Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-06-04
JEFFERSON'S DREAM
HAS BEEN REALIZED NORTH
SOUTH AND WEST.
New England Led the Van and New
York Spends Royal Sums
for Education.

Written for The Evening Star by Arthur T. Town
send.
Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams:
You and will rejoice in heaven over the
coming of the glorious day of the education
of the whole people,
New York city is beginning to prepare
for the celebration of the centenary of
its public schools several months hence, and
this is profitable occasion to review the
enormous progress made in public educa-
ton in America during the past century or
more.
Thomas Jefferson was far ahead of his
age in his educa tional schemes and dreams.
He elaborated a comprehensive plan in
1779 for the education of the children and
the youth of the country, but he lived to
see only very small part of it carried out.
Especially was he ahead of his own aristo-
cratic state of Virginia.
Away back in colonial days the British
commissioners of foreign plantations
wrote to the governors of the several Amer
lean colonies to ask what they were doing
in the matter of public education.
81 thank God there are no free schools
or printing presses replied the governor
of Virginia, land / hope we shall not have
any these hundred years.
"One-fourth the annual revenue of the
cOtOny is IalQ out IN MAINTAINING free
Sc ools for the education of our children"
said the governor of Connecticut.
Before the war of the revolution the
wealthy planters in the southern colonies
usually sent their sons home to be edu-
Gated in English schools and universities.
If this was not done some English clergy
man who had left his country for his coun-
try's good, person of the type who taught
the Warrington boys in The Virginians,"
was engaged as a tutor.
In what used to be known as the middle
colonies commercialism held sway and
bred men of affairs who recognized that the
creation of an educated people was neces-
sary to the success of their business ven
lures. In this way the foundations of sys-
tenn of public instruction were laid
In Early Days.
But it was in New England that educa-
ton was most general from the earliest
colonial days. Among the settlers there
was large proportion of university men,
many of whom were ministers of religion.
and, as distinguished authority has said,
they fixed the mold from which the pub
lie school education of America grew up"
AS they died off other men whom they had
trained took up their work. The tendency
of the New England settlers to congregate
in towns made it easier to establish schools
there than in the other colonies, where the
people were thinly scattered on farms and
plantations.
After the revolution most of the states
tried to secure the best possible system of
schools within their power 1t was natu-
raj instinct on the part of people who had
fought for freedom, but they bui1ded bet
ter than they knew, for the school system
which they established, with no thought
beyond benefting their own children be-
came in later days most efficient machine
for Transforming the raw material of Eu-
ropean immigration into satisfactory
American citizens.
Undoubtedly the public schools played a
great part, from the days of Washington
to our own, in building up the American
commonwealth, but 1t is the fashion to
give them too much credit in the matter
This may seem a daring opinion, but even
prominent educationiSts share 1t. DR. A. D.
Mayo, one of the principal officials of the
United States bureau of education, wrote
the following striking words in the 1902 re-
port of the bureau:
circumstances Taught.
'Tt must never be forgotten that of ali
modern peoples the people of the United
States is the one that has been least de-
pendent on what can be learned from books
and taught through the agency of schools
for the development of the national char
acter; for the very form of government. the
order of society, the conditions and oppor-
tunities of industrial life and the experience
In public affairs gained by all classes of
white people in the United States during
the long colonial times and over q century
of national life had. from the frst been In
themselves university more stimulating,