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Agriculture and shopwork.... J. H. Washburn, Kingston.... July 14 Normal

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Edgar O. Silver, Boston, Mass.

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Prof. C. M. Young, Vermilion. Organized in 1894.

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CHAPTER XXXVII.

ORIGINAL ESTABLISHMENT OF STATE SCHOOL FUNDS.

By Rev. A. D. MAYO, M. A., LL. D.

In a former essay, in the Report of the United States Commissioner of Education for 1893-94, we sketched the rise and progress of the educational ideas and practices of the original thirteen American colonies from their settlement to the formation of the Government of the United States, 1790. We now come upon a period of American educational history equally important—the era of conflict for the supremacy of the common-school idea, during the first half century of the Republic, 1790-1810.

At the beginning of the present century every fundamental idea of popular education now in practical operation in the United States had been formulated in a manner sufficiently intelligible, with a hearing sufficiently extensive, to make it the common property of the educational public of the country. In the New England colonies, from the first, the basal idea of the American common school, that the people may educate all children through the agency of the State and local governments for American citizenship, had been adopted and put in general operation as far as private circumstances and the condition of public affairs would permit. In the central and southern colonies, owing to various peculiarities in their condition, this method of educating the children and youth had not been in favor. But even in the least favorable of these colonies we have seen that the same ideal was cherished. Especially were the foremost statesmen of Virginia and the famous men of the central colonies, like Benjamin Franklin, Dr. Richard Rush, and others of national renown, fully committed to this policy. So powerful had this impulse for universal education become that even before the organization of the National Government the Congress of the Confederation, by the unanimous vote of all States in attendance in 1787, had placed in the ordinance for the settlement of the Northwest Territory the provision for the setting apart of the sixteenth section of each township for public schools and of two entire townships of each new State for a university. By this memorable act the new Republic put on record its approval of the American idea of the support of education by the State, in all its departments, from the district school of the open country to the State university.

This idea, the contribution of the New England colonies to the new Republic, fixed in the great ordinance of 1787 by the insistence of New England men, was demanded by the original settlers of the Ohio purchase and destined thenceforth, like every original and characteristic principle of our American order of society and government at every period of the national development to appear with new vigor until it has become to-day the prevailing system of universal education in every State and Territory of the Union.

But all experience in popular government demonstrates that while it is one thing to formulate a splendid ideal in the conviction of the foremost minds, and even to incorporate it in the constitution and statute law of States and in the practical policy of the nation, it is quite another thing to place on the ground a vigorous and successful application of the same that shall actually perform what has been proniised and realize even a moderate expectation of favorable results. More than half a ED 9548 1505

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