Home › E › Education (Art of drawing out)

Education (Art of drawing out)

the art of drawing out or developing the faculties, the training of human beings for the functions for means the imparting or gaining of knowledge of every kind, good as well as nd, disciplines his evil; but specifically it signifies all that broadens a man's mind , temper, develops his tastes, corrects his manners, and molds his habits. In a still more limited sense it means any course of training pursued by parents, teachers, or a whole community to train the young means employed in education fall natphysically, mentally, and morally. The industrial labors. urally under two heads: discipline or moral training, and instruction, or the imparting of information; though the two often run into each other. Under the head of discipline come the forming of habits of order, self-control, obedience, civility, love of truth and reverence for what is good and great. In respect of direct utility the things most necessary to know are those that bear most directly (1) on the preservation of life and health, and the proper performance of (1) on the preservation of life and the more common This involves a knowledge of the sciences of physiology, natural philosophy, and edge of our moral relations. Besides a knowledge of the ordinary moral duties, and the high religious sanctions with acquaintance with the laws of economy. (3) As a preliminary step, there is required a knowledge of the mother-tongue, and the faculty of reading and writing it. (4) The cultivation of the taste and EDUCATION imagination, or the faculties which derive pleasure from music, painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, and works of fiction.

United States. Education in the United States naturally divides itself historically into two parts: Colonial and National. Education in the 13 colonies deserves attention for its originality and its marked influence in preparing the colonies for national independence. Immediately on landing, in 1620, one of the first acts of the Plymouth colonists was to provide a meeting-house for religious services and a schoolhouse for the children. The citizens of Boston as early as 1635, by vote, appointed a schoolmaster. By law of the Massachusetts colony in 1642, the selectmen of every township were required to see that provision was made for the education of all the children, so as to be able to read and have "knowledge of the capital laws." In 1647 every township of 50 householders was required to appoint a schoolmaster, and every township of 100 families to maintain a grammar shool in which boys could be prepared for Harvard College. The Colonial laws of Connecticut, ut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, with reference to public education, were explicit, and were enforced so as to secure practically universal elementary education. New York was not behind New England in similar legal educational provisions, but they do not seem to have been so well enforced. The West India Company, under whose charge the first Dutch colonists came to New York, enacted a law in 1629 which required the establishment of schools.

The first school was opened in 1633, speedily followed by others. Church and state united to pay the expenses of the schools, and no charge was made directly for tuition; Dutch schools existed in the towns and villages when the English obtained possession of the colony, After this great difficulties arose from the conflict of the two languages, and though many English schools were established education greatly suffered for a few years. In 1704 a society for the propagation of the Gospel began its work of establishing schools in the English language in several of the counties. In 1732 an act was passed to establish a public school in the city of New York; King's College, afterward Columbia College, was founded in 1754. New Jersey, as early as 1693, by law enabled the inhabitants of any town to establish a free school and to tax all the property holders for its support, under which law schools became numerous. Pennsylvania had many private schools, but no educational system previous to the Revolution. In Virginia little attention was paid to EDUCATION the education of the poorer classes, but the College of William and Mary was established in 1692. Maryland passed an act as early as 1723 for erecting schools in several counties. The Southern colonies generally had not succeeded in establishing public schools previous to the Revolution, on, though numerous private schools existed.

Subsequent to the Revolution education received a great impulse in the new nation. The New England States, including Vermont and Maine, added, after the Revolution, all adopted systems of public schools. New York at first encouraged private schools, and in 1785 created a Board of Regents of the University of New York, whose chief function for many years was to encourage academies and colleges; but in 1795 common schools of the New England type were greatly encouraged. Pennsylvania and New Jersey both adopted similar systems. The new States of the Northwest were anxious to attract emigrants and to provide for the future good by similar systems, and flourishing common schools became the rule throughout these States.

Most of the States have educational funds for the aid of the public schools which are distributed to the schools on compliance with certain conditions, which usually require the existence of a State supervisor under the direction of State Boards of Education, with some executive officer, or State Superintendent of Education. The various school funds, so called, have had different origins, though most of them have come from the grant of lands by the States for this purpose, or by the Federal grant of one thirtysixth of all the lands in the States admitted to the Union since 1785. In 1848 the United States granted another thirty-sixth of the land for schools, so that since then all the States admitted have had one-eighteenth of the land thus appropriated. In some instances each county has been permitted to collect and expend the result of the sale of these school sections of land. Usually the State has borne the expense of selling and collecting the money for these lands, and has charged itself with the proceeds, the result of which is called a State educational fund, the annual interest of which is expended by the State for public schools. These funds for public schools in the several States will soon exceed $100,000,000. In addition to the income of these funds, so collected, State school taxes are raised, and in some instances local county, city, village, and township taxes.

The practice is rapidly growing of maintaining a large public union school in every considerable village, in which EDUCATION several teachers are employed and the pupils are graded in classes through which they advance on examination. In some cases a separate high school is maintained. Graduates from the high school are admitted to the State universities and to some of the private or Church universities on certificate of graduation. In the State universities the education is nearly if not quite free for the students who reside in the State. See COLLEGES; also AGRI- CULTURAL EDUCATION; COEDUCATION; COLLEGES FOR WOMEN; COMMON SCHOOLS; MEDICAL EDUCATION; SCHOOL; SECONDARY SCHOOLS; NORMAL SCHOOL; TECHNICAL EDUCATION; UNIVERSITIES, AMERICAN; UNIVERSITY EXTENSION; EDUCATION.

