolina he cherished a great affection, and sought to rekindle and keep alive the memories and fraternity of the Revolutionary period, when Massachusetts and South Carolina were struggling together for the establishment of our free institutions. Deeply touched and very grateful was he that South Carolina honored him so highly, by attaching his name in perpetuity to one of her most beneficent institutions of learning. The watchward of his life was the worship of truth and devotion to the Union. He saw clearly that "whoever would work toward national unity must work on educational lines." We may well pause to drop a tear over the grave of author, orator, philanthropist, patriot, statesman, Christian gentleman. Governor Tillman said last May, at the laying of the corner stone of the college at Rock Hill: "On one thing the people of South Carolina are certainly agreed-in their love for Robert C. Winthrop and the new college that bears his name." I have said that he was a Christian statesman. Christianity and democracy have revolutionized the ideas and institutions of the world in reference to man, his rights, privileges, and duties. The arrival of democracy, says Benjamin Kid, is the fact of our time which overshadows all other facts, and this arrival is the result of the ethical movement in which qualities and attributes find the completest expression ever reached in the history of the human race. Kings and clergy, as having superior access to God and command of the Divine prerogatives, have been relegated to the background. Man's attainment to an enjoyment of privileges and possibilities depends on the development of latent, original, God-given powers. Families, churches, and States recognize and provide for the unfolding of these capacities. "Education, a debt due from present to future generations," was the idea and motive which permeated Mr. Peabody's munificence, and the sentiment is the legend for the official seal of the Peabody Education Fund. Free schools for the whole people should be the motive and aim of every enlightened legislator. South Carolina incorporates the duty into her organic law. There can be no more legitimate tax on property than furnishing the means of universal education, for this involves self-preservation. The great mass of the people are doomed inevitably to ignorance, unless the State undertake their improvement. Our highest material, moral, and political interests need all the capabilities of all the citizens, and then there will be none too much to meet life's responsibilities and duties. As the people are sovereign, free schools are needed for all of them. Wo recognize no such class as an elect few. It is desirable that citizens should read the laws they are to obey. A governor onco put his edicts above the heads of the people; we sometimes, practically, do the same by keeping the people in ignorance. When all must make laws as well as obey, it is essential that they should be educated. The more generally diffused the education the better the laws; the better are they understood and the better obeyed. The highest civilization demands intelligent understanding of the laws and prompt, patriotic, cheerful obedience. Extract from the journal of the house of representatives of the State of South Carolina, Thursday, December 13, 1894: JOINT ASSEMBLY. The senate attended in the house at 11 a. m. to hear the address of the Hon. J. L. M. Curry. The president of the senate presented Senator Tillman, who introduced the Hon. J. L. M. Curry, who entertained the general assembly for some time in an eloquent and able address on education. Mr. Manning offered the following resolution: "Resolved, That the general assembly of South Carolina has heard with pleasure and the deepest interest the eloquent and instructive address of the Hon. J. L. M. Curry, and the heartfelt thanks of this body are hereby extended to him for his address, and we wish to assure him that his words on behalf of the advancement of the educational interests of the State have fallen on ears that are alive to those interests, and that we hope for the best results upon the educational institutions of the State." Which was considered immediately and unanimously adopted. When schools are established, what will perfect them? The first need is sufficient money, to be attained through State and local revenues. In no instance should this money be appropriated for sectarian purposes. In England, since the free education act, there has been a determined effort to quarter denominational schools upon the rates. In the United States a persistent effort is made to subsidize from general revenues certain sectarian schools in States and among the Indians. During the nine years-1886-1894—our Government gave for education of the Indians $4,277,940, and of this appropriation one church received $2,738,571. The remainder was distributed among fifteen various schools and organizations. Another requirement is efficient local and State supervision, divorced from party politics, and controlled by civil service principles. If education be of universal and vital concern, it needs for its administration the highest capacity. The system of common schools reached its preeminent usefulness in Massachusetts under the administration of such remarkable men as Mann, Sears, and Dickinson. Pupils should be