USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 4 > Part 17
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STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION
His next plea was for neglected and wayward boys, and a home school for them was the result.
When all this was achieved, Horace Mann went to the State senate, and was at once elected president of that body. It was natural that he should champion the cause of all chil- dren and youth.
PROGRESS IN EDUCATION (1821-1858)
That Massachusetts was ripe for the great awakening of 1820 is evident from the fact that Boston had the first really free public high school in the New World : the English High School in 1821, and the first high school for girls in 1825.
In 1827 the legislature permitted the support of public schools for all children for twelve weeks in the year, but it was 1858 before there was compulsory schooling for all chil- dren from eight to fifteen.
The teaching of geography was required in 1826. This was more than ten years before there was a State board of education, before Mr. Mann was in the State legislature. There are many evidences that educational history was bud- ding before the great blossoming was apparent.
Boston was far ahead of the rest of the State, and certainly led all cities in the New World. This had its disadvantages as well as its advantages. Boston was proud, even conceited, so that it refused to profit by any of the spirit of the great awakening between 1820 and 1845.
One of the notable creations in the educational history of this period was the promotion of supervision. In nothing was Mr. Mann more heroic than in his appeal for professional supervision of the schools of cities.
Springfield had the first city superintendent of schools in Massachusetts, in 1840.
MASSACHUSETTS STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION (1837)
Educational history was ready to ripen when the Massa- chusetts State Board of Education was created. On May 27, 1837, the governor appointed eight men as the State Board of Education. Mr. Mann was one of these. He be-
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lieved this Board to be like a mountain spring, almost im- perceptible, but destined to deepen and widen as it descended, diffusing health and beauty in its course till people should dwell upon its banks. He considered it the first great move- ment towards an organized system of common-school education.
Mr. Mann demonstrated his sincerity by accepting the secretaryship, on June 29 of that year. His dramatic con- secration to the creation of a State common-school system is without a parallel in the educational history of America. "My law library is for sale. I'll let the next generation be my client." "God grant me an annihilation of selfishness, a mind of wisdom, a heart of benevolence. ... I must not irritate. I must not degrade any one in his own eyes. I must not pre- sent myself as a solid body to oppose an iron barrier to any. I must adapt myself to tastes, opinions, habits, manners so far as this can be done without hypocrisy or insincerity, or a compromise of principle ... . So long as I hold this office, I devote myself to the supremest welfare of mankind."
Mr. Mann's enthusiasm received a severe shock immediately when he entered upon his new work. He had been the most popular speaker in the State for ten years, and he expected to win immediate and universal support to his appeals for better schoolhouses, for the use of maps and globes and school ap- paratus, for better books, better teachers, and better teaching.
When he made a political speech in Westport, everybody came to hear him, and a hundred people came from New Bed- ford; but when he had an address on education a few evenings later, almost no one came to hear him. Naturally he was exasperated at the universal indifference to his appeals.
From 1789 to 1837 academies and private schools had developed almost miraculously. When Mr. Mann consecrated himself to the creation of a common-school system in 1837, $328,000 was paid in tuition to private schools and academies in Massachusetts and only $2.81 of tax money was expended per child on public education. The entire tax for public schools was $465,228. The $328,000 was paid in tuition for one sixth of the children of the State.
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INFLUENCE ON THE NATION
ACADEMIES, HIGH SCHOOLS, AND LOCAL DIS- TRICTS (1820-1870)
The academy (named from a suburb of Athens where Plato met his students) was a vital factor in the educational history of Massachusetts from 1820 to 1870, but slackened its pace of progress when the free public high school intensified its popularity after the Civil War.
The academy was really a creation of the Revolutionary War period. Phillips Academy was established at Andover by Samuel Phillips in 1778. In 1820 there were 26 incorporated academies in Massachusetts. In 1840 there were 114.
The high school, first named in Boston about 1824 and recognized by law in 1827, had a hard time competing with the academies. In 1840 there were only 18 high schools. In 1861 there were 102 high schools, in which Latin and Greek were taught.
