Michigan was a Leader in Public Education during 19th century

Two Men from Marshall Created State’s School System

Part 2

Published in January 2017

   Michigan, under the provisions of the Ordinance of 1787, became a territory (splitting off from Indiana) upon reaching a certain population level. That occurred in 1805.

   The next step, statehood, would come when another, level of growth (60,000 free inhabitants) was reached. In the early 1830s, the territorial government and other leading citizens, aware that Michigan would soon become eligible due to the surge of new settlers that were arriving, set the mechanism in motion for joining the union.

  Interestingly, a vote taken in 1832 on whether a state government should be formed passed by only a small margin.

  One of the main orders of business, after Congress had given permission for a state government to be formed in January of 1835, was calling a convention for the purpose of creating a state constitution. An election of delegates was held on April 4, with the convention set to meet in Detroit in May.

    Among the delegates was General Isaac E. Crary of Marshall. He, in turn, was appointed to chair a committee to draft an article on education.

   In his book Michigan: A History of the Wolverine State (published in 1965) Willis Frederick Dunbar wrote that one of the men Crary knew, and apparently discussed the matter with, was his fellow townsman John D. Pierce.

    Crary, noted Dunbar, hailed from Connecticut and “had achieved an excellent reputation in his home state before he came to settle in Marshall and practice law in the early 1830s,” adding that “his title ‘general’ derived from his appointment to that office in the territorial militia.”

   Pierce, who was born in New Hampshire and educated in Brown University and then Princeton Theological Seminary, was an ordained minister of the Congregational Church. He moved to Michigan for the purpose of being a missionary, settling in Marshall in 1831.

   At the time of the constitutional convention, Sarah Austin’s English translation of Victor Cousin’s Report on the State of Public Instruction in Prussia had gained widespread attention and “much impressed” the two men from Marshall.

   The Prussian model, as it came to be known, outlined an overarching system of education that included primary schools, secondary schools, and a university. Students would be divided by age into specific grades, starting at grade one when they were young and progressing up the ladder.

    In addition, this system (according to the model) would be administered by the state and supported with tax dollars. To that end, the committee recommended the office of Superintendent of Public Education be created. Aware the federal government would give the state the proceeds of section 16 in each township as a means of funding a school system, the proposed constitutional article (wrote Dunbar) “included provisions designed to safeguard the lands the federal government would grant the state for education and to prevent the use of the proceeds for other purposes.”

    The article stated that schools “were to be conducted for at least three months out of the year.” While a state university was mentioned, the particulars of establishing one and how it would be governed was left to the legislature.

   The committee’s draft was adopted by the convention with little debate, becoming Article X in the Constitution of 1835.  

   The convention, Dunbar’s history book noted, also accepted Crary’s suggestion that Congress be petitioned with a request the money earned from the sale of those section sixteen parcels be given to the state rather than to each township. The money would be collected in a fund and distributed to the schools.

   The proposed constitution had to be put before the voters of the territory for approval. That ratification occurred in October. General Crary, as it so happened, was elected as Michigan’s first member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

   With Crary heading to his new post, he recommended that John Pierce be named as the new superintendent of public education. Gov. Stevens T. Mason accepted the suggestion and made the appointment in 1836.

   At that time, though, Michigan was in limbo between a territorial government and its newly-elected state government. This was due to the dispute with Ohio over who owned a strip of land along their mutual border which included the settlement of Toledo and, more importantly, the mouth of the Maumee River on Lake Erie.

   President Andrew Jackson, not pleased with Michigan’s position and its attempt to take control of the area, delayed signing the bill on statehood. As it turned out, Ohio, having more clout in the nation’s capital, got the land. Michigan, as a consolation prize, had the western half of the Upper Peninsula included within its new boundary.

   So, it was not until April 22, 1837, that Michigan became a member of the federal union even though a state government had been established and had begun conducting some business in late 1835.

   WHILE CRARY AND HIS COMMITTEE WERE THE ARCHITECTS of what would become Michigan’s public school system, it was Pierce—with approval from the legislature over the next six years—who began the construction.

   The new supervisor started off, Dunbar wrote, by traveling “to the East to confer with leaders in the field of education and attend a national education meeting in Massachusetts.” He also attended an annual meeting of the College of Professional Teachers held in Ohio and “carried on extensive correspondence with education leaders throughout the nation.”

