The Spread of Education Before Compulsion; E. West

Yet if these necessities were to be provided today on the same basis as education, they would be available free of charge. Indeed, there would be laws for compulsory and universal eating and higher taxes to pay for children's "free" food at the nearest local government kitchens or shops. But it is only in the last century and a quarter that this kind of asymmetry of treatDr. West is a professor ofeconomics at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and author of Education and the State (Liberty Press). ment has emerged. This essay will accord ingly look at the history of the subject to enquire to what extent the altruism of typ ical parents extended to education as well as to other necessities before governments in tervened. I shall first examine conditions in England in the nineteenth century prior to the introduction of compulsory education. I shall then make a similar investigation of the United States to see if there were interesting parallels.

England and Wales Contrary to popular belief, the supply of schooling in Britain between 1800 and 1840 was relatively substantial prior to any gov ernment intervention, although it depended almost completely 'on private funds. At this time, moreover, the largest contributors to education revenues were working parents 2 and the second largest was the Church. Of course, there was less education per child than today, just as there was less of every thing else, because the national income was so much smaller. I have calculated, never theless, that the percentage of the net na tional income spent on day-schooling of 488 489 Table 1 Growth in Public Schooling in England and Wales, 1818·1858 Averageannual Averageannual growth rate Numberof growth rate Year Population of population day scholars of day-scholars 1818 11,642,683 674,883 1.40% 3.60% 1833 14,386,415 1,276,947 1.47% 3.16% 1851 17,927,609 2,144,378 1.21% 2.35% 1858 19,523,103 2,525,462 Sources:The 1851 Census(EducationReport)andthe NewcastleCommissionReporton Educationin 1858(ParliamentaryPapers 1861).

children of all ages in England in 1833 was approximately 1 percent. By 1920, when schooling had become "free" and compul sory by special statute, the proportion had fallen to 0.7 percent. 3 The evidence also shows that working parents were purchasing increasing amounts of education for their children as their incomes were rising from 1818 on wards, and this, to repeat, at a time before education was ' 'free" and compulsory by statute. Compulsion came in 1880, and state schooling did not become free until 1891. Table 1 demonstrates that the annual growth of enrollments between 1818 and 1858 exceeded the annual growth of popu lation. After the compilation of the first educational census in 1851, it was reported that the average school attendance period of working-class children was nearly five years. By 1858 the Newcastle Commission concluded that it had risen to nearly six years. And the same authority reported that "almost everyone receives some amount of school education at some period or other. ,,4 The author of the famous 1870Act, W. E.

Forster, explained that the intention of in troducing fee-based government-run estab lishments for the first time was not to replace the vast system of private schools but sim ply to "fill up the gaps" where they could be found. His officials, however, were overambitious in their reports of these needs, and after government schools were erected they were often found to have much surplus capacity. To reduce their embarrassment over half-empty schools, the education boards then resorted to lowering tuition fees and using tax revenues to fill the breach. The lower price naturally expanded the demand; but this was at the expense of the private schools, many of which could not survive such unfair competition. After education was made compulsory by statute, the government-school advocates argued that it was wrong to compel the very poorest to do something they could not afford. But rather than propose a special financial dispensation or grants to these families, the advocates insisted that educa tion should be made free for all: the rich and the middle class as well as the lower-income groups. Free education was legislated for the new government schools exclusively because it was argued that it would be inviting conflict to ask taxpayers to subsi dize religious schools. Protestant taxpayers, for instance, would object to their taxes financing Catholics, and vice versa.

In this way the new "gap-filling" govern ment schools were given a wide-open field with their zero-priced education. Since most of the subsequent growing population nat urally chose the free alternative, the private schools' share of the market declined and that of government schools skyrocketed.

490 THE FREEMAN • JULY 1996 The Literacy Record The pre-1870 record of educational out puts such as literacy was even more impres sive than the numbers of children in school, and this presents an even more serious problem to typical authors of social histo ries. Professor Mark Blaug has observed that "Conventional histories of education neatly dispose of the problem by simply ignoring the literacy evidence.,,5 R. K. Webb, a specialist historian of literacy, offers the following conclusions about conditions in Britain in the late 1830s: In so far as one dare generalize about a national average in an extraordinarily var ied situation, the figurewould seem to run between two-thirds and three-quarters of the working classes as literate, a group which included most of the respectable poor who were the great political potential in English life.6 There was, moreover, an appreciable rate of growth in literacy. This is reflected in the fact that young persons were more and more accomplished than their elders. Thus an examination of educational attainments of males in the Navy and Marines in" 1865 showed that 99 percent of the boys could read compared with their seniors: seamen (89 percent), marines (80 percent), and petty officers (94 percent).?