Phillips Academy never suffered from high-school com- petition; but many other Massachusetts academies suf- fered greatly from the competition, because the high school prepared students in Latin and Greek for college, and at the same time had commercial and other departments which ap- pealed to the public.
In 1827 the local school district was legalized and made a political institution. Until then it had been a convenience, with no State provision for its action.
George H. Martin, in his study of the Massachusetts public school system, says that this legalizing of the local school district was the high-water mark of modern democracy, and the low-water mark of the Massachusetts school system. Each school district became the center of semi-political activ- ity. Mr. Martin said, "Questions involving the fate of na- tions have been decided with less expenditure of time, less stirring of passions, less vociferation of declamation and de- nunciation, than the location of fifteen-by-twenty district schoolhouses."
MASSACHUSETTS INFLUENCE ON THE NATION (1830-1889)
A vital factor in the educational history of Massachusetts
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in the quarter of a century following 1820 is its influence upon national educational history.
Probably the most effective single educational address ever made in the New World was by Thaddeus Stephens in the Pennsylvania legislature, in 1834, which saved the modest at- tempt to promote public education in that State.
In 1844, New York State, which had resisted the noble ap- peals of Governor De Witt Clinton for a quarter of a century, followed the lead of Massachusetts. The New York Legisla- ture reprinted the fifth annual report (1841) of Horace Mann for extensive free circulation in the State, an honor never con- ferred on any other educational publication of Massachusetts by that legislature ; and it bore important fruit.
In 1844 New York established at Albany the first State normal school outside of Massachusetts. New York went still further in its appreciation of Massachusetts and came to that State for a principal for the first normal school-David P. Page, who was an assistant teacher in the Newburyport high school. There were many New York aspirants for the position, all men with academic attainments, and Mr. Page had no college training. This came near jeopardizing the normal school project in New York State.
The second year that Mr. Mann was secretary of the Mas- sachusetts State Board of Education, Mr. Page, a young man, an assistant teacher in the Newburyport high school, read a paper at an educational meeting on "Duties of Parents and Teachers." In it were sentences like these: "We should ask for sympathy,-for soul-cheering sympathy on the part of the parents of those we are called to instruct . . . . Let parents give their sympathy and cooperation to the teachers of their children, and the profession would soon be filled with devoted and talented men, who would be willing to live and die in their work: and when from their last pillow they should cast back a lingering look to the scene of their labors, the roses would amply conceal the sharpest thorns."
Mr. Mann said this was the ablest educational address to which he had listened; and he published it at public expense, sending a copy to all teachers in the State. This address made Mr. Page principal of the Albany State Normal School six years later.
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NORMAL SCHOOLS
All vitalized educational history in the New World is trace- able to Massachusetts in the quarter of a century from 1820 to 1845; and this is centered on the vision, courage, and wisdom of Horace Mann and his associates.
SUPPORTERS OF REFORM (1836-1874)
No man creates history any more than one general wins a battle. History is made by civic, industrial, social, and reli- gious conflict. Horace Mann would have made a sorry pic- ture in educational history but for the heroic support that he received from Edward Everett, orator, statesman, and presi- dent of Harvard College; Josiah Quincy, mayor of Boston; Charles Sumner, eminent statesman; Rufus Choate, famous lawyer; Samuel G. Howe, of international fame; John G. Whittier, Martin Brimmer, and John G. Carter, champions of professional education of teachers. Mr. Carter was the original promoter of the State normal school idea. He was one year older than Mr. Mann, and a graduate of Harvard College, three years earlier than Mr. Mann graduated from Brown University.
NORMAL SCHOOLS (1827-1889)
The year that Mr. Mann was elected to the Massachusetts legislature, Mr. Carter petitioned for an appropriation for the establishment of a State normal school. The failure of this bill led Mr. Carter to open a private normal school at Lan- caster, Massachusetts. He was a member of the legislature in 1835, and drafted the bill which created the first two State normal schools in Massachusetts.
Edmond Dwight, Mr. Mann's most ardent supporter in the establishment of normal schools, was a member of the first State Board of Education; and when the bill for the estab- lishment of the first State normal school was passed, he gave $10,000, and the legislature appropriated an equal amount.
