Alt text: This is a photograph of a group of children wearing Japanese dress, posed on the steps outside of their school. The building is in a Japanese style.
These sources do not represent the entire debate about the role of education in 19th century America. However, they do reflect the historical perspectives on education as a means to address social and economic issues in society.
Politician and educational reformer Horace Mann brought free and equal education to the people of Massachusetts, which led to similar reforms throughout the country.
I believe in the existence of a great, immortal, immutable principle of natural law...which proves the absolute right to an education of every human being that comes into the world; and which, of course, proves the correlative duty of every government to see that the means of that education are provided for all.... Massachusetts is parental in her government. More and more, as year after year rolls by, she seeks to substitute prevention for remedy, and rewards for penalties. She strives to make industry the antidote to poverty, and to counterwork the progress of vice and crime by the diffusion of knowledge and the culture of virtuous principles.
Source: http://unveilinghistory.org/wp-content/lessons/2013/donohue/B_document-set.pdf
A number of [kind] persons had seen, with concern, the increasing vices [problems] of the city, arising, in a great degree, from the neglected education of the poor. Great cities are, at all times, the nurseries and hot-beds of crimes. ... And the dreadful examples of vice which are presented to youth, ..., connected with a spirit of extravagance and luxury, ... cannot fail of [increasing] the mass of moral depravity. ... There can be no doubt that hundreds are in ... this city, prowling about our streets for prey, the victims of intemperance [drunkenness], the slaves of idleness, and ready to fall into any vice, rather than to cultivate industry and good order. How can it be expected that persons so careless of themselves will pay any attention to their children? ... Instances have occurred of little children, arraigned at the bar of our criminal courts, who have been derelict and abandoned, without a hand to protect, or a voice to guide them, through life. When interrogated ... , they have replied that they were without home and without friends. In this state ... they existed, a burden and a disgrace to the community.
Source: http://unveilinghistory.org/wp-content/lessons/2013/donohue/B_document-set.pdf
Be it enacted by the Senate and the House of Representatives Section
1. Every person who shall have any child under his control between the ages of eight and fourteen years, shall send such child to some public school within the town or city in which he resides, during at least twelve weeks, if the public schools within such town or city shall be so long kept, in each and every year during which such child shall be under his control, six weeks of which shall be consecutive.
http://unveilinghistory.org/wp-content/lessons/2013/donohue/B_document-set.pdf
In the 1870s, Japanese leaders realized that their education system needed fundamental reforms. This view was partially inspired by educational reform in the West, which Japanese leaders believed was closely linked to the West’s industrial strength.
In 1885, Tokyo University, the only university in Japan, was designated the imperial university. It became a training ground for future elites who would become well-versed in Western learning and skills. Middle schools were designed to prepare potential students for the imperial university; elementary schools, however, focused on producing students who would be loyal to the Emperor.
Source: http://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/content/400028018.jpg
Alt text: This is a photograph of a large brick, western-style building with towers and large windows. There is a broad avenue leading up to it.
Caption: This is a picture of Tokyo Imperial University in 1900. Notice how the structure is western in design.
Source: https://historyofjapan.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/elementary-school-kudoyama-wakayama.jpg
Alt text: This is a photograph of a group of children wearing Japanese dress, posed on the steps outside of their school. The building is in a Japanese style.
Caption: An elementary school class in Kudoyama City in Wakayama Prefecture during the Meiji Era.
Courtesy of Wakayama Prefecture.
Source: https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/image/imperial-rescript-education
Alt Text: This is a page of Japanese text. See caption for full description.
Caption: The Imperial Rescript was the foundational document of education during the Meiji Era (1868-1912). Students were required to commit it to memory, and to treat its words with reverence.
Know ye, Our subjects:
Our Imperial Ancestors have founded Our Empire on a basis broad and everlasting and have deeply and firmly implanted virtue; Our subjects ever united in loyalty and filial piety have from generation to generation illustrated the beauty thereof. This is the glory of the fundamental character of Our Empire, and herein also lies the source of Our education.
