USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Brookline > History of the town of Brookline, Massachusetts > Part 21
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A summary of the situation is given in the report of the school committee on their examination of the schools in March of 1834:
The School in the South district under the care of Mr Con- verse has 13 scholars, present 17 on the list. School in the middle district under care of Moses Burbank 35 were present, 50 on the list. First North District under the care of Leonard Spaulding 41 were present 63 on the list. also one school under the care of Hannah Perry & Lucy Davis 49 were present 53 on the list, whole number 183. - Your com- mittee recommend to the Town to dispense with a Male and employ a Female Teacher in the south district - Forty eight weeks at $2.50 - 120 dollars and they further recom-
I The earliest district schools in the town were located as follows:
Middle District, in Sherburne Road, now Walnut Street, on the triangle near the present church.
North District, in the New Lane, now School Street.
South District, in Warren Street between Heath and Clyde Streets (later moved to Heath Street).
Southwest or Putterham District, in Newton Street near Grove Street.
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mend the Town to Support two schools in the first North district throughout the year. one female teacher 48 weeks @ 2.50 pr week 120. also one other female teacher 32 Weeks @ 2.50 pr week 80$. the school to commence the first of april keep to the first of December. grant to the Second North District 100 dollars a year during the Towns pleasure. that the Forty six dollars saved to the Town by the alteration in the South District should go to pay a female teacher in the first North district the ensuing winter.
In 1839 enlargement of the Putterham School was found desirable, at an estimated cost of $125 and an actual expendi- ture of $243.72. That same year a committee was appointed 'with authority to repair the Middle district school house where it now stands, or to remove the same or build a new one at their discretion on such a lot as Thomas H. Perkins and others will provide to the satisfaction of the committee in exchange for the old lot, provided said Perkins and others will pay the Town Six hundred dollars for exchanging lots ... ' There seemed to be no purchaser for the old building, so the committee re- paired it at a cost of $859.07, pointing out that although this was perhaps as much as a new school house would have cost, the old frame was better than any new one that could be bought, and should last indefinitely. Scarcely more than a dozen years later, the building was described as 'quite un- worthy of the Town, dingy, dirty, ill-placed, ill-constructed, and ill-kept, not a fit place for the training of youthful minds in sound learning, good morals, and good manners.'
NEW THEORIES OF EDUCATION
At about this stage, the Brookline school committee exhibits unmistakable signs of the influence of Horace Mann, who has sometimes been described as the father of public education in the United States. He had settled in Dedham in 1826, at the age of thirty, and was promptly recognized as a man of bril- liant talent. Trained as a lawyer, he was an able speaker, and embarked at once upon a highly successful political career, in the course of which he used all his influence to effect improve- ments in the public schools. In 1837 he was appointed a mem- ber of the first Massachusetts State Board of Education, and
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became its secretary. For a decade the most popular public speaker in the State, he was deeply chagrined to find that people who would come miles to hear him discuss politics seemed wholly indifferent to his appeals for better school houses, better books and teaching equipment, abler and more adequately trained teachers. His was a long and vigorous and, at length, triumphant fight; but from the beginning there had been some who were ready to listen to him, and it is ap- parent that among these were the forward-looking citizens of Brookline who were actively interested in its schools. Hence, in that town were to be felt some of the first results of Horace Mann's pioneering.
How else can one account for the program laid down by the school committee in 1842? Parts of it recited:
In consequence of the advancement made by some of the scholars it has been found necessary to extend the course of study in one or two instances, and to meet the exigencies which have thus arisen, the com. have recommended some branches which have never before been pursued in our com- mon schools. Whether this method can be pursued still farther without doing material injury to the smaller scholars, or whether our schools must be rendered useless to many under the age of sixteen who wish to prosecute their studies farther than those who have preceeded them and add to the knowledge which they have already attained, is a ques- tion which your com. are not fully able to decide. It is evident, however, that the wants of this class should in some way be met, and that the Town should make provision for the thorough instruction of all between the ages of four and sixteen. The fact that such demands are made of the Com. is proof that the cause of education is advancing, and that our common schools are accomplishing more than they have hitherto done. There seems to be an increased interest among us in relation to the cause of education, parents are some of them beginning to give their attention more fully to this subject and to inquire what can be done and what ought to be done in order to give their children such mental training as will fit them for respectibility and usefulness in future life. They perceive that in respect to knowledge demands are made in every department of business of those who are now coming upon the stage of active life, which
THE PUTTERHAM SCHOOL ON NEWTON STREET Built in 1768. Almshouse in the background
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were not made in former times, and, without a thorough education, the rising generation will not be able to meet these demands .... Now it is the opinion of your committee that none of us put too high an estimate upon a good edu- cation, or feel too much the importance of having our children furnished with such means for intellectual culture as the exigencies of the age demand. The public schools of this town ought not to be inferior to those of any other town in the Commonwealth, and we ought not to be satisfied without the evidence that we are every year elevating their character and improving their condition.
