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INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF THE 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC SCHOOL 
 
 SYSTEM , 
 
 A HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 
 BT 
 GEORGE H. MARTIN, A.M. 
 
 SUPERVISOR OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
 1901 
 
UA 
 
 COPTRIGHT, 1894, 
 
 By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 
 
 Electkotyped and Printed 
 
 AT THE APPLETON PrESS, U. S. A. 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 By common consent the teachers of the United 
 States would choose Massachusetts as the State 
 possessing the most interesting educational his- 
 tory. Even though each teacher should express 
 his first preference for his own State, there would 
 be found great unanimity in the second choice. 
 
 Upon close examination it appears to the stu- 
 dent of education that each State has something 
 unique, some phase of development better repre- 
 sented than can be found elsewhere. In the his- 
 tory of education, as in that of other provinces, 
 it is not merely the invention of good methods 
 that profits us, but the discovery of the bad ef- 
 fects that follow from the use of methods not 
 good. The demonstration of the evils incident 
 to a certain course of study or practice in school 
 administration is a permanent contribution to 
 the science of pedagogy. All methods and appli- 
 ances which are accounted good have, it is true, 
 their limits, beyond which they are useless, if not 
 
 V 
 
1 
 
 vi EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 pernicious. From this it is evident that each 
 State system of education possesses points of in- 
 terest and lessons in management valuable either 
 as models for guidance or negatively as experi- 
 ments to be avoided. 
 
 The claims of the history of education in Mas- 
 sachusetts to pre-eminent interest are based on 
 the fact that it offers the completest exhibition 
 of the Puritan ideal of education that is to be 
 found. It shows it in all its phases of evolution, 
 and makes evident both its strength and its weak- 
 ness. The experience of Massachusetts has aided 
 all the other colonies settled by Puritans to out- 
 grow the earlier and more defective stages of 
 Puritan development. The experience of "the 
 ^ Bay State ^^ has thus been vicarious^ serving not 
 \ only for itself but in a measure for all the other 
 New England States, and also for the new com- 
 munities in the West, settled in great part by 
 emigrants from New England. There is scarcely 
 a feature of school instruction or school disci- 
 pline and management that has not been differen- 
 tiated in Massachusetts at some epoch within the 
 two hundred years of its history. The adoption 
 of a course of study and the fixing of the amount 
 of instruction to be given in each branch and the 
 time when it is best to begin it ; the relative 
 position of the disciplinary and the information 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. vii 
 
 studies; the use and disuse of corporal punish- 
 ment; the education of girls; written examina- 
 tions ; the grading of schools ; 'the relation of 
 principal and assistant teachers ; professional in- 
 struction in normal schools; religious instruc- 
 tion; unsectarian moral instruction and secular 
 instruction; theocratic or ecclesiastical govern- 
 ment and purely secular control, or the union 
 and separation of Church and State ; government 
 by centralized power and then by distribution of 
 power to districts, realizing the extreme of local 
 self-government, and then the recovery of central 
 authority ; public high schools and private acad- 
 emies ; co-education and separate education of 
 the sexes; educational support by tuition fees> 
 rate bills, general taxation, and local taxation; 
 general and local supervision by committees and 
 by experts ; educational associations and teach- 
 ers' institutes; large and small school buildings 
 and their division into rooms, their heating, ven- 
 tilation, and lighting ; evening schools, kinder- 
 gartens, industrial art instruction, free text- 
 books — in fact, almost all educational problems 
 have been agitated at one time or another in 
 Massachusetts. 
 
 It has often happened that some one feature 
 or another has been taken up by a neighboring 
 State and more perfectly developed than in Mas- 
 
viii EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 sachusetts ; or in the inception of some important 
 movement other States have anticipated Massa- 
 chusetts. But no other State has, on the whole, 
 so rich and profitable an experience. 
 
 In studying the records of this State one is 
 impressed by the fact that every new movement 
 has run the gantlet of fierce and bitter opposition 
 before adoption. The ability of the conservative 
 party has always been conspicuous, and the 
 friends of the new measure have been forced to 
 exert all their strength, and to eliminate one after 
 another the objectionable features discovered in 
 advance by their enemies. To this fact is due 
 the success of so many of the reforms and im- 
 provements that have proceeded from this State. 
 The fire of criticism has purified the gold from 
 the dross in a large measure already before the 
 stage of practical experiment has begun. In re- 
 viewing this long record of bitter quarrels over 
 new measures that have now become old and 
 venerable because of their good results in all 
 parts of the nation, we are apt to become impa- 
 tient and blame too severely the conservative 
 party in Massachusetts. We forget that the op- 
 position helped to perfect the theory of the re- 
 form, and did much to make it a real advance 
 instead of a mere change from one imperfect 
 method to another. Even at best, educational 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. ix 
 
 changes are often only changes of fashion, the 
 swing of the pendulum from one extreme to 
 another, and sure to need correction by a fresh 
 reaction. Again, it is patent in Massachusetts 
 history that the defects of old methods were in 
 great part remedied by the good sense and skill 
 of many highly cultured teachers who still prac- 
 ticed them, and hence the wholesale denunciation 
 of the old methods was felt to be unjust. The 
 best teachers resented the attack on their methods. 
 It seemed unfair, because it charged against the 
 method all the mistakes committed by inexperi- 
 ence and stupidity, and because, too, it claimed 
 more for the new device than could be realized. 
 The old was condemned for its poor results in the 
 hands of the most incompetent, while the new 
 was commended as an ideal, without considering 
 what it would become in the hands of unfaithful 
 teachers. 
 
 It is well said by the author, Mr. Martin, that 
 the Puritan emigration to New England was a 
 part of a large movement which had begun with 
 the revival of learning in western Europe, and 
 which has not yet ceased, but seems destined to 
 include in its scope the whole human race. It is 
 easy to see that modern history has exhibited 
 external and internal reactions in a progressive 
 series. There was an external reaction against 
 
X EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 the East, in the form of crusades, from the elev- 
 enth century on. But contemporaneous with this 
 there went on an internal reaction in the form of 
 Scholastic philosophy against the Moslem think- 
 ers, who interpreted Aristotle in such a way as 
 to deny individual immortality to the soul ; Scho- 
 lasticism refuted such pantheism in its systems 
 of theology. This was a philosophical crusade. 
 There was another outward reaction in the epoch 
 of discovery and colonization of the New World, 
 and this was accompanied by an internal reac- 
 tion known as the Protestant Reformation. It 
 has been succeeded by an era of revolutions — 
 external reactions against centralized authority 
 in political governments, and internal . reactions 
 in favor of science and the emancipation from 
 spiritual authority in its various forms. The 
 Puritan colonization belongs to the second of 
 these movements, and the third movement is in 
 process now, and to it is chargeable most of the 
 changes in Massachusetts schools within the 
 present century. 
 
 Here we see the significance of the apparent 
 ^ retrogression of education in Massachusetts from 
 1789 to 1839, a period of fifty years, marked by 
 * ' the increase of local self-government and the de- 
 crease of central authority. The central power 
 had been largely theocratic or ecclesiastical at 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. xi 
 
 the beginning. The reaction against ecclesias- 
 tical control went too far in the direction of in- 
 dividualism. The farthest swing of the pendu- 
 lum in this direction was reached in 1828, when 
 the districts obtained the exclusive control of the 
 schools in all matters except in the item of exami- 
 tion of teachers. The public schools diminished 
 in efficiency, and a twofold opposition began some 
 years before 1828, which took, on the one hand, 
 the shape of an attempt to remedy the deficiency 
 of public schools by the establishment of acade- 
 mies, and, on the other hand, that of a vigorous 
 attack by educational reformers, such as Horace 
 Mann and his able coworker Carter. The estab- 
 lishment of a State Board of Education, and the 
 appfintment of Horace Mann as its secretary, 
 mark an era of return from the extreme of indi- 
 vidualism to the proper union of local and cen- 
 tral authority in the management of schools. 
 The smaller the territory the fewer the number 
 of able men and women available for school 
 management. The town contained able men 
 enough for one excellent school committee, but 
 not always enough to furnish such a committee 
 for each district. 
 
 The commencement of the era of rapid growth 
 of cities — our urban era — belongs to the time of 
 Horace Mannas entrance upon his labors in Mas- 
 
xii EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 sachTisetts. It is the era of railroads and manu- 
 facturing towns. Formerly the rural districts 
 held a winter session of three or four months 
 taught by a man, and a summer school of shorter 
 session taught by a woman. The teacher did not 
 adopt teaching as a vocation, but only as a make- 
 shift. After the railroads came, and villages 
 grew, the school session was extended to ten or 
 eleven months and teaching became a vocation. 
 Then succeeded a demand for skilled teachers, 
 and the normal school was established to give 
 them professional training; after this came ex- 
 pert supervision of schools. 
 
 The influence of Massachusetts on other Com- 
 monwealths in school matters can be inferred by 
 the frequency with which one finds the words of 
 the law of 1789 quoted in State school laws and in 
 codes of school regulations adopted for the gov- 
 ernment of city schools. " Instructors of youth,^^ 
 it said, ^^ should exert their best endeavors to im- 
 press on the minds of children and youth the 
 principles of piety and justice and a sacred re- 
 gard to truth.^^ It made a tentative list of the 
 virtues that can be cultivated in school, such as 
 " love-of_J:heir cgiintry, humanity, and universal 
 benevolence ; sobriety, industry^ and frugalit y ; 
 chastity, moderation, and tempe ranc e ; and those 
 other virtues which are the ornament of human 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. xiii 
 
 society and the basis upon which a republican 
 Constitution is founded." 
 
 Special attention is called to the long battle 
 against the district system, lasting over fifty ^ 
 years. Three times it was abolished by the 
 Legislature, only to be restored again quickly by 
 repeal of the law (1853, 1859, 1869). At last, in 
 1882, when only forty-five towns out of the total 
 of more than three hundred and fifty still re- 
 tained the district system, the fourth law was tX 
 passed, and the system finally (it is believed) 
 abolished. 
 
 The law of 1836, in Massachusetts, regulating 
 the employment of children under the age of fif- 
 teen years working in the mills, forbade such 
 employment, unless the child had attended schpol 
 three months '' in the year preceding his employ- 
 ment."" It is an interesting commentary on the 
 efficiency of such a law that a statute in the same 
 words was adopted in Connecticut, and this was 
 followed by a full attendance of children from 
 the mills every alternate winter. The law was 
 kept in its letter but violated in its spirit ; for 
 the legal interpretation of the words "three 
 months in the year preceding his employment " 
 was construed by lawyers to refer to the calendar 
 year, and not to the twelve months preceding the 
 time of employment, as the lawmakers intended. 
 
xiv EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 It is sometimes mentioned as a proof of the in- 
 efficiency of the Connecticut law that there were 
 no prosecutions under the law. But the fact is, 
 that the natural reluctance of parents to render 
 themselves liable to such prosecution was suffi- 
 cient to secure a general attendance of the chil- 
 dren of the mills in compliance with the letter of 
 the law. Before the passage of the law a large 
 per cent of the children were deprived of their 
 schooling by their parents for the sake of their 
 earnings in the mills. 
 
 Mr. Martin names the steps of progress in 
 Massachusetts education as follows : 
 
 (1) Compulsory teaching ; (2) compulsory 
 schools ; (3) compulsory certificating of teachers ; 
 (4) compulsory supervision; (5) compulsory 
 school attendance. Besides these steps, there are 
 other highly important epochs marked by (a) the 
 admission of girls to schools above the primary 
 grades; (b) the establishment of English high 
 schools (for boys, 1821 ; for girls, 1825) ; (c) even- 
 ing schools; (d) normal schools; (e) industrial 
 art education and State Normal Art School ; (f) 
 free text-books ; (g) written examinations (1845) ; 
 (7^) the adoption of single classrooms for assist- 
 ant teachers, and the abolition of the practice of 
 having the pupils sit together in a large hall un- 
 der the master's eye for purposes of study (1847). 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. XV 
 
 All these are treated by Mr. Martin in this 
 book. 
 
 I find, by the returns made to the National 
 Bureau of Education, that the total amount of 
 school education that each inhabitant of Massa- 
 chusetts is receiving on an average — basing the 
 calculation on the attendance in public and pri- 
 vate schools and the length of the annual school 
 term — is nearly seven years of two hundred days 
 each, while the average schooling given each citi- 
 zen in the whole nation is^j)|y|j||£giy^^j||4.,y,ij;;^d>= 
 te n t hs of such vears. No other State is giving 
 so' much education to its people as Massachusetts, 
 and yet all the education given in all its institu- 
 tions does not amount on an average to so much 
 as seven eighths of an elementary education of 
 eight years. Even Massachusetts is not over- 
 educating the people. But there would seem to 
 be some connection between the fact that, while 
 her citizens get nearly twice the national aver- 
 age amount of education, her wealth-producing 
 power as compared with other States stands 
 almost in the same ratio — namely (in 1885), 
 at seventy - three cents per day for each man, 
 woman, and child, while the average for the 
 whole nation was only forty cents. 
 
 W. T. Harris. 
 
 Washington, D. C, November, 1894, 
 
AUTHOK'S PREFACE. 
 
 This book is not a history of education in 
 Massachusetts. For such a work the materials 
 are ample, and only await the approach of some- 
 one who has time and inclination to use them. 
 The author has the inclination, and hopes in the 
 future to have the time. 
 
 The present work is only a sketch — a study. 
 It aims to show the evolutionary character of the 
 public-school history of the State, and to point 
 out the lines along which the development has 
 run, and the relation throughout to the social 
 environment. 
 
 Incidentally, it serves to illustrate the slow, 
 wavering, irregular way by which the people 
 under popular governments work out their own 
 social progress. 
 
 The lecture form in which the material was 
 originally cast has been maintained at the re- 
 quest of many interested persons. A few refer- 
 ences have been added in footnotes to facilitate 
 
 xvii 
 
xviii AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 further study, if any reader should care to con- 
 tinue his investigations. 
 
 It is almost superfluous to say that Barnard^s 
 Journal of Education has been of inestimable 
 service in the preparation of this work, for 
 wherever the student of educational history 
 travels he will find that Dr. Barnard has been 
 before him. One hardly knows which most to 
 thank him for — his own labors in the cause of 
 education, or his painstaking memorials of the 
 labors of others. 
 
 The author is especially indebted to Mr. C. B. 
 Tillinghast, State Librarian of Massachusetts, 
 and to Mr. Julius H. Tuttle, Assistant Librarian 
 of the Massachusetts Historical Society, for valu- 
 able assistance and advice. 
 
 To Mr. Augustus Lowell, the friend of educa- 
 tion and the wise and public-spirited trustee of 
 the Lowell Institute, the author is also indebted 
 for the earliest opportunity to place this history 
 before the public. 
 
 Lynn, Mass., September i, 189S. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 THE EARLY LEGISLATION: ITS PRINCIPLES AND PRECEDENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Early Massachusetts — people and polity. Harvard College. 
 Laws of 1642 and 1647. Principles em]?odied. Sources 
 of ideas. The Reformation. Schools in Germany, Hol- 
 land, Scotland. Early English schools. Destruction 
 of monasteries. Endowed schools. Early schools in ^ 
 other American colonies. The claim of Massachusetts. 1 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 
 
 Schools public — on English models — modes of support — 
 studies — teachers. Decline of school spirit in the sec- 
 ond century. Changes in population. Decentraliza- 
 tion. The moving school. Rise of the district system. 
 Employm^ent of wonjen as teachers^ Law of 1789 . 44 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 THE DISTRICT SCHOOL AND THE ACADEMY. 
 
 Evolution of the school (^strict. The school — location, 
 house, teachers, studies, influence in education. Decay 
 of town spirit. Decline of grammar schools. Rise of ^^ - 
 academies — relation to the State — influence. Educa- 
 tion of girls — in public schools — in seminaries . . 90 
 xix 
 
XX CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 HORACE MANN AND THE REVIVAL OF EDUCATION. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 European revival — philanthropic and philosophic. Infant 
 schools. Monitorial schools. Mechanics' ins1;itutes. 
 Pestalozzi, Jacotot, Fellenberg. Similar movements in 
 America. Public awakening. James Gr. Carter's work. 
 
 ^-— Law of 1826. History of supervision. School fund. 
 Board of Education. Horace Mann : character, meth- 
 ods of work — normal schools — institutes — opposition — 
 results ' . . 135 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 Social and industrial changes in Massachusetts. Graded 
 schools. High schools. Decay of academies. Decline 
 and abolition of the district system. School buildings. 
 Compulsory attendance. Employment of children. 
 Truancy. Evening schools. Professional supervision. 
 Free text-books. Education of the defective classes. 
 Higher education. Colleges for women. Sectarian 
 discussion. Bible in schools. Parochial schools. Pub- 
 lic-school spirit dominant . . - /~ » - • 186 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE MODERN SCHOOL. 
 
 The modem school : purpose, spirit, curriculum, methods. 
 Impulse from Pestalozzi, Froebel, Spencer — from nor- 
 mal schools. Industrial drawing. Manual training. 
 Kindergartens. Influence of Board of Education. 
 Teachers' associations. Educational literature. Con- 
 servative influence of democracy. Influence of the 
 colleges — the Legislature. General review . . . 236 
 
MASSACHUSETTS 
 PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 THE EARLY LEGISLATION; ITS PRINCIPLES AND 
 PRECEDENTS. 
 
 The late Chief- Justice Shaw, in a famous in- 
 terpretation of school law, used these words : 
 
 It would be curious to examine into the early legislation and 
 see from what small beginnings and by what slow and steady 
 progress the system of public instruction has increased to its 
 present magnitude, maintained at great expense, cherished with 
 the most anxious solicitude, and affecting the dearest social and 
 political interests of the State. — (Gushing, 8-164.) 
 
 Such an examination is the purpose of this course 
 of lectures. 
 
 In 1635 the town of Boston, having attained 
 the agaof five years — the school age — put upon 
 its records the following vote : * 
 
 Agreed upon that our brother Philemon Pormort shall be 
 entreated to become schoolmaster for the teaching and nurtur- 
 ing children with us. 
 
 * Second Report of Boston Record Commissioners, p. 5. 
 
2''^' J^Jlfek-GHUSSTTS^'PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 Who were the men who so long ago were not 
 ashamqd to call the schoolmaster ^^ brother "" ? 
 What were their character and purpose ? For no 
 one has a right to treat of Massachusetts history 
 in any of its phases who does not first answer 
 these questions. 
 
 They were not needy adventurers, seeking to 
 restore their ruined fortunes in a land of gold, 
 like the cavaliers of New Spain. They were not 
 ignorant peasants, beguiled into the wilderness to 
 form the servile basis for a feudal regime, as in 
 New France. They were not exiles driven from 
 their homes by the edicts of tyranny, like the Hu- 
 guenots. They were well-to-do, intelligent Eng- 
 lish yeomen and gentlemen, with some artisans 
 and traders, and a liberal sprinkling of scholars. 
 I say they were intelligent : if I say they were 
 Puritans, the other need not be said. 
 
 Puritanism, like Minerva, sprang from the 
 brain. It was the consummate flower of English 
 intellect, stimulated by the most eventful cen- 
 tury in English history. The story of that cen- 
 tury is a familiar one. Just a hundred years 
 before, Henry VIII had severed England from 
 the papacy. Then came the spread of the Tyn- 
 dale Bible ; the semi-Protestantism of the youth- 
 ful Edward ; the reaction under Mary, lurid with 
 the fires of Smithfield ; the accession of the Vir- 
 
THE EARLY LEGISLATION. 3 
 
 gin Queen ; the Renaissance of chivalry ; the fix- 
 ing of the Protestant succession ; the intolerant 
 Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity ; the harry- 
 ing of Catholics and Brownists; the Catholic 
 League ; the Spanish Armada ; the burst of patri- 
 otism which repelled it; the naval glories of 
 Drake and Hawkins ; the splendors of the court, 
 with Burleigh and Leicester, Essex and Raleigh ; 
 the more brilliant galaxy of literary celebrities — 
 Spenser and Shakespeare, Bacon and Hooker; 
 the succession of the Presbyterian James — nar- 
 row, opinionated, arbitrary, ^^the wisest fool in 
 Europe '' ; the Hampton Court conference, disap- 
 pointing the Puritans; the profound discussion 
 of religious doctrines and polities ; the clashing 
 of parliamentary rights with royal prerogatives ; 
 the marshaling of the forces that were to set 
 aside the right divine of kings and put the peo- 
 ple on the throne. Here was enough to set the 
 coldest brain on fire. No wonder that the rea- 
 son so often lost its power to control^ that fa- 
 natics were multiplied ; that this was the age of 
 isms. 
 
 The Puritans were in the thick of all this; 
 and the Massachusetts Puritans, in intellectual 
 vigor, in literary culture, in political sagacity, 
 in patriotic devotion, as well as in the strength 
 of religious conviction, were not a whit behind 
 
4 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 their brethren whom they left to fight the battle 
 at home. 
 
 Such were the men whose acts we are to 
 ^^ study, and their purpose was in keeping with 
 their character. They came here to found a state 
 — an English state and a Puritan state. They 
 were not visionaries nor fanatics. They combined 
 in a remarkable degree the profoundly intellec- 
 tual with the severely practical. " New lights " 
 found anything but a hospitable welcome. Cot- 
 ton Mather says of Governor Dudley : 
 
 There was no man that more hated fanatics and wild opin- 
 ionists than he did, notwithstanding he was so strenuous an 
 oppugner of conformity and the ceremonies of the Church of 
 England. 
 
 The emigrants came here to reproduce, as 
 nearly as cirpumstances would allow, their Eng- 
 lish life, and to provide for its continuance. 
 They had no elaborate scheme of government, 
 like that which Locke and Shaftesbury pre- 
 pared for the Carolinas; they went about their 
 work in the mosi^^traightf orwar^ way. They set 
 
 , up their home lixe and social life and town life 
 and church life as quietly as if they had been 
 
 I planting colonies all their lives. What of Eng- 
 lish customs and precedents they could use they 
 used ; what they could not use they dropped ; what 
 new ones they needed they supplied ; and all as if 
 
THE EARLY LEGISLATION. 5 
 
 they were doing the most commonplace thing in 
 tjie world. 
 
 ^ The civil organization of the colony was pe- 
 culiar. The people had emigrated nnder a char- 
 ter which gave all civil authority to the officers 
 and members of a corporation formed to pro- 
 mote settlement and trade. Only those settlers 
 who were members of the company had a voice 
 in the government, and for a time only members 
 of the churches could be members of the com- 
 pany. This gave controlling influence to the min- 
 isters, university educated men, whose command- 
 
 ^ing scholarshi^_and eloqu ence had , made them 
 shining marks for ecclesiastical persecution. 
 
 Upon arrival the settlers had dispersed in 
 groups, selecting eligible sites around Boston as \ I 
 a center. These groups of people living together ^ 
 began at once to act together on matters of com- 
 mon interest — the partition of lands, the herding 
 of cattle, watch and ward, matters of common 
 concern. Thus the town life was set up. At 
 first all action was voluntary and without legal 
 authority. The center and source of all author- 
 ity was the General Court ; at first an assembly 
 of all the members of the company, but soon com- 
 posed of deputies sent by the towns, together 
 with the Governor and a body of magistrates also 
 chosen by the people. Thus was combined^^ as in 
 
6 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 all Anglo-Saxon communities, local autonomy 
 with, supreme central authority. Our study, 
 therefore, must be along two lines. The acts of 
 the General Court represent public sentiment 
 when crystallized into law. The formative pe- 
 riod is disclosed in the history of the towns. 
 
 In the first volume of the Massachusetts 
 Records — those " short and simple annals of the 
 poor '' — we read : * 
 
 At a Court holden Sept. 8, 1636, and continued by adjourn- 
 ment to the 28th of the 8th month, October, 1636, the Court 
 agreed to give £400 toward a school or college ; £200 to be paid 
 next year and £200 when the work is finished, and the next 
 Court to appoint where and what building. 
 
 The next year ^^the college is ordered to be 
 at Newtown.^^ Soon the name of the town was 
 changed to Cambridge, in loving memory of the 
 alma mater of so many of the colonists. 
 
 In 1638, before the college was fairly estab- 
 lished, John Harvard, a minister who had been 
 in the colony but a year, dying, bequeathed his 
 library and half his property to the infant insti- 
 tution. Says President Quincy in his history of 
 Harvard University : f 
 
 An instance of benevolence thus striking and timely . . . 
 was accepted by our fathers as an omen of divine favor. With 
 
 * Records of Massachusetts, vol. i, p. 183. 
 
 t Quincy's History of Harvard University, 2d ed., vol. i, p. 9, 
 
THE EARLY LEGISLATION. 7 
 
 prayer and thanksgiving they immediately commenced the sem- 
 inary, and conferred upon it the name of Harvard. 
 
 Historians have dwelt chiefly upon the- liber- 
 ality of the people in their endowment of the new 
 college. It was liberal indeed — ^400. Palfrey 
 says it was equal to the whole colony tax for a 
 year. I It was eqnal to fifty cents for each of the 
 inhabitants of th,e colony. At the same rate now 
 a million dollars would scarcely represent the 
 value of the endowment, and it would not begin 
 to represent its burden upon the people. 
 
 But the act is not most significant for its lib- 
 erality. There was in it a sublime faith in the 
 future, akin to that which led the childless patri- 
 arch to see in the innumerable stars of his Syrian 
 sky a symbol of his own posterity. There was a 
 consciousness of being at work at foundations, of 
 building for all time. There was an intelligent 
 conception of the relation of learning to truth 
 and of truth to civil and religious liberty. What 
 memories of their own college days, what visions 
 of the future, what painful sense of contrast 
 these graduates of old Cambridge had as they 
 planned for their infant college, we do not know ; 
 but we do know that they had caught the spirit 
 of the apostle — they were ready to forget the 
 t, *ugs which were behind, and to reach out to 
 ^l^hose which were before. All this is expressed 
 
8 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 in that of ten-qnoted sentence from New Eng- 
 land's First Fruits : * 
 
 i After God had carried us safe to New England and we had 
 
 ) builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, 
 
 ^X.'^ reared convenient places for God's worship, and settled the civil 
 
 \ j government, one of the next things we longed for and looked 
 
 \J \^ after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity ; 
 
 dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when 
 
 our pres» ut ministry shall lie in the dust. 
 
 « 
 A certain class of writers on Massachusetts 
 
 history is fond of saying that the infant colony 
 
 was dominated by the ministers, and that they 
 
 founded Harvard College not from a love of 
 
 learning, but as a means of perpetuating their 
 
 own influence. If we give the ministers the 
 
 credit of founding the college, we must also give 
 
 them the credit of the legislative act of 1642. f 
 
 The Court— 
 
 jL^taking into consideration the great neglect of many parents and 
 • (v guardians in training up their children in learning and labor 
 -..•Y" ^^^d other employments which may be profitable to the com- 
 ^^^\ monwealth — 
 
 order that the selectmen in every town shall 
 have power to take account of all parents and 
 I masters as to their children's education and em- 
 ployment. The chosen men may divide the town 
 among them so that each shall have the over- 
 
 * Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, vol. i, 1st series, p. 242. 
 f Records of Mass., vol. ii, p. 8. 
 
THE EARLY LEGISLATION. 9 
 
 sight of a certain number of families. They are 
 to see that the children can read and understand 
 the principles of religion and the capital laws of 
 the country, and that they are put to some useful 
 work. 
 
 Those Puritan ministers were not, after all, as 
 black as they have been painted. There is no 
 taint of priestcraft about this law. Bigoted ec- 
 clesiastics, aiming to promote the interests of 
 their order, have not been wont to include in 
 their schemes the universal education of the 
 masses. 
 
 Another principle underlay this law. " Profit- 
 able to the commonwealth " is the language used. 
 In a revision of the law, made a few years later, 
 the preamble says : 
 
 For inasmuch as the good education of children is of singu- 
 lar behoof^and benefit to any commonwealth — 
 
 for the parents not to teacl\ their children to 
 read the English tongue and to know the capi tal 
 law is barbarism. They knew that an indus- 
 trious child was a squared stone fit to be builded 
 into the e/iifice they were rearing, so they would 
 have the children put to work. They called 
 illiteracy bar baris m, and therefore, not for the 
 Church's sake nor7or~'the child's sake, but for 
 {( .the sake^f th6_.comLiiiQirgeal th, they insisted ^rr 
 universal education. That this law was not a 
 
J 
 
 10 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 dead letter the records of the towns abundantly 
 show. The following extracts from the records 
 of the town of Billerica are typical ones : * 
 
 1 — 5 — '61. " The Townsmen doe agree yt Lieftenant "Will : 
 french and Ralph Hill senior, doe take care and (examine) the 
 seiierell famelies in our Towne whethr there children and serv- 
 ants are Taught in the precepts of relidione, in reding and 
 Learning there Catechism." 
 
 10 — 9 — '68. The selectmen " appoint ye next seconday to 
 go ye rounds to examine the teachings of children and youth 
 according to law." 
 
 3 — 19 — 75. "In reference to the catechising of ye youth 
 of ye towne and examining them concerning their reading, a 
 duty imposed on ye selectmen by ye Hon'"'^ Court to take care 
 that children and youth be instructed in both. The selectmen 
 doe order that all children and youth single persons from eight 
 years old upward their parence and masters shall send such 
 their children and servants to ye Reverend Mr. Samuel Whiting 
 at such times as shallbee afterward appointed by him, to be 
 examined of both, as hoping this might be a good expedient for 
 ye encouragement of all superiours and youth." 
 
 Five years later^ in 1647, was enacted the 
 . school law which is the real foundation of the 
 j Massachusetts school system.^ 
 \ During the seventeen years of the colony^s 
 \ existence, it had been growing in numbers. It 
 had attained a population of nearly twenty thou- 
 sand people, living in thirty towns. They had 
 planted " fifty towns and villages, built thirty or 
 forty churches and more ministers' houses, a cas- 
 
 * Hazen's History of Billerica, p. 252. 
 
THE EARLY LEGISLATION. H 
 
 tie, a college, prisons, forts, cartways and cause- 
 ways many; had comfortable houses, gardens 
 and orchards, grounds fenced and cornfields/^ 
 They had begun to export some staples — furs, 
 clapboards, hoops, pipestaves and masts, grain 
 and provisions for victualing ships, fish of vari- 
 ous kinds, pitch, tar, resin and turpentine, oils. 
 They were raising hemp and flax and manufac- 
 turing them. They were mining iron and cast- 
 ing it at Saugus, making woolen and cotton 
 cloth at Rowley, and glass at Salem. They were 
 building ships at Medford and Marblehead, Sa- 
 lem and Boston, and before 1647 these same ships 
 were carrying the products of Massachusetts to 
 Virginia and the West Indies, to London and 
 Teneriffe and Malaga.* 
 
 Many of the towns had provided schools and 
 were sending their boys to the college at Cam- 
 bridge. But this was not enough. So far all 
 was yabintary. There was danger that as the 
 colonists penetrated farther into the wilderness, 
 as new exigencies arose, as the rewards of busi- 
 ness enterprise grew more sure and more entic- 
 ing, education would become neglected, and that 
 the public spirit which had characterized the 
 first settlers would be chilled by a narrow regard 
 
 * Palfrey's History of New England, ii, pp. 53-57. 
 3 
 
12 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 for private interests. It is probable that already 
 some of the towns had made no corporate provi- 
 sion for schools, and that in others the means of 
 education had not expanded with the increase in 
 numbers and wealth. In these circumstances a 
 law was framed so broad and generous in its 
 scope as to challenge the admiration of states- 
 men ; * so exact, yet so elastic in its provisions, 
 that with a single addition it suflBced for one 
 hundred and forty years of Massachusetts his- 
 tory. / More than tlxis, it contained as in embryo 
 the whole school system of Massachusetts as we 
 know it to-day. The process which we shall 
 have occasion to study is one of evolution, not of 
 accretion. Many readers are already familiar 
 with the law : f 
 
 " It being one chief e project of y* ould deluder, 
 Sathan, to keepe men from the knowledge of y* 
 Scriptures, as in form' times by keeping y" in an 
 unknowne tongue, so in these latt' times by per- 
 swading from y* use of tongues y* so at least y* 
 true sence and meaning of y* originall might be 
 clouded by false glosses of saint seeming deceiv- 
 ers, y* learning may not be buried in y" grave of 
 
 * Macaulay's Speeches, ii, pp. 333-335, ed. of Redfield, New 
 York, 1853. 
 
 f Records of Mass., toI. ii, p. 208. 
 
THE EARLY LEGISLATION. 13 
 
 o' fath" in y" church and comonwealth, the Lord 
 assisting o' endeavo's. 
 
 "It is therefore ord'ed, y* ev'y township in 
 this jurisdiction, aft' y' Lord hath increased y*" to 
 y* number of fifty household", shall then forth w*^ 
 appoint one w*^in their towne to teach all such 
 children as shall resort to him to write and reade, 
 whose wages shall be paid eith' by y* parents or 
 mast" of such children, of by y" inhabitants in 
 gen'all, by way of supply, as y* maior p' of those 
 y' ord' y* prudentials of y* towne shall appoint ; 
 provided, those y* send their children be not op- 
 pressed by paying much more y" they can have 
 y" taught for in othe' townes ; and it is f urth' or- 
 dered, y* where any towne shall increase to y* 
 numV of one hundred families or househould" 
 they shall set up a gramer schoole, y^ master 
 thereof being able to instruct youth so farr as 
 they may be fited for y* university ; provided, 
 y* if any towne neglect y® performance hereof 
 above one yeare, y* every such towne shall pay 
 5" to y* next schoole till they shall perf orme this 
 order/' --^ 
 
 With the enactment of this law the systei]^,^^ 
 was complete: elementary English schools, sec- 
 ondary classical schools, and the college. With 
 these as instruments, the commonwealth might 
 provide itself with learned ministers and teachers 
 
 \/\ 
 
14 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 and with an intelligent body of citizens, of whom 
 a part would be fitted for leadership by the supe- 
 rior culture afforded by the higher schools. 
 
 An analysis of the laws of 1642 and 1647 dis- 
 covers the principles upon which Massachusetts 
 school history rests : 
 
 '*^. The universal education of youth is essen- 
 tial to the well-being of the state. 
 
 2. The obligation to furnish this education 
 rests primarily upon the parent. 
 
 3. The state. haS-,2uright to enforce this obli- 
 g^on. 
 
 The law of 1642 said nothing of/ schools. It 
 simply insisted that the children should be edu- 
 cated; all children — girls and boys — children 
 bound out to service as well as children at home. 
 How or where they should be taught it did not 
 prescribe, and the oflBcers intrusted with the en- 
 forcement of the law were empowered to demand 
 only results ; they were neither to provide means, 
 nor act as censors of methods. But the state 
 claimed the right to know (and exercised it) 
 whether the child was educated, and to know 
 it through officers appointed for that purpose. 
 
 4. The state may fix a standard which shall 
 determine the kind of education, and the mini- 
 mum amount. 
 
 Thus the law of 1642 said that the child must 
 
THE EAELY LEGISLATION. 15 
 
 know how to read and understand the principles 
 of religion and the capital laws. The law of 
 1647 went further, and required the towns in 
 their corporate capacity to provide suitable op- 
 portunities for the required education, so that the 
 want of such opportunities might not seem to re- 
 lieve the parent from his obligation. If the town 
 had not the fifty householders, the obligation 
 upon the parent was not less binding. No child 
 might suffer because he lived in an infant com- 
 munity or in a sparsely settled one. But while 
 these laws decreed compulsory education, they 
 did not make school attendance compulsory. 
 The teacher was to instruct '' all such children as 
 should resort to him.^' They need not resort to 
 him if they were educated elsewhere. The law 
 neither restricted parental rights nor interfered 
 with parental choice. 
 
 The law of 1647 enunciated another principle : 
 
 5. Public money raised by general tax may be 
 used to provide such education as the state re- 
 quires. The tax may be general, though the 
 school attendance is not. 
 
 6. Education higher than the rudiments may 
 be supplied -%y4 he st ate. Opportunity must be 
 provided at public expense for youths who wish 
 it to be fitted for the university. 
 
 Whatever discussion may arise upon the ab- 
 
16 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 s+ract justice of any of these principles, the fact 
 remains that they were incorporated into the 
 earliest statutes, and have been a part of Massa- 
 chusetts history from the beginning. 
 
 It is important to note here that the idea 
 underlying all this is neither paternal nor social- 
 istic. The child is to be educated, not to advance 
 ^ his personal interests, but because the state will 
 suffer if he is not educated. The state does not 
 provide schools to relieve the parent, nor because 
 it can educate better than the parent can, but be- 
 cause it can thereby better enforce the obligation 
 ^which it imposes. 
 
 In view of the fact that England has never 
 made provision for education equally generous, 
 we are led to ask for the source of principles so 
 wise and so statesmanlike, incorporated into their 
 life so early by people just from England. 
 , Looked at in its large relation, the Puritan 
 migration was only a part of that great upward' 
 movement which, beginning with the revival of*. 
 J.e^ rning in western Europe, has not yet ceased, 
 and which, reacting on the Eastern world, seems 
 destined to include in its scope the whole human 
 race./^ Of this movement the Protestant revolu- 
 tion was the most conspicuous feature in the six- 
 teenth and seventeenth centuries. Of the Prot- 
 estant revolution learning was first the sword 
 
THE EARL/ LEGISLATION. 17 
 
 and then the shield. \^ It is doubtful if Luther's 
 attempt to reform the Church would have met 
 with any less tragic fate than had those of Wiclif 
 and Huss, if the newjearning had not already 
 opened men^s minds and made them more re- 
 ceptive of new truth?^ Erasmus made men laugh- 
 at the ignorance before lather made them angry 
 at the corruption of the clergy^ And when t'ae 
 reformed doctrines were established, the reforn - 
 ers everywhere aimed to perpetuate their f aitli 
 by educating the people. The keynote of this 
 attempt was struck by Luther, in his address to 
 the councilmen of all the towns of Germany in 
 1524.* After lamenting the neglected education 
 of the young, Luther appeals to the magistrates^ 
 with an eloquence and force which have never 
 been surpassed. Said he : 
 
 A city's increase consists not alone in heaping up great 
 treasures, in building solid walls, or in multiplying artillery; 
 nay, where there is a great store of this and yet fools with it, it 
 is all the worse and all the greater loss for the city. But this 
 is the best and the richest increase, prosperity and strength 
 of a city — that it shall contain a great number of polished, 
 learned, intelligent, honorable, and well-bred citizens ; who, 
 when they have become all this, may then get wealth and put 
 it to good use. Since, then, a city must have citizens, ... we 
 are not to wait until they are grown up. We can neither hew 
 them out of wood nor carve them out of stone. . . . We must 
 use the appointed means, and with cost and care rear up and 
 mold our citizens. 
 
 * Barnard's Journal of Education, iv, p. 429. 
 
18 MASSACHUSETTS PUBJilC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 He an wers the evNr-repeated question — 
 What wi it profit us to have Latin, Greek, 
 Hebrew, a ^' your other liberal arts taught in 
 our schools ir These languages and these arts are 
 agreeable and useful alike ; sources both of honor 
 and of 'profit'; throwing light upon the Scriptures 
 and imparti ^ sound wisdom to rulers. He ar- 
 gues- that thej- Church had fallen into corruption 
 T^ecause the languages had been lost, and afiirms 
 that (iod had caused the languages to put on 
 bloom and vigor f/>r the sake of the gospel. We 
 may conclude, he says, that where the languages 
 do not abide, there in the end the gospel must 
 perish. 
 
 V The preamble to the Massachusetts school law 
 ot 1647 is a perfect echo of this appeal. Luther 
 had said : " The prince of darkness is shrewd 
 enough to know that where the languages flour- 
 ish, there his power will be so rent and torn that 
 ^ he 00,% .^ot readily repair it. Few of us perceive 
 ithe craf I and snare of the devil.'' The Puritans 
 of M-assachusetts had their eyes wide open on 
 this side, and if they never threw the ink-bottle 
 at Satan, as Luther did, they used its contents 
 with as much vigor and wisdom. Their pre- 
 amble says : 
 
 It being one chief project of that old deludeiv^atan to keep 
 men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times 
 
THE EARLY LEGISLATION. 19 
 
 by keeping them in an unknown tongue, so " i these latter 
 times by persuading from the use of tongues. 
 
 If there is any better means of o" ^Wtting the 
 devil than by popular education, .he genius of ^ 
 man has not yet discovered it. 
 
 But Luther would not have his education 
 rest wholly on ghostly motives. '^Were there 
 no soul/' said he, "and were there no need of 
 schools or of the languages for the sake of the 
 Scriptures or of God, yet it would be a suflBcient 
 reason for establishing in e^"3ry place the very 
 best of schools, both for boys and girls, that the 
 world merely to maifttain its outward prosperity 
 has need of shrewd and accomplished men and 
 women, men to pilot state and people safely and 
 to good issues, women to train up well and to 
 confirm in good courses the children and serv- 
 ant^.^' In the same address Luther argues as 
 soundly for public libraries as for schools. 
 
 The school system as planned by Lr^'^or and 
 Melanchthon * included in one or two plr ces i' 
 the principality a learned school, whence pi-each- 
 ers, pastors, clerks, and councilors might be taken 
 for the whole principality. In all the towns and 
 villages good schools for the children should be 
 established, whence those who were adapted to 
 
 * Barnard's National Education in Europe, p. 20. 
 
20 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 higher studies might be taken and trained up 
 for the public. 
 
 Under these arguments and appeals, a school 
 / law was adopted and schools opened in Branden- 
 burg before 1540 ; in Wittenberg in 1559 ; in Sax- 
 ony in 1560 ; in Hesse in 1565. The Thirty Years' 
 ^ >Var interfered with the schools, but at its close, 
 f or before, the government made it compulsory 
 on parents, under a penalty of fine and imprison- 
 ment, to send the children to school during a 
 certain period. 
 
 Holland early felt the impulse. Schools were 
 already numerous in the cities when the Synod 
 of 1586 sought to make them universal. It 
 ordered that the consistories or assemblies of 
 ministers and elders of the churches should take 
 care that schools should be everywhere provided 
 with good schoolmasters to instruct the children 
 of all classes of persons in reading, writing, rhet- 
 oric, and the liberal arts, as well as in the doc- 
 trines of religion and the catechism of the 
 Church. 
 
 What Luther did for Germany, Knox did for 
 
 Scotland. The First Book of Discipline, pre- 
 
 ^ . pared under Knox's direction in 1560,* ordained 
 
 that every several kirk should have one school- 
 
 * Works of John Knox, Laing, Edinburgh, ed. 1848, vol. ii, 
 p. 183. 
 
THE EARLY LEGISLATION. 21 
 
 master appointed, able to teach grammar and the 
 Latin tongue ; this if the town is of any reputa- 
 tion. In the upland towns the minister is to take 
 care of the children and instruct them in the first 
 rudiments and in the catechism. The civil au- 
 thorities were slow to assist in carrying out these 
 beneficent provisions, but in 1633 — two years be- 
 fore Boston was looking for a schoolmaster — a 
 parliamentary enactment directed that a school 
 should be established in every parish, and that 
 theJands be assessed for the purpose. 
 
 ( To England we must give a more minute ex- 
 amination.* Here as elsewhere before the Refor- 
 mation, the schools had been associated chiefly 
 with the various monastic establishments, and 
 had experienced the same vicissitudes of fortune. 
 As early as the seventh century, when Theodo-., 
 sius of Tarsus came to the see of Canterbury, he 
 made the great monasteries seats of learning; and 
 more than a hundred years later, when Charle- 
 magne attempted a revival of learning in France, 
 he drew his teachers from England. In the Dan- 
 ish invasions the schools were carried down in 
 the universal wreck of Christian institutions, 
 
 * For study of early education in England, see Hook's Lives 
 of the Archbishops, Carlisle's Grammar Schools, Ackerman's 
 History of the Colleges of Eton, Winchester, etc., Schools En- 
 quiry Commission Report, 1868. 
 
22 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 and Alfred^s utmost exertions only partially res- 
 cued his realm from the ignorance which caused 
 his earnest soul so much solicitude. After the 
 Conquest conventual establishments multiplied 
 — abbeys, priories, chantries ; five hundred and 
 fifty-seven new ones were founded between the 
 time of the Conquest and the death of King John 
 (1216). To most of these schools were attached. 
 There were, besides, cathedral schools under the 
 immediate care of the bishop, and schools among 
 the Jews who at that period congregated in all 
 the large towns. It was a Jewish rabbi of the 
 period who declared that the world would not 
 subsist were it not for the babbling of little 
 school children. If the youth of England were 
 not educated up to the standard of the time, it 
 was not for lack of opportunity. The education 
 furnished by these ecclesiastical schools was in- 
 tended chiefly to prepare youth for the services 
 of the Church. It was what would in these days 
 be called a practical education. It had a " bread- 
 and-butter '^ basis. In the high schools the stu- 
 jjtents studied Latin, that they might read the 
 writings of the Church fathers; rhetoric, that 
 they might participate in the polemical discus- 
 sions of the age ; music, that they might bear a 
 part in the cathedral ritual. If they learned 
 English, it was because the earlier deeds of gi: 
 
 I 
 
THE EARLY LEGISLATION. 23 
 
 and bequest, the rules of the establishment, and 
 the chronicles of its history were in the ver- 
 nacular. 
 
