An 1853 survey found that most Wisconsin school buildings were badly equipped and in poor condition.

"The Public School System Menaced" Wisconsin Journal of Education, March 1876 "We express our belief in the truth of two apparently contradictory statements: First, the State school system never had so many able, persistent, and sincere enemies as at the present time. Secondly, this system, as a whole, was never really more firmly intrenched in popular confidence and popular need than at the present time. We will explain. 1. Our school system grew out of a conviction of its necessity. The general intelligence which is the axiomatic basis of a popular government like ours, can only be secured by a system of thickly and broadly scattered free schools. Experience and reflection both proved that private enterprise was inadequate for the great and necessary work. The State only was equal to so prodigious a task, as the State only is equal to the necessities of war, of executive, and judicial administration, and of gigantic systems of public improvement. The vast bulk of the people have, up to the present time, been satisfied with the public-school system, as a whole. It has reasonably met the need for which it was founded. But as the population and wealth of the country have increased with astonishing rapidity, as new industrial and social conditions have been rapidly evolved, the school system has not kept pace with them. The system that was reasonably adequate in the earlier years of its operation, is now seen to be defective in some important details. It does not satisfactorily meet the new, more numerous and more complex conditions that are crowding upon us. Hence enemies, interested and disinterested, sincere and guileful, proclaim it a failure and, demand its overthrow. The New York Tribune has been publishing numerous letters from such, many of them exceedingly able, and nearly all of them containing in their charges more or less of unpleasant truth. There is dissatisfaction in New England. The Rev. Dr. Peabody, Prof. Everett, and Mr. Frank W. Bird, of Massachusetts, are said to be among the opponents of the present system.

Some of our readers will remember the bold and earnest letter of Gerritt Smith, advocating the entire overthrow of the public-school system, and the relegating to private enterprise of that with which the State has no right to meddle. Upon this letter the JOURNAL commented at some length two years ago. Not a few first-class men, in various parts of the country, are today advocating the same thing with like earnestness, ability and sincerity.

Then a respectable portion of our Catholic fellow citizens are with increasing vigor and effect assaulting the same system. Take an illustration from our own State. On the 18th of last month Rev. H. F. Fairbanks, of Whitewater, delivered, in St. John’s Cathedral, Milwaukee, in the presence of an unusually large and attentive audience, a very able and apparently very sincere arraignment of our public-school system as infidel and demoralizing in its influence, and not adapted to secure the ends sought either by good Christians or good statesmen. This address, or lecture, has just been published in full in the New York Freeman’s Journal and Catholic Register, a leading church paper, whose editor requests for it “the careful perusal of every Catholic.”

These attacks cannot be ignored. They ought not to be. They should be known to every teacher, and to every friend of the public-school system in the State and country. Only through knowledge of them will come ability to repel them when undeserved, and to remedy the defects which deservedly invite the assaults.

2. The public-school system is so firmly grounded in the needs and convictions of the mass of the people of this country, that nothing will ever overthrow it but persistent refusal to recognize the defects that exist, and to apply the remedies which the changed conditions of the country demand.

These will be applied. Popular opinion will recognize their necessity. The public-school system will not fall, but will be made stronger and more symmetrical and enduring by the very blasts that beat against its now somewhat disproportioned limbs.

For ourselves, we freely acknowledge many of the defects pointed out by the enemies of the system, and instead of hurling bitter words against the latter, we cordially thank them for the aid they unconsciously give the true friends of public-school education in their efforts to improve the latter through an aroused and enlightened public sentiment.

We shall hereafter consider somewhat in detail the charges now being made against the public schools, shall strive to show how many are false and how many are true, and to indicate as well as we are able the reforms in the system that will prove far wiser and safer than its overthrow."

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