USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > A modern history of New Haven and eastern New Haven County, Vol. I > Part 17
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But not only was the seventeenth century the day of private schools, but in large measure so were the eighteenth and nineteenth. New Haven has had other distinctive schools, which have given it wide fame. Hopkins always headed the list, but there was the Lancasterian School of John E. Lovell, established in 1822, and following for thirty years a remarkable career during which it graduated many of the men who made the New Haven of their day. The feature of the Lancasterian system, as most persons by now have forgotten, was the\ employment of the older pupils to teach the younger. It seemed to work well under so excellent a master as Mr. Lovell. and appealed to some of the other educators of New Haven. The influence of it was felt to the extent that it was tried in several of the public schools of New Haven about the middle of the last century. It seemed to have its recommendations of econ- omy, and it worked very well at that time, but it depended much on the domi- nating spirit of the master. In those days of small numbers in the schools, when they were simply country schools on a little larger seale, it had some educational advantages. By the standards of education which have for some time prevailed it is, of course, hopelessly primitive.
There were other notable private schools in that earlier period. One that cannot even vet be forgotten was the Russell Military School, known formally as General Russell's Collegiate and Commercial Institute on Wooster Place. It belonged to the time when Wooster Place was the fashionable center of resi- dence, culture and to some extent of education. It was the city's only military school, and its fame, in its time, spread far. It was somewhat later than that, when Mrs. Sarah L. Cady's West End Institute, a fashionable and able "finish- ing school" for girls (perhaps they did not use that term in its early days), became famous and made educational prestige for New Haven.
The modern development of New Haven's public schools began, one may judge, about 1860, when first the high school was established. Its location was at the first near corner of Orange and Wall streets, where the building named from James Hillhouse was erected by the eity in 1871. It was a small beginning. But the building was an ambitious one by the standards of that time, and in it for the next three decades some of the best educational work of Connecticut was done. Little could the founders of that high school in the '60s foresee the time when New Haven would have a high school with a membership larger than the average American college, with a force of teachers considerably larger than Yale College had at the time.
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Large as it is, the high school of today is only proportional to the publie educational system of New Ilaven. A glimpse of it is impressive in many ways. This city of perhaps 175,000 people is served by a high school which really is four schools in one. There is the high school proper, with its college prepara- tory, classical. scientific and English courses; there is the manual training school, with its scientific and general courses; there is the commercial school, soon to have its own separate building, with the varied courses which the business college teaches; there are the Boardman apprentice shops, with their classes in shop work, domestic science and the trades. To this, doubtless, should! be added the evening high school, which is yearly coming nearer to the presen- tation, in necessarily somewhat abridged form, of all the advantages which the day schools offer.
This high school has a force of principal and six heads of departments, with a student counsellor and a special principal in charge of the afternoon sessions. There is a force of 114 teachers for the three departments, besides the Boardman apprentice shops, and for these there are, in all, twenty-seven teachers. In all departments of the high school there are this year 4,007 pupils. These taper down by classes, from 1.412 in the first year class, 1,002 in the second year class, to 738 in the junior class and 644 in the senior elass. This last figure will represent, approximately, the number in the graduating class. There are 178 pupils in the apprentice shops, better known as the Trade School. There are sixteen post-graduates.
There is a group of buildings in the high school system, and it is bound to be greater. When the great building on York Square was erected in 1903, it was expected to be ample for the school needs for years to come. Within less than ten years it was found hopelessly inadequate to accommodate all the pupils at one session. It was planned to accommodate 1,562 pupils. It now has, as we have seen, over 4,000. Though an addition accommodating 768 pupils in its six- teen rooms was made in 1914. it was still necessary, as it had been three years earlier, to resort to the expedient of double sessions. First the first year class was made into an afternoon school, and by 1917 it was found necessary to divert 150 of the second year pupils to this school. At the end of 1917 the superin- tendent reported that the building had accommodated in the previous year 2,500 pupils, which he considered its limit.
