Spurred by the Evangelical fervor of the Second Great Awakening, Protestant lay persons of the national period, organized Sunday Schools and Charity Schools. Interdenominational alliances, including the American Sunday School Union, the American Home Missionary Society and the American Education Society, sponsored Sunday Schools whose purpose was teaching rudimentary literacy. No surprise, the Bible was the text, saving young souls and keeping the Sabbath streets free of troublesome urchins. In newly settled areas, Sunday Schools were often precursors of district public schools. In older communities, Sunday Schools complemented the district schools. Charity schools which provided free education to poor children in most regions of the nation were a carryover from the 18th century. In New York City, Protestant sects organized charity schools for the poor children in their congregations. Non-religious charity schools also appeared in New York. In 1794, the Quaker dominated Manumission Society, incorporated the African Free School to serve black children. In 1801, the Quaker women of the Female Association established a charity school for poor white girls. Then 1805, philanthropic Quaker men organised the Free School Society for poor boys who were not being served by any other denominational schools. Unlike the rest of New York State where township receive matched funds for public schools by virtue of an annual appropriation from the state legislature, New York City divided its state allotment among ten church schools and the African Free School. Not until 1815 would the Free School Society receive a fair share of the state appropriation for its schools. >> In 1809, the Free School Society opened a two-story, red brick building with accommodations for 500 boys. Over the next 25 years, the society built many more schools, drawing in more and more pupils with more than 20,000 poor children on its benches by 1839. How was this society able to accommodate so many children, yet keep its costs in check? The answer lies in the society's adoption of the Lancastrian or Monitorial System which was imported from England in the early 19th Century. The historian Diane Ravitch gives us a good image of this system in practice. Imagine crowding 300 to 500 children into a large hall. Envision all of these pupils rigidly seated in long, straight rows of wooden desk, each row called a form, each form representing one of ten levels of achievements in reading and arithmetic. At the head of each row, or form, stands a monitor whose job is to teach the lessons prescribed in a manual provided by the teacher of the school. The teacher drills the monitors preparatory to each lesson. The monitors repeat the drill to the pupils in their charge. Pupils demonstrate mastery of the material and so cause for promotion to the next form by reciting line-by-line memorized lessons. They can cough up the lessons on demand. Learning is dismally wrought, terribly boring. Little more than a mindless pouring in and regurgitation of facts. The monitor is likely to be a recent graduate of a Society School. He was young, unimaginative, robot-like. He reports to the teacher of the school who receives the reports, authorizes promotions, and occasionally, peers out over the hall. Poor children in the Monitorial School learned the rudimentary literacy and morality. The main virtue of the Lancastrian model, as society's wealthy trustees saw it, was it's economy. [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] >> On average, about $4 for pupil for a year, over a 47-year period. [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] In 1826, the Free School Society was rechartered as the Public School Society. It's schools were now open to all children of New York City without regard for social class or poverty. Although its board of trustees was private and voluntary, the society operated with public funds and public facilities, and served a public purpose. In a critical decision, New York City used its public funds to expand its charity schooling to all. It did not, for example, choose to use its funding to expand support to the varied pay schools, which were de facto the most common schooling. By the 1830s, the Public School Society was the city's de facto public school system. It received city property taxes and a state grant. It incorporated the six black Free Schools operated by the Manumission Society. New York City would maintain racially segregated schools until they we're abolished by state law in 1873. The Public Schools Society's ideology was non-denominational Protestantism, the King James Bible was read in the Society Schools without comment. Claiming about a quarter of New York City's population by the mid 1850's, the city's Irish Catholics weren't buying the pan-Protestant compromise or even the idea of common schools. The Irish were a despised national group. Their character regarded as inferior to hardy Anglo-Saxon Protestant stock. The religion ridiculed as papist. >> The Irish-Catholic imbroglio with the Public School Society started in 1839 when John Hughes was named Bishop of New York. Hughes and his allies regarded Catholic education as an essential mainstay of their faith and culture. To no avail, they campaigned long, hard, and militantly in Albany, the state capital, for state and city tax support for parochial education. In 1842, the issue was finally settled when the State Assembly voted to establish the Central Board of Education for New York City. Whereupon a hand-wringing Bishop Hughes withdrew his Catholic legions from the fray, and debarked on building a system of parochial schools. For it's part, the new Board of Education soon absorbed the schools of the Public School Society and build a system of ward schools. With school governance located primarily at the ward level. We'll return to ward-based schooling in our fourth coming module. >> Nationwide, separate Catholic schools were a gradual development which would not reach a large scale until after 1870. In some areas, Catholic parishioners were slow to leave the public schools either lacking sufficient funds to build parochial schools or sufficient discontent to abandon the public's fear. Ultimately, Catholics were able to build and sustain a separate system of parochial schools. They had the option to join or reject the common school movement. By contrast, blacks and American Indians did not have this option in the antebellum era. We take up their story in our next episode. [SOUND]
