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What We Pay for Schools

About This Item

  • Title: What We Pay for Schools
  • Date: 23 March 1858
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00946
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 23 March 1858: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Kaylen Michaelis Cassandra Jannel Simms Stefan Schöberlein Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "What We Pay for Schools." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00946.xml (TEI)
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WHAT WE PAY FOR SCHOOLS.

According to the Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, the whole amount expended annually for the support of Common Schools in this State is $8,403,139, of which nearly one-half is expended in the cities. Referring to the American Almanac, we find that the sum expended annually in Massachusetts is $2,346,309; in Pennsylvania, $2,267,096; in Ohio, $2,732,800. No other State in the Union reckons its expenditures for public education by the million. Virginia foots up under this head only about $163,000, while the State of Maine expends half a million. The number of schools in New York is about 12,000; in Pennsylvania, 11,000; in Ohio, 9,283; in Massachusetts, 4,300. The teachers in the State of New York number 31,563 (12,452 males and 19,111 females); in Pennsylvania, 12,357 (7,986 males and 4,421 females); in Ohio, 17,928 (9,491 males and 8,462 females); and in Massachusetts, 7,153 (1,768 males and 5,385 females).

The school tax per capita is 35.2 in Kings—being about a medium rate, the highest being New York, 60.9, and the lowest county, Warren, 10.05.—In Brooklyn, there are 75 school districts, 27 male teachers and 293 female; 100 private schools, and 46,000 children residing in the districts, 35,817 of whom were in the schools for two months of the year or more. There are 29,511 volumes in the school libraries of this city; 13 frame school houses, and 17 of brick.

The cost per pupil is given in cents and mills, and Brooklyn shows favorably in comparison with other cities. The cost per month per pupil in Kings County towns is given at 92 cents 9 mills, and in Brooklyn city 84 cents 6 mills; while in many counties the rate per capita is over a dollar, and in New York and Buffalo over a dollar and a half.

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