The remainder of the 4.000, of course, were in the Boardman Manual Training School Building on Broadway. Here the manual training courses are taken care of, as well as the commercial department. A new building for this department has been planned, but its construction is delayed. The greater portion of the Boardman building is occupied by the pupils of the Trade School, who need more room in proportion to their number.
So the problem of New Haven's growing high school has been solved for the time. The division of the high school into local parts in different sections of the city, which seemed at one time inevitable, has been at least post- poned. It has been hoped to still further postpone it by the formation of what
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is called the Junior High School. This is a separate school consisting of grades seven, eight and nine; that is, the last two years in the grammar school and the first in the high school. This plan, discussed at some length by the super- intendent in his last annual report as the most feasible means of relieving the high school pressure, was expected to be tried out, possibly in the present year. The plan intends the establishment, in all sections of the city. of a sufficient number of these junior high schools to perhaps permanently relieve the pressure on the central building.
The grammar and primary grades of the city are now served by forty-seven buildings, in addition to the schools at the New Haven and St. Francis orphan asylums. In them are 614 classrooms, with a total of 26,139 seats, to take care of a school registration of 27.242. The total number of teachers, including the entire high school force, the teachers in the grammar, primary and kindergarten grades, and the supervisors and assistants, was in 1917 820.
The largest school in New Haven is Hamilton Street, with thirty-one rooms and 1,523 pupils. Greene Street, at the corner of Wooster Square, comes next, with nineteen rooms, 942 pupils. Ivy Street, at the corner of Ivy Street and Winchester Avenue, comes third. with 882 pupils. These are among the older schools of the city. There are fourteen other schools each having the full eight grades, ranging from 860 down to 158 pupils in number, and in age from the historie Lovell School, built back near the middle of the last century, to Bar- nard School, opened in 1913, out on the western edge of the city. Two schools, the Dixwell Avenue, with five rooms and 164 pupils, and the school of St. Francis Orphan Asylum, with eight rooms and 384 pupils, have only seven grades. Seventeen have only six grades. These are mostly in districts, some of them congested, where pupils are prone to leave school early. Three schools in the Wooster Square district. Dante. Fair Street and Wooster, stop with the fifth grade. Eight have only four grades. these being mostly subsidiary to larger buildings in their distriet. The New Haven orphan asyhim school, being restricted to children quite young, has only two grades. The schools of New Haven offer a most favorable field for the study of the process of race amalga- mation which means so much to New Haven. They reflect, at the same time, the nature of the city's changing citizenship. They moreover give reassurance. as has elsewhere been said, to those who fear that the task of making the raw material into Americans is not being well performed. In these schools forty-five different nationalities are represented. They are American, Armenian, Austrian, Australian, Belgian, Bohemian, Canadian. Chinese. Cuban. Danish, Dutch, Egyptian, English. Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hungarian. Irish, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Negro, Newfoundlander, Norwegian, Philippine, Polish, Portuguese, Prussian, Rumanian, Russian, Scandinavian, Scotch, Serbian, Shetland Islander, Slavonian, South American. Spanish, Swedish, Swiss, Syrian, Turkish, Welsh and West Indian.
Of the 27.029 children in the schools, 8.115, or less than one-third. may be called Ameriean. Italy, not America, heads the list of nationalities with 8,576.
1
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Then follow American, 8,115; Russian, 4,486; Irish, 1,304; German, 926. There are half as many Russians as AAmericans. Yet the mixture in the schools seems hopeless. There is only one school in the eity, the Dante, which is practically a school of single nationality. Of the 437 there, 434 are Italians, two are Americans and one is Russian. Italians largely predominate in seven other schools, having from 58 to 97 per cent. These are Wooster, Fair Street, Hamil- ton, Greene Street, Washington, Ezekiel Cheever and Eaton. In nine sehools, out of a total registration of 6,009, 4,725 are Italians. In four schools, Zunder, Hallock Street, Webster and Scranton Street, Russians predominate, having a registration of 1,352 out of a total of 2,432.
