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Schooling and Poor Children in 19th-Century America

MARIS A. VINOVSKIS University of Michigan

Societies are always confronted with the problem of dealing with poor children. Often, this means finding ways of overcoming or compensating for the disadvantaged backgrounds of these children. Indeed, concern about the fate and well-being of disadvantaged children in the United States today has lead many policymakers to look once again to the schools for assistance.

Despite our strong and persistent belief in the importance and necessity of education in preparing future citizens, not everyone agrees that American schools are designed or prepared to help disadvantaged children. Some contend that family background rather than the quality of the school is the main determinant of student achievement and of subsequent job placement (Jencks, 1979). Although these scholars acknowledge that the total amount of schooling received matters, they argue that the length of schooling is more dependent on a child’s home environment than on the school setting. Other analysts have gone even further to argue that public schools in 19th-century America were deliberately designed to perpetuate the existing inequalities within the expanding capitalist economy (Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Katz, 1975). Rather than helping poor students in the past or today, these critics argue that the school system was created in large part to allow middle- or upper-class parents to help their own children while ensuring that those from disadvantaged backgrounds would not advance.

To investigate the relationship between schooling and poor children historically, this article examines the origins and development of 19th­ century education in the United States with particular attention to whether or not schools helped poor children obtain better jobs. First, the establishment and expansion of schools in the early 19th century are analyzed. Next, contemporary views of schooling and poor children are noted and their ideas about the relationship between education and economic productivity ex­ AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST, Vol. 35 No. 3, January/February 1992 313-331 © 1992 Sage Publications, Inc.

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plored. Then, the article looks at three antebellum educational reforms intended to help poor children: (a) monitorial charity schools, (b) Sunday schools, and (c) infant schools. Doing so allows us to assess to what extent early 19th-century Americans were interested in dealing with the problems and needs of poor children. In addition, school attendance among poor children is investigated to see if they were excluded from these new institu­ tions as some historians have claimed. Finally, the important question of whether or not schooling actually fostered occupational mobility among poor children is addressed.

By examining the development of schooling in the United States in the 19th century and its impact on poor children, we can ascertain the intentions and evaluate the achievements of early efforts to deal with disadvantaged children in our society. We analyze the relative roles of parents and schools in educating children and assess the importance of schooling in fostering social mobility in the past. Furthermore, by investigating the different ways in which school reformers tried to alleviate the problems associated with poverty among 19th-century children, we can place our current educational reforms in a broader historical perspective.

EXPANSION OF SCHOOLING IN THE 19TH CENTURY

Schools have not always been the primary institutions for socializing and training children. In colonial New England, the household had the primary responsibility for educating children and servants (Bailyn, 1960). Ministers and churches were expected to assist the household since the goals of education were primarily religious. Initially, the father rather than the mother was entrusted with the education and catechizing of the children in the home. Only after the mid-17th century, when males stopped joining the New England churches as a matter of course, did Puritans slowly and reluctantly turn to women as the chief agents for home education (Moran & Vinovskis, 1986).

Even if parents were expected to educate their own children and servants at home, they sometimes used schools to assist them. Older women, often widows, set up dame schools to educate young children (Cremin, 1970). In some communities private elementary schools were created to cater to those parents who did not want to educate their own children at home (Murphy, 1960). In addition, the few children who continued their education beyond the rudiments of reading and writing went to grammar schools established in the larger communities (Vinovskis, 1987). Increasingly, during the colo-

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nial period, parents placed their children in private or public schools when­ ever they became available in the local communities, but at least one scholar (Cohen, 1974) has argued that opportunities for formal education may have actually declined in the 18th century.

One of the major changes in 19th-century American life was the develop­ ment of mass public elementary or common schools. Yet there is considerable disagreement on when or why this occurred. In the 1960s and 1970s, a group of scholars, sharply critical of the existing educational system, reexamined the origins of American schooling and concluded that common schools were established as a response to industrialization (Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Katz, 1968). These historians, often designated as “revisionists,” argued that man­ ufacturers and merchants spearheaded the public school expansion and reforms to instill in future workers a respect for law and authority necessary in the newly emerging capitalist economy (Bowles & Gintis, 1976, pp. 178-179).

