1. Origin and development of the New York common-school system... PREFACE. This report is not designed as a complete, detailed history of education in New York State, for that would have made the work excessively voluminous. The aim is rather to point out the most important features of the educational development of the State and upon these to lay the larger emphasis. Accordingly the primary-school system has been for the most part excluded from consideration, an exclusion easy of accomplishment owing to the earlier establishment in New York of the administrative system of higher education and to the fact that the "common-school" system, when established, was placed under a separate administrative control. The peculiar dual administration of education in New York is one of its distinctive characteristics. The historic "University of the State of New York" was founded in 1784, immediately upon the achievement of independence from Great Britain. It was in reality the State bureau of education, although in form a private corporation. While it was thus an administrative arm of the State government, it included at the same time within its corporate existence all the chartered teaching institutions of the State of academic and collegiate grade. The common-school system of New York was put on a permanent basis by the establishment of the State department of public instruction in 1854. This, however, was not the beginning of a system of primary schools, but rather the culmination of a long historic progress, having its origin in the order of the States-General of Holland in 1621, that a tax should be laid upon the inhabitants and householders of New Netherland for the support of a school. The development of the system from this germ until the final adoption in 1867 of the principle of schools absolutely free to all and supported by general taxation is outlined in an admirable address delivered before the New York State Teachers' Association in 1890 by Dr. Andrew S. Draper, then superintendent of public instruction in the State of New York. The influence of the English colonial administration was toward ecclesiastical control of education and unfavorable to the promotion of popular primary schools. A new current toward State control and popular education came 1 See appendix where this address is reprinted. |