general interest in the public mind on the subject of education. There is at present, at least in this section of the United States, a widespread and melancholy indifference in reference to it * * in part due to the doctrine borrowed from the commercial code * * * that education, like tea and silk, should be left to the operation of the principle of demand and supply. Another purpose is: To elevate the standard of primary schools which do little but reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic, geography, and grammar in nineteen-twentieths, or maybe ninety-nine hundredths of the schools, and even these are often pursued to so limited an extent as to be almost entirely useless. 1 The same periodical, reorganized as the Monthly Advocate of Education, restates its purpose: That it (education) is, however, the sheet anchor of our political hopes as a Nation, the only safeguard of our civil institutions, every day's observation serves more fully to convince us; and that it is the great lever to be employed, under Providence, for the political and moral regeneration of the world, we entertain as little doubt. It is, therefore, an object of prime and indispensable concernment to us as citizens, as philanthropists, and as Christians. Although the value of education is very generally acknowledged by our people, yet we fear we can not add with truth that it is as deeply felt by the great body of them. Apathy a painful topic, which blinking will not cure. # * We must have the firmness to probe the sore to the core, and then, with what skill we may, to restore health and soundness to the diseased and suffering system. To lend a helping hand, feeble though it be, to this great and good cause is our main object in the work which we propose to establish. Teachers' seminaries a main object to be worked for. 2 Common School Assistant: The improvement of common schools is the exclusive object of this paper. From statistical tables it can be seen that only 1 pupil in 20 goes higher than the common school. This paper, therefore, will endeavor to assist 19 out of 20 of the children and youth * in acquiring the only education they will ever receive. Public sentiment must be enlightened. * Common School Advocate' (Illinois, 1837): The leading object of our proposed publication will be the promotion of common schools. By this, however, we would not be understood as undervaluing the higher grades of education. But our chief attention will be devoted to common schools. And the design of the Advocate will be to move the public mind and make an effort in this all-important cause by the presentation of facts, examination of books, methods of teaching, existing systems of education in our country and the world. The primary object is to break up inaction due to lack of information or absorption with other topics-not to overcome opposition to education, which does not exist. The Western Academician (1837): İt will be seen that the objects are, to aid in giving tone and character to the public mind, to create a taste for scientific attainments, to build up a strong rampart about our country by the introduction of a manly and vigorous education diffused among the people that thus they may know to estimate national liberty, as well as to preserve it. Connecticut Common School Journal' (1838): The purpose is to promote the elevated character of common schools, * be the organ of communication between the board and secretary and the people, contain laws of the State help school committees and visitors help form, encourage, bring forward good teachers and furnish some matter adapted to the capacity of children and give information as to what is being done in other States. * * District School Journal' (New York, 1841): We are now suffering from the evils attendant upon a negligent education. We have been engrossed by the material interests of society. * The public eye has been coldly averted from the schools. Hence, we fear, is much of the increasing demoralization of society; hence that leaden apathy which weighs down these mainsprings of the social system, clogging all movement and checking all progress. 1 Vol. 1, 137-138. Common Sch. Asst., 1836, I, 1. • Common Sch. Adv., Vol. I, 1. • Vol. I, 4. We do And, therefore, not realize the relation between school and life. though the fund is ample and well contrived, yet our schools are embarrassed and degraded and will remain so until an enlightened and honest interest is taken in their welfare. The Journal hopes to help in remedying the evil. Common School Journal' (Pennsylvania, 1844): It will, therefore, be our aim, first of all, to collect and diffuse information in regard to the past history and the present actual condition of the public schools throughout the State. It is obvious that a correct knowledge of these points must lie at the basis of all intelligent action for their future improvement. * Next to the col lection and diffusion of information of intelligence in regard to the state of public instruction, we would esteem it especially important to enlist the attention of directors, teachers, and others engaged in the cause to the suggestion and discussion of improvement. Ohio School Journal' (1846): (1) To awaken the whole community to a lively sense of the importance of education to a free people, and of the common school as the means by which all the youth of the State are to be educated. (2) To arouse school directors and other officers to a high sense of the responsibility of their stations, and to aid them in performing their duty to the schools, the community, and the State. (3) To aid teachers in the important work of self-culture in preparing for the duties of the schoolroom and in becoming efficient laborers in promoting general education. Maine Journal of Education (1850): To be the organ of the board and of teachers in order to give greater uniformity and efficiency. Will also be a medium for disseminating among the masses correct views in regard to physical, intellectual, and moral culture of the forthcoming generation and the best means to be employed. * * American Educational and Western School Journal' (Ohio, 1852): Design is to be educational but not merely so. Means that it shall be a guest, ever to be greeted with undissembled welcome at the domestic fireside, attracting by its genial message the attention of both old and young. | District School Journal' (Iowa, 1853), to be devoted exclusively to the interests of the district schools of the State: By so doing we shall endeavor to elevate the standard of common-school instruction, to diffuse as widely as possible useful knowledge, and to render the communication of that knowledge to the young as free and unfettered as the air they breathe. We