The revisionists’ particular focus on Massachusetts parallels the concen­ tration of other scholarship on the educational and economic developments in that state. This is significant because the Commonwealth was not only a leader in educational changes but in urban and industrial development. In addition, the revisionists dated the emergence of public schooling in the 2 decades before the Civil War and used the appointment of Horace Mann as the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education in 1837 as a starting date (Bowles & Gintis, 1976, p. 154).

There are numerous problems with the revisionist interpretation of the development of mass education and school reforms in 19th-century America. For one thing, it equated the movement for public school reforms in the 1840s and 1850s with the expansion of mass education and did not look at devel­ opments outside Massachusetts.

Yet mass literacy and education in Massachusetts occurred well before the 1840s and 1850s. Lockridge (1974) documented that about 90% of men and 60% of New England women were literate by 1790. According to the census figures on literary, only 1.1 % of the White population, aged 20 years and older, in Massachusetts in 1840 were illiterate (Vinovskis, 1989). In addition, estimates of Massachusetts school attendance in 1800 indicate that it was already high in 1800 and gradually increased over the next 4 decades. Contrary to the interpretations of the revisionists, the percentage of children in Massachusetts schools actually decreased slightly from 1840 to 1850 (Kaestle & Vinovskis, 1980).

There were important changes in some aspects of Massachusetts educa­ tion in the 2 decades prior to the Civil War, such as the shift from private to public schools and the establishment of public high schools. But even here,

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one needs to acknowledge that some of these changes were a continuation of earlier trends. For example, the proportion of children in school receiving at least some private education dropped from 18.7% in 1840 to 8% in 1860. Nevertheless, more than four of five students were already going to a public school in 1840, and therefore the major changes from private to public schooling occurred earlier (Vinovskis, 1989).

Another reason why the revisionist equation of the rise of mass education with industrialization is incorrect is that most of the expansion in schooling in the two decades prior to the Civil War occurred in areas which were predominantly rural and agricultural. The largest increases in the percentage of White children attending school or in the total number of new students between 1840 and 1860 was not in New England or in the Middle Atlantic states but in the North Central region (Fishlow, 1976).

If the revisionists exaggerated the causal relationship between the rise of mass education and industrialization, they overestimated the role of the manufacturers and merchants in achieving educational reforms (Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Katz, 1968). While both of these groups generally supported the public school movement, they were less important than others, such as clergymen, at the local level (Vinovskis, 1985a). In addition, school reform­ ers were active not only in the more industrialized states, such as Massachu­ setts, but in agricultural states, such as Michigan and Ohio. Nor were school reformers restricted to urban areas, as the revisionists imply. They were also present in rural communities, although in those communities, reformers often faced a different set of problems than in urban areas. Finally, rather than seeing education imposed on an indifferent or hostile working class, as many revisionists believe, there is considerable evidence of widespread public support for education, including strong enthusiasm among Northern workers for common school education (Kaestle, 1983; Katznelson & Weir, 1985).

Instead of seeing mass education as the result of mid-19th-century indus­ trial development, it is more accurate to view it as a continuation of the colonial Puritan activities to ensure that everyone was able to read the Bible. This religious enthusiasm for education was reinforced by the establishment of the United States in the late 18th century and the extension of suffrage to almost all White adult males in the early 19th century. Given the perceived fragility of the early republic, mass public schools were seen as essential not only as a means of promoting widespread literacy but as a way of preserving moral values. As mothers were now regarded as the natural caretakers and educators of the next generation of citizens, women received access to public schooling that had been denied to most of them in the colonial period. Combined with a growing recognition in the 1840s and 1850s that education

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may foster individual social mobility and stimulate overall economic devel­ opment, it is not surprising that mass public schooling for Whites expanded rapidly in all regions of the United States exceptthe South, where geographic and social conditions limited the establishment and maintenance of common schools (Kaestle, 1983; Vinovskis, 1989).

