people. The result is that local self-government is unknown. France is a republic; but Mr. Fiske well remarks that, “as contrasted with American methods and institutions, it is difficult to call it anything else than a highly centralized despotism." 755. DEFINITIONS.--We may leave this branch of the subject with quoting these definitions from Mr. Toulmin Smith:1 "Local self-government is that system of government under which the greatest number of minds, knowing the most, and having the fullest opportunities of knowing it, about the special matter in hand, and having the greatest interest in its well-working, have the management of it or control over it." "Centralization is that system of government under which the smallest number of minds, and those knowing it the least, and having the fewest opportunities of knowing it, about the special matter in hand, and having the smallest interest in its well-working, have the management of it, or control over it." 1 Quoted by Fiske. CHAPTER VIII. STATE EDUCATION. 756. No NATIONAL SCHOOL SYSTEM.-The provision of education is not included among the powers delegated to the National government. The words education and schools are not found in the Constitution, and hence its adoption left the whole subject where it had already been, in the hands of the States, save as Congress might, from time to time, under the general-welfare clause, indirectly render them assistance. 757. THE STATE SYSTEMS.-Some of the States already had school systems in 1787, which they have extended and improved. The other States have since organized them, and every State in the Union now has a system of public schools. These systems are all provided for, or are at least recognized, in the State constitutions, and are fully elaborated in school laws. 758. (1) THE SCHOOL PROVISION. COMMON SCHOOLS.-The studies prescribed by the State laws or constitutions are called the legal studies. They differ somewhat in different States, but the so-called common branches of English study are found in all the States. The minimum time that the schools must be in session, which is prescribed by law, ranges from four to seven months in the year. Several of the States have enacted laws making a certain amount of education or school attendance compulsory. 759. HIGH SCHOOLS.-All the States make provision for the creation and support of high-schools, but only Massachu setts makes them compulsory. In that State these schools must be open ten months in the year exclusive of vacations, and be taught for the benefit of all the inhabitants of the town. 760. NORMAL SCHOOLS.-Massachusetts founded the first State Normal School, in 1839. The Report of the National Commissioner for 1887-88 has a table containing one hundred and thirty-four public normal schools, some of them State schools and some city schools. Some of the State schools are managed by the State Boards of Education, and some by special boards of trustees. The city schools are managed by the local boards of education that create and maintain them. The special object of the State schools is the professional education of teachers for the schools of the State; the local schools look mainly to local ends. Pedagogical professorships exist in some of the State Universities as in those of Michigan, Indiana, Iowa, and Wisconsin, and in Cornell University. 761. STATE UNIVERSITIES.-Congress has given Ohio. three, Florida and Wisconsin four each, Minnesota three and a half and the other states two each public-land townships of land, for the creation and support of universities; and Tennessee also has received land for the same purpose. The State Universities of these States were founded in whole or part with funds derived from this source, and they are to-day largely supported in the same way. Still, these institutions, or most of them, receive assistance from the State. Several of them receive, besides appropriations for special objects, the proceeds of special taxes. The University of California receives a tax of one mill on each dollar of taxable property in the State; the University of Colorado, one-fifth of a mill, and the University of Michigan one-twentieth of a mill. The Universities of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and West Virginia, all of them State institutions, have received no assistance from the National government. 762. AGRICULTURAL AND MECHANICAL COLLEGES.-Congress passed an act in 1862 granting to each State a quantity of land, or in States where Congress had no lands, land-script, equal to 30,000 acres for each Senator and Representative in Congress to which it was entitled under the census of 1860, that should, subject to the terms of the act, provide a college for teaching agriculture and the mechanical arts. No part of the proceeds of these lands, or of the interest, can be applied to the provision of buildings, and not more than ten per cent. thereof to the purchase of building sites. All of the States have complied with the terms of the act, or are in course of complying; some by creating new institutions, and some by adding new departments to old ones. In some, the funds thus arising have been largely supplemented from other sources, public or private. (2) THE SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION. 763. THE EMPLOYMENT OF THE STATE MACHINERY.To a considerable extent, the State schools are administered by officers to whom other branches of the State administration are entrusted. Mention may be made of State auditors, comptrollers, and treasurers, county auditors and treasurers, and to township clerks and treasurers. But an efficient State school system requires a special administrative machinery, both State and local. 764. STATE BOARDS OF EDUCATION. Massachusetts created the first board of this description in 1837. Many of the other States, but not all of them, have followed this example. The Massachusettes board consists of the governor, the lieutenant-governor, and eight other persons appointed by the governor and council for eight years. The Michigan The more board consists of the State superintendent, and three other members elected by the State at large for six years. efficient of these boards have jurisdiction, under the law, of questions that arise in the administration of the schools; the less efficient have few and comparatively unimportant duties. Commonly the board stands in a directory or advisory relation to the educational executive of the State. 765. THE STATE EDUCATIONAL EXECUTIVE.-In Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Texas, this officer is elected, for no fixed period, by the state board, and is styled the Secretary of the board. In Rhode Island, Georgia, and Ohio he is styled the Commissioner of Schools, and in the remaining States the Superintendent of Schools or of Public Instruction. He is elected by the legislature in New York and Virginia; appointed by the governor in Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Georgia, Tennessee, and Minnesota; in the other States, with one exception, he is elected by the people. The term, save in the three States mentioned, is two, three, or four years. In some States, as New York and Pennsylvania, the superintendent is the real head of the State system of schools, performing numerous and important duties; but in others, as in Ohio and Michigan, he is little more than a clerk charged with the collection and publication of educational statistics. The principal of the Maryland State Normal School is the head of the school system of that State. 766. COUNTY BOARDS.-Many of the States have constituted county boards of education. Such a board is made up of representatives of the townships or school districts, who are also charged with local duties, as inspectors, directors, etc. This county board stands to the schools of the county in a relation similar to that of a State board to the schools of the State. |