Reprinted from the

EDUCATIONAL REVIEW

NEW YORK, APRIL, 1892

PUBLIC SCHOOL PIONEERING

IN

NEW YORK AND MASSACHUSETTS

BY

ANDREW S. DRAPER

PUBLIC SCHOOL

PIONEERING IN NEW YORK

AND MASSACHUSETTS.

"Reviewing the evolutionary process from the beginning, we note that there have been six steps: compulsory education, compulsory schools, compulsory certification of teachers, compulsory supervision, compulsory taxation, compulsory attendance; and it seems that Massachusetts took each of these steps in advance of the other States a little in advance of her sister States in New England, far in advance of all the others."

The above is perhaps the most striking passage in a paper by Mr. George H. Martin, the accomplished agent of the State Board of Education of Massachusetts, read at the Department of Superintendence of the National Educational Association, in Philadelphia, in February, 1891, under the title

Compulsory Education in Massachusetts." The literary finish, as well as the audacity of the paper, attracted particular attention.

The Department was justified in expecting that Mr. Martin would present the methods adopted in his State to insure a general attendance of children upon school, and the extent to which such methods had been effectual; and upon that subject, it was believed, there was much to be said. Instead of doing that, he treated of the educational history of Massachusetts, and claimed that it antedated and overshadowed that of all other sections of the country. He manifested sensitiveness because "some recent writers" had been unwilling to adopt this view, and resented the suggestion that the Dutch as well as the English had had something to do with inaugurating and promoting educational activity on this side of the ocean. As so many other loyal and accomplished Massachusetts men. have done before him, he eliminated matters which do not

support his claims, referred to places and events which start a patriotic glow in every American breast, asserted general propositions which meet a ready response in every American soul, and secured in this way the acquiescence of his hearers in statements and inferences not supported by facts and opposed to the truth of authentic history.

The broad subject cannot be traversed in a magazine article. Only one phase of it will be now considered. It is the conviction of the writer of this article that America is indebted to the Dutch rather than to the English for the essential principles of the great free-school system of the country, and that in the several most important steps which have marked the establishment and the development of that system, New York, and not Massachusetts, has led the way.

In support of this proposition an appeal must be made to well-known facts, to the views of approved authorities, and to the original records. Even then New York is at a disadvantage, for the records of New Netherlands are by no means so complete as are those of the colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay. She cannot permit this disadvantage to be increased by accepting, as proof, the embellished utterances of fervid poets, orators, and “historians" whose literary, work is colored and biased by their love for the "mountain where their fathers worshiped."

At the time of the early settlements upon the Massachusetts coast, the Republic of the Netherlands presented the first instance in the history of the world in which a republican form of government had existed for any length of time over a territory of any size. The right of self-government had been won in a bloody war, in which more than a hundred thousand Netherlanders had lost their lives. By valor, for conscience' sake, they had broken the rod of the oppressor, thrust back the kingly power crushed and beaten, and gained the right to think and act for themselves. They had set up a form of popular government which became the model for our several States and our confederated republic. Having paid the price, they knew the value of liberty. Their country be

came the asylum of the oppressed of other lands. It witnessed a great commercial and industrial development. In education, painting, political science, finance, mechanical industries, and commercial activity, the Dutch were leading the world. They were coming and going also, and thus indoctrinating others with their love of liberty and their business prosperity. England was not in a condition to be compared with the Netherlands. Her people numbered but two-fifths of the present population of New York. She was under the domination of the king; agricultural products were few; manufacturing was almost unknown; the Church and state were one. The whole policy of the government, so far as learning was concerned, was to educate a few elaborately for the purposes of the state and Church, and to keep the masses in ignorance for fear they would learn their rights and demand them. The only schools were Latin schools and universities for the nobility. There were no schools for the people. Writing of a time one hundred and fifty years later, Mr. Bancroft says the mass of the people of England could not read nor write. Indeed this policy has been followed by the English government ever since, though now it seems to have discovered that it can continue no longer.

Means of travel were then extremely meager. People could travel more easily by water than on the land. The Spanish invasion of the Netherlands sent many Dutchmen to the eastern shores of England. The expulsion of the invaders, with ensuing results, brought many Englishmen to the Netherlands. The Dutch influence made the eastern counties of England the hotbed of opposition to the prevailing government and the established Church. Persecution ensued, and the martyr fires were lighted. These eastern counties furnished the greater part of the victims. But the blood of the martyrs nurtured the cause. In a little time it involved all England in a revolution which cost the king his head. But it was a revolution which could endure but a few years in that age and on that territory.