graded so as to economize time, utilize teaching talent, and secure systematic progress. At last, all depends on good teaching, and children, with all their possibilities, deserve the best. There is often a criminal waste of time, talent, opportunities, and money, because of incompetent teachers. There is sometimes a distressingly small return for mony and labor expended upon schools. It is not well-organized school systems, nor excellent textbooks, nor systematic courses of study, nor wise supervision, however important, that make the good school. It is the teacher, not mechanical in method and the slave of some superficial notion of the object and the process of the work, but a thorough master of the profession, widely knowledged and cultured, able to interest the pupils, to develop the highest power and efficiency. A good teacher will make a good school in spite of a thousand hindrances. One able to awaken sluggish intellect, give a mental impulse running through after life, who understands child nature, the laws of mental acquisition and development, whose mind has been expanded and enriched by a liberal education, who has accurate scholarship and a love for sound learning, who can awaken enthusiasm, mould character, develop by healthful aspirations, inspire to do duty faithfully, will have a good school. Andrew D. White called Dr. Wayland the greatest man who ever stood in the college presidency, and such men as Mark Hopkins, M. B. Anderson, Drs. McGuffey and Broadus show the value of high qualifications in teachers. In our public schools are thousands of men and women, doing heroic work, noiselessly and without ostentation, who deserve all the praise which is lavished upon less useful laborers in other departments. As the State has undertaken the work of education, it is under highest obligations to have the best schools, which means the best teachers. How shall South Carolina meet these imperative obligations? Your schools average four and seventh-tenths months, but no school should have a term shorter than eight months, and the teachers, well paid, should be selected impartially, after thorough and honest examination. All should have unquestioned moral character, sobriety, aptitude for the work, desire and ability to improve. It has been suggested that if only one law were written above the door of every American schoolroom, it ought to be, No man or woman shall enter here as teacher whose life is not a good model for the young to copy. The experience of most enlightened countries has shown that these teachers should be trained in normal schools; and by normal schools I do not mean an academy with deceptivo name and catalogue, and the slightest infusion of pedagogic work. Teaching is an art, based on rationally determined principles. The child grows and runs up the psychic scale in a certain order. The mind has laws, and there is no true discipline except in conformity to and application of these laws. Acquaintance with and application of these laws come not by nature, not spontaneously, but by study and practice. The real teacher should be familiar with the history, the philosophy, and the methods of education. He will best acquire and accomplish the technical and professional work if he have a well-balanced mind, fine tastes, and "the faculty of judgment, strengthened by the mastery of principles, more than by the acquisition of information." We have professional schools for the lawyer, the doctor, the engineer; why not for the teacher? His ability to teach should not be picked up at haphazard, by painful experience, and with the sacrifice of the children. A signboard near my residence reads, "Horses shod according to humane principles of equine nature." It conveys a true principle and suggests that children should be instructed according to the true principles of mental science. President Eliot, in one of his excellent papers, enunciates six essential constituents of all worthy education. (a) Training the organs of sense. Through accurate observation we get all kinds of knowledge and experience. The child sees the forms of letters, hears the sound of letters and words, and discriminates between hot and cold, black and white, etc. All ordinary knowledge for practical purposes, and language as well, are derived mainly through the senses. (b) Practice in comparing and grouping different sensations and drawing inferences. (c) Accurate record in memory or in written form. (d) Training the memory; and practice in holding in the mind the record of observations, groupings, and comparisons. (e) Training in the power of expression, in clear, concise exposition; logical setting forth of a process of reasoning. (f) Inculcation of the supreme ideals through which the human race is uplifted and ennobled. Before the pupil should be put the loftiest ideals of beauty, honor, patriotism, duty, obedience, love. Teachers are greatly helped by teachers' institutes, when those who assemble get the wisdom and experience of many minds on the difficult problems of the profession. The work should be practical, systematic, logical, continuous from year to year, and a course of professional reading should be prescribed, so as to increase the intelligence and culture of the profession. We very often lose sight of the true end of education-it is, or should be, effective power