Opinion ID: 852693
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Context of the Historical Development of Common Schools

Text: Exploring the framers' understanding of tuition and its application to the case before us, the Court of Appeals set forth the historical framework of Article 8, Section 1. The Court determined that the evil to be addressed by what became Article 8 of our Constitution was a lack of education and the subsequent problem of illiteracy among Indiana's citizens. Nagy, 808 N.E.2d at 1227-28. From this, the Court held that, to have any forceful meaning at all, Article 8, Section 1 must be interpreted to mean that not only must Indiana public schools not charge for `tuition' in the sense of the services of a teacher or instruction, but also must not charge for those functions and services which are by their very nature essential to teaching or `tuition.' Id. at 1230. Accordingly the Court of Appeals determined that imposition of the $20 student services fee at issue in this case runs afoul of Article 8, Section 1. The Court also called into question the continued validity of Indiana's public textbook scheme. Id. at 1230 n. 10. We are of the view that the holding expressed by our colleagues sweeps a little too broadly. The idea that tuition includes those functions and services which are by their very nature essential to teaching is certainly descriptive of what is meant by a free school system. See, e.g., Randolph County Bd. of Educ. v. Adams, 196 W.Va. 9, 467 S.E.2d 150, 159 (1995) (citations omitted) ([W]hatever items are deemed necessary to accomplish the goals of a school system and are in fact an `integral fundamental part of the elementary and secondary education' must be provided free of charge to all students in order to comply with the constitutional mandate of a `free school' system.); Paulson v. Minidoka County Sch. Dist., 93 Idaho 469, 463 P.2d 935, 939 (1970) (holding that schools may not charge for such items as textbooks, school building maintenance and teachers' salaries because the common schools are to be `free' as our constitution requires). Indeed a number of jurisdictions contain provisions in their state constitutions for free public schools. [4] However, unlike constitutions in a number of states, the framers of Indiana's constitution were careful not to provide for a free school system. [5] Rather, at most the framers provided that tuition would be free, or more precisely tuition shall be without charge. This is a subtle distinction, but a significant one that we believe the framers made intentionally. A free public school system implies a level of educational subsidization that the framers at least did not endorse and at most rejected outright.
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.
Drafted in 1816, Indiana's first constitution provided the following provisions concerning education: Sect. 1st. Knowledge and learning generally diffused, through a community, being essential to the preservation of a free Government, and spreading the opportunities, and advantages of education through the various parts of the Country, being highly conducive to this end, it shall be the duty of the General Assembly to provide, by law, for the improvement of such lands as are, or hereafter may be granted, by the [U]nited States to this state, for the use of schools, and to apply any funds which may be raised from such lands, or from any other quarters to the accomplishment of the grand object for which they are or may be intended. But no lands granted for the use of schools or seminaries of learning shall be sold by authority of this state, prior to the year eighteen hundred and twenty; and the monies which may be raised out of the sale of any such lands, or otherwise obtained for the purposes aforesaid, shall be and remain a fund for the exclusive purpose of promoting the interest of Literature, and the sciences, and for the support of seminaries and public schools. The General Assembly shall from, time to time, pass such laws as shall be calculated to encourage intellectual, Scientifical, and agricultural improvement, by allowing rewards and immunities for the promotion and improvement of arts, sciences, commerce, manufactures, and natural history; and to countenance and encourage the principles of humanity, honesty, industry, and morality. Sect. 2. It shall be the duty of the General [A]ssembly, as soon as circumstances will permit, to provide, by law, for a general system of education, ascending in a regular gradation, from township schools to a state university, wherein tuition shall be gratis, and equally open to all. Ind. Const. of 1816, art. 9, §§ 1-2, reprinted in 1 Charles Kettleborough, Constitution Making in Indiana: A Source Book of Constitutional Documents with Historical Introduction and Critical Notes 112-14 (1916) (emphasis added). The second constitutional convention consisted of 150 delegates. James H. Madison, The Indiana WayA State History 139 (1986). For purposes of considering, drafting, and submitting sections to be incorporated into the new constitution, the convention was divided into twenty-two standing committees. Kettleborough, supra, at 221. On October 14, 1850, a ten-person Committee on Education was formed. To that committee was referred, among other things, the educational provision of the 1816 Constitution. On December 11, 1850 the committee reported the results of its deliberations to the full convention, which included a recommendation that the following provision be adopted: Sec. 1. Knowledge and learning generally diffused through a community being essential to the preservation of a free government, it shall be the duty of the General Assembly to encourage, by all suitable means, moral, intellectual, scientific, and agricultural improvement, and to provide by law for a general and uniform system of common schools, wherein tuition, as soon as circumstances will permit, shall be gratis, and equally open to all. Journal of the Convention of the People of the State of Indiana to Amend the Constitution 407-08 (Indianapolis, A.H. Brown 1851) [hereinafter Journal ]. The proposed section was read a first time and passed to a second reading. Id. at 409. At the time of the second reading, on January 27, 1851, committee member James R.M. Bryant of Warren County noted a discrepancy between the proposed text and the intended proposal of the committee. Realizing that the proposed provision contained the clause as soon as circumstances will permit, delegate Bryant declared: I will say that this clause was inserted inadvertently by the committee. It was not intended to retain anything more of the first section of the present Constitution, than those parts of it that were applicable to our system. We certainly did not intend to insert anything that would have the effect of preventing or postponing the establishment of free schools. 2 Report of the Debates and Proceedings of the Convention for the Revision of the Constitution of the State of Indiana 1858 (Indianapolis, A.H. Brown 1851) [hereinafter Debates ]. See also Journal, supra, at 801. The delegates agreed with Bryant's motion to remove the clause from the provision, and the revised section was set for a third reading. Debates, supra, at 1858; Journal, supra, at 801. On January 28, 1851, Bryant reminded the convention delegates of recent developments in Indiana education and corresponding legislative responses. [7] Debates, supra, at 1888-91. Quoting from the 1850 census, Bryant argued that more than 73,299 Indiana citizens over the age of twenty-one were illiterate. Id. at 1890-91. He then highlighted the 1848 passage of the free public school question in the referendum and the decision of more than sixty Indiana counties to establish systems of free schools with a limited tax. Id. After a third and final reading on January 30, the provision passed without further discussion and was referred to the Committee on Revision, Arrangement, and Phraseology. Journal, supra, at 815. When the committee submitted its report on February 7, Article 8, Section 1 had been slightly modified from shall be gratis to shall be without charge, which apparently reflected a change from a Latin phrase to its English equivalent. The full text read as follows: Sec. 1. Knowledge and learning generally diffused throughout a community, being essential to the preservation of a free government, it shall be the duty of the General Assembly to encourage, by all suitable means, moral, intellectual, scientific, and agricultural improvement; and to provide by law for a general and uniform system of Common Schools, wherein tuition shall be without charge, and equally open to all. Id. at 945. Ultimately the delegates completed their work on February 10, 1851. After ratification by the voters, the Constitution took effect November 1, 1851. Kettleborough, supra, at 425.