​Morrill Acts

• The Morrill Act of 1862 gave public land to states providing that it be sold for profit and the money used to create "land-grant colleges" for teaching Agricultural and Mechanical Arts.

  • In the state of Arizona, the 13th legislature was able to raise $25,000 in 1885 to build the University of Arizona in the city of Tucson.

• The Morrill Act of 1890 provided for annual appropriations to be given to states for supporting their land-grant colleges
  as long as they adhered to certain anti-discrimination requirements. As a result 17 African-American universities were created.

  • No new Arizona colleges were created under this Act.
     

Manual Training Movement
and Manual Arts

• Inspired by the work of Swiss "father of manual training," Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, American educators in the late 1870's emphasized combining social and intellectual learning for engineering students with courses, namely wood and metal working, to develop hand and eye coordination.

• American John O. Runkle included broader, more practical knowledge of tools and basic mechanics.

  • This is considered a precursor of Vocational Education.

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National Society for Promotion of Industrial Arts/Education, Douglas

• In 1905 the state of Massachusetts established the Douglas Commission to study the feasibility of state funding for expanding technical and industrial education. The final report resulted in a positive recommendation.

  • In 1906 education reformers organized the National Society for Promotion of Industrial Education using the findings of this report to coordinate lobbying for vocational education.
     

Smith Lever Act of 1914

• Established the Cooperative Extension Services, resulting in an official government funding mechanism with land-grant colleges through the
  U. S. Department of Agriculture.

  • Established lump sum amounts of $10,000 and provide for additional "formula funding." The formula was based on what percentage of the U. S. population resided in the state, to be phased in over a 7-year period and no more than 4.8 million dollars total.

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Commission on National Aid for Vocational Education

• Eight years after the report of the Douglas Commission, and thanks in large part to the lobbying efforts of the National Society for Promotion of Industrial Arts/Education, the congressional Commission on National Aid for Vocational Education reported the urgent necessity of national funding for vocational education, and recommended grants for training teachers of vocation education.

  • Two of the commission's members, Senator Hoke Smith and Representative D. M. Hughes, were principle authors of the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917.

Smith-Hughes Act of 1917

• Charles A. Prosser, who is also known as the Father of Vocational Education in the United States, was the architect of this Act. It provided federal funding for pre-college vocational education in "agriculture, trades and industry, and homemaking."

  • Some historians believe an unintended consequence of the Act was the differentiation of secondary schools caused by reinforcing existing class- and race-based inequalities (see side note for background information)

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