Josiah Quincy, mayor of Boston, gave Mr. Mann $1,500 for the promotion of normal school activities.
The Bridgewater State Normal School, under Nicholas Tillinghast, gave a tone to normal schools which has had a vast influence all over the country. The Bridgewater Normal
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School was the first to continue in the place where it was es- tablished. The Lexington Normal School moved to West Newton and then to Framingham, and the Barre Normal School moved to Westfield; and each of them changed prin- cipals early.
Horace Mann's theory was to use the normal schools for the spread of his gospel of the new education. As a result, students could attend school for a short time each year, keep account of the time they were there, and get their certificates of graduation when their attendance equalled three terms, which counted for a year.
Tillinghast was a scholar and an educator. He was a grad- uate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, had taught in that academy, had been a principal in Boston. He was principal of the Bridgewater Normal School from its opening in 1840 until 1853.
Tillinghast insisted that a State normal school should pre- pare students to teach successfully, and that it was impossible to achieve that unless a student remained in the school at least three consecutive terms, or one year. When he had been principal six years and had been unable to secure this standard, he resigned as principal, giving this as the reason. The State Board of Education refused to accept his resignation, and put all three schools on the continuous attendance program.
Albert G. Boyden was principal of the Bridgewater Normal School from 1858 to 1906, by far the longest term that any head of any educational institution has been in service. His eldest son, Arthur C. Boyden, in 1929 was serving his twenty- third year as the successor of his father.
Educational history of Massachusetts must always follow the movement from the common schools to the academies until 1820; from the academies to the colleges from 1820 to 1870; from the high schools to the colleges after 1870.
The academies harvested the promising boys of the common schools, and the colleges marketed the promising boys of the academies.
EDUCATIONAL REPORTS (1836-1841)
In the first years of Mr. Mann's devotion to the creation of a public-school system, Massachusetts led the New World as
Courtesy of Massachusetts Historical Society HORACE MANN
Courtesy of Halliday Historic Photograph Co. MARK HOPKINS
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BOSTON SCHOOLS
wholesomely as it did brilliantly. His first five annual re- ports, as secretary of the State Board of Education, are the most important five books on public schools that have been written. Search the libraries, run down the visions of all the philosophers, psychologists, and methodologists of a century, and you will find no five books that have rendered service comparable to that exerted by these five annual reports.
Horace Mann's fifth annual report was read in part in the British Parliament at a critical time in the promotion of public education, and saved legislation which was being bitterly op- posed. Germany had Mr. Mann's fifth annual report trans- lated and reprinted for general circulation. Never has any State in the Union had as great influence at home and abroad as had Massachusetts from 1820 to 1845.
State responsibility for the best schools for all children was idealized in State normal schools, and the first three in the New World were in Massachusetts. It was a hazardous ad- venture, because it necessitated an indictment of the teaching of the times and was a condemnation of the academies in which the teachers of the day had been educated.
Despite the troublous times in which these State normal schools were born, they made educational history for the New World; and today there is no State in which teacher training is not required. These three State normal schools of 1839 and 1840 are today in evidence in every nook and corner of every State and Territory.
BOSTON SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS (1843-1844)
The controversy between Horace Mann and the thirty-one Boston masters in 1844 is an illuminating chapter in the edu- cational history of Massachusetts, but nothing has been writ- ten that makes it historically intelligible.
It is always referred to as an attack upon Horace Mann by the Boston masters. This was in no sense true until the final chapter in the controversy.
Mr. Mann made a fierce and furious attack upon the Boston masters in his seventh annual report, 1843. He felt justified in this because of their attitude toward the State normal schools, then only four years old.
The Boston schools were far above the common schools
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which the State normal schools were establishing. The State normal schools were established to educate the people to ap- preciate ideal school conditions, and they were used primarily, in those first years, for propaganda purposes. The two primary issues were teaching children to read as all children are taught to read now, and to abolish corporal punishment.
The Boston schools were primarily character-forming and social-creative institutions of an academy type. For a child to learn to read was a mere incident : he was to get the school atmosphere, as it were.
