Opinion ID: 852693
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Free Common School Debate

Text: At least one pair of commentators has noted, The crusade for free, common schools ... is one of the best known episodes in American educational history.... Claudia Goldin & Lawrence F. Katz, The `Virtues' of the Past: Education in the First Hundred Years of the New Republic 16, Working Paper 9958, National Bureau of Economic Research (September 2003). Caleb Mills, a professor at what was later to become Wabash College, and often referred to as the father of the Indiana common school system, see Scott Walter, `Awakening the Public Mind': The Dissemination of the Common School Idea in Indiana, 1787-1852, in Hoosier Schools: Past and Present 1, 1, 8-9 (William J. Reese ed., 1998), addressed the Indiana General Assembly six times between 1846 and 1852 with appeals for the creation of free common schools. Among other things, Mills argued for a quality education open to all Indiana children without distinction of rank or color and that our common schools should be free as the atmosphere we breathe. Caleb Mills, An Address to the Legislature of Indiana at the Commencement of its Session (December 7, 1846), reprinted in Charles W. Moores, Caleb Mills and the Indiana School System 400, 404 (1905). More particularly, Mills asserted that Indiana residents were willing to be taxed to support Free Schools, Caleb Mills, An Address to the Legislature of Indiana, on Common Schools, Showing the Advantages of a System of General Education (December 11, 1848), reprinted in Moores, supra, at 503-04, that Indiana must ascertain what is done in those States where Free Schools exist and flourish ... to know what is necessary to accomplish, id. at 507, that good schools should include the employment of competent teachers, id. at 515, and that Indiana should establish an office of state superintendent, id. at 521. In apparent response to the efforts of the free common school movement supporters, the General Assembly called for a convention, to be held in Indianapolis, for the purpose of `consulting and devising the best course to be pursued to promote common school education' in Indiana. Donald F. Carmony, 2 The History of Indiana 381 (1998) (quoting Indiana House Journal 387 (1846-47)). The Indiana State Journal reported: It is the laying [sic] the very corner stone of the durability of the republic; the commencement of a system of free schools .... Carmony, supra, at 381. The convention first met on May 26, 1847 and lasted three days. Justice Blackford presided, and about 300 persons attended. Richard G. Boone, History of Education in Indiana 96 (New York, D. Appleton 1892). The convention's delegates recommended that, (1) additional [school] funds should be provided by a general tax; (2) [the schools] should be free, `perfectly free, as the dew of heaven, to rich and poor, without the least recognition of pauperism or charity'; (3) they should be made as good as any other schools in the State; (4) a suitable standard of qualification should be erected for teachers ...; [and] (5) there should be provided a superintendent of free common schools. Id. at 97. An address of the arguments emerging from the convention was produced and a thousand copies were printed and distributed across the State of Indiana. Id. at 97-98. Still, many Indiana residents opposed free common schools. Even before the adjournment of the [1847-48] Legislature the campaign for free schools began, and the friends of the movement in using every agency to help it on were only equaled by its enemies in their efforts to retard it. Partisan politics, sectarian bias, the antagonisms of social classes, and personal preferences were all arrayed against the establishment of State, tax-supported schools. Id. at 102. The Indiana House passed a bill similar in form and containing similar provisions to those recommended by the common school convention delegates. However, the Senate did not act on the bill. Instead, it submitted the question of free schools to the people of Indiana. Id. at 101. A referendum on the subject was placed on the ballot during the 1848 elections. It was straightforward: Are you in favor of free schools? An Act to Authorize the People to Vote for or Against a Tax for the Support of Free Schools, ch. 49, 1848 Ind. Acts 48. There were several reported incidents of residents opposed to free common schools appearing at polls to intimidate those who would vote in favor. Boone, supra, at 103-04 (citing Indiana School Journal 298 (1876)). Some Hoosiers objected because their existence would make education too common, decreasing the value of privately funded education. Vigorous opposition came from both the wealthiest and poorest economic classesboth those who had the finest education money could afford and those who never attended school. See Boone, supra, at 122-23 (explaining that rich and poor alike abhorred paying taxes for schools, the poor because they thought it unfair for the laboring classes to pay for the education of wealthy children, and the rich because they did not need the free common schoolsthey could enroll their children in academies). Other Hoosiers feared that a free common school system was dangerous to their religious freedom. One resident declared, The bait is to give our children an education; the chief object is to religiously traditionize them, and then unite Church and state. Id. at 104-05. Free schooling was thought by some to be dangerous to the State and subversive to the highest individual good, and others characterized it as undemocratic. [6] Others believed a State-controlled system was a usurpation of local government authority and personal and family liberties. Id. at 108-09. Ultimately the referendum passed with 56 percent of the vote. Id. at 105-06 (providing tables of school vote by county and by region); Logan Esarey, A History of Indiana from Its Exploration to 1850 685 (1924) (containing map of Indiana with results of the referendum by county). The 1848-49 General Assembly responded to the referendum with a legislative enactment to increase and extend the benefits of the common schools. An Act to Increase and Extend the Benefits of Common Schools, ch. 116, 1849 Ind. Acts 123. Although the new act addressed aspects of school funding, it stopped far short of establishing free schools. See id. at § 31. It was in this environmenta lively and sometimes acrimonious public debate over the establishment of free common schools and a referendum vote of 56% in support of free common schoolsthat the framers of Indiana's second constitution assembled at Indianapolis on October 7, 1850.