ANTEBELLUM VIEWS OF POVERTY AND EDUCATION

Concern about poverty and disadvantaged children does not necessarily imply support for mass education. In early 19th-century England, a rapidly industrializing nation beset by problems of poverty and social unrest, calls for mass education encountered strong opposition. English opponents of education for the poor argued that schooling would encourage unrealistic occupational aspirations and lead to discontent among children of common laborers. They also feared that education would facilitate the dissemination of dangerous ideas against religion and civic authority (Silver, 1965).

There was almost no opposition to the education of poor Whites in the United States. Given the creation of the republic and the need for an educated electorate, conservatives supported schooling as a means of instilling proper values (Kaestle, 1976).

Although there was strong and widespread support for educating poor children in the United States, it was usually justified in terms of protecting society rather than of helping individuals get ahead. The value of education, according to most commentators, was to improve the moral character of the poor rather than to enhance their occupational skills or to foster individual social mobility. This orientation was due, in part, to the expectation that workers would acquire their specific job skills through apprenticeship instead of schooling (Rorabaugh, 1986).

Unlike today, 18th- and 19th-century British classical economists did not emphasize education as a key to individual or even societal economic productivity (Blaug, 1986). Adam Smith (1937), for example, briefly ac­ knowledged that monetary rewards should compensate workers for acquiring skills, but he did not elaborate on the important implications of this insight. Most early 19th-century American political economists agreed, although some placed a little more emphasis on the benefits of education than did their British counterparts (Phillips, 1828; Wayland, 1843).

The leaders of the American workers in the 1820s and 1830s stressed the importance of universal common school education (Carlton, 1908) but paid scant attention to the value of education for enhancing economic productivity

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or fostering social mobility (Kaestle, 1983; Vinovskis, 1989). Instead, they saw in schooling a means of educating workers to recognize and protect their rights through the political process (Luther, 1832; Simpson, 1831).

The one person who did stress the economic productivity of education was Horace Mann. Responding to the legislative efforts to abolish the Massachusetts State Board of Education in 1840, Mann sought to broaden the support for public education by demonstrating its economic value to the state economy and to the individual in his Fifth Annual Report (Massachu­ setts Board of Education, 1842). Based on a flawed, but seemingly objective, survey 0f textile mill managers in Lowell, he argued that educated workers earned about 50% more than uneducated ones. Although Mann’s estimate of the value of antebellum education was clearly exaggerated and based on faulty data and reasoning, it appeared scientific and plausible to his contem­ poraries (Vinovskis, 1970).

Thus while early 19th-century Americans valued and promoted education, they usually did not acknowledge or emphasize its economic value for the individual or the society. Thanks to the work of Mann and his supporters, however, the economic productivity of elementary education was recognized and praised by the time of the Civil War. This reinforced the growing widespread belief in 19th-century America that the children of the poor could escape their poverty through education. Education became even more highly valued as an alternate means of occupational mobility, once other ways of training young people, such as apprenticeship, declined in early 19th-century America (Vinovskis, 1989).

ANTEBELLUM PROGRAMS FOR EDUCATING POOR CHILDREN

Did 19th-century Americans develop special educational programs to help poor children? And if programs for poor children were set up, were they altered over time to adjust to the development and changes in the common schools? To answer these and other related questions, we look at three antebellum educational programs: (a) monitorial charity schools, (b) Sunday schools, and (c) infant schools. Although these programs were not the only or even the most typical of antebellum efforts to educate children, they exemplify and illustrate how concerns about poverty and disadvantaged children were translated into special educational programs.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, efforts were made to establish charity schools for poor children in American cities. These institutions were