Ye, Our subjects, be filial to your parents, affectionate to your brothers and sisters; as husbands and wives be harmonious, as friends true; bear yourselves in modesty and moderation; extend your benevolence to all; pursue learning and cultivate arts, and thereby develop intellectual faculties and perfect moral powers; furthermore advance public good and promote common interests; always respect the Constitution and observe the laws; should emergency arise, offer yourselves courageously to the State; and thus guard and maintain the prosperity of Our Imperial Throne [and at the same time] with heaven and earth.
So shall ye not only be Our good and faithful subjects, but render illustrious the best traditions of your forefathers. The Way here set forth is indeed the teaching bequeathed by Our Imperial Ancestors, to be observed alike by Their Descendants and the subjects, infallible for all ages and true in all places.It is Our wish to lay it to heart in all reverence, in common with you, Our subjects, that we may thus attain to the same virtue.
The 30th day of the 10th month of the 23rd year of Meiji.
(Imperial Sign Manual. Imperial Seal.)
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Imperial_Rescript_on_Education
Definition: filial piety - a Confucian value that one must respect parents, elders and ancestors.
Nineteenth century educational reform in India was driven by interaction with Western cultures. Key reformer Rammohan Roy believed that a Western-inspired education would modernize India. He founded several schools, including the Vedanta College where both Indian and Western courses were available. He also facilitated the spread of ideas in Bengali by compiling works that outlined Bengali grammar and prose.
Pandit Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, another reformer, was driven by his desire to help the poor and the oppressed. He challenged the caste system by admitting those who were not Brahmins into the Sanskrit College. He also established numerous schools for girls, and assisted John Elliot Drinkwater Bethune, an Anglo-Indian lawyer and a pioneer in women’s education, in founding the first Indian school for girls in 1849.
Definition: caste system - a system of hereditary classes in India.
Definition: Brahmin caste - a teacher or priest class that protected sacred learning.
Source: https://puronokolkata.com/tag/john-elliot-drinkwater-bethune/ or https://archive.org/stream/BethuneSchoolAndCollegeCentenaryVolume18491949/Bethune-School-And-College-Centenary-Volume-1849-1949#page/n15/mode/2up
Alt Text: A drawing of a big crowd gathered outside in a square. There is a British flag flying, men and women dressed in western style clothing, looking at a British man in the centre of the square who appears to be speaking to the crowd.
Caption: This image depicts the founding of the Bethune School by Drinkwater Bethune in 1849. From the Bethune School and College Centenary Volume (1849-1949)
However, the first half of the nineteenth century was also dominated by a debate: should Indian students be educated in Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian, or should they learn Western values in English? In his Minute of 2nd February 1835, British politician Lord Macaulay wrote:
“A single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.”
“We must do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions, whom we govern, a class of persons, Indian in “blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country.”
Lord William Bentinck, Governor-General of India approved Macaulay’s Minute, and passed a resolution that stated the following:
“His Lordship in Council is of opinion that, the great object of the British Government ought to be the promotion of European literature and science among the natives of India and that all the fund appropriated for the purpose of education would be best employed on English education alone.”
Though some traditional Indian schools survived, British authorities guaranteed the success of Western schools through funding. Thus, English became the language of higher education in India.
Alt Text: This is a sepia-toned photograph showing three people in front of a wooden fence, which is in front of a wall. Two figures have square boards around their necks, they are sitting on the ground. The third person appears to be guarding the other two, he is standing nearby with a cane, and is dressed warmly and wearing a hat.
Despite being a relatively new nation, the United States became the model for prison reform in the nineteenth century.
Prison reform in the United States was largely due to the work of Dorothea Dix, a tireless advocate for the mentally ill who reformed the prisons of not only Massachusetts, New Jersey, and other states, but also nations throughout Europe. Dix and other reformers sought to eliminate physical punishments and to provide opportunities for self-improvement, such as access to learning and prison libraries.