 What they did in the smaller schools we may 
 judge from the deed of foundation of one chantry 
 in Berkshire : 
 
 The chantry chaplain shall teach the children the alphabet, 
 the Lord's prayer, the salutation of the Blessed Virgin, the 
 apostles' creed, and all other things which are necessary to en- 
 able them to assist the priest in the celebration of the mass, to- 
 gether with the psalm De Profundis, and the usual prayers for 
 the dead ; also, in English, the fourteen articles of faith, the 
 ten commandments, the seven deadly sins, seven sacraments, 
 seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, seven works of mercy, five bodily 
 senses, and the manner of confession ; good manners, to fear 
 God and keep His commandments, especially to refrain from 
 lying, to honor parents, and to serve God devoutly in this 
 church. 
 
 If any should be apt and disposed to learn 
 grammar, they were to be taught. *^ 
 
 In this last condition is the clew to much in . 
 English history. These«conyentual schools drew 
 their pupils chiefly from the poorer classes; 
 sifted them, selected the most apt, educated them 
 more broadly, first fitted them for and then em- 
 ployed them in the higher services of the Church, 
 whence by an easy transfer they mingled in 
 the statecraft of the realm, and often exerted 
 a profounder influence upon the destinies of 
 the nation than the secular leaders -who had 
 
24: MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 come from the loins of nobles, and who had 
 reached their places of power by the favor of 
 kings, or had cut their way to them with their 
 swords. 
 
 In the fifteenth century two causes combined 
 in England to give a new impulse to popular ed- 
 ucation, and to divert it from its old channels. 
 "X^en the " poor preachers " went over England, 
 scattering copies of WicliFs Bible and the tracts 
 of his Lollard disciples, they furnished for the 
 first time since Alfred's day a motive to common 
 men to learn to read. When there were no 
 books, save in college and monastic libraries, to 
 know how to read was an idle accomplishment. 
 Not so when it was the key with which they 
 might unlock for themselves the storehouse of 
 God's truth, and gain access to spiritual food for 
 which the burning words of the preachers had 
 everywhere created a hunger. At the same time 
 the monastic establishments had everywhere 
 fallen into disrepute. The epics of Langland 
 and Chaucer, and the more stirring songs and 
 ballads of hosts of obscurer writers, reveal to us 
 what they helped to create — the public sentiment 
 of the times. The whole fraternity of monks 
 and friars was denounced with scorn and del- 
 uged with ridicule. In the Vision of Piers Plough- 
 man, Langland had said : 
 
THE EARLY LEGISLATION. 25 
 
 1 found there friars, all the four orders, preached the people 
 for profit of themselves. The parish priest and the pardoner 
 part the silver that the poor of the parish should have.* 
 
 They were charged with ignorance and greed, 
 with gluttony and lust, and a gradual dissolution 
 was going on long before Henry VIII began his 
 wholesale harrying. 
 
 The rise of the new learning stimulated a 
 work already begun, and before Luther's influ- 
 ence was felt grammar schools were being set up 
 all over England. But after the suppression of 
 /the monasteries by Henry, the endowment of 
 such schools became almost a fashion. Of the 
 so-called " great " schools of England, Winches- 
 ter and Westminster had"^ existed from time im- 
 memorial and furnished a model for later foun- 
 dations ; Eton was founded in 1440 ; St. Paul's 
 by Colet in 1509 ; and in rapid succession Christ's 
 Hospital, the Merchant Tailors', Shrewsbury, 
 Rugby, Harrow, and the Charter-House; while 
 of lesser foundations there were still in existence 
 thirty years ago two hundred and eighty-eight 
 schools established before the settlement of Bos- 
 ton. 
 
 This widespread popular enthusiasm for edu- 
 cation is something as peculiar as it is interest- 
 
 * Transposed and spelling modernized. See The Vision, 
 11. 115-118 and 161-164. 
 
26 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 ing. The Reformation in England had leaders, 
 but no leader. Encountering the virile egoism 
 of the Tudors, no less virile in Mary and Eliza- 
 beth than in their father and grandfather, on its 
 religious side the development of the Reforma- 
 tion was arrested, and most of its energy was 
 directed into political channels. There was no 
 Luther or Knox, no synod or consistory, to de- 
 cree universal education, and it was left to pri- 
 vate munificence to supply the want which the 
 royal edicts of monastic suppression had created. 
 The founders of these endowed schools were of 
 all classes : men and women. Catholics and Prot- 
 estants, kings, dukes and baronets, ecclesiastics 
 and merchants. The phenomenon is unique. 
 There was no concert of action — no plan. Here 
 and there, in the cities and towns, silently, one 
 by one, and benignly as the stars in the twilight 
 blossom in the infinite meadows of heaven, these 
 schools appeared. There was not even uniform- 
 ity of motive. Some were the outcome of selfish- 
 ness, as the monasteries had been; dying men 
 and women, looking back over lives of greed and 
 cruelty and lust, and forward to '^adamantine 
 chains and penal fires," to " torture without end,'' 
 and " fiery deluge fed with ever-burning sulphur 
 unconsumed,'' would purchase pardon and ob- 
 livion for the misdeeds of life by charitable en- 
 
THE EARLY LEGISLATION. 27 
 
 dowment. The old proverb said, "He steals a 
 pig and gives away the trotters for God's sake/' 
 
 Sometimes the founders hoped for purgatorial 
 benefits, as in the case of the Stopford Grammar 
 School, where twice a week the boys were to go 
 with the master to church and recite the De Pro- 
 fundis and the other services for the founder's 
 soul and the souls of his father and mother. 
 Sometimes a truer piety prompted the gift, as at 
 Kingsbridge, where over the entrance is in- 
 scribed, "Lord, what I have 'twas thou that 
 gavest me, and of thine own this I return to 
 thee." Often the motive was a patriotic one — a 
 generous public spirit. The old deeds coruscate 
 with utterances, quaintly phrased, of the desire 
 to raise up godly and learned men for the Church 
 and the state. Again, sympathetic charity 
 prompted other gifts. Men who had raised 
 themselves to wealth and civic honor by trade 
 sought to remove from the path of the poor boys 
 of their native towns the ignorance which had 
 impeded their own career. 
 
 As there was variety of motive, so there was 
 endless diversity in the terms of the endowments. 
 Usually limited to a prescribed locality, some- 
 times the benefits of the gifts were confined to a 
 specified ixumber of boys ; often to poor men's 
 children ; most often to all children without dis- 
 
28 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 tinction. As to support — some called for tuition 
 fees from those who could afford to pay ; many- 
 were wholly free to all, as at Guisboro, where 
 the deed of foundation decreed that the masters 
 should teach freely all scholars coming to the 
 school, grammar, honest manners, and godly 
 living, "not demanding any pennji^ of them or 
 their parents/^ The phrase " not demanding any 
 penny " had reference to a custom peculiar to the 
 schools of northern England, and throws a gleam 
 of side light across the manners of the age. In 
 some of the endowments the masters are to teach 
 freely, making no charge to the parents " except 
 cock-pence only,'^ or "except potation-pence/^ 
 Cock-baiting was a part of the annual routine 
 in the grammar schools of Yorkshire, Lanca- 
 shire, and some other of the more northern coun- 
 ties, and it was almost universal in France as 
 well. The head master furnished the cock, pre- 
 sided over the sport, and gave an * entertainment 
 to the children and parents. On Shrove Tuesday 
 the cock was tied to a post in a pit and pelted 
 with sticks. If a boy killed the cock it became 
 his property ; if not killed, the master took it. 
 To provide the cock he received a small gratuity 
 from the scholars; this was cock-pence. Some- 
 times the master made a drinking festival for all 
 the scholars several times a year, and for this the 
 
THE EARLY LEGISLATION. 29 
 
 scholars furnished potation-pence. The fees con- 
 tinued to be exacted long after the practices had 
 been abandoned, and in large schools supplied a 
 liberal perquisite. 
 
 The schools were called grammar schools be- 
 j^ause Latin was the staple. But other subjects 
 were sometimes specified. At Enfield the in- 
 struction was to be in the arts of grammar and 
 arithmetic. At St. Olave's, in Southwark, the 
 school was ^^ for the education and instruction of 
 children of the parish, as well of rich as of poor, 
 liberally and prosperously in grammar, in acci- 
 dence, in other lower books, and in writing ; also 
 in the Latin and English tongues."" At Lewis- 
 ham was to be taught " Latin, Greek, and He- 
 brew free,"" and " writing, ciphering and accounts 
 on payment of two shillings a year."" At St. 
 Dunstan"s the instructioji was to be in grammat- 
 ical science, and the young ones in spelling until 
 they are fit to learn grammar; but the schools 
 which provided for elementary instruction in ad- 
 dition to Latin were few. A part of the schools 
 were to provide only the rudiments ; of the foun- 
 dation of most of them no records remain. In 
 general it was assumed that the children would 
 be able to read and write before entering these 
 schools. This assumption is of importance, as 
 showing the existence of opportunities more or 
 
30 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 less general for previous education. This oppor- 
 I tunity was furnished by humble parish school- 
 masters and village dames, who eked out a scanty 
 subsistence by guiding the unsteady steps of the 
 "potties and incipients^^ toward that hill of 
 learning up which there is no royal road. To 
 such a humble seat doubtless went the infant 
 Shakespeare, "a whining schoolboy, with his 
 satchel and shining morning face, creeping like 
 snail unwillingly to school '' ; while at the Free 
 Grammar School at Stratford he acquired that 
 " small Latin and less Greek '' which Ben Jonson 
 says comprised his erudition. 
 
 Although the charters rarely made any dis- 
 tinction of sex, it was generally understood that 
 boys alone would go to the grammar schools. 
 
 The basis of these schools was distinctly re- 
 ligious. This is shown by express provisions for 
 religious instruction, as at Chester, where the 
 founder says : 
 
 Mine intent in founding this school is specially to increase 
 knowledge and worship of God and our Lord Jesus Christ, and 
 good Christian life and manners in the children, and for that 
 intent I will that the children learn the catechism. 
 
 At the end he says : 
 
 Charge the master that he teach always that is best. 
 
 The religious trend of the movement is still more 
 clearly shown in the terms used to describe the 
 
THE EARLY LEGISLATION. 31 
 
 masters to be employed : " Bachelor of arts and 
 in holy orders"; ^^ a priest cnnning in gram- 
 mar '' ; " a priest to say mass and to keep schooF' ; 
 '' a learned schoolmaster, a priest if possible " ; 
 "a university man, graduate, and a preacher/' 
 Sometimes the requirement was laconic : ^^ A fit 
 man/' I know of nothing in all educational lit- 
 erature more profound in philosophy nor more 
 beautiful in expression than this in the statutes 
 of the Surrey school : The master — 
 
 shall be a man of wise, sociable, and loving disposition ; wise 
 and of good experience to discern the nature of every several 
 child, to work upon their disposition for the greatest advantage, 
 benefit, and comfort of the child ; to learn with the love of his 
 hook. 
 
 Comparing the effect of the Reformation upon 
 elementary instruction in England with its in- 
 fluence on the Continent, we are struck by the 
 peculiarly English character of the new move- 
 ment. All English institutions — political, re- 
 ligious, social—are symbolized by one of i|;s great 
 cathedrals. If the traveler, at once charmed 
 and awed, asks the garrulous verger when the 
 minster was built, he is told : " It never was built ; 
 it was always building. Even now there are 
 workmen on yonder scaffold. ^^ As he looks 
 about him and views the pile from different 
 standpoints, he sees that no period in architec- 
 ture can claim it for its own. The plan seems 
 
32 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 Norman, and the massive walls and columns, the 
 semicircular arches and the great square central 
 tower praise that daring race who from freeboot- 
 ing pirates became the great church-builders of 
 Europe. Another view changes the whole im- 
 pression. All is Gothic. Here are the slender, 
 graceful columns, the exquisitely carved capitals 
 and moldings; overhead are the pointed arches 
 and vaults, and yonder are the mullioned win- 
 dows of the Early English. But there is Gothic 
 and Gothic. One star differeth from another 
 star in glory. That transept is not Norman, nor 
 Early English. It is light, airy, delicate; its 
 pinnacles and flying buttresses, its traceried 
 windows, are marvels of design and miracles of 
 execution. Another turn, and the vision of 
 beauty fades. There is only the stiflf, formal, 
 perpendicular style of the Tudors, and disap- 
 pointment becomes disgust as in the choir or 
 chapel one sees the utterly absurd designs of the 
 later Renaissance. Most interesting of all is the 
 discovery, in some obscure place, of a fragment 
 of a wall or some deep-laid substructure, that 
 tell that Cinquecentist, Gothic, and Norman, all 
 built upon an earlier Saxon foundation. 
 
 The British Constitution tells the same story. 
 The revolutions have claimed to be but restora- 
 tions. Every king has sworn to rule by what 
 
THE EARLY LEGISLATION. 33 
 
 Magna Charta calls " the law of the land/' Wil- 
 liam the Conqueror ruled as the lawful suc- 
 cessor of the Saxon Edward, and every Norman 
 king swore to keep " the good laws of Edward "" ; 
 as Canute the Dane and his Gemot at Oxford 
 had reaffirmed the laws of Edgar; as Edgar's 
 legislation found its sanction in reproducing the 
 still earlier laws of Ina. 
 
 So with the English Church. There has been 
 no break in the continuity of her history. 
 Changes there have been, great and many — 
 now additions and now mutilations ; it has taken 
 on new beauties and new graces; but to-day it 
 is the Church which Augustin set up under the 
 protection of the good Queen^ Berth'a. ; 
 
 And the English language, if not identical 
 with that which Hengist and Horsa spoke to 
 their corsair followers in the isle of Thanet, in- 
 cludes and envelops that as the vast cathedral 
 includes and envelops its earlier Saxon precursor. 
 
 Thus deep-seated and instinctive in the Eng- 
 lish mind is reverence for the past; so that the 
 changes which have occurred in its institutions 
 are like those great secular changes in the earth's 
 relations which can only be measured by cen- 
 turies. . 
 
 When the monasteries were swept away, and 
 with them those provisions for education which 
 
3i MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 the medisBval Church had organized and sus- 
 tained, it never occurred to any one that there 
 was an opportunity to found a new system of 
 education. With characteristic English direct- 
 ness and simplicity, and English conservatism as 
 well, they took the means already at hand and 
 multiplied them. There had been a few'gram- 
 mar schools from time immemorial ; they would 
 substitute these for the defunct Church schools. 
 So they honored the past while serving the pres- 
 \ ent and the future. Nor did they think of modi- 
 fying greatly the old curriculum. There was no 
 philosophy of education. They were working 
 wholly from a practical standpoint. The age 
 was characterized, as we have said, by intense 
 intellectual activity. There came to be a rever- 
 ence for learning which may seem to us, and per- 
 haps was, almost superstition. But the mistake 
 was natural. They saw that in the competition 
 of the new age the men of learning were leading, 
 although the learning was chiefly Latin. If 
 they thought the learning was the cause of the 
 success, rather than the power gained in the 
 process, we can not wonder, for they were plain 
 people. 
 
 They made no mistake in what they saw. 
 The impulse was a generous one, and to it was 
 largely due the steady progress of the English 
 
THE EARLY LEGISLATION. 35 
 
 middle class in social and political power. But 
 the ruling class in England never rose to the idea 
 of universal education. They made poor-laws 
 ' and set up workhouses in every parish, and im- 
 posed taxes to support the paupers, when the 
 streams of charity which had flowed from the 
 monastic establishments were dried up, but they 
 made no such national provisions to supply the 
 intellectual wants. Cornpulsor y poor-hous es, vol- 
 untary schools, was England's answer to the 
 question. After the monasteries — what ? 
 
 But a question has arisen recently which de- 
 mands more specific examination. Mr. Motley, in 
 his enthusiasm for Holland, suggested that the 
 people of New England probably were more in- 
 debted to Holland than to England for their 
 school system. Taking their cue from this, other 
 writers have amplified this ' statement, and some 
 have gone so far as'to declare that Massachusetts 
 not only derived her school ideas from the Dutch, 
 but received them by waj^of New Amsterdam^ 
 The Kne of argument followed bv all thesa 
 writers is ^Eliat free p ublic schools w ere universal 
 in iJolla nd, while the educational opportunities in 
 England were of the scantiest kind. The people 
 of Holland are represented as universally edu- 
 cated, while the people of England were univer- 
 sally illiterate. A closer and wider examination 
 
36 MASSACHUSETTS PI BLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 of the conditions would have shown that these 
 opinions were only guesses, with no historical 
 basis. What England did we have already seen. 
 It is probable that Holland at this time was 
 superior to all other countries in the quality of 
 the education it furnished ; but the difference is 
 not as great as these modern partisans would 
 have us believe. 
 
 T he Synod of 1586 had ordered that schools 
 should be everywhere established by the Church 
 authorities. In 1618 the Synod of Dort decreed 
 that schools for instructing the young in Chris- 
 tian doctrines should be provided not only in 
 the cities, but also in towns and country places, 
 where heretofore none had existed. The schools 
 which the earlier Synod had been instrumental 
 in establishing had been confined to the cities, 
 but the city schools, at least the elementary ones, 
 were of no very high order. A historian says of 
 them: 
 
 The method of education in children's schools was of the 
 rudest and most unscientific kind. They were kept either hy- 
 men or women, and many of the latter could not even read. 
 Before the door a pattern sheet written by the master's own 
 hand had to be hung out, describing, under a penalty, what he 
 was fit to teach, and in addition sometimes a signboard with 
 the word " School " was exhibited, along with a painting repre- 
 senting the schoolmaster himself in the midst of his pupils. 
 Occasionally a rod and ferule were painted on the signboard, 
 with some appropriate motto, such as " Cheap Wisdom," etc. 
 
THE EARL¥' LEGISLATION. 37 
 
 The middle and poorer kinds of children's schools in the Dutch 
 towns consisted generally of low, small apartments, on the sec- 
 ond story, with an outlook on a dirty lane or courtyard, and 
 sometimes evien of a damp cellar. In many cases there were 
 separate apartments for the children of the riciier and poorer 
 classes. Oftentimes the school apartment served as a sleeping 
 or sitting room, and frequently the mistress kept a small shop 
 for the sale of dainties which the children purchased. If she 
 could not read, she merely drilled the children from memory 
 in the alphabet, the Lord's prayer, the ten commandments, and 
 the creed, until the children could repeat them by heart, with- 
 out having learned to read them.* 
 
 These Dutch elementary schools are thus seen 
 to resemble in all essential particulars the dame 
 schools of England. Long before the Synod of 
 1586 had issued its decree, Englan d was dotted all 
 over with free grammar schools. Twenty-two 
 years before, Ascham had published his School- 
 master. Five years before, in 1581, Doctor Mul- 
 caster, head master of Merchant Taylor's School, 
 one of those endowed grammar schools, had pub- 
 lished his book on education, called by the quaint 
 name Positions, one of the most remarkable 
 books on education ever written by an English- 
 man. He depicts a universal desire of parents of 
 all classes to have their children educated, and 
 deprecates it, and argues at length in favor of 
 limiting the higher education to a selected few-/ 
 the gifted ones. This was fifty years before the 
 
 * Geddes's Life of John De Witt, vol. i, pp. 33, 34. 
 
38 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 Boston emigration. Surely, these New England 
 people had no need to go to Holland to find in- 
 spiration and impulse. 
 
 "When, in 1585, that famous company of Dutch 
 ambassadors came to London to offer the sov- 
 ereignty of the new nation to Elizabeth, accom- 
 plished as many of them were, Elizabeth herself 
 was more than their peer in polite learning as 
 well as in statecraft, and the courtiers who sur- 
 rounded her on that brilliant occasion — Walsing- 
 ham and Leicester and Burleigh and Sidney — 
 were as learned as they were brave, and not a 
 whit inferio'ii even to Motley^s hero, John of 
 Barneveldt^y 
 
 J^ But wl5m of the Dutch on Manhattan Island ? 
 Did Boston learn of them ? Historians of New 
 York are fond of claiming that in New Amster- 
 dam there was a free public school before Bos^^on 
 called Philemon Pormort, and they point to the 
 documents which they claim show the univer- 
 sality of education. What are the facts ? 
 
 In 1621 the Dutch West India Company^ 
 under whose auspices the country was settled 
 and by which it was governed, bound itself to 
 maintain good and fit preachers, schoolmasters, 
 and comforters of the sick. In 1629, in its 
 Charter of Liberties, it laid upon the patroons 
 and colonists an obligation to provide ministers 
 
THE EARLY LEGISLATION. 39 
 
 and schoolmasters. In 1633 there came over 
 with the new Governor, William Kieft — Irving's 
 William the Testy — one Adam Roelandsen, a 
 schoolmaster.* He was appointed by the Classis'' 
 of Amsterdam, paid by the Dutch West India 
 Company, and kept a school under the superyi- 
 sion and management of the deacons of the I^utoli-— ^^ 
 Reformed Church in the colony. That school has 
 been in existence ever since. It antedates our 
 Boston Latin School by two years. But it has 
 never been a public school in the Boston sense. 
 It is to-day what it has always been, a school for 
 the children of the Dutch Reformed Church in 
 New York. It is doubtful if it was ever free to 
 any others, for there were private schools coex- 
 isting with it, almost from the beginning. In 
 1649, two years after our school law, the people j3:::> 
 of New Amsterdam complained that no school- 
 house had yet been built ; that " the school was 
 kept very irregularly by this one and that, ac- 
 cording to his fancy, as long as he thinks fit '' ; 
 and after this school had been in existence,, 
 twenty-six years, in 1659, the people, still depend;^ 
 ent on the foreign company, humbly represent 
 that there is no school in the colony where their 
 children can learn Latin ; that there is no such 
 
 * Dunshee's History of the School of the Reformed Protest- 
 ant Dutch Church in the City of New York. 
 
40 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 school nearer than New England ; that they can 
 not afford to hire a Latin master from New Eng- 
 land, or to send their children thither ; so they 
 pray the honorable company to send a man 
 capable of teaching Latin. The company gra- 
 ciously acceded to their request, and classical 
 learning at last found a place among the good 
 burghers of New Amsterdam. But before this 
 time there were half a score of flourishing Latin 
 schools in Massachusetts, and seventeen classes 
 had been graduated from Harvard College.* 
 ^ Coming back, now, from this extended sur- 
 vey of education in the Old World to answer the 
 question, '^ Where did the Massachusetts Puri- 
 tans get their ideas of popular education ? '^ we 
 observe that they did not evolve those ideas from 
 their own consciousness. Neither the compulsory 
 policy nor the arguments by which it was sup- 
 ported were of their own originating. Neither 
 were they pioneers in the scope of the education 
 which they proposed. All these matters had been 
 under discussion for a century in the literature 
 of the Reformation. Their neighbors in Scot- 
 land, and on the Continent had already reduced 
 
 * For an extended discussion of the relative claims of 
 Massachusetts and New York, see articles Public School Pio- 
 neering, in The Educational Review, 1892, April, June, October; 
 1893, March. 
 
THE EARLY LEGISLATION. 41 
 
 their principles to practice, while in the ele- 
 mentary and grammar schools of England they 
 had themselves received an education whicty 
 they would make universal. Bu^ when we say " 
 thatjthe colonists of Massachusetts brought from 
 the Oid World their ideas of education and of 
 schools,/ we have not stripped them of their 
 glory, jffn Germany, in Holland, and in Scot- 
 land sckools were imposed upon the people by 
 authority. The compulsion came from princes, 
 synods, parliaments. But in Massachusetts the 
 people established the educ^ional system for . 
 themselves and their posterity.] 1 Edward Everett 
 declared that the Massachusetts \ssembly which — 
 appropriated £400 to found Harvard College w^»gr 
 the first body in which the people by their repfre- 
 sentatives ever gave their own money to found a ' 
 place of education.! 
 
 fiVIore than this, Germany, Holland, Scotland, 
 anoSEngland were old communities^^ The people 
 were comfortably settled in ancestral homes. 
 They were worshiping in churches rich with the 
 tributes of mediaeval piety, and hallowed by the 
 sacraments of centuries. Social and domestic 
 relations were crystallized into shape by im- 
 memorial customs. Industries were established 
 and the currents of trade were in the main flow- 
 ing in channels worn long before. While great 
 
42 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 political questions were still in agitation, the or- 
 dinary course of civil administration was settled, 
 and for each nation there was a common law 
 whose precedents were hoary with age, and un- 
 der whose shelter the people found a satisfactory 
 measure of security. What a contrast to all this 
 did Massachusetts present in 1647! But a few 
 yea^ibefore, their homes were of logs, and their 
 metropolitan church was plastered with mud and 
 roofed with straw. They were clearing lands, 
 building roads and bridges, mills and fish-weirs. 
 They were exploring the wilderness for new sites 
 for settlement, and searching for new resources 
 to develop. All social relations were demanding 
 readjustment under the new conditions. New 
 problems were constantly arising in Church and 
 state. The familiar common law needed to be 
 supplemented by much special legislation, which, 
 though homely, was essential to the good order of 
 the community. More perplexing than all this 
 were the questions forced upon them by intruders 
 and dissentients ; and outside of all were the per- 
 petual menaces to their very existence from the 
 savages around them, and from their ecclesias- 
 tical and political enemies across the water. 
 
 Herein is the superabounding glory of these 
 men; not that they had convictions — for these 
 they shared with a great multitude — but that they 
 
THE EARLY LEGISLATION. 43 
 
 had the courage of their convictions, and that 
 that courage mounted with the occasion. Not 
 the pressure of material needs, not poverty, not 
 domestic nor foreign complications, not fightings 
 within nor fears without, not any or all of these 
 blinded them for a moment to the necessity of 
 educating their children, nor hindered them for 
 a moment in making the completest provision 
 for it. From the hour in which they set foot in- 
 Massachusetts, they felt that they had a country ; 
 and they began to plan for posterity before the 
 grass was yet green on the graves of the earliest 
 victims of the first New England winter, who, as 
 ^_Cotton Mather said of the sweet Lady Arbella 
 Johnson, ^^took New England in their way to 
 heaven.'^ When we consider the provision for 
 education made- during the first .seventeen years 
 of the history of this commonwealth,, we honor 
 the fathers for their faith, their patriotism, their 
 courage, and their liberality, more even than for 
 the largeness of their views and the profound 
 sagacity of their plans. 
 
LECTURE IL 
 
 SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 
 
 Having discerned the foundations which, the 
 fathers laid for their educational system, we 
 come now to see what manner of structure they 
 built upon it. 
 
 In their theory of education they were in line 
 with the foremost of the reformers, and, as we 
 have seen, this line was far in advance of the 
 existing practice at the time of their expatria- 
 tion. Universal opportunity for education was 
 the utmost that even the charitable founders of 
 the endowed schools aimed to secure by their 
 gift. 
 
 The Massachusetts Puritans went further, and 
 decreed universal education, but when they came 
 to provide the means for such education they set 
 up such schools as they had been familiar with. 
 Bryce has said, " Everything which has power to 
 win the obedience and respect of men must have 
 its roots deep in the past.'' As the student of 
 our political institutions is struck by the fact 
 
 .44 
 
SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 45 
 
 that their founders broke with the past so little, 
 the student of our educational history observes 
 the same fact, and finds that the early schools o f 
 ! N"ew England are studied be« ^- in <^1^' F-^^gl^^^^ 1 
 
 When the lawmakers of 1647 spoke of gram- 
 mar schools, they meant such schools as they had 
 already started, and these were such as they had 
 been educated in at home. Winthrop came from 
 Groton, in Sii^ffolk. At Bury St. Edmunds, close 
 by, was a free grammar school founded by Ed- 
 ward in 1553. At Eye, in the same county, was 
 one founded before 1556 ; while at Sudbury .there 
 was another, founded by one William Wood a 
 year before Columbus discovered America. 
 
 John Cotton came from old Boston. There 
 was a free grammar school, and Cotton, a few 
 years before, had been one of a committee to 
 select an usher for it. Endicott, of Salem, came 
 from Dorchester. There was a school founded 
 in 1579, "a free school with a learned master 
 for children of all degrees." Dudley, of Rox- 
 bury, came from Northampton. There was a 
 school, founded in 1541, to teach boys who de- 
 sired to learn, freely. 
 
 Hooker, of Cambridge, who led his flock 
 through the wilderness to the Connecticut, came 
 from Chelmsford, in Essex. There, too, was one 
 of the good Edward's free grammar schools. 
 
46 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 founded in 1551. At Halsted and Colchestei, 
 too, in the same county, were similar schools. 
 From the neighborhood of these came most of 
 tl^e early settlers of Cambridge. 
 
 In view of these facts it is amusing to read, in 
 Mr. Douglas Campbell's book on the Puritans, 
 that in the absence of any schools in England 
 the Puritans, before their emigration to Massa- 
 chusetts, must have educated themselves and 
 their children. 
 
 The statement is frequently made that Massa- 
 chusetts, by its law of 1647, established a system 
 of free public schools — the first in the world. 
 The colonists did establish a system of schools ; 
 they were public schools, and many of them were 
 free schools; but, paradoxical as it may seem, 
 there was at first no system of free public 
 schools, because the law made public support 
 permissive rather than compulsory- 
 Schools had been begun in nearly all the 
 towns before 1647, and after that date new 
 schools were added as the necessity arose. With 
 perhaps a single exception, these were all public 
 schools — the people's schools. The initiative was 
 taken by the people as citizens — taken in town 
 meeting and recorded in the town records. The 
 town voted to have the school ; the town deter- 
 mined the grade of the school; the town chose 
 
SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 47 
 
 tTie master and fixed his compensation ; the town, 
 through its officers, inducted him into office, and 
 arranged all the details of the school economy. 
 
 This was all done as a matter of convenienc/B, 
 not of right — not at all with any conscious refer- 
 ence to any theory of local autonomy. It is im- 
 portant to dwell upon this point. There has 
 grown up an exaggerated notion of the rights 
 of towns, especially in regard to schools. In 
 Massachusetts, towns have no rights, and never 
 had any, save such as have been conferred by 
 statutes. 
 
 De Tocqueville, in his study of American De- 
 mocracy, was deceived by appearances into see- 
 ing an analogy between the Federal Union and 
 the individual States. He assumed that the State 
 is an aggregation of units — the towns being the 
 units, as the Federation is an aggregation of 
 States. This is not true, legally or chronologic- 
 ally. The cowns were not first settled, then 
 grouped into the State. The State was first, as a 
 legal entity. The territory was the territory of 
 the State, and the supreme authority was in the 
 State. Instead of the towns being the source of 
 power, and delegating power to the State, as the 
 State has done to the United States, the towns 
 are but creations of the State, and under its 
 sanction " live and move and have their being." 
 
48 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 The State, or the General Courts which was the 
 State, deemed the towns most suitable agents to 
 carry out its policy of uiriversal education. The 
 towns were required to iprovide ^/^ ools, as they 
 were required to provide churches, and to keep 
 watch and ward against the Indians. 
 
 While the schools were thus public schools, 
 their peculiarly English character is most strong- 
 ly marked in the manner in which they were 
 supxDorted. We notice the absence of uniformity, 
 and we are impressed by the fact that, at first, 
 direct taxation for their support was not uni- 
 versal. 
 
 Of seven grammar schools established before 
 1647, no two were supported in just the same 
 way. In Boston there was first a subscription by 
 the wealthy citizens. Sir Henry Yane and Gov- 
 ernor Winthrop heading the paper ; * then there 
 was the income from leased town lands ;t then 
 incomes from funds left by will to the school; 
 and, lastly, when there was not enough from all 
 
 * Second Report of Boston Record Commissioners, p. 160, 
 note. 
 
 f The appropriation of income from leased town lands, from 
 fishing privileges, etc., common in the early history of the Mas- 
 sachusetts schools, resembles the appropriations for schools 
 from " the common good " in Scotland in the sixteenth and sev- 
 enteenth centuries. — See Grant's History of the Burgh Schools 
 in Scotland, p. 456. 
 
SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 49 
 
 these sources to make up the master's salary of 
 £50, a town rate was levied for the balance. 
 ( There is nowhcT-e any reference to tuition fees. 
 
 Of Camb^^J,ge, we ead in New England^'s 
 First Fruits, "And by the side of the college a 
 fair grammar school for the training of young 
 scholars and fitting them for academical learning, 
 that still as they are judged ripe they may be re- 
 ceived into the college."" * 
 
 This school seems to have been supported 
 wholly by tuition fees. In its earliest years the 
 only public grant is an appropriation by the 
 Commissioners of the United Colonies, to pay for 
 the instruction of some Indian youths, f But in 
 1648, the school being small and the master's in- 
 come consequently scanty, the town sold some 
 land for his benefit, and six years later levied a 
 rate to help him out. J 
 
 In Charlestown * three sources of income are 
 apparent (1647) : the rent of some islands, the 
 income from the Mystic weir, and a rate. 
 
 In Dorchester II there was the income from 
 leased lands on Thomson's Island, which the 
 
 * Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc, vol. i, First series, p. 247. 
 f Paige's History of Cambridge, p. 366. 
 
 X Ibid., p. 367. 
 
 * Frothingham's History of Charlestown, pp. 115, 116. 
 II History of Dorchester, Boston, 1859, p. 420. 
 
50 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 General Court had given to the town. And 
 there were bequests by generous people; there 
 is nothing at first to indicate either tuition fees 
 or a town rate. It was purely an endowed school, 
 but endowed by the people themselves. 
 
 In Salem,* parents subscribed as they were 
 able and felt disposed, and the town by rate pro- 
 vided for the children of the poor. 
 Vln Ipswich f the grammar school was sup- 
 ported by income from rents, lands, annuities, 
 and tuition fees to make up the needed amount. 
 The town has still some school income from these 
 ancient leases. 
 
 In Roxbury J the grammar school was never 
 public; the wealthier inhabitants founding the 
 school, binding their estates for its perpetual 
 support, only their own children receiving the 
 benefit of the school f reejy. 
 
 In all these cases tlj^ town rate— -the general 
 tax — was used only |d supplement the other 
 sources of income, to eke out otherwise too 
 scanty resources. There seems to have been no 
 objection to the rate, but the people naturally 
 followed the customs with which they had been 
 
 * Felt's Annals of Salem, i, p. 164. 
 f Felt's History of Ipswich, Essex, and Hamilton, p. 83. 
 X Dillaway's History of the Oram mar School in Roxbury, 
 pp. 7, 8. 
 
SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 51 
 
 familiar at home. School lands, school funds, 
 and school fees were traditional ideas, so they 
 started in the old way, and in many cases con- 
 tinued in that way for more than a century. 
 
 Dedham , early in its history — in 1644 — set up / 
 a free school, and built a house for it, and sup- 
 ported it by a general tax.* It furnished element- 1 
 ary instruction in English, writing, and the art \ 
 of arithmetic. The tax was levied semiannually, I 
 and the master's pay was two thirds in wheat I 
 and the other third in other corn. In extreme 
 weather the master was permitted to keep the 
 school in his own house, and in the heat of sum- 
 mer he might use the meeting-house, on condi- 
 tion that he left it clean and mended all the win- \ 
 dows that his boys broke. 
 
 But the conditions in New England tended to 
 make the schools everywhere, sooner or later, 
 wholly free and supported by tax. Common 
 lands, available as sources of town income, were 
 gradually sold. Population increased more rap- 
 idly than the income from testamentary proper- 
 ties, so that the needs of the schools, in most 
 instances, outran their fixed revenues. Private 
 benevolence lacked incentive when law made 
 schools compulsory, and atown rate could be 
 
 * Dedham Historical Register, vol. i, p. 86. 
 
52 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 depended upon to provide means for their sup- 
 port. Tuition fees from the rich and free tuition 
 for the poor made class distinctions too promi- 
 nent in a new society, where in church and state 
 all were equal. Support by town rate was sim- 
 pler, easier, and more uniform than by any other 
 method. 
 
 All these causes, peculiar to the colonial con- 
 ditions, tended to change the^ English schools to 
 American schools as we know them to-day. The 
 change came more rapidly in some cases than in 
 others; less rapidly in the commercial towns 
 than in the newer agricultural communities. 
 Each locality worked out its own problem 
 in its own way, until all at last reached the 
 same result under the law which made sup- 
 port by town rate permissible but not compul- 
 sory. 
 
 When this result had been reached, about the 
 middle of the eighteenth century, Massachusetts 
 stood alone in the world. Excepting New Hamp- 
 shire, which was so closely identified with Mas- 
 sachusetts as to be thought of with it, no other 
 State in the Union^had a free-school system. 
 Connecticut had public ^ schools, but they were 
 not free until later. New York had no public- 
 school system of any kind at this time, and had 
 no free-school system until a century later. The 
 
SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 53 
 
 European systems furnislied free schooling only 
 to the poor. 
 
 It is significant that in many of the towns the 
 grammar school was the first to be established. 
 Until recently it has been supposed that corpo- 
 rate provision for elementary education was the 
 exception, but as the early records are studied 
 more carefully it becomes evident that such ed- 
 ucation was general. Sometimes English was 
 taught in grammar schools; this seems to have 
 been so at first in Boston, an usher being ap- 
 pointed for the purpose, after the English fash- 
 ion. In Ipswich an English school was coeval 
 with the grammar school; this was chiefly for 
 older children. In Charlestown, Watertown, and 
 Dedham we know that elementary instruction 
 was furnished from the beginning, and this was 
 true of all the smaller towns. 
 
 In a contract with a teacher for the Roxbury 
 grammar school,* the master covenants " to use 
 his best skill and endeavor, both by precept and 
 example, to instruct in all scholastical, moral, 
 and theological discipline the children of the 
 proprietors of the school — all A-B-C-darians ex- 
 cepted.'^ 
 
 It seems to have been generally understood 
 
 * Dillaway's History of the Grammar School in Roxbury, 
 p. 30. 
 
54: MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 that children would be taught to read before at* 
 tending the grammar schools. Very early there 
 appeared that other English institution so fa- 
 miliar, so closely associated with memories of 
 childhood — the dame school; and before many 
 years this was made a part of the public-school 
 system. 
 
 It will be interesting now to follow a child in 
 one of the larger towns, during the first century 
 of colonial existence, through his pupilage. At 
 four or five years of age, clinging to the fingers 
 of some older brother or sister, he toddles away 
 from his own dooryard to the humble cottage 
 where the road to learning was supposed to be- 
 gin. It was such as Crabbe described — 
 
 " Where a deaf, poor, patient widow sits 
 And awes some thirty infants as she knits — 
 Infants of humble, busy wives, who pay 
 Some trifling price for freedom through the day. 
 At this good matron's hut the children meet, 
 Who thus becomes the mother of the street : 
 Her room is small, they can not widely stray, 
 Her threshold high, they can not run away; 
 With band of yarn she keeps offenders in, 
 And to her gown the sturdiest rogues can pin." 
 
 Suspended by a string from the wall is the 
 single object which was in embryo all that the 
 Massachusetts statutes now designate by the 
 phrase "text-books and supplies/' It was the 
 
SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 55 
 
 Hornbook,* an English classic when Shake- 
 speare wrote. In Love's Labour's Lost, the school- 
 master, Holof ernes, is proved to be "lettered'^ 
 because he teaches boys the Hornbook. This first 
 round in learning's ladder consisted of a card 
 set in a frame, having printed on it the Roman 
 alphabet, capitals and small letters; below, the 
 vowels, large and small; then the familiar Ab, 
 Eb, lb, etc. Following these the benediction — 
 ^^The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the 
 love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy 
 Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen.'"* Then 
 came the Lord's Prayer, and sometimes, at the 
 bottom, the Roman numerals. The whole was 
 covered with a thin, translucent sheet of horn, to 
 preserve it. 
 
 So Shenstone describes it : 
 
 " Their books of stature small they take in hand, 
 Which with pellucid horn secured are, 
 To save from fingers wet the letters fair " ; 
 
 while Prior describes a more pleasing form of 
 the same instrument : 
 
 " To master John the English maid 
 A hornbook gives of gingerbread ; 
 And that the child may learn the better, ** 
 
 As he can name he eats the letter." 
 
 ♦ See Halliwell's Notices of Fugitive Tracts, in Percy Society 
 Publications, vol. xxix, p. 30, frontispiece. 
 
56 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 The good dame, as she knits or sews or spins, 
 listens to each child in turn as he calls the letters 
 in their order. She eaiertaixxS him with stories 
 from the Bible, and strives with moral precepts 
 to bring him up in the nurture and admonition 
 of the Lord. 
 
 The older children have brought from home 
 their primers, in the earliest days made in Eng- 
 land, but after 1660 for nearly two hundred years 
 printed widely in New England — the famous 
 New England Primer. The first edition was 
 plain, but soon and always afterward illustrated 
 with cuts. 
 
 This little book was a perfect vade mecum of 
 I what the Roxbury trustees called '' scholastical, 
 /' theological, and moral discipline." Beginning 
 with the alphabet, large and small, the vowels 
 and consonants and combinations of these, there 
 followed lists of words for spelling, first of two 
 syllables, then of three, then of foiir, then of five, 
 ending with ^^abomination," ^^justification," etc 
 Then followed some moral injunctions : " Pray to 
 God," '' Hate lies" ; then some Bible questions and 
 answers— "Who was the first man ?" then selec- 
 tions from the Proverbs, arranged alphabetically 
 — "" A wise son," etc. ; then the Lord's Prayer, the 
 Apostles' Creed, Watts's Cradle Hymn ; then mis- 
 cellaneous hymns — " Now I lay me," etc. Proper 
 
SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 57 
 
 names of men and women, for spelling, followed. 
 Then Agur^s prayier, " Give me neither pover-ty 
 nor riches." Latjt, th^^ Westminster Shorter 
 Catechism, so called. I remember that when a 
 child I was compelled to learn it, and I wondered 
 what a longer one could be like. 
 
 The poetical selections varied in different edi- 
 tions. There was considerable variety, too, in the 
 pictures : the frontispiece in some was a child re- 
 peating his evening prayer at his mother's knee ; 
 in others, several children standing before the 
 mother, while still another represented a school 
 — a dame school. A Primer printed in 1777 has 
 a portrait of John Hancock, President of the 
 American Congress. 
 
 Each had a series of cuts illustrating promi- 
 nent Bible scenes, with couplets condensing the 
 
 narrative, as — 
 
 " In Adam's fall 
 We sinned all." 
 
 A picture of John Rogers at the stake was 
 another cheerful feature, with the "nine small 
 children and one at the breast," and some edi- 
 tions had a long metrical posthumous address to 
 his children. The whole was called An Easy and 
 Pleasant Guide to the Art of Reading — a title 
 which has been applied to many a primer pub- 
 lished since. 
 
58 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-S.-IJHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 The Primer mastered, by dint of much persua- 
 sion and at the cost of many tears, the boys are 
 now too large to be longer restrained by bands of 
 yarn or to be pinned to the good matron's apron. 
 They are seven or eight years ola, and the Latin 
 ^Xochool opens its doors to them — but not to the 
 girls. Their education is finished if they can 
 read the Primer through. The boys bring to the 
 master's school a Psalter and a Bible ; they will 
 need no other English books; they will read 
 these every day till they go to college. They 
 will cipher, too, a little. The master will dictate 
 a problem, and the boys will work on it till they 
 dig it out. But this work is only incidental ; this 
 is a grammar school, and Latin grammar is the 
 be-all and the end-all. 
 
 Master Cheever, of New Haven, has made a 
 little book — A Short Introduction to the Latin 
 Tongue. It is known as Cheever's Accidence, 
 and the New England people — always favoring 
 home productions, and always furnishing a home 
 market for the best — printed eighteen editions of 
 this before the Revolution. 
 
 We are to fancy our Latin School boys, in the 
 earlier days, in the master's house, working their 
 way through Cheever's Accidence, then plung- 
 ing into the dreary wilderness of Lilly's Gram- 
 mar, with its twenty-five kinds of nouns, its 
 
SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 59^ 
 
 seven genders, its fifteen solid pages of rules for 
 gender and the exceptions, its twenty-two solid 
 pages of declensions of nonns, all of which must 
 be committed to memory, not at the point of the 
 bciyonet but .at' the end of the ferule. Cotton 
 Mather says, ^^ Persisting in the use of Lilly's 
 book will prolong the reign of the ferule.'^ 
 
 For reading Latin the boys had first The Col- 
 loquies of Corderius, whose name had a sweet 
 savor to the New England worthies, for Corde- 
 rius had been Calvin's tutor, and a famous teach- 
 er in the schools of the Reformers. They read 
 ^sop, too. Then followed Eutropius — his short 
 history of Rome. Soon they began the making 
 of Latin, using exercise books; then, in turn, 
 Caesar, Ovid, Yirgil, and Cicero ; for Greek, the 
 grammar and the Testament and some Homer. 
 All this was to fit them for the university, as the 
 law required. 
 
 The university fixed its requirements for ad- 
 mission as follows : * ^^ Whoever shall be able to 
 read TuUy or any other such like classical author 
 at sight, and correctly and without assistance to , 
 speak and write Latin both in prose and verse, I 
 and to inflect exactly the paradigms of Greek 
 nouns and verbs, has a right to > expect to be ad- 
 
 * Quincy's History of Harvard University, vol. i, p. 515. 
 
^0 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 initted into the college, and no one may claim 
 admission without these qualifications/^ 
 I So much classical knowledge every town of a 
 hundred families was to provide, and by a law of 
 1683 a town of five hundred families must have 
 two such schools and two writing schools. 
 
