The Making of Our Wisconsin Schools 1848-1948

Struggle for Status

Teachers and Their Qualifications

The basic problem in education is that of getting the best possible teachers for the classrooms. The methods of selecting and licensing teachers in Wisconsin have moved from local authorities to a complete control of certification by the state superintendent. It took 90 years to accomplish this necessary centralization, for the law placing certification in the Department of Public Instruction - was not passed until 1939.

In the earliest days, before there was any kind of organization and “public schools” were entirely supported by tuition, anyone could set up a school. The following correspondence indicates the low level from which teachers came. While probably not typical it shows what was possible.

To Mr. John Lawe & Mr. Louis Grignon

Gentlemen, - as I have mentioned to you boath, that I intend to keep school being the onley means for a liveleyhood. I shall concider it a great Obligation if you will favour me in obtaining Scholars, which I promise to do & act faithfully my duty as a school master toward them &c.

Respectfully, Gentlemen your
J. BTE S. JACOBS,
Green Bay, 17 October, 1820

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Green Bay 26th November 1821

Dear Lawe, - Your note in answer to mind of the 25th inst pleased me mush, as it maid me cum to my right sencess; in one part of my leter to you I returned you thanks for your favour towards me, and in another part that you abused me. I did not mean to say so, it is a mistake on my part. I ment to say that you repremanded me several times in regard of the Blotter I kept last summer for you and my saying you was jealous about my school I intended to mention that you gave me no answer to my note to you where I mentioned I would be quite happy if you would send your Children to school and I should charge you onley one Ollar per Child instead of two -- and about minding receaiveing 0person with spirits and Whiskey, I was half drunk and I maid Ceremonies to get quite so.

In regard of making out my account against you, please to place to my Credit, your’s and Mr. Frankes Children 7 Months schooling $84 - as to my writing for you cupping (copying) invoices Ec est les commission que je faiette - I did not inteand to ask you aney thing - but as I am a poor, reatch and Mr. Porlier has no Blanket of 2 ½ Pt. and my Girl as not aney I would which (wish) you to Let me have one & ½ the Coloured Thread and one Dressd deer Skin.

To Forgive my errors
Respectfully yours
J. BTE. S. JACOBS.

I shall probably pay you with grain.
I have 24 Scholar but I suppose half will pay and the others will not pay verry well.

This letter as been written on the 26 November at present 8 December 1821.

Township Control

Under the first state school code the town superintendents examined and licensed teachers with no state regulations of any kind. These men usually had little more “book learning” than the applicant, and sometimes they were almost illiterate. One such superintendent is reported to have opened a geography to the map of Europe and asked the teacher, “What color is France?” - apparently he could read a little.

The other side of the picture is in a report to the state superintendent which one of the town officers wrote of an applicant, “She is a good natural reader, spells well, writes a fair legible hand, but is very deficient in Arithmetic, Grammar, and Geography. In answer to the question, “By what other names is the Earth known,” she said, “By the names of Globe, Hemisphere, and New World.”

Other reports asked for better teachers, for experienced teachers, for qualified teachers. One says, “There is a great scarcity of experienced teachers. We often have to hire mere boys to teach our winter schools.” “Often have I had this inquiry, What shall we do? for teachers we must have.” And this, “I have great distrust of the ability of these half-fledged teachers who are thronging the country. Some of them may, and indeed do, succeed; but the majority of them fail - if not in getting through a term of school, in doing any good.”

One report probably summed up the main difficulty thus, “Able teachers are not easily found, and they probably will not be for a while to come. In the country, where schools are taught for a few months only every year, teaching cannot become a profession and the task is undertaken by young men and ladies who enter upon it as a temporary business, and do not make any great effort to improve themselves as teachers. Perhaps to make good teachers more common, something should be done to render their situation more desirable.” The quotations are from the annual report of State Superintendent A. Constantine Barry made in 1856.

The same report focused statistical evidence on “teachers wages” - they had not yet achieved the dignity of “salaries.” In 1852 the average wages of male teachers was $15.83 a month while female teachers received $8.64. (The designation of “men” and “women” was seldom used in the old reports, although sometimes one finds “ladies” and “gentlemen.”) These wages represent an increase from $15.22 for males and $6.92 for females reported in 1849. The average school year was 5 ½ months.

