USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 4 > Part 18
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Not until the approach of 1870 did it dawn upon Massa- chusetts that she had really made American history.
In 1820 there was no educational virility anywhere in the country ; but every movement of Horace Mann in Massachu- setts had touched a live social and civic nerve in Pennsylvania
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NEW EDUCATIONAL SPIRIT
and Ohio and was vibrating sympathetically from those States west and north.
NEW EDUCATIONAL SPIRIT (1869-1889)
The first birth throe of the new collegiate educational his- tory was the election of Charles W. Eliot to the presidency of Harvard in 1869. He had been one of the famous seven educational scientists in the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- nology, and his issuance of the Eliot and Stores "Laboratory Chemistry" on "Qualitative Chemical Analysis" was the first great thrill of the new collegiate education in Massachusetts.
Under President Eliot, Harvard was the first Massachusetts college to attempt to try to guide the public-school spirit of the State. Harvard had been leading in the direction of public sentiment through eminent men on the faculty for a quarter of a century. No other institution had for as many years men like Asa Gray, Louis Agassiz, Henry W. Longfellow, Nathan- iel S. Shaler, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, Edward Everett, and Josiah Quincy on its faculty.
America had a new birth in 1870, and this was nowhere in evidence more impressively than in educational history. From 1845 to 1870 the public was too intensely interested in the great political and military conflict to give appropriate at- tention to any other issues.
The stabilizing of public finance in the early 'seventies gave a marvelous impetus to industry and commerce. This inevi- tably promoted educational development.
The whole world seemed to be alive with industrial and humanistic adventures. The transatlantic cable (1866), the transcontinental railway (1869), the first telephone (1875), the first submarine (1877), the first electric lighting (1878), the first electric street car line (1880), the first linotype print- ing (1884), the first internal combustion motor (1885), sug- gest the virility of the quarter of a century from the close of the Civil War.
The creation of the sciences, the medical and practical arts, were giving the whole world its greatest intellectual thrill; Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Pasteur were at the height of their influence; and that new spirit made a new education inevi- table in America.
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The public school influence of Massachusetts had permeated the entire North, and 26 States had State boards of educa- tion patterned after Massachusetts. Fifteen States had a total of 30 normal schools patterned after the Massachusetts normal schools.
EDUCATIONAL AWAKENING (1869-1890)
When the great awakening came, after the Civil War mate- rialized, Massachusetts had 4,959 free public schools, with 1,085 men and 6,937 women teachers, and the length of the school term in the State was eight months. There were in Massachusetts at that time 175 high schools, which were 35 more than the law called for. The public tax for schools was $3,123,892.
Some of the mill towns already had part-time schools in which one half of the children went to school in the forenoon and worked in the afternoon, and the other half alternated.
At this time Boston had music, drawing, and physical cul- ture in all of the schools, and there were thirteen special teach- ers of sewing. Boston had ten truant officers who gave their entire time to investigating cases of children not in school, insisting upon the attendance of all children. Massachusetts had a compulsory school law for children from seven to six- teen.
Massachusetts imported Arnold Guyot from Switzerland. He was employed by the State Board of Education for six years to supervise the teaching of geography and to lecture throughout the State.
In 1870 Massachusetts had a law requiring the teaching of drawing, authorizing cities and towns of more than 10,000 inhabitants to provide good free instruction in industrial and mechanical drawing to persons over fifteen years of age, either during the day or in the evening.
In 1870 the State Board of Education imported Walter Smith from England to supervise drawing in the schools of the State; and in 1875 the Boston Normal Art School was established.
Herman Krusi, Jr., came to Massachusetts from Switzer- land. He was active in the State in association with Louis
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MANUAL TRAINING
Agassiz and Arnold Guyot. He was the son of Herman Krusi, who was intimately associated with Pestalozzi at Yverdon. He went from Massachusetts to the State Normal School at Oswego, New York, where he helped Dr. E. A. Sheldon make that school one of the famous normal schools of America.
The first English-speaking kindergarten in the United States was established in Boston by Miss Elizabeth Peabody.
