<\/p>\n
In 1981, when our public schools are subject to severe criticism, it is well that we should understand how those schools have developed from colonial times to the present day.<\/p>\n
From the earliest settlements in New England, religion and education were classified together. Then the religious groups known as Separatists broke away from the Church of England. one of their strongest sects were the Puritans who came with Governor Winthrop to Boston in 1630. The church that they set up in Massachusetts and made the established state church of the royal province was known as Congregationalist because of its polity of control of each local congregation. It did not take long, however, for those local churches to group together and have their ministers exercise almost complete control of the provincial government.<\/p>\n
Because the Congregational polity denied any allegiance to a hierarchy of any kind – whether called pope, bishop, or by any other name – they placed complete reliance on the Bible in English translation – at first the translation called the Bishop’s Bible, which most of the earliest settlers brought with them from England, then later the more popular King James Bible of 1611. If people were to be able to follow the Bible by themselves, not by what preachers read to them, then the people must be taught to read. That is why education in early New England went hand in hand with religion. To go to school meant to learn to read – and the reason was to read the Bible.<\/p>\n
So it came about that, as soon as any New England settlement got truly started, it had a Meetinghouse and a school house. Even after Massachusetts released its control by an established church and exempted persons from the church tax if they paid their share toward support of a minister of their own faith, the province and later the state for some time required every newly incorporated town to do two things: support regular preaching and maintain schools. So, when the town of Winslow and this included Waterville, was incorporated in 1771, it was required to have preaching and a school. By 1800 it had meetinghouses on both sides of the river and several schoolhouses.<\/p>\n
In our Waterville area the first schools were private, usually taught by men in their own homes, with parents paying a fee for each child that attended. But in 1789 the new State of Massachusetts adopted its constitution as one of the 13 United States of America. Under that Constitution the state required towns to set up convenient school districts in sufficiently settled neighborhoods within the town. By means of a school tax, the town raised a certain sum of money, which was then distributed among the various districts according to school population. Each district committee had complete control of choosing teachers, fixing their pay, deciding on the time and length of each school term, and other matters.<\/p>\n
In addition, each district had to build its own schoolhouse. For many years, under the district system, most Maine pupils went to one-room schools with a single teacher.<\/p>\n
The link with religion, though not as strong as in colonial days, still remained. Even as late as the middle of the 18th century, schools were still using the New England Primer, the first textbook published in the American colonies. That first book read by many a beginning pupil was filled with quotations from and reference to the Bible, beginning with its rhyme under the letter A – “In Adam’s fall we sinned all.” In many an early Maine school the teacher was the local minister, because he was likely to be the best educated person in town.<\/p>\n
Maine public school students got their start early linked with religion. When Congress adopted the first ten amendments to the Constitution – since known as the Bill of Rights – it included the first article that required that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or preventing the free exercise thereof,” no one ever dreamed that the time
\nwould come when the nation’s highest court would interpret that clause to mean that prayer, even voluntary prayer, must be banned from the public schools.<\/p>\n
What had prompted that amendment was the people’s genuine fear of educational domination by a particular sect. Not only had they seen that very thing happen in England, but when the federal constitution was drawn in 1787, all except 3 of the 13 states still had some vestige of church control of schools – the Congregationalists in New England, the Episcopalians in Virginia being outstanding examples.<\/p>\n
When in 1820 Maine became a separate state, it had 236 towns with elementary schools distributed in autonomous school districts, all supported by taxation. It was not long before demand arose for education beyond the elementary, or what was then called the Common school. After the establishment of Harvard College in 1636, the need became imperative. If students must be ready to undertake Harvard studies based on those venerable universities at Oxford and Cambridge, New England must have schools that prepare those students – schools like Harrow and Eton in England. No common elementary school could be expected to teach Latin and Greek, or the algebra and geometry necessary for such preparation.<\/p>\n
So there began in New England what was at first called Latin schools or grammar schools and later on adopted the more common name of academy. Their function was to prepare boys for college. Education beyond the common school was thought unnecessary for girls. It was not long, however, before Massachusetts, then all of New England, began to see female academies or ladies’ departments in the boys’ academies. Curriculum for the two sexes was different, the girls’ program centering on such accomplishments as embroidery, painting, music, and fashionable etiquette, training designed to produce a cultured young lady.<\/p>\n
The academies were definitely private schools managed by boards of trustees, and funded by tuition or private donations. The only aid from the state came at first from grants of townships in Maine’s vast public lands. Located usually at some distance from where the academy was established, those lands yielded money for the school principally through sale of timber rights, which usually brought more money than did eventual sale of the land itself. As time went on the state occasionally made a grant to an academy because of some disaster such as loss of a building by fire.<\/p>\n
