The Development of the Public School Down to 1837, when Massachu setts created her board of education and placed Horace Mann at its head. the curriculum of schools not fitting boys for college was limited to the bare acquisition of the school arts, spell ing, reading, writing, ciphering, relieved by a trifle of geography and history. The discipline was always rigid and sometimes harsh; the school term was short and the years of school ing few; the path of learning was not strewn with roses: but the intellectual, like the moral, discipline did honor to the straitest notions of our Puritan forefathers. In his seventh an nual report, Mr. Mann, who had visited schools abroad, especially in Germany, where the new philosophy of Pestalozzi was earnestly applied, attacked with great vigor the old curriculum, the old Puritanic ideas and the old unsympa thetic methods of teaching. He demanded new subjects more suitable to children, more humane and sympathetic treatment of pupils and new ideals of the ends to be attained by education. These criticisms and demands led to a spirited battle between Mr. Mann and his admirers and the 'Thirty-one Boston Schoolmasters,' who defended the old-time rigorism in study and discipline The result was a drawn battle. The reformers succeeded in getting their ideals and watchwords accepted, but the conservatives pre served the old curriculum practically unchanged. It was, however, a great advance to have the new ideals of character-forming accepted as a supreme end of education. Even if this school were to he confined to the acquisition of the school arts, it was a vast improvement to have the new methods everywhere put into practice, for now the concrete was made to precede the abstract, facts came before principles and in ductive reasoning enlivened and enlightened the old-time memory drills and mechanical applica tion of rules. The school term was gradually lengthened and with this there came a per ceptible thought-enrichment of the studies by means of which the children were drilled in the use of the tools of knowledge.
This condition of things lasted until after the period of the Civil War, when the rapid development of the public high school, the still more remarkable expansion of the university curriculum and the rise of all sorts of social organizations for the moral and economic wel fare of the community, forced upon the public school an amount of new subject matter that is little short of astounding. As already explained,
the old curriculum was mostly confined to the studies through which the child was drilled in the use of the school arts. The children learned to read, but they never read anything; they learned to spell and write and parse, but they produced nothing more than an occasional school essay. But now behold how this old course of study has been uenriched!"—(1) by copious amounts of literature suitable to every grade, not only in the elementary hut in the high school as well; (2) by systematic 'lan guage lessons* throughout the full course; (3) by the occasional introduction of elementary algebra and concrete geometry in the seventh and eighth grades; (4) by four years of history and as many of geography; (5) by nature work in all the grades; (6) by a course in manual training or "occupations' throughout the whole elementary period; (7) by extensive acquisi tion in fine arts, such as drawing, painting, molding and music, and finally (8) by an obliga tory course in physiology and hygiene, accom panied by what is called scientific temperance instruction.
The foregoing may be called reform by ad dition. Heretofore the method of relief from a congested curriculum has been by subtrac tion. When the "reform' forces of a community have been in the ascendency, the new subjects have been added; when, on account of com plaints of taxpayers, parents and children, the wave of reform has receded, the new subjects, then called °fads," are dropped and the curricu lum assumes something of its old-time propor tions. Obviously some method better than that of addition and subtraction is needed for over coming this obtrusive dualism in the course of study. That of organization has been suggested by Prof. John Dewey, whereby the school arts shall be made to emerge from the acquisition of extensive bodies of life-giving knowledge. To effect this reform, however. teachers must be better trained, school facilities must be in creased and, most important of all, teachers must have smaller classes. The ideal public school of the future will not require one teacher to teach more than 20 children. Now the num ber often rises to 60.
For statistics of the public school, see EDU