School Buildings

School houses didn’t offer much prospect of a happy environment to the early teachers. In 1852 there were 1.730 buildings - 66 of brick, 74 of stone, 812 were framed, and the remainder (778) were log houses. Six hundred and ten had no blackboards. The majority had no apparatus, and were devoid of anything like comfortable furniture. The value of these school buildings was $261,986.32, an average of $168.88 per building. One school clerk reported the value of the school house as two cents. This probably represents the low point in physical plants. The first issue of the Wisconsin Journal of Education in 1856 has reports of new buildings; at Waukesha, “one of the best school edifices in the State. It is built of stone - two stories high, and finished in the best manner.”; at Beloit “there will be erected during the next summer a school edifice for another Union school, which it is said will surpass anything of the kind in the state.” Something was being done “to make the situation more desirable,” even to having “edifices” for schools.

Certification of Teachers

After the creation of the office of county superintendent in 1861 the next step was obviously that of giving him power of certification. The first law providing for granting certificates was accordingly passed in 1862. It annulled all certificates granted by town superintendents.

Three grades of certificates were created and examinations were to be given by the county superintendent in “moral character, learning, and ability to teach.” The lowest, or third grade certificate, required passing grades in orthoepy, orthography, reading, penmanship, intellectual and written arithmetic, primary grammar, and geography; for a second grade certificate grammatical analysis, physiology, physical geography, elementary algebra, United States history, and theory and practice of teaching. The top, or first grade certificate, added to these higher algebra, geometry, and natural philosophy.

A third or second grade certificate was good for one year and a first grade for two years. All were limited to the county in which the certificate was issued.

The first reports after this law was passed showed that county superintendents had issued 5,898 third grade, 151 second grade, and 61 first grade certificates. Among those who secured the highest certificate that year were two men who later became normal school presidents, Duncan McGregor and Warren D. Parker, and a distinguished city superintendent, Charles T. Viebahn. No reports were made by city superintendents who were still authorized to examine and certificate teachers as had the town superintendents. City superintendents retained this power until 1939, although in the latter years they seldom exercised it.

State Certification

In 1868, a state board of examiners was created with power to issue certificates good in any county. Eventually this form of certificate was extended to five years, and the highest was good for the life of the holder. To secure the life certificate was the highest ambition of many an early schoolmaster, for it was equivalent in the popular mind to the modern Ph.D. as representing the supreme attainment of a school teacher.

Changes in certification laws were made in 1901 by adding as requirements an examination in the elements of agriculture and the Manual of the state course of study for elementary schools. The Manual soon became the most authoritative book on teaching. Other changes were made as needs of the schools were modified.

In 1909 a new idea in certification was introduced by requiring as a prerequisite for all examinations, attendance at a professional school for teachers for at least six weeks. In 1913 this was increased to two years beyond the eighth grade, one year of which must be devoted to professional subjects. It became effective July 1, 1915, but was not retroactive. In 1919 the laws were again modified by requiring two years of high school education and in 1921 this was increased to high school graduation with a year of professional training. Eventually in 1939 the entire procedure was abolished by giving all certificating power to the state superintendent. Teachers’ examinations practically became obsolete. Nearly all certificates to teach are now based upon graduation from a Wisconsin state teacher’s college, a county normal school, Stout Institute, the University of Wisconsin with a university teacher’s certificate, and other accredited colleges which have met certain professional requirements.

Teaching was of course for many a transient and temporary job, an economic expedient offering a little ready money to young people on their way to another occupation or to continue their education. Many used teaching as a “stepping stone to something lower.” When they left teaching they became an important influence in developing the cultural pattern of the state. The most casual study of the biographies of men and women who became prominent in Wisconsin history reveals an amazing number who taught school while studying for a profession - law, medicine, engineering, the ministry, or who through teaching accumulated a little capital for a business venture. And thousands of Wisconsin mothers were once school teachers. They were generally the better pupils, with a zeal for learning, a love of books, and a good deal of ambition. When they left teaching they carried over a belief in schools and a desire to extend and improve them.

More than this, they were leaders in supporting libraries, lyceums, forums, and every cultural enterprise which would make better communities and a better state. Today they are serving in all sorts of capacities without compensation and often at considerable personal sacrifice. Sometimes an ex-teacher on a board of education is too officious, but for every one of this kind there are thousands who serve with no thought except to make the schools like those they dreamed of before they left the schoolroom for more remunerative callings. It may be that we have underemphasized this influence and have been too ready to quarrel with requirements so easy that unprepared boys and girls could change during vacation from pupil to teacher. There were compensating social values, actual and potential, in this experience. Someone should study the unique contribution of ex-teachers to our Wisconsin heritage.