England. Before the Reformation there were, with the exception of the universities, very few institutions for the advancement of learning which could be called public. The monasteries had been for centuries the only seminaries in which the sons of gentlemen were able to obtain instruction. Here and there grammar schools had been founded as choristers' schools, or were otherwise connected with ecclesiastical establishments. The revival of learning, and the increased mental activity at the Reformation produced a widely spread demand for the means of instruction. Uniform purpose is manifest in the testaments, deeds of gift, statutes and ordinances by which the character and subsequent career of English schools were intended by their founders to be fashioned. It is to encourage the pursuit of a liberal education, founded on the ancient languages of Greece and Rome, then the only studies which had been so far formulated and systematized as to possess a disciplined character. The period of the Civil War was unfavorable to educational enterprise. The Act of Uniformity and the secession of the Non-conformist clergy brought home to men's minds the conviction that all attempts to incorporate Puritanism into the organic life of the English Church, which followed soon after, must be abandoned as hopeless; and the Toleration Act compelled English churchmen to recognize for the first time the unwelcome truth that dissent had to be reckoned with as a fact. Whereas in the 16th century men founded grammar schools, in the 18th they founded charity schools instead.

These institutions rapidly multiplied during the whole of the 18th century and in the beginning of the 19th. The first sign of interest in public instruction evinced by Parliament was the appointment in 1816 of a select committee of the House of Commons on the education of the EDUCATION lower classes of the metropolis. In 1832 Lord Althorp procured the assent of the House to a vote of £20,000 for the erection of school buildings in England. The main provision for secondary education had for centuries been supplied by endowed grammar schools. Each of these was, however, controlled exclusively by its own body of trustees; and was regarded as a purely local and separate institution. The elaborate inquiry into endowed charities begun in 1818 and concluded in 1837, resulted in the accumulation of a mass of facts; but it did not attempt to furnish any information respecting the educational character and public usefulness of those schools. In 1862 Lord Clarendon's Commission investigated the state of the nine great public schools, Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester, Westminister, Shrewsbury, Charterhouse St. Paul's and the Merchant Tailors. Sir Lyon Playfair in 1879, and Sir John Lubbock in 1880, drafted and introduced without result, measures which provided for the registration of teachers and for the establishment of an educational council. Meanwhile public elementary education in Great Britain had been made free. The devotion of part of the probate duties to the remission of fees gave Scotland free education in 1890; England secured the same privilege under the provisions of of the budget of 1891. In 1885 a separation was made of the administrative functions of the Scotch and the English Education Department; the former has since had its own committee of council and its own secretary. The Local Government Act for Scotland for 1889 allotted the sum of $1,005,000 per annum, derived from the probate duties, to the reduction of school fees in state-aided schools throughout the rest of Scotland. The result in time will be to make elementary education in Scotland free.

Ireland. Up to 1831, when Lord Derby established the national system, parliamentary grants for education had been made through the agency of private societies. In that year a Board of Commissioners was established, with very large powers of administration, including the power to aid in the erection of schools, to appoint inspectors and other officers, to award gratuities to teachers, to establish a model and training school, and to edit and publish suitable school books. The powers thus intrusted to the Irish commissioners were greatly in excess of those ever exercised by the committee of council in England or in Scotland. From the first it was determined that the rights of the Catholic population should be duly regarded; when, in 1861, the whole system was consolidated EDUCATION by the grant of a royal charter to the commissioners, it was specially provided that of the 20 members of the board, onehalf should be Catholics and one-half Protestants. Religious instruction is provided in all the schools, but a stringent conscience clause protects the interests of parents who do not approve of that given in the school.

Canada. The relation of the provinces of Canada to the Dominion Parliament is very nearly analogous to that of the States of the American Union to the Federal Government. Each province has its own educational laws and its own department of public instruction. The schools of Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, and Ontario are free; but in Quebec there is a school-tax levied on parents for all children of school age. France. In France there is a very completely organized system of instruction, supérieure, secondaire, et primaire, under the supervision of the Minister of Public Instruction, the schools being all visited and examined by state officers.

The professors in the universities are remunerated by the state. The lycées, or secondary schools, also receive large subventions from the state, those of Paris and Versailles being considered rather higher in rank, and having a better paid staff of professors and teachers than those of the provinces. Colleges are establishments for intermediate education, maintained at the charge of the local municipalities, but without any aid from the central government, except the occasional endowment of special chairs and the partial support of a few professors. Primary instruction is everywhere throughout France gratuitous.

Germany. The German elementary schools are divided into (1) those with three or more classes; (2) schools with two teachers; and (3) schools with one teacher, either with one class or half-day schools. Eighty is recognized as the maximum number of scholars under one teacher, even under the most unfavorable conditions. The compulsory laws as to ordinary school attendance are enforced from the age of 6 to that of 14, but generally if a child at 14 fail to reach the proper standard, he may be compelled to attend either another year at the day-school, or at a supplementary school in the evening or on Sunday.

Fines for non-attendance are imposed, and the agency of the police is called into requisition to force the child of a negligent parent to attend school. For the development of educational systems in other countries, see their respective titles and in the United States see under the various States.