 It was a long and dreary road — seven or 
 eight hours a day, with scanty recesses, few holi- 
 days, and no vacations. Only benches without 
 backs for the lower classes. It was a long, 
 steady, persistent pull uphill. It meant dogged 
 industry, persistent application, resignation to 
 the inevitable. A child who had begun with 
 learning in his Primer the definition of "Effec- 
 tual Calling," and had followed this by commit- 
 ting Lilly's Grammar, had acquired no rose-col- 
 ored views of life ; had learned to spell " work " 
 with a capital W, and to print it in italics. If 
 the boys, quickly succeeding each other, came 
 into these New England homes " trailing clouds 
 of glory," surely "the shades of the prison- 
 house " began early to close about them, and long 
 before they became men they must have per- 
 ceived "the vision splendid die away, and fade 
 into the light of common day." 
 
 One peculiarity of all these schools we may 
 notice in passing. The boys were obliged to find 
 fuel in winter. So much was required even in the 
 
SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 61 
 
 schools called free, and it was declared by the 
 authorities that if any parents neglected to send 
 wood, their children should have no benefit of the 
 fire ; and if they sent log- wood, the boys must cut 
 it up. 
 
 The teachers of the earlier schools were men, 
 and men of no ordinary capacity and experience. 
 Some of them had been clergymen. All were 
 scholars, and most of them had been educated 
 at old Cambridge. As soon as the infant col- 
 lege at new Cambridge began to bear fruit, to 
 the honor of the pious Harvard, its graduates 
 found places in the schools as well as in the 
 churches. 
 
 Brother Philemon Pormort, who was first 
 called to the Boston school, seems to have been 
 an active participant in the theological discus- 
 sions of the Ann Hutchinson controversy, and 
 followed her adherents to the infant settlements 
 in New Hampshire. It required intellectual ca- 
 pacity of no mean order to handle one's self in 
 that tempest, and an associate of Mistress Hutch- 
 inson, with her mystic speculations, of Vane, 
 with his youthful fervor, and John Cotton, with 
 his subtle dialectic, must have been worthy to 
 stand at the head of the long line of Massa- 
 chusetts schoolmasters. His successor, Daniel 
 Maude, had been a nonconforming preacher in 
 
62 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 England, and after a few years' service in the 
 Boston school resumed his ministry at Dover. 
 
 Pre-eminent among all the teachers of the 
 early schools, pre-eminent among the New Eng- 
 land teachers of all times, stands Ezekiel Chee- 
 ver,* a ripe consummate flower of the Puritan/ 
 epoch. Born in London while the Pilgrims were 
 sojourning in Ley den, a blue-coat boy at Christ's 
 Hospital, he came to Boston in 1637, and taught 
 for more than thirty years in New Haven, Ips- 
 wich, and Charlestown. Then, in 1670, he took 
 the Boston Latin School, which he taught for 
 thirty-eight years, until he died at his post at the 
 age of ninety-four, after continuous service in 
 the New England schools of seventy years. He 
 was buried from his schoolhouse; was followed 
 to the grave by the Governor and all the dig- 
 nitaries of church and state; was eulogized in 
 a sermon and elegy by his pupil. Cotton Mather, 
 as no schoolmaster was ever eulogized before or 
 since.f " Ink is too vile a liquor,^^ said the great 
 preacher in his elegy; '^liquid gold should fill the 
 pen by which such things are told.^' 
 
 * For biography of Cheever, see N. E. Hist, and Gen. Reg., 
 vol. xxxiii, p. 164 (April, 1879) ; vol. xli, p. 65 (January, 1887) ; 
 Barnard's Journal of Education, vol. i, p. 297. 
 
 t Boston Public Latin School, Historical Sketch and Cata- 
 logue, Appendix, p. 275. 
 
SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 6" 
 
 That lie was a good Latin scholar his littk , 
 
 book proves — used for more than a century 
 
 throughout the colonies. Mather says : 
 
 " Were grammar quite extinct, yet at his brain 
 The candle might have well been lit again." 
 
 There are indications that he was in sympathy 
 with Ascham and Milton in their efforts to ad- 
 vance education. He was more patient with the 
 slow boys, less severe and brutal with all boys, 
 than schoolmasters of the age were wont to be. 
 He never sunk the man and the Christian in the 
 pedagogue. Full to the brim with Puritan the- 
 ology — he wrote a book called The Scriptural 
 Prophecies Explained — he labored diligently to 
 help his boys to become Christian men. ^^ He 
 taught us Lilly, and he gospel taught." 
 
 So, after training up a whole generation of 
 Boston's sons, he was gathered to his rest, full of 
 years and full of honors. Making all allowance 
 for Mather's ostentatious grandiloquence*, we to- 
 day in this city, whose character he did so much 
 to mold, revere his memory as that of a wise, 
 learned, pious, faithful schoolmaster. As Aris- 
 totle said of Plato, " he was one whom all good 
 men ought to imitate as well as celebrate." 
 
 It would be too much to say that all the early 
 masters were like Cheever, but they were all 
 scholarly after the fashion of the times, and all 
 

 MASSACI ^& pIjBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 feply iml? v^ich tliat religious spirit wliich _ 
 ^aractej the Puritan epocli. Their whole 
 
 .raining rided to this. Their_coll^^e.. -studies 
 were the studies of a divinity school.* There was 
 some mathematics — arithmetic and geometry ; 
 some natural science — physics and astronomy. 
 All thejrest_was_alo ng the li neLDJ the humanities. 
 Grammar and logic and rhetoric; politics and 
 ethics; Chaldee, Hebrew, and Syriac; biblical 
 and catechetical divinity — all this wealth of 
 learning was at the service of the children. 
 
 There is another feature of these schools 
 which must be noticed : they were under the 
 constant and vigilant supervision of the minis- 
 ers. The minister was a town officer, as the 
 'teacher was. He was employed for the religious 
 instruction of the people, and the children were 
 a most important part of his charge. So he vis- 
 ited the school regularly, frequently questioned 
 the children on the sermon of the preceding Sun- 
 day, and periodically examined them in the cate- 
 chism and in their knowledge of the Bible. 
 Sometimes the children were required to go to 
 him for this purpose. 
 
 The ministers regarded this relation not only 
 as a duty but as a right. When, in 1710, the Bos* 
 
 * Pierce's History of Harvard University, Appendix, p. 6. 
 
SCHOOLS BEFORE THE . Ji;^;Cj^piON. 65 
 
 ton people chose five men as tix^j.. '*^^ors to visit 
 the Latin Schcol with the minis, , ;Jthoiigh 
 the ministers were to pray with the ... olars and 
 '^ entertain them with some instruction^; of piety 
 specially adapted to their age and education/' 
 Increase Mather was highly incensed at the inno- 
 vation, and after declaring that the ministers 
 were the fittest persons in the world to be the 
 visitors of the schools, pettishly declared that 
 he would not go with the lay inspectors, but 
 would go when he pleased, and would go aloiie. ^ 
 
 So the children were enveloped, at home and 
 at school, week days and Sundays, in an atmos- 
 phere saturated with religion, or with religious 
 forms and services and ideas and language. 
 When a neighbor or a kinsman dies. Judge Sew- 
 all puts all the children — Samuel and Betty 
 and Hannah — into the carriage and drives away 
 to the funeral, two or three hours long, that no 
 opportunity be lost to impress the solemn veri- 
 ties of life and death and the grave and the here- 
 after. "When, after patient search, he finds that 
 the cause of the stoppage of the water-spout on 
 the roof is the lodging in it of a ball, he sends 
 for the minister and has a season of prayer with 
 his boys, that their mischief or carelessness may 
 be set in its proper light, and that the event may 
 be sanctified to their spiritual good. 
 
63 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 Powers of darkness and of light were strug- 
 gling for the possession of the soul of every 
 child ; there was no time to lose. Every oppor- 
 tunity must be improved by parents, ministers, 
 and teachers to pluck the children as brands 
 from the burning. Hell with its physical tor- 
 ments, heaven with its no less selfish allure- 
 ments, stood always in their sight with open 
 doors, and the cries of the lost were mingled in 
 their ears with the song of the redeemed and the 
 music of harpers harping with their harps. 
 
 If it sometimes happened that the very at- 
 tempt to make the child religious defeated itself 
 — that the imagination strained to too high a 
 flight lost its power to fill with meaning the for- 
 mulas of doctrine, that familiarity with the sol- 
 emn and awful deadened the sensibilities to spir- 
 itual influences, so that character and conduct 
 remained unchanged in spite of the religiosity 
 of the age, it was only what might have been ex- 
 ..^ected. 
 
 ^ , I remember visiting a high school and being 
 shocked by the general irreverence and disorder 
 during the openirgr exerjc^* :;S of devotion. To 
 my surprise, the i^. jlass-exercise which fol- 
 lowed was one on Christian Evidences. 
 
 When once a committee was appointed to see 
 if the instruction at 11^ ^ard remained true to 
 
SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 67 
 
 its earliest motto, ^'For Christ and the Church/^ 
 they reported that the Greek Catechism was re- 
 cited regularly by the Freshmen, and that Wol- 
 lebius^s System of Divinity was diligently pur- 
 sued by the other classes, while on Saturday 
 evening, in the presence of the president, the 
 students repeated the sermon of the foregoing 
 Sabbath. Yet the committee were compelled to 
 lament the continued prevalence of several im- 
 moralities, particularly stealing, lying, swearing, 
 idleness, picking of locks, and too frequent use of 
 strong drink.* From all which we learn a les- 
 son for our own times — that an education di- 
 rected by the clergy, environed by ecclesiastical . 
 sanctions, breathing the atmosphere of ecclesias- 
 tical rites, and making instruction in ecclesiastical 
 dogma imperative, is not necessarily a religious 
 education, and holds no necessary relation to the 
 development of Christian character. 
 
 In the smaller towns, which were not required 
 to maintain a school, or at most only the English 
 school, the opportunities for education were less 
 favorable. In some of them no town school was 
 kept during the ^^'irlieT^ vej^rs of settlement, the 
 parents instructing thfo <MikiTen at home, or em- 
 ploying some man or woman who was willing for 
 
 * Quincy*s History of Z«vrvard University, vol. i, p. 319. 
 
68 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 a few pence a week to start the children in the 
 Primer and the Psalter. 
 
 There is a tradition in one town that the chil- 
 dren learned to write on white-birch bark, and 
 were tanght in rotation a week each by all the 
 men who could read. Often the minister added 
 to his other duties the work of teaching, espe- 
 cially the teaching of Latin, in the towns which 
 had no grammar school. 
 
 This seems to have been universally the case 
 in the Plymouth colony. The old colony, less 
 populous and less wealthy than its younger 
 neighbor, made no public provision for schools 
 for fifty years after its settlement, though schools 
 of some sort were early in existence.* In 1663 f 
 the General Court proposed unto the several 
 towns of its jurisdiction, as a thing they ought 
 to take into their serious consideration, "that 
 some course may be taken that in every town 
 there may be a schoolmaster set up to train up 
 children to reading and writing."" But the towns 
 seem to have taken little notice of the suggestion. 
 
 In 1670 X the profits from the Cape Cod fisher- 
 ies were set apart for a free school, and a gram- 
 
 * Plymouth Col. Rec, vols, i and ii, p. 37, February, 11, 
 1635. History of Plymouth County, Philadelphia, 1885, p. 1150. 
 t Ibid., vol. xi, p. 211. 
 t Ibid., vol. V, pp. 107, 108, 259, 260 ; vol. xi, pp. 233, 237. 
 
SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 69 
 
 mar scliool was soon after established at Plym- 
 outh. Seven years later,* thirty years after the 
 Massachusetts law, the General Court authorized 
 towns of fifty families, which chose to have a 
 grammar school, to support it partly by rate, and 
 Required towns of seventy families which had no 
 such school to pay a fixed sum to the nearest town 
 which had one. By the same act the profits of 
 the fisheries were divided among the towns sup- 
 porting such schools. The threefold method of 
 support is here fixed by law : fixed revenues, tui- 
 tion fees, and a town rate. From this time on- 
 ward the educational history of the two colonies 
 is one. 
 
 As we enter upon the eighteenth century, 
 after, seventy years of colonial history, we feel 
 that the atmosphere has changed. There is less 
 enthusiasm for learning than the first settlers 
 had. There is a manifest decline in school spirit. 
 This is apparent in the legislation and in the 
 records of the county courts. 
 
 In the re-enactment of the colonial laws, which 
 took place soon after the reorganization of the 
 government under the Province Charter,f the 
 penalty upon the towns for neglecting to provide 
 
 * Plymouth Col. Rec, vol. xi, pp. 246, 247. 
 t Acts and Resolves of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, 
 i, p. 63. 
 
70 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 a schoolmaster was j&xed at £10. .* In 1701,* after 
 declaring that " the observance of the school law 
 was shamefully neglected by divers towns, and 
 the penalty thereof not required, tending greatly 
 to the nourishment of ignorance and irreligion, 
 whereof grievous complaint is made,'^ the Gen- 
 eral Court increased the penalty to £20. 
 
 It would seem that not infrequently the 
 towns, to evade the law, had appointed the min- 
 ister to be the schoolmaster. To meet this, it was 
 enacted that no minister of any town should be 
 considered the schoolmaster within the intent of 
 the law.f At the same time, all justices of the 
 peace and all grand juries in the counties were 
 enjoined to special vigilance in the execution of 
 the law. Following this enactment, at almost 
 every session of the courts some town was '^ pre- 
 sented"" by the grand jury for neglecting to 
 maintain the schools required by law. This is 
 especially true regarding the grammar school, 
 which came to be considered an unnecessary bur- 
 den by towns which had just reached the num- 
 ber of families which made the support compul- 
 sory. 
 
 Various excuses were offered for the neglect — 
 
 * Acts and Resolves of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, 
 i, p. 470. 
 
 + Ibid., i, p. 470. 
 
SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 71 
 
 sometimes poverty, sometimes inability to secure 
 teachers ; while organized efforts were not want- 
 ing to secure a repeal of the law. Some towns 
 persistently refused to support the grammar 
 school, preferring to pay the penalty as cheaper. 
 To meet these cases the penalty was heavily in- 
 creased a few years later. 
 
 To one familiar with the early history of our 
 State this decadence of the primitive ardor does 
 not seem strange. It would seem more strange 
 had the high level been maintained, for during 
 these seventy years the little bark of state had 
 been tossed on troubled waters. The educational 
 history of Massachusetts is projected on a somber 
 background. Scarcely had the colonists become 
 settled in their new homes along the bay before 
 dissensions among themselves brought the whole 
 enterprise into hazard — dissensions so sharp, dif- 
 ferences of opinion so radical, as to reach down 
 to the bed-rock both of their civil and ecclesias- 
 tical foundations. 
 
 The agitation of these controversies had scarce- 
 ly subsided when new clouds appeared along the 
 English horizon. The banished dissenters car- 
 ried back to England exaggerated stories of the 
 intolerance and independence of Massachusetts. 
 The rival claimants to her territory pressed their 
 suit, and the colonists would have lost their char- 
 
72 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 ter, and with, it all possibility of building the 
 structure they had planned, had not Charles been 
 more concerned to save his crown than to crush 
 the colony. 
 
 Thus the second decade went by. The rule of 
 the Parliament promised a period of peace ; but 
 a new trouble arose, and the third decade found 
 the people stirred over the Quaker invasion. 
 Hardly were these sad days over when the Res- 
 toration brought new political dangers, and for 
 the next thirty years the leaders in the colony 
 were taxing their ingenuity to the utmost to avert 
 the blow which fell at last, when their cherished 
 charter was annulled and they were left to the 
 tyranny of Andros and his myrmidons. 
 
 During this same period heavier calamities 
 had fallen upon them in the terrible struggle 
 known as King Philip's War. Four years of anx- 
 ious solicitude were followed by fourteen months 
 of continuous and unmitigated horror. As the 
 messengers came in quick succession to the pa- 
 triarch Job, each telling of a new calamity, until 
 he was stripped and desolate, so from north, east, 
 south, and west, every day, sometimes almost 
 every hour, brought news of villages burned anc 
 their inhabitants massacred, or of the troops sent 
 to their rescue ambushed and butchered. From 
 one end of the colony to the other the people in 
 
SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 73 
 
 their dreams heard the war-whoop of savages 
 and the crackling of flames, and saw the toma- 
 hawk and the scalping-knife doing their bloody 
 work. Happy were they if they were not wak- 
 ened to the reality. 
 
 When all was over, more than half a million 
 dollars had been spent, thirteen towns had been 
 destroyed, six hundred buildings burned, and six 
 hundred men, the flower of the colony, had been 
 killed. Some towns were so impoverished that 
 their share of the colony tax was remitted, and 
 for three years the smaller towns were relieved 
 from the obligation to support the grammar 
 schools. 
 
 Only six years later, and the gloom of the 
 witchcraft delusion settled like a pall over the 
 province, and swift upon the heels of this calam- 
 ity came the war with the French, with Sir Wil- 
 liam Phipp's disastrous expedition against Que- 
 bec, and the new Indian atrocities upon the fron- 
 tier settlements on the north and east. 
 
 Such is the record of these first seventy years, 
 and in them all not one without some danger or 
 some menace of danger. When a French states- 
 man was asked what he did during the Revolu- 
 tion, he replied, "I lived.''^ It was much that 
 the schools of Massachusetts lived through the 
 trying vicissitudes of this first period. 
 
74 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 "With the close of Queen Anne's War the prov- 
 ince entered upon a new epoch, which brought 
 with it changes in the school system whose influ- 
 ence we have not yet outlived. In the early days 
 the fear of Indian invasion had served to hold 
 the settlers somewhat closely together; indeed, 
 in a part of the towns, as in Dedham, the people 
 were forbidden to build beyond a fixed distance 
 of one or two miles from the meeting-house. 
 But now that this danger seemed to be over, the 
 people began to push out into the wilderness. 
 
 Outlying portions of the older towns were oc- 
 cupied, and new settlements made so rapidly that 
 between 1700 and 1760 one hundred and twenty- 
 three towns were incorporated, and during the 
 next ten years forty-five more, chiefly west of the 
 Connecticut. 
 
 Many of these new towns had no nucleus of 
 population, no village center, the farming settlers 
 scattering themselves widely. In others there 
 were several nuclei, larger or smaller, the people 
 grouping themselves in isolated hamlets, where a 
 fertile spot in the midst of rocks and swamps, a 
 mill privilege or a fish weir, tempted them to set- 
 tle. Sometimes family ties led a father and son, 
 or brothers, to locate near each other. Some- 
 times mere social instinct — the desire for neigh- 
 bors — brought several families into propinquity. 
 
SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION, 75 
 
 In all these towns, new and old, the school 
 problem presented itself under new conditions in 
 thfs\sec6nd century, and the people solved it in 
 their usual hand-to-mouth way, with no calculat- 
 ing of consequences. All the children were to 
 be taught to read, and every town was to have 
 a school. It is probable that there was less ca- 
 pacity for home instruction than there had been 
 a hundred years before. Of the women whose 
 names appear in the recorded deeds of the early 
 part of the eighteenth century, either as grantors 
 of property or as relinquishing dower, something 
 less than forty per cent sign their names ; all the 
 others make their mark.* 
 
 So we begin to read in the records of ^^. moving 
 schools.^'' The children went no longer to the 
 schools; the school went to the children. At 
 first the towns voted that the school which had 
 been kept through the year in one place, be kept 
 for a part of the year in each of several places. 
 Sometimes the period was equal in each place, 
 sometimes very unequal. Thus, in Scituate (1704), 
 the school was to be kept one third at each end and 
 one third in the middle ; so in Amesbury (1711), 
 four months in each of three places; in Yar- 
 
 * This proportion has been determined from a careful 
 examination of the registry books in the counties of Suffolk, 
 Essex, and Middlesex. 
 
 7 
 
76 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 mouth the school time for five places varied from 
 four Weeks to four months. In some of ;^.he 
 towns schooling was still more scanty, as in Sut- 
 ton (1730), where a school "to learn the children 
 to read and write English '' was ordered te be 
 kept at the discretion of the selectmen iix four 
 places, one month in each. y 
 
 Noi only was the English school thus put^n 
 wheels, but in many places the grammar' school 
 as well. In Gloucester (1751), the grammar-school 
 instruction for three years was divided among 
 seven localities in the proportion of nine, four 
 and a half, three, one and a half, seven, five and 
 a half, and five and a half months. One month 
 and a half of the grammar school in three years 
 — what a boon ! But these far-away people paid 
 their taxes and demanded their share of the bene- 
 fits, though that share be ever so small. They 
 would have justice, though the heavens fall. 
 
 The child who began his Latin grammar and 
 spent his six weeks on it would have run some 
 risk of forgetting his part before the three years 
 came round ; . but we know that in some towns 
 provision was made by which those who cared to 
 do so might follow the school on its travels, and, 
 like the English drum-beat in Webster^s meta- 
 phor, " keep company with the hours throughout 
 the year." 
 
SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 77 
 
 In the earlier apportionment of the schooFs 
 time the terms "angles"' and "squadrons'" are 
 used for the divisions of the town. The expres- 
 sion " to squadron out the schools '' is not an un- 
 common one.* Afterward these names were su- 
 perseded by the word districts. 
 
 When this division of the school time was 
 made, and in many towns for a long period, there 
 were no schoolhouses in the squadrons; but 
 after a time it was made a condition of having a 
 school at all, that the squadron should build a 
 schoolhouse.f This tended to fix the limits of 
 the districts. 
 
 Another step was taken by which the disin- 
 tegrating process was hastened and confirmed. 
 The moving school was the town school, sent on 
 its travels by a vote of the town, and with the 
 limits of its stay in each locality fixed by the 
 same vote. Usually the same teacher taught 
 throughx)u^_the___year===-^ 
 
 philosopher."' But about the middle of the cen- 
 tury, or a little earlier, some of the towns were 
 divided into districts,^ and each district was al- 
 
 * In Sutton (1735), a committee was chosen " to squadron out 
 the schoolhouses." 
 
 f So in Gloucester in 1751. 
 
 X Haverhill, 1712 ; Worcester, 1731 ; Gloucester, 1735 ; Brim- 
 field, 1736; Boxford, 1739; Abington, 1755; and Grafton, 1785. 
 
78 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 lowed to draw its share of the school money and 
 spend it as it liked. Thus the selection of the 
 teacher, his pay, and the time when the school 
 shall be kept, are taken out of the hands of the 
 selectmen and the school ceases to be a town 
 school. 
 
 N"ot only is the amount of schooling diminish- 
 ing, but the quality is evidently deteriorating. 
 The moving school does not attract the best men. 
 Special inducements are offered. Professed 
 schoolmasters — notice the word — are by law ex- 
 empted from taxes (1692) ; next, from militia duty 
 (1693) ; then, from watch (1699). On the other 
 hand, fences are found necessary to keep out the 
 unworthy. The grammar master must be ap- 
 proved by the minister of the town and of the 
 two next adjacent towns, or two of them.* He 
 must be not only good, but conspicuously good. 
 Here is the first compulsory certification of 
 teachers known in our history. 
 
 Another section of the same law marks a de- 
 cided change in^the conditions, and also declares 
 a principle of the highest importance. The act 
 declares that keepers of schools must be of sober 
 and good conversation, and must have the allow- 
 ance and approbation of the selectmen, under a 
 
 * Acts and Resolves of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, 
 i, p. 470. 
 
SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. Y9 
 
 penalty of forty shillings. The phrase " persons 
 who keep schools " is significant. Before this we 
 have read in the laws only of schoolmasters, but 
 the tendency to lift the burden of school support 
 from the parents to the public had been working, 
 and early in the eighteenth century we begin to 
 find such entries in the town records as '^Paid 
 Widow Walker ten shillings for schooling small 
 children ^^ ; * '^ Paid for boarding school-dame, at 
 three shillings per week '^ ; f " Paid for a horse 
 to carry the school-dame up and bring her down 
 again.'^ f That is, the towns had absorbed into 
 their public system that primitive institution, 
 the dame school. J This is not universal. In 
 some of the larger towns no public provision for 
 the youngest children was made for another hun- 
 dred years. 
 
 The employment of women was made more 
 general by the scattering of the population. If 
 it was difficult to find men willing to itinerate 
 with the grammar schools, although they might 
 be employed the year through, it was impossible 
 to find men willing to teach the little neighbor- 
 hood schools for a few weeks or months at a time. 
 For these the schbol-dames were indispensable. 
 
 * Woburn, 1694. f Winchendon, 1768. 
 
 t Weymouth, 1700; Amesbury, 1707; Bradford, 1710; 
 Worcester, 1731 ; Wenham, 1746. 
 
80 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 Mendon (1732) voted to choose school-dames 
 to teach school in the outskirts of the town. 
 Westford (1764) voted to hire a school-dame the 
 following six months, to keep the school in six 
 parts of the town. Far out on the frontier, in 
 Northfield (1721), where now those magnificent 
 institutions honor the wisdom and the liberality 
 of Dwight L. Moody, the first teacher was Mrs. 
 Elizabeth Field, the wife of the smith. She had 
 a class of young children twenty-two weeks in 
 the warm season, at fourpence a week. While 
 teaching, she made shirts for the Indians at eight- 
 pence each, breeches for her husband s brother at 
 a shilling and sixpence per pair, and cared for 
 her four young children. 
 
 Now that primary education is becoming a 
 public matter, it attracts the attention of the 
 Legislature, and the state recognizes its duty and 
 declares its rights. It aflBrms its purpose to pro- 
 tect the stream at its source. Not only must the 
 masters be ^►pproved, but all keepers of schools — 
 not onJi^K^epers of schools supported by the 
 loney, but keepers of private schools as 
 w^lT So we find frequent entries in the records 
 certain women are allowed and approved by 
 
 ) selectmen to keep schools for young children.* 
 
 * Billerica, 1718. The selectmen g&ve leave to John Hart- 
 welFs wife *'tx) keep a school tx) instruct children to read " (Hazen). 
 
SCHOOLS BEPORB THE REVOLUTION. 81 
 
 This early declaration seems to have been 
 strangely overlooked in recent discussions. If, 
 for the protection of the children and the good 
 of the State^the teachers in the public schools 
 must be known to be persons of good moral char* 
 acter and competent to instruct, why not the 
 teachers of the private schools for the same rea- 
 son? If public ix>licy requires that the State 
 must know what kind of persons peddle tinware 
 and keep junkshops and exhibit wild animals in 
 a tent, why should it allow anybody to open a 
 school who can entice parents to send their chil- 
 dren to it, and make no provision by which the 
 public can even know that such a school exists ? 
 It has been argued that State inspection of pri- 
 vate schools would lead to a demand for State 
 support; but State approbation and oversight of 
 {Nrivate schools no more implies State support 
 than licensing a circus justifies a claim for a 
 subsidy, 
 
 AU these processes which we have been ob- 
 serving went on with, varying steps, under vary- 
 ing conditions, as the towns multiplied: new 
 towns imitating the old^ settled masters in the 
 larger communities, itinerant ones in the more 
 sparsely settled; school-dames, sometimes at pub- 
 lic expense, sometimes at private ; short schools 
 in the outskirts, longer ones in the villages; 
 
82 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 until the gathering storm of the Revolution- 
 ary period absorbed all attention. The public 
 thought was held to political questions until 
 the long struggle was over, independence se- 
 cured, the province changed to a commonwealth, 
 the Union established under a Constitution, and 
 the national era begun.- 
 
 In the State Constitution itself the f ramers 
 recognized the existing system in all its parts, 
 and reannounced the principles declared by the 
 fathers : * 
 
 "Wisdom and knowledge as well as virtue 
 diffused generally among the body of the people, 
 being necessary for the preservation of their 
 rights and liberties ; and as these depend on 
 spreading the opportunities and advantages of 
 education in the various parts of the country, 
 and among the different orders of the people, it 
 shall be the duty of Legislatures and magistrates, 
 in all future periods of this Commonwealth, to 
 cherish the interest of literature and the sciences, 
 and all seminaries of them, especially the Uni- ' 
 versity of Cambridge, public schools and gram- 
 mar schools in the towns.^^ 
 
 — ^ No sooner had the pressure of war been re- 
 moved and the agitations of Constitution-making 
 
 * Constitution of Massachusetts, chap, v, section 2. 
 
SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 83 
 
 subsided, than the old subject of poj),ular edu- 
 cation came again to the front^ and* in 1789 * a 
 most elaborate sahool law was framed, crystalliz- 
 ing into statutes all the principles and practices 
 which had been slowly evolving during the past 
 hundred and fifty years. 
 
 The new law followed the old in graduating 
 its requirements to the population of the towns. 
 Towns having fifty families must furnish each 
 year six months^ schooling by a master; this 
 might be in one school or many ; for the larger 
 towns a longer aggregate time was prescribed. 
 These were English schools. Besides these, 
 towns of two hundred families must support a 
 grammar schoolmaster. The older school law 
 had required instruction only in reading and 
 writing; the new law prescribed reading, writ- 
 ing, the English language, orthography, arith- 
 metic, and decent behavior. Except by special 
 direction of the selectmen, no youth might be 
 sent to the grammar school unless they had 
 learned elsewhere to read. 
 
 The masters of all these schools must be grad- 
 uates of some college or university, or they must 
 produce a certificate of qualification from a 
 learned minister of the town or neighborhood; 
 
 * Laws of Massachusetts, 1789, June 25th. 
 
84 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 and, \)^^^m, they must produce a certificate of 
 moral cnaraT^^i^from a minister or from a select- 
 man of their own town. 
 
 The angust General Court condescends to con- 
 sider children in the most early stages of life, 
 and ordains that the masters or mistresses of 
 schools for this primary education must also be 
 approved as persons of sober life and conversa- 
 tion and qualified to teach. Towns are author- 
 ized to divide their territory and fix the limits of 
 school districts. 
 
 For the first time provision is made by law 
 for regular official supervision of the schools, 
 either by the ministers and selectmen, or by com- 
 mittees specially chosen for the purpose. All 
 the schools must be visited as often as once in 
 six months, and ^^ the diligence and proficiency of 
 the scholars " determined. Neither the teachers 
 nor the pupils could complain of the curious pro- 
 viso that reasonable notice should be given of 
 the time of the visitation. 
 
 Comparing the new law with the old, we see 
 that the standard is that of a degenerate age. 
 Whereas in the early colonial days there was a 
 permanent English school in every town of fifty 
 families, now only six months^ schooling is de- 
 manded, and this may be subdivided indefinitely. 
 Whereas each town of a hundred families must 
 
SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 85 
 
 have supported a permanent grammar school, 
 where boys could be fitted for ^the university, 
 now all such towns below two hundred families 
 need keep only the English school, and might 
 fritter away the twelve months in driblets. 
 
 Had the old law remained in force, every 
 town in Bristol, Dukes, Nantucket, and Suffolk 
 Counties, nine of eleven in Barnstable, twenty of 
 twenty-five in Berkshire, twenty of twenty-two 
 in Essex, seventeen- of twenty-three in Franklin^" 
 thirteen of sixteen in Hampden, eighteen of 
 twenty-one in Hampshire, thirty-five of forty- 
 one in Middlesex, seventeen of nineteen in Nor- 
 folk, sixteen of seventeen in Plymouth, forty- 
 four of forty-nine in Worcester — two hundred 
 and thirty of two hundred and sixty-five in all — ■ 
 must have supported the grammar schools. By 
 the change of a single word, one hundred and 
 twenty of these towns were exempted from obli- 
 gations which some of them had borne for a hun- 
 dred and fifty years. The free and open path to 
 the university was closed to the boys of a hun- 
 dred and twenty towns, and for some of them it 
 has only recently been opened. 
 
 Another significant fact about this law, as 
 indeed of the earlier laws, is that all which seems 
 new is only an embodiment of sentiments and 
 practices which had already become popular. 
 
86 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 All the principal towns had established schools 
 before the law of 1647 made them compulsory. 
 Towns had been forming districts for fifty or 
 sixty years. They had been employing women 
 to teach for a longer time. They had been pro- 
 viding free primary schools, and they had been 
 choosing committees for school purposes — regu- 
 larly or periodically — through all their history, 
 and they had been teaching all the branches now 
 required. The new law only legalized existing 
 practices. The school system had been devel- 
 oped by the people freely, and not under the 
 stress of legal enactments. Here is the essence 
 of government by the people, and no better illus- 
 tration of it can be found in all our history. 
 
 However the dominant Calvinistic theology 
 of Puritan Massachusetts may have theorized 
 concerning ^' fixed fate "" and ^' foreknowledge ab- 
 solute,'^ practically it recognized in every village 
 community a free moral agent, acting out its 
 own volitions and drawing upon itself the conse- 
 quences of its own freedom. Out of this grew the 
 individuality so characteristic of Massachusetts 
 towns : some open to new influences, looking al- 
 ways toward the east, ready to welcome the ris- 
 ing sun, generous in sentiment and in provision, 
 always in the van of social progress ; others nar- 
 row, petty, parsimonious, burning incense to the 
 
SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 87 
 
 past rather than offering/Sacrifices to the future ; 
 not because they reverence the past so much, 
 but because incense is cheaper than oxen and 
 sheep, or libations of wine and oil. 
 
 It is in this latter class of towns that popular 
 government is not an unmixed blessing. Here 
 public opinion is proved to be not always the best 
 judge of public interest, and public sentiment 
 not always to tend to conserve or promote the 
 public good. Where ignorance and selfishness 
 dominate, institutions suffer, and thousands of 
 children in Massachusetts have been defrauded 
 of the best part of their inheritance from the 
 fathers, by the narrow selfishness of the com- 
 munities into which it was their misfortune to 
 be born. Evidence of this will accumulate as we 
 proceed in our survey. 
 
 While most of the provisions of the law of 
 1789 were but sanctions of existing practices, and 
 have been modified by subsequent legislation, the 
 law contained one section wholly new in its let- 
 ter, but focusing in itself all the traditions of 
 the Reformation period, and gleaming still out of 
 the dullness of the public statutes. 
 Moral Instruction. 
 
 It shall be the duty of the president, professors, and tutors 
 of the University at Cambri^^e and of the several colleges, of 
 all preceptors and teachers of academies, and of all other in- 
 structors of youth, to exert their best endeavors to impress on 
 
88 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 the minds of children and youth committed to their care and 
 instruction the principles of piety and justice and a sacred re- 
 gard to truth ; love of their country, humanity, and universal 
 benevolence; sobriety, industry, and frugality; chastity, mod- 
 eration, and temperance ; and those other virtues which are the 
 ornament of human society and the basis upon which a repub- 
 lican Constitution is founded ; and it shall be the duty of such 
 instructors to endeavor to lead their pupils, as their ages and 
 capacities will admit, into a clear understanding of the tendency 
 of the above-mentioned virtues to preserve and perfect a repub- 
 lican Constitution and secure the blessings of liberty as well as 
 to promote their future happiness, and also to point out to 
 them the evil tendency of the opposite vices. 
 
 These men, who had just fought through to a 
 triumphant issue the battle for civil liberty and 
 the right of self -government, who had enthroned 
 the people, were not intoxicated by their success. 
 They knew that a corrupt and wicked king 
 might hold his power indefinitely, but not so a 
 corrupt and wicked people ; so they would build 
 about their infant republic bulwarks of personal 
 integrity and virtue, that thus the public weal 
 might be conserved. 
 
 Entering upon the new era of national and 
 State history, they set as a corner stone of their 
 educational system the declaration that what 
 men are, more than what they know or what 
 they have, determines the perpetuity of nations. 
 Here is the reply to all charges against the pub- 
 lic schools that their influence does not make for 
 righteousness. 
 
SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 89 
 
 There rests upon every instructor of youth, an 
 obligation as solemn as can be placed by human 
 authority upon any person to use his opportunity 
 to make virtuous men and women. Whatever 
 else he may do or leave undone, he can not shift 
 or evade this responsibility. 
 
 In place of the catechisms and creeds of the 
 earlier days, Massachusetts has put the example 
 and precepts of the instructors of her youth as 
 her chosen means of securing the blessings of 
 liberty to succeeding generations. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 THE DISTEICT SCHOOL AND THE ACADEMY. 
 
 The half century from 1790 to 1840 is the pic- 
 turesque period of Massachusetts educational his- 
 tory. In the prelude to Dr. Holmes's ophidian 
 story, Elsie Yenner, you remember, there is a 
 description of a ^' deestrick skule ^' in Pigwacket 
 Center, from the mastery of which the handsome 
 young medical student moved onward and up- 
 ward to more congenial work in the ApoUinean 
 Female Institute in a distant town. 
 
 The institutions of which these are types — the 
 district school and the academy — are the two foci 
 about which move in orbits of greater or less ec- 
 centricity all the educational events of the time. 
 Exerting a profound influence upon the genera- 
 tion which was trained in them, they have af- 
 fected scarcely less strongly the imagination of 
 the generation which has. followed them. The 
 traditions which gathered about them and the 
 embellishments of literary art to which they 
 readily lent themselves have idealized them into 
 
 90 
 
DISTRICT SCEOOL AND THE ACADEMY^ 91 
 
 the source of most that is great and good in New 
 England character. 
 
 We have already marked the early stages of 
 
 * evolution both of the school district and of the 
 district school. We heard the scattered families 
 and the isolated hamlets calling for school privi- 
 leges, and we saw the master sent upon his rounds 
 to keep the " moving school." We saw that later, 
 in many towns, lines were drawn squadroning 
 out the territory ; and to the people within these 
 lines their share of the school money was given 
 to use as they saw fit. But for a century all this 
 was informal — de facto, but not de jure, 
 
 ^ We saw that in 1789 this division of districts 
 was sanctioned by law./ A law which sanctions 
 also invites, and rapidly, after this, district divi- 
 sions were fixed. But the new law gave no pow- 
 ers to the district. If a schoolhouse was needed, 
 it must be built by the voluntary contributions 
 of the people. This state of things could not 
 long continue, and in 1800 * the chief element of 
 sovereignty — the power to tax — was conferred, 
 upon the people of the school districts. They 
 were authorized to hold meetings, to choose a 
 cjlerk, to decide upon a site for a schoolhouse, and 
 to raise money by taxation for buying land 
 
 * Laws of Massachusetts, February 28, 1800. 
 8 
 
92 ■ MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 and for building, repairing, and furnishing the 
 house. 
 
 The next step followed naturally, perhaps ne- 
 cessarily. In 1817* the school districts ' were 
 made corporations, with power to sue and be 
 sued, to enforce contracts, etc. Ten years l-ater f 
 the structure was completed by the law, which 
 required the towns having districts to choose for 
 each district a prudential committeeman, *who 
 should have the care of the school property in 
 the school district, and the selection and employ- 
 ment of teachers. Instead of choosing these*men 
 in town meetings, the towns might allow them to 
 be chosen in the districts, and tliis was usually"^ 
 done^^ 
 
 ly^he school district now, from being a mere 
 social convenience, has become a political insti- 
 tution — imperium in imperio. The year 1827, 
 therefore, is a memorable one. It marks the cul- 
 mination of a process which had been going on 
 steadily for more than a ceijtury. It marks the 
 utmost limit to the subdivision of American^sov- 
 ereignty — the high- water mark of modern dremfe^- 
 racy, and the low- water mark of the Massachil- 
 setts school system. 
 
 * Laws of Massachusetts, June 13, 1817. 
 t Ibid., March 10, 1827. 
 
DISTRICT SCHOOL AND THE ACADEMY. 93 
 
 Two limitations upon the power of the dis- 
 tricts should be noticed. The whole amount of 
 money to be spent in supporting the schools of 
 the town was still to be determined by the town, 
 and to be raised by tax under town authority^ 
 After being raised and apportioned to the dis- 
 tricts there was no responsibility to the town for 
 its expenditure. There was a limitation upon 
 the districts in the employment of teachers. No 
 person could be so employed without a certificate 
 of qualification from the town school committea 
 But this limitation was nominal rather than reaL 
 Thus the school district became a creation ' of 
 law, and the school more and more a creature 
 of circumstances. It should be remarked that 
 the division into districts was not compulsory ; 
 a few towns were never so divided. 
 
 Each school district now became a center of 
 semi-political activity. Here was exhibited in 
 all its force what Guizot so aptly terms " the en- 
 orgy of local liberty.^' The violence of ebullition 
 is inversely as the size of the pot. Questions in- 
 volving the fate of nations have been decided 
 with less expenditure of time, less stirring of pas- 
 sions, less vociferation of declamation and denun- 
 ciation, than the location of a fifteen-by-twenty 
 district schoolhouse. I have known such a ques- 
 tion to call for ten district meetings, scattered 
 
94 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 over two years, bringing down from mountain 
 farms three miles away men who had no children 
 to be schooled, and who had not taken the trouble 
 to vote in a presidential election during the 
 period. 
 
 Again, when a teacher has given dissatisfac- 
 tion to a part of the district, possibly to a sin- 
 gle family, a contest has arisen over the choice 
 of a prudential committeeman. Into the discus- 
 sion have been brought questions the most re- 
 mote: old family feuds have been revived, and 
 new ones created; all the petty jealousies and 
 rivalries, masculine and feminine, have been 
 brought to the surface, until the whole dis- 
 trict is by the ears. The poor little teacher, 
 who was the innocent cause of all the disturb- 
 ance, has been forgotten, and a social war rages 
 with the bitterness of a Kentucky vendetta 
 and the protraction of an English suit in chan- 
 cery. 
 
 In the choice of a site for the shrine to Mi- 
 nerva, upon one point there was unanimity : the 
 land must be valueless, or as nearly so as possi- 
 ble, for frugality was ever a New England virtue. 
 A. barren ledge by the roadside, a gravelly knoll, 
 the steeply sloping side of a bosky ravine, the 
 apex of the angle of intersecting roads — such as 
 these were choice spots, provided one could be 
 
DISTRICT SCHOOL AND THE ACADEMY. 95 
 
 found near enough to the geographical center of 
 the district. 
 
 Absolute equality of privilege was the stand- 
 ard aimed at. This was the right for which the 
 embattled hosts were marshaled in the district 
 meetings. The district was surveyed and meas- 
 ured; often the exact distance of every liouse 
 from the proposed location was determined^ that 
 as nearly as possible perfect equipose should be 
 secured — each two-mile family on one side hav- 
 ing a two-mile family on the opposite side to bal- 
 ance it. 
 
 If this ideal condition was not reached — if, as 
 sometimes happened, the rights of individuals 
 were overborne for the convenience of the major- 
 ity — a rankling sense of injustice remained ; 
 smoldering embers ready to kindle into flame ; 
 an old score waiting to be paid off, may be in 
 the town meeting, perhaps in the election to the 
 General Court, possibly in a church quarrel. 
 Within a half-dozen years I have discovered 
 more than one such "ancient grudge'' not yet 
 fed fat enough. 
 
 The size and architectural features of the 
 building varied with the populousness, wealth, 
 and liberality of the district. Judged by the 
 standard of the present day, they were all too 
 small. It was no uncommon thing to find more 
 
96 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 than a hundred children crowded into a room 
 thirty feet square. Bnt the internal arrangement 
 made crowding easy. In the rural districts the 
 fireplace and the door often occupied one end of 
 the room. In the middle of one side was the 
 teacher's desk. Against the wall, on three ^ides, 
 was a slightly sloping shelf, with a horizontal 
 one below, and a bench without back in front. 
 On the bench the older pupils sat ; on the sloping 
 shelf they wrote; on the one below they kept 
 their books. Thus, in writing, they faced the 
 wall. Another lower bench in front served for a 
 seat for the younger pupils who did not write. 
 
 Thus the school was arranged on three ^de"g 
 of a hollow square. How many pupilsHrhe room 
 could hold depended on how closely the children 
 could be packed upon the benches. In the cen- 
 ter of the square the classes stood for recitation. 
 
 In another type of schoolroom the seats were 
 arranged in long rows across the room, in ter- 
 races, the back seats only having desks in front ; 
 the older scholars thus overlooked the younger 
 ones, the teacher having an elevated platform 
 opposite. The descent of the pupils from their 
 high seat to the floor, coming in contact, perhaps, 
 with some unconsciously extended foot, was often 
 sudden and precipitate. 
 
 The seats and desks were of native wood, pine 
 
DISTRICT SCHOOL AND THE ACADEMY. 97 
 
 or oak, worked out by hand, unpainted, never 
 elegant, often rude in the extreme. When the 
 carpenter's work ended the boys' work began, 
 and in process of time the furniture was carved 
 with an elaboration of tracery which the most 
 enthusiastic devotee of Sloyd might hope in vain 
 to excel. 
 
 ^--TEe amount of s.chooling enjoyed in any dis- 
 trict depended, first, upon the liberality^of the 
 town in itsr annuar appropriation ; and, second, 
 upon the method of distributioii which the towns 
 adopted. It is a curious fact that the State never 
 prescribed the mode in which the school money 
 should be apportioned among the districts. An 
 interesting statement, prepared by Mr. Mann and 
 published in his eighth report,* sets the indi- 
 viduality of the towns in the clearest light. 
 
 More than thirty different modes of appor- 
 tionment are reported : in one town, according 
 to the number of houses in the district ; in 
 others, according to the number of families ; in 
 several, the number of ratable polls was the basis 
 of division ; and in one, the number of able-bodied 
 persons over twenty-one, not paupers. In many 
 towns the money was divided equally ; in others, 
 
 * Eighth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Board of Edu- 
 cation, p. 79. 
 
