Excerpt from Historical Notes on Pennsylvania's Public School System: With Suggestions as to Needed Changes

As a matter of fact, Pennsylvania has had the township system, not since 1882, but for more than 70 years. Since 1836 every township, borough and city has been a school district, and the sub-district sys tem never prevailed except in a comparatively small number of dis tricts called independent districts. The creation of these in dependent districts is now generally admitted to have been a mistake. It interferes with the development of a rational sys tem of high schools, and imposes unnecessary taxation upon the owners of the less valuable farms. With the exception of these inde pendent districts, Pennsylvania has escaped the evils of the district (often called sub-district) system, under which the schoolhouse with the community sending to it is the unit of school administration. Other states are still struggling to escape these evils, and in some ih stances have found it impossible to secure what the wisdom of Sena tor Smith gave us in the 30s.

And yet, the Carnegie Foundation has the temerity to assert that Pennsylvania has never come into a conception of education from the standpoint of the whole people. The only ground for such an asser tion is the fact that Philadelphia was exempted from the jurisdiction of the State Superintendent and from other acts of Assembly, and this was due to previous legislation, which was believed to be superior to the common school law, and which may have given rise to the taunt that Philadelphians believe themselves to be made of finer dust than are the other people of the Commonwealth.

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