This video, by a student who earned 3rd place for Junior Individual Documentary at the 2012 National History Day contest in Washington, D.C., provides an overview of Dorothea Dix and her reforms.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/nSYM4IS_jiA?rel=0
In this excerpt from her “memorial” to the North Carolina General Assembly, Dorothea Dix lays out her arguments for building a state hospital for the mentally ill. Dix’s campaign marked a great change in the way Americans viewed the mentally ill.
I admit that public peace and security are seriously endangered by the non-restraint of the maniacal insane. I consider it in the highest degree improper that they should be allowed to range the towns and country without care or guidance; but this does not justify the public in any State or community, under any circumstances or conditions, in committing the insane to prisons; in a majority of cases the rich may be, or are sent to Hospitals; the poor under the pressure of this calamity, have the same just claim upon the public treasury, as the rich have upon the private purse of their family as they have the need, so have they the right to share the benefits of Hospital treatment. Urgent cases at all times, demand, unusual and ready expenditures in every community.
From: http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-newnation/4748
In the 1860s, the British prison system in India was the third largest in the world, behind only the United States and Russia. From the onset of colonization, British forces struggled to maintain control of Indian prisoners, a problem that only intensified in the late nineteenth century.
David Arnold, Professor of the History of South Asia at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, argues that the prison system may have intensified nationalist sentiments in India. For example, British attempts to force prisoners to eat together at Chapra jail in Bihar, in June 1842, was met with staunch resistance from the cooks and the prisoners, who had previously eaten in 52 separate messes designated to various castes. The prisoners rioted, and were supported by local townspeople who believed that such reforms were actually an attempt to impose British-Christian values.
Following the Uprising of 1857, British authorities constructed a new prison for political prisoners. In order to distance the political prisoners from their areas of operation, and to prevent further uprisings, the authorities chose Port Blair, located in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, for the prison. The Cellular Jail, also known as Black Waters because of the cruel treatment endured by its prisoners, remained a notorious symbol of British authority into the twentieth century.
In 2001, the Guardian published an article outlining some of the practices secretly authorized by British authorities in the early twentieth century. The following practices were used to deal with prisoners who were on hunger strikes:
Very Secret: Regarding security prisoners who hunger strike, every effort should be made to prevent the incidents from being reported, no concessions to be given to the prisoners who must be kept alive. Manual methods of restraint are best, then mechanical when the patient resists.
"Recommendation, 24/1629/1: A rubber catheter should be inserted through the nostril and into the gullet and so to the stomach. A solution of milk, eggs and sugar should be poured via a funnel. In certain cases rectal feeding should be tried."
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2001/jun/23/weekend.adrianlevy
The image below is from a book called Black Waters: The Strange History of Port Blair, written by Muhammad Jafar in 1892. It recounts Jafar’s experiences as a prisoner at Black Water.
Source: https://www.wdl.org/en/item/9698/view/1/1
Alt Text: This is a book cover with two images of men in chains in oval frames. There is Hindi script below their images.
During the Qing Dynasty (1644 to 1912), corporal punishment was widespread. Torture was used during the court proceedings and as the punishment itself.
While some Westerners attempted to draw the punishments they witnessed, many surviving drawings, such as the one by Thomas Allom in 1843, are actually based on the drawings of others; thus, it is difficult to verify their accuracy. Furthermore, historians have questioned Allom’s work, as his English-Victorian bias is evident.
http://blogs.harvard.edu/preserving/2014/07/01/punishment-in-19th-century-china/
Definition: apostasy - a renunciation of religious beliefs
Alt Text: A drawing of three men putting another man on a type of torture rack. Two of the torturers are wearing chinese-style hats and holding ropes on the device, while the third holds a mallet about to swing.
Caption: While some Westerners attempted to draw the punishments they witnessed, many surviving drawings, such as the one by Thomas Allom in 1843, are actually based on the drawings of others; thus, it is difficult to verify their accuracy. Furthermore, historians have questioned Allom’s work, as his English-Victorian bias is evident.