There are marked shifts of this population as well. Schools in the old Weleh district, which were once largely Russian, now have a larger number of Italians than Russians. These are Cedar Street, Prince Street and Weleh. But of these two nationalities together there are 1,633 children out of a total of 2,235. The Italian seems to be universal. In every school in the city he is represented by from five to 1,294 children. The Russian, however, is almost as widely dis- tributed. The Ameriean manages to be represented in all but one of the schools of the city, the small Greenwich Avenue School. In the last three years, the number of Americans in the schools has increased 1.3 per cent, the Italians have increased 13.5 per cent, the Russians have increased 11.9 per cent, the Irish have deereased 16.1 per cent. the Germans have decreased 30.7 per cent. There are other changes. Of the pupils now in the schools, 1,754 were born abroad. But this is 1,642 fewer than for 1915, and 571 fewer than for 1916. This may be accounted for, perhaps, by the recent checking of immigration. In the High School there are thirty-one different nationalities. A little less than half the total, or 1,822, are Amerieans.
II
The New Haven school organization now consists of a board of education of seven members, appointed by the mayor, a superintendent, three assistant superintendents, a seeretary of the board and an inspector of school buildings. The members of the board, at the beginning of 1918 were: Leo H. Herz, presi- dent of the board ; Henry A. Spang, H. M. Kochersperger. Dr. George Blumer, Mrs. Perey T. Walden, William A. Watts and Joseph T. Anquillare. Frank II. Beede has been superintendent for the past eighteen years, sueceeding Calvin N. Kendall in 1900. The change from the system of supervising principals to assistant superintendents was made in 1912, and had the immediate effect of demoting, at least as to responsibility and salary, three of the veteran prin- cipals and able educators of the school system, whose work had deserved for them a better fate. The present assistant superintendents are Junius C. Knowl- ton, Claude C. Russell and John C. McCarthy. George T. Hewlett is the sec- retary of the board, having ably served since 1903, when the late Horaee Day closed his labors after a service of forty-three years with the board. The in- spector of school buildings is Dennis J. Maloney.
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The present principal of the High School is Charles Kirschner, a native of New Haven, a graduate of the school and of Yale, and an able exeentive and educator, proved so by his service in the most trying period the school has so far known. The heads of departments are: Classical, Alfred E. Porter; Com- mercial. John D. Houston ; English, Susan S. Sheridan, one of the veteran teachers of the school ; Mathematics, Arthur E. Booth: Modern Languages, Thomas F. Taylor. Janet M. Purdue is the student counselor, and Ralph Wentworth is principal in charge of the afternoon sessions.
The Boardman apprentice shops, now forming a vitally important depart- ment, not only of the High School, but of the whole New Haven system of education, are now directed by Ralph O. Beebe. This school, popularly known as the Trade School, was established in 1913, and has, under wise foundation and careful administration, made a record which has given it high distinction among schools of its class in the country. It was planned, not on the model of any other trade school, but solely for New llaven's needs. Its central purpose was to offer, to the large and rapidly growing number of New Haven boys and girls whom the urge of economie necessity was driving into gainful occupations as soon as the law would permit them to leave school, aid to choice of the kind of work for which they were best adapted, and a direct fitting for that work. It was to serve the further and not less essential purpose of offering an indneement for a year or two years of further continuance in school, with the general edu- cation and training that might accompany the special education, of hundreds who were hesitating between school and work, and liable to choose the latter in following what seemed the line of least resistance.