Institutes

For many years teachers’ institutes were the principal agency for the instruction of teachers. For rural teachers the institute was the only opportunity to review and extend their knowledge of subject matter and to learn better methods of management and instruction.

The first institute of America was conducted by Henry Barnard in 1839 at Hartford, Connecticut. The states of New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts soon setup statewide institute programs. Henry Barnard, in his addresses to the Wisconsin constitutional convention, urged their establishment in Wisconsin. He believed they had a real function to perform until a regular and complete system of normal schools could be established, and then they would become an organic part of normal instruction. Indeed, Superintendent Ladd designated institutes as “temporary normal schools.”

Institutes usually continued from two to ten days, and in some cases six weeks. They enrolled as many as 300 teachers. The longer term became practically a summer school. A rather elaborate program was projected, and at their height the institutes had the services of the best school men and women of the state.

During the administration of Supt. L.D. Harvey, institutes reached their peak. He developed a school for organized and detailed course study to be given in every teachers’ institute. It was built around his famous, although now almost forgotten, four fundamental propositions. The recitation was then the center of all school activity and was called “The heart of the school.”

The propositions were:

1. The teacher must have in mind a definite purpose or purposes to be realized in the next recitation.
2. The teacher must have in mind the things which must be known or done in order to realize the purposes of the recitation.
3. The teacher must determine what of the things falling under proposition two, the pupil now knows or can do.
4. The teacher must determine what the things enumerated under two the pupil still has to learn or to do and the order in which they should be known or done.

Testing, teaching, drilling, and assignments were reduced to a system of law and order almost as dogmatic as Herbart’s five formal steps, then the educational panacea for American schools.

The institutes served Wisconsin well for over 70 years until displaced by summer schools, teachers’ associations, supervisors’ meetings, and the requirement that all teachers must be graduates of an accredited institution for teacher education.

Training at the University

The first legislature without much opposition passed an act “to establish the University of Wisconsin” under the management of a board of regents of 12 members. In January of 1849, the regents passed an “ordinance,” ratified by the legislature in February, to establish a normal department. State Superintendent Root in his first report emphasized the necessity for making the “ordinance” effective. With such a department and with a system of teachers’ institutes he felt that present needs for educating teachers could be met. It is interesting to note that this legislature also chartered the Jefferson County Normal School which, however, never materialized.

This ordinance is notable since it created a normal professorship “to render instruction in the art of teaching, comprising the most approved methods of inculcating knowledge and administering the discipline of the common school; and in such branches of study as may best prepare the pupils in this department for their honorable and useful vocation as educators of the popular mind.” The intentions of the board of regents was “to make the University of Wisconsin subsidiary to the great cause of popular education, by making it, through the normal department, the nursery of the educators of the popular mind, and the central point of union and harmony to the educational interests of the commonwealth.”

During those early years when the University was struggling for survival and the normal department existed only on paper, the board of regents, on December 24, 1855, appropriated $500 for a chair of normal instruction and assigned the duties to Prof. Daniel Read, then professor of English. For five months he was to give a course in teaching in addition to his other classes. In the other seven months he was to conduct teachers’ institutes throughout the State. Chancellor J.H. Lathrop in his report to the regents said “an appropriation of $2,000 (from the School Fund) would enable the Board to perfect the system and offer to the public a normal organization unsurpassed elsewhere, at a moiety of expenditure it would require to set up a normal school separate from the University, which could not be expected to perform the work so well.” The appropriation was not made.

Eighteen students were enrolled the first year and 28 the second. The number seems small, but the total enrollment in the University in 1855 was 118 men, with a faculty of seven in the College of Science, Letters and Arts. Co-education had to wait several years before it was reluctantly accepted. Enrollments in the normal depart- ments during the first seven years were as follows:

1855-56 --------------------------18
1856-57 --------------------------28
1857-58 --------------------------40
1858-59 --------------------------48
1859-60 --------------------------67
1860-61 --------------------------59
1861-62 --------------------------60

The department was not on a full university basis, for completion of the course of two years entitled the student to a “First Class English Certificate,” but not to a diploma.

The department was discontinued in 1867 with the glowing anticipations of Chancellor Lathrop unrealized and his objection to separate normal schools overridden. The Normal School at Platteville had opened and Whitewater had now been definitely designated as a second normal school. The first experiment in teacher training had failed.