98 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 the basis was the number of children of school 
 age ; and in as many more the districts received 
 back what they had paid in taxes. These last 
 two methods bore heavily upon the poorer and 
 the more sparsely populated districts. A major- 
 ity of the towns endeavored to equalize the school 
 privileges by combining two or more of these 
 methods, distributing a part equally, and a part 
 according to the valuation or the number of chil- 
 dren, or both. Frequently a sum was set aside 
 to be used at the discretion of the selectmen or 
 the school committee to aid the poorer districts. 
 
 But, in spite of this, there were districts whose 
 school money was the merest pittance. As late 
 as 1844 several districts are reported as receiving 
 less than ten dollars, and one' received only five 
 dollars and sixty cents, to provide its children 
 with schooling for a year ! Each district aimed 
 to get the most for its money ; quality and quan- 
 tity were likely to be in inverse proportion. A 
 cheaper teacher meant more weeks of school ; so 
 that the phrase by which the law described the 
 work of the prudential committee, ^^ to contract 
 with the teacher,^^ was most expressive. 
 
 In the largest towns the schools " kept '' the 
 most of the year. In the great majority there 
 was a winter term of ten or twelve weeks, at- 
 tended by the older children, and kept by a mas- 
 
DISTRICT SCHOOL AND THE ACADEMY. 99 
 
 ter ; and a summer term of equal length, kept by 
 a woman, for the benefit chiefly of the little ones. 
 In the poorer towns a single term of two.or three 
 months was all that was furnished, and some of 
 the poorest districts had but a few weeks. 
 
 During the period under consideration ..there 
 was some broadening of the school-work. Up to 
 1789 the elementary schools had been required to 
 teach only reading and writing; most of them 
 had taught the boys some arithmetic ; the new 
 law made arithmetic compulsory, and added the 
 English language, orthography, and decent be- 
 havior. In 1827 geography was required for the 
 first time. 
 
 Ear]yjn_jfchjB _^ . Gat^,QMsm, 
 
 the P salte r^, and the Bible- were almost univer- 
 sally displaced by the Spelling-"-Boofe-€ba€lr-4fee'- 
 Reader. This change had been going on grad- 
 ually for many years. The general unity of re- 
 ligious doctrine which had characterized the peo- 
 ple during the first century had given place to a 
 diversity. Within the churches themselves theo- 
 logical views became rife which to the stanch 
 adherents of the old faith recalled the ancient 
 heresy of Arius and the more recent though not 
 less dangerous errors of Socinius and Arminius. 
 During the French and Indian wars contact with 
 British army officers had leavened the communi- 
 
100 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 ty with the prevalent English deism, and during 
 the Revolution, and subsequently, the friendly 
 association with France had scattered widely the 
 more pronounced infidelity of the French philos- 
 ophers. 
 
 Under the influence of these changes in senti- 
 ment the Calvinistic New England Primer gave 
 way almost everywhere to the Spelling Book — j 
 chiefly Perry^s or Dilworth^s, both of English 
 origin ; these in their turn yielding place to that 
 most famous American classic, the blue-backed 
 Spelling Book of Noah Webster. Not without- 
 strenuous opposition in some towns the Psalter 
 and the Bible were replaced by some of the many 
 reading books which began to be made soon after 
 the Revolution, and which have been ^pouring 
 forth in ever-increasing numbers to the present 
 time. 
 
 Pre-eminent among these early readers were 
 The American Preceptor and The Columbian 
 Orator; and, later. The American First Class 
 Book had wide acceptance. The titles of the 
 books appealed to the national spirit, evoked by 
 the stirring events of the Revolutionary and Con- 
 stitution-making period, while the contents of 
 the books were adapted to foster and develop the 
 same spirit. 
 / For example. The Columbian Orator contained 
 
DISTRICT SCHOOlu AKD . dAt ''ift'CJtDBMk IQl 
 
 that famous speech of Colonel Barre on the 
 Stamp Act, in which he so indignantly denied 
 the assertions of Townshend that the colonies 
 had been planted by the care, nourished by the 
 indulgence, and protected by the arms of the 
 mother country. It contained no less than seven 
 extracts from the speeches of Pitt in opposition 
 to the measures of George III and his ministers. 
 It had speeches by Fox and Sheridan and Er- 
 skine; it had parts of the address of President 
 Carnot at the festival in Paris which celebrated 
 the successful establishment of the French Re- 
 public, and the congratulatory address to the 
 United States in the same year, with Washing- 
 ton's reply, and it had the most significant por- 
 tions of Washington's Farewell Address. 
 
 The First Class Book, if less stirring in its ap- 
 peal to patriotism, introduced the pupils to the 
 newly risen stars of American literature in the 
 prose of Irving, the poetry of Bryant, and the 
 pulpit oratory of Buckminster and Channing; 
 while in Scott and Byron and Campbell they be- 
 came acquainted with the newest in the litera- 
 ture of England. 
 
 The importance of this change in the New 
 England schools can not be overestimated. Its 
 influence was deep and abiding. The substitu- 
 tion of the selfish and sordid aphorisms of Frank- 
 
102 MASSA'MUSB^raiS : PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 lin for the Proverbs of Solomon and the divine 
 precepts of the Sermon on the Mount ; the dec- 
 lamations of Webster and Pitt for the lofty pa- 
 triotism of Moses and Isaiah ; the feeble reason- 
 ing in ethics of Mrs. Barbauld and Hannah More 
 for the compact logic of Paul's Epistles; the tin- 
 sel glitter of Byron for the upspringing devotion 
 of David; and the showy scene-painting in the 
 narratives of Scott for the simplicity of the gos- 
 pel story of the life of Christ — such a substitu- 
 tion could not take place without modifying, 
 subtly but surely, all the life currents of the 
 community. 
 
 Not only in language, but in arithmetic, books 
 by native authors superseded those in use. In 
 place of Hodder's, which had been common, the 
 famous treatise prepared by Nicholas Pike, of 
 Newburyport, and published in that town in 
 1788, gained wide acceptance, aided, no doubt, by 
 flattering testimonials from George Washington, 
 Governor Bowdoin, and the Presidents of Har- 
 vard, Yale, and Dartmouth Colleges. It was a 
 portentous volume of five hundred and twelve 
 pages, almost encyclopedic in its mathematical 
 range. Besides arithmetic proper, it introduced 
 the student to algebra, geometry, trigonometry, 
 and conic sections. Applications of the arith- 
 metic are made to problems in all forms of me- 
 
DISTRICT SCHOOL AND THE ACADEMY. 103 
 
 chanics, gravity, pendulmn, mechanical powers, 
 and to such astronomical problems as the calcu- 
 lation of the moon^s age, and the time of its 
 phases, the time of high water, and the date of 
 Easter. 
 
 The labor involved in the computation of 
 ordinary business transactions at this period is 
 almost appalling. The money units were the 
 English ; two pages only are given to Federal 
 money, as it was called, which Congress had just 
 established but which had not come into general 
 use, Mne kinds of currency were in use in com- 
 mercial transactions, and the students of this 
 arithmetic were taught to express . each in terms 
 of the others, making seventy-two distinct rules 
 to be learned and applied. 
 
 Under the title Practice, which is described 
 as " an easy and concise method of working most 
 questions which occur in trade and business,'^ 
 the learner is required to commit a page of 
 tables of aliquot parts of pounds and shillings, 
 of hundredweights and tons, and a table of per 
 cents of the pound in shillings and pence. These 
 tables contain more than a hundred relations, 
 and the application is in more than thirty-four 
 cases, each with a rule, of which the following is 
 an example : 
 
 " When the price is shillings, pence, and far- 
 
104: MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 things, and not an even part of a pound, multi- 
 ply the given quantity by the shillings in the 
 price of one yard, etc., and take parts of parts 
 from the quantity for the pence, etc., then add 
 them together, and their sums will be the answer 
 in shillings, etc.^^ 
 
 Under the topic '' Tare and Trett ^' is the fol- 
 lowing rule, unintelligible to the present genera- 
 tion : 
 
 ^' Deduct the tare and trett, divide the suttle 
 by one hundred and sixty-eight, and the quotient 
 will be the cloff, which subtract from the suttle, 
 and the remainder will be the neat.'^ 
 
 This book gave tone to all the arithmetic 
 study of the district-school period, and is respon- 
 sible for that excessive devotion to arithmetic 
 which has of late been the subject of just com- 
 plaint, jit is characterized by an almost endless 
 elaboration of cases and prescription of rules.V 
 There are fourteen rules under simple multipli- 
 cation, and in all the book three hundred and 
 sixty-two. \The understanding of the pupil is 
 taxed, and sometimes severely, to grasp the mean- 
 ing of the rulc^No hint of a reason for the rule 
 is given, exceptXm an occasional foot-not^ but 
 there are problems which tax the mathematical 
 capacity to the utmost. \ 
 
 A majority of the district-school pupils, es- 
 
DISTRICT SCHOOL AND THE ACADEMY. 105 
 
 pecially the girls, ciphered only through the four 
 fundamental rules, with a short excursion into . 
 vulgar fractions. If they penetrated into the 
 mysteries of the rule of three, they were ac- 
 counted mathematicians ; and if in later and de- 
 generate days one ciphered through Old Pike, he 
 was accounted a prodigy ; and if he aspired to 
 teach^U doors were open to him. 
 l^^TsunmsiT and geography were learned in al- 
 most all the schools, though not by all the pupils. 
 Harvard College, in 1816, extended its require- 
 ments for admission to include a knowledge of 
 ancient and modern geography. This forced it 
 into the fitting schools, and made it attractive 
 to the more ambitious students in the districts. 
 Morse's Geography was most common, and Mur- j 
 ray's Grammar in some of its many abridgments. I 
 The study of grammar culminated in parsing,! 
 and Pope's Essay on Man"^aTiti-Milton%-Pa;radise 
 Lost became familiar hunting grounds for the 
 pursuit of linguistic subtleties, and arenas for 
 the display of grammatical jugglers and acrobats. 
 Spelling had been little taught, but in the 
 period which we are describing it became a craze, 
 absorbing into itself most of the interest and en- 
 thusiasm of the schools. Not only in the regular 
 school exercises was it prominent, bub it over- 
 flowed its bounds and reveled in evening spelling 
 
106 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 schools, and brought into rivalry and friendly 
 combat neighboring districts, which sent their 
 champions to contend in orthographic tourna- 
 ments, ~ — - 
 
 Dfthe teachers of these schools there were 
 three classes. A majority of the winter schools 
 were kept by men who might be called semi-pro- 
 fessional teachers ; that is, they reckoned on the 
 wages of a winter's teaching as a regular part of 
 their annual income. In a certain irregular way 
 many of them were itinerants. In the course of 
 a long life they taught in all the districts of a 
 number of contiguous to^pis — sometim"es keeping 
 the same school for two or three successive win- 
 ters, making a new contract each time. There 
 were many roving characters, who journeyed 
 more widely, in search of novelty or because a 
 prophet is more honored among strangers than 
 in his own country. Such a one was Ichabod 
 Crane, a Connecticut schoolmaster, but domesti- 
 cated in Sleepy Hollow. During the larger part 
 of the year these men were engaged in farming 
 or in some mechanical industry. 
 
 Another class was made up of students, who, 
 by dint of labor in the district schools in the 
 winter and in the hayfield in the summer, con- 
 trived to work their way through the academy 
 and the college. So the students of medicine 
 
DISTRICT SCHOOL AND THE ACADEMY. 109 
 
 and law and divinity helped to pay their way. 
 There are few of the older professional men to- 
 day who, among the reminiscences of their callow 
 youth, have not some associated with their keep- 
 ing a district school. 
 
 The summer schools were almost always kept 
 by women. A majority of these were young, 
 ambitious girls, eager for a term at the academy, 
 which they must earn or go without — independ- 
 ent girls, who liked to show that they could do 
 something for their own support in the only way 
 then open to them. For most of these good men 
 were waiting, and they found iample room to ex- 
 ercise all their powers and to satisfy their noblest 
 ambitions in making homes. For some, alas ! 
 Providence planned no such career, and they 
 grew old and passed into the sere and yellow leaf 
 as ^^ schoolmarms '^ — sometimes sweetening as 
 they ripened, sometimes quite the contrary. 
 
 The wages of the teachers varied widely. Ten 
 or twelve dollars a month was common, though 
 in rare cases, in wealthy districts, a man of expe- 
 rience and more than usual culture earned twen- 
 ty. Women received from four to ten dollars. 
 Besides this money payment the districts boarded 
 the teachers. By this arrangement the district 
 supplemented the scanty town appropriation and 
 secured a longer school. Usually the teacher 
 
^MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 boarded round " among the parents of his pu- 
 pils, proportioning his time to the number of 
 children who attended his school. Under these 
 conditions the master acquired a knowledge of 
 family history, an acquaintance with the domes- 
 tic affairs of the neighborhood, which even the 
 doctor and the minister might envy. He learned 
 discretion and a power of self-adaptation as he 
 passed from the more comfortable homes of inde- 
 pendence and refinement, through all the social 
 grades, finding taste and neatness and intelli- 
 gence among the poor, coarse abundance asso- 
 ciated with ignorance, and sometimes shiftless- 
 ness and poverty and pride going hand in hand. 
 Time would fail to describe the agonies and de- 
 lights of this most unique system. 
 
 As to the qualifications required to teach 
 these district schools, the law made good moral 
 character and competence to teach the branches 
 indispensable; but custom and necessity pre- 
 scribed two others, which obscured the legal de- 
 mand. For women, the surest passport to em- 
 ployment was to be related by blood or marriage 
 to the prudential committee of the district. His 
 daughters or his sisters, of course, had first con- 
 sideration ; then his nieces, then his wife^s con- 
 nections to the remotest degree of consanguinity. 
 No little friction sometimes accompanied these 
 
DISTRICT SCHOOL AND THE ACADEMY. 109 
 
 family arrangements, but the district was power- 
 less until the next annual meeting, when it might 
 choose another committeeman, by having votes 
 enough, and thus substitute a new dynasty. 
 
 For men, to keep the winter schools, the high- 
 est qualification was pluck. You recall Dr. 
 Holmes^s description of the gladiatorial combat 
 in the Pigwacket school, in which the master 
 •routed the combined forces of Abijah Weeks, 
 the butcher's son, and his "yallah dog.'' The 
 story is a typical one. Ask any man who has 
 taught a district school, and. he will remember, 
 or imagine he does, just such a scene. ^^-^ 
 
 Such life-and-death struggles are as insepa- 
 rably associated with the little red schoolhouses 
 as they are with the ruins of the Roman amphi- 
 theaters. As the early Christians were stretched 
 by the rack, and boiled in oil, and roasted over 
 slow fires, and stung to death by bees, and torn 
 to pieces by wild beasts, so the young man begin- 
 ning a term in a new school expected to' be tor- 
 mented by the older boys. If, like Bernard 
 Langdon, beneath a scholarly exterior, he con- 
 cealed the skill of a trained athlete, he might 
 surprise his antagonist by an unexpected display 
 of pugilism. But if he lacked the muscle or the 
 courage, his work as teacher came to an igno- 
 minious end. When the boys had " put out " two 
 
110 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 or three masters in succession, the school ac- 
 quired a reputation of being "hard/" and the 
 committee were forced to canvass widely and 
 pay liberally for a man who had " fought with 
 beasts at Ephesus^^ and had conquered. That 
 these conditions were jiot rare, is shown by the 
 fact that in, 1837, more than three hundred schools 
 in Massachusetts were broken up by the insub- 
 ordination of the pupils or the incompetence of 
 the teachers. 
 
 '^ Such, in general, were the district schools. 
 We may profitably stay for a moment to ask and 
 
 ' to answer the question. What did they do for 
 the education of the Massachusetts boys and 
 
 I girls ? Whether we mean by education the ac- 
 quisition of useful knowledge merely, or the cul- 
 ture of intellect and feeling and will which ulti- 
 mate in thoughtful, skillful, and righteous men 
 and women, we must answer that these schools, 
 even the best of them, did little. 
 
 Looking at Massachusetts society in the last 
 generation, it is easy to find men of mark, pro- 
 fessional men of great ability, and men who laid 
 broad and deep the foundations of the great busi- 
 ness interests of our State, commercial and man- 
 ufacturing ; men and women, too, capable of ap- 
 preciating gYQ^X'^kioy^ek^A ^, and rising to the 
 level of the sublimest personal sacrifices for the 
 
DISTRICT SCHOOL AND THE ACADEMY, m 
 
 sake of truth. It is easy, too, to see that through 
 all the communities where the district schools 
 flourished there was a high average of general 
 intelligence and moral thoughtfulness. Know- 
 ing how prone we all are to argue from Tenter- 
 den steeple to the Goodwin Sands — post hoc, ergo 
 propter hoc — it need not seem strange that men 
 have argued that these characteristics of indi- 
 viduals and communities were due to the work 
 of the district schools. 
 
 But if we think, we are forced to see that, if 
 every effect must have an adequate cause, there 
 is no proportion of adequacy between the school 
 work and these effects. The knowledge which 
 an average boy or girl could acquire or retain, in 
 ten or twelve weeks' study, for each of ten or 
 twelve years, each period of study separated from 
 the next by forty weeks of something else, must 
 be scanty under the best conditions ; and the 
 training of powers, mental or moral, could at 
 best only be intermittent and desultory. 
 
 But when besides the meagerness of oppor- 
 tunity, we consider the unfavorable physical con- 
 ditions, the crowded, unhealthy, uncomfortable 
 rooms, the inexperience and ignorance of most 
 of the instructors, the mechanical and dreary, 
 often me'aninglei^H/it . - ». ^v which went by 
 the name of study, we are forced to conclude 
 
112 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 that other influences must have been at work — 
 that we may have overestimated the district 
 school. 
 
 The power and majesty with which the Mis- 
 sissippi sweeps by New Orleans to the Gulf were 
 not brought by it out of Lake Itasca. But let us 
 give the lake credit for what it did do — it set the 
 rill a-flowing. So did the district school. It gave 
 to the children of the generation the key to the 
 world's thought in the world's literature. What 
 that key was worth depended upon what use 
 they made of it. 
 
 Edmund Stone, a distinguished man of science, 
 was taught to read by a servant of the Duke of 
 Argyll. Here is his story: "I first learned to 
 read; the masons were then at work on your 
 house. I approached them one day, and observed 
 that the architect used a rule and compasses, and 
 that he made calculations. I inquired what 
 might be the meaning and the use of these 
 things, and I was informed that there was a sci- 
 ence called arithmetic. I purchased a book of 
 arithmetic, and I learned it. I was told that 
 ther /Tya^s lother science called geometry. I 
 "■ v L cxie necessary books, and I learned geom- 
 etry. By reading, I found that there were good 
 books of these two sciences in Latin. I bought a 
 dictionary and I learned Latin. I understood. 
 
BISTRICT SCHOOL AND THE ACADEMY. 113 
 
 also, that there were good books of the same 
 kind in French. I bought a dictionary and I 
 learned French. And this, my lord, is what I 
 have done. It seems to me that we may learn 
 everything when we know the twenty-six letters 
 of the alphabet.'^ 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, learning little bnt his 
 primer at school, found within himself a hunger 
 for books, and in succession and slowly read and 
 absorbed the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, ^sop's 
 Fables, a Life of Washington, and Plutarch's 
 Lives. Here was an education in itself. 
 
 So the district school opened to the children a 
 very narrow way into the world's knowledge — 
 set the door just a little ajar. Where, back of 
 the school, was a home in which not for twelve 
 weeks but for fifty-two, not in winter alone but 
 all the four seasons through, there was a father 
 or a mother setting a high value upon education, 
 because they had it or because they lacked it, 
 ambitious for their children and stimulating 
 them to do their best ; where, back of the school, 
 was a long line of educated ancestry; planting in 
 the children scholarly instincts and ;^brpet ing 
 them through generations, blood aiways t( ri^ 
 — the blood of country doctors and lawyers and 
 ministers and teachers: where these conditions 
 axisted the door was pushed wider open, and in 
 
114 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 broader fields of opportunity the work of educa- 
 tion went on. 
 
 Sometimes there came into the life of the 
 pupils in these schools a personal influence strong 
 and lasting. Some gentle, patient, sweet-voiced 
 and sweet-mannered girl, teaching the little ones 
 in a summer school, so impressed her personality 
 upon their minds and hearts that they worshiped 
 her. Through all their lives they reverenced 
 womanhood as idealized in her. I have heard 
 old men speak of such with tears, showing that 
 her image in their memory has over it the saintly 
 nimbus. Among the student teachers, too, were 
 ardent, enthusiastic ones, full of moral earnest- 
 ness, who struck fire when they found a flint; 
 who appreciated the scholarly instincts when 
 they found them, encouraged the boys and girls, 
 gave them special help and direction, and drew 
 them to higher levels of thought and action. 
 
 But for the slow and the dull, for the chil- 
 dren of ignorant parents with no heredity for 
 culture, especially in the remoter districts, the 
 district school scarcely threw a glimmer into the 
 darkness. \ 
 
 Two positive evils resulted from the district 
 system, where it was fully established. It wa s 
 fatal to a bro ad and generous public spirit. 
 iWhen the conduct of church affairs had been 
 
DISTRICT SCHOOL AND THE ACADEMY. 115 
 
 given to the parish, the care of roads and the 
 care of schools to the districts, there was little 
 left to the town to do, and the town spirit waned 
 before the narrow and petty local interests. The 
 spirit of progress during the last half century 
 has found in this narrowest of provincialisms its 
 most persistent and bitterest opposition. This 
 has been true not only in educational matters, 
 but along all lines of social and business develop- 
 ment. There came to be among the distri(fts a 
 jealousy of each other, and in the smaller and 
 outlying districts a suspicion and jealousy of the 
 central and more populous districts, which effec- 
 tually hindered the progress of reform. A looker- 
 on in the town meetings would be impressed by 
 the dog-in-the-manger spirit which often charac- 
 terized the words and votes of the people who 
 lived outside the village centers. What they 
 could not personally enjoy they would combine 
 to prevent others from enjoying. This is one 
 cause of the d^adness and decay of towns. From 
 a social consideration the creation of the district 
 as a political unit was^n^iiiiiiuxfid evil. 
 
 On the educational side the most conspicuous 
 effect of the disintegration of the towns was the 
 disappearance of ijie old grammar schools. The 
 law of 1789, notwithstanding it freed one hun- 
 dred and twenty towns from the ancient obliga- 
 
 I 
 
116 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 tion to provide free classical instruction, still left 
 that obligation upon one hundred and ten towns. 
 But in 1824 * a new statute exempted, too, from 
 this burden all towns having less than five thou- 
 sand inhabitants. At this time one hundred and 
 seventy-two towns should have been employing 
 a master competent to instruct in Latin and 
 Greek. The new law left but seven towns in the 
 State legally bound to furnish any education 
 higher than the rudiments. These were all com- 
 mercial towns : Boston, Charlestown, Salem, Mar- 
 blehead, Gloucester, Newburyport, and Nantuck- 
 et. As the name grammar school disappeared 
 from the statutes, the institution itself also faded 
 out of the memory of the-^people, and practically 
 there was litfe public recognition of the value or 
 need of a li/jer- 1 education. Indeed, in the gram- 
 mar schools which were still maintained there 
 were but few Latin " scholars.'^ In the Roxbury 
 school, in 1770, of eighty-five pupils but nine 
 were studying Latin ; and in Newburyport, at a 
 later period, there were but five Latiners in a 
 school of sixty children. 
 
 Several influences had probably combined to 
 produce this reaction. There had been a growing 
 indisposition thj^oughout the eighteenth century 
 
 • : J 
 
 * Laws of Massachusetts, February 18, 1824. | 
 
DISTRICT SCHOOL AND THE ACADEMY. 117 
 
 to support the grammar schools. The develop- 
 ment of the district system had made it less easy 
 for all the people to share in the benefits of a sin- 
 gle school — a moving grammar school could not 
 have been a success — and local jealousy made the 
 people unwilling to plant in one district what all 
 the districts could not equally enjoy. 
 
 In the early part of this century began that 
 migration from the towns to Boston, when coun- 
 try boys who had learned industry and frugality 
 on the farms, in spite of the limited opportunities 
 for education, laid the foundations for princely 
 fortunes. From 1810 to 1830 Boston gained near- 
 ly one hundred per cent in population. Emerson 
 has sung, "Things arc in the saddle and rule 
 mankind.'' Already "things'' wei^ mounting, 
 and material success gained by n^>ii"#i'th scanty 
 learning made literary culture seem a luxury 
 rather than a necessity. 
 
 The ministers were less potential than in the 
 early days, and could do less to stem the current. 
 More than this: an itinerant clergy, full of re- 
 ligious zeal, though illiterate, by the contrast of 
 its spiritual fervor with the coldness of the more 
 highly educated regular ministers, tended to 
 bring college learning into disrepute. Added to 
 all these was the poverty which followed the 
 Revolution, and from which in the first quarter 
 
118 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 of the century the people at large were only just 
 
 recovering. Public spirit was not broad and 
 
 \ high enough to induce people to tax themselves 
 
 \ for what all could not enjoy and what many 
 
 ^eemed unnecessary. 
 
 .^ While the free public schools were in this 
 I [state of decline, a new institution came into be- 
 lling — the incorporated academy. It has an hon- 
 \ orable place in Massachusetts history. In its 
 j inception it reminds us of the early grammar 
 schools in England. In 1761 William Dummer, 
 ♦dying in Boston, left by will his mansion house 
 *and farm in Newbury for the establishment of a 
 free school to be maintained forever pn the es- 
 tate. This William Dummer * came of an an- 
 cient and honorable colonial family, and had 
 been Lieutenant Governor during some of the 
 stormiest years which preceded the Revolution. 
 He had received his own education in the Boston 
 Latin School, and later had resided for several 
 years in England, where he probably became ac- 
 quainted with the form of school which he after- 
 ward founded, and where perhaps he first con- 
 ceived the idea of his own benefaction. 
 
 In accordance with the terms of the will, the 
 
 * First Century of Dummer Academy. A Historical Dis- 
 course by Nehemiah Cleveland, Boston, 1865. 
 
DISTRICT SCHOOL AND THE ACADEMY. II9 
 
 Dummer Free School was opened in 1763, and 
 Samuel Moody was called from York to be its 
 first master. Among Master Moody's earliest 
 pupils was Samuel Phillips, of Andover.* Fitted 
 for college at the Dummer School, he gradu- 
 ated from Harvard at nineteen. He at once 
 took an active part, with Samuel Adams and 
 John Hancock, in the Massachusetts Provincial 
 Congress, and during the succeeding years of 
 the Revolution he was ardently serving the colo- 
 nial cause. At the same time he was preparing 
 for loftier service. Through his influence a 
 school was founded at Andover, in 1778, by the 
 munificent gift of three brothers, Samuel Phillips, 
 of Andover, John Phillips, of Exeter, and Wil- 
 liam Phillips, of Boston. It was called the Phil- 
 lips School, but in 1780 it was incorporated by the 
 Legislature under the name Phillips Academy. 
 Two years later the Dummer School was also in- 
 corporated under the new name Dummer Acad- 
 emy. 
 
 The use of the word academy as applied to 
 these new schools has been traced by the late 
 Rev. Charles Hammond, of Monson, to the en- 
 dowed schools of the English dissenters, f These 
 
 * Taylor's Memoir of Judge Phillips, Boston, 1856. * 
 
 f New England Academies and Classical Schools, by Rev. 
 
120 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 people had been excluded from the old founda- 
 tion schools^ and had been forced to provide clas- 
 sical training for themselves. Mr. Hammond 
 suggests that they probably received their first 
 suggestion of a name for their new institutions 
 from Milton^'s Tractate on Education, in which 
 the great dissenter called his ideal school an 
 academy. 
 
 Following close upon the incorporation of 
 Phillips and Dummer came the founding of the 
 scarcely less famous Leicester Academy,* in 1784, 
 and in rapid succession Derby, Bristol, Marble- 
 head, Westford, Westfield, Plymouth, and New 
 Salem. To three of these, in its act of incorpora- 
 tion, the State had given a grant of land in the 
 District of Maine. Petitions for similar aid 
 came from other towns, and in 1797 f it became 
 necessary for the State to determine the relation 
 of these schools ta^^the public, that a uniform 
 policy might be established by the Common- 
 wealth in its dealing with them. \ The subject 
 was referred to a committee which reported 
 through Nathan Dane, of Beverly, a /inan who 
 
 Charles Hammond, A. M., in Barnard's Journgil of Education, 
 
 vol. xvi, p. 403. 
 
 * Washburn's History of Leicester Academy, Boston, 1855. ^ 
 f Resolves of the General Court of Massachusetts, February, 
 
 1797. 
 
DISTRICT SCHOOL AND THE ACADEMY. 121 
 
 had achieved a national reputation as the author 
 in the Continental Congress of the Resolution of 
 1787, by which the Northwest Territory was set 
 apart for freedom. 
 
 This report favored the continuance of the 
 plan of giving State aid to the amount of a half 
 township to academies founded under certain 
 conditions : 
 
 1. There must be a neighborhood of thirty or 
 forty thousand inhabitants, not accommodated 
 by existing acadeniies. 
 
 2. State grants should only be in aid of schools 
 which had a permanent fund contributed by 
 towns or individuals. 
 
 3. All parts of the State should share alike 
 in the distribution of State aid. 
 
 The Legislature adopted the report, and the 
 incorporated academies became in a sense public 
 schools. From this they increased so rapidly 
 that before 1840 one hundred and twelve acts of 
 incorporation had passed the Legislature, author- 
 izing academies in eighty-eight towns,* though 
 not all were opened. They were in every county. 
 Essex had twelve, Middlesex fourteen, Norfolk 
 eight, Plymouth nine, Bristol three, Worcester 
 
 * See Report on Academies, by George A. Walton, Agent of 
 the Board of Education, in the Fortieth Report of the Massa- 
 chusetts Board of Education, p. 174. 
 
J22 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. . 
 
 ten^ Franklin five, Hampshire six, Hampden six, 
 Berkshire eight, Barnstable five, Dnkes two, and 
 Nantucket one. 
 
 The spirit which founded the earlier acade- 
 mies was a resurrection ; it was the spirit which 
 moved in John Eliot to cry out, in his prayer at 
 the synod at Cambridge: "Lord, for schools 
 everywhere among us; that our schools may 
 flourish; that every member of this Assembly 
 may go home and procure a good school to be 
 encouraged in the town in which he lives.^^ It 
 was the spirit which dictated the dying bequest 
 of John Harvard; which led the Connecticut 
 ministers to lay down their books on the table 
 at Branf ord, saying, " I give these books to found 
 a college in this colony/^ It was the spirit of 
 John Knox and of Martin Luther. It was a lofty 
 Christian patriotism, as sagacious as it was fer- 
 vent, as practical as it was devout. It was that 
 Puritanism which is as old as the ages, resting 
 upon the solid foundations, the glory of God and 
 the welfare of man. No one can read the story 
 of Judge Phillips and Ebenezer Crafts without 
 being moved to thank God and take courage. 
 
 The purpose of the founders was primarily to 
 provide a means by which young men could be 
 fitted for college, and through it for the require- 
 ments of public and professional life. When 
 
DISTRICT SCHOOL AND THE ACADEMY. 123i 
 
 Leice ster Acad emy was founded there was not 
 [ in all WorcestejL Qpunty an educational institu- 
 tion higher than the district schools. The few 
 boys who were fitted for college learned their 
 Latin and Greek by their own firesides or as they 
 followed the plow, and they recited them to the 
 parish ministers. 
 
 But there was a broader purpose underlying 
 this movement. It was the ^ope of the founders 
 that public sentiment might be stimulated, and 
 that a higher educational standard might be set 
 up. By piittin^b^efore the youtE^r~the"country 
 opportunities for education, they hoped to create 
 a desire for it; and they aimedTcT furnish to'stu- 
 dents who could not go to college the elements, 
 at least, of a liberal education. 
 
 This is apparent from the li"st of studies which 
 was included in^ihe ^acts of foundation : * Eng- 
 lish, Latin, Greek, and French languages ; writ- 
 ing, arithmetic, and geography ; the art of speak- 
 ing; practical geometry, logic, and philosophy; 
 while the possibility of future growth was pro- 
 vided for by the general clause, '^Such other 
 liberal arts and sciences as the trustees shall 
 direct.'^ 
 
 These schools realized the most sanguine 
 
 ► "Washburn's History of Leicester Academy, p. 12. 
 10 
 
124 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 hopes of their founders, and justified the liber- 
 ality of public and private benefactors. In their 
 history English history repeated itself. A few 
 with ampler endowments, and under the impulse 
 of abler men, took a front rank, as Eton and 
 Harrow and Rugby had done, and drew their 
 students from a wider constituency, becoming in 
 a broad sense public schools. Others became only 
 centers of local interest — mere day schools for 
 town pupils. 
 
 But they all in varying degree fulfilled their 
 mission. They fitted for college, and served alike 
 the church and state. Dummer, under its first 
 master, e'ducated fifteen members of Congress, 
 two Chief/Justices of the Supreme Court, one 
 President of Harvard College, and four college 
 professors. Leicester, in 1847, had fitted four 
 Governors, three Supreme Court judges, one col- 
 lege president, and five college professors. Mon- 
 son numbers among its alumni more than two 
 hundred ministers of the gospel. 
 
 But besides this work as fitting schools, the 
 academies had an immeasurable influence in 
 broadening non-college students. They reached 
 an immense multitude of young people. In 1786 
 Leicester had received from six to eight thousand 
 pupils, of whom perhaps four hundred had been 
 fitted for college; Westfield had sent out over 
 
DISTRICT SCHOOL AND THE ACADEMY. 125 
 
 eight thousand persons; Lawrence, at Groton, 
 nearly eight thousand ; New Salem not less than 
 seven thousand. In eighty or ninety years — 
 three generations — these four schools alone had 
 brought into a scholarly atmosphere, had kept 
 under the instruction of scholarly men and wom- 
 en, for a longer or shorter time, not less than 
 thirty thousand young men and women — ten 
 thousand to a generation ; and these are only 
 four of more than a hundred such schools. 
 
 When we hear of the scanty opportunity af- 
 forded to the children \ in the first half of the cen- 
 tury — the few weeks iti the little red schoolhouse 
 under the ignorant and incompetent instructor — 
 we must keep in mind the fact that in every 
 town some of the children, as they reached years 
 of maturity, were receiving the elements of cul- 
 ture. A single term at the academy might serve — 
 often did serve — to give a new turn to life; to 
 open the windows of the mind, often of the soul, 
 to new and refining influences; to make the 
 young man or woman more susceptible to the 
 spirit of progress, which was the spirit of the| 
 age. If we ask, in brief, what the academies did 
 ^they trained the leaders of two generations. 
 
 Besides these direct results, certain indirect 
 and less apparent influences may be traced to the 
 endowed schools. Not only did they hold up a 
 
126 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 /higher standard of education, but also a higher 
 standard of teaching. The college-bred teachers, 
 who had given character to the early grammar 
 schools, had largely disappeared, and the district 
 schools furnished no opportunity for professional 
 teachers ; but with the development of the acad- 
 emies a new class^ of teachers was developed. 
 Master Moody, for twenty-eight "yeafi' at Dum- 
 mer, is a John the Baptist, " suggesting Elias, or 
 one of the old prophets.^^ He ranks with Ezekiel 
 Cheever and Elijah Corlet ; and after him Nehe- 
 miah Cleveland, Eliphalet Pearson, Joseph Em- 
 erson, Samuel Taylor, and Charles Hammond. 
 ^^ There were giants in those days.^^ 
 
 It is true that the courses of study were some- 
 what pretentious, and the methods of instruction 
 and modes of administration would not in all 
 respects commend themselves to our judgment. 
 Josiah Quincy, who went to Phillips in its open- 
 ing year, says that the discipline was severe and 
 disheartening; that there was no consideration 
 for childhood; that for four years he was tor- 
 mented with studies not suited to his years. 
 Master Moody knew nothing but Latin and 
 Greek, and cared for nothing else, and, as one of 
 Marryat's boys says of his instructor, " he drove 
 learning into the heads of his pupils as the car- 
 penter drives oakum into the seams of a ship.'^ 
 
DISTRICT SCHOOL AND THE ACADEMY. 127 
 
 ^^If severe in SMgW — and doubtless most of 
 them were — " the love they bore to learning was 
 in fault/' But many of them worked out in their 
 own practice, and anticipated some of the best 
 things in modern school life. From them came 
 many of the improved text-books of the period, 
 and they were prime movers in the formation of 
 the educational associations. 
 
 The broadening of the earlier educational 
 work in the academy made it possible for the 
 colleges to enlarge the scope of their training. 
 In 1789 no knowledge, even of common arith- 
 metic, was required for admission to Harvard,* 
 though doubtless it was presupposed, nor was 
 the candidate required to know 'anything of geog- 
 raphy. But in 1814 the college called for arith- 
 metic, through the rule of three, and announced 
 that after 1815 it would also demand a knowl- 
 edge of ancient and modern geography. In 1816 
 it asked for the whole of the arithmetic. Yale, 
 too, enlarged its requirements about the same 
 time, and both colleges developed largely the 
 English side of their work. , 
 
 While we recognize the potent agency of the\ 
 academies in raising the general educational \ 
 standard of the time, we must admit that in an- ' 
 
 * Leicester Academy Centenary, p. 51, note 8. 
 
128 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 other direction their influence was less beneficent. 
 By the affection and respect which they engen- 
 dered for themselves, they fostered the idea of 
 private schools,, and so reacted injuriously. 
 
 Samuel Adams, that man of the people, early 
 scented danger in this direction. As Governor, 
 in 1795, in his inaugural address, he said : * "It 
 is with satisfaction that I have observed the pa- 
 triotic exertions of worthy citizens to establish 
 academies in various parts of the Commonwealth. 
 It discovers a zeal highly to be commended. But 
 while it is acknowledged that great advantages 
 have been derived from these institutions, per- 
 haps it may be justly apprehended that multi- 
 plying them may have a tendency to injure the 
 ancient and beneficial mode of education in town 
 grammar schools. 
 
 "The peculiar advantage of such schools is 
 that the poor and the rich may derive equal bene- 
 fits from them; but none excepting the more 
 wealthy, generally speaking, can avail them- 
 selves of the benefits of the academies. Should 
 these institutions detach the attention and influ- 
 ence of the wealthy from the generous support 
 of the town schools, is it not to be feared that 
 useful learning, instruction, and social feelings 
 
 * Independent Chronicle, Boston, June 4, 1795. Resolves of 
 the General Court of Massachusetts, May Session, 1795. 
 
DISTRICT SCHOOL AND THE ACADEMY. 129 
 
 in the early parts of life may cease to be so 
 equally and universally disseminated as it has 
 heretofore been ? 
 
 " I have thrown out these hints with a degree 
 of diffidence in my own mind. You will take 
 them into your candid consideration, if you shall 
 think them worthy of it/' 
 
 All that Governor Adams foresaw as possible 
 became actual. Pseudo-academies multiplied, 
 after the type of Dr. Holmes's Apollinean Female 
 Institute, and private schools abounding, with- 
 drew from the common schools the children of 
 all but the poorest families. The wealthier peo- 
 ple patronized the tuition schools; the poorest, 
 perforce, gotjwhiat little they could from the free 
 town schools-;-- whila ietweeu—these extremes 
 pride and poverty struggled with each other, 
 and as one or the other gained the ascendency 
 the children alternated between the two institu- 
 tions. The scanty measure of education fur- 
 nished by the town schools led to the founding 
 of the academies. The more the academies flour- 
 ished the worse became the town schools. 
 
 In 1838-'39 there was spent for instruction in 
 private schools — not incorporated — one half as 
 much money as was spent for the common 
 schools; and the scripture was fulfilled which 
 says, "Where your treasure is, there will your 
 
130 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 heart be also/' People will never willingly and 
 cheerfully support two systems of schools. 
 Whenever the private-school system in any 
 community gets on its side the social and polit- 
 ical leaders^ it will grind the public schools to 
 the wall, and do it under legal and constitutional 
 sanctions. 
 
 The half century in which the district school 
 and the academy flourished is also memorable for 
 the change in public sentiment regarding the 
 education of girls. In the earliest days, when 
 Dorchester set up its town school, it was left 
 to the discretion of the elders and the select- 
 men whether maids , should be taught with the 
 boys or not.* In the exercise of this discretion 
 they tacitly or otherwise decided against coedu- 
 cation, and until ihe Revolution girls graduated 
 from the dame schools and early entered upon 
 domestic duties. The district schools in the 
 smaller towns opened their doors to boys and 
 girls alike, but few of the girls advanced beyond 
 reading and writing. 
 
 The Revolutionary period started new cur- 
 rents of thinking along many lines, and almost 
 simultaneously in all the larger towns there 
 arose a demand for ampler opportunities for the 
 
 * History of Dorchester, Boston, 1859, p. 420. 
 
DISTRICT SCHOOL AND THE ACADEMY. 131 
 
 education of girls. The practical form which 
 the agitation assumed concerned the admission 
 of girls to the master^s school. At first towns 
 voted decidedly to be at no expense for educat- 
 ing feirls.* Slowly the conservative party made 
 concessions. The boys were sent home an hour 
 earlier in the forenoon and afternoon, and the 
 girls came in ; f or the girls came an hour in the 
 morning, before the boys, and on Thursday after- 
 noon (the boys' holiday) ; this only during the 
 summer months, so tender was the consideration 
 for what, in the language of the time, was called 
 ^' the female health.'' 
 
 Thus the more ambitious girls worked their 
 way a little into arithmetic and geography and 
 grammar. It was fifty years after the Revolution 
 before girls acquired equal privileges with the 
 boys in the masters' schools of the large towns. 
 Meantime fashion had made some demands, 
 and private schools were set up to add some 
 frippery accomplishments^ — " finishing schools." 
 They taught a little French, a little embroidery, 
 considerable dancing, and many elegant manners. 
 Families of means sent their girls from the coun- 
 
 * History of Mount Holyoke Seminary, 1837-1887, p. 4. 
 t Chase's History of Haverhill, p. 456 (1792). Brooks's His- 
 tory of Medford, pp. 281, 282 (1776 and 1794). 
 
132 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 try to Boston, Salem, and Newburyport to be 
 polished for market.* 
 
 But during this time, while the voters in town 
 and district meetings were wrestling with the 
 question whether girls should be taught at all, 
 and were grudgingly giving them a few crumbs 
 from the boys' table ; while the more ignorant 
 were derisively asking if the girls expected to 
 carry pork to market, that they wanted to learn 
 arithmetic ; and while young women who aspired 
 to be social leaders were trimming the rags of 
 their ignorance with the passementerie of Tur- 
 veydrop manners, some earnest souls had awak- 
 ened to the conviction that girls might be more 
 than drudges or dolls. 
 
 The efforts of William Woodbridge in Con- 
 necticut, f the success of girls in the early acad- 
 emies — Leicester, Monson, Lawrence, and Brad- 
 ford—fostered the idea. The writings of Miss 
 Edgeworth and others still further stimulated it, 
 and within ten years, beginning with 1818, there 
 were established at Byfield (1818) by Rev. Joseph 
 Emerson, at Troy (1821) by Emma Willard, at 
 Hartford (1822) by Catherine Beecher, and at 
 
 * Rev. William Woodbridge, in the American Journal of 
 Education for September, 1830, p. 421. 
 
 t American Journal of Education, 1830, p. 422 ; Annals of 
 Education, 1831, pp. 522-526. 
 
DISTRICT SCHOOL AND THE ACADEMY. I33 
 
 Andover (1829) through the liberality of Mrs. 
 Sarah Abbott, schools for girls, which in breadth 
 of English scholarship and in methods of instruc- 
 tion surpassed any existing institutions of learn- 
 ing, not excepting the colleges. 
 
 Mr. Emerson was the first to introduce the 
 topical method of study. Miss Willard pushed 
 her girls into the higher mathematics, and at her 
 school, in 1820, occurred the first public examina- 
 tion of a young woman in geometry. She intro- 
 duced greatly improved methods of teaching 
 geography and history, and with William Wood- 
 bridge prepared the best text-book in geography 
 which had appeared. 
 
 Some of these schools were mothers of institu- 
 tions. At the school at Byfield were Zilpah P. 
 Grant and Mary Lyon. Together they taught 
 the seminary at Derry, N". H. (1824-1828), and 
 afterward at Ipswich, Mass. (1828-1835), until 
 Miss Lyon opened her own school at South Had- 
 ley (1837). These schools were pre-eminently re- 
 ligious institutions. Not only was there system- 
 atic Bible study, but there was a profoundly 
 devotional spirit pervading all the life, ultimat- 
 ing in consecrated Christian womanhood. There 
 was an exhilaration due to the very novelty of 
 the experience, an enthusiasm as of pioneers, a 
 keenness of appreciation, an intellectual fresh- 
 
134 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 ness^ and elasticity, with an all-absorbing moral 
 and religious earnestness. No one can estimate 
 tbe influence of all this upon !N'ew England life. 
 
 It is to these early seminaries that the histo- 
 rian must look to account for the great moral re- 
 forms of the century which took so deep a hold 
 on New England life. Not only did Byfield send 
 out Harriet Newell and Mrs. Judson as mission- 
 aries to the heathen, but from these schools came 
 the strongest workers against intemperance and 
 slavery. 
 
 When Mary Lyon was seeking for a name for 
 her new school at South Hadley, Dr. Hitchcock 
 proposed to call it "The Pangynaskean Semi- 
 nary.'' " The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth 
 life.'' Had the name been adopted, the school 
 would have died of ridicule, but the name sug- 
 gested was grandly appropriate ; it told that, for 
 the first time in the history of the English-speak- 
 ing race, the whole woman was to be put to 
 school. 
 