The school was opened with Frank L. Glynn as director. Under his experi- enced and progressive leadership, it at once took high rank among institutions of its sort. There was at first opposition to it from organized labor bodies, who suspected its effect as inimical to them. Bnt discreet management has substan- tially overcome this opposition, and all workers in all trades in New Haven now pretty well understand that the school will be a great help to the proficiency of their lines of work. In 1916 Mr. Glynn was called to a larger work in Wisconsin, and Robert O. Beebe, who had for some years been the assistant of Major Hewlett in the office of the Board of Education, was made director. He has shown a broad conception of the opportunities and purposes of the school, and has excellently developed its courses.
The school functions now through twelve departments, each representing an important trade or vocation. The one regularly containing the greatest number of pupils is the department of machine shop practice, in which forty- five boys are learning by actual work in well equipped machine shops to do practically expert machine making. Their work is not merely practice. There product is finished and salable, and finds a market, as well as, in some cases, an actual advance demand. The income from this source alone makes a material reduction in the cost of running the school. Next to this the most largely at- tended branch is the girls' department, in which thirty-three pupils are learning
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dressmaking, millinery and cooking, as well as housekeeping and the higher branches of domestic seience. Twenty-three boys are in the drafting room. Twenty are in the woodworking trades, which are a practical preparation for all branches of carpentry and cabinet making. The electrical department has seven- teen pupils, and teaches with practical experience all the leading branches of applied electricity. There is a printing department, which had nine pupils last year. This teaches practical printing, including the use of the linotype machine, a good machine and an instrnetor being constantly available. This department prints many of the papers and pamphlets used by the educational board and the schools in their work. There is a class of seven in pattern making, a class of seven in plumbing, of five in book binding, and of two in forging. This was the first trade school in the country to open a department for the teaching of painting and decorating. In that class there were ten boys in 1917. The mem- bers of this elass have done much of the work of this sort for the department of schools whenever new rooms were opened or it was necessary to redecorate old ones. As an instance, the last report of the Board of Education said : "On November 9, 1917, the Board of Education held its first meeting in the new offices in the old county court house. The work of refinishing these offices was largely done by apprentices from the Boardman apprentice shops."
Other reports within the past few years have shown that all the finished material produced and the work done by apprentices from this school either brings in or saves the city money amounting in the year to between $15,000 and $16,000, a very appreciable portion of its cost of maintenance.
Once in three months the department in salemanship of the school enrolls a class of twenty-five members, composed of salesmen or women from depart- ment stores, who are given efficient instruction in this essential art.
At present the number of those seeking instrnetion in the apprentice shops, especially in some departments, exceeds the accommodations, and as soon as the completion of the building for the commercial school takes this department ont of the Boardman Building, these vacated rooms will be made available for the apprentice shops. The school is run on the plan of any industrial institution, from eight in the morning till five in the afternoon on five days in the week, and even the Saturday session is now being extended to all the day. It is kept in session practically all the year, with the exception of part of a month in the summer. The evening department, an increasingly important one, is now open for the full six nights. The Saturday afternoon and evening sessions are held to accommodate evening school pupils for whom there is not room at the regular evening sessions.
The evening schools of New Haven have changed in twenty years from being merely missionary to definitely practical in their character. There is still the familiar irregularity in their attendance, so that figures of registration are unsatisfactory and in a measure deceiving. But schools which at first were run as social eenters, where those who took the notion might come and go practically as they pleased during the evening school session, now have taken on the char-
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acter of practical, efficient schools, with a definite course and required work. Their season is comparatively short, but each year they grant formal diplomas to those who complete the required course, and have their regular graduation exereises. In the past year the demand for entrance to some branches of them has been such that a registration fee of one dollar was demanded in the Iligh School and in the Boardman apprentice shops, as a guarantee of good faith and serious purpose. In the past year classes have been conducted at the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, and the prediction is officially made that the time may come when evening and continuation schools will be con- dueted in all the large factories.