In the 1870’s began a rapid development of free high schools in Maine, but until the middle of the 20th century, many of the old academies survived. Maine’s first school laws, adopted in 1821, provided no school aid to towns, but they did set a minimum that the towns themselves must furnish in support of schools. That was 40 cents per capita for each resident of the town between the ages of five and twenty years.<\/p>\n
How has Maine now to furnish state aid? When Maine became a separate state in 1820, its controlling political party was that of its first Governor, William King – the Jeffersonian Democrat, who strongly opposed the prevailing party in Massachusetts, the Federalists. The Jeffersonians were firm believers in home rule, in local control of all such functions as schools, believing that he who pays the piper calls the tunes They were reluctant to see state or federal government take away any elements of local control. So they opposed state aid for schools. If local control was to be maintained, it must be done by local financing. The district system lasted until 1870, when the state legislature allowed voluntary abolishment of districts by a town, and later made abolishment compulsory. In place of district control came control by locally elected town school committees.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile in 1846 had been established Maine’s first State Board of Education. It was short lived, lasting only until 1852; and it was not renewed until nearly a century later – 1947. But during its short six years, that first State board did make some significant advances. It started the first special training for teachers bv setting up Teachers’ Institutes in various parts of the state in 1848. That was followed by training programs in some of the academies, and paved the way for teaching jobs for trained young ladies. Then, in 1863, came separate institutions for the training of teachers – the state
\nnormal schools, beginning at Farmington and then extending to Castine, Gorham, Machias, Fort Kent, and Presque Isle. At first the normal schools were managed by the Governor and Council, but were later more effectively placed under a
\nboard of trustees.<\/p>\n
It was the persistent egalitarian movement in America, under an aroused democratic republic, that gradually eroded local control. If, as declared in the Declaration of Independence, all persons were born equal with respect to opportunity so far as the government could provide it that must especially apply to education. Maine people came to the conviction that a
\nchild in the poorest town should have education on a par with a child in the richest town.<\/p>\n
That conviction led to a systematic plan of state aid, under which the largest percentage in subsidies for schools went to the poorer towns. Beginning with a bank tax dedicated for schools, it developed into the present complicated formula of subsidies that now, on an average, provide about 50% of Maine’s public school costs.<\/p>\n
The first State Superintendent of Schools was appointed in 1857. Until early in this century it was largely a one-man department and had little control over local schools. During the past three-quarters of a century the department expanded into a large staff, which through changing legislation, has been able to exercise more and more control over every school in Maine.<\/p>\n
Early in this century the State permitted the formation of school unions, whereby a group of towns employed a single superintendent, but still held a large measure of local town control. The major blow to local control was the so-called Sinclair Law, permitting the formation of School Administrative Districts in Maine. Under the District plan, the schools in all the towns form a district, managed by a board of directors, on which each town is represented in accordance with its school population, and meets costs in proportion to its state valuation.<\/p>\n
The District system has brought two marked advantages. It has brought a large measure of equality to all elementary schools in the district, and it has enabled the district to set up a single, large, all-purpose high school, providing a variety of courses and training that no small high school could possibly give.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, the district system has diminished local control. There is a startling difference between school unions and administrative districts. In a union each town retains its own school committee and its own appropriation for schools. In a district, the town hands over all such control to the board of directors. This has led to small towns, with only one or two directors on a large district board, to feel aggrieved and dominated by a large town. It has been difficult to prove that such domination is usually the case, because experience has shown that most district boards are very careful to give impartial treatment to all towns in the district.<\/p>\n
A more valid complaint is the inability of a town to withdraw from a district if that district has a debt, as most of them do, or without abolishing the district itself. One result of the district system has been the passing of most of the state’s old academies. Only the strongest remain, and some of those have survived only because the district directors chose to contract with an academy as the district’s high school. Such contracts saved academies like Fryeburg, MCI at Pittsfield, and Lincoln at Newcastle.<\/p>\n
Towns still in school unions continue to retain the right either to contract with another town or with another academy for high school education, or allow parents to send children to any school of their choice, with the town paying the tuition. So today we see secondary pupils from Vassalboro in the high schools at Winslow and Augusta, as well as in such private schools as Erskine Academy and Oak Grove-Coburn.<\/p>\n
This story of the development of Maine public schools since colonial days records one outstanding fact. Most gains are accompanied by some losses. In order to secure realization of the great American ideal- equality of opportunity – the local communities gradually lost control of their schools. Is the game worth the candle? The people must decide.<\/p>\n
Year: 1981<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #1265, Broadcast on March 1, 1981<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35323,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10029"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10029\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}