 As the voice of a herald was the voice of Ips- 
 wich, and Abbott, and Wheaton, and Mount Hol- 
 yoke, crying'', "... Work out your freedom. 
 Girls, knowledge is now no more a fountain 
 sealed!" 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 HORACE MANN AND THE REVIVAL OF EDUCATION. 
 
 Historic events are parts of historic move- 
 ments, and historic men have built on founda- 
 tions laid by forgotten workers. This was pre- 
 eminently trne of Horace Mann and the educa- 
 tional reforms usually associated with his name. 
 
 The first part of this century is marked by a 
 general quickening of interest in education among 
 enlightened thinkers and the friends of humanity 
 the world over. This interest resulted in an up- 
 ward movement equally widespread. No classes 
 were outside its influence, and in the grand sweep 
 of its beneficence, and in some of its many phases, 
 it had touched and blessed all lands before Horace 
 Mann had begun to think about the Massachu- 
 setts schools. 
 
 While the movement may be - regarded as 
 one — the same Zeitgeist stirring simultaneously 
 many minds in many lands — it had two distinct 
 phases, and each of these manifested itself in 
 several different directions. The motive under- 
 
 135 
 
136 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 lying one of these movements was philanthropy, 
 and its object was to widen the sphere of school 
 activities; to reach, with the benefits of educa- 
 tion, neglected classes. The motive underlying 
 the other was philosophy, and its aim was to 
 improve existing institutions by broadening the 
 courses of study and substituting more rational 
 methods of instruction and discipline. 
 
 A rapid survey of what was happening out- 
 side of Massachusetts during the first third of 
 the century will prepare us to understand what 
 happened in Massachusetts later. 
 
 To this period belongs the infant-school 
 movement. Started in 1800 by Robert Owen* 
 for the children of his employees at Lanark, fos- 
 tered by Lord Brougham and other philanthro- 
 pists, developed in London by Samuel Wilder- 
 spin, f it spread to all the centers of population 
 the world over. Infant-school societies were ev- 
 erywhere organized. Purely charitable in their 
 purpose, they took the children of the poor, be- 
 tween the ages of eighteen months and six years, 
 and amid comfortable and pleasant surroundings 
 furnished them with such elementary training as 
 the parents were too poor , and too negligent and 
 too ignorant to supply. With similar purposes, 
 
 * Barnard's Journal of Education, vol. xxvi, p. 411. 
 
 f Ibid., vol. xxviii, p. 897. 
 
HORACE MANN— REVIVAL OF EDUCATION. 137 
 
 and anticipating some of the methods of the kin- 
 dergarten, the schools combined amusement with 
 instruction and moral with intellectual discipline. 
 Joseph Lancaster* had set up his famous 
 Monitorial School in the Borough Road, in 
 Southwark, and, gathering a thousand children, 
 had perfected his system of mutual instruction. - 
 Filled with enthusiasm, he had become an edu- 
 cational evangelist; had traveled through the 
 United Kingdom, lecturing and expounding his 
 new system (which yet was not wholly new) with 
 such success that monitorial schools became 
 everywhere the rage. Within a few years there 
 were fifty-seven of these schools in London alone, 
 and more than a thousand in Ireland. They 
 were in Sweden, in Switzerland, in Russia, in 
 India and Africa ; and in 1825 Lancaster was in 
 the new Republic of Colombia, and Simon Boli- 
 var, the Liberator, had appropriated twenty thou- 
 sand dollars to found monitorial schools. 
 
 * For knowledge of Lancaster and his system, see Improve- 
 ments in Education as it respects the Industrious Classes of the 
 Community, by Joseph Lancaster, London, 1806. The Lancas- 
 terian System of Education with Improvements, by Joseph Lan- 
 caster, Baltimore, 1821. Monitorial Instruction: An Address 
 at the Opening of the New York High School, by John Gris- 
 com, New York, 1825. Epitome of some of the Chief Events 
 and Incidents in the Life of Joseph Lancaster, written by Him- 
 self, New Haven, 1833. Reports of the British and Foreign 
 School Society, 1810-1826. 
 
138 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 The system had many claims upon public in- 
 terest and favor. By using the older and more 
 forward children to instruct the younger, the 
 time of the master could be used to better advan- 
 tage, and each child have more individual atten- 
 tion. There was hardly a limit to the possible 
 size of a monitorial school. An enthusiastic 
 French writer says of it: "It is a masterpiece 
 which must produce a revolution in popular edu- 
 cation. ... It may be styled a manufactory of 
 knowledge. . . . The intellectual faculties of man 
 may be decupled. An invention not less grand 
 and useful than many others which dazzle and 
 astonish us.'^ 
 
 In a more matter-of-fact consideration, we 
 may say of the monitorial schools as a whole : 
 
 1. They educated large numbers of children 
 at comparatively small expense. 
 
 2. They taught children to read quicker than 
 the ordinary schools, though they introduced no 
 new order of steps and made the work no less 
 mechanical. 
 
 3. They introduced into early instruction the 
 use of ruled slates and blackboards. 
 
 4. They introduced the use of wall charts for 
 teaching reading. 
 
 5. They introduced the co-ordinate teaching 
 of reading and writing. 
 
HORACE MANN— REVIVAL OF EDUCATION. 139 
 
 6. They first used written spelling by dicta- 
 tion. 
 
 7. They made class work more prominent than 
 individual work, and laid the foundation for 
 modern grading. 
 
 8. They made great use of emulation as a 
 motive — rewards and prizes. 
 
 9. They discountenanced the use of the rod, 
 but used other forms of punishment not less ob- 
 jectionable. 
 
 Among the punishments which Lancaster 
 himself recommends are wooden pillory, wooden 
 shackles, tying the legs together, suspending 
 from the ceiling in a sack or basket, labeling 
 boys for offenses—" Tell-tale Tit,'' or " Bite-finger 
 Baby "" — setting a girl to wash the face of an un- 
 ruly boy ; and he commends the example of the 
 school dame who, wearied with the trials of her 
 calling, was about to retire from the profession 
 when some one suggested a bowl of camomile 
 tea with which to quiet restless children, with 
 the result that " the school continued an example 
 of order and usefulness.'' 
 
 While these charitable schemes for the most 
 elementary education were flourishing, an impor- 
 tant movement was in progress at the other end 
 of the line. At Glasgow had been founded a 
 
 Mechanics' Institute, which had been reproduced 
 , 11 
 
140 MASSACHUSETTS PTJBLTC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 in all the great manufacturing centers. The 
 motto of these societies was a most suggestive 
 one: ^^To make the man a better mechanic, we 
 must make the mechanic a better man.^^ So it 
 aimed, by lectures, by evening classes, by libra- 
 ries and reading rooms, to give to men of limited 
 opportunities the benefit of a scientific education 
 — to fit the man for the century. 
 
 During this eventful period a still more pro- 
 found movement was in progress on the Conti- 
 nent. Rousseau's Emile, after being condemned 
 to be burned by the Archbishop and Parliament 
 of Paris, and subjecting its author to banish- 
 ment, was bearing fruit in the work of Pestalozzi 
 and his disciples. Unlike the schemes of Wil- 
 derspin and Lancaster, which magnified devices 
 ' — devices for organization, devices for instruction 
 — the Pestalozzians were expounding and ap- 
 plying principles — principles which Bacon had 
 announced two hundred years before, but which 
 had found no reception in the schools. At the 
 same time Jacotot was putting into practice in 
 Louvain his methods of teaching languages, and 
 Fellenberg was elaborating his complex Manual 
 Labor School at Hofwyl. The air was full of 
 educational novelties. From all countries phil- 
 anthropic men and the ambassadors of kings 
 were making pilgrimages to Yverdun and Lou- 
 
HORACE MANN— REVIVAL OF EDUCATION. 141 
 
 vain and Hofwyl. Curious travelers turned 
 aside from viewing picturesque ruins and gal- 
 leries of old masters, to experience a new sensa- 
 tion in seeing children at school and happy. 
 Verily the word of the prophet was fulfilled, *^A 
 little child shall lead them.'^ 
 
 The stimulus which these reforms gav^ to 
 public thought was evidenced in the educational 
 literature which began to be abundant. All 
 phases of education were discussed, and dis- 
 cussed from new view-points and with a deeper 
 insight into the nature to be educated — domestic 
 education, the education of girls, religious edu- 
 cation, the education of the defective classes, the 
 blind and the deaf^and out of it all national sys- 
 tems were evolving, which at a later day deter- 
 mined the fate of nations. 
 
 The influence of all this activity was felt on 
 this side the Atlantic, and not one of all the 
 schemes of the revivalists but found its patrons 
 and its imitators here. Infant-school societies 
 were to be found in all the cities; Lancaster 
 traveled through the United States, leaving 
 everywhere some of his own enthusiasm, and the 
 monitorial system became universally popular. 
 Not only was it adopted for primary instruction, 
 but for the older pupils in the reading and writ- 
 ing schools of the cities ; and, following the lead 
 
142 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 of New York city, monitorial high schools were 
 established in many places with the more ad- 
 vanced studies of the academies.* 
 
 ^ Joseph Neef, a coadjutor of Pestalozzi, opened 
 
 a Pestalozzian school in Philadelphia, and pub- 
 lished a descriptive book.f In the same city a 
 disciple of Jacotot founded an institute to apply 
 ^ his principles, while the manual labor ideas of 
 Fellenberg found expression in some half-dozen 
 States.* Still following the lead of the Old World, 
 - the famous Franklin Mechanics' Institute was 
 founded in Philadelphia (1824), and similar asso- 
 ciations began their beneficent work in other 
 cities; educational books multiplied — reprints 
 of European works, and many by native au- 
 thors. 
 
 Coming nearer home, we find that Massachu- 
 setts had felt the universal impulse, and we turn 
 now to see by what means and to what extent the 
 fallow ground of the Bay State had been broken 
 up for cultivation by Horace Mann. As in Eu- 
 rope, so here, philanthropy preceded philosophy 
 
 ^, in producing change, multiplying the means of 
 education much more rapidly and more widely 
 
 * See monthly news reports, headed Intelligence, in Ameri- 
 can Journal of Education, 1836-1830. 
 
 t Sketch of a Plan and Method of Education, Philadelphia, 
 1808. 
 
HORACE MANN— REVIVAL OF EDUCATION. 143 
 
 than its methods were reformed. From this mo- 
 tive had sprung the incorporated academies, and 
 it had compelled a reluctant and ungracious as- 
 sent to its demands for the better education of 
 girls. It had aroused the social aristocracy of 
 Boston by its demands f or ^^rimaryjjistructipn 
 at public_ expense^ and a little later to a, still 
 higher pitch of indignation by calling for a free^ 
 high school er g irls. 
 
 It is curious to see how long the higher social 
 circles of the ^ commercial towns — Boston, Salem, 
 and Newburyport— (-clung to the old^ traditions, 
 and how they resistgOThe..eiicr oachm airba,^^ 
 leveling spirit whichjsxiuli break down the old 
 social barriers. Thus in Newbury port, in 1790, 
 when it was proposed to open primary schools 
 for girls at public expense, the school committee 
 of clergymen, doctors, squires, and captains rec- 
 ommended that all girls who attended these 
 schools should be considered as recipients of pub- 
 lic charity. This the town rejected. • 
 
 In Boston the primary-school movement met 
 with similar treatment. Under the rules, no 
 child could attend the reading and writing 
 schools under seven years of age, nor could any 
 attend who could not read. Dame schools at pri- 
 vate expense were expected to provide for these 
 earlier years. In consequence of the disasters of 
 
 / 
 
144: MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 the Revolution and of the War of 1812, and the 
 immigration of foreigners, there were many poor 
 people who did not patronize the tuition schools. 
 Some charity schools for girls were opened, but 
 in 1817 it was found that there were several him- 
 dred children under seven who did not attend 
 school and could not read, and against whom the 
 doors of the public schools were shut.* 
 
 Public attention was called to the condition 
 of affairs. A town meeting was held in Faneuil 
 Jl^JIr The matter was referred to a large com- 
 mittee, of which the school committee was a part. 
 This committee made an extended report to the 
 effect that two or three hundred illiterate children 
 was nothing to be troubled about ; it was a won- 
 der there were so few ; the tuition of children at 
 dame schools was not a heavy burden on the 
 parents, and if it should be found so in special 
 cases, charity schools would provide relief. " It 
 is not to be expected that free schools should be 
 furnished with so many instructors and be con- 
 sidered on so liberal principles as to embrace the 
 circle of a polite and finished education. They 
 have reference to a limited degree of improve- 
 ment.^' 
 
 * For origin of primary schools in Boston, see Wightman's 
 Annals of the Boston Primary School Committee, Boston, 1860, 
 pp. 14-35. 
 
HORACE MANN— REVIVAL OF EDUCATION. 145 
 
 So, in the most graceful and polished lan- 
 guage, and referring to the heavy tax already 
 assessed for the support of public education, the 
 honorable committee report that it is not expe- 
 dient to establish primary schools at public ex- 
 pense, nor to increase the number of schools. 
 At this time the public schools were instructing 
 two thousand three hundred and sixty-five pupils, 
 while at private schools were four thousand one 
 hundred and thirty-two pupils, at an expense of 
 nearly fifty thousand dollars, nineteen thousand 
 dollars of which was for children under seven 
 years of age. 
 
 Not deterred by this cool rebuff, the same 
 men who had started the movement continued the 
 agitation, secured a formidable petition, and in 
 1818, in spite of the eloquence of Harrison Gray 
 Otis and Peter Thacher, carried the town in 
 support of their measure, and twenty primary 
 schools were opened in that year. 
 
 Following close upon this movement was the 
 opening of the English High School for boys in , 
 1821 — the first in the country — a similar school 
 for girls in 1825, which was short-lived, and a^ 
 Mechanics' Institute in 1827. 
 
 During this period the monitorial system had 
 been widely introduced into the larger towns. 
 Pestalozzian principles and methods had their 
 
146 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 earliest exemplifications in the monitorial school 
 of William B. Fowle, and through the elemen- 
 tary books which he prepared these principles 
 came into common use in the monitorial schools 
 of other places. 
 
 The publication of Warren Colburn's Intellec- 
 tual Arithmetic, in 1823, was an efiicient force in 
 raising the standard of instruction. Previous to 
 this all arithmetic work had been unintelligent 
 ciphering. This book came into the schools as 
 refreshing as a northwest wind, and as stimulat- 
 ing. It was eagerly seized upon by the more 
 intelligent teachers. Its use was a mark of an 
 intelligent teacher, a sign of life from the dead. 
 Embodying the principles of the new education, 
 it wrought a revolution in the teaching of arith- 
 metic, and it determined the character of all sub- 
 sequent text-books. 
 
 All these movements, though having in them 
 the elements of progress, were comparatively 
 local and limited in the sphere of their influence. 
 A few public-spirited men and women^:*^me 
 teachers — had come out into the light ; but the 
 great body of common schools remained unaf- 
 fected. The majority of Massachusetts citizens 
 were torpid so far as school interests were 
 concerned, or, if aroused at all, awakened only 
 to a spasmodic and momentary excitement 
 
HORACE MANN— REVIVAL OF EDUCATION. 147 
 
 over the building of a new chimney to the dis- 
 trict schoolhouse, or the adding of a half 
 dollar a month to the wages of the school- 
 mistress. 
 
 Nor was this lethargy of the people and this 
 decay of primitive ardor more marked in New 
 England than in other countries where the spirit 
 of the Reformation had early set up school sys- 
 tems. Scotland, in 1819, awoke to the fact that 
 the parish schools, in which a century before she 
 had led the world, had fallen into decay — had 
 so failed to maintain the standard of popular in- 
 telligence which had made the Scotch leaders of 
 thought, that half the people in the Highlands 
 could not read. In Holland, too, the primary 
 schools of the Reformation had become what the 
 Highland chief called ^^ cemeteries of eddica- 
 tion ^' ! The free-school system of Massachusetts, 
 under her compulsory laws, had kept her from 
 sinking to the level of the parochial systems of 
 her Calvinistic sisters. ^y^ 
 
 y^^o James G. Carter, of Lancaster,* belongs 
 the honor of first attracting attention to the de- - 
 cadence of the public schools, the extent of it, 
 the cause of it, and the remedy for it. Within a 
 year after he graduated from college he began 
 
 * Barnard's Journal of Education, vol. v, pp. 407-416. 
 
148 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 an aggressive campaign in favor of free schools, 
 which he continued for seventeen years, until 
 his triumph was complete in the establishment 
 of normal schools, and Horace Mann came to fol- 
 low up his victory. ■ 
 
 His first efforts were through the press. He 
 described the condition of the public schools; 
 he showed how they had sunk in the char- 
 acter of their instruction and instructors; with 
 convincing logic he showed how the academies 
 and private schools were largely responsible 
 for this decline; in eloquent terms he painted 
 the wisdom and self-denial of the founders of 
 the State, and contrasted them with the degen- 
 eracy of their children; and with the ardor of 
 his age, and a sagacity and insight beyond his 
 years, he argued for inductive teaching in all 
 the schools, and proved conclusively that there 
 could be no such teaching until competent 
 teachers could be provided. Then, rising to- 
 the height of his subject, he outlined a plan' 
 for a seminary for teachers,* of which Prof. 
 Bryce said, in 1828, it was "the first regular 
 publication on the subject of the professional 
 education of teachers which he had heard of.'^ 
 
 * This essay is given in full in Barnard's Normal Schools 
 and Other Institutions, pp. 75-83. 
 
HORACE MANN— REVIVAL OF EDUCATION. 149 
 
 These papers were widely circulated and favor- 
 ably received. They were reviewed by Theophi- 
 lus Parsons in the Literary Gazette, and by 
 Prof. Ticknor in the North American Review, 
 and bore almost immediate fruit in the legis- 
 lation of 1824* and 1826.t, 
 
 This legislation is of commanding importance 
 in Massachusetts school history. It was the first 
 attempt to remedy the evils of the district sys- 
 tem — not by prevention, but by a check. Every 
 town was required to choose annually a school 
 committee, who should have the general charge 
 and superintendence of all the town schools. 
 They could determine the text-books to be used, 
 and no teacher could be employed without being 
 first examined and certified by them. 
 
 Here let us pause and review the history of 
 school supervision in Massachusetts for the first 
 two hundred years. 
 ^1 — During the colonial and provincial period *- 
 \here was no statutory provision for the super- 
 vision of schools. The selection of teachers and 
 the regulation of the schools were vested in the 
 town as a corporation, and not in any particular 
 officer of it. The choice of teachers was guarded 
 
 * Laws of Massachusetts, February 18, 1824. 
 t Laws of Massachusetts, March 4, 1826. 
 
150 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 by the requiremeDt that their scholarship and 
 character must be attested by the ministers. In 
 practice there was no uniformity. Often the 
 town in its meeting chose the master, fixed his 
 salary, and regulated the terms of admission. 
 More often committees were chosen to perform 
 these functions, as well as to provide and repair 
 schoolhouses and to lay out the districts. These 
 committees were chosen for specified executive 
 functions, and they had no term of service. 
 Most frequently all these functions were per- 
 formed by the selectmen, as the general execu- 
 tive officers of the town. But in no town was 
 either of the three modes used uniformly or con- 
 tinuously. 
 
 The law of 1789 first required supervision, 
 though it left all executive functions still un- 
 lodged. The ministers of the gospel and the 
 selectmen, or a committee specially chosen for 
 the purpose, were required to visit and inspect 
 the schools once in every six months at least, to 
 inquire into the regulation and discipline, and 
 the proficiency of the scholars therein. The sug- 
 gestion of a special committee was quickly acted 
 on, and in the next twenty years a large number 
 of towns chose such a committee, the ministers 
 and selectmen often being ex-officiis members. 
 There are in existence several sets of school-corn- 
 
HORACE MANN— REVIVAL OF EDUCATION. 151 
 
 mittee records beginning before 1800 — one begin- 
 ning in 1712.* 
 
 The visitation required by law was a formal 
 and solemii affair. The ministers, the selectmen, 
 and the committee, sometimes numbering more 
 than twenty — the chief priests and elders of the 
 town — went in stately procession at the appoint- 
 ed time to inspect the schools. They heard the 
 classes read — Primer, Psalter, Testament, Bible, 
 Preceptor — examined the writing and the cipher- 
 ing books, listened to recitations in Latin, aired 
 their own erudition — in the customary school- 
 committee way — and took their departure, leav- 
 ing on the records their testimony to the good 
 behavior and proficiency of the scholars and the 
 fidelity of the master. The quaint record of one 
 such visitation to the school of old Nicholas Pike 
 closes by saying, "The school may be said to 
 flourish like the palm tree.'^ 
 
 Meanwhile the support of the schools was 
 falling more and more into the hands of the dis- 
 tricts, and the executive functions came to be 
 performed by the district committees, with the^ 
 results which we have learned to deplore. The 
 law of 1826, therefore, introduced no new idea 
 
 * Salem, 1712; Newburyport, 1790 ; Boston, 1792 ; Hingham, 
 1794. 
 
152 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 into the school history of the State ; it made uni- 
 versal and compulsory what had already become 
 familiar to many communities. But it did more 
 than this : it elevated the school interests by dif- 
 ferentiating them, specializing these functions, as 
 the care of the roads, of the poor, of taxing, had 
 long before been specialized. 
 
 The law of 1789 was a long step forward, by 
 making it somebody^s business to know what the 
 schools "^fere doing. This law was a longer step 
 forward, by making the somebody a special 
 body, and giving to it new and more extended 
 powers. It is not strange that the law met 
 with vigorous opposition. Petitions came to the 
 next Legislature urging its repeal, but it was 
 not repealed. 
 
 So arrogant had the little districts become, so 
 jealous of their imagined rights, though they 
 had had a corporate existence but thirty-seven 
 years, that they complained of the new law a^*- 
 being arbitrary and oppressive, because it gave 
 back to the town a part of the powers which had 
 always belonged to it, but which the districts 
 had usurped. 
 
 The law was not repealed, but a sop was 
 thrown to the districts, which in practice went 
 far to neutralize all the good e:pects of the law. 
 This was the authority givqn to the prudential 
 
HORACE MANN— REVIVAL OF EDUCATION. I53 
 
 committee to select the teacher.* The power had 
 been long exercised; now it was legally con- 
 ferred. The town committees neglected their re- 
 strictive duties, so that in many towns the new 
 legislation was practically inoperative. 
 
 One other feature of the legislation of 1827 
 should be noticed in passing. For the first time 
 in the history of the State is the entire support 
 of the schools by taxation made compulsory. 
 From 1647 such support had been voluntary, f 
 For many years it had been universal. 
 
 From the beginning legislation had recog- 
 nized the principle so aptly stated by Mr. Carter, 
 that all the property of the town was liable for 
 the education of all the children of the town. 
 Now, after one hundred and eighty years, the 
 principle is enacted into a law. So slowly are 
 institutions evolved and perfected in a govern- 
 ment by the people. 
 
 sJMr. Carter's plans for school improvement 
 included two means as of primary importance : a 
 school fund, and a seminary for the training of 
 teachers. The efforts of the friends of reform to 
 secure these two ends were unremitting. The 
 
 * Laws of 1827. 
 
 f In the Province Law of 1692 the maintenance and support 
 of schools was included in the town charges, for which taxes 
 might be levied. 
 
\ 
 
 154 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 measures were forced upon the attention and 
 consideration of the Legislature every year from 
 1827, until opposition and reluctance yielded to 
 importunity, and both were secured. 
 /un 1834 * a bill was reported and enacted es- 
 tablishing a school fund. The fund was to con- 
 sist of all money in the treasury derived from 
 the sale of lands in the State of Maine, and from 
 the claims of the State on the United States for 
 military services, and half of all money there- 
 after to be received from the sale of Maine lands, 
 the fund not to exceed a million dollars. Profit- 
 ing by the example of Connecticut and New 
 York, the distribution of the money among the 
 towns was upon two conditions : the towns must 
 raise by taxation at least one dollar for each 
 person of school age — four to sixteen years — and 
 must make to the State the statistical returns re- 
 quired by law. The fund was thus made a means 
 not only of aiding the towns, but also of securing 
 that information concerning the state of edu- 
 cation which was necessary to intelligent legis- 
 lation. 
 
 ^jt^Three years later Mr. Carter's enthusiasm and 
 energy achieved another signal triumph, and the 
 Commonwealth took the second step in its educa- 
 
 * Laws of Massachusetts, March 31, 1834. 
 
nORACE MANN— REVIVAL OF EDUCATION. I55 
 
 tional renaissance. In his address at the open- 
 ing of the legislative session in 1837, Governor 
 Edward Everett recommended the creation by 
 law of a Board .of Education, as an efficient means 
 of furthering the educational interests of the 
 State. This recommendation was indorsed by a 
 convention of the friends of education in Bristol 
 County, in a memorial to the Legislature. The 
 Committee on Education, of which Josiali Quincy, 
 Jr., was the Senate chairman, and Mr. Carter 
 House chairman, reported a bill in accordance 
 with the Governor's, recommendation. This was 
 defeated in the House by a vote of one hundred 
 and thirteen to sixty-one. 
 
 Cast down but not destroyed, Mr. Carter's 
 signal ability was equal to the occasion. By 
 parliamentary skill he induced the House to go 
 into a Committee of the Whole and discuss the 
 measure. The committee reported favorably ; 
 the House adopted the report, and the bill passed 
 to be engrossed.* A board of eight members was 
 created, to be appointed by the Governor and 
 Council, one member to retire annually; the 
 Governor and Lieutenant-Governor to be mem- 
 bers ex officiis. 
 
 This measure, which so narrowly escaped de- 
 
 * Laws of Massachusetts, April 20, 1837. 
 12 
 
156 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 "^feat, was very mild and inoffensive. It was evi- 
 dent that the State intended to lay no violent 
 hands upon the people's schools. The new board 
 had some simple duties, but no power. It was to 
 prepare an abstract of tlje school returns ; it was 
 to make an annual report to the Legislature of 
 the condition and efficiency of the common-school 
 system, and to suggest means of improving it — 
 only this and nothing more could the board do. 
 Its mission was to influence by enlightening, not 
 to control by authority. 
 
 >^ That this influence might be most widespread 
 and potent, the board was authorized to appoint 
 a secretary, who should, in the words of the act, 
 '^ collect information of the actual condition and 
 efficiency of the common schools and other means 
 of popular education, and diffuse as widely as 
 possible throughout every part of the Common- 
 wealth information of the most approved and 
 successful methods of arranging the studies and 
 conducting the education of the young, to the 
 end that all children in this Commonwealth who 
 depend upon common schools for instruction 
 may have the best education which those schools 
 can be made to impart.'^ 
 
 I SL^The board was to enlighten the Legislature ; 
 its secretary was to enlighten the people. Inas- 
 much as the Legislature came from the people, it 
 
HORACE MANN— REVIVAL OF EDUCATION. I57 
 
 is evident that whatever efficiency there was to 
 be in the new measure, would be the personal 
 efficiency of the secretary; the outcome of the 
 new departure, in direction and distance, would 
 be determined by his wisdom, zeal, and pop- 
 ularity. The possibility of progress was coex- 
 tensive with the power of the secretary to make 
 himself solid with the people. 
 
 At the first meeting of the board, June 29, 
 1837, Horace Mann was chosen secretary. The 
 choice was a surprise and a disappointment to 
 many of those who had been most active in pro- 
 Linoting the new movement. They wanted James 
 G. Carter. It was his voice and pen which for 
 seventeen years had been kindling public senti- 
 ment and guiding it toward this consummation. 
 It was his portrayal of the decadence of the com- 
 mon schools, his keen-eyed discernment of the 
 influence of the academies, his eloquent appeals 
 to the sacrifices of the fathers, his sagacious and 
 far-reaching plans for improvement, his skill' in 
 legislation, which had set the reformation on its 
 feet. He had been the acknowledged leader out 
 of the wilderness into sight of the promised land. 
 It seemed hard that he should not go over and 
 possess it. 
 
 If Mr. Mann's qualifications for the position 
 were not peculiar nor pre-eminent, they were 
 
158 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 neither few nor inferior. Supreme among them 
 
 T' was his moral earnestness. In considering any 
 
 / -J^iiiestion, his mind instinctively turned to its 
 
 ' moral aspects; all subjects for him were shad- 
 
 ^ owed by the eternities. In this he was a Puritan 
 
 of the Puritans. The Puritan spirit was manifest 
 
 also in his readiness to take the field in defense 
 
 of principles, or in support of measures which he 
 
 had espoused. He was born to be a champion. 
 
 y Fearless of consequences to himself, he had the 
 
 stuff that martyrs are made of. 
 
 He was broadly humanitarian in his sym- 
 pathies. He had already shown this in carrying 
 through the Legislature, almost single-handed, 
 the bill to establish the first asylum and hospital 
 for the insane in Massachusetts. He was one of 
 the firmest friends and strongest helpers of Dr. 
 Samuel G. Howe in carrying on his work among 
 the blind, and he was in the van in the fight with 
 slavery and intemperance. 
 
 On the intellectual side, his legal training had 
 developed certain natural characteristics; his 
 mind was at once broad and keenly logical. As 
 a result of this, no subjects presented themselves 
 to him alone and unrelated ; they readily referred 
 themselves to categories and came under general 
 principles. From the combination of these two 
 qualities — moral and intellectual — it came about 
 
HORACE MANN— REVIVAL OF EDUCATION. 159 
 
 that, whatever cause he espoused, he lifted the 
 discussion at once to the most elevated plane, 
 giving to it a breadth and a dignity which ap- _ 
 pealed to the thoughtful men and women of the "^ 
 time. This was the secret of his power and of - 
 his success. His imagination was active and — 
 strong, his idealizing power great ; yet there was '^ 
 a practical element in his make-up which kept 
 him from Quixotic undertakings — he never mis- 
 took sheep for soldiers, nor tilted against wind- 
 mills. 
 
 His writings were characterized by a wealth 
 of language, aptness and variety of illustration, 
 and an elaboration of argument sometimes bor- 
 dering close on prolixity and tediousness ; but in 
 controversy he could be keen, witty, vigorous, 
 overwhelming. In public speech his arguments 
 were convincing and his eloquence inspiring. 
 
 Besides these qualities of character, his pre- 
 vious public life was an added qualification for 
 his new office. He had been for ten years in the 
 Massachusetts Legislature, and during the last '^ 
 two of these he had been President of the Senate. - 
 This gave him a wide acquaintance among lead- 
 ing men in all parts of the State. He had been * 
 one of a commission to prepare the Revised 
 Statutes of 1836. All this gave him a prestige 
 which a mere schoolman could not have had. In 
 
160 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 politics he was a "Whig, in religions faith a Uni- 
 tarian. These were elements both of strength 
 and of weakness in his new position, as will ap- 
 pear later. 
 
 With snch endowments, natural and acquired, 
 Mr. Mann accepted the office of Secretary of the 
 Board of Education, June 30, 1837, and on the 
 evening of that day he wrote in his journal,* 
 " Henceforth, so long as I hold this office, I dedi- 
 cate myself to the supremest welfare of mankind 
 upon earth,^' and for twelve years he held him- 
 self to the full level of that vow. 
 
 His friends and the public were surprised that 
 he should consent to leave his profession, which 
 might be lucrative, and to withdraw from polit- 
 ical life, where preferment was certain, for an 
 office whose salary was meager and whose title 
 conveyed the idea of service, but not of honor. 
 Concerning the title he wrote : " If the title is 
 not sufficiently honorable now, then it is clearly 
 left for me to elevate it. I had rather be creditor 
 than debtor to the title." 
 
 The twofold work assigned by law to the 
 Board of Education was to collect and to diffuse 
 information. The board set itself, through its 
 secretary, immediately to these tasks. The school 
 
 * Life of Horace Mann, by his Wife, p. 80. 
 
HORACE MANN— REVIVAL OF EDUCATION. 161 
 
 law of 1826 had for the first time called for re- 
 turns from the towns concerning school attend- 
 ance and expenditures, these returns to be sent 
 to the Secretary of State, and by him to be trans- 
 mitted to the Legislature. But the returns had 
 been incomplete, and little use had been made of 
 them. By the new law these returns were to be 
 received and abstracts made by the Secretary of 
 the Board of Education. In Mr. Mann's hands 
 they became powerful instruments in educating 
 the public. Besides these regular returns, spe- 
 cial circulars of inquiry were sent concerning the 
 condition of schoolhouses, the length of the 
 school period, the selection, compensation, and 
 service of school committees, books, apparatus, 
 and the quality of the teaching force. 
 
 These inquiries met with a very general re- 
 sponse, and the answers gave to Mr. Mann a suf- 
 ficiently accurate idea of the educational condi- 
 tion of the State. These means he supplemented 
 by tours of observation and by extensive corre- • 
 spondence. Whatever Mr. Mann at the time of 
 his appointment lacked of information, within a 
 few months he knew more than any one else had 
 ever known about the Massachusetts schools. 
 
 For diffusing this information and for arous- 
 ing and directing public opinion, three means 
 were used: first, conventions and other public 
 
162 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 '^ meetings ; second, the annual reports which the 
 law called for ; and, third, the Common School 
 
 ^ Journal, a monthly periodical which Mr. Mann 
 established and conducted for ten years. By 
 these three means he aimed to reach and influ- 
 ^ ence all the parties on whom the success of the 
 schools depended — the public, the school commit- 
 tee, and the teachers. 
 
 In annual conventions held in each county, to 
 which teachers, committees, and all friends of 
 education were invited, and to which the towns 
 were requested to send special delegates, Mr. 
 Mann delivered an address in which he discussed 
 in a broad and general way great educational 
 topics, treating them with that wealth and felici- 
 ty of illustration, that elaboration of argument 
 and that lofty eloquence which characterized his 
 treatment of all great themes. 
 
 His first lecture was entitled The Means and 
 Objects of Common-School Education, and it 
 struck the keynote of all his subsequent labors. 
 While no man had a higher appreciation of the 
 value and need of the higher education, nor ex- 
 hibited in his own work more of its fruits, yet 
 
 ^ /his accepted mission was to be the apostle of the 
 
 — common schools. In an age of invention, he de- 
 clared, "The common school is the greatest in- 
 vention of man," and he sought all the means in 
 
HORACE MANN— REVIVAL OF EDUCATION. 163 
 
 his power, on the one hand, to increase its effi- 
 ciency, and, on the other, to win back to it pub- 
 lic confidence and pride. 
 
 To one familiar with the course of modern ed- 
 ucational history, who knows by what short and 
 easy methods the arbitrary governments of the 
 Old World in the early part of this century re- 
 formed their systems of elementary education, 
 this Massachusetts method by conventions is 
 most significant. The sovereign people can not 
 be driven ; they can only be coaxed or persuaded, y 
 Give light enough and time enough, and things 
 will come out right. This distinctive feature of 
 our popular government has never been more 
 clearly nor more eloquently exhibited than by 
 Mr. Mann himself : * 
 
 '' The education of the whole people, in a re- 
 publican government, can never be attained 
 without the consent of the whole people. Com- 
 pulsion, even if it were desirable, is not an avail- 
 able instrument. Enlightenment, not coercion, 
 is our resource. The nature of education must ^ 
 be explained. The whole mass of mind must be ^ 
 instructed in regard to its comprehension and en- "* 
 during interests. We can not drive our people _ 
 
 * Lectures and Reports on Education, edition of Lee & Shep- 
 ard, Boston, 1872, p. 286. 
 
^, 
 
 164 MASSxVCHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 up a dark avenue^ even though it be the right 
 one ; but we must hang the starry lights of knowl- 
 edge about it^ and show them not only the direct- 
 ness of its course to the goal of prosperity and 
 honor^ but the beauty of the way that leads to it. 
 
 " In some districts there will be but a single 
 man or woman, in some towns scarcely half a 
 dozen men or women, who have espoused this 
 noble enterprise. But whether there be half a 
 dozen or but one, they must be like the little 
 leaven which a woman took and hid in three 
 measures of meal. Let the intelligent visit the 
 ignorant day by day, as the oculist visits the 
 blind man and detaches the scales from his eyes, 
 until the living sense leaps to the living light. 
 
 " Let the zealous seek contact and communion 
 with those who are frozen up in indifference, and 
 thaw off the icebergs wherein they lie imbedded. 
 Let the love of beautiful childhood, the love of 
 country, the dictates of reason, the admonitions 
 of conscience, the sense of religious responsibil- 
 ity be plied, in mingled tenderness and earnest- 
 ness, until the obdurate and dark mass of avarice, 
 ignorance, and prejudice shall be dissipated by 
 their blended light and heat.^^ 
 
 The response of the people to the efforts of 
 the board in these conventions varied with the 
 locality and circumstances, though the meetings 
 
HORACE MANN— REVIVAL OF EDUCATION. 165 
 
 were on the whole fairly well attended, and con- 
 siderable interest was manifested, but many of 
 them sorely tried the soul of the ardent secretary. 
 
 While Mr. Mann in his annual convention 
 lectures treated educational subjects in a more 
 general and discursive way, in less formal meet- 
 ings he treated of specific evils and pointed out 
 the remedies. This he did, too, through the me- 
 dium of his annual reports, which stand to-day 
 unexcelled as educational documents, for the 
 range of subjects — general and special, for the 
 treatment — so broad, so philosophical, so wise, 
 and so practical, that, as we read them in the 
 light of a world full of new educational literature, 
 we wonder how a lawyer came to know so much 
 of the theory and practice of education. 
 
 In his reports the secretary dealt more directly — 
 with facts, and used the returns from the towns 
 as a basis for argument and appeal. The fact 
 which overtopped all others in significance, and 
 which was a cause of justifiable alarm, was the 
 nonattendance of children at schools of any kind.^ 
 It appeared from the returns that more than 
 forty-two thousand children did not attend school ^ 
 at all, or attended so little as not to be counted, 
 while those who were counted attended on the 
 average but seventeen weeks in the year. The ^ 
 money which should have been used to secure a 
 
166 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 J full measure of schooling to all the children had 
 •^ been diverted to the use of the few to the neglect 
 -" of the many. The people were paying seven 
 tenths as much money to educate one sixth of 
 the children in private schools as they were rais- 
 ing by tax to educate the other five sixths in 
 public schools. 
 
 With this fact and this peril before them, Mr. 
 ^ Mann appealed to the people as patriots, in a 
 convention lecture,* on the necessity of educa- 
 tion in a republican government. In his Fifth 
 Report he appealed to them as practical business 
 men, by showing the advantages of education 
 over ignorance in promoting the industrial wel- 
 fare of a community; and in his Eleventh Re- 
 port he appealed to them as Christians, by show- 
 ing the common schools to be the most effective 
 instrument to deliver the people from vice and 
 crime. 
 
 Not only were the common schools poorly 
 ^supported and scantily attended, but the school- 
 houses were a menace to the health of the chil- 
 dren and a disgrace to the communities which 
 owned them. In his first year of service Mr. 
 Mann prepared a si^ecial report on schoolhouses, 
 containing plans and detailed suggestions for 
 
 * Lectures and Reports, p. 143. 
 
HORACE MANN— REVIVAL OF EDUCATION. 167 
 
 proper sites, size, arrangements, furniture, heat- 
 ing, lighting, and ventilating. 
 
 The third count in the indictment was the ab- 
 sence of any adequate supervision. The town 
 committees, who were to have the general charge 
 and superintendence of the schools, thereby 
 averting the evils of the district system, in many 
 of the towns had no pay for their services and 
 rendered no service. In a town of forty districts 
 the committee had not examined a teacher nor 
 visited a school for eight successive years ; and 
 the people loved to have it so. Mr. Mann urged 
 the people to use greater care in the selection of 
 committees, and to pay them adequately ; and he 
 instructed the committees in their duties in vis- 
 itation, in examination of teachers, and in selec- 
 tion of text-books. 
 
 While working thus with the people, he was 
 working with no less assiduity and skill to im- 
 prove the internal economy of the schools, both - 
 in matter and method, both in work and in spirit. 
 His Second Report is a most interesting and in- 
 structive treatise upon the teaching of reading, 
 including a sweeping and just arraignment of 
 existing school readers, and suggestions for read- 
 ing matter better adapted to be an instrument of 
 instruction in the art of reading and a means of 
 true literary culture. He urged the advantages 
 
168 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 -- of teaching words before letters^ of written rather 
 than oral spelling. He advocated everywhere 
 "" objective methods of instruction ; the teaching 
 - of ideas before words ; the use of illustrative ap- 
 paratus and experiments. He dwelt at length 
 upon school motives and government, and urged 
 the use of moral measures in place of the indis- 
 criminate and universal use and abuse of cor- 
 poral punishment. He endeavored to broaden 
 the conception of education, and brought more 
 directly before the people than any one had done 
 before the need of physical and moral as well as 
 intellectual training. 
 
 After accepting the office of secretary, he had 
 read and absorbed the treatise of the Edgeworths 
 dealing with education on the practical side, and 
 that of George Combe, which was theoretical. 
 So he presented to the people and secured a hear- 
 ing for all the characteristic features of what has 
 come to be known as the New Education — its 
 spirit and its methods. 
 
 The crowning work of this new era was the 
 establishment of the normal schools. Toward 
 this consummation many men and many influ- 
 ences contributed. The battle had been fought 
 and nearly won before Mr. Mann became an edu- 
 cational leader. Other men labored, and he en- 
 tered into their labors. 
 
HORACE MANX—REVIVAL OP EDUCATION. 169 
 
 The idea of educating teachers for their work - 
 had been in the minds of the founders of the — 
 early schools for girls. William Woodbridge - 
 had aimed especially at this, and from Troy and 
 Ipswich and Mount Holyoke there had gone out "^ 
 hundreds of young women into the little red — 
 schoolhouses among the hills and valleys of New 
 England. But in all these there was no especial 
 recognition of teaching as a profession, nor of ' 
 such special preparation for it as was afforded by 
 the theological schools to young men fitting for 
 the ministry. 
 
 But all the leaders of educational reform in 
 this and other States had included in their plans, 
 as the foundation of all the others, a seminary 
 for the special training of teachers. As early as 
 1827 Mr. Carter came within a single vote of se- — 
 curing an appropriation to aid in founding such *" 
 an institution. Failing in this, he opened a pri- 
 vate school for the purpose, and in 1830 a depart — 
 ment was opened at the Phillips Academy at — 
 Andover, under the charge of Rev. Samuel R. 
 Hall, who had done similar work in Concord, Vt. 
 . Much of the impulse to this movement, and y 
 that which finally carried it to success, was re- 
 ceived from Europe. The reports made by M. 
 Cousin to the French Government, on the school 
 systems of Prussia and Holland, had awakened 
 
J 
 
 170 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 widespread interest in these systems^ and led the 
 friends of progress everywhere to seek in these 
 European systems for remedies for local evils. 
 They saw at once that whatever success these 
 new systems had already achieved was due to 
 the admirable methods for securing competent 
 teachers. 
 
 Seizing upon this idea, and taking for his text 
 thje motto/^ As is the teacher so is the school/' 
 Rev. Charles Brooks, of Hingham, in 1835 began 
 a most vigorous campaign in favor of normal 
 schools in Massachusetts.* In public meetings 
 throughout the State, and before the Legislature, 
 he preached his doctrine. Memorials were se- 
 cured from county conventions and from the 
 American Institute of Instruction, f The first 
 report of the Board of Education asked for 
 normal schools. Governor Everett indorsed the 
 plan in his inaugural. Mr. Mann, in all the 
 counties of the State, lectured on the topic. Spe- 
 cial Preparation a Prerequisite for Teaching.]; 
 ^ While all these men talked, one man acted, 
 y Edmund Dwight, of Boston, a member of the 
 
 * Barnard's Normal Schools, p. 125 ; same in Barnard's Jour- 
 nal of Education, vol. i, p. 587. 
 
 t Ibid., p. 85. 
 
 X Ibid., p. 131 ; same in Mann's Lectures and Reports on 
 Education, Boston, Lee & Shepard, 1872, p. 89. 
 
HORACE^ MANN— REVIVAL OF EDUCATION. 171 
 
 Board of Education, offered to give ten thousand 
 dollars if the Legislature would appropriate an 
 equal sum for the instruction of teachers in nor- 
 mal schools.* Mr. D wight had been a leader in 
 promoting the great manufacturing and railroad 
 enterprises of the day. Brought thus in contact 
 with the laboring classes in different parts of the 
 State, he had come to have a deep interest in the 
 educational problem of the day — the renovation 
 of the common schools. He had read Cousin's 
 report, and, moved by these influences, he had 
 been most influential in the establishment of the 
 Board of Education, and at his own table made 
 the first proposition that Mr. Mann should be 
 secretary of the board. 
 
 The generous offer of Mr. D wight was com- 
 municated to the Legislature by Mr. Mann, and 
 on the 19th of April, 1838, resolves were passed 
 accepting the proposition, and appropriating ten 
 thousand dollars to be expended by the Board 
 of Education in the training of teachers. With 
 these sums at their disposal the board decided 
 to establish three schools for three years. In 
 locating these schools, the board required of the 
 towns that they should furnish buildings and 
 
 * For memoir of Edmund Dwight, see Barnard's Journal of 
 Education, vol. iv, pp. 1-23. 
 13 
 
172 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 fixtures, and pay all expenses except the com- 
 pensation of teachers. 
 