It is not surprising that with such evidence of literacy growth of young people, the levels had become even more substantial by 1870. On my calculations for 1880, when national compulsion was enacted, over 95 percent of fifteen-year-olds were literate. 8 This should be compared to the fact that over a century later 40 percent of 21-year olds in the United Kingdom admit to diffi culties with writing and spelling.9 American Education on the Eve of Government Compulsion In the interests of manageability I shall confine attention to a single U.S. state. New York is selected because it seems to have been reasonably representative of condi tions generally in the first 70 years of nine teenth-century America. In 1811 five commissioners were autho rized to report on the extent of education in the state. They recognized that, in order to qualify for state aid, it was necessary to establish in what respects the people were not themselves already securing sufficient education for their children. The commis sioners acknowledged that schooling was indeed already widespread: "In a free gov ernment, where political equality is estab lished, and where the road to preferment is open to all, there is a natural stimulus to education; and accordingly we find it gen erally resorted to, unless some great local impediments interfere." 10 Poverty was in some cases an impediment; but the biggest obstacle was bad geographic location: In populous cities, and the parts of the country thickly settled, schools are gen erally established by individual exertion.

In these cases, the means of education are facilitated, as the expenses of schools are divided among a great many. It is in the remote and thinly populated parts of the State, where the inhabitants are scattered over a large extent, that education stands greatly in need of encouragement. The people here living far from each other, makes it difficultso to establish schools as to render them convenient or accessible to all. Every family therefore, must either educate its own children, or the children must forego the advantages of educa tion.ll The problem was thus presented in the same terms as those later used in England by W. E. Forster, the architect of the 1870 English Education Act. As we have seen, it was largely a problem, to use Forster's words, of "filling up the gaps. " The logic of such argument, of course, called mainly for discriminating and marginal government in tervention. To this end three methods were available. First, the government could assist families, but only the needy ones, by way of educational subsidies. Second, it could sub sidize the promoters of schools in the special THE SPREAD OF EDUCATION BEFORE COMPULSION 491 areas where they were needed. Third, the government itself could set up schools, but only in the "gap" areas. Without discussing possible alternatives, the New York State commissioners recommended that the in conveniences could generally best be rem edied "by the establishment of Common Schools, under the direction and patronage of the State."

The report, having stressed the plight of . the rural areas, leads the reader to expect special attention to be paid to them in the New York State general plan of interven tion. No such priority appears, however. The main features of the plan suggested by the commissioners were: that the several towns of the state be divided into school districts by three commissioners, elected by the citizens to vote for town offices; that three trustees be elected in each district, to whom shall be confined the care and super intendence of the school to be established therein; that the interest of the school fund be divided among the different counties and towns according, not to the distribution, but to the size of their respective populations as ascertained by the current census of the United States. Thus, in place of discrimination in favor of the poor and thinly populated districts, a flat equality of treatment was decreed for all areas; the public monies were to be distrib uted on a per capita basis according to the number of children between five and fifteen in each district, whether its population was dense or sparse, rich or poor.

Two details of the early legislation (of 1812 and 1814) are worthy of special atten tion. First, there seems to have been no announced intention of making education free. Even with the addition of the revenues from town taxes there were far from suffi cient monies to cover expenses. The sub stantial balance was presented in the form of rate bills (fees) to the parents, who were required to pay in proportion to the atten dance of their children. For instance, in 1830 parental fees contributed $346,807 toward the total sum for teachers' wages of $586,520.12 The second detail of the early legislation worth noticing is that religion was regarded as an integral part of school education. The commissioners observed: "Morality and re ligion are the foundation of all that is truly great and good; and consequently, of pri mary importance. ,,13 The Bible, in common schools, was to be treated as more than a literary work. The commissioners particu larly recommended the practice of the New York Free Schools (the charitable establish ments) in "presuming the religious regard which is due to the sacred writings." 14 Subsequently, the annual reports of the superintendents revealed a steady growth in the number of school districts organized. In some cases, entirely new schools were built; in others the personnel of existing private schools allowed themselves to become so cialized, that is, to become common schools, in order to qualify for the public monies. In the report of 1821 it was stated that the whole number of children between the ages of five and 16 residing in the state was 380,000; and the total number, of all ages, taught during the year was 342,479.

