The Fight for Seattle's First High School
An 1886 public debate over the 'luxury' of secondary education mirrors the modern struggle to fund public infrastructure.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
There is a debate currently regarding the necessity of the Seattle High School. 'Taxpayer' calls the high school a 'luxury'—a bit of dessert after their meat. I call it the nutritious meat and bread, eaten in the early morning to arm the partaker for his noble labors of the day. He says we are too small and poor to maintain a high school. By the way, the word 'high school' is a misnomer; primary, grammar, and high are all in this Seattle public school institution. Let us search the records to see how early the good old Bay State (Massachusetts) provided for higher instruction. By the law of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, enacted in 1647, any town containing one hundred families or householders was required to 'set up a grammar school.' That was twenty-seven years after the landing of the Pilgrims. The children of our city have had the advantage of free instruction in the higher branches since 1883, about twenty-seven years after the landing of the first settlers in Seattle. If I were to offer any criticism upon the University, it would be that it is essentially the Territorial High School. That is why one of the Regents sends his daughter to California to be educated. When the University is made a university in fact, children from every part of the Territory will be found within its walls completing their education. You will never build up the University upon the dead body of the High School.
“You will never build up the University upon the dead body of the High School.”
In 1886, critics dismissed a public high school as an unaffordable 'luxury,' a sentiment that echoes 21st-century arguments against public investment. Much like today’s debates over the University of Washington versus K-12 funding, the city was then wrestling with its identity as a growing metropolitan center versus a frontier outpost.
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