Tally Shae Payne and Dr. Clayne L. Pope, Economics
In his study, “Education Among the Mormons,” Frederick S. Buchanan noted that “when we examine development of public schooling in Utah during the half century which elapsed between the initial settlement by Mormon pioneers in 1847 and the granting of statehood in 1896, it is not obvious that a smooth developmental process of growth occurred.”1 Traditional holds that early Mormon settlers were devoted to education and quickly built a strong schooling system for the youth, yet Frederick S. Buchanan’s statement paints a more accurate picture of frontier education in Utah. This economic study used empirical evidence to test the differing views of education in the Territory of Utah. Frontier education did not measure up to contemporary eastern education nor to the grand stereotypes supposing that the early Utah pioneers were all learning their three “R’s.”
After gathering and inputting a data set of over 13,000 individuals enumerated in the 1870 U.S. Census, a list of hypotheses were tested in an economic model. Males and females between the ages of five and twenty were considered to be eligible for school, and their school attendance was noted by a column in the census manuscripts checked if the student attended school during a given year.2 Variables tested hypotheses about the effects of ethnicity, nativity, household head’s occupation, residential location, mother’s age, family size, parent literacy, gender, and household head’s wealth upon the schooling of children in the territory.
A table of historical enrollment rates in 1870 shows that Utah children were entering school at later ages and in smaller percentages than their eastern counterparts. For example, by age nine, Chicago, Indianapolis and Newburyport had attendance rates of 87.9, 78.8 and 99.2 whereas both males and females’ attendance rates in Utah are below 50 percent at age nine.3 Attendance rates peaked at age twelve, but dropped steadily among males and females after age thirteen (Table 1).
More statistical evidence further substantiates the claim that Utah frontier education was not a picture-perfect schooling situation. A logit regression used to best fit the historical model at hand yielded significant outcomes. For example, if a child’s mother were foreign born, that child was less likely to attend school, especially if the child was between ages five and fourteen. The regression also showed that the occupation of the household head (usually a father) did not necessarily affect schooling rates. Seemingly counter-intuitive, family size affected attendance rates positively, meaning that as a family increased number, a child in that family was more likely to attend school. Overall, the greatest determinant of schooling on the frontier was geographic. Variables were constructed to indicate in which of nine counties a child resided. Residence in Cache, Box Elder and Millard counties was largely correlated to school attendance. While some assumed that urban populations were more likely to develop schooling systems, “urbanized” Salt Lake County did not have the highest attendance rates. Another outcome of the regression showed that household head’s wealth positively affected schooling rates in all age groups. Simply put, as a family had greater wealth, children in that family were more likely to attend school.
These outcomes are just a glimpse at the insights provided by this economic study of historical education. Indeed, this study creates a great need to look beyond the statistics and recreate a historical explanation of territorial Utah schooling. No doubt, “the importance of education for all the people was given strong support by the religious principles and doctrines espoused by the pioneers who settled the land which is not the state of Utah.”4 And yet, the frontier must have been a tough place to develop a school system. This economic study of schooling in Utah in 1870 shows that the Mormons’ emphasis on education by their leaders and religious principles was not necessarily answered by school attendance rates of the Mormon youth, the “students,” on the frontier.
References
- Buchanan, Frederick S. “Education Among the Mormons: Brigham Young and the Schools of Utah.” History of Education Quarterly. 22 (1982) 435-459.
- United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. The History and Growth of the United States Census. (Washington, D.C.:GPO) 1900.
- Galenson, David W. “Determinants of the School Attendance of Boys in Early Chicago.” NBER Working Paper. (1995). Kaestle, Carl R. and Maris A. Vinovskis. “From Fireside to Factory: School Entry and School Leaving in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts,” in Tamara K. Hareven. Transitions: the Family and the Life Course in Historical Perspective (New York: Academic Press) 1978. and Herscovici, “Ethnic Differences in School Attendance in Antebellum Massachusetts: Evidence from Newburyport, 1850-1860” Social Science History v. 18, p.474.
- Law, Reuben D. The Utah School System: Its Organization and Administration. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press) 1952.
- The aid of Dr. Clayne Pope, faculty mentor, and Shawn Jordan, computer programmer, is
gratefully acknowledged.