Massachusetts high schools from 1870 to 1890 very gener- ously magnified the college-preparatory feature, and a high school's rank, professionally and socially, was gauged by the number of students who took the Harvard examinations, which specialized on preparation in Latin and Greek.
President Charles W. Eliot of Harvard did much to pro- mote efficiency in public-school work. From 1875 to 1890 he made an heroic effort to enrich the course of study, especially in the upper grades of the grammar schools. He led the famous crusade to eliminate the ninth grade-which, however, brought slight results by 1890.
MANUAL TRAINING (1870-1890)
Massachusetts led in the first great crusade for manual training in the elementary schools. Charles Francis Adams brought to Quincy Colonel Francis W. Parker, who had made an intensive study of the modern methods in Germany; and in five years Colonel Parker made that city better known than any other city has ever been made known in so short a time.
Colonel Parker had a vital message, "Learn to do by doing ;" and his work was immortalized by Miss Lelia Partridge, who wrote one of the greatest professional books of the 1870 to 1890 period-Quincy Methods.
Colonel Parker was the first American school man to be in universal demand on the educational platform. He was a dynamic speaker. His personality was commanding and his manner dramatic.
After five years in Quincy, he was elected one of the as- sistant superintendents of Boston. After three years in that position, he went to Chicago as principal of Cook County Normal School, and the rest of his life was spent in that city.
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EDUCATIONAL EXPERTS (1870-1890)
G. Stanley Hall became one of the famous educational leaders of Massachusetts and of the country generally in the 1870 to 1890 period. He was an instructor at Harvard, and President Eliot arranged a lecture course for him in Boston. Harvard paid for the rent of Wesleyan Hall on Bromfield Street and paid for printing and other incidental expenses, and Mr. Hall had the receipts from the tickets. The price for the course was five dollars, and the Boston masters and teach- ers came in large numbers. This course of lectures initiated the great professional revival among the Boston teachers. Even to the end of his long and distinguished career, Dr. Hall regarded this course of lectures as his greatest professional achievement.
Dr. William T. Harris, who had become nationally famous because of his thirteen annual reports as superintendent of St. Louis schools, came to Concord and joined A. Bronson Alcott in his attempt to establish a school of philosophy. In 1886 Dr. Harris had a course of lectures for teachers at Bos- ton University, similar to those which had made G. Stanley Hall famous. In 1889, Dr. Harris was appointed United States Commissioner of Education, in which position he brought high credit to Massachusetts as well as to the United States.
ADVANCE OF THE COLLEGES (1874-1890)
The Massachusetts colleges caught the spirit of progress after the Civil War, and from 1870 to 1890 they made great strides. Harvard, naturally, led because she had some of the most famous literary and scientific men on her faculty and added thereto eminent leaders in education like John Fisk, George Herbert Palmer, William James, Josiah Royce, and Charles Eliot Norton.
Amherst College (established in 1821) had led a precari- ous existence at times, but sprang into great prominence on the celebration of its fiftieth anniversary in 1871. Presidents Hitchcock and Stearns had steered it wisely, but it was Julius H. Seelye who gave Amherst College national fame.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology became an institu-
191
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
tion of international fame. It was opened in a modest way in 1865 with seven instructors, of whom Charles W. Eliot was one of the youngest. Boston University, created in 1869, at the time that Charles W. Eliot became president of Harvard University, was rapidly developed. The women's colleges- Wellesley, Smith, Mt. Holyoke "Seminary" and "College," and Radcliffe-were astonishingly influential in the creation of educational history.
PERMISSIVE LEGISLATION (1849-1889)
A peculiar individuality of the educational history of Mas- sachusetts is its insistence upon permissive legislation. Law was never a schoolmaster in Massachusetts as in some States- notably in Pennsylvania, where the aim was to get a law passed and then make the people obey it. There is nothing of this in Massachusetts. In 1858 drawing was permissive, in 1870 it was compulsory. In 1839 the consolidation of schools was permissive, but it was fifty years before it was compul- sory. In 1873 towns were permitted to provide free text- books and supplies, but it was not till 1884 that they were re- quired to do so. Towns were permitted to extend the school year to eight months, but not until all but 47 towns had chosen to do so did the State require all towns to have an eight- months school. The township system abolishing local districts was permissible, but not obligatory until there were only 39 towns that had not abolished the districts.