Academy System of Training

The pioneers transplanted the academy system of New England and New York to Wisconsin to provide education above the elementary level. Before and during the Civil War, local academies were almost the only schools to prepare young people for college and for teaching. Although colleges were chartered in relatively large numbers most of them were locally created and supported and with the academies and the University furnished the only opportunities for teacher training until the Platteville Normal School was opened in 1866.

Superintendent Barry in his report for the year 1858 predicted the failure of the Academy system for teacher training, for he was convinced that the plan was impracticable, premature, and ill-advised.

However, the Board of Regents designated certain academies, high schools, and colleges as normal training institutions and voted to engage a competent person to determine the quality of their work. By an agreement with the University Board of Regents, Henry Barnard was elected Chancellor of the University and Professor of Normal Instruction and General Agent of the Board of Regents of Normal Schools. His salary was $2,500. Since the University of Wisconsin was committed to the education of teachers as a principal function by “making the University of Wisconsin subsidiary to the great cause of popular education,” it seemed a very reasonable, sensible arrange- ment.

He had advocated in his address to the Constitutional Convention the linking of University and Normal Schools.

Henry Barnard was the peer of the more famous Horace Mann; his career, although less spectacular, was at least as productive. He was a graduate of Yale, a member of Phi Beta Kappa and a lawyer who had 20 years of educational experience behind him when he was invited to come to Wisconsin. He was 27 when he became the first Secretary of the Board of Commissioners of Common Schools in Connecticut in the year that Horace Mann was completing his first year in a similar position in Massachusetts. In 1843 he became State Superintendent of Schools in Rhode Island, which office he resigned after six years because of poor health. In 1850 he went back to Connecticut as State Superintendent. The next year he received the degree of LL.D. from Yale, from Harvard, and from Union College. In 1855 he founded the American Journal of Education which continued until 1882. He had written books on School Architecture, Normal Schools, and Education in Europe. In all of the United States there was no other person so well qualified to do the spade work that was needed in Wisconsin.

Although he was elected in July, 1858, ill health prevented him from beginning his work here until May, 1859. He was formally inducted as Chancellor at the fifth commencement on July 27 and greeted as a messiah. The state superintendent, Lyman C. Draper, ecstatically reported, “He comes to us ripe in educational experience and is devoting the best years of his life to the honor and glory of Wisconsin.”

“As a promoter of the cause of education, the career of Dr. Barnard has no precedent and no parallel. We have reason to felicitate ourselves on the acquirement of such a man. It ought to form a new era in our State history.”

This is not the place for a detailed report of his brief service in Wisconsin which was terminated by a nervous breakdown in May of 1860. Nominally he served two years in Wisconsin, but his active service was limited to a little more than 12 months. His activities at the University were largely confined to making reports and recommendations. Among other things, he asked the regents to develop the normal department and to stress public health, agriculture, architecture, and other industrial pursuits. He suggested that no more dormitories be built, but ironically Barnard Hall, a dormitory for girls, is his memorial. He recommended that students be classified by individual studies, not by years of attendance, and that degrees be awarded after examination without regard to the place where the studies were pursued. Obviously such a sensible program was not accepted and education went in the opposite direction toward standardized credits and Carnegie units.

The University authorities felt that they suffered for lack of guidance and complained that Barnard’s connection with the University was nominal. “During the two years he held the position of Chancellor, he never gave a lecture or heard a recitation, and the students met but once in the chapel.” In fairness, it should be said that he accepted the chancellorship with the understanding that he was not to engage in teaching. The Wisconsin Journal of Education said of him that though often absent “he had done not a little to elevate the university in the estimation of the people of this state.”

Barnard’s work in teacher education was largely limited to conducting teachers’ institutes and editing educational journals.

Eleven institutions received from the Board $10,152 for reporting an enrollment of 564 in the normal departments. No check on these reports was made because of the pressure of other duties of the agenda. Twenty institutions had in 1860 set up such classes with a reported attendance of 793 pupils. The Board had now engaged Charles H. Allen as assistant agent to visit and inspect the work of the normals. His report was very critical and the Board was naturally greatly dissatisfied. Only 232 pupils attended normal classes, although more than three times as many were certified as attending. In some of the academies, not a single pupil was actually enrolled in the normal department although many were reported. Pupils were described as deficient in orthography and other fundamentals, and in general the instruction was found poor and ineffective.