in action, doing what the uneducated can not do, putting acquisition into practice, developing and strengthening faculties for real everyday life. The only sure test is the ability to do more and better work than could be done without it. The average man or woman with it should be stronger, more successful, more useful, than the average man or woman without it. It is the human being with an increase of power which makes one more than equal to a mere man. It is not so much what is imparted, but what is inwrought; not what is put in, but what is got out. It is not so much what we know as what we are and can do for productive ends. The object of Christianity is to make good men and good women here on earth. The object of education is to make useful men and women, good citizens. And here comes in the need of manual training, which is not to fit for special trades, but to teach the rudiments of mechanics, those common principles which underlie all work. The pupil can acquire manual dexterity, familiarize himself with tools and materials, be instructed in the science without a knowledge of which good work can not be done. The object of this industrial instruction is to develop the executive side of nature, so that the pupil shall do as well as think. This introduction of manual training into schools has been found to be very helpful to intellectual progress. Gentlemen need not reject it as something chimerical and utopian; it is not an innovation; the experiment is not doubtful; it has been tried repeatedly; it is comparatively inexpensive, and has been and is now in very successful operation. It is not wise statemanship, nor even good common sense, to forego for many years what other peoples are now enjoying the advantages of. In a quarter of a century trade schools, technical schools, manual training, the kindergarten, will have nearly universal adoption. Why, during this period, should a State rob her children of these immense benefits? As population increases the struggle to maintain wages becomes more severe, the pressure being the hardest upon the unskilled, and less severe on each higher rank of laborers. Every possible facility for education should be put within the reach of laboring men, to increase their efficiency, to raise the standard of life, and to augment the proportion between the skilled and the unskilled. Dr. Harris, our wisest and most philosophical educator, says: "Education emancipates the laborer from the deadening effects of repetition and habit, the monotony of mere mechanical toil, and opens to him a vista of new inventions and more useful combinations." Our industrial age increases the demand for educated, directive power. Business combinations, companies for trade, transportation, insurance, banking, manufacturing, and mining, demand, as essential conditions of success, intelligent directive power. Production is augmented by skill. An indispensable condition of economic prosperity is a large per capita production of wealth. Socialism, as taught by some extremists, would sacrifice production to accomplish distribution, and means annihilation of private capital, management by the State of all industries, of production and distribution, when Government would be the sole farmer, common carrier, banker, manufacturer, storekeeper, and all these would be turned into civil servants, and be under the control and in the pay of the State, or of a party. States may have ideals as well as individuals, and embody the noblest elements of advanced civilization. Agriculture, manufactures, mining, mechanical arts, give prosperity when allied with and controlled by thrift, skill, intelligence, and honesty; but what is imperishable is the growth and product of developed mind. Greece and Rome live in their buildings, statuary, history, orators, and poems. Pliny said: "To enlarge the bounds of Roman thought is nobler than to extend the limits of Roman power." The founders of the great English universities centuries ago builded wiser than they knew, and opened perennial fountains of knowledge and truth from which have unceasingly flowed fructifying streams. All modern material improvements are the outgrowth of scientific principles applied to practical life. If you would legislate for the increased prosperity and glory of South Carolina, be sure not to forget that this is the outcome of the infinite capacities of children. Hamilton said there was nothing great in the universe but man, and nothing great in man but mind. "No serious thinker," says Drummond, "can succeed in lessening to his own mind the infinite distance between the mind of man and everything in nature.” Fisk says: "On earth there will never be a higher creation than man." Evolutionists say that the series of animals comes to an end in man, that he is at once the crown and master and the rationale of creation. What you know and admire in South Carolina is what has been done by cultivated men and women. What other country can show such a roll of immortal worthies as your Pinckneys and Rutledges, your Marion, Sumter, and Pickens, your Harper, Johnson, O'Neill, your Fuller and Thornwell, your McDuffie and Hayne, Legare and Petigru, and, towering above all contemporaries, peerless in political wisdom, metaphysical subtlety, ignited logic, the great unrivaled American Aristotle, John C. Calhoun? |