Today in Supreme Court History: November 7, 1922

11/7/1922: Oregon enacts the Compulsory Education Act.

Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

Cleveland v. United States, 531 U.S. 12 (decided November 7, 2000): video poker licenses were not “property” so as to be predicate for prosecution under mail fraud statute (defendants had obtained licenses via applications with fraudulently concealed facts)

Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45 (decided November 7, 1932): in one of the earliest Incorporation decisions, Court holds that Sixth Amendment right to counsel was incorporated by Fourteenth Amendment; black defendants accused of raping white women on train should have been given court-appointed lawyer and been informed of their right to such (if I were an Alabaman I’d be proud: “we’ve prompted the creation of more civil rights law than any other state!”)

The Max Morris v. Curry, 137 U.S. 1 (decided November 7, 1890): person injured on vessel can recover in admiralty suit even if part of the fault was his

[SRG2]

Powell v Alabama is of course the Scottsboro Boys case

[Dan Schiavetta]

I should have mentioned that. Thanks!

[Dilan Esper]

Also, it was a Sutherland opinion. He wasn't a very good Justice overall, but credit where credit is due, his Powell opinion is good and he got 7 votes for it.

[Frank Drackman]

Ok,
Those Sisters do look like some Bitter Klingers!

[Jerry B.]

And Progressives once again want public schools to be the only schools. What goes around comes around.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Progressives prefer public schools (especially when public funds are involved) and operate our strongest teaching and research institutions.

Conservatives prefer backwater religious schools (or superstition-based homeschooling by substandard parents). Conservative-controlled campuses are fourth-tier (or worse), censorship-shackled, nonsense-teaching, dogma-enforcing, science-disdaining hillbilly factories.

This might explain the culture war's trajectory . . . and the number of red states afflicted by lousy schools, shitty medical facilities, cultural wastelands, economically inadequate residents, and can't-keep-up towns.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Massachusetts passed the Old Deluder Satan Law in 1647 -- mandatory public education.

[apedad]

"It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these later times by perswading from the use of tongues, that so at least the true sense and meaning of the Originall might be clowded by false glosses of Saint-seeming deceivers; and that Learning may not be buried in the graves of our fore-fathers in Church and Commonwealth, the Lord assisting our indeavors: it is therefore ordered by this Court and Authoritie therof;

That every Township in this Jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty Housholders, shall then forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read, whose wages shall be paid either by the Parents or Masters of such children, or by the Inhabitants in general, by way of supply, as the major part of those that order the prudentials of the Town shall appoint. Provided that those which send their children be not oppressed by paying much more then they can have them taught for in other towns.

2 And it is further ordered, that where any town shall increase to the number of one hundred Families or Housholders, they shall set up a Grammar-School, the Masters thereof being able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the Universitie. And if any town neglect the performance hereof above one year then everie such town shall pay five pounds per annum to the next such School, till they shall perform this Order. [1647]"

FYI, Harvard was founded in 1636

[Dan Schiavetta]

The reference to Satan was window dressing. Actually sounds like a responsible and progressive statute. And does not seem to exclude girls.

[John F. Carr]

I wonder if the exclusion was implied. Did anybody expect girls to go to school? Did schools teach clothes-mending or child-birthing?

In Massachusetts one of the cases on interpretation of the decedent's intent involved a bequest for the education of young men of some community. Somebody wanted to spend it on girls too. The Supreme Judicial Court ruled of course that language was meant to include girls as well as boys. I disagree. In olden times when the will was written it probably meant boys only.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Perhaps!

My grandmother (born in 1902 in Italy) didn’t go to school. Where she was, girls didn’t go. Whereas my grandfather (1900, Italy) attended up to what we would call sixth grade. I assume this was the extent of compulsory education in that time and place.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Of course it included girls.

Understand one thing: Puritan theology required one to be able to read the Bible for himself or herself, hence universal literacy as a religious goal. And as it was a theocracy….

Universal high school arrived after WWII -- in most places before that it was private tuition like college is today.

[SRG2]

The Acte also seems a rebuttal to many in the Roman Catholic Church who were still unhappy with the idea of a common-tongue Bible.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Speaking of Satan . . .