Thomas Allom’s Original Words: One of the worst features in the criminal procedure of the Chinese is their retention of torture. While religious fanatics and hypocrites have been compelled to lay aside that horrible engine of barbarity, the rack, the Chinese are still permitted to employ it for the purpose of extorting confession; and, as Queen Victoria has interceded for the abolition of death as a punishment of apostasy in Turkey, it is to be hoped she will extend her humane influence to the extinction of an infinitely more cruel practice in China—a country which recent events have taught to respect her power.
https://www.wdl.org/en/item/1922/view/1/1/
Alt Text: This is a sepia-toned photograph showing three people in front of a wooden fence, which is in front of a wall. Two figures have square boards around their necks, they are sitting on the ground. The third person appears to be guarding the other two, he is standing nearby with a cane, and is dressed warmly and wearing a hat.
Caption: This photo depicts a common punishment during the Qing Dynasty. The boards in this photo were 16 kilograms, but some criminals were forced to wear boards that weighed as much as a grown man. The boards were designed so that reaching one’s mouth with one’s hand was difficult (if not impossible), making feeding oneself extremely challenging.
Alt Text: This is an image in a newspaper with three parts. In the centre is the figure of Christ in a circle with a cross. He is looking benevolently upon an African man and a white man. To the left of Christ, is a scene from an open air slave auction with the American flag flying above. On the right is an image of a large slave family with many children at the entrance to their home.The newspaper is The Liberator, Boston, Friday December 15, 1854. Above the date is written “Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind.”
From the founding of the United States, there had always been some who opposed slavery, especially on religious grounds. In the 19th century, slaves harvested cotton on a large scale, which not only generated incredible wealth but also intensified the abolitionist movement. Because the Southern economy was so dependent on cotton, Southerners tended to support slavery. In contrast, the abolition movement grew in the North, where slavery was illegal.
However, those who opposed the current state of slavery in the United States did not agree on the proper course of action. Some called for an eventual end to slavery, but were unwilling to commit to the immediate end of the practice. Others argued that slaves should be freed, but given means to return to Africa, while some believed that only the number of slaves--not the existence of slavery--was problematic.
William Lloyd Garrison, publisher of the abolitionist paper called The Liberator, was one of the relatively few who called for an immediate end to slavery. As the image below indicates, the religious traditions behind the abolitionist movement are clear in Garrison’s work.
Alt Text: This is an image in a newspaper with three parts. In the centre is the figure of Christ in a circle with a cross. He is looking benevolently upon an African man and a white man. To the left of Christ, is a scene from an open air slave auction with the American flag flying above. On the right is an image of a large slave family with many children at the entrance to their home.The newspaper is The Liberator, Boston, Friday December 15, 1854. Above the date is written “Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind.”
The following video provides an overview of William Lloyd Garrison’s role in the abolition movement. What kind of impact did he have on social reform during this time period? https://www.youtube.com/embed/5PbxSl-U89w?rel=0
Emancipation in the British Empire started in 1833, approximately 30 years before the end of slavery in the United States. The end of slavery in the Empire was precipitated by the Baptist War, a slave rebellion in Jamaica in 1831-1832. The rebellion had started as a protest by slaves who wanted more freedom and pay. When the demands were refused, hundreds of thousands of slaves rebelled.
The British forces suppressed the rebellion. The Jamaican government and the ruling class of plantation owners used the victory to punish the rebels. Approximately 330 slaves were executed; according to some sources, these executions occurred 3 or 4 at a time, with bodies being buried in mass graves.
While slavery had been outlawed in Great Britain in 1772, and the slave trade was declared illegal in 1807, it was still permitted in several colonies. However, the Baptist War was followed a year later by the Slavery Abolition Act, which applied over almost the entire Empire, and subsequent laws, which freed slaves under the age of six and granted partial freedom for all other slaves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptist_War#/media/File:Duperly_(1833)_Destruction_of_the_Roehampton_Estate_January_1832.pngAlt Text: This is a painting of a large estate in Jamaica. It was painted in 1833, one year after the event. It shows a the estate on fire, and many people of African descent watching from the hill in the foreground. Some of the people have torches, some have sticks. They appear to be waving the sticks or torches and pointing at the fire. There are much smaller figures in the background on the road or by the smaller huts, watching the fire.