   “He was determined to equip himself with knowledge of the best educational practices of the day and to become acquainted with the experience of other states before drawing up his plans for Michigan,” explained Dunbar.

   As a result, he had two major legislative proposals on the agenda when the legislature officially convened in January of 1837. Only a few weeks later, Gov. Mason had signed them into law.

    The organization of primary schools was first and foremost. It called for establishing school districts in each township, with each district having a moderator, a director, and an assessor, along with three school inspectors per township. Under the law, it was up to the township residents to establish a school, not the state superintendent.

   Money from the Primary School Fund was to be allocated to the school districts based on their enrollment of students between the ages of five and 17. In addition, school districts could seek to levy taxes, with perks given for those that did so. A regular report from each district to the state superintendent was required.

  Soon after, due to an economic downturn that occurred, the state would limit the amount of tax millage that could be levied but (eventually) would also allow for each district to have an elected school board to administer it. However, oversight existed at both the county and state levels. What evolved was that local schools had to meet certain standards and students had to pass a test at eighth grade in order to graduate.

   Interestingly, while Pierce recommended a system of tax-supported public schools which primary school-aged students could attend for free, the legislature did not put that into the law. “…not until 1869 did the legislature require all public primary schools to be free, although some were free prior to that date.” Prior to this enactment, tuition fees helped fund many districts along with property tax revenues and state money.

   The new superintendent also called for teachers to have “a regular course of training,” that teachers be paid a minimum wage in order for a district to be eligible for state funding, and that student attendance be compulsory. It took a number of years before these ideas—training, a decent wage, and mandatory attendance—were embraced by governmental officials.

   Pierce’s second proposal that was put into law was the creation of the University of Michigan. But the legislation entailed much more. In additional to establishing a college in Ann Arbor, the law allowed the appointed university board to create branches in other communities that would serve as an intermediate level of study after primary school. Under his plan, a branch would offer a female department, agriculture-mechanical studies, teacher training, and studies for young men planning to attend the university.

    This idea of branches saw some initial interest. The board ended up authorizing 16 branches, but only nine were opened. The poor economy made funding both them and the university problematic.

    Also, participation was low. “The total attendance in all the branches never exceeded 315 for any one year,” Dunbar noted. By 1846 financial support from the university ended. A few of these schools continued, supported by their local communities, but when all was said and done, the idea had failed.

    However, the underlying purpose was fulfilled with the eventual establishment of high schools as the main means of providing secondary education, along with vocational training institutes, women attending high schools and colleges, and the formation of the Michigan Normal College and the Michigan Agricultural College.

    In the rural areas, where most state residents resided when the 1837 laws were passed, the one-room country schools proved the most efficient means of providing education for the young. One teacher handled the duties. While the students were divided by age into each grade, from first thru eighth grade, and had their appropriate level of studies, all of them sat in the same room.

   This set-up was not necessarily a problem. Many people, later in life, claimed they learned a lot, and felt they were better prepared for their next grade, due to listening to the lessons given to the older students by the teacher.

    These country schools, administered by their individual school boards, were a staple in Michigan through the rest of the 19^th century and up to the mid-1900s. After World War II, for a variety of reasons, the rural districts were compelled to consolidate into larger entities.

   A different set-up emerged in the larger towns and cities. As more and more people moved to the state and settled in these communities, the legislature in the early 1840s allowed for the creation of union school districts whereby smaller districts could merge together into a combined entity. Detroit, for example, became a single district in 1842.

    These union districts, by possessing a much larger enrollment and more substantial financial resources, were able to build larger schoolhouses where the grades could be separated and several teachers employed. Even so, most students attended a neighborhood elementary school located near their homes.

     It was also in the cities where the first high schools were established.  However, these secondary educational facilities served not only the students in their town or district, but students from the surrounding rural districts.

    The shared vision of Crary and Pierce would evolve into public schools serving an ever-growing and more diverse population. These schools were administered at the primary level by local boards and other officials, and supported by public monies from both the districts and state.

    The two men from Marshall also set into motion the creation of a state university that would flower into additional public-supported colleges in the coming decades as well as the means for establishing secondary education that would (with some changes) result in the establishment of our many community high schools.

Steve Horton is a journalist and commentator.