 Plymouth County, where great interest had 
 been created by the labors of Mr. Brooks, made 
 the first proposal and was first accepted ; but be- 
 fore the competition between the towns could be 
 adjusted a school was opened at Lexington, July 
 3, 1839 — the first in America — and one at Barre, 
 September 4th. The Plymouth County school was 
 opened at Bridgewater, September 9, 1840. At 
 the end of the tentative period of three years the 
 schools were so firmly established that the State 
 assumed the entire burden of their continued 
 support. 
 
 It fell thus to the lot of Mr. Mann to be pres- 
 ent at the birth and to watch over the infancy 
 of these schools, and never did feeble nurslings 
 have more sympathetic and more solicitous care. 
 ' He selected the first principals, made out the first 
 plan of organization and instruction, and they 
 stand for all time inseparably associated with his 
 name and work. 
 
 Besides the normal schools, the Board of Edu- 
 cation set in operation another agency for the 
 improvement of teachers, called Teachers^ Insti- 
 tutes. The idea was borrowed from New York, 
 where, under county superintendents, bodies of 
 teachers had come together to study for several 
 
HORACE MANN— REVIVAL OF EDUCATION. 173 
 
 days in succession, under competent instruct — ■ 
 ors, methods of school instruction and disci- 
 pline. 
 
 Mr. Mann had no funds at his disposal to in- 
 augurate such a system. Again Mr. Dwight's 
 generous friendliness came to his aid with an 
 offer of one thousand dollars to enable him to 
 try the experiment. An institute was proposed 
 in Pittsfield. On the morning of the appointed 
 day Mr. Mann and Governor Briggs repaired to 
 the schoolhouse where the meeting was to be 
 held. No preparation had been made. The Gov- 
 ernor borrowed a couple of brooms from a neigh- 
 bor, and he and the secretary swept the room 
 and prepared it for the gathering.* 
 
 Notwithstanding this unpromising beginning, 
 the meetings were so successful that the next 
 Legislature made an appropriation for their 
 maintenance, and no year since has such an ap- 
 propriation been wanting. In the earlier years 
 the money was used to pay the board of the as- 
 sembled teachers, while the instructors gave their 
 services. As the system became popular, the 
 people of the towns welcomed the teachers to 
 their homes. In the long list of institute in- 
 
 * Life of Horace Mann, by his Wife, Boston, Willard Small, 
 1888, p. 242. 
 
174 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 structors, the names of Agassiz, Gnyot, and 
 Lowell Mason stand pre-eminent. 
 
 One other feature of the common-school re- 
 vival is worthy of note. Early in 1837 the Legis- 
 lature authorized the school districts to expend a 
 
 *^ small sum of money for a library.* At first few 
 of the districts availed themselves of the privi- 
 lege, but through the influence of the Board of 
 Education a general interest was awakened. f 
 Books adapted for the purpose were prepared 
 and published with the approval of the board/ 
 and the district library became a most valuable 
 adjunct of the district school. 
 
 At the close of the year 1848 Mr. Mann gave 
 up his work as secretary, having accepted a seat 
 ^ in Congress as the successor of John Quincy 
 Adams. It is fitting here to ask what progress 
 had been made in the evolution of the Massachu- 
 setts public schools during these twelve years of 
 
 ^' Mr. Mann's labors. 
 
 yy^ Statistics tell us that the appropriations for 
 
 public schools had doubled ; that more than two 
 
 million dollars had been spent in providing 
 
 better schoolhouses ; that the wages of men as 
 
 — teachers had increased sixty-two per cent, of 
 
 * Laws of Massachusetts, April 12, 1837. 
 f Second Annual Report of the Massachusetts Board of Edu- 
 cation, pp. 18-20. Third Annual Report, pp. 11-17, 24-32. 
 
" HORACE MANN— REVIVAL OP EDUCATION. 175 
 
 women fifty-one per cent, while the whole num- 
 ber of women employed as teachers had in- ^ 
 creased fifty-four per cent ; one month had been 
 added to the average length of the schools ; the *" 
 ratio of private-school expenditures to those of ^ 
 the public schools had diminished from seventy- v, 
 five per cent to thirty-six per cent ; the compen- 
 sation of school committees had been made com- >- 
 pulsory, and their supervision was more general ^ 
 and more constant ; three normal schools had ^ 
 been established, and had sent out several hun- 
 dred teachers, who were making themselves felt 
 in all parts of the State. 
 
 All these changes, great as they were in them- 
 selves, had their chief significance as indications 
 of a new public spirit. The great work which 
 had been accomplished had been to change the 
 apathy and indifference of the people toward the ^ 
 common schools into appreciation and active 
 interest. This, once secured, was a guarantee of 
 future progress, and with it nothing would be 
 impossible. 
 
 In achieving this result, Horace Mann's pre- 
 eminence is indisputable. Much had been done 
 before his time : some men had come out into the 
 light ; truth had been preached ; converts had 
 been made ; far-seeing men had projected far- 
 reaching schemes. But the great body of the 
 
176 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 people of Massachusetts were as ■aiimoved by all 
 that his predecessors had done as the depths of 
 the ocean are unmoved by the winds that agitate 
 its surface. 
 
 Mr. Mann was not an original thinker along 
 educational lines: he read, observed, absorbed, 
 and then gave out. For fifteen hours a day for 
 pearly twelve years, without a day for recreation, 
 ^ he gave himself to the work of convincing and 
 moving the Massachusetts public. He sowed be- 
 side all waters. ■• 
 
 It is for this reason that popular opinion has 
 come to associate all modern educational reforms 
 with the name of Horace Mann. He is thought 
 to have been the father of normal schools, of 
 high schools, of graded schools, of methods of 
 teaching — the destroyer of the district schools 
 and the academies. By some he is honored as 
 , the morning star of the reformation ; by others 
 he is esteemed an iconoclast and a vandal. He 
 was neither : he was a voice crying in the wilder- 
 ness ; and men did hear, and did heed, and did re- 
 spond. Not readily, nor universally. The story 
 of his labors reads like a chapter in the Acts of 
 ^'the Apostles, so disheartening was the coldness, 
 so varied and persistent the opposition. 
 
 Many of the conventions were small and 
 spiritless. This was especially true in the autumn 
 
HORACE MANN— REVIVAL OF EDUCATION. 177 
 
 of 1840, when political excitement ran high, and 
 the people — even the best of them — went by the 
 doors of his meetings in throngs, to attend log- 
 cabin and hard-cider rallies in distant towns. 
 Not that they had anything against Mr. Mann ; 
 on the contrary, had he been — as in earlier days 
 — an active participant in these political move- 
 ments, they wonld have flocked to hear him. It 
 was this very indifference to the cause which , 
 he had espoused which wounded his sensitive / 
 spirit ; so he writes in his journal, "A miserable, 
 contemptible, deplorable convention ^^ ; * again: 
 ^' Politics is the idol which the people have gone 
 after, and the true gods must go without wor- 
 ship. ... If I were not proof against slights, 
 neglect, and mortification, I should abandon the 
 cause in despair." f 
 
 Nor was active opposition wanting. The J 
 most serious came from the Legislature ; the most 
 contemptible, from the religious press ; the most 
 humiliating to the friends of education, from the 
 schoolmasters. 
 
 The State election of 1839 was signalized by a 
 political overturn, by which the oft-defeated 
 Democratic candidate for Governor, Marcus Mor- 
 ton, was elected by a majority of one vote, and 
 
 * Life of Horace Mann, p. 135. f Ibid., p. 136. 
 
178 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 the Whig ascendency in the Legislature was 
 broken. Governor Morton, in his inaugural ad- 
 dress, without directly attacking the Board of 
 Education, by innuendo opened the way for his 
 followers in the Legislature to a direct assault. 
 He suggested that to those nurseries of pure 
 democracy — the town and district meetings — 
 should be left the control and care of the com- 
 mon schools. A committee on retrenchment, act- 
 ing on this hint, went out of its way to recom- 
 mend the abolition ol the board, declaring that, 
 instead of a State Board, there should be a 
 Board of Education in every school district, and 
 that that board should be composed of the fa- 
 thers of the children. 
 
 The matter went to the Committee on Educa- 
 tion, from which came a majority report recom- 
 mending the repeal of all legislation establishing 
 the Board of Education and the normal schools, 
 and the refunding to Mr. D wight of the money 
 contributed by him. The board was assailed in 
 this report rather for what it might do than for 
 what it had done; for its centralizing tendency 
 — a tendency to acquire controlling influence 
 over the school interests of the State. It was 
 /charged with trying to Prussianize the schools, 
 / and to substitute for the democratic principles 
 of the past the arbitrary methods of European 
 
HORACE MANN— REVIVAL OF EDUCATION. 179 
 
 despotisms — with being an ingenious instrument 
 for crushing out the liberties of the people. The 
 district libraries approved by the board were a 
 menace to the moral and religious interests of 
 the State, because they contained no sectarian 
 books. The normal schools were unnecessary 
 and useless. The academies and high schools 
 could furnish all the teachers that were needed, 
 and they cost the State nothing; any one who 
 had been well instructed could instruct others. 
 
 A minority of the committee, consisting of 
 only two members, presented a counter report, 
 which showed so clearly the illogical and absurd 
 / position of the majority, and defended so ably 
 the Board of Education and its measures, that it 
 secured the approval of the House. The oppo- 
 sition was defeated by the decisive vote of two 
 hundred and fifty-two to one hundred and eighty- 
 two. 
 
 The period occupied by the discussion was 
 perhaps the most anxious time that the friends 
 of educational progress in Massachusetts had 
 ever experienced. And not in Massachusetts 
 alone : in New York and Connecticut reactionary 
 movements had already been successful, and de- 
 feat in Massachusetts would have been a national 
 calamity. 
 
 Mr. Mann's pronounced Unitarianism made 
 
180 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 Mm from the first an object of suspicion to many 
 of the people calling themselves evangelical. 
 The loss of Harvard College to orthodoxy, and 
 the wholesale looting of the old churches which 
 had accompanied the Unitarian schism, led the 
 older denominations to fear that the Board of 
 Education was merely an instrument, contrived 
 under plausible pretexts, to bring the public 
 school interests of the State under Unitarian 
 control, as the college had been brought. They 
 saw in the normal schools, under Mr. Mann's 
 direction, a most insidious means of filling the 
 schools with Unitarian teachers, and in the dis- 
 trict libraries — with their claim to be nonsec- 
 tarian — a device for poisoning at the fountain 
 the minds of the people. So the denominational 
 papers kept up a running fire of criticism, sec- 
 onded all the hostile efforts in the Legislature, 
 and opened their columns to the most malignant 
 personal attacks.* While Mr. Mann hated ortho- 
 doxy as much as the orthodox distrusted him, 
 yet the consciousness of the sincerity and single- 
 ness of purpose in his educational work sus- 
 tained him through all this annoying experience. 
 
 * See Christian Witness, 1844, February 23, March 29, May 
 17, July 26 ; 1845, February 28, April 4, May 16 ; Boston Re- 
 corder, 1847, January 14, February 26, May 6, May 27, June 17, 
 November 17; 1848, February 18, July 28. 
 
HORACE MANN— REVIVAL OF EDUCATION. 181 
 
 The story of this period of revival would not 
 be complete without a notice of the attitude of 
 tlie teachers themselves. 
 
 Mr. Mannas Seventh Report consisted of a de- 
 scription of European schools as he had seen 
 them in a tour of inspection just completed. 
 This report was made the pretext for an attack 
 upon Mr. Mann by the masters of the Boston 
 grammar schools, thirty-one in number, in a 
 pamphlet of one hundred and forty-four pages. 
 
 In this document the masters accuse Mr. Mann 
 of ignorance of education in general and of the 
 Boston schools in particular; of bearing false 
 witness against the schools of Massachusetts, in 
 order to magnify his own work as a reformer ; of 
 hasty conclusions from scanty observation. They 
 minimize the value and the work of the normal 
 schools, and then, selecting three subjects — oral 
 instruction, the teaching of reading, and corporal 
 punishment — proceed at great length to antago- 
 nize the views of Mr. Mann. The whole docu- 
 ment was a confession of weakness and fear, by 
 men who felt the ground slipping from beneath 
 their feet — men who were conscious that if the 
 principles and methods advocated by Mr. Mann 
 should obtain general acceptance, their own days / 
 were numbered; if the world should move in 
 that direction, they must be stranded. 
 
182 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 Mr. Mann replied to this pamphlet ; the mas- 
 ters replied to his reply ; and he returned again to 
 the attack, while a guerrilla warfare of pamphlets 
 was waged by partisans of the principal com- 
 batants.* 
 
 Two events of historic importance are asso- 
 ciated with this controversy. Some thirty or 
 forty men in Boston, anxious to give Mr. Mann 
 a tangible proof of their confidence and apprecia- 
 tion, knowing how near his heart were the nor- 
 j mal schools, offered to give five thousand dol- 
 //lars, if the State would give as much, to provide 
 buildings for these schools, which had occupied 
 only temporary quarters. Charles Sumner gave 
 his personal bond for the amount. The Legis- 
 lature accepted the offer, and the buildings at 
 Bridgewater and Westfield were erected. When, 
 it was found that such buildings as were needed 
 could not be built for the sum at the disposal of 
 the board, Mr. Mann guaranteed the additional 
 amount, and paid six or seven hundred dollars 
 from his own private means. This was but a 
 single instance of pecuniary sacrifice for the good 
 of the cause. 
 
 The other event was the founding of the Mas- 
 
 * For titles of the Mann Controversy pamphlets, see Bar- 
 nard's Journal of Education, vol. v, p. 651. 
 
HORACE MANN— REVIVAL OP EDUCATION. 183 
 
 sachusetts Teachers' Association, in the same 
 year. This was designed to follow np and make 
 general the opposition to Mr. Mann and his meas- 
 ures, begun by the Boston masters. The call for 
 the meeting invited practical teachers, and it was 
 intended by the phrase to exclude Mr. Mann.* 
 The general tone of the first meeting was antago- 
 nistic. A resolution approving the Board of Ed- 
 ucation was tabled. The only supporter of Mr. 
 Mann's views was Mr. Pierce, Principal of the 
 West Newton Normal School. A man from Al- 
 bany was glad to find the convention so sound 
 and so opposed in spirit to the Board of Educa- 
 tion, and he declared that the New York State 
 Association had been founded to counteract sim- 
 ilar heresies, t 
 
 This opposition from within the educational 
 ranks can only be explained on the theory of Dr. 
 Harris, that the profession of teaching tends to 
 make men conservative. The necessities of in- 
 struction compel the teacher to reverence what is 
 known, what is fixed, and to be suspicious of the 
 untried. Occupied in restraining the eccentrici- 
 
 * Life of Horace Mann, by his Wife, pp. 244, 245. 
 
 f At the next meeting a resolution was adopted disclaiming 
 any intention to antagonize the Board of Education. Benja- 
 min Greenleaf declared that the association meant " peace on 
 earth and good will to Mann." 
 
184 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 ties and vagaries of childhood, his first instinct 
 is to oppose the new as visionary and fantastic. 
 
 Charitable as this philosophy is, this opposi- 
 tion of teachers — this wounding of the cause of 
 education in the house of its friends — was most 
 harassing and discouraging to Mr. Mann. Time 
 which he might have spent in furthering the 
 cause, or in needed rest and recreation, was used 
 in repelling enemies or in quieting the apprehen- 
 sion of friends. 
 
 When we set ourselves to measure the work 
 of Mr. Mann, all this must be taken into account. 
 He fought the battle of educational reform in 
 Massachusetts through to the end and conquered. 
 Apathetic indifference, hide-bound conservatism, 
 niggardly parsimony, sectarian bigotry, and 
 political animosity surged around him as the 
 enemies of France surged around the white 
 plume of Henry of Navarre ; but he left the field 
 so clear, that since his day none of these reaction- 
 ary forces, singly or combined, have made any 
 successful opposition to the ongoing movements 
 of the cause of popular education. 
 
 To the vigor, the skill, the self-sacrificing 
 ardor, and the conscientious rectitude with which 
 he conducted the offensive and defensive cam- 
 paigns of his official life, is due the fact that 
 Massachusetts has suffered none of those educa- 
 
HORACE MANN— REVIVAL OF EDUCATION. 185 
 
 tional reverses which, have befallen most of the 
 other States. The school children of Massachu- 
 setts made no mistake when they placed in front 
 of the Capitol of the State a statne of Horace 
 Mann as of their benefactor and their ideal. 
 
 I 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 All evolutions are conditioned by two forces. 
 / Each, organism takes on new forms nnder the 
 pressure of changing environment, while heredity 
 holds it true to its type through all its modifica- 
 tions. The Massachusetts school system affords 
 a striking illustration of this broadest general- 
 ization of modern science. 
 
 There have been three historical epochs, each 
 characterized by a special form of the school sys- 
 tem: First, tbe town period , with the dame school, 
 the reading and writing school, and the grammar 
 school ; then the period of d§ gentralizat ion, with 
 \ the district school and the academy ; and, lastly, 
 the modern period, most strongly centralized, 
 characterized by the graded schools. 
 
 As we followed the movement of population 
 away from the original seats, spreading itself 
 more and more into the wilderness as it followed 
 the retreating wave of Indian depredation, occu- 
 pying isolated choice bits of arable land, and 
 
 c 
 
 186 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 187 
 
 utilizing streams for the mill and the forge, so 
 now we have to note a process exactly the re- 
 verse : the movement from the extreme of segre- 
 gation to the extreme of aggregation — a move- 
 ment which has brought back the people into 
 populous centers, changed the farm to forest, left 
 along the country roads a few old apple trees or 
 a clump of lilacs, an ancient dam or a broken 
 flume, to verify tradition that here was once a 
 house and there a mill. 
 
 While the revival of education was in prog- 
 ress under Mr. Mann and his predecessors, other 
 changes were going on — industrial and social 
 changes ; and these, rather than the theories of 
 educationists, are responsible for the modern 
 school system. 
 
 In 1820, when Mr. Carter began his agitation 
 for reform, Massachusetts was an agricultural 
 State. In 1850 it had become a manufacturing 
 State. In 1820 its population was native-born 
 and homogeneous. In 1850 there were two hun- 
 dred thousand foreigners — one fifth of the whole 
 population, and these so diffused as to be found 
 in every town in the State but one.* 
 
 During those thirty years eighty-eight towns 
 
 * A Statistical View of the Population of Massachusetts from 
 1765-1840, by Jesse Chickering, Boston, Little & Brown, 1846. 
 14 
 
188 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. \, 
 
 gained one hundred and fifty-three per cent in 
 population, while the other two hundred and 
 thirteen towns gained only thirty-seven per cent. 
 Of the total gain in population, these eighty- 
 eight towns had made seventy-seven per cent. 
 
 In 1820 there were no cities and no railroads. 
 In 1850 there were seven cities, arid all the main 
 railroad lines were in successful operation. 
 
 When Francis Cabot Lowell, in 1815, at Wal- 
 tham, for the first time in history brought to- 
 gether all the processes of cotton manufacture, 
 and so established the modern factory system, he 
 set in operation forces whose outcome he could 
 not have conceived, and we have only begun to 
 recognize and measure. 
 
 Aggregations of population there had been 
 before, but they had always been commercial in 
 their origin and purpose, and limited in number 
 by the possibilities of profitable exchange. The 
 power loom, with its newly invented accessories, 
 utilized by capital in the factory, made aggrega- 
 tions of people possible wherever streams gath- 
 ered force over falls and rapids in their passage 
 to the sea. Every factory village became a cen- 
 ter of a new life. With the mills came stores, 
 banks, new churches, new social organizations, 
 more ready money, more willingness to spend it, 
 a wider separation of social classes, more desire 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 189^^-^ 
 
 for novelty and change. Life became faster ; it 
 made greater demands, developed new powers, 
 offered new problems, and these not material 
 only, but political, social, and religions — problems 
 which to-day put Christianity to a severer test 
 than it has encountered before in the nineteen 
 hundred years of its history. 
 
 Invention stimulated invention, new processes 
 multiplied, and new products. New supplies cre- 
 ated new demands. Things once luxuries became 
 necessities. The railroads, increasing, widened 
 the circle of intercourse and exchange, and 
 made every populous center in a measure cosmo- 
 politan. 
 
 The factory system, moreover, first checked ^^/""^ 
 the tide of emigration which had for a generation ^^ 
 been setting westward, and it developed immi- C-^ 
 gration, first of the Irish, then of the French 
 Canadians, then of all nationalities and races. 
 Nor were these influences long confined to the 
 cotton-manufacturing centers, but rapidly ex- 
 tended to other industries, until they had in- 
 cluded the manufactures of wool, of paper, of rub- 
 ber, of metals, and, last, of leather, and until, in 
 one third of the cities and towns of the State, are 
 aggregated nine tenths of the population of the 
 State. 
 
 Turning now to the educational side, it is easy 
 
I 190 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 / to see that so radical a change in environment 
 
 1/ must have been followed by no less radical 
 
 changes in the educational system, and to it we 
 
 must look for explanation of the changes which 
 
 we know have occurred. 
 
 1 The graded school, with its supplement, the 
 free high school, the decay of the academies, the 
 decline and fall of the district system, evening 
 schools, scientific and technical schools, parochial 
 schools, supervision by specialists, the improve- 
 Jy' ment of school architecture, compulsory-attend- 
 V\/ ance laws, truant laws and truant schools — all 
 these are directly due to the change from rural 
 to urban life, consequent upon modern mechan- 
 ical inventions and their utilization under the 
 . factory system. It is an interesting fact that 
 
 Cthe incorporation of the manufacturing town of 
 Lowell occurred in the same year with the resto- 
 ration of the town school system. It will be our 
 work in this lecture to study these recent changes 
 — their order and their relation. 
 
 Foreshadowings of grading may be discovered 
 early in the history. The exclusion of " A-B-C- 
 darians '' from the Roxbury Latin School in 1668 
 was a formal recognition of the principle of the 
 division of labor in teaching, and in general chil- 
 dren were not expected to attend the master^s 
 school until they could read ; as the school-rules 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 191 
 
 of Newburyport said, ^^Read tolerably well, by 
 spelling words of four syllables/^ 
 
 Before the Revolution it had been common 
 for the towns to support the dame schools. The 
 new law of 1789 expressly authorized such sup- 
 port, and in Newburyport and Boston, as we 
 
 ^^ have seen, primary schools acquired a permanent 
 place in the school system. But, generally, 
 
 i throughout the State the district schools con- 
 tained children of all ages. With the growth of 
 
 i factory villages and railroad centers many of 
 these mixed schools outgrew the possibility of 
 successful discipline and instruction. 
 
 Mr. Mann, in his second report, urged the 
 separation of the younger from the older pupils, 
 and in subsequent reports noted with pleasure 
 individual instances where his suggestions had 
 been followed. But so slow was the process that 
 twelve years later his successor, Mr. Sears, de- \^ 
 voted almost the whole of his report to the sub- 
 ject of grading. 
 
 About 1850, as schools increased in size, here 
 yand there a further subdivision was made, and a / 
 
 7 third or intermediate school placed between the 
 primary and the master's school. The masters' 
 schools had by this time come to be called gram- 
 mar schools, the term having an entirely differ- 
 ent signification from that in the early history. 
 
192 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 About this time Cambridge made five grades 
 — alphabet, primary, middle, grammar, and high 
 — a more minute subdivision than existed any- 
 where else. 
 
 The organization which is now universal in 
 the larger schools was first made in Boston in 
 Ififiiy, ^ Before that the Boston system had been 
 unique.* The grammar schools were double- 
 headed affairs, divided into a writing department 
 and a reading department, each with a master 
 and an assistant, the two masters having original 
 and concurrent jurisdiction over the pupils. In 
 the writing schools, arithmetic and penmanship 
 were taught to all, while algebra, geometry, and 
 bookkeeping were optional. In the reading 
 schools, reading and spelling, with definitions, 
 grammar, and geography, were required studies, 
 with history, astronomy, and natural philosophy 
 optional. The pupils spent the morning in one 
 school and the afternoon in the other. This 
 alternation was often " from grave to gay, from 
 lively to severe.'^ 
 
 In 1845 there was a written examination of 
 the highest classes — the first official written ex- 
 
 * For an extended and interesting description of the schools 
 of Boston in 1823, see the Prize Book of the Public Latin School 
 in Boston, 1823, No. IV, pp. 9-12. 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 193 
 
 amination.* This revealed such wide differences 
 and such defects in the instruction as to call for 
 radical reform. The reform took shape in a new 
 organization, with a single head and with sepa- ■ 
 rate classrooms, each under an assistant teacher. 
 While the number of pupils under the old sys- 
 tem was limited to the capacity of the single 
 room which contained the whole school, under 
 
 ' the new organization there was practically no 
 limit, for buildings could be made with any re- 
 quired number of rooms. The system seemed to 
 be so well adapted to the demands of the grow- 
 ing towns and cities that it was soon widely 
 copied, and for the last thirty years has been 
 general. 
 
 Ten years later Boston carried the system 
 to completion by applying it to the primary 
 schools ; t and this plan, too, has been foUbwed 
 quite generally in the more populous communi- 
 ties. 
 
 The evolution of the graded school is so re- 
 cent that all its stages can be observed in exist- 
 
 / ing specimens : there are no missing links. We 
 have in this State to-day the ungraded rural 
 
 *See Reports of the Annual Visiting Committees of the 
 Public Schools of Boston, 1845. 
 
 t Annual Report of the School Committee of Boston, 1863, 
 pp. 8-21. 
 
] 
 
 194 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 schools, containing pupils from four to seventeen 
 years of age. We have the old division into 
 primary and grammar schools in the rural vil- 
 lages. In the small manufacturing towns we 
 have the threefold division — the primary, the in- 
 termediate, and the grammar schools ; and in 
 the cities and large towns the fully developed 
 system, with separate classrooms for each grade. 
 Several of these types may and do exist in dif- 
 ferent portions of the same town. 
 
 Of the graded school as an educational instru- 
 j . ment I shall speak in another connection. 
 L^ ^ / But this fact can not be too strongly emplia- 
 J) I sized, that the system as it exists is an effort to 
 adapt the educational instrument to the environ- 
 ■ ment — that it has taken shape under the pressure 
 \ of the times. As evolutions, no more than revo- 
 lutions, go backward, so whatever weakness the 
 present system may possess, the remedy will not 
 be found in looking backward, but in advancing 
 along the lines already laid down. 
 
 The district- school ideal has in it nothing for 
 J the present or the future. We have outgrown 
 that as we have outgrown the stagecoach and 
 the warmingpan. 
 
 The period under consideration is character- 
 ized not only by the graded elementary school, 
 but by the free high school. We have already 
 
 I 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 195 
 
 noticed the provisions for secondary instruction. 
 Before the Revolution all towns of one hundred 
 families must maintain the grammar school, 
 with a master competent to fit boys for the uni- 
 versity. After the Revolution the number of 
 families was raised to two hundred, and the 
 grammar master must be well instructed in 
 Latin and Greek. We have seen this noble pro- 
 vision for higher education at public expense 
 almost universally ignored under the blighting 
 influence of the district system, and in its place a 
 system of private schools and academies built 
 up, favoring the rich and burdening the ambi- 
 tious poor — affording their benefits to only one 
 sixth of the children of the State. 
 
 Massachusetts people are a law-respecting 
 people, and the ghost of this dead law seems to 
 have haunted and troubled them, so that_in_lS24^-^ 
 when things were darkest, they changed the law 
 so that, in place of the master well instructed in 
 Latin and Greek, the towns might employ a 
 teacher competent to instruct in the three RX 
 and in geography, grammar, and good behavior. 
 So they laid the ghost of the dead law, and the 
 very thing which the early legislators sought to 
 guard against came very near happening: that 
 learning should be buried in the graves of the 
 fathers. What a fall was there ! Only twenty- 
 
196 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 two towns were left under the obligation to 
 support a liberally educated schoolmaster. In 
 the face of the example of such legislation the 
 phrase " good behavior/' must have had a very 
 narrow interpretation. 
 
 In the midst of this darkness the example of 
 Boston became again an inspiration and a guid- 
 ing light. In 1821 Boston established the first 
 free English high school in America.* The gen- 
 eral reaction from classical study had limited the 
 usefulness of the ancient Latin School, and no 
 public institution existed where the sons of 
 merchants and small tradesmen and mechanics 
 could receive an advanced English education. 
 
 To meet the need, a new school was estab- 
 lished for boys, under the instruction of George 
 B. Emerson. It was called the English classical 
 school. How it came to be called high school is 
 not clear. It is not known that the name had 
 then been applied to any school in the country. 
 There is no record of any formal change of name, 
 but in 1824, in the records of the school com- 
 mittee, the secretary. Rev. John Pierpont, calls 
 it the English High School, and so it has con- 
 tinued to be called. 
 
 * For a succinct account, by Hon. John D. Philbrick, of the 
 origin and plan of this school, see Annual Report of School 
 Committee of Boston, 1863, p. 153. 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 197/ 
 
 Tlie next year, 1825, a high school for girls 
 was established, and in the same year a moni- 
 torial high school in New York, and from that 
 time the name has been common. But it is a 
 singular fact that the term was not used in the 
 Massachusetts Statutes to designate the town 
 school until the Public Statutes of 1882. 
 
 Following the example of Boston, the friends J 
 of education outside secured from the Legisla- / 
 ture, in 1826,* a law establishing the modern high jT^ 
 school as a part of the public-school system. It \y^ 
 provided that in towns having five hundred f am- . 
 ilies there should be a master to instruct in> 
 United States history, bookkeeping by single 
 entry, geometry, surveying, algebra; and in 
 towns having four thousand inhabitants, a mas- 
 ter competent to instruct in Latin and Greek, 
 history, rhetoric, and logic. The schools were to 
 be kept for the benefit of all the inhabitants, and 
 for ten months in the year. 
 
 These schools were to furnish an education as /"' 
 
 .;/7 
 
 leges. The new law met with opposition fror 
 two sources : from the academies and the privat^ 
 schools, and from the scattered inhabitants of 
 
 * Laws of Massachusetts, March 4, 1826. 
 
 broad as Harvard College had given a quarter of /'*" 
 a century before. They became the people's col- 
 
 [it4 
 
V 
 
 198 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 the agricultural towns. The two interests com- 
 bined succeeded in procuring a repeal of so much 
 of the law as bore upon towns of five hundred 
 families, and they were left with the obligation 
 to maintain only the district schools. 
 
 But a new spirit was moving in the com- 
 munity; the revival of education was in prog- 
 ress, and in the revision of the statutes in 1836 
 the law was re-established in its original form. 
 Notwithstanding these facts, in 1840 the opposi- 
 tion succeeded in having the obligation again 
 withdrawn, on condition that the towns raise 
 twenty-five per cent more than ever before for 
 their district schools, and this remained in force 
 till 1848, when the law of 1836 was revived. 
 How much it was needed, may be gathered from 
 Mr. Mannas first report (1838), in which he tells 
 us that, of forty-three towns under obligation to 
 maintain the town school, fourteen were doing 
 so ; the other twenty-nine, among the wealthiest 
 towns, containing more than one third of the 
 whole population of the State outside of Boston, 
 were paying less per scholar than the smaller and 
 poorer towns, while they were supporting private 
 schools for the few at a large expense. 
 
 So potent was the influence of Mr. Mann, and 
 
 so contagious was the spirit of reform, that in 
 
 i fourteen years fifty high schools were estab- 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 lished. From 1860 to 1875 ninety more were es- 
 tablished. Towns whose population was below 
 the legal requirement voluntarily established 
 high schools, until now, while the compulsory 
 enactment affects but one hundred and sixty- 
 four towns, two hundred and twenty-three are 
 actually maintaining them. These two hundred 
 and twenty-three towns contain more than nine 
 tenths of the school children of the State. And 
 the opportunities of the system are made univer- j 
 sal by a recent law allowing children living in j 
 towns not having high schools to be educated in/ 
 high schools in other towns at public expenseJ 
 with the consent of the local school committee.* 
 
 Meantime the standard of these schools has 
 been raised by broadening the course of study. 
 Latin and general history have been brought/, 
 down to the lower school, while the natural 
 sciences, civics, and modern languages have been 
 added. 
 
 The modern high school in its origin was an- 
 other step in the process of specialization, and 
 only completed the ideal graded-school system. 
 In the district schools most of the more advanced 
 English branches were occasionally studied by 
 occasional students. In some schools a few of 
 
 * Acts of 1891, chap. 363. 
 
200 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 the more intelligent boys and girls made a real 
 advance in mathematics and science ; in many 
 more schools ambitious boys and girls with am- 
 bitious teachers — usually college undergraduates 
 — pushed themselves into algebra and geometry 
 and natural philosophy before they could read 
 intelligently or perform creditably the simpler 
 operations in arithmetic. 
 
 To differentiate the functions of the district 
 school became as necessary on the upper as on 
 the lower side, and the high school gave the 
 same relief from congestion by taking out the 
 adult pupils that the primary schools did by tak- 
 ing out the younger. The high school became 
 thus the natural and fitting crown of the public- 
 school system. 
 
 It was inevitable that the high school should, 
 from the outset, come into competition with the 
 ancient academy and the private school. As 
 with all organisms deriving their sustenance 
 from the same source and seeking to maintain 
 themselves in the same environment, there be- 
 gan a struggle for existence. The academies 
 gradually weakened ; most of them dragged out 
 a lingering existence for a longer or shorter time, 
 and finally gave up the struggle. A few of the 
 stronger ones, becoming sharply specialized as 
 fitting schools and feeders of denominational col- 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 201 / 
 
 leges, remain, but their ancient occupation is 
 gone. They no longer take the boys and girls I 
 fresh from rural homes and district schools, with! 
 awkward manners and homespun clothes, and givel --^ 
 them glimpses of the broader world of men ana / 
 books — a world else all unknown. IsTow, many! ; 1 
 of their students come from homes of wealth — 1 
 most often new-made wealth. They come from — 
 parents who love not learning more, but exclu- ^ 
 siveness. 
 
 In contrasting the high schools with the acad- --- 
 emies, if we accept the doctrine of the survival 
 of the fittest, we must allow that that which has 
 .survived is the fittest — is best adapted to the- 
 modern environment. No other institution could 
 have diffused so widely the light of modern sci- — 
 ence, could have scattered so widely the fruit of ^ 
 modern discoveries, could have supplied so widely 
 that general intelligence which is the basis of 
 modern intellectual life, could have created so 
 wide and intelligent a demand for the products of 
 modern literary effort, or developed an appetite 
 so universal for the modern periodical. 
 
 Another consideration is of the greatest im- 
 portance. The free high school introduced no / 
 new principle into Massachusetts history. What- 
 ever laissez faire political economists may say 
 as to the proper limits of the taxing power for 
 
302 Massachusetts public-school system. 
 
 educational purposes, granting to it the right to 
 provide only the rudiments, the doctriiie derives 
 no sanction from Massachusetts law or practice. 
 The earliest law opened a path to the door of 
 the university to all who chose to walk therein 
 freely, and while at times the scope of the law 
 has been narrowed, the principle has never been 
 in abeyance for a day; and although men in 
 high places have sought to undermine and dis- 
 credit its operation, the popular instincts have 
 been true to the convictions of the fathers. The 
 Boston Latin School stands to-day a monument 
 to the historic continuity of the principle em- 
 bodied in the law of 1647. 
 
 Mr. Mann early discovered that the most 
 /Serious obstacle in the way of all reform meas- 
 ures was the district system. Did he urge the 
 necessity of improving the quality of the teachers 
 — quoting the Prussian axiom, " As. is the teacher, 
 so is the school" — there stood the prudential 
 committeeman with a group of family connec- 
 tions, his own or his supporters', for whom he 
 must provide a livelihood in the school. Did he 
 plead for better schoolhouses — there stood the 
 "deestrick," intrenched behind statutory rights 
 and immemorial usage, parsimonious, independ-* 
 ent, defiant. Already the social and industrial 
 changes had affected many of these districts un- 
 
 I 
 
/ 
 
 / J 
 
 THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM./ 20^ 
 
 favorably. The exodus to the West in tiieearly 
 part of the century, and the later movements 
 toward the centers of manufactures and trade, 
 had drawn away from the rural districts the 
 flower of the young men, naturally the most en- 
 terprising and progressive — men with their faces 
 toward the rising sun; men who in their new 
 homes were throwing themselves into the for- 
 ward movements of the century. 
 
 The population left behind was of the more 
 conservative sort: old men, whose families had 
 all been educated, and who had therefore out- 
 lived the services of the schools but not the ob- 
 ligation to be taxed for them, and who had little 
 respect for new-fangled notions, especially if they 
 increased the taxes. 
 
 Many of these men were wealthy farmers, who 
 had a considerable following of men more or less 
 dependent on them for the means of support. In 
 towns wholly agricultural, the new measures, 
 therefore, met with little favor. In towns con- 
 taining a village center, growing populous under 
 the new order of things, a struggle began be- 
 tween the village and the outskirts, often pro- 
 tracted for years. The movement for the town 
 liigh school was in most cases an occasion for an 
 annual tug of war. 
 
 It early became evident that no substantial 
 
 15 
 
A\ 
 
 204 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 and general progress could be made so long as 
 the district system existed. Batteries were early- 
 erected against it, and the Board of Education, 
 through its secretaries, kept up a continuous fire 
 of argument, entreaty, fact, philosophy, statistics, 
 testimony — and all this for more than forty 
 years. It is one of the most memorable sieges in 
 history. It illustrates in a remarkable way the 
 methods by which reforms have to be brought 
 about under a popular government. How provok- 
 ingly tedious is the process! how chafing and 
 galling to the spirit of ardent men — men who 
 know they are right, but must wait to convert a 
 generation ! 
 
 It illustrates, too, how impossible it is, under 
 our government, to secure reforms by law. Four 
 attempts were made to overthrow the district 
 system by force, and three of them failed. The 
 fourth succeeded, because there was scarcely any- 
 thing then left to overthrow. 
 
 In 1853 * the school committees were empow- 
 ered to discontinue districts, unless the town 
 voted triennially to continue them. This law 
 was soon repealed, f 
 
 In 1859,t at the spring session of the Legisla- 
 
 \ * Acts of 1853, chap. 153. t ^cts of 1859, chap. 253. 
 
 ^ ' t Acts of 1857, chap. 254. 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 205 
 
 ture, the district system was summarily aBbl- 
 islied. At a special session in the autumn the 
 act of abolition was repealed.* Ten years later, 
 in 1869,t the system was again abolished. The 
 bill for this passed the Senate unanimously, and 
 with only nine negative votes in the House. The 
 next year, on petition of a few towns, the law 
 was practically repealed by allowing any town 
 by a two-thirds vote to re-establish the system. J 
 In 1882 * the system was again abolished, and to 
 
 I this time it has remained abolished. 
 
 r The work to be done throughout this long 
 conflict was to reinstate the town in its original 
 authority. The first step was to strengthen the 
 position of the town school committee ; to induce 
 the towns to withdraw from the prudential com- 
 mittee the selection of teachers. Incidental to 
 this, the office of town committee must be made 
 more honorable. So provision was made by law 
 for paying the committee for their services ; at 
 first (1838) a dollar a day, then (1875) two dollars 
 a day, then two dollars and a half. They were 
 required (1838) to make an annual report ; later 
 (1859), to make this report in print; and, to 
 
 * By General Statutes, chap. 182. 
 t Acts of 1869, chaps. 110, 423. 
 X Acts of 1870, chap. 196. 
 « Acts of 1882, chap. 219. 
 
206 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 strengthen them still more, there was given to 
 them (1844) the absolute power of summary dis- 
 missal of teachers. This provision of our school 
 law, much criticised of late, originated as a shield 
 to protect the school from the baleful influence 
 of the prudential-committee system. 
 
 The battle against the district system raged 
 in every town. Against the traditional system 
 the arguments were facts: the instability and 
 incompetence of the teaching force — new and 
 unskilled teachers succeeding each other with 
 kaleidoscopic rapidity — and the inequality of 
 school privileges growing more marked with 
 every increase of population in the central dis- 
 tricts. 
 
 On the other side was an intense feeling of 
 jealousy of those central districts — an absurd con- 
 ception of the school district as the palladium of 
 popular liberty, to be defended to the last. The 
 town system was an entering wedge to central- 
 ization and despotism, and backwoods orators in 
 town meeting eloquently appealed to the memory 
 of Patrick Henry and the heroes of Lexington 
 and Bunker Hill. But public sentiment in Mas- 
 sachusetts usually comes round, give it time 
 enough, and one by one the towns threw off the 
 incubus and regained their original sovereignty, 
 so that when, in 1882, the final act of abolition 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 207 
 
 passed the Legislature only forty-five towns were 
 affected by it. Hj 
 
 The popular awakening which gave character _ 
 to the modern period has manifested itself no- 
 where so conspicuously as in the buildings which 
 it has furnished for its schools. Good school- 
 houses do not necessarily imply good schools, 
 but they do imply public interest, and are the 
 fullest exponent of it. 
 
 The condition of the schoolhouses when Mr. 
 Mann began his labors is best described in his 
 own words : * ^' Respecting the three thousand 
 schoolhouses, I am convinced that there is no 
 other class of buildings within our limits, erected 
 either for the permanent or temporary residence 
 of our native population, so inconvenient, so un- 
 comfortable, so dangerous to health by their 
 construction within, or so unsightly and repul- 
 sive in their appearance without. . . . Deserted 
 by all public care, and abandoned to cheerless- 
 ness and dilapidation.^' The estimated entire 
 value of the whole was but little more than half 
 a million dollars — an average value of only two 
 hundred dollars. 
 
 Following the publication of Mr. Mann's re- 
 
 * Third Annual Report of the Massachusetts Board of Edu- 
 cation, p. 39. 
 
208 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 port on schoolhouses, in 1838, improvement be- 
 gan immediately; within two years more new 
 houses had been bnilt than in the ten years be- 
 fore. In five years $650,000 had been spent in 
 erecting new houses and repairing old ones. In 
 1855 the value of school property had risen to 
 $5,000,000, and the average value of schoolhouses 
 had increased more than sixfold. In 1870 the 
 value had risen to $13,500,000, and in 1891 to $28,- 
 461,645. The sum expended in 1891 for new 
 buildings and repairs was $2,646,865, There are 
 to-day single schoolhouses which have cost more 
 than the value of the whole three thousand 
 buildings in 1837. All the changes in organiza- 
 tion, which we have described, have combined 
 to produce this marvelous material expansion. 
 The massing of scholars in graded schools called 
 for new and larger structures, and the necessities 
 of dense population demanded that these should 
 be substantial, safe, and durable. 
 
 As the free high school became more firmly 
 established in the public system, it naturally 
 claimed a home somewhat in keeping with its 
 pre-eminence; so, year by year, in cities and 
 country towns, there have been erected high- 
 school houses, many of them " beautiful for situ- 
 ation,"" some of them palatial — triumphs of the 
 builder's art, ministering to a worthy local pride. 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 209/ 
 
 testifying to the people^s estimate of education, 
 and by this testimony profoundly influencing the 
 generation which is trained in them. 
 
 This influence has by no means been confined 
 to the cities. The abolition of the district system 
 was everywhere followed by a rehabilitation of 
 the school property. The "little red school- 
 houses/' which tradition has glorified, had been 
 generally worthless. Chatham sold four, at an 
 average of $41.34. In another town four were 
 sold at $100. Many sold for from $5 to $10. In 
 one town, for a series of years, all the money 
 annually appropriated for repairs on its eight 
 schoolhouses was $5 — an average of 627^ cents 
 each. 
 
 No sooner had the towns taken the school- 
 houses, than the same people who in the district 
 meetings had resolutely opposed any improve- 
 ment came forward and demanded new houses 
 in their district. Each new one made others 
 necessary, until in scores of towns all the schools 
 found themselves in new and comfortable quar- 
 ters. Within recent years school sanitation, fol- 
 lowing European lead, has developed into a 
 science, and modern buildings are gradually be- 
 coming as safe for the bodies of the pupils as 
 they are well adapted to the training of the in* 
 tellect. 
 
210 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 The modern period is further characterized 
 by its compulsory legislation to promote school 
 attendance. The idea of compulsion was not 
 new in Massachusetts educational history. The 
 earliest legislation, as we have seen, placed the 
 parent under legal obligatio:|3L to bring up his 
 children to learning and labor, and it placed the 
 local officers also under obligation to enforce the 
 law. Later, it laid its hand on the towns them- 
 selves, and bound them, under heavy penalties, 
 to provide schools, as means by which the parent 
 could obey the law. 
 
 So for two hundred years the idea of com- 
 pulsion had wrought itself into the tissue and 
 fiber of Massachusetts thought, strengthened and 
 defended all along by the action of the judicial 
 authorities, holding the towns and parents and 
 committees up to their duty. Slowly, however, 
 in later days, public sentiment had been weaken- 
 ing. The scanty schooling which the poorer dis- 
 tricts furnished was more than many of the 
 people cared for. Hence much neglect had come 
 about. Even with the better class, school at- 
 tendance had been subordinate to domestic con- 
 venience or the supposed necessities of the farm 
 and the shop. 
 
 The concentration of population in the manu- 
 facturing and railroad centers aggravated the 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 211 
 
 evil. There was less home work for children, 
 less opportunity for parental oversight, stronger 
 street temptations. So absenteeism and truancy 
 increased. Under the graded system, absence and 
 tardiness were more serious evils than under the 
 more free and easy regimen of the district school. 
 This the parents were slow to comprehend; in- 
 deed, in the country districts they do not yet 
 comprehend it. 
 