Although Superintendent Barry had clearly pointed out what the results would be, the Board felt that it had been exploited, reporting that “The fund put at the disposal of the Board is intended for the encouragement of Normal instruction and it should not be wasted or frittered away on encouraging the formation of classes where such instruction is inefficiently given or totally neglected.” The second experiment failed.

Normal Schools

These expedients for educating teachers having been unsuccessful, in 1866 the legislature incorporated the Board of Regents of Normal Schools, who at once proceeded to establish normal schools in different parts of the state. It had previously been decided that a normal school should be located in each of the six congressional districts. Local communities were authorized to offer sites and make donations for building and support. Proposals came from almost every city, but offers from Platteville and Whitewater were accepted. At Platteville, an academy which was in successful operation was offered to the regents and was promptly accepted. The first normal school was opened in 1863 in the academy building with Charles H. Allen, then in charge of the department of theory and practice of elementary education at the University of Wisconsin as president.

The first faculty consisted of the president and four teachers. In this year, there were 99 students in the normal department, 41 in the preparatory, and 70 in the model school. The first diplomas were issued in June, 1869, to six men and four women.

The curriculum was pretty heavily loaded with academic subjects, but it is to be remembered high schools had not yet been formally organized and admission was by examination in the branches then required for a third grade certificate. It was necessary to have “clear and well defined knowledge of the subjects taught in our public schools.” In the model school all students were required “to teach and train, putting into practice and thoroughly testing the theories learned, and subjecting themselves to the criticisms of teachers and fellow pupils.”

The second normal school was opened at Whitewater in 1868. Seven more were established as follows: Oshkosh, 1871; River Falls, 1875; Milwaukee, 1885; Stevens Point, 1894; Superior, 1896; La Crosse, 1909; and Eau Claire, 1916.

Until 1925 they were called normal schools, and most courses were two years in length. That year the legislature authorized a change in name and the extension of the courses to four years and authorized in granting of the degree of Bachelor of Education. The board promptly designed them at Teachers Colleges and extended most courses to four years. Subsequently the degree of B.S. was authorized and the board was empowered to set up graduate courses with the degrees usually given for such courses.

County Normal Schools

The range between the best and poorest teachers was always greatest in the one-room district school, generally referred to as the country school. Before the change from town to county supervision, there was no attempt to determine statewide standards for teachers, and then it was a long and difficult struggle to secure adequate standards for teachers of rural schools.

Teachers’ institutes, examinations, and reading circles helped somewhat, but not until the turn of the century was the first specialized school for training country school teachers established. A rather feeble attempt was made in 1885 to see that some instruction in teaching methods was available in high schools, although the average country school teacher had not graduated from a high school and had but little formal education above the eighth grade. Many of these teachers were naturally interested in books and had done a good deal to improve themselves. A few high schools established regular courses for teachers either in the last year of the high school course or as a post graduate offering. These courses had a temporary offering. These courses had a temporary value but were finally discontinued.

As early as 1894 C.E. Patzer, then county superintendent of Manitowoc County, began a campaign to have the county board of supervisors authorize a training school for the country school teachers of that county. It did not materialize, but in 1897 Marathon County made an appropriation for such a school, which however was not finally opened until 1899 and then only because the legislature had authorized the establishment of two such schools and granted special aids for their support. Supervision of these schools was placed in the office of the state superintendent. By successive laws their number was increased until at one time there were 32 such schools. Several have been discontinued, but the need for them persists. They have been generally devoted to the specific task for which they were created, and in almost every county where county training schools were set up they extended their influence into one-room schools by what is now referred to as in-service education. They have met a real need and will continue to do so for many years, whatever reorganization takes place, for this year there are about 2,500 persons teaching in rural schools who do not meet the lowest requirements for a teacher’s certificate. Rural departments in the teachers’ colleges have much the same problems and are alone unable to meet the needs for properly trained teachers.

After a century the rural teacher problem has not been solved although much progress has been made since John G. Saxe described the pedagogue of long ago.

Right learned is ye Pedagogue,
Fulle apt to reade and spelle;
And eke to teach ye parts of speeche,
And strap ye urchins well.

Daye after daye for little paye,
He teacheth what he can,
And bears ye yoke, to please ye folk,
And ye committeeman.

Ah! many crosses hath he borne,
And many trials found.
Ye while he trudged ye district through,
And boarded rounde and rounde.

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Posted March 6, 1998