Schools in the Landscape: Localism, Cultural Tradition, and the Development of Alabama's Public Education System, 1865-1915

Abstract

On December 14, 1819, Alabama was admitted to the Union. Between then and February 1854 when the General Assembly of Alabama passed a law establishing a statewide public schooling system, the state's educational enactments were exceedingly modest and largely restricted to the chartering of private academies. Such action was barely sufficient to give substance to the constitutional piety that "Schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged in this State." This should not, however, be taken as a sign of any particular indolence. Before the Civil War (1861-1865) the socialization of children was regarded in most parts of the United States as a parental and community matter. In Alabama, community schools were organized and survived - or did not survive - according to the wishes and wherewithal of the people they served. Educational policy was the province of elected trustees who were also responsible for building schoolhouses, employing teachers, prescribing texts, and generally operating the schools within a local area termed a township. In 1929, when modernization was still a work in progress, Edgar W. Knight, professor of education at the University of North Carolina, claimed this early model of schooling inspired a "persistent devotion to and confidence in localism in education." He saw this as a continuing blight and tut-tutted that localism "still commends itself to wide popular approval because of the deep democratic colour it is believed to wear." Geography goes some way toward explaining the localism that was Alabama's prevailing cultural condition during the nineteenth century. The state contains an area of 52,423 square miles, which, for comparative purposes, is about the same size as England. Within its borders are a number of fairly distinct regions, which are themselves composed of varying landscapes.