shall advocate the establishment of a school system upon a broad, comprehensive, and impregnable basis, so that the blessings of a sound elementary education can be assured to every child of the State without distinction or discrimination. * * * Michigan Journal of Education' (1854): But what is the object of this new periodical? Not even to procure a livelihood for editors and pubfishers, for we get our living by other means, and this is a labor of love, but our object is to promote the correct and thorough and general education of the sons and daughters of the State of Michigan. [ The Missouri Journal of Education' states it purposes to arouse public feeling, urge better schoolhouses, better qualified teachers, and better salaries and longer terms of school, and explain best method of instruction and discipline, and to be literary as well as educational. A year later the Missouri Educator,* after deploring the absence of any literary and educational journal, announces its purpose to be the inspiration of the people, and the inspiration of greater zeal for their work among teachers, as well as the giving of information and suggestions. The Voice of Iowa' (1857): We have no appeal to make to parties or sects, but one universal invitation in the name of humanity, in behalf of the race, to 1 Vol. I, 2. 2 Vol. I, 1. * Vol. I, 4. 113783°-19 • Vol. 1, 45. Missouri Jl. of Ed., St. Louis, I, 3-4, 1857. * all who love progress in science and the arts, the lovers of the beautiful, the true, and the useful; we extend to all, by whatever altars they may worship, or around whatever captain they may gather, a hearty invitation to join our troop. As a pioneer we come, claiming a difference from all that has preceded us. Although we may sometimes give selected gems, our main object will be to make true our name to let Iowa be known as she is to all who trace the pages of our work. [The purpose will be] to bring within sight of all the glorious inheritance of the means for free instruction in all the necessary branches of science. Alabama Educational Journal' (1858): The object of this journal is to record the educational movements going on among us and about us, both for the sake of diffusing information in respect of them and that they may be preserved as matters of future history. Young teachers may profit by knowing what older teachers have done, educational literature will be disseminated and the public informed. Teachers, parents, and citizens are appealed to for support. The foregoing somewhat extended quotations may be taken as fully representative of the aims of school journals during the pioneer period, which, it should be noted, varied chronologically with the development of the public school system. Similar statements of aim could easily be found in the reconstruction period of the South and the development of the newer Western States. In this era appeal is to parents, school officers, the community at large, as well as to teachers. The official State journals, sent as a rule to school officers, frequently aimed to be literary as well as educational, and not “mere school journals," a term applied very early and attached to every periodical which gave conspicuous attention to schoolroom procedure. The aims cited show an unbounded faith in education as the means of transforming society, and an oft-expressed belief that general diffusion of knowledge is the foundation of liberty and republican institutions. To promote this diffusion of knowledge through a public school system which was beginning to take form; to awaken a more general interest in education, to disseminate more liberal views, to guide or enlighten public sentiment and enthusiasm for education, and to secure intelligent legislation, were among the purposes to be striven for. Inquiry as to the state of public education in all the world, past and present, was frequently mentioned as prerequisite for wise procedure. Among specific measures advocated were the establishment of monitorial schools, manual labor institutions, infant schools, libraries, lyceums, normal schools, a national university, better education for women, and most prominently of all the establishment upon a sound basis of free public schools. As will be shown in the chapter upon content, many of the leading articles were very general in nature; comparatively few had direct relation to schoolroom procedure; [the great aim was promotion and direction of a public school system in the process of becoming. Even the names of many of these periodicals proclaim their mission as that of agitation. Fifteen of the eighteen "Advocates" which have lived their short span had flourished and passed away before 1850; other suggestive names were the Academic Pioneer, Universal Educator, Educational Disseminator, and Free School Clarion. Until about 1870 the general aims previously cited seemed to satisfy, though there is occasional recognition of a field not well occupied, that of supplying material for the rank and file of those who were actually doing the teaching. Such general aims appealed to the few; the many were not so much concerned with the larger phases of educational thought as with what was of direct or immediate utility in the schoolroom. Such content in the nature of the case 1 Vol. I, 1. must appear to be on a lower plane, especially if it is presented so as to appeal to young, inexperienced, poorly educated, or ill-trained teachers. There is accordingly much unwillingness to declare frankly that the purpose, or a leading purpose, of a school journal is to publish method and device, and much disagreement as to what the purpose of a school journal should be. In the transition from the general to the specific character, or, as often expressed, from the liberal and cultural to the direct and trivial, many uncomplimentary remarks were made, even denying such school periodicals as circulate generally any justification for their existence. Some of the most radical criticisms are from the editors themselves. Careful reading of the following quotations, which state more or less analytically the difficulty of determining the school journal's function, and of finding content appropriate for its purpose, will show that one of the unsolvable problems attempted was that of trying to interest relatively uneducated teachers in matters beyond their mental horizon; for those who were unwilling or unable to cheapen content by coming to the lower level, it was very natural to find fault with the tendency which did both. The earliest recognition of the dual function which school journals might be called upon to serve is from the Education Reporter and Weekly Lyceum1 (1830): "The proposed field is almost unoccupied," except for the Journal of