Post B

The Kalamazoo decision was a result of a community to pay higher taxes to maintain a free high school education. This decision was made by the School Board of Kalamazoo Michigan. A citizen of Kalamazoo decided to take legal action to prevent the taxation. This case was taken to the Supreme Court in Michigan, the decision was that taxes were allowed to be charged and also that some of this money went to pay the superintendent. The citizens of the community would vote if they wanted taxes raised for free education.
Kalamazoo Michigan was the beginning of a free higher education. At first Kalamazoo was just known as a common school where kids would just go for a few grades and then would have to take on adult roles such as motherhood or start working. In the 1800’s there wasn’t a real need for people to be educated because back then we didn’t have technology like we do know, and everything you needed to know you learned from experience, or just from what everyone else was doing. The girls learned to become mothers from experience and from what they saw or learned when they were little, and the same thing with keeping up with the house. They knew it had to be done, and they learned how to do it by starting at a young age cleaning and cooking. The men however worked usually in fields all day or went hunting for food. Men learned this mostly from their fathers who would take them out on trips to learn how to hunt so one day they could take care of their own families.
In Michigan in 1859 Legislature passed a law saying that schools with more than 200 school aged children needed to elect school boards to oversee the schools. The school boards had control over the schools and had a say over everything that was done, they also had control over the school funds which would be funded by the taxes, if the tax payers voted in favor of the proposal. Kalamazoo opened its first high school in 1858. This establishment was a bridge between common schools to the universities. It was a step in between instead of a big gap from common school then to university if you chose to go in that direction. This school was kept running until 1873. That year three citizens of Kalamazoo who were property owners filed a suit intending to prevent the school board from funding the high school with tax money. The citizens argued that the law had been permitted without the vote of the citizens or rather the taxpayers. They were upset because they had been forced to pay this extra money and did not have a say on whether it was a good decision or not.
These three men felt that it was important to take taxes out to pay for the common schools, but anything higher should be paid privately either by the student or their families. The decision was made in favor of the school and tax payers had to pay for the schools an education.

http://www.fullbooks.com/THE-HISTORY-OF-EDUCATION13.html

http://www.kpl.gov/collections/localhistory/allabout/education/SchoolCase.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalamazoo_College

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0036-6773(193404)42%3A4%3C255%3ATHQBTC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-U

http://books.google.com/books?id=_KAcAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA587&lpg=PA587&dq=kalamazoo+decision&source=web&ots=8ACVil43cs&sig=_hYYK6HzmMyA3oITTMRCJmJ7BeM