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intended for children whose parents were either incapable of educating their children at home or unable to enroll them in a private school. Many of these charity schools were sponsored and funded by religious groups, and they catered not only to poor White children but to free African-American children (Cremin, 1970).

l\lONITORIALCHARITY SCHOOLS

Establishing and maintaining charity schools was expensive, and their philanthropic sponsors looked for ways to economize. One of the most promising and innovative approaches was to adopt the ideas and organization of Joseph Lancaster, a young English teacher who established monitorial (Lancasterian) schools for poor children in London and other communities in Great Britain. Lancasterian schools emphasized memorization and recita­ tion and used older students to oversee and monitor the progress of younger ones (Kaestle, 1973).

Lancasterian schools quickly spread to the major urban areas in the United States in the 1810s and 1820s. The schools were efficient and economical and were usually organized on a nonsectarian basis. Students were allowed to progress at their own pace, and large numbers of poor children received their education in them.

Although American educators were at first enthusiastic about Lancaster­ ian schools, complaints about the rote memorization and the impersonal education surfaced. As American school reformers of the 1830s and 1840s were exposed to the ideas of Johann Pestalozzi (Barlow, 1977), who stressed the need for more individual attention and for a close emotional relationship between the teacher and the pupil, the Lancasterian approach gradually fell out of favor and use.

The movement away from monitorial schools was reinforced by the growth of public schools and by the efforts to make these institutions attractive for children of middle-class families. Although the highly regi­ mented and inexpensive Lancasterian schools were seen as adequate for poor children, they were viewed as inappropriate for middle-class children whose parents demanded a better education for their own children (Kaestle, 1973).

Poor children benefited by the abandonment of Lancasterian schools in the 1830s and 1840s because they were able to enroll in one of the smaller classes in public schools rather than being taught by older students in a large monitorial charity school. Nevertheless, for a few decades in the early 19th century, monitorial schools provided education for many disadvantaged children -who might not have otherwise received any schooling.

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SUNDAY SCHOOLS

Sunday schools were another educational innovation intended for the poor which was borrowed from England (Laqueur, 1976). They were introduced into the United States in the 1790s and proved to be equally popular here. Some of the first Sunday schools were set up in factory towns by industrial­ ists, such as Samuel Slater, who wanted to provide schooling and religious training for poor children working in their textile mills (Tucker, 1984). As in England, religious activists played a key role in the establishment of Sunday schools in the larger cities, like Philadelphia, but initially these institutions were not controlled by or oriented toward a single religious denomination (Rice, 1917).

At first, Sunday schools emphasized teaching both poor children and illiterate adults how to read and encouraged the memorization of long passages from the Bible. Sunday schools often provided a basic education for those who were denied one elsewhere. Not surprisingly, many African­ Americans in northern cities received their limited education in them. In New York City, nearly 25% of the pupils in the Sunday School Union Society’s institutions were African-Americans (Boylan, 1988).

As public common schools became more available and adult illiteracy declined, Sunday schools changed their clientele and goals. Fewer illiterate adults attended, and increasingly middle-class children attended the Sunday schools alongside the children of the poor. Because children now acquired reading and writing in the public schools, it was no longer necessary to teach literacy in the Sunday schools. Instead, by the 1830s, Sunday schools emphasized evangelical training and became a religious complement to the public schools (Boylan, 1988; Rice, 1917).

INFANT SCHOOLS

Monitorial and Sunday schools tried to educate poor children of all ages. But another institution, infant schools, was especially designed for young children as a means of overcoming their disadvantaged backgrounds. Al­ though we often think that early childhood education for poor children originated in the mid-1960s, infant schools antedated the Head Start program by nearly 150 years.

Based on the pedagogical ideas of Pestalozzi and on Robert Owen’s model infant school at New Lanark, Scotland, these institutions spread rapidly throughout Europe and America in the 1820s and early 1830s. Much of their popularity stemmed from the popular belief that by reaching disadvantaged

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children at the age of 2 or 3 years, it was possible to save them before they adopted the harmful habits and dangerous values of their impoverished environment (Whitbread, 1972).

