Education in The Constitution
The first piece of legislation to offer free education to all children, regardless of race is Mississippi’s Constitution of 1868. The Constitution established a “uniform system of free public schools, by taxation or otherwise, for all children between the ages of five and twenty-one years.”
Legislation was passed in 1870 and created school districts under the supervision of an elected State Superintendent of Education and appointed country superintendents, as well. Areas of a population with at least 5000 were permitted to establish separate schools districts and extend the school term to seven months.
The Constitution also provided the following features in its legislation to establish a public education system: 1. Administration: the state superintendent of public education must be elected to provide “general supervision of the commons schools and the educations interests of the State.” A State Board of Education shall also be made up of the State Superintendent, the Attorney General and the Secretary of State. 2. School Term: The school year should also be at least four months. Any county that does not abide by the guidelines presented in the legislation should forgo its share of school funding and taxes. 3. Funding: The common schools were funded from a combination of revenue earned from the sixteenth sections lands, and excise tax on alcohol, military exemption fees and public and private donations specifically designed for public education. Funding was then invested in the United State bonds and the interest collected was allotted to support school systems. A poll tax was also levies to aid in funding education.
The Constitution also specifically state that public schools or its funds were not to be controlled by any religious group and it was forbidden for public schools to convert in a parochial school.
Read more about this topic: Education In Mississippi
Famous quotes containing the words education and/or constitution:
“To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“Can you conceive what it is to native-born American women citizens, accustomed to the advantages of our schools, our churches and the mingling of our social life, to ask over and over again for so simple a thing as that “we, the people,” should mean women as well as men; that our Constitution should mean exactly what it says?”
—Mary F. Eastman, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4 ch. 5, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)