Some of the most important of the instruction in the New Haven schools is directed by supervisors, each with his or her specialty. New Haven was one of the first cities in the country to establish the teaching of vocal music in all its grade schools, and the work done in that department for fifty years by him who came to be the loved "musie master." Prof. Benjamin Jepson, attracted national attention. Beginning with 1864, he developed a training system which left its mark for the better on every pupil that passed through the schools. Ile was able to make singers of only a few, but he gave those few an invaluable start, and he improved all. The city's schools became famous for their musical instruction, and it was always possible to raise at short notice a chorus of from fifty to two hundred school children to sing on any public or patriotie occasion. Professor Jepson, at times in his career as musie supervisor. conducted singing classes in many of the towns around New Haven. He also developed an exeel- lent series of school music readers, which is still in nse in many of the schools of the country. His work in the New Haven schools is continued by Supervisor William E. Brown, with two assistants.
The present plan not only develops chorus singing to the highest practicable point, but gives some degree of attention to individual singing wherever it seems desirable. It also provides instruction on the violin to many pupils of the schools-as many as 300 from the fifth. sixth. seventh and eighth grades in 1917. In the High School chorus work is especially developed by boys' and girls' glee clubs, and instrumental ability is encouraged by a high school or- ehestra under competent instruction.
New Haven has made a most valuable feature of the teaching of drawing and art in its schools under the supervision of Almond H. Wentworth. The work is so conducted that even in cases where there is not the slightest natural inclination in this direction, the mind of the pupil is arrested and fixed for a time on this subjeet, and at least something is accomplished in the teaching of good taste and an appreciation of the beautiful.
In some school systems penmanship may have become a lost art, but not in New Haven. Supervisor Harry Houston has found just the points in which penmanship is practical even in these days of typewriters and mechanical book- keeping, and dwells on these points in his direction of writing. His own skill and knowledge of the subject, developed in a series of school copy books which
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many schools of New England have adopted as standard, have given him an almost national reputation in his specialty.
Ilenry J. Schnelle, the present supervisor of physical training, has developed his practically new department to a most significant degree. Something more than just perfunetory school drills are given to the children. They are given a practical groundwork in the art of good living, in the fundamentals of good health. I'nder his direction leagues in baseball, football, basketball, track and field sports have been organized in many of the schools. School yard play is supervised, and the teachers are made competent physical instruetors. Even the men principals have been enthused to the point of personal participation in competitive sports.
Sewing has become more and more of a practical and applied subject of late years in the schools, particularly under the present supervisor, Miss Jennie R. Messer. Important instruction is given in things which every woman needs to know, and given in such a manner that it has its lasting effect.
There are other leaders in the New Haven schools for the past twenty years who should be mentioned, though they have been identified with no specialty. Frank J. Diamond has been in this period principal of the Greene Street School, and no teacher in New Haven has done a more valuable work just where the tide of alien population has flowed strongest. In a school of 927 pupils, where 82 were born abroad. and 735 are of Italian parentage, with eighteen other nationalities besides American represented. he and his loyal corps of teachers show a composite product of true Americanism that is a credit to their work and a reassutranee to all who tremble at the effect of the alien strains in our national blood. In another way, and with a different problem, Sherman I. Graves at Strong School in Fair Haven has done as valuable a work. No teacher in all our schools has finer ideals than he; none loves better the community of his adoption. It was his dream to make this school a transforming community center. He had made it a wonderful school when fire in 1911 destroyed his beauti- fnl building, but his hopes rose with the new one from the ashes. 1Je has not been able to do all he hoped to do. Untoward events have worked against him. But the discerning know the worth of his faithful work. His school also is a melting pot, with twenty-one nationalities among its 514 pupils, but fine is the gold it turns ont. The third of a trio of strong men wrestling with great problems is David D. Lambert at Truman Street School, with 838 pupils in his charge, 122 of them born abroad, 281 of them Russian, 169 of them Italian, eighteen other races represented, only 227 of them called American. IIe also has faithfully, quietly, hopefully worked on. If he had no other reward than the sight of the results he is accomplishing for the future of New Haven, he might well be content.
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