Caption: This image depicts the Roehampton Estate during the Baptist War (1833).
At various conferences held throughout the nineteenth century, European powers sought to address the treatment of minority groups. For example, at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, the powers responded to the massacre of 15 000 Bulgarians in Plovdiv by the Ottoman Empire by creating an independent principality of Bulgaria. Jewish people in Europe faced great discrimination, from lack of access to many forms of employment, to a lack of legal rights, including citizenship. Often, the only avenues of employment were jobs considered “un-Christian,” including money-lending. Several attempts to address the plight of the Jewish people occurred at similar conferences, but with limited success. Napoleon had emancipated the Jewish populations of the territories he conquered. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, several participating states intended to enshrine Jewish emancipation; however, the agreement was changed so that participating states could actually return Jewish status to pre-Napoleonic levels.
Even when emancipation occurred, it did not guarantee acceptance. Jews in Great Britain were emancipated in 1858, yet anti-Semitism continued. Jews were not granted the right to vote (enfranchisement) until 1867. The following article appeared in the conservative newspaper, the St. James Gazette in 1887. According to the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick, the author implies that the Jewish population of East London constituted a “terrorist threat” to the population of the city.
Now the presence in East London of a colony of 30,000 or 40,000 aliens [Jews], steeped to the lips in every form of moral and physical degradation, having no sympathy with the surrounding population, carrying things with a high hand whenever the chance arises, exacting to the upmost the privileges which the law confers upon Englishmen, under-selling English workmen in the labour market by sheer force of their ability to live as he could not possibly live--the presence of such a colony constitutes a very serious social and economic evil.
Source: https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/studying/docs/racism/jewish/
Alt Text: This is a photograph of a parade in Hamilton in the 1880s. There are three-storey brick buildings on either side of the street, and a streetcar track running down the middle of the street. There are several hundred people marching in an orderly parade and crowds filling the sidewalks.
As more and more people came into cities to work in factories, it became clear that working and living conditions were largely appalling. Many groups formed to try to address these issues in Europe and in North America, where industrialization was becoming widespread.
The International Workingmen’s Association was formed in London in 1864, and counted Karl Marx as one of its founding members. Its other founders were socialists, communists, and anarchists from organizations around the world. At its peak, the IWA had approximately 8 million members worldwide. However, the organization dissolved in 1876 due to disagreements between its socialist and anarchist members.
The following is from the General Rules from The International Workingmen's Association, October 1864.
That the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves, that the struggle for the emancipation of the working classes means not a struggle for class privileges and monopolies, but for equal rights and duties, and the abolition of all class rule;
That the economical subjection of the man of labor to the monopolizer of the means of labor – that is, the source of life – lies at the bottom of servitude in all its forms, of all social misery, mental degradation, and political dependence;
That the economical emancipation of the working classes is therefore the great end to which every political movement ought to be subordinate as a means;
That all efforts aiming at the great end hitherto failed from the want of solidarity between the manifold divisions of labor in each country, and from the absence of a fraternal bond of union between the working classes of different countries;
That the emancipation of labor is neither a local nor a national, but a social problem, embracing all countries in which modern society exists, and depending for its solution on the concurrence, practical and theoretical, of the most advanced countries;
That the present revival of the working classes in the most industrious countries of Europe, while it raises a new hope, gives solemn warning against a relapse into the old errors, and calls for the immediate combination of the still disconnected movements;
For these reasons – The International Working Men's Association has been founded.
Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/iwma/documents/1864/rules.htm
Rerum novarum,or the Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor is an encyclical issued by Pope Leo XIII on 15 May 1891. This open letter was an attempt to strike a balance between socialist movements supporting labour and unfettered capitalism. While the document strongly defends the rights of property owners, it states the following about the rights of the worker:
Definition: encyclical - letter from the Pope to the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church
Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner. If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accept harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford him no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rerum_novarum
Throughout the 19th century, Canadian labour movements struggled for recognition and workers’ rights. Strikes occurred in major cities and industrial towns, driven by such issues the workers’ desire for a 9, not 12, hour work day.
The Trades and Labor Congress of Canada (1833) and the Knights of Labor were two labour organizations that transcended regional boundaries. The TLC was by far the most dominant labor organization in Canada at the beginning of the 20th century; the Knights of Labor was the more influential in the previous decades, with over 450 assemblies and 20 000 members across the nation. Membership was open to all labor, regardless of gender, race, or trade, with one exception: Chinese workers were not permitted to join.
The significant traction gained by the unions was at least partially due to changes in law. In the mid 1800s, unions were often viewed with suspicion because of their perceived ties to socialist ideals. In 1872, however, the Canadian government passed the Trade Unions Act, which stated that unions were lawful organizations, and not to be treated as illegal conspiracies.
Alt Text: This is a photograph of a parade in Hamilton in the 1880s. There are three-storey brick buildings on either side of the street, and a streetcar track running down the middle of the street. There are several hundred people marching in an orderly parade and crowds filling the sidewalks.
Caption: Hamilton's Knights of Labor parading down King Street during the 1880s (courtesy Library and Archives Canada/PA-103086).
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/knights-of-labor/
The Royal Commission on the Relations of Labour and Capital of 1889 demonstrates how much perception of unions had changed in Canada. The following is an excerpt from the Commission’s findings:
The man who sells labor should, in selling it, be on an equality with the man who buys it; and each party to a labor contract should be subject to the same penalty for violation of it. No greater or different punishment should be imposed upon the workman, or even upon the apprentice, who quits his employment without notice than upon the employer who summarily dismisses an employé. Your Commissioners believe some existing provisions of Masters and Servants Acts not to be in accord with the liberal spirit of the present age; and they believe that justice would be secured by the abolition of such Acts, leaving only civil remedies to be sought for the breach of civil contracts.
Source: http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2014/bcp-pco/CP32-146-1889-1-eng.pdf
The Royal Commission on Relations between Labour and Capital recommended that laws become uniform throughout the country on the issues of child labour. They advised law-makers at both provincial and federal levels to outlaw full time work for children under 14 years old, and to forbid employment of children at night and before 7 am in the winter months. In this excerpt from the 1889 report, the commissioners describe the state of child labour that they witnessed:
Boys under twelve and girls under fourteen years of age should not be employed in factories, and the Education Act of the same Province provided that children between the ages of seven and thirteen must attend school at least one hundred days in each year. In Quebec the Factory Act is substantially identical with that of Ontario, but at the time the Commission visited the Province it had not been enforced.
In New Brunswick and Nova Scotia there are no restrictions upon the employment of children in factories. In Nova Scotia the employment in mines of boys below ten years of age is not permitted, and boys between ten and twelve years of age may not be employed more than sixty hours in one week. The boys under twelve years are employed as trappers - that is, in opening and closing doors for the passage of coal cars - and this is not laborious work. Still, your Commission cannot approve of a system which permits the continuous employment of such young children, even if it could be shown that their bodily health will not suffer injury. It is very certain that children removed from schools at the age of ten cannot acquire education sufficient to fit them for the duties of life in a civilized community. The testimony taken in other Provinces disclosed a most regrettable state of affairs. Many children of tender age, some of them not more than nine years old, were employed in cotton, glass, tobacco and cigar factories, and in other places. At one place in Ontario children, certainly less than eleven years of age, were employed around dangerous machinery. Some of them worked from six o'clock in the morning till six in the evening, with less than an hour for dinner, others worked from seven in the evening till six in the morning. At Montreal boys were employed all night in the glass works.
Source: From the Royal Commission on the Relations of Labour and Capital, 1889, Appendix E. (http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2014/bcp-pco/CP32-146-1889-1-eng.pdf