In looking at education, we're really starting to get into the nitty gritty of how the lives of citizens are improved. In SimCity, education buildings were built to increase a city's EQ or educational quotient. The formula for EQ is base + genetics + education. Your base was directly tied to wealth. New citizens were born with 80% of their parents EQ, as education is passed on through the generations. Then the more effective education facilities in the city was the final factor.
At it's founding, Los Angeles was not as wealthy or populous as the big cities east of the Mississippi. It's economy was based on agriculture and shipping, and they had to start completely fresh building elementary schools, high schools, and colleges.
Los Angeles City Council was empowered to elect a school board by the Ordinance of 1853. The board could hire and fire teachers, and they were to take a census of all children 5-18. In 1854 the Board of Education gained a superintendent, and in 1855 the first public schoolhouse opened its doors.
Schoolhouse number one opened on the northwest corner of Second and Spring St. A year later, Schoolhouse number two opened on north Main St. They were both two story brick buildings, with two school rooms and two rec rooms.
San Pedro Street School, Photo credit: LAPL
The oldest still site still in use is the San Pedro Street School. The original building was a one room brick schoolhouse as shown above. With three schools under its jurisdiction, the first enrollment record dated 1865-66 indicates three schools, three teachers, and an enrollment of 244 pupils.
The elementary schools in SimCity had a capacity of 550 pupils, but they were multi room buildings with many teachers. The next step after providing residential areas with elementary schools was to build a high school that could cover the entire residential area. Los Angeles got its first high school in 1873.
Central School, photo credit LAPL
The cornerstone for Central School was laid July 19, 1872 and it cost $19,000 to build. Dr. Lucky was named principal. The building was up on a hill (poundcake hill) so that everyone could marvel at it, with cross streets of Temple and Broadway. The high school occupied four rooms of the Central School building.
The first graduating class (1875) had seven members. Curriculum was structured to meet the standards of the State University (University of California). In two decades Los Angeles has gone from trying to teach a new generation of merchants to read and write to sending a select few off to become doctors and lawyers.
Now with Los Angeles joining the San Francico Bay Area in an East Coast style education system, it would have to have a place to train teachers. The California State Normal School was founded on May 6, 1862 in San Jose (now the site of San Jose State). In 1881, the state opened the California State Normal School at Los Angeles.
California State Normal School at Los Angeles, photo credit LAPL
With the Central School site back to just an elementary school, the decision was made in 1887 to move the building and build the Los Angeles Courthouse on that site. Unfortunately, the man who got the contract to move Central School underbid and when he ran out of money simply left the school up on scaffolding where it stood.
Central School on Stilts. Photo credit LAUSD archives
Look at that! That's not normal. That's a school, on stilts, with trolleys going underneath. The plan had been to move the school to Sand St., but the contractor got halfway up Temple and said "they heck with it, let's go bowling". Meanwhile, construction began on a school house just for the high school on Fort Moore Hill.
Second Los Angeles High School building, photo credit LAPL
Completed in 1891, it sat upon an abandoned Protestant cemetery. The site had been abandoned, and was mostly visited by grave robbers, so the city decided not to remove the bodies when building their school. The city also sold off some of the land as residential lots, again, without excavating any of the bodies. Los Angeles High School was the city's only high school until 1905.
So there you can see a whole system set up on furthering education and staffing the schools. California and Los Angeles had to build this system from scratch over their first fifty years of existence. The Catholic church had been doing it for a lot longer.
In SimCity, private schools were built if the public schools in your city fell beyond a certain level of quality. Underfunding your schools would see them decline, and sooner or later (with enough wealthy citizens) a private school would be built. The idea being that those with a wealth base (and thus a higher education quotient) wouldn't sit by idly and see that level drop in their offspring.
Churches founding schools is nothing new, it's how they created new generations of priests and scribes. It wasn't until the close of the 19th century that public secondary schools began to outnumber the private ones. 1870 was the first year every state had free elementary schools.
The Society of Vincent St. Paul had been founded in 1833 with the mission to tackle poverty in the slums of Paris. In 1854, Thaddeus Amat y Brusi of Barcelona, Spain was ordained a bishop, and petitioned the Pope to move the southern California diocese from Monterrey to Los Angeles.
The Pope approved. Los Angeles built St. Vibiana's Cathedral in 1876, so I guess Thaddeus had his see somewhere else for twenty years. In 1865, he asked the Vincentian friars to build St. Vincent's College for boys, the first institution of higher learning in Los Angeles.
St. Vincent's College, photo credit LAPL
Humble little thing, isn't it? The college covered an entire block, bounded by 6th, 7th, Fort and Hill streets. A small lane, St. Vincent's Place, ran north into campus from 7th Street. While those in the public school system had to go up to Berkeley to continue their education, those who went to parochial schools had a local option.
In SimCity, a city college could be built by the city, but a university was a reward. The churches were rewards just for meeting certain population caps, and the university is available after reaching 15,000 citizens. The parochial school system existed outside of the state school system, and in 1880 Los Angeles finally was granted a university.
But that's a story for another day.
No comments:
Post a Comment