Education, which will devote itself more to heavy articles. The Journal will still be desirable for the scholar and the educated man of leisure; the Reporter will attempt to aid every teacher, however humble his location, and assist every parent in training up his precious charge. Our highest ambition will be gratified if we can fill this humble department acceptably and usefully. The opposite ideal appears in the Connecticut Common School Journal' (1838): It has been my aim in this publication to embrace only documents and articles of permanent value and interest. This necessarily interferes with its popularity, success, and makes it a constant expense. (Barnard.) The following extracts relate more specifically to the problem: ' What is to be expected of a teachers' journal? Some object that it contains no material for the district schools, almost entirely for grade and high schools. Many take a teachers' journal expecting in it and by it to be told how to teach school under any and all circumstances; how they shall keep order, how they shall teach reading, spelling, etc.; in other words, they expect a set of empirical recipes, and if they do not find them, as they can not, they drop the journal as of no use to them. It must be understood that it is impossible to give detailed methods in teaching that are infallible. Teaching has not yet reached the crystalline stage of a true science, when it can be limited and defined, its processes explained, and its results predicted with certainty. American Education Monthly (1869): The poverty of our educational literature is indeed a matter of national reproach, especially to a nation that professes to be doing so much and so well for education. The better class of teachers hold themselves aloof from educational papers. Thus they exert no considerable influence on the character of educational * literature. Boys and girls teaching are neither producers nor consumers of educational literature. The editor classifies other teachers as those who lead, "leading educators"; those who are led; and those who neither lead nor go. The second group furnishes most market for school papers, and this class craves material of the county institute essay type or of the comic almanac style; principles they can not stand. The Teacher (1889): Our highly esteemed and very valuable contemporary, the Journal of Pedagogy, Athens, Ohio, some time ago called attention in its editorial columns to the worthlessness of a large number of our American educational journals. We have long been impressed with this fact, and are also "sorry to be compelled to say that their average tone is decidedly low." The number of these journals is annually increasing, in spite of the fact that the greater part of them meet an early and richly deserved death. We are puzzled to know what is the reason for their existence. Do teachers demand that sort of chaff? or is it that their editors are under the misapprehension that teachers are altogether devoid of literary taste or, worse still, of common sense? These educational journalists are mostly under the impression that the sort of inspiration and practical help (?) needed by teachers is scrappy information of all kinds and a vast amount of questions and answers and exceedingly interesting items about very unimportant persons and things. * *本 We can not very well know where to lay the blame, but we do know and feel that a crusade against such literature and such deteriorating influences is very much needed. We are sorry for the editors and publishers who are constrained, if they are so, to meet such a demand. We are just as grieved for the teachers who waste their time on such reading, and more so for those who are in need of influence and have to come to such a source for their education. A description of these journals is hardly necessary. * They are fine specimens of enterprising journalism, with a very small capital of education or the culture inseparable from it. Under the circumstances it is a problem why they exist, and when they cease their existence the profession will be blessed. Quoted by Public School Journal (LX, 408): Our American educational journals are not, in the main, such as we could be proud of. They are to-day, for the most part, crude, shallow, uncritical, carelessly edited, full of poor flatteries, lacking in dignity, and lacking in definite aim. Perhaps no other field of journalism has been cultivated in so unsatisfactory a manner, whereas no field really demands more critical and scientific workers; for the educational journal is the teacher of teachers. Samuel Findley, on educational journalism in Ohio: A problem ever present to the honest editor of a periodical devoted to the interests of common schools is how to fill his pages with matter most instructive, elevating, and inspiring, and best calculated to promote wise and sound education, and yet at the same time so popularize his journal as to secure a sustaining constituency. The problem is not an easy one, but is likely to grow easier with the increase of intelligence and the dissemination of broader and juster views of education among teachers. [The writer (Sabin) *] believes that the custom of filling a school journal with methods and devices, cut and dried, all ready for school use, is not calculated to make strong, independent teachers. It savors too much of the labor-saving device of living in a flat and having meals sent in from a common kitchen. The power to think, to originate, to adapt to the present work of the school, is the surest criterion of a good teacher; but this power is not acquired by wearing the misfit garments of some other person, nor by fighting the battles of David in the armor of Saul. The Journal' will continue to address teachers as rational beings who are intelligent and are seeking to improve their knowledge of the theory and practice of teaching. It positively refuses to consider the education of a child as a mechanical process, to be carried on by mechanical device and rule of thumb. Ohio Educational Monthly (1901, 358): Among the subscribers to educational journals are found the two extremes, composed on the one hand of those whose demand for what they term practical is so strong that they fail to see anything of merit in an article which can not be used directly to aid them in the actual work of the classroom, and, on the other hand, of those who have lost all sympathy with the helps which are so valuable to inexperienced teachers and which they themselves at one time needed, and who as a result criticise every article which does not treat in a philosophical manner some underlying principle of education. 1 Vol. II, 82. * New England Mag., 1891, IV, 134. Iowa Sch. J., Des Moines, 1892, VII, 7. |