This tradition of educating the people by permissive legis- lation before making the law compulsory, accounts for the traditional opposition to a federal department of education, child-labor laws, etc.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Harvard University had developed, during the years of gen- eral inactivity, an educational history. It had an endowment of $2,250,000 when Charles W. Eliot became president. There was also a faculty of 128 members and a student enrollment of 1,043. During the 1820 to 1845 period, Harvard intro- duced courses in chemistry, geology, history, political eco- nomics, and other modern subjects. In the 1820 to 1845 period,
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EDUCATION
the professional schools of medicine, law and science were built up.
In all its history until 1865, the State government had been a controlling factor in the management of the college. The liantly. He was bitterly opposed by members of the governing the official board, and later the whole State senate was on the Board of Overseers of Harvard. In 1865 the right to a seat on the Board of Bursars was confined to the alumni. There had always been clergymen on the Board of Managers; but their influence was lessened, and since 1884 no clergyman has been elected.
President Eliot met the new opportunities wisely and bril- liantly. He was bitterly opposed by members of the governing board for a few years, but he met the opposition so heroically and tactfully that he won unanimous support because of his single-minded devotion to high aims and by the dignity of his personal character. He adapted the university to the chang- ing conditions, and commanded for it fabulous financial gifts.
Of Harvard's graduates from three fourths to a third had been clergymen until 1820, but the ratio dropped to less than one in twenty before 1890. From 1820 to 1890 nearly one third of the Harvard graduates were lawyers, which accounts in some degree for the remarkable influence that Harvard has had in the production of statesmen. From 1820 to 1890 the department of medicine had steady growth, and a little more than ten per cent were physicians.
From 1820 to 1890 the per cent of Harvard graduates who made a profession of teaching increased from below ten per cent to above twenty per cent. The pursuit of business made great advances after 1870, and has been the dominant profes- sion for Harvard graduates, more than one-third choosing a business career every year from 1870 to 1890.
AN EMINENT MASTER
An example of the character of Boston masters is worthy of record. John D. Philbrick was one of the most conspic- uous men in the promotion of educational history in Massa- chusetts from 1842 to 1890. In 1842, upon graduating from Dartmouth College, he came to Boston as assistant teacher
193
INFLUENCE OF WOMEN
in the English high school, and within a year he had become one of the two head teachers in the Mayhew Grammar School of Boston. This was in 1844.
At that time a Boston grammar school was a double-headed affair, one department being called a "writing school" and the other a "reading school." Each pupil attended one of these for half a day, and the other for the other half day. A school had about two hundred boys, seated in one large hall. The headmaster was seated at one end of the room; and another, called "usher," at the other end. The classes recited in various small rooms.
In 1846 the Quincy School, the first organized on a one-class basis, was opened and Mr. Philbrick was its first headmaster. There were four hundred pupils in class rooms of about fifty pupils each.
His success in the Quincy School led to his selection as the first principal of the Connecticut State Normal School at New Britain. At thirty-eight years of age he was chosen superintendent of Boston, which position he held for twenty- five years. He was a member of the State Board of Educa- tion for ten years, and received honorary degrees from several American colleges, and medals of honor from France and other foreign countries. No other man has been as highly honored at home and abroad while city superintendent of Boston schools as was Dr. Philbrick.
After retiring from the superintendency, he made his home in Danvers, Massachusetts ; and John G. Whittier, the famous Quaker poet, was his neighbor. Whittier said of him: "He was a busy student, deeply interested in the cause to which his life had been devoted, but at the same time a genial, un- pretending gentleman, and a very pleasant addition to our social circle. A good and true man, who served his genera- tion faithfully and successfully."
INFLUENCE OF WOMEN
A sample of a woman's leadership in making educational history deserves especial emphasis.