Thus, according to this evidence, schooling in the early nineteenth century was already almost universal without being compulsory. Moreover, although it was subsidized, it was not free except to the very poor. In the first half of the century, statistics for private schooling throughout the state were hard to come by. But it will be remem bered that the 1811 Commissioners ob served that in thickly populated areas the means of education were already well pro vided for. The Superintendent's Report of 1830contained an account of a census of the schools of the city of New York for the year 1829. It showed that of the 24,952 children attending school in the city, the great ma jority, 18,945, were in private schools. 15 By this time the superintendents were expressing complete satisfaction with the provision of schooling. On the quantity of it the Report of 1836 asserted: Under any view of the subject, it is reasonable to believe, that in the common schools, private schools and academies, the number of children actually receiving 492 THE FREEMAN • JULY 1996 instruction is equal to the whole number between five and sixteen years of age.16 The fact that education could continue to be universal without being free and compul sory seems to have been readily acknowl edged. Where there were students who had poor parents, the trustees had authority to release them from the payment of fees entirely, and this was done' 'at the close of term, in such a manner as to divest the transaction of all the circumstances calcu lated to wound the feelings of scholars. ,,17 Literacy in Nineteenth Century America The spread of literacy among the Ameri can population before education became compulsory seems to have been at least as impressive as in the case of Britain. An item in the Journal ofEducation of January 1828 gave this account: Our population is 12,000,000, for the ed uca~ion of which, we have 50 colleges, beSIdes several times the number of well endowed and flourishing academies leav ing primary schools out of the account.

For meeting the intellectual wants of this 12,000,000, we have about 600 newspa pers and periodical journals. There is no country, (it is often said), where the means of intelligence are so generally enjoyed by all ranks and where knowl edge is so generally diffused among the lower orders of the community, as in our own. The population of those portions of Poland which have successively fallen under the dominion of Russia, is about 20,000,000. To meet the wants of which there are but 15 newspapers, eight of which are printed in Warsaw. But with us a newspaper is the daily fare of almost every meal in almost every family. Sheldon Richman quotes data showing that from 1650 to 1795, American male literacy climbed from 60 to 90 percent. Between 1800and 1840literacy in the North rose from 75 percent to between 91 and 97 percent. In the South the rate grew from about 55 percent to 81 percent. Richman also quotes evidence indicating that literacy in Massachusetts was 98 percent on the eve of legislated compulsion and is about 91 percent today. IS Finally, Carl F. Kaestle observes: "The best generalization possible is that New York, like other American towns of the Revolutionary period, had a high literacy rate relative to other places in the world, and that literacy did not depend primarily upon the schools. ,,19 Conclusion This account of education in New York State prior to full government intervention to make it free, compulsory, and universal, can be concluded as follows: Whether or not it was appropriate (after 1867) to apply compulsion unconditionally to all classes of individuals, the laws that were actually established did not in fact secure an educa tion that was universal in the sense of 100 percent school attendance by all children of school age. If, on the other hand, the term "universal" is intended more loosely to mean something like, "most," "nearly ev erybody," or "over 90 percent," then we lack firm evidence to show that education was not already universal prior to interven tion. The eventual establishment, mean while, of laws to provide a schooling that was both compulsory and free, was accom panied by major increases in costs. These included not only unprecedented expenses of growing bureaucracy but also the sub stantial costs of reduced liberty of families eventually caught in a choice-restricted mo nopoly system serving the interests not of the demanders but of the rent-seeking sup pliers. Both sides of the Atlantic, mean while, shared this same fate. D 1. G. Becker and K. Murphy, "The Family and the State," Journal of Law and Economics 30 (1988): 3 and fn. 9.

2. E. G. West, Education and the Industrial Revolution (London: Batsford, 1975). 3. Ibid., p. 89. 4. Newcastle Commission, 1861, p. 293. 5: Mark.~laug, "The Economics of Education in English ClaSSicalPohttcal Economy: A Re-Examination," in A. Skin ner and T. Wilson, eds., Essays on Adam Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 595.

THE SPREAD OF EDUCATION BEFORE COMPULSION 493 6. R. K. Webb, "The Victorian Reading Public," in From Dickens to Hardy (London: Pelican Books, 1963), p. 149. 7. Ibid. 8. E. G. West, "Literacy and the Industrial Revolu tion," Economic History Review 31 (3) August 1978. 9. Central Statistical Office, Social Trends: 1995 Edition (London: HMSO, 1995), p. 58. 10. M. Randall, History of the Common School System of the State of New York, from its Origins in 1795, to the Present Time (New York: Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor, & Co, 1871), p. 18; my emphasis. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid., p. 66. Teachers' wages constituted about one half of total expenses. 13. Ibid., p. 19. 14. Ibid., p. 22. 15. Annual Report, New York Superintendent Common Schools, 1830, p. 17. 16. Annual Report, New York Superintendent Common Schools, 1836, p. 8. 17. Annual Report, New York Superintendent Common Schools, 1831, p. 16. 18. Sheldon Richman, Separating School and State: Lib erating America's Families (Fairfax, Va.: The Future of Freedom Foundation, 1994), p. 38.

19. Carl F. Kaestle, The Evolution of the School System: New York City 1750-1850 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni versity Press, 1973), p. 5.