Whipping was not a cruel affair-was rarely, if ever, used severely in Boston. It was merely a means of making boys manly; "behavioristic" it would be called now.
The creation of the normal schools in 1839 and 1840 was the cause of great annoyance to Mr. Mann. Much glory as there was in it because of the public appreciation and personal financial gifts by Charles Sumner, Josiah Quincy, mayor of Boston, Edmund Dwight, and many others, there was opposi- tion bordering on ridicule by teachers and the public.
Naturally, the argument for State institutions to provide teachers was based upon the fact that those now teaching were incompetent. This inevitably led to bitter resentment by those who were teaching.
New England had church academies and seminaries, whose students quite generally taught; and this led these institutions and the churches they represented to resent the attitude of Mr. Mann.
Mr. Mann had no satisfactory opportunity to meet this op- position till his seventh annual report, 1843, which was pre- pared after six months spent in England, Germany, and Prussia.
He made the issue the fact that untrained teachers taught the alphabet and punished pupils, neither of which was the practice in Prussia. Unfortunately, he attacked the Boston Schools directly and vehemently on those two issues.
THE BOSTON CONTROVERSY (1843)
This provoked the controversy. The thirty-one Boston Masters signed the "Remarks on the Seventh Annual Report,"
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THE BOSTON CONTROVERSY
which were so brilliant that Mr. Mann said frankly that he lost sleep and reputation in consequence.
His "Reply" to the "Remarks" was most unfortunate in spirit and in matter. The fact was that he had no support, even from his best friends. No one cared whether the al- phabet was taught or not. Everybody had learned the al- phabet, and it had done them no harm; and mothers and fathers resented the suggestion that spanking was a crime.
The pulpit proclaimed the Bible as authority on Solomon's insistence that the rod should not be spared; and here was the head of the school system of Massachusetts insisting that the rod should be spared.
All in all the "Reply" of Mr. Mann left the controversy a triumph for the Boston masters. Had there been a popular vote on the alphabet and spanking, there would have been few school districts in his favor.
The "Rejoinder" of the Boston masters changed the whole situation. Some of the writers of the famous "Remarks" had declined to continue the controversy; and younger men, who wrote in the "Rejoinder," turned from the alphabet and spanking, and attacked Mr. Mann's record on the ground that he had accomplished nothing, ridiculing Dr. Samuel G. Howe and Martin Brimmer for their support of Mr. Mann.
Immediately there rallied to Mr. Mann's support, with in- tense bitterness towards the Boston masters, Edward Everett, Charles Sumner, Josiah Quincy, John G. Whittier, Henry Wilson, and many others who had the public's confidence. No one dared to support the Boston masters in this new rôle; and at an election held to elect a school board, the strongest supporters of Mr. Mann were elected. This dramatic victory of Mr. Mann had no possible reference to the controversy over the alphabet and the use of the rod, and yet it is quite com- mon to hear eminent educators speak in glowing terms of Mr. Mann's triumphant victory in the alphabet-punishment contest. "The Answer" of Mr. Mann was every way worthy of him and of the occasion. Unfortunately, the result of the controversy established an impassable gulf between Mr. Mann and the teaching force of Boston; and they remained in ac- tion, while Mr. Mann and his enthusiastic supporters detoured into the sectional political morass.
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EDUCATION
EDUCATION FOR GIRLS (1820-1875)
Educational history took an entirely new departure in open- ing an academic world for girls after 1820.
Boston deserves high praise for having the first academic high school for girls in the New World.
Ipswich, Massachusetts, made a desperate effort to establish a seminary for girls. Mary Lyon devoted six years of bril- liant teaching and intense activity, trying to have the Ipswich seminary financed; but she failed, and the seminary was closed.
No story has been oftener told and no chapters in educa- tional history have been better written than the wonderful achievement of Mary Lyon in the creation of Mt. Holyoke Seminary. She was born in western Massachusetts, one year after Mr. Mann was born at Franklin in southeastern Massa- chusetts.