 Superadded to these influences came foreign 
 immigration. Thousands of children were 
 brought into the States from England, Ireland, 
 and Scotland, where elementary education was at 
 its lowest ebb — children who had never seen the 
 inside of a schoolroom. 
 
 Such was the state of affairs when the Board 
 of Education was established. By the earliest 
 returns it was estimated that, short as the sum- 
 mer schools were, only one half the children 
 of school age were in attendance, and in the 
 winter schools only three fifths.* One of the 
 first acts of the board was to secure the use of 
 registers of attendance, that the actual attend- 
 ance might be known. The facts corroborated 
 the earlier estimates. 
 
 * First Annual Report of the Massachusetts Board of Edu- 
 cation, p. 87. 
 
212 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 fith. all his admiration for the new European 
 systems, Mr. Mann had been unwilling to adopt 
 their compulsory features. He deemed them un- 
 American, and preferred to think that, by the 
 slow process of enlightenment and steady influ- 
 ence, public sentiment might be brought up to 
 the ideal standard. After ten years of effort, 
 however, he was compelled to acknowledge that 
 the progress was too slow ; that it would require 
 half a century to get the children into school. 
 
 Before the close of his service he came to 
 advise compulsion. A few years later the Board 
 of Education urged the Legislature to come to its 
 aid, and in 1852* the first compulsory school at- 
 tendance Taw in the Union was enacted. It re- 
 quired the parent to send his children between 
 eight and fourteen to school at least twelve 
 weeks in each year, unless he was too poor, or 
 unless the child was otherwise provided with the 
 means of education for a like period. The school 
 committee were to inform the town of violations, 
 and the town treasurer was to prosecute. The 
 exemptions and the provisions for enforcement 
 practically nullified the law. 
 
 But it was something to have the principle 
 recognized. At intervals the law has been broad- 
 
 * May 18, 1852. 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 213 
 
 ened and strengthened.* The twelve weeks were 
 changed to twenty weeks, and recently to thirty 
 weeks. The poverty of the parents is no longer 
 a valid excuse for keeping the children from 
 school ; and if the parent chooses a private school, 
 it must be one approved by the school com- 
 mittee, and they can only approve it when the 
 instruction is as broad and as thorough as in the 
 public schools, and. is in the English language. 
 Special officers, too, have been appointed, to see 
 that the law is enforced. 
 
 It is important to notice the relation of the 
 modern statutes to the earliest ones. We dis- 
 cover that the new laws do no violence to the 
 traditional spirit or policy of our people. The 
 parents have always been under compulsion to 
 educate their children up to the limit set by the 
 State. They have always been free to choose such 
 means to this end as they prefer. When, in the 
 early days of Winchendon, all the men in town 
 who could read by turn taught the children, it 
 was in obedience to the earliest law and in the 
 exercise of individual freedom. 'Home instruc- 
 tion and private schools have always been legal, 
 and are no less so to-day. The new laws are not 
 
 * Acts of 1873, chap. 279; 1874, chap. 233; 1876, chap. 52; 
 1878, chap. 171 ; 1889, chap. 464. 
 
vO 
 
 214 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 importations from European despotisms, but the 
 rehabilitation of an ancient statute. Like the 
 old ones, they have been made by the people 
 themselves, and changed only to meet the exigen- 
 cies of a new environment. The selectmen and 
 ministers can no longer keep a vigilant eye over 
 their neighbors, to see that the children are be- 
 ing educated. The school census and the school 
 register are to do this work. Nonattendance at 
 the public school is now made prima facie evi- 
 dence of parental neglect. If the parent can show 
 that he is doing his duty by his child in some 
 other way equally good, the law has no penalty 
 for him. 
 
 The introduction of the factory system was a 
 new source of danger to the educational interests 
 of the State. "With the beginning of the new 
 manufacturing era in Great Britain, in the last 
 quarter of the last century, child labor assumed 
 new importance, and as factories multiplied they 
 became insatiable Molochs, where children of the 
 tenderest ages were sacrificed to the greed of 
 mill owners and the necessities of parents. The 
 manufacturing towns of Great Britain became 
 characterized by squalor and wretchedness, ig- 
 norance, and brutality. 
 
 Early in this century public attention in Eng- 
 land was called to the evils of child labor. Par- 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 215 
 
 liamentary commissions were appointed to inves- 
 tigate, first, child labor in factories,* then in 
 mines, f and then in agricultural communities 
 (1867, 1868). The revelations made by these com- 
 missions were startling and sickening. Man's 
 inhumanity to man has rarely been painted in 
 stronger colors. Mrs. Browning's Cry of the 
 Children voiced the universal sympathy : 
 
 " Do ye hear the children weeping, my brothers, 
 Ere the sorrow comes with years ? 
 They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, 
 And that can not stop their tears." 
 
 Some humane legislation followed these dis- 
 closures, fixing a minimum age at which chil- 
 dren might be employed, and limiting the hours 
 of labor. 
 
 The men who introduced the factory system 
 into Massachusetts — Lowell, Appleton, and their 
 associates— took special care to guard against 
 the British factory conditions by which the op- 
 eratives were degraded and brutalized. To their 
 wise and Christian foresight we owe it that 
 Lowell and Lawrence did not become copies of 
 Manchester and Paisley and Glasgow. Still 
 
 * See Reports of Factories Inquiries Commission, London, 
 1833, 1834. 
 
 f Children's Employment Commission, First Report, Mines, 
 London, 1842. 
 
'-n 
 
 216 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 the temptations to utilize child labor were great, 
 and increased with the foreign immigration. The 
 foreign parents were ignorant, and many of them 
 .valued lightly the education of their children, 
 preferring the present help of their earnings to 
 the future and less substantial results of school 
 attendance. 
 
 To regulate the employment of children thus 
 became early a matter of legislative concern. 
 The first law was enacted as early as 1836.* This 
 forbade the employment of children under fifteen 
 years of age, unless the child had attended school 
 three months in the year preceding his employ- 
 ment. Much subsequent legislation f has tended 
 to reduce the amount of child labor in the State, 
 and to promote and extend the school advan- 
 tages. Now, no child under thirteen can be em- 
 ployed at all ; none under fourteen, unless he has 
 attended school thirty weeks in the year. The 
 penalties are heavy and the means of enforce- 
 ment adequate. 
 
 "While the State has thus sought to protect 
 the children from the indifference and cupidity 
 of parents and employers, it has been no less 
 
 * Acts of 1836, chap. 245. 
 
 + Acts of 1838, chap. 107; 1842, chap. 60; 1849, chap. 220; 
 1858, chap. 83 ; 1867, chap. 285 ; 1876, chap. 52 ; 1878, chap. 257 ; 
 1888, chap. 348. 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 217 
 
 vigilant to protect the child against himself — to 
 save him from his vices and his bad associates ; 
 to take him from the street and put him at 
 school. With the increase of the foreign popu- 
 lation and the growth of manufactures, truancy 
 became alarmingly prevalent. The school com- 
 mittee at Rockport, at one time, estimated that 
 one third of the children were habitual truants. 
 
 In 1850 * the first law to prevent truancy was 
 passed. It authorized the towns to make by- 
 laws to remedy the evil. This was the grass- 
 throwing stage. In 1862 f it changed " may '" to 
 " shall/^ and thus began to throw stones. Later J 
 the towns were required to appoint truant officers, 
 and since that whatever efficiency the law has 
 had has been measured by the efficiency of these 
 officers. By faithful watching, by kindly per- 
 suasion, by unremitting pursuit, they have suc- 
 ceeded in reducing truancy to a minimum. They 
 have beeruaided in this work by the establish- 
 ment of county truant schools, where, under 
 judicious care, the boys, many of whom have 
 suffered from parental neglect and evil associates, 
 are won back to right living. 
 
 * Acts of 1850, chap. 294; 1852, chap. 253 ; 1853, chap. 343. 
 t Acts of 1862, chaps. 21 and 207; 1865, chap. 208. 
 i Acts of 1873, chap. 262 ; 1874, chap. 233; 1878, chap. 217; 
 1881, chap. 144. 
 
lASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 While the influx of foreigners was taxing the 
 wisdom of legislators and school authorities to 
 provide educational facilities for the children, it 
 was also flooding the State with illiterate adults. 
 The condition and needs of these people were 
 first observed by persons engaged in charitable 
 and missionary work in the cities. They saw 
 the danger to society from this source, and were 
 the first to apply a remedy. In connection with 
 the philanthropic Christian work of the Warren 
 Street Chapel in Boston, what is commonly sup- 
 posed to have been the first evening school in this 
 country, was opened in 1836 with two pupils.* 
 More than sixty years before (1773), evening 
 schools were carried on in Salem to teach a lim- 
 ited number of poor boys the mariner^s art, and 
 others to write and cipher. 
 
 The number of pupils at the Warren Street 
 Chapel increased, and other schools were estab- 
 lished, conducted by charitable workers, and aid- 
 ed by insignificant sums from the city treasury. 
 
 Similar schools were opened in the manu- 
 facturing cities; all the earlier ones conducted 
 and supported as private charities, f In 1847 1 
 
 * Twenty-fifth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Board 
 of Education, pp. 76. 77. 
 t Ibid., pp. 77-87. 
 i Acts of 1847, chap. 187. 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 219 
 
 the Legislature authorized the towns to support 
 schools for adults, and appropriations began to 
 be made from public funds. Ten years later,* 
 legislation, while still leaving their support op- 
 tional, defined their place as integral parts of the 
 public-school system, opening them to all per- 
 sons over fifteen years of age, and putting them 
 under the control of the school committee. In 
 1883 t their support became compulsory in towns j 
 having ten thousand inhabitants. Thus they 
 passed through the three stages so common in 
 our educational history : fir st volunta ry, then i 
 authorized, then r^uired. 
 
 In the earlier years the success of the schools 
 was hindered by irregular attendance — the 
 schools opening full, but gradually thinning in 
 numbers, until they were closed for want of 
 pupils, few of the persons who patronized them 
 having more than temporary and spasmodic in- 
 terest in learning. Many of the pupils, too, were 
 rough and disorderly; and the teachers, chari- 
 tably disposed men and women, but lacking the 
 power to control, often failed to reduce the turbu- 
 lent elements to the quiet necessary for school 
 purposes. Gradually these evils have been to a 
 great degree overcome. The unruly class has 
 
 * Acts of 1857, chap. 189. f Acts of 1883, chap. l74. 
 16 
 
220 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 been weeded out. Regular teachers have been 
 employed. Systematic classification has taken 
 the place of the early promiscuous work, and 
 courses of study have been developed specially 
 adapted to the needs of the school. 
 
 The work, too, has taken on a broader char- 
 acter with the establishment of evening high 
 schools^* where young men and women, forced 
 into the ranks of breadwinners from the elemen- 
 tary schools, may pursue the same branches of 
 learning and acquire the same culture as their 
 more fortunate brothers and sisters are doing in 
 the ordinary public high schools. There are 
 now in the State two hundred and fifty-five even- 
 ing schools, attended by twenty-nine thousand 
 two hundred and twenty-one pupils, in fifty-five 
 towns and cities. 
 
 Out of the necessities of this broadened and 
 more complex educational system there has 
 been evolved, within the period we are review- 
 ing, a new educational function — that of profes- 
 sional supervision; and a new organ for the 
 function — the Superintendent of Public- Schools. 
 The idea was first put in practice in New Eng- 
 land, in Providence — suggested, it is said, to its 
 originator there by the factory system of the 
 
 * ^ * Acts of 1886, chap. 236. 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 221 
 
 State. However that may be, the modern organi- 
 zation of industries has furnished analogy and 
 argument more potent than any others in secur- 
 ing attention to the system and promoting its 
 adoption. The fact is conspicuous, that the suc- 
 cess of all great business enterprises is condi- 
 tioned not so much on the quality of the indi- 
 vidual employees, nor on the general intelligence 
 and financial standing of the boards of control, 
 as on the capacity of the overseers, the superin- 
 tendents, and the general managers. 
 
 The modern principle of the division of labor 
 has developed experts and specialists in all lines, 
 not only material — in production and distribu- 
 tion of commodities — but in scientific research 
 and in professional labor. It would have been 
 strange if a principle so generally accepted and 
 applied had not entered the realm of educa- 
 tion. It has entered and pervaded it, on the 
 whole, with signal benefits and with some draw- 
 backs. I 
 
 A college president is no longer a teacher, but 
 an administrator of college funds, which he has 
 been successful in increasing. If he makes occa- 
 sional excursions into the realm of educational 
 theory, it is apt to be along statistical lines. 
 Averages abound, and more or less distinctly 
 visible as a motive is seen the enlargement of the 
 
222 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 college catalogue, the splendor of college num- 
 bers. Similar tendencies have developed them- 
 selves in public-school management. The sys- 
 tem has sometimes been made a fetich, and it has 
 been worked on factory principles, with children 
 as raw material to be worked up according to 
 uniform patterns, by uniform processes, to a uni- 
 form standard. But this is only a passing phase, 
 which the schools are already outgrowing. 
 
 The business analogy has helped to carry for- 
 ward the superintendency in Massachusetts. 
 Beginning in Springfield, in 1840, as an experi- 
 ment, it had no permanent place in the State 
 until Boston adopted the plan in 1861. Soon a 
 State law authorized it,* and it has slowly but 
 steadily worked its way into universal favor in 
 the cities and largest towns. It has encountered 
 less opposition from business men and in man- 
 ufacturing communities than among farmers, 
 who are less conversant with modern industrial 
 methods. 
 
 Quite recently the State has aided the small 
 towns to employ superintendents, in union dis- 
 tricts,! and the " jingling of the guinea " from 
 
 * For legislation concerning superintendents of schools, 
 see Acts of 1854, chap. 314 ; 1856, chap. 232 ; 1860, chap. 101 ; 
 1870, chaps. 117 and 183 ; 1873, chap. 108 ; 1874, chap. 272 
 
 t Ibid., 1888, chap. 431 ; 1890, chap. 379. 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 223 
 
 the State treasury has helped to overcome the 
 fear of centralization among the rural voters. 
 
 The most serious difficulty in extending an(J 
 perfecting the system has been in the lack oi 
 suitable men. The duties of the office have been 
 arduous, the relations delicate, the tenure pre- 
 carious, and the pay out of proportion to the 
 capacity and service demanded; and the best 
 men have often been restrained by school boards 
 from fulfilling all the appropriate functions of 
 the office. In spite of these hindrances, it is true 
 that the progress made in public-school educa- 
 tion within recent years has been chiefly due to 
 the broad conceptions, the wise plans, and the 
 skillful administration of these officers. 
 
 After all the steps which the Commonwealth 
 had taken toward making education free, there 
 was one burden still resting on the parents if 
 they were honest: they must supply their chil- 
 dren with the books, etc., needed for school use. 
 An early statute had obliged the towns to fur- 
 nish these necessaries free to the children of the 
 poor.* This system made an invidious distinc- 
 tion between the well-to-do and the indigent. It 
 shackled honest poverty and shameless indiffer- 
 ence together and marked them with the same 
 
 * Acts of 1826, chap. 143. 
 
224 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 badge. Public attention was called to the injus- 
 tice and inconsistencies of the policy. The ex- 
 ample of other communities was cited, where 
 free text-books had long been furnished. 
 
 Following her usual custom, in 1873* the 
 State authorized the towns to own the books and 
 loan them to the pupils. Several cities and towns 
 at once availed themselves of the opportunity, 
 and with such favorable results, answering con- 
 clusively all objections, that in 1884 f compulsion 
 took the place of permission, and all books and 
 supplies became free in all grades of school. 
 
 In earlier days the pupils had been required 
 to furnish the fuel for the winter school, and 
 only after lively passages at arms in town meet- 
 ings and acrimonious debates was the burden 
 shifted from the parent to the public. Logical 
 consistency demanded free text-books as much 
 as free fuel and free teachers for a free-school 
 system. 
 
 The new arrangement proved its value in a 
 rapid increase in school attendance, especially in 
 the high schools, where the book biiTd^n had been 
 heavy. So popular has the system become that 
 for political purposes men have contended for 
 
 * Acts of 1873, chap. 106. 
 
 t Acts of 1884, chap. 103 ; 1885, chap. 161. 
 
/ 
 
 THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 225 
 
 the honor of its paternity, as the cities of Greece 
 contended for the honor of having cradled Homer. 
 
 The kindly impnlses prompting to the human- 
 itarian movements in the early part of this 
 century, included in the gracious thought the de- 
 fgrvMj^ classes. The earliest institutions for the 
 deaf-mutes, for the blind, and for the feeble- 
 minded were from the first liberally subsidized 
 by the State, for the education of its own indi- 
 gent unfortunates. In recent years its policy 
 has widened, until now it provides free instruc- 
 tion without distinction to all its defective chil- 
 dren. And that there may be no joints in its 
 harness through which the arrow of criticism 
 may pierce — that its educational practices may 
 conform to its most advanced educational theo- 
 ries — it has made ample provision to win back 
 to lives of rectitude and usefulness (by judicious 
 restraint and the regenerating influences of learn- 
 ing and labor) boys and girls who have taken 
 the first steps in crime. To this beneficent end 
 it established, in 1847, the Lyman School for 
 Boys, at Westborough, and in 1856 the Indus- 
 trial School for Girls at Lancaster. 
 
 While the State has been in these later years 
 constantly broadening the scope and increasing 
 the means for elementary education, it has main- 
 tained its primitive interest in the higher edu- 
 
226 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 cation, and its open-handed policy toward the 
 higher institutions. Harvard, for which it made 
 its earliest appropriations, has never ceased to be 
 an object of affection and pride, and the younger 
 institutions — Williams, Amherst, and Tufts — 
 have received substantial tokens of the good-will 
 of the Commonwealth. 
 
 Only recently has the close bond which con- 
 nected Harvard with the State been sundered. 
 For one hundred and fifty years the college had 
 the same relation to the State which the ancient 
 grammar school held to the town. The General 
 Court chose the president and professors directly 
 or through the Governor and Council, as the 
 town chose the schoolmasters. Until after the 
 Revolution the salaries of the faculty were annu- 
 ally voted by the General Court. Until 1865 the 
 chief officers of the Commonwealth were members 
 of the governing board of the university. Since 
 that year there has been no official connection ; 
 the president and faculty no longer look to the 
 Governor and Council for their election or their 
 support. 
 
 But there remains upon the statute book a 
 solemn obligation, placed there more than a cen- 
 tury ago — a statute which gives to the president 
 a sublime pre-eminence among the educational 
 forces of the State — that famous law of 1789, 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM.( I 22^7 / 
 
 which we have before noticed, ijmposing^^obli- 
 gation of moral instruction. This law, manda- 
 tory alike on high and low, reaching down to the 
 obscurest teacher of the lowliest children in the 
 humblest school, yet imposes iipon the President 
 of^iarvard the, supreme responsibility for the 
 moral education of the youth of the State. Bind- 
 ing into one brotherhood, for the preservation 
 of the institutions and liberties of the Common- 
 wealth, all instructors of youth of every title and 
 degree, it looks up to the President of Harvard 
 as the leader of them all. 
 
 The scientific spirit of the century and the 
 industrial development of the modern era have 
 made necessary appropriate educational instru- 
 ments, and such the State has added to its educa- 
 tional forces. The Institute of Technology, the 
 Worcester Industrial Institute, and the Agricul- 
 tural College have received generous largesses 
 from the public treasury, and all have been con- 
 nected with the public-school system by means of 
 free scholarships to able and needy students se- 
 lected by the Board of Education. -^ v^j 
 
 While these institutions have carried forward 
 the education of young men into ever- widening 
 fields of literary and scientific culture, the educa- \ 
 tion of girls — so long delayed, so auspiciously 
 begun at last — ^has moved forward to triumphant 
 
,/y 
 
 228 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 success. Women who, as girls, sat on the door- 
 step of the village school and through the open 
 door heard the boys recite — the nearest approach 
 to higher education which the public system af- 
 forded or general public opinion favored — lived 
 to see, at Wellesley and Smith, girls who had 
 been fitted side by side with boys in public high 
 schools, pushing their way into the remotest 
 realms of knowledge. Opposed by learned argu- 
 ment, and laughed at as the ambitious girls in 
 the earliest days had been, yet by their success 
 in achieving the highest scholarship, while pre- 
 serving intact all their womanliness, they have 
 proved the logic of their detractors to be illogical 
 and have made ridicule itself ridiculous. 
 
 So as never before, in these colleges of men 
 and women, we see fulfilled the hope and proph- 
 ecy of the lamented poet : 
 
 *' And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time, 
 Sit side by side, full summed in all their powers, 
 Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be, 
 Self-reverent each and reverencing each. 
 Distinct in individuality, 
 But like each other, even as those who love." 
 
 The dawn of the modern public-school era 
 was clouded by a discussion which threatened to 
 subvert the system itself. The theological dis- 
 cussions which had raged inVthe early part of the 
 century, with the breaking up of the old churches. 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 229. 
 
 had left everywhere roots of bitterness. Suspi-' 
 cions and jealousy were rife, and so inflammable 
 was the atmosphere that a spark was followed 
 by instantaneous explosion. The air was lurid 
 with invectives and heavy with anathemas. The 
 attempt of the Board of Education to revive the 
 public-school interests awakened at once the sus- 
 picions and aroused the hostility of large num- 
 bers of the influential classes. 
 
 These people, representing various religious 
 bodies called evangelical, saw in the new move- 
 ments an attempt to exclude religion from the 
 schools — to secularize them. The academies had 
 been nurseries of religion and powerful adjuncts 
 of the established faith. The public schools 
 themselves had been largely watched over by the 
 ministers, and in earlier days had given to re- 
 ligious exercises a prominent place. The legisla- 
 tion which inaugurated the new era giving to the 
 town committee the care of the . school, gave to 
 them the selection of books for school use, but 
 forbade the use of sectarian books. This was 
 taken as a declaration of intention to banish 
 religion from the schools, and on this issue the 
 people divided. 
 
 On the one side were those who believed tli^t 
 religion was the only proper foundation of tl\e 
 education of the young, and that schools fror 
 
230 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 wiLich religious exercises were excluded were 
 subversive of the foundations of character and 
 of the social and public weal. On the other side 
 were those who believed that among a people of 
 different faiths no system of religious instruction 
 could be devised which should not be offensive 
 to some ; that education by the State was for the 
 State, and not for the Church ; and that it was 
 possible to provide a common education for all, 
 which, while it cultivated the mind and promoted 
 general intelligence, should also conduce to pri- 
 vate and public virtue, leaving to the home and 
 the Church such special instruction in religious 
 doctrines as parents might desire for their chil- 
 dren. 
 
 In the heat of discussion some of the leading 
 religious papers declared that, rather than omit 
 religious instruction from the schools, they would 
 give up the public schools and let each denomi- 
 nation provide for the training of the children of 
 its own faith. 
 
 While this discussion was going on a new 
 danger appeared, in the presence of which the 
 opposing parties ceased their wordy conflict, and, 
 combining their forces against the common en- 
 emy, solidified public opinion in support of the 
 nonsectarian public school. 
 
 The tide of foreign immigration which set in 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 231 
 
 with increasing force after the unsuccessful revo- 
 lutionary movement in Europe in 1848 produced 
 everywhere in the United States a feeling of anx- 
 iety and alarm. The political ascendency gained 
 by foreign-born citizens in New York city inten- 
 sified the feeling, and the attacks of the Catholic 
 Church authorities upon the public-school system 
 added fuel to the fire. 
 
 An intense anti-foreign and anti-Catholic 
 spirit manifested itself. Organizing itself in 
 secret societies, it spread over the country ; min- 
 gling patriotism with fanaticism, it revealed it- 
 self in many places in violence and outrage. It 
 entered politics, and, breaking down the old party 
 barriers, swept its adherents into power in a large 
 number of States. 
 
 The attack of the Church upon the public 
 schools had been in two directions: it had de- 
 manded the exclusion of the Bible as a secta- 
 rian book, and it had claimed a share of the 
 public-school money for the support of Church 
 schools. A protracted struggle in New York 
 city had resulted in maintaining the public- 
 school money intact, but the Bible had been ex- 
 pelled from the public schools. 
 
 In 1853, in several States, a demand was made 
 for a division of the school money. It was no- 
 where granted. In Massachusetts an amendment 
 
232 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 to the Constitution,* approved by the Legislatures 
 of 1854 and 1855, was immediately ratified by the 
 people. It declared that money raised by local 
 tax or appropriated by the State for schools 
 should only be expended upon public schools; 
 and that such money should never be appropri- 
 ated to any religious sect for the maintenance of 
 its own schools. 
 
 The Bible question was settled with equal sig- 
 nificance and conclusiveness, f Ins^ad of exclud- 
 ing the Bible, its reading, which had been only 
 voluntary, was made compulsory — daily reading 
 of the Bible in the English version in all schools. 
 Subsequent statutes J modified the law by ex- 
 empting children whose parents might have 
 scruples from taking part in the exercise. 
 
 At the time of these discussions Church 
 schools in Massachusetts were few and small. 
 The first of ^hich we have any knowledge were 
 in Lowell, in/, 1834. They increased but slowly 
 until the Baltimore Council in 1884, which de- 
 clared it to be the policy of the Catholic Church 
 \ to educate its own children in its own parish 
 schools. Since that time there has been a rapid 
 gain. 
 
 * Constitution of Massachusetts, Amendments, Art. XVIIL 
 
 t Acts of 1855, chap. 410. 
 
 { Acts of 1862, chap. 57; 1880, chap. 176. 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 233 
 
 In the decade from 1860 to 1870 the increase 
 in attendance on these schools was about six 
 hundred; from 1870 to 1880, eight thousand; 
 from 1880 to 1890, twenty-eight thousand. The 
 number now in attendance upon the parochial 
 schools is 10*6 per cent of the whole school at- 
 tendance. 
 
 While the isolation of even this portion of the 
 school population is to be regretted for their own 
 sakes — separated thus from those early associa- 
 tions in work and play by which the individuals 
 of each generation become affiliated with one 
 another in youth, prevented thus from growing 
 into the possession of those common thoughts 
 and purposes which mark interests common and 
 imply one people, born and reared and molded 
 into a sect rather than into a nation — while this 
 is a misfortune for those who are subjected to 
 it, we have profound reason for congratulation 
 and thankfulness that this divisive spirit has 
 gained so slight a hold upon the people of our 
 State. It is most significant that, notwithstand- 
 ing the conditions of society have been most fa- 
 vorable to private-school interests, during the last 
 twenty years there has been scarcely any percep- 
 tible gain in the ratio of private-school attend- 
 ance outside the parochial schools — only about 
 one fifth of one per cent. This is a most conclu- 
 
234 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 sive answer to the statement that the public 
 schools are declining in popular favor — a state- 
 ment usually made by men whose wish is father 
 to the thought. 
 
 The power of the public-school system to 
 mold public opinion in its own favor, to make 
 friends for itself, is strikingly exhibited in the 
 changes which have taken place since 1850 : 
 
 The population has gained one hundred and 
 twenty-five per cent, and the school population 
 has gained ninety-one per cent. 
 
 The publiC'School attendance has gained nine- 
 ty-six per cent. 
 
 The property of the State has gained two hun- 
 dred and sixty per cent. 
 
 The school appropriation has gained five hun- 
 dred and fifty -one per cent. 
 
 And all this while the number of foreign-born 
 persons has gained three hundred per cent, and is 
 29*35 per cent of the whole population, while the 
 population born of foreign-born parents is fifty- 
 six per cent. 
 
 Year by year these people of Massachusetts — 
 more and more of them of foreign parentage — in 
 their town meetings and their city councils delib- 
 erately tax themselves far beyond the legal re- 
 quirements. That this is true is the strongest 
 testimony to the educating, unifying, American- 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL SYSTEM. 235 
 
 izing influence of the public school, and the most 
 magnificent tribute to it. 
 
 To-day, while the compulsory law requires 
 towns to raise three dollars for each child of 
 school age, they voluntarily raise an average of 
 twenty-four dollars and sixty-seven cents. While 
 they must keep their schools open six months, 
 they do voluntarily keep them open eight and 
 a half months. 
 
 If the millions of dollars of to-day represent 
 less of value than the four hundred pounds which 
 the early colonists set apart for Harvard College, 
 the spirit which prompts the gift is still the same, 
 and we realize that we have not departed so far 
 from our Puritan antecedents as we may have 
 feared; so we thank God and take courage. 
 
 ir 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE MODERN SCHOOL. 
 
 In that wonderful essay, Levana and our 
 Ladies of Sorrow, you will recall the passage in 
 which De Quincey hints at two ideas of educa- 
 tion : one, '' the poor machinery of spelling books 
 and grammars'^; the other, "that mighty system 
 of central forces hidden in the deep bosom of hu- 
 man life, which, by passion, by strife, by tempta- 
 tion, by the energies of resistance, works forever 
 upon children, resting not night or day any more 
 than the mighty wheels of day and night them- 
 selves; whose moments, like spokes, are glim- 
 mering forever as they revolve/^ 
 
 Something like this distinction is suggested 
 by the contrast between the modern school and 
 the schools which we have been considering. 
 Not every existing school is a modern school. 
 Antediluvian ideals remain under postdiluvian 
 conditions, and the mediaeval spirit defies the 
 Renaissance. The modern school is still in pro- 
 cess of evolution. As in all such processes, the 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL. 237" 
 
 individuals progress unevenly: some slowly, 
 some rapidly ; some along one line, some another ; 
 so that only by a process akin to composite pho- 
 tography can we get an idea of the type. When 
 we get this idea we find that the modern school i 
 has become differentiated in four particulars : in 
 purpose, in spirit, in studies, in methods of in- 
 struction. 
 
 The purpose of the earlier schools was nar- 
 row. To instruct in the arts of reading, writing, 
 and casting accounts, was all that the elementa- 
 ry schools essayed to do. The grammar schools 
 added a knowledge of the structure of Latin and 
 Greek. In more recent times, as new studies 
 were added to the school curriculum — English 
 gratnmar, geography, history, in the lower 
 schools, and the new sciences in the academies 
 and high schools — the aim was still to impart 
 knowledge ; that up to the limit of opportunity 
 the student might be learned. To store the mind 
 was the teacher's aim and the pupil's ambition. 
 As the child learned in infancy to repeat — 
 
 " How doth the little busy bee 
 Improve each shining hour, 
 And gather honey all the day 
 From every opening flower," 
 
 he was expected to find in the verse at once 
 analogy and incentive. 
 
238 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 I Later, under the mechanica l influences oL tlie 
 graded system, the purpose of the in dividual 
 school became still more narrow : to furnish a 
 measured quantity of knowledge ; hence of meas- 
 urable knowledge ; to fit for the next grade — 
 grammar school, high school, college ; to get per 
 cents and pass examinations. Through this stage 
 most schools have recently passed. Some are 
 still in it. 
 
 The modern school is characterized by a pur- 
 pose as broad as the nature of the child, and de- 
 termined by it. Instead of seeing in the boy or 
 girl just entering the primary school only one 
 more to be registered, and put through a half- 
 dozen reading books, two or three arithmetics, 
 and a couple of geographies, and then turned out 
 done — instead of seeing merely a child, the school 
 sees a child in process of becoming a man, and 
 looking beyond the present it inquires what de- 
 mands the future will make upon him in the 
 complicated relations of modern life. 
 
 It sees the child as body, mind, and^soul, and 
 feels responsibilities for each. It sees the mind, 
 not as a storehouse to be filled, not as Locke saw 
 it— a blank white tablet to be written on— but 
 a sum of undeveloped capacities and powers; and 
 finds its own mission to be to direct and promote 
 the unfolding, for the perfecting of each, that 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL. 239 
 
 the body may be a fit instrument for the mind ; 
 the mind for the soul ; that the man may be full 
 summed in all his powers, or, to use the philo- 
 sophic formula of the day, may be in harmony 
 with his environment. 
 
 With this broader purpose, and because of it, 
 the school has taken on a new spirit. The pre- 
 vailing spirit of the old school was harsh, repres- 
 sive, repellent. Wherever the light of litera- 
 ture, in fiction or in poetry, touches the school, 
 it gleams luridly. The schoolmaster is impaled 
 upon the pen of every satirist ; the trident is no 
 more inseparable from the conception of Neptune 
 in art, nor the organ from the pictures of Saint 
 Cecilia, than is the rod from the portrait of the 
 schoolmaster. 
 
 From every study of childhood, in biography 
 or tradition, we rise with the exclamation of 
 Thackeray, ^^ Poor little ancestors, how they 
 were flogged !^^ School government was re- 
 garded as a necessary evil: it was to hold the 
 child down while he could be operated upon, or 
 to head him off whenever he obeyed an impulse 
 of Nature. Rebellion was assumed to be the 
 natural attitude of the child's mind, and the first 
 condition of success in education, expressed in a 
 phrase which suggests the rack and the thumb- 
 screw, was to " break the child's will." 
 
240 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 Now all is changed. The modern school be- 
 lieves in sunshine ; it seeks first to be cheerful ; 
 the birch and the ferule are no longer conspic- 
 uous schoolroom ornaments — they have given 
 place to pictures and flowers and running vines, 
 as the stocks and the whipping-post on the 
 village green have given way to the memorial 
 statue and the fountain. School discipline is re- 
 garded not as a means of repressing evil, but as 
 an essential means of bringing out good. The 
 teacher is no longer merely a master, a task- 
 setter, an examiner ; but he is an educator, using 
 the school for the benefit of the child, that by its 
 means he may be formed as well as informed. 
 
 The worlc of the modern school is so new that 
 the change seems more like revolution than; 
 evolution. The little children are studying form 
 and color, modeling in clay, constructing in 
 paper and wood; all are drawing. They are 
 learning sewing, cooking, joinery, wood-turning, 
 and carving. They are studying music, not 
 merely to sing by rote, but to read in various 
 keys and in all the parts. They are collecting, 
 observing, drawing, describing, preserving i^lants, 
 animals, and minerals. They are studying the 
 ^atural forces and their effects, in physics and 
 chemistry and meteorology. 
 
 Looking toward citizenship are history, civ- 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL. 241 
 
 ics, and various spocial exercises to develop pa- 
 triotism : the flag over the schoolhouse is a most 
 significant emblem of the new purpose working 
 itself out beneath. Besides all this, there are 
 the humanizing influences of literature ; not the 
 Bible of the colonial schools — morels the pity ; 
 not the set pieces of elocutionary fireworks of 
 the later school readers, but choicest classics in 
 their entirety. 
 
 ^ This broader work matches the broader pur- 
 pose and grows out of it. These studies are not 
 ends but means. By them powers and capacities 
 are revealed and increased and satisfied. Right 
 feelings are wakened, tastes are cultivated, the 
 will is trained, and the conscience instructed. 
 As the current phrase expresses it, " the whole 
 child is put to school.''^ 
 
 i Lastly, the modern school is known by its 
 methods of instruction. These, too, are in har- 
 mony with its purpose — the all-round develop- 
 ment of the child. To set a task in geography or 
 arithmetic, to see that it is learned and remem- 
 bered, was one thing ; to use these studies to 
 train the child to observe, to imagine, to reason, 
 to express, to feel, to Will, is another and a very 
 different thing. One principle underlies all the 
 work and determines all the method— things, not 
 signs for things, al'e the true source of knowl- 
 
242 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 edge; the true educing forces. Objects, facts, 
 phenomena are observed, compared, classified, 
 related. Analysis and induction are used as a 
 means of training. In all these ways and by all 
 these means the school seeks to develop the 
 active powers and to attain the great end — self- 
 education; believing, with Sandy Mackaye in 
 Alton Locke, "A mon kens only what he has 
 learned hissel.^^ 
 
 / Such being the salient features of the modern 
 ''school, we turn to ask to what influences they 
 are due; in what order and by what agencies 
 they have been evolved. The influences have 
 been of two kinds, general an d indi vidual. The 
 more kindly spirit in the schools is a feature of 
 the age. There is more sympathy with suffer- 
 ing, more pity for misery, more charity for sin. 
 Much of this doubtless is mere sentiment — a 
 fastidious niceness that would have no ^' slovenly, 
 unhandsome corse betwixt the wind and its no- 
 bility '' — but that there is something deeper and 
 more real is proved by every Eed Cross and 
 White Ribbon, by every Toynbee Hall and An- 
 dover House, by every King^s Daughter and 
 Humane Society and Rescue Mission the world 
 over. 
 
 The scientific spirit of the age, too, has had 
 its influence in the schools. That keen-visioned 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL. 243 
 
 search for truth, ever doubting, ever questioning, 
 submitting all things to crucial tests, the tardy 
 but glorious fruitage of the philosophy of the 
 sage of Verulam, is all the time molding courses 
 and methods of study. 
 
 In the beginning of this century elementary 
 schools were much alike in Germany, Holland, 
 England, Scotland, and the United States. Low 
 ideals, narrow range of instruction, incompetent 
 teachers, public apathy were general. 
 
 Unquestionably the first effective impulse to 
 move the schools out of the slough came from 
 Pestalozzi. Men before him had philosophized 
 wisely about education, but he illustrated his 
 philosophy by his practice, and was fortunate 
 enough in the time and place of his experiments 
 to attract universal attention and to gather about 
 him a body of disciples who could preach and 
 practice his doctrines even more successfully 
 than he could do it himself. Thus he multiplied 
 himself in his followers until all the world felt 
 his influence. 
 
 It is true that his own practice was crude, full 
 of errors and failures, but his life was a grand 
 success. He broke the chains for all earnest 
 school teachers, and let in the sunshine on the 
 pathway of childhood. He discovered the true 
 functions of school education — to develop the 
 
244: MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 child in the line of his natural powers and in the 
 order of their development ; and he saw, too, in 
 some degree the true relations of studies to this 
 end. In his work language, form and number, 
 music and drawing were means for exercising 
 the faculties of the child, and the teacher's work 
 was with the child and not on him ; for the child 
 was neither a reservoir to be filled, nor a block 
 of marble to be carved, nor a mass of clay to be 
 molded. 
 
 If we examine his doctrines and practice 
 in detail we shall find in them all those feat- 
 ures which characterize the modern school — 
 the broad purpose, the gentle^ and kindly spirit, 
 the various studies used as means, the natural 
 methods. 
 
 Another powerful impulse has come more re- 
 cently from Froebel. In the same direction as 
 Pestalozzianism, it goes much further and strikes 
 much deeper. It makes more of the moral and 
 religious side of education. Studying more spe- 
 cifically the relations of life — domestic, social, 
 civil — it seeks to prepare for them all by a care- 
 ful system of child nurture, making much of the 
 creative and imitative faculties, and providing 
 the child from the earliest infancy with a favor- 
 able environment. 
 
 Herbert Spencer, too, has had considerable in- 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL. 245 
 
 fluence in modifying the courses of study, and to 
 some extent the methods of instruction. His in- 
 fluence must be counted on both the progressive 
 and the conservative side ; progressive, in that he 
 advocated the study of modern science ; conserv- 
 tive, in that he reiterated the ancient dogma — 
 knowledge is power. The so-called practical the- 
 ory of education, which believes in giving to 
 children that knowledge and that only which 
 they can put to immediate use in bread-winning, 
 has found in Spencer its most powerful expositor 
 and advocate. 
 
 In our study of Horace Mann and his coadju- 
 tors we saw how closely the revival of interest 
 in the common schools in Massachusetts was re- 
 lated to the reorganization of the common-school 
 systems of Prussia and Holland. Into these 
 schools the doctrines and practices of Pestalozzi 
 had been wrought by men who learned them as 
 his disciples. 
 
 To this fact is due whatever superiority the 
 elementary schools of Germany have over those 
 of the United States, and the latest movements, 
 there as here, received their impulse from the 
 same source, for Froebel and Herbart were both 
 students under Pestalozzi. 
 
 The doctrines and practices of Pestalozzi early 
 and profoundly impressed American observers. 
 
246 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 Cousin^s Reports were widely read ; the American 
 Reports of Stowe, Bache, Mann, and Barnard 
 deepened the impression. Woodbridge, in his 
 Journal of Education, kept the new education 
 steadily before his readers. Colburn's Arithmetic 
 (1823) was wholly Pestalozzian. 
 
 Private-school men early threw themselves 
 into the new movement. William B. Fowle in 
 the monitorial school, William Russell at Lan- 
 caster, Gideon F. Thayer in the Chauncey Hall 
 School, George B. Emerson in his young ladies* 
 school, the Alcotts in their teaching — were all 
 apostles of the new education. With Russell 
 was associated for a time Hermann Kriisi, son 
 of that Kriisi who had been Pestalozzi's asso- 
 ciate at Iverdun, and himself trained as pupil 
 and teacher in his father's normal school at 
 Gais. 
 
 Considerable impulse toward reform came 
 from the lectures and writings of George Combe, 
 who visited this country in 1838 and formed last- 
 ing friendship with most of the progressive men 
 and women of the time. Coming just when the 
 new spirit was working most powerfully, he 
 found in Mr. Mann a warm personal friend and 
 a loyal disciple, and through him influenced the 
 whole State. It is probable that the introduction 
 of physiology and hygiene in the common-school 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL. 247 
 
 curriculum as an optional study, in 1850/ was 
 due to this influence. 
 
 Aside from the efforts of these individuals, 
 the normal schools stand forth pre-eminent 
 among the agencies by which the schools have 
 become modernized. From their beginning, the 
 three Massachusetts schools — Framingham, West- 
 field, and Bridgewater — stood for progress along 
 the lines already specified. While they have 
 taught the same branches of knowledge as the 
 academies, they taught them for a different pur- 
 pose and in a different way. 
 
 Superficial critics, from that day to this, have 
 found fault with the normal schools for teaching 
 subjects — calling such work academic and not 
 professional; but the difference between the 
 study of subjects — say arithmetic — in the nor- 
 mal schools and elsewhere, has been the differ- 
 ence between the old school and the new. 
 
 Outside the normal school arithmetic was 
 studied that the student might know enough of 
 it for his personal use in the affairs of life; in 
 the normal school it was so taught that the stu- 
 dent might know it and use it as an instrument 
 in training children t o think . So the normal 
 student came to know arithmetic, not merely in 
 
 * Acts of 1850, chap. 229. 
 
248 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SGHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 its technique, but in its principles ; not merely aS 
 a means of solving problems, but as a means of 
 teaching children. 
 
 In the normal schools, too, the true principles 
 of school government were unfolded and the 
 highest motives to conduct presented. Day by 
 day the pupils of Father Pierce at West ISTewton 
 and at Framingham heard his sublime injunc- 
 tion, " Live the truth ! " 
 
 Natural methods of instruction found, too, in 
 the normal school their most complete exemplifi- 
 cation. The abundant use of objective illustra- 
 tion and oral instruction were characteristic fea- 
 tures. The fundamental principle of the new- 
 education was that education was development ; 
 the work of the school was to supply the condi- 
 tions for the unfolding of faculties — in the ordei!' 
 of Nature. It early became evident that the 
 study of mind must underlie all successful edu- 
 cational theory and practice, and the normal 
 schools set about the teaching of psychology^ 
 that the teachers whom they were training might 
 work not empirically but from principle and in- 
 telligently. 
 
 The first three normal schools were estab- 
 lished, as we have seen, in 1839 and 1840. Theif 
 early graduates encountered almost everywhere 
 prejudice and suspicion, in many cases active and 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL. 249 
 
 persistent, sometimes malignant opposition ; but 
 steadily, year by year, they fixed themselves 
 more and more firmly in public estimation and 
 support. Each normal graduate who succeeded 
 created a demand for more, and during their en- 
 tire history there has not been a year when the de- 
 mand has not exceeded the supply. At different 
 times testimony has been called for, from school 
 authorities, as to their success. The weight of 
 this testimony is to the effect that through the 
 influence of these teachers better methods of 
 teaching have been introduced, milder forms of 
 government, more salutary influences upon char- 
 acter, and that indirectly they have raised the 
 standard for all teachers, and so elevated more 
 schools than they have taught. Especially note- 
 worthy is the testimony that the normal gradu- 
 ates exhibited a professional enthusiasm hitherto 
 almost unknown, and that this spirit being con- 
 tagious had elevated the whole body of teachers. 
 So satisfactory had the work of the pioneer 
 schools been that in answer to a popular demand, 
 in 1854, a fourth school was opened in Salem, and 
 twenty years later a fifth school in Worcester. 
 Working with these State schools has been the 
 Boston City Normal School.* 
 
 * The legislature of 1894 has authorized the establishment 
 of four more State normal schools. 
 
250 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 Side by side with the normal schools of Mas- 
 sachusetts, and co-operating with them in the 
 modernizing of common-school education through 
 the principles of Pestalozzi, stood the Normal 
 School of Oswego, New York, where object teach- 
 ing was first specialized under Pestalozzian prin- 
 ciples in 1861, when Miss E. M. Jones was brought 
 from the Home and Colonial Society of London 
 to open a City Training School. The next year 
 Kriisi became connected with the school, and 
 spent twenty-five years in developing Pestalozzi's 
 theories. The school has sent its graduates over 
 all the land, and has perhaps as much as any 
 other single institution helped to mold American 
 schools. 
 
 While we are indebted chiefly to the normal 
 schools for modifying the spirit and methods of 
 public instruction, their work was done almost 
 entirely on the traditional lines. That broaden- 
 ing of the course of study, which is the most con- 
 spicuous feature of the modern school, and the 
 incorporation of the doctrines of Froebel into the 
 current school philosophy have proceeded from 
 other sources. 
 