The Samuel Alito's Mom Abortion Clinic (operated by the Satanic Temple, which declares abortion a religious sacrament and whose demands for "religious freedom" protections will twist Blackman and Volokh into exceptionally stale, unappetizing pretzels):

"In 1950, Samuel Alito's mother didn't have a choice . . . and look what happened."

(The relevant part begins at 16:45; the entirety is worth watching, as is customarily the case with John Oliver.)

[Magister]

Reading the Wikipedia page about that law, it appears that the requirement was for towns of 50 or more households to "appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read"; that seems to be compulsory hiring of educators but not compulsory attendance of children.

Both that and the Oregon law seem excessively entangled in religious purposes.

[apedad]

" . . . excessively entangled in religious purposes."

It was the mid-1600s so for their standards I wouldn't say that.

Unfortunately there are folks now who wish it was the mid-1600s.

[Magister]

"It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times by keeping them in an unknown tongue" -- it seems both laws implicitly criticize the Catholic Church. We can mock the naivete of the Puritans that education would necessarily make people more religious; today's equivalent seem more interested in promoting ignorance.

[defaultdotxbe]

I wouldn't even go as far as saying its mandatory hiring of educators, as it allows for the "wages [to be] be paid either by the Parents or Masters of such children" So basically they appoint someone and he just becomes the official private tutor for the town.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Remember that it not only varied by state but then also by local interpretation of state law. There were also so-called "Dame Schools" -- taught by older women and these were in competition with the other schools.

I don't really know, but remember that at a certain point, "parents or masters" and "property tax payers" (and "church tax payers" were all the same people. (In Massachusetts, the minister was a municipal employee.)

[Dr. Ed 2]

That's my understanding, compulsory attendance arriving later. I believe mid 19th Century, in response to immigration.

As an aside, John Adams taught school in Worcester (MA) for a year -- it was something that young college-educated men did before they figured out what they wanted to do with their lives -- and later it was the daughters of the upper class before they got married.

Certification arrived starting about 1830 with Horace Mann and the Normal School movement -- Normal Schools (the first is now Framingham State University) were 2-year hybrid high school/college where prospective teachers were taught a standardized (or "normalized") curriculum. Before that, the Town Selectmen went out and found a teacher, usually involving nepotism -- I believe the Mass State Constitution still mandates town selectmen do this.

[defaultdotxbe]

Mandatory establishment of a school, but it doesn't seem to mandate children actually be sent to school. It also provides that payment for the appointed teacher can come from the parents who send their children to him, so not necessarily "public" education either.

[SRG2]

FYI, at the time, that would have been regarded as public because the term "public school" was used for schools that, while private, were not "church schools" so were open to the public if they wished to pay. This usage continues in Britain, where what you lot call "prep schools" are still called "public schools". (I went to one myself.)

[Dr. Ed 2]

A distinction --

[Dr. Ed 2]

No SRG2 -- in the US, "public" always meant taxpayer supported, right on to today where the FAPE law stands for "Free and Approprite Public Education" -- SPED ain't free, but the parents don't pay....

Remember too that this didn't start at K-12 -- it didn't even start as grades because a century ago, my grandmother was hired to sort a one-room schoolhouse (then still common in rural areas) into grades. The concept of grades (i.e. first, second...) arrived with the Normal School movement 80 years earlier, but still hadn't been fully implemented.

But what was "free" was the elementary school, what became grades 1-8 with a lot dropping out at grade 6. High school was an Academy -- a private school where you either paid tuition or got a scholarship to attend.

In Massachusetts, kindergarten wasn't "public" until the mid- 1970s, before that there were private kindergartens one paid to attend, some in people's homes, others in churches.

I think the British "public" school meant open admissions.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I know that in the early 1800s if you were a Baptist and could prove that you were paying to support a Baptist church, you didn't have to pay the portion of your town property taxes that supported the Congregational church. This may be part of the same -- Baptists wanting their own teachers.

Remember one other thing though -- if there are no parents paying the teacher, there would be no teacher -- so (I'm guessing here) the town had to guarantee some minimum income for the teacher.

The big fight arrived mid 19t h Century with the arrival of Catholic immigrants who had a different translation of the Bible (i.e. not King James) and which version would be read in school.