STATE AID

ΤΟ

SECONDARY SCHOOLS

A THESIS IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE

OF MASTER OF ARTS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

PRESENTED IN 1903 BY.

DAVID RHYS JONES

〃

BERKELEY

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

1903

PREFATORY NOTE

An attempt is made in this paper to set forth the attitude of the several states as regards the encouragement of secondary education through the granting of special subsidies to the middle schools. As this inquiry covers the period from the establishment of the earliest secondary schools in this country down to the present time, it is made to deal more particularly with systems of state aid rather than with a consideration of aid granted to individual institutions. No account has been taken of the aid granted to state normal schools, which are, in theory, professional schools, but very often are, in reality, schools devoting a large part of their time to secondary instruction. Preparatory departments such as state universities maintained during the earlier years of their existence, are likewise omitted from this consideration.

For a definition of the term "secondary education," the reader is referred to two discussions which appeared in print at about the same time. The first of these is found in the introductory chapter of "The Making of Our Middle Schools," by Professor Elmer Ellsworth Brown of the University of California; the other, by President Arthur T. Hadley of Yale University, is an article entitled "The Meaning and Purpose of Secondary Education," published in the School Review for December, 1902.

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA, May, 1903.

STATE AID TO SECONDARY SCHOOLS

CHAPTER I

THE COLONIAL PERIOD

It has been said that the early schools of New England are studied best in Old England, so closely related were they to the schools of the mother country. Particularly was this true of the early secondary schools. The Latin grammar schools of the colonial period were patterned after those of a corresponding grade in England, in which many of the men prominent in our early colonial history had been educated.

Before the close of the sixteenth century the influence of the new learning was strongly felt in England, and with it came the desire for a more general and liberal education. Private endowment by individuals of wealth and public spirit sought to make amends for the loss which the country had sustained in the destruction of schools in the time of Henry VIII and Edward VI. Not infrequently, in response to a petition of the people, lands which had been confiscated during the reformation were restored for the support of grammar schools in various parts of the country. This united effort, public and private, was going on at the time of the settlement of the American colonies. The English secondary schools were supported from land endowments, productive funds, and tuition fees; and their courses of study were designed to prepare for the advanced work of the universities. While the colonists continued to be Englishmen upon American soil we should expect to find English customs and institutions dominant; but as the gradual effect of a new environment and the enlarged scope of unrestrained action began to make of them a distinct people, a new class of institutions might be looked for.