Alice Freeman Palmer was highly influential in the promo- tion of educational history in Massachusetts. Miss Freeman,
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EDUCATION
a graduate of the University of Michigan in 1876, came to Wellesley College as a professor in 1879, was made vice- president in 1881, and was president from 1882 until her mar- riage to Professor George Herbert Palmer of Harvard in 1887. She was dean of women, Chicago University, 1892 to 1894. She was appointed to the Massachusetts State Board of Education in 1889, and was one of the most important members of the Board. She was active in educational achieve- ment until her death in 1902.
Mrs. Quincy Agassiz Shaw, a woman of large means, was active in the promotion of progressive education from 1872 onwards. In 1887 she opened a free kindergarten in Boston for children of families not thrifty. This was one of her many private charities.
EDUCATIONAL LEADERS
A significant example of the character of men who made up the State Board of Education is John W. Dickinson, prin- cipal of the Westfield Normal School from 1852 to 1877, the longest service of any one in that position in Westfield. He was secretary of the State Board of Education from 1877 to 1894, the longest any one has held that office. He was a man of high professional ideals, and exerted a great influence upon the public schools for forty-two years.
Examples of eminent personalities in the making of educa- tional history are illustrative of the vast number of men and women to whom the educational activities of today are due.
The first president of Smith College, Laurenus Clark Seelye, ranked with the presidents of men's colleges, which gave the college high standing scholastically from the beginning.
William F. Warren, president of Boston University for thirty years from 1872, was chiefly responsible for the stabil- izing of that university, scholastically and professionally.
Sanborn Tenney, Professor in Williams College, 1868 to 1875, was the first man to popularize natural history. He was a magnetic speaker, and was passionately fond of his subject.
Educational history in Massachusetts from 1820 to 1890
195
COURSE OF STUDY
rescued Massachusetts from the indifference that prevailed from 1789 to 1820, discovered and created a public-school sentiment from 1820 to 1837, aroused public action from 1837 to 1847, slumbered from 1847 till after the Civil War, and achieved marvelous results in administration and pro- fessional zeal in the common schools and magnified collegiate education nobly from 1870 to 1890.
FINANCING EDUCATION (1820-1890)
In 1820 there was nothing uniform in the financing of education. In the common schools the summer term was short, all that was required was ability to teach all the chil- dren what all the children should know. The teacher was often a woman of the district, young or old, who was glad of a modest wage.
If there was a winter school it was usually taught by some man with a reputation for being able to "keep school." Some of the boys were there to learn, some of them because there was nothing else to do. The latter were there to make it unpleasant for the master to try to keep school. The wages of such a man depended upon the demand there was for his services in other school districts.
In 1830 there was slight change in the common school wage conditions except a general improvement. The same was true of Boston and other centers.
In 1850 there was improvement in many common schools. Horace Mann's most notable service had been his emphasis upon public responsibility for paying taxes for qualified teach- ers and supervision of the teaching.
From 1850 to 1870 there was moderate improvement in wages but nothing of special note.
From 1870 to 1890 there was great improvement in salaries in Boston and other cities, but compared to present day salar- ies they seem ridiculous. A salary of $400 in a district school or $700 in a city school was regarded as entirely ade- quate.
THE COURSE OF STUDY (1820-1890)
In 1820 there was no course of study in any school. In the common schools the only requirement was ability to read
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EDUCATION
easily, write legibly, spell decently and know how to use as much "number" as the common people had occasion to use. Even in Boston and other community centres there was no course of study, no grading in classes or subjects in 1820. In 1820 the common schools offered boys, who continued in school after they had mastered the common branches, the "Fifth Reader," by whatever name it was called, a collection of the best selections by masters of English, and these were read and reread, recited and declaimed until the student had inbided them and been recreated by them.
Their arithmetic was loaded and overloaded with every- thing that had any excuse for being called arithmetic. The more useless it was the better it was, for its only excuse for existence was that it kept bright boys busy in school.
In spelling they practiced on "demons" that could be spelled correctly only by those who were scholastically in- clined.
In Boston and some other cities all this was massed and magnified enough to give youths who cared to stay in school for several months each year something to do. In these larger communities there were included mild injections of geography and United States history.