 The first wide departure from the conven- 
 tional standards of school work was in the com- 
 pulsory introduction of drawing. Following 
 closely upon this came the miscellaneous work 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL. 251 
 
 grouped around the title "manual training/^ 
 The impulse to both of these came from the 
 Paris Exposition of 1867. At the World's Fair 
 in London in 1851 England led in nearly all 
 departments of manufactures. Yet there were a 
 few in which Continental nations excelled. The 
 superiority of these was chiefly in beauty of de- 
 sign ; the products were artistic as well as useful. 
 Schools of design were immediately established, 
 and the South Kensington Museum founded, and 
 the influence of these was speedily felt. 
 
 But the Continental countries had learned 
 more than they had taught, and in 1867 Eng- 
 land was in the rear even in her own special- 
 ties. Commissioners appointed to search for the 
 causes of this relative decline agreed that the 
 chief cause was the splendid industrial train- 
 ing which France, Belgium, Switzerland, and 
 Austria had incorporated into their educational 
 systems. Drawing had been made a universal 
 study in the elementary schools, and upon this 
 foundation had been built the most thorough 
 and comprehensive system of technical instruc- 
 tion, reaching all kinds of industries, and provid- 
 ing intelligent workmen and accomplished fore- 
 men and superintendents. 
 
 England took the lesson to heart. The imme- 
 diate outcome there was the National Schools 
 18 
 
252 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 Act of 1870. American manufacturers learned 
 tlie same lesson, and with characteristic prompt- 
 ness and energy set about the work of raising the 
 educational standard at home. In 1869 the Low- 
 ells, the Lawrences, the Bigelows, and others, 
 setting forth the lack of skilled native workmen, 
 and the necessity of importing designers and 
 foremen for all the higher classes of manufac- 
 tures, petitioned the Legislature to consider 
 means of providing instruction in industrial and 
 mechanical drawing.* 
 
 Drawing had been made an optional study in 
 1858, chiefly through the influence of Kriisi, who 
 had taught it for several years in the Teachers' 
 Institutes. But nothing of value had been done. 
 Now, in 1870,f drawing was made a regular study 
 in all the public schools. Besides this, evening 
 drawing schools were required in all the larger 
 towns. This requirement was immediately acted 
 on, and schools were opened, to which men and 
 women from all the leading industries flocked, 
 eager to avail themselves of the new opportunity. 
 
 The attempt to carry out the provisions of the 
 new law in the public schools met at once with 
 
 * For initiatory steps in introduction of industrial drawing, 
 see Thirty-fourth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Board 
 of Education, p. 163. 
 
 t Acts of 1870, chap. 248. 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL. 253 
 
 an insuperable obstacle — there were no teachers, 
 and there was no one to teach the teachers. To 
 obviate this difficulty the city of Boston sought 
 a leader in South Kensington, and finding there 
 Mr. Walter Smith, made him Art Director for 
 the city. The State co-operated with the city, 
 and employed him as Art Director. The State 
 also established a Normal Art School, and placed 
 Mr. Smith at its head. Subsequently the Board 
 of Education employed a special agent to super- 
 vise the drawing in the State. By means of 
 these agencies the work in drawing has been 
 put upon a substantial footing, and is already 
 bearing fruit in some of the leading industries. 
 
 Thus the foundation of a system of industrial 
 education has been laid ; but after twenty years 
 of agitation and effort, everything beyond this 
 — even where the most has been done — is still 
 matter of experiment and uncertainty. 
 
 In deference to the wishes of the friends of 
 this work, following its usual custom, the Legis- 
 lature in 1872 * granted permission to the towns to 
 support free industrial schools. Various private 
 associations and individuals in a tentative way 
 early began to experiment in furnishing instruc- 
 tion in some form of wood-working ; a little crude 
 
 * Acts of 1872, chap. 86. 
 
254 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 experimenting was done in the same line in con- 
 nection with, public-school work.* 
 
 Now wood-working in a systematic form en- 
 ters into the regular school work of Boston and 
 several other cities and towns. Sewing has been 
 quite generally introduced into the city schools, 
 and more recently instruction in cooking has 
 been added to the curriculum. A beginning has 
 been made in Springfield, Cambridge, and Boston 
 to furnish more advanced instruction in wood 
 and metal working. But as yet neither State nor 
 municipalities have undertaken to furnish in any 
 large and generous and intelligent way such op- 
 portunities for technical culture as all the great 
 centers of England and Europe have been main- 
 taining for years. 
 
 While for twenty years the idea of industrial 
 education has been slowly permeating society, the 
 doctrines of Froebel have been even longer in get- 
 ting themselves formally recognized in public- 
 school work. The concrete embodiment — that is, 
 the kindergarten as an institution — is just begin- 
 ning to exist as a part of the public-school sys- 
 tem. And yet the kindergarten has been before 
 the people of Massachusetts for more than thirty 
 years — the lifetime of a generation. 
 
 * Forty-fourth Report of Massachusetts Board of Education, 
 pp. 179-186 ; Forty-sixth Report, pp. 217-223. 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL. 255 
 
 I The apostle of the kindergarten movement in 
 Massachusetts was Miss Elizaj3eth_P._Peabody, 
 and to her efforts, with tongue and pen, is due 
 whatever success the movement has had. Her own 
 kindergarten — the first in Boston, in 1860 — was 
 soon followed by others in different parts of the 
 country. They were all private, and patronized 
 chiefly by families of means, who preferred them 
 to the old-fashioned dame-school or the public 
 primary school. 
 
 It was soon apparent to Miss Peabody that 
 these schools were kindergartens chiefly in name ; 
 with a few of the externals, they lacked the spirit 
 of Froebel's institution. She went to Germany, 
 and studied the system in its home, and came 
 back to begin the work anew. Trained kinder- 
 gar tners came from Europe and opened training 
 schools here, and the work entered upon its sec- 
 ond and much higher stage.* 
 
 In 1877 Mrs. Quincy A. Shaw opened kinder- 
 gartens for the poor as a private charity. The 
 number of these was gradually increased until, in 
 1888, she was supporting fourteen of them in dif- 
 ferent parts of the city. In that year the city 
 adopted them as a part of its public-school sys- 
 
 * In 1870 a public free kindergarten was opened in Boston 
 under the direction of the school committee. It was maintained 
 for nine years. 
 
256 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 tern, and now there are in Boston forty-eight 
 public kindergartens. 
 
 While the kindergarten itself as an institu- 
 tion — even now — is a very small fraction of the 
 public-school system, its principles and its phi- 
 losophy have indirectly and profoundly affected 
 public-school instruction. The closer relation of 
 the teachers to the children and of the children 
 to each other — simulating the family — the varied, 
 pleasing, and at the same time purposeful and 
 educational activity shown in the kindergarten, 
 have become characteristic of the modern pri- 
 mary school. 
 
 The early primary school was once portrayed 
 in a Boston school report : " It looked like an ill- 
 regulated nursery, where the morning duties of 
 the children in the way of washing, combing, 
 and dressing had been imperfectly performed, 
 and the children sent to one room as a safe 
 place of detention. In the countenance of both 
 teacher and pupils there was but one expression 
 — 'What a weariness it is!' The children sat 
 in the small yellow chairs, swaying their little 
 bodies to and fro from mere listlessness ; and 
 whenever they could escape the eye of the 
 teacher, breaking the laws of the school by 
 obeying the laws of Nature, constantly offend- 
 ing but never feeling guilty, the teacher mean- 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL. 257 
 
 while, by snatches and amid continued interrup- 
 tions, hearing the alphabet class, the spelling 
 class, and the reading class in a drawling and 
 weary manner. There were two cheerful mo- 
 ments in the day — those when the children 
 escaped from the schoolhouse ; and when the 
 teacher left the door she could hardly have 
 known in the eager looks and joyous voices of 
 the little crowd the listless and weary children 
 of the half hour before/' 
 
 The transformation of the primary school be- 
 
 /gan with the Pestalozzian influence, but the most 
 radical and far-reaching impulse has come from 
 Fro^bel through the kindergarten. 
 
 Another most interesting phase of the same 
 subject is the influence of the kindergarten upon 
 the work in drawing and the manual arts. The 
 drawing work, as originally planned, had for its 
 primary and specific end to prepare mechanics to 
 make and to read working-drawings and to culti- 
 vate taste and skill in industrial design. Other 
 results were secondary. The motive was purely 
 practical in its character. 
 
 From the new philosophy came the idea of 
 drawing as an educational instrument, as a 
 means of expression of conceptions of form, as 
 only a part of a more extended whole. This 
 notion superinduced upon the original one has 
 
258 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 wholly changed the drawing in all the elemen- 
 tary schools. It begins earlier — begins with form 
 study; uses modeling in clay as an adjunct; 
 draws into its service the kindergarten occupa- 
 tions of stick-laying and paper folding and cut- 
 ting, and makes itself attractive with color. It 
 is also itself made to do service in illustrating 
 almost all subjects in the school courses — geog- 
 raphy, history, literature, and natural science. 
 Persons not familiar with school work can not 
 know how far-reaching this work is as an ele- 
 ment of public education. 
 
 But the influence of the kindergarten upon 
 the development of technical education has been 
 less favorable. In the early advocacy of the in- 
 dustrial movement two motives were apparent. 
 Men interested in the mechanic arts and in build- 
 ing up manufacturing industries wanted skilled 
 workmen, and they wanted schools to train them 
 in. The end was clearly in view, and the way to 
 it was plain and straight. Besides this purely 
 practical motive, there was a pseudo-philan- 
 thropy, which feared that the lower classes 
 would not properly appreciate the dignity of 
 manual labor — that they would look away to the 
 cleaner hands and better clothes and shorter 
 hours which seemed to belong to literary and 
 professional and commercial life. Something be- 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL. 259 
 
 sides the traditional work of the schools seemed 
 necessary to fit these people for their sphere and 
 to keep them in it. 
 
 From the kindergarten came another motive. 
 Man is a creative animal, and it is the business 
 of education to furnish him, throughout his 
 school life, with opportunity for this creative 
 instinct to develop itself. Solely from subjec- 
 tive motive, and without reference to any prac- 
 tical end, every child should be taught to use his 
 hands. 
 
 These two motives have been playing seesaw 
 with each other for years. !N"ow one has been up, 
 now the other. They have not yet been harmon- 
 ized. One is reminded of a phrase used by the 
 historian Mommsen, in describing Pompey the 
 Great: '"He passed his life away in a state of 
 perpetual inward contradiction.^^ Meanwhile the 
 work waits. The people could understand the 
 practical motive, and might respond to it in a 
 practical way. They knew little and cared little 
 about the more abstruse theory. An industrial 
 educational system directed to practical ends, 
 broad in its scope and complete in its details, and 
 adapted to American needs, we have not yet at- 
 tained. 
 
 In discussing the agencies by which the mod- 
 ern evolutionary processes have been hastened. 
 
260 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 we have spoken of individuals and of the normal 
 schools. There are others deserving of mention. 
 y^^ ! The Board of Education has also had a powerful 
 uplifting and broadening influence. People in 
 States where the educational system is more cen- 
 tralized are fond of sneering at the Massachusetts 
 Board of Education because it has so little com- 
 pulsory authority. These people have not learned 
 the first lesson of the civics of a free State — that 
 the hidings of its power are not in law, but in 
 the sentiments and impulses of its people. Quiet- 
 ly but steadily, for fifty-four years the Board of 
 Education has been using the means at its com- 
 mand to enlighten the people of the State con- 
 cerning what they ought to do and how they 
 ought to do it. 
 
 Under the blighting influences of the private 
 schools, the board had first to create a public- 
 school spirit; then it had to foster it; more re- 
 cently, to meet the malign influences of sectari- 
 anisms, it has had to intensify it. 
 
 Among its members have been men of all pro- 
 fessions, whom Massachusetts has delighted to 
 honor, and who have earned its homage by their 
 work and their services: publicists — Briggs, 
 Boutwell, Washburn, Walker, Adams; literary 
 men — Sparks, Higginson, Scudder; clergymen — 
 Chapin, Hooker, Clarke, Miner, Brooks ; public- 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL. 261 
 
 school men — Mann, Emerson, Philbrick ; coUego 
 men — Sears, Hopkins, Seelye, Stearns, Felton, 
 Marshall, Capen. 
 
 Through its annual reports and those of its 
 Secretary it has put before school officers the 
 most advanced opinions of educational theory 
 and practice. Through its institutes it has pre- 
 sented these theories in the concrete, and thus 
 afforded to teachers everywhere object lessons in 
 the application of approved methods. Through 
 its Agents — practical school men — it has pene- 
 trated every town and every school district, 
 discovering weaknesses and excellences, reveal- 
 ing to teachers and committees and parents 
 their own shortcomings — criticising, condemn- 
 ing, counseling, awakening, encouraging. 
 
 In no other State in the Union is the condi- 
 tion of the entire public-school system so trans- 
 parent to the central authority as in Massachu- 
 setts. The Board of Education can by asking its 
 Agents have by return mail a detailed descrip- 
 tion of the most obscure school, its numbers, its 
 house, its teacher, its work — a photograph taken 
 within two years and in the Agent's note-book. 
 
 Under the steady pressure of this influence, 
 without compulsory authority, school attendance 
 has become more regular, school buildings have 
 become brighter and safer for body and soul. 
 
262 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 school books and helps have become plentier and 
 better, school teachers have become kinder and 
 wiser, school committees broader, and the school 
 public more intelligent and more generous. Old 
 things have passed away, and some if not all 
 things have become new. Besides all this, the 
 board has been almost the sole instrumentality 
 in securing helpful legislation and in protecting 
 the school from hostile enactments. 
 
 It has done all this work quietly, with single- 
 ness of purpose and without ostentation, sound- 
 ing no trumpet before its acts of beneficence — as 
 the hypocrites do — it has sought to realize Hor- 
 ace Mann's ideal of the common school — ^' a free, 
 straight, solid pathway, by which every child of 
 the Commonwealth could walk directly up from* 
 the ignorance of an infant to a knowledge of the 
 primary duties of a man, and could acquire a 
 power and an invincible will to discharge them.'' 
 
 The Board of Education and the normal schools 
 have found earnest coadjutors among the teachers 
 themselves as organized into^ associations. The 
 American Institute of Instruction, established in 
 1830, was immediately followed by the Essex 
 County Association, and this by other county 
 organizations and by the State Association. In 
 more recent years numerous bodies of specialists 
 have been organized. 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL. 263 
 
 In 1848 the Commonwealth, in a way, adopted 
 the State and County Associations into its school 
 system by giving them annual grants of money. 
 In the meetings of these associations the new and 
 the old have met and contended in free discus- 
 sion — new theories, new methods, new devices. 
 Orthodoxy has clashed with heterodoxy until 
 the sparks flew, to the confusion of the weak and 
 the perplexity of the wise. Cranks and mounte- 
 banks have disported themselves, to the grief of 
 the judicious and the alarm of the timid. But 
 out of it all has come progress, and these associa- 
 tions are to-day potent instrumentalities in the 
 current evolutionary processes. 
 1/ There is an educational literature, too, which 
 ris on the whole making for righteousness. This 
 is the most modern force. Twenty-five years ago 
 books on education were rare and periodicals 
 were few and their circulation insignificant. 
 Now a public-school teacher who is not a sub- 
 scriber to some educational periodical is looked 
 upon askance by school ofl&cials. Teachers^ li- 
 braries are common, and teachers^ reading circles 
 have covered whole States. It is rare to find a 
 schoolroom desk without some books on edu- 
 cational theory or practice. Public school teach- 
 ers in Massachusetts are studying their work as 
 never before. 
 
264 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 I turn now to review the path along which we 
 have come. Standing by the side of the sources 
 of our educational institutions, we find ourselves 
 among a people who partook in the fullest meas- 
 ure of the spirit of the Renaissance and the Ref- 
 ormation, who had imbibed the sentiments of 
 Luther and Calvin and Knox and Cranmer, who 
 believed that religion was the supreme affair of 
 man and that learning was its handmaid. As an 
 enduring testimonial to their belief that the so- 
 cial and civil welfare of the new community was 
 inextricably interwoven with its spiritual life, 
 they built a church in the midst of their homes, 
 and planted a school beside it or within it. 
 
 Their aim was to have every child so in- 
 structed and trained that he should on the one 
 side be a self-supporting member of the commu- 
 nity and an intelligent participator in social and 
 civil affairs, and on the other that he should be 
 a loyal subject in the kingdom of God. These 
 people lived always in sight and in thought of 
 two worlds, and their history has proved that to 
 give a large share of interest to spiritual things 
 by no means impedes material progress, illustrat- 
 ing Coleridge's saying, "Celestial observations 
 are necessary, even to make terrestrial charts ac- 
 curate."' 
 
 So believing, they coupled in their earliest de- 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL. 265 
 
 cree for the bringing up of their youth, " learn- 
 ing and labor/^ and they included in the learning 
 " the capital laws and the principles of religion/^ 
 That was a wonderfully comprehensive scheme 
 for the time and place. 
 
 As we follow the course of events, we observe 
 that throughout the history the Legislature has 
 been the efficient instrument in holding up the 
 standards and unifying the system, while there 
 has been in practice a tendency to drop below 
 them. 
 
 The first step in the evolution of our compul- 
 sory system — the compulsory teaching of the 
 children — was taken, we are expressly told, be- 
 cause many parents were too indulgent and neg- 
 ligent of their duty. The next step — compulso- 
 ry schools — was taken lest learning be buried in 
 the graves of the fathers; the third step — com-*, 
 pulsory certification of teachers — grew out of the 
 fact that the e a^rly l aw had been shamefully neg- 
 lected by divers towns during the trying period 
 of the Indian wars. 
 
 When the schools had suffered through the 
 Revolutionary period, the law of 1789 contained 
 a new compulsory enactment — compulsory super- 
 vision; and again in 1 836 wh en the evils of the 
 district system were at their height, the office of 
 school committee was established to check their 
 
266 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 deteriorating influences. When a new cause — 
 foreign immigration— had brought again deca- 
 dence, the last of the great compulsory enact- 
 ments was made — that requiring school attend- 
 ance. 
 
 Thus the five conspicuous steps in the evolu- 
 tion of the compulsory features of our system — 
 compjilsory teaching, compulsory schools, com- 
 pulsory certification of teachers, compulsory su- 
 perintendence, and compulsory school attend- 
 ance — were the efforts of the State to hold the 
 entire people up to standards which some people 
 were unwilling to reach. 
 
 While this interposition of superior central 
 authority was intermittent and at wide intervals 
 of time, there was a perpetual conflict going on 
 in the towns themselves. Nowhere is the con- 
 servative influence of democracy more apparent 
 than in the history of New England schools. 
 Every change in policy and method, every im- 
 provement in the material condition or in the 
 inner life of the schools, has been met by the 
 narrow and selfish opposition of some man or 
 men whose only interest in civil affairs has been 
 to reduce taxation. To this open hostility of the 
 niggardly has been added the inertia of the igno- 
 rant, and the town meeting has been the arena 
 where the hosts of the Lord have contended with 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL. 267 
 
 the Philistines through all the generations of 
 Massachusetts history. Thus the town meetings 
 have been themselves among the most potent 
 educational influences. Progressive and zealous 
 men, animated by principle, have learned a 
 higher art than the schools teach — the ar t of per- 
 suading their fellow-men. Forced to give a 
 reason for their faith, they have enlightened 
 themselves that they might enlighten others. 
 
 But all this takes time. Zealous reformers 
 often grow impatient, and shallow critics babble, 
 and cynics snarl ; but for all this the progress 
 has been continuous, and in spite of all that is 
 said and thought to the contrary, intelligent 
 observers know that the schools of to-day are 
 not the schools of fifty years ago, nor twenty 
 years ago, nor ten years ago, nor five years 
 ago ; they are better schools in everything that 
 makes a good school. And they are growing 
 better: as steadily as the grass grows in the 
 spring, or the leaves unfold, as surely and 
 steadily as time moves on, bringing new days 
 and new months and new years, so surely is the 
 new school being unfolded, according to the law 
 of democratic evolution, by the energizing force 
 of enlightened public opinion. 
 
 We have seen this force operating through 
 
 all the period we have been studying. All new 
 19 
 
268 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 forms and all reforms have been first wrought 
 out in individual towns through the influence of 
 individual citizens. Thence they have spread 
 from town to town, through that friendly rivalry 
 which is as powerful a motive in municipal as in 
 private life. Finally, when experience and trial 
 have led to the belief that what is good for a 
 part is good for all, the Legislature has interposed 
 and made the practice general.^x^hus legislation 
 has ever followed, not led nor driven, and Massa- 
 chusetts has never known the time when a polit- 
 ical party could find capital in opposing the edu- 
 cational policy which the people have adopted. 
 It is this fact which accounts for the stability 
 of the public-school system, rooted deep in the 
 intelligent convictions of eight generations of 
 the people. 
 
 It is from this point of view that we discover 
 most clearly the influence and value to the Com- 
 monwealth of Harvard College. We are fa- 
 miliar with the sneer that early Massachusetts 
 was priest-ridden, and that Harvard College was 
 founded to make clergymen, and that the Latin 
 schools were only to teach boys whose profession 
 was to be theology. It is probable that as many 
 boys became ministers in order to study Latin 
 as studied Latin to be ministers ; for there were 
 boys then as now who loved study for its own 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL. 269 
 
 sake, and the ministry was then the only learned 
 profession. But through all our history the 
 ministers have been more than clergymen ; they 
 have been social lights and social leaders. In 
 this the college has more than realized the hopes 
 of its founders, and justified their benefactions. 
 
 Conspicuous as have been the spires of the 
 country churches, so conspicuous have been the 
 ministers, embodying and preserving the ancient 
 traditions in favor of learning. By their side 
 have been the country doctor and the country 
 lawyer. In times and places of popular indiffer- 
 ence they have kept the fires alive. They have 
 first of all provided the best education for their 
 own children. Their sons and daughters have 
 been the shining lights of the school, the acad- 
 emy, and the college. Intimately acquainted 
 with all the families, they have known the apti- 
 tudes of the children, and they have aroused an 
 ambition for learning in the hearts of a multi- 
 tude of young people who but for their advice 
 or intercession might never have been more than 
 drudges. In the absence of other means, they 
 have themselves been teachers. 
 
 They have always been the friends of schools ; 
 have stood for progress and liberal measures 
 in town meetings; have served on school com- 
 mittees, and by their annual reports have edu- 
 
2Y0 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 cated the people up to their own standard. Their 
 private libraries were object lessons, and helped 
 to foster a reverence for books and a taste for 
 reading, out of which grew the early social 
 libraries and later the free public libraries, 
 of which Massachusetts has more than all the 
 other States combined. The influence of the 
 minister, the doctor, and the lawyer, in the 
 making of New England, is a subject which in 
 its fullness waits for a historian. 
 
 In the educational movements of the last 
 forty years, by which the school system has be- 
 come modernized and the schools themselves 
 have become new creations, the colleges have 
 had little share. Indeed, the college influences 
 in many cases have been wholly conservative 
 and reactionary. To the normal schools and the 
 free high schools distinguished college men have 
 been openly and actively hostile; to the new 
 philosophy underlying the more recent changes 
 they have been indifferent. In theory and in 
 practice they have clung to Renaissance ideals, 
 and they have been singularly blind to the new 
 work and new methods by which the public 
 schools have been seeking to adapt themselves to 
 the new social conditions. 
 
 If an educational system may be judged by 
 iU fruits, the people of Massachusetts have 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL. 271 
 
 reason to think that on the whole the fathers 
 built wisely and well. They may believe that 
 the successive phases which the system has pre- 
 sented in its development have on the whole 
 been in harmony with the spirit of the age, and 
 adapted to its requirements. 
 
 This seems no less true of the more modern 
 than of the more ancient forms. The active men 
 and women of the present generation were 
 trained in the public schools as they were modi- 
 fied under the graded system, and under the in- 
 fluence of the modern ideals. It is fair to look at 
 these men and women as products in part of the 
 educational system, and to measure its influence 
 by the qualities of character which they possess, 
 and by their success or failure. 
 
 While an outlook over the face of society 
 in its varied relations and activities may not at 
 every point afford the utmost satisfaction — while, 
 indeed, there may be much to deplore — yet as be- 
 tween the optimist and the pessimist the optimist 
 seems to have the best of it. Whether we turn 
 our glass toward the higher levels of religion 
 and morals and manners, or lower to the material 
 side of life, or toward the conduct of public af- 
 fairs, the forces which have been at work to 
 prepare the generation for its duties and its re- 
 sponsibilities seem to have done their work well. 
 
272 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 If there is less of intension in the religions 
 life and work of men and women, there is more 
 of extension. If there is less of theological 
 thinking there is more of Christlike activity ; so 
 that no great harm has come from leaving the 
 catechism out of the schools. Society is as 
 chaste, as temperate, as honest as it has been at 
 any period in our history. There is more of 
 courtesy and less of boorishness. 
 
 The increase of wealth and its wide distribu- 
 tion, whereby the people are better housed and 
 better clothed and better fed, testify to the in- 
 dustry and frugality and business enterprise 
 of the people, while the magnitude of busi- 
 ness undertakings, of financial operations and 
 their success show that business integrity, and 
 fidelity to trust have been equal to the increas- 
 ing strain upon them. 
 
 And, finally, in spite of all that good men de- 
 plore in the conduct of civil and political affairs, 
 it may be doubted whether — taking the com- 
 plexity of modern civilization into account — the 
 administration of public affairs, in the making, 
 the interpreting, and the execution of law, is not 
 on the whole as wise and as honest as at any 
 earlier period of the history of our State. Nor is 
 there less affection for country or devotion to 
 the flag. 
 
r 
 
 THE MODERN SCHOOL. 273 
 
 That the nearer approach to modern ideals 
 which the schools are now making will not be 
 less fruitful of good, we may confidently hope, 
 for the work is based on an ever-increasing 
 knowledge of child nature and a more profound 
 study of education as a science. But in judging 
 of the present and in forecasting the future, we 
 ought always to have in mind the limitations 
 under which the schools are doing their work. 
 The results which the system ought to produce, 
 presuppose children of an average intelligence 
 and average health, in regular attendance upon 
 schools in suitable buildings, under intelligent 
 and skillful teachers, well organized and wisely 
 directed. 
 
 But some of these conditions are often want- 
 ing. There are many dull children and stupid 
 children — multitudes with no intelligent ancestry 
 back of them, no heredity in their favor ; chil- 
 dren who, like Mr. Pullet in Adam Bede, have a 
 great natural capacity for ignorance. There are 
 puny children, ill-nurtured children, sickly chil- 
 dren, while epidemics of children's diseases deci- 
 mate whole schools every year. 
 
 The physical conditions under which the 
 work is attempted are often most unfavorable. 
 Schoolhouses — most of the old ones — are badly 
 heated, badly lighted, and not ventilated at all. 
 
274 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 The seats, even the best modern ones, have no 
 relation in form or size to the children who are 
 to occupy them. 
 
 Much might be done in spite of these hin- 
 drances, if the children who ought to be at 
 school were always there, but on the average 
 every child is absent one day in ten ; and inas- 
 much as the sound bright children from good 
 homes are more regular than the average, by so 
 much are the weak and the neglected more fre- 
 quently absent. 
 
 The organization of most of the schools is 
 such as to make ideal teaching and training im- 
 possible. The classes are too large by half ; the 
 wonder is that teachers accomplish anything 
 with the swarms of little ones who crowd the 
 primary schools, or with the fifty or more who 
 load the upper grades. 
 
 The teaching force, while better than ever 
 before and. constantly improving, is still far from 
 being what ideal conditions would require. 
 Many teachers are too young, too inexperienced 
 in life, with no sense of its responsibilities and 
 no comprehension of its relations. Many are too 
 old : elasticity all gone ; no sympathy with child- 
 hood; no power of adaptation. Some are igno- 
 rant, having had no adequate scholastic or pro- 
 fessional training — worked into the schools in 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL. 275 
 
 the absence of any effective means of barring 
 them out. 
 
 The best teachers are sometimes hampered by 
 ill-constructed courses of study, or by arbitrary 
 restrictions in discipline, or by ignorant and 
 crotchety school officials ; most often by systems 
 of examination which force them into paths 
 that are repugnant alike to their feelings and 
 their judgment. 
 
 That public sentiment which in the fathers 
 led them to Jay the foundations of the school 
 system so broad and so substantial, which kept 
 schools and colleges alive through periods of 
 darkness and disaster, which adapted them by 
 new forms for changing conditions of social life 
 — the moving school, the district school, the 
 academy, the graded school, the free high school 
 — that public sentiment must be relied on to re- 
 duce these limitations to a minimum. 
 
 More generous appropriations of money are 
 needed, to provide everywhere commodious and 
 comfortable and attractive schoolhouses ; to 
 equip them with all needed apparatus, cabinets, 
 and libraries ; to increase the number of teachers 
 so that the size of classes may be reduced — so 
 that children may be taught in squads rather 
 than in battalions and brigades. 
 
 To this same enlightened public sentiment 
 
276 MASSACHUSETTS PUBLIC-SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
 
 we must look for a system of selecting teach- 
 ers w^hich will keep out the most incompetent; 
 which will put a premium on capacity and pro- 
 fessional training; which will neither induct 
 teachers into office nor keep them there for per- 
 sonal and political ends, nor sacrifice the welfare 
 of the children to the necessities of the superan- 
 nuated and the indigent. And, lastly, public 
 sentiment among those who have the schools in 
 charge must devise some way by which all grades 
 of schools, from the kindergarten to the college, 
 shall be so correlated that there shall be a 
 straight and open pathway from the lowest to 
 the highest — with no hurdles to jump over and 
 no hoops to jump through — along which free- 
 acting children may be led by teachers acting 
 freely within the necessary limits of relativity. 
 
 The process of evolution has in it necessarily 
 an element of sadness. When old things pass 
 away, we miss them even if we would not have 
 them stay. The old, familiar ways — our roots 
 are in them, and change means wrenching. We 
 reverence " use and wont." Some of us perhaps 
 are looking back to the district school with jeal- 
 ous fondness; to the academy and to the older 
 days at college, or to a time when school work 
 and school discipline were more severe and for- 
 mal. Perhaps even now, in thought, we are 
 
THE MODERN SCHOOL. 277 
 
 querying if the new be really better, and depre- 
 cating any new departure. 
 
 We sympathize perhaps with Arthur's lonely 
 knight standing by the unknown sea, the goodly 
 fellowship all ended, and the phantom barge 
 about to bear away his king : 
 
 " Ah, my lord Arthur, whither shall I go f 
 For now I see the true old times are dead, 
 When every morning brought a noble chance, 
 And every chance brought out a noble knight." 
 
 Listen to Arthur's answer : 
 
 " The old order cha!!|peth, yielding place to new. 
 And God fulfills himself in many ways, 
 Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abbott Seminary, founding of, 
 133. 
 
 Academies, changes in, 200 ; de- 
 
 . cline of, 200 ; distribution of, 
 121; founding of, 118; legis- 
 lative report on, 120; num- 
 ber of, 121 ; origin of name, 
 119; purpose of; 122; results 
 of, 124, 128 : State aid for, 
 120; studies in, 123 ; teachers 
 in, 126. 
 
 Adams, Samuel, warning con- 
 cerning academies, 128. 
 
 Agricultural College, 227. 
 
 American First Class Book, 100. 
 
 American Institute of Instruc- 
 tion founded, 262. 
 
 American Preceptor, 100. 
 
 Angle, used for district, 77. 
 
 Apportionment of school money 
 among districts, 97. 
 
 Appropriations for public 
 schools in 1892, 234. 
 
 Arithmetic, Colburn's, 146, 246 ; 
 Hodder's, 102 ; in the district 
 schools, 102 ; Pike's, 102. 
 
 Attendance, school, made com- 
 pulsory, 210, 212 ; subsequent 
 legislation, 213. . 
 
 Barre, normal school in, 173. 
 
 Bible, displaced, 100; daily 
 reading of, required by law, 
 232 ; used as reading book, 58. 
 
 Billerica, law of 1642 enforced 
 in, 10. 
 
 Boarding around, 108. 
 
 Board of Education, agents of, 
 261 ; composition of, 155 ; 
 duties of, 156; established, 
 155 ; influence of, 260 ; mem- 
 bers of, 260; secretary of, 
 duties, 156. 
 
 Boston, English High School in, 
 145, 196 ; first school record, 
 1 ; grammar school in, sup- 
 port of, 48 ; grammar schools 
 ' in, in 1823, 192; primary 
 schools in, established, 143. 
 
 Bridgewater, normal school in, 
 172. 
 
 Brooks, Rev. Charles, advocates 
 normal schools, 170. 
 
 Cambridge, grading in, 192; 
 grammar school in, 49. 
 
 Carter, James G., plan for sem- 
 inary for teachers, 169 ; work 
 of, for public schools, 147. 
 
 (279) 
 
280 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Certification of teachers, first 
 required, 78. 
 
 Chantry schools, 23. 
 
 Charlestown, grammar school 
 in, 49. 
 
 Cheever, Ezekiel, author of Ac- 
 cidence, 58 ; character of, 62 ; 
 eulogy of, by Cotton Mather, 
 62. 
 
 Children, employment of, in 
 England, 214 ; laws of Mas- 
 sachusetts concerning, 216. 
 
 Colburn's Arithmetic, 146, 246. 
 
 Colleges, aided by State, 226; 
 relation of, to modern schools, 
 270. 
 
 Columbian Orator, 100. 
 
 Combe, George, influence of, 
 168, 246. 
 
 Compulsory attendance laws, 
 date of, 212 ; introduce no 
 new principle, 210. 
 
 Compulsory system of Massa- 
 chusetts, development of, 
 265; judged by its fruits, 
 271. 
 
 Constitution of Massachusetts, 
 education in, 82. 
 
 Controversy of Horace Mann 
 with schoolmasters, 181. 
 
 Cotton, John, English home of, 
 45. 
 
 Cousin's Reports, influence of, 
 169. 
 
 Dame schools, in England, 30 ; 
 in Massachusetts, 54; made 
 public, 79, 191. 
 
 Dedham, first school in, 51. 
 
 De Tocqueville, idea of New 
 England towns, 47. 
 
 District schools, books used in, 
 99, 101; discipline in, 109; 
 houses, 94, 95; length of 
 term in, 98 ; libraries in, 174 ; 
 studies in, 99, 105; teachers 
 in, 107, 108; work of , 110. 
 
 District system, abolition of, 
 205 ; decline of, 202 ; evils of, 
 114; opposition to, 204. 
 
 Dorchester, grammar school in, 
 49. 
 
 Drawing, an optional study, 
 252 ; required, 252. 
 
 Dudley, Joseph, English home 
 of, 45. 
 
 Dummer Academy, 118, 119. 
 
 Dwight, Edmund, aid in found- 
 ing normal schools, 170 : aids 
 teachers' institutes, 173, 
 
 Emerson, Rev. Joseph, work of, 
 in education of girls, 132. 
 
 Employment of children in 
 England, reports on, 214; 
 laws of Massachusetts con- 
 cerning, 216. 
 
 Endicott, John, English home 
 of, 45. 
 
 England, early education in, 
 21. 
 
 Evening high schools required 
 by law, 220. 
 
 Evening schools, charitable, 
 218; public, authorized by 
 law, 219; improvements in, 
 
INDEX. 
 
 281 
 
 219; number of, 220; re- 
 quired, 219. 
 Examination, first written, in 
 Boston, 192. 
 
 Fellenberg, at Hofwyl, 140. 
 Free text-books, 223. 
 Froebel, influence of, in public 
 schools, 254. 
 
 Germany, schools established 
 in, 20. 
 
 Girls, education of, colleges for, 
 228; early limits, 130; ex- 
 tended after the Revolution, 
 131 ; in district schools, 130 ; 
 seminaries for, 132. 
 
 Grading of schools, foreshad- 
 owings of, 188 ; in Cambridge, 
 192 ; in Boston, in grammar 
 schools, 192; in primary 
 schools, 193; recommended 
 by Horace Mann, 191. 
 
 Grammar in the district schools, 
 105. 
 
 Grammar schools, English, en- 
 dowment of, 25, 26 ; number 
 of, 25 ; patronage of, 37 ; re- 
 ligious nature of, 30 ; studies 
 in, 29 ; support of, 28 ; teach- 
 ers in, 31 ; early, in Massa- 
 chusetts, disappearance of, 
 115; failure to support, 76; 
 made moving schools, 76; 
 number of, diminished by 
 law of 1789, 85 ; support of, 
 48 ; teachers, 78 ; in Boston, 
 organization in 1823, 192. 
 
 Harvard College, bequest to by, 
 John Harvard, 6; first ap- 
 propriation for, 6 ; influence 
 of, 238 ; morals in, 66 ; presi- 
 dent of, 226; requirements 
 for admission, 59, 1277 i 
 rated from State, 226 ; stud- 
 ies in, 64, 127. 
 
 High schools, established by 
 law, 197; evening, 220; in 
 Boston first, 196 ; increase of, 
 199 ; influence of, 201 ; num- 
 ber of, 199; opposition to, 
 197. 
 
 Holland, character of schools 
 in, 36 ; schools established in, 
 20. 
 
 Hooker, Thomas, English home 
 of, 45. 
 
 Hornbook described, 55. 
 
 Industrial education, author- 
 ized, 253 ; extent of, 254. 
 
 Industrial School for Girls, 225. 
 
 Infant-school movement, in 
 Europe, 136; in United 
 States, 141. 
 
 Institute of Technology, 227. 
 
 Ipswich, grammar school in, 50, 
 
 Jacotot, at Louvain, 140 ; meth- 
 od used in Philadelphia, 142. 
 
 Kindergarten, first in Boston, 
 255 ; influence of, on primary 
 schools, 256 ; Miss Peabody's 
 work for, 255; Mrs. Shaw*s 
 support of, 255; public, in 
 
282 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Boston, 256 ; relation of, to 
 drawing, 257 ; relation of, to 
 manual training, 258. 
 King Philip's war, effects of, 
 
 72. 
 
 Lancaster, Joseph, founds mon- 
 itorial schools, 137. 
 
 Laws, early school, in Massa- 
 chusetts, 1642, analysis of, 
 14 ; enforcement of, 10 ; sub- 
 stance of, 8 ; of 1647, analysis 
 of, 14; text of, 12. 
 
 Leicester Academy founded, 
 120. 
 
 Lexington, normal school in, 
 172. 
 
 Libraries in school districts, 
 174. 
 
 Limitations on public school 
 work, 273. 
 
 Luther, Martin, address of, 17. 
 
 Lyman School for Boys, 225. 
 
 Lyon, Mary, work of, in educa- 
 tion of girls, 133. 
 
 r Mann, Horace, choice of, as Sec- 
 retary of Board of Education, 
 157 ; controversy with school- 
 masters, 181 : conventions 
 held by, 162, 176 ; lectures by, 
 162 ; opposes district system, 
 202 ; opposition to, by relig- 
 ious opponents, 180 ; by teacTi- 
 ers, 181 ; in Legislature, 177; 
 qualifications of , 157; reports 
 of, 165 ; retirement of, 174. 
 Manual labor schools, at Hof- 
 
 wyl, 140; in United States, 
 142. 
 
 Massachusetts, changes in, in- 
 dustrial, 187 ; factory system 
 in, 189, 214. 
 
 Massachusetts Teachers' Asso- 
 ciation founded, 183. 
 
 Mechanics' institutes, 139. 
 
 Ministers, influence of, 269 ; not 
 to be schoolmasters, 70; re- 
 lation of, to early schools, 64. 
 
 Modern school, differs from 
 earlier schools, 236; influ- 
 ences producing, 242 ; meth- 
 ods in, 241 ; Pestalozzianism 
 in, 243; purpose of, 237; 
 spirit of, 239 ; work of, 240. 
 
 Money, school, apportioned 
 among districts, 97 ; not to be 
 used for sectarian schools, 
 232. 
 
 Monitorial schools, in Boston, 
 146; in Europe, 137; in 
 United States, 141 ; work of, 
 138. 
 
 Morals, instruction in, legal 
 provision for, 87. 
 
 Moving schools, 75. 
 
 Neef, Joseph, 142. 
 Newburyport, early records of, 
 
 151 ; primary school for girls 
 
 in, 143. 
 Nonattendance at school, 211. 
 Normal Art School founded, 
 
 253. 
 Normal schools, advocated, 169 ; 
 
 aided by D wight, 170 ; estab- 
 
INDEX. 
 
 283 
 
 lished, 171 ; influence of, 247 ; 
 relation of Horace Mann to, 
 172. 
 
 Oswego, normal school in, 250. 
 
 Parochial schools, 232. 
 
 Pestalozzi, at Iverdun, 140 ; in- 
 fluence of, in modern schools, 
 243. 
 
 Phillips Academy, discipline in, 
 126 ; founding of, 119. 
 
 Pike's Arithmetic, 102. 
 
 Plymouth colony, schoollegis- 
 lation in, 68. 
 
 Pormort, Philemon, character 
 of, • 61 ; invited to become 
 teacher, 1. 
 
 Primary schools in Boston, es- 
 tablished, 143. 
 
 Primer, New England, descrip- 
 tion of, 56; displaced by 
 Spelling Book, 99. 
 
 Private schools, decline of, 200 ; 
 expense of, 129; promoted 
 
 »by academies, 129 ; teachers 
 of, to be approved by select- 
 men, 80, 81. 
 Prudential committees author- 
 ized by law, 92. 
 Psalter, displaced by Spelling 
 Book, 99 ; used as a reading 
 book, 58. 
 
 Reading in school, Bible dis- 
 placed by reading books, 99 ; 
 methods of teaching dis- 
 cussed by Horace Mann, 167. 
 20 
 
 Roxbury, grammar school in, 
 50, 53. 
 
 Salem, grammar school in, 50 ; 
 normal school in, 249. 
 
 School committee, choice of 
 voluntary, 150 ; compensa- 
 tion of, 167, 205 ; neglect of 
 duties by, 167 ; opposition to, 
 152; required by law, 149; 
 formal visits by, 151. 
 
 School districts, authorized by 
 law, 84 ; creation of, 77 ; em- 
 powered to choose prudential 
 committee, 92 ; empowered to 
 tax, 91 ; limitations on, 93 ; 
 made corporations, 92. 
 
 School fund, establishment of, 
 154. 
 
 Schoolhouses, bad condition 
 of, 207; improvement in, 
 208 ; in districts, description 
 of. 95 ; report on, by Horace 
 Mann, 166. 
 
 School law, of 1647, 12 ; of 1789, 
 83 ; of 1824 and 1826, 149. 
 
 Schoolmasters, exemption of, 
 from public burdens, 78. 
 
 Schools, in Holland, 20, 37; 
 in New Amsterdam, 38. 
 
 Schools in Massachusetts be- 
 fore the Revolution, became 
 free, when, 51 ; dame schools, 
 54; elementary, 53; fuel in, 
 60 ; grammar school, first, 53 ; 
 in small towns, 67; public, 
 46; supervision of, 64; sup- 
 port of, 48; teachers,61,78,81. 
 
284: 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 School spirit, decline of in the 
 eighteenth century, 69 ; main- 
 tained by new population, 
 234; revival of, by Horace 
 Mann,' 175. 
 
 Scotland, decline of education 
 in, 147; schools established 
 in, 20. 
 
 Secretary of Board of Educa- 
 tion, choice of Horace Mann, 
 157 ; duties of, 156. 
 
 Sectarian schools, public money 
 not to be used for, 232. 
 
 Seminaries for girls, 132. 
 
 Settlements, increase of, after 
 Indian wars, 74. 
 
 Smith, Walter, made art direct- 
 or, 253. 
 
 Spelling in the district schools, 
 105. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, influence of, 
 244. 
 
 Squadron, used for district, 77. 
 
 Studies in common schools, 83 ; 
 in dame schools, 54 ; in gram- 
 mar schools, 53, 240 ; in Har- 
 vard College, 64. 
 
 Superintendents of schools, au- 
 thorized in Massachusetts, 
 222 ; first in Providence, 220 ; 
 in Boston, 222; in Spring- 
 field, 222; legislation con- 
 cerning, 222; State aid for, 
 222. 
 
 Supervision of schools, efforts 
 of Horace Mann to improve, 
 
 167; general review of, 149; 
 professional, 220 ; required 
 by law of 1789, 150. 
 
 Taxation for school support 
 made compulsory, when, 153. 
 
 Teachers, associations of, 2'62 ; 
 certificated, 78; exemptions 
 of, 78; in district schools, 
 106; in English grammar 
 schepls, 31 ; in grammar 
 schools in Massachusetts, 61 ; 
 qualifications of, in district 
 schools, 108 ; wages of in dis^ 
 trict schools, 107. 
 
 Teachers' institutes, 173. 
 
 Technical schools, 227. 
 
 Text-books, free, 224. 
 
 Truancy, extent of, 217 ; legis- 
 lation against, 217. 
 
 Wages of teachers, in district 
 schools, 107 ; increase in, 174. 
 
 Wilderspin, Samuel, 136. 
 
 Willard, Emma, work of, in ed- 
 ucation of girls, 132. 
 
 Winthrop, John, English home 
 of, 45. 
 
 Women, employed as teachers, 
 79; illiteracy of, 75; in col- 
 leges, 228 ; in summer schools, 
 107. 
 
 Woodbridge, William, work of, 
 in education of girls, 132. 
 
 Worcester, normal school in, 
 249. 
 
14 DAY USE 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA LIBRARY