Early 19th-century Americans believed that children were capable of intellectual development at an early age. Therefore, the idea of special infant schools for children of poor parents seemed reasonable and natural. Because the educational practices in infant schools ranged from allowing the children to play to teaching them to read, there was widespread agreement that educating poor young children helped them to overcome their disadvantaged backgrounds (May & Vinovskis, 1977).

Although infant schools initially were intended for poor children, once middle-class families heard about them, they feared that the poor in infant schools might gain an advantage over their own children. As a result, middle-class parents wanted these institutions made available to all children.

Infant schools and early childhood education spread rapidly in the United States. Although, at first, infant schools were set up only in the larger urban areas like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, many rural communities established them. It is estimated that in 1840 approximately 40% of all 3-year-olds in Massachusetts were either enrolled in a special infant school or in a regular common school (Kaestle & Vinovskis, 1978).

Despite the initial enthusiasm for infant schools by parents and educators, they did not last long. In 1833, Amariah Brigham, a prominent physician, argued that early intellectual activity among children weakens the develop­ ment of the brain and eventually may lead to insanity (Brigham, 1833, p. 15).

Brigham’s ideas, based on the best medical and scientific thinking of the day, were widely disseminated among middle-class families through popular magazines. Support for infant schools and early childhood education quickly faded, and by 1860, there were almost no children under the age of 5 years in Massachusetts public schools (May & Vinovskis, 1977). What had started out as a means of helping poor children overcome their deficient home environments was now seen as detrimental to any young children in school. Middle-class parents were more likely than lower-class ones to withdraw their own children from the infant schools, partly because they were more likely to read about the injunctions against early education in popular magazines and advice books. But once philanthropic support and public funds were withheld from the infant schools and educational authorities barred very young children from entering public schools, the early schooling for all antebellum children in America collapsed (Kaestle & Vinovskis, 1978).

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SUMMARY

Having examined monitorial charity schools, Sunday schools, and infant schools, it is clear that antebellum Americans did set up special educational programs for poor and disadvantaged children. Their motivations were mixed. Some feared the social and economic disruptions caused by urban­ ization and industrialization and believed that educating poor children would help to minimize these difficulties. Others were more concerned about the political stability and felt that an educated electorate was essential in the new

republic. Many philanthropists and educational reformers were genuinely concerned about the well-being of disadvantaged children and felt it was their religious duty to help those less fortunate than themselves.

Many of the educational efforts aimed at poor children originated abroad and came to the United States from Great Britain. Indeed, historians have often ignored or minimized the importance of the transmission of ideas and institutions from abroad by viewing American developments in isolation from other countries. Yet the establishment and growth of educational institutions for the poor in the United States was not identical to that of comparable programs in Great Britain. With virtually no opposition to the education of the poor Whites in 19th-century America, it was much easier to promote such innovations here than in England, where strong opposition to mass public education persisted.

Educational programs for the poor in the United States frequently started out as private, charitable efforts in the early 19th century but quickly sought and received public funding. Indeed, one of the interesting characteristics of many of these programs is that they shifted from efforts aimed exclusively at poor and disadvantaged children to ones intended for everyone.

There were many advantages to having educational programs designed for the poor expanded to include all children. The stigma attached to attend­ ing private charity schools was largely eliminated once these institutions became public schools intended for middle-class as well as lower-class children. The quality of the education in these institutions also often im­ proved because middle-class parents insisted on better facilities and teachers once their own children were affected. But there were also some disadvan­ tages for poor children which did not receive much attention at the time. Once schools were intended for everyone and not just poor children, 19th-century reformers usually assumed that disadvantaged children in the public common schools did not need any special help or guidance. Indeed, as was seen in the case of infant schools, there was concern among middle-class parents that any special efforts on