By 1830 there was a classification of primary, grammar and high school for the first time. Girls received attention in the common schools, and in Boston a Girls' High School was attempted, but it fared ill for some time.
By 1850 the common school had lost much of the original idea which had dominated it from 1780 to 1820 and what- ever was expected of city schools was expected of the brightest students in the common schools. The course of study for city schools was intensified, girls had every opportunity that boys had, and high schools were practically universal in cities.
From 1850 to 1870 little that was vitally important was introduced. There was enlargement and perfection of every- thing that was well established by 1850.
From 1870 to 1890 the course of study in the common schools and city schools was as completely remade as were the industries, by the discoveries in electricity, in transportation and transmission.
91 An Easy Standard of Pronunciation.
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prith ee få ther wor thy an öth er
bur then far thing moth er
to géth er
south ern far ther
smoth er
log a ríthms
teth er
pôth er ·
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nevertheless
thith er
broth el
be néath
The derivatives follow the same rule.
FABLE VI. The Bear and the two Friends.
TWO Friends, setting out together upon a jour- ney, which led through a dangerous forest, mu- tually promised to assist each other, if they should happen to be assaulted. They had not proceeded far, before they perceived a Bear making towards tluan with great rage.
There were no hopes in flight ; but one of them, being very active, sprung up into a tree; upon which the other, throwing himself flat on the ground, held his breath and pretended to be dead ; remem- bering to have heard it asserted, that this creature will not prey upon a dead carcass. The bear came up, and after smelling to him some time, left him,
Courtesy of Harvard College Library
A PAGE FROM NOAH WEBSTER'S AMERICAN SPELLING BOOK
PETER PARLEY. 97
malice toward the English, for having got possession of their lands, they committed the most cruel and inhuman outrages. Here is a picture of one of the scenes of this war.
3. But of these outrages I cannot tell you more now; I can only describe to you the
What was the consequence ? 7
Courtesy of Harvard College Library THE PETER PARLEY VERSION OF AMERICAN HISTORY
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SCHOOL BUILDINGS
SCHOOL BUILDINGS (1820-1890)
In 1820 there was not a reputable school house in the State. In the rural districts with limitless areas and miles of good land that could be had almost for the asking they sought unattractive corners with rocks or gullies, the one five square rods which could never be improved. With primeval forest stretching over hill and dale, they sought the one wee bit of land where not even a shrub could survive and on this God- forsaken knoll threw together a shack that hoboes would have objected to in 1890. In the center of this hopeless place they stuck a stove and added some backless benches, the hard side up, for rows of boys and girls to sit on and study.
If there was any pretense to lavatory decency it was out of doors and often too indecent to be reported upon in this age of proprieties.
In Boston, best of all places in the State, the schoolhouse was a barn-like building with double seats and desks, two hundred boys in the one room with a master at one end and a second man called usher at the other end, with little rooms around the sides for classes to retire to while lesser teachers heard them recite the lessons learned in the big hall.
In 1890 there were country schools to be found with good- sized yards, with trees and shrubs and flowers, with a walk from street to door that could be kept clean, with a well into which nothing undesirable drained.
On this adequate lot was a leakless building with whole windows, with a door that could be locked, with a jacketed stove, with single seats, with desks, and blackboards that were black, with maps and globes, and a dictionary on a stand.
While such a school lot and building were not universal in 1890 there were enough of them to be contagious, and they paved the way for the wonderful country school buildings of later date.
The transition from 1820 to 1890 was well started in Horace Mann's day and the change was largely due to his heroic challenge to give the boys and girls a place in which to learn and a yard in which to play.
In Boston and other cities the change was even greater. In 1848 the first real school house was built for a grammar
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EDUCATION
school. It was the Quincy School and John D. Philbrick, afterward famous as a superintendent of Boston, was the master. It was the most thrilling event in school affairs that New England had known.
Early in the sixties at the dedication of the Rice Building, Superintendent Philbrick said, "This is as good a school building as can ever be built," but it was out of date before 1890.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
ASSOCIATION OF MASTERS OF THE BOSTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS .- Remarks on the Seventh Annual Report of the Hon. Horace Mann, Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education (Boston, Little and Brown, 1844).
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