Mary Lyon had as noble a vision for women as he had for children and youth. At forty years of age, when the Ipswich Seminary failed because Rufus Choate, with all his fame and brilliant appeal, could not enlist financial support, Miss Lyon returned to the Berkshires and from the farmers and their families raised $68,500, which she invested in land and build- ings in South Hadley and opened a seminary for girls. She insisted that she would never accept more than $200 a year and board for her service, and would provide as good education for girls for $60 a year-tuition and board-as any boys had.
There were accommodations for eighty-five students, and more than three hundred applied. In the twelve years that she lived to conduct that seminary, there were 2,324 young women in attendance and every State was represented.
It was more than twenty years after Mary Lyon died in 1849, at the age of fifty-two, before a woman's college func- tioned in Massachusetts-Wellesley and Smith, 1875.
After Wellesley and Smith were functioning, a woman was elected on the School Committee of Boston, whom the courts would not allow to qualify because only men could direct the education of children and youth. It required an act of the legislature to make it possible for children in school to have the benefit of a woman's counsel.
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MASSACHUSETTS COLLEGES
ADVANTAGES OF THE BOSTON SCHOOLS (1875-1890)
Educational history moved much faster in Massachusetts from the establishment of Wellesley and Smith Colleges to 1890, than from that of Mount Holyoke in 1837 to 1875.
Boston's educational history was never any part of the educational history of Massachusetts. It was never a small city and never had any common-school conditions. It never had any short school year; never had any schools for the ex- press purpose of teaching reading, writing, and numbers.
The Boston grammar schools were primarily academies. The Boston master was in the same class as the principal of an academy. The pupils attained good manners and health sug- gestions, and gave attention to their personal appearance as definitely as the pupils in any academy.
No pupil was hide-bound by any course of study. The Boston master was as much elated when he could help a boy upon graduation into a position of responsibility as was any academy principal. There was no Boston master who did not point with pride to a number of men in business whom he had started on their careers. A grammar school reunion was a home-coming of men of distinguished success.
MASSACHUSETTS COLLEGES (1820-1870)
There was little distinctive educational history made in Massachusetts colleges from 1820 to 1870. Williams Col- lege in the extreme west and Harvard in the east-the latter religiously liberal, and the former mildly orthodox and highly missionary-were the leaders. Williams College had its pres- tige centered in its famous president, Mark Hopkins ; who was a professor from 1829 to 1836, president from 1836 to 1872, and professor from 1872 to 1887. No other collegiate leader was such a vital educational force for fifty-eight years as was Mark Hopkins. His writings were more abundant and more influential than those of any other collegian. He was famous as a teacher, eminent in religious leadership, with the confi- dence of all classes, lay and clerical.
Harvard's prestige from 1820 to 1870 was largely due to its professors, among whom were Longfellow, Holmes, Agassiz and Asa Gray.
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EDUCATION
Academic educational history of Massachusetts was largely merged with other New England colleges until 1870-Brown and Yale in southern New England and Dartmouth and Bowdoin in northern New England.
From 1870, Massachusetts played an independent part in collegiate educational history.
Educational history requires a special civic, social, and religious atmosphere, which never functions in flood tide or ebb tide of political or military warfare.
Educational history developed slowly for twenty years from 1846 to 1865. Public thought was at white heat in religious, racial, and sectional antagonism.
Theodore Parker's brilliant oratory was ready to see America go to war in the issue of religious freedom. Henry Wilson came into national prominence in the "Know-Nothing" racial issue, and Massachusetts elected a governor on that ticket. In 1856 the religious and racial antagonism gave way to the sectional controversy which rent North and South so fiercely that a terrific civil war was inevitable. Not until the war clouds had begun to disappear did Massachusetts regain com- posure.
NEW COLLEGES AND TECHNICAL SCHOOLS (1861-1890)
During the war-time educational lull, the Catholic Church established Holy Cross College, in Worcester, and Boston College; the west welcomed the land-grant college idea; and Massachusetts was one of the first States to experiment with an agricultural college, which failed to function vitally until 1890.
The western agricultural zeal aroused the industrial-service spirit of Massachusetts; and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Worcester Polytechnic Institute budded promptly, and by 1890 Massachusetts "Tech" was an inter- national institution rivaling Harvard University in influence.
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