Freemasonry Defined, Using History to Understand the Fraternity by Gorley Shawn M

Author:Gorley, Shawn M.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shawn M. Gorley
Published: 2013-11-18T00:00:00+00:00

Later in life Swett wrote that one of his teachers:

“Did something more than textbook recitations. He talked, he explained, he illustrated, he even laughed…how genial he was! Arithmetic was made easy, grammar was sweet to the taste, and the whole world seemed delightful.”[29]

Swett attended many local academies and was an educated man. He even obtained a teaching certificate at the age of seventeen and enrolled himself into a newly opened teacher training institute. However, at that time he had not yet fully decided to take on a career in teaching. After all it was the mid eighteen hundreds and not unlike many others he felt the fever of the California gold rush in which he decided to partake in, albeit very briefly. Upon arriving in San Francisco in 1853 after a long sail at sea from Boston, Swett worked for a few months with little reward working in the mines and on farms. Destitute and broke he began teaching in San Francisco as Principle of the Rincon School. He remained at that position until 1862, which was also the year he became a Freemason, joining Phoenix Lodge #144 of San Francisco.

In retrospect, the new state of California seemed to be an ideal place to establish a free, comprehensive and public school system like the ones that were already in place in the eastern U.S. by the mid 1800’s. With the gold rush going on, the money was there, and with that California attracted teachers as well as would be teachers to the state. The only thing was that standards needed to be set for a thriving and beneficial set of school systems to operate. “California’s first constitution in 1849 called simply for a “system of common schools,” the term in use at the time for free elementary schools supported by public money, and an elected state superintendent. The delegate at the constitutional convention set the term at three months because they thought it would be easier to fund the shorter term than a longer one. But they did not write funding procedures or guidelines into the constitution.”[30]

Brother Swett was elected to the position of State Superintendent of Public Schools in 1862 and remained in that position until 1867. In 1863 he founded the California Teachers Association. His call for this led to the California Educational Society, which in 1875 became the California Teachers Association. “The most notable work of his administration was the drafting and securing of the passage of the “Revised School of Law,” which became the permanent foundation of the free school system in California.”[31] This included “securing the passage of laws creating a state board of education, providing teachers institutes where poorly equipped teachers might get help, organized the schools into grades, establishing school libraries, providing for the certification of teachers, and laid out the financial basis for the support of public education. Before the close of his term, he had abolished tuition and made public schools absolutely free in all districts for at least five months each year.

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