The report goes on to state that the principal handicaps upon schooling are the irregularity of attendance, and frequent changes of teachers. Parents whose children had been dis- ciplined were likely to object to continued employment of the teacher who was responsible, and insist on the selection of a new one the next year. The new teacher might pass the school committee's examination well enough, and still not prove as effective as one who had already had experience in the com- munity.
... Facts plainly show us that a person who succeeds well in managing a school in one place or community may en- tirely fail in another. No two schools are alike and no method of governing or management will answer for every school. Unless a teacher have a knowledge of human na- ture, and especially of human nature as developed in chil- dren [,] unless he have some versatility of talent, in fine unless he have tact as a teacher and knows how to meet diffi- culties in any form he cannot long succeed. Now it is difficult to find all the qualifications in one person, and when a teacher is found who succeeds well in any place it seems desirable that such an one should not be exchanged without the most weighty reasons ...
Two hundred, or even one hundred years earlier, it had been assumed that anyone who could read and write a little was capable of imparting his knowledge to others. In other words, any literate person was suited to be a school teacher. Now, under the penetrating and humane thought of Horace Mann, a really intelligent conception of the nature and process of edu-
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cation was gaining acceptance. The birch rod must give way to tact. Better buildings were all very fine, but they did not of themselves assure better schools. There must be teachers who could teach - to produce whom Mr. Mann founded the normal school at Bridgewater - a broader curriculum, and a more practical grading of classes.
IMPROVEMENT OF SCHOOLS
It was manifestly impossible for even the ablest of teachers to get far with a miscellaneous group of pupils of all ages in a single room. Effective attention to any one group must always be at the expense of more or less neglect of the others. Nathan- iel Goddard's account, quoted in Chapter V, of the beginners who recited the alphabet twice daily, is a case in point. Hence, in 1841, it was voted expedient for the town to have a high school, and a committee was named to look into the matter. But the committee was slow in reporting, expenses were heavy meanwhile, and a year later the town decided to postpone the high school business indefinitely.
However, this seems only to have been preliminary to an unprecedented interest in school affairs in 1843. At the an- nual town meeting in March the school committee reported with pride that the year's expenditure of $4.69 for each of the 245 school children in the town, gave Brookline tenth rank among the communities of the state.
Five schools had been maintained, the largest being that 'taught by a female in the North district.' It was maintained throughout the year, and its outstanding success was attributed to its possessing a permanent teacher. The student body had become so large that boys over ten and girls over twelve were removed to the separate school taught by a master in the same building. This, intended originally for boys over ten, was main- tained for five months, from the first of November to the first of April.
The South and Middle District Schools were 'taught by a male five, and a female six months in the year.' The committee felt that the frequent change of teachers imposed a handicap here, and to a somewhat less degree on the similarly taught school in the Southwest District.
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The Centre School was kept by a master for six months, from the middle of April to the middle of October. Here attendance was irregular, on account of boys being kept out to help with the farm duties during the summer, and the committee would have been glad to close the school, except that provision for the education of children between four and sixteen was obli- gatory. They felt that 'as all the other public schools in town, are taught by females in summer, it seems necessary that this school should be continued, otherwise some twenty or thirty boys, must be kept out of school during the greater portion of the year, or go into our female schools at an age which would be likely to embarrass the schools, and cause the female teach- ers an undue amount of trouble.'
The report then went on to urge the provision of more gen- erous playgrounds, and adequate shade. The committee were particularly desirous of having permanent teachers appointed for all the schools, and that they should be of a type whose impression on the youthful mind would be for the best.
FIRST HIGH SCHOOL
At the adjourned meeting in April, these recommendations were followed up to a purpose. The school committee reported their resolutions to maintain female teachers in each of the three districts throughout the year, and to establish a school in the center of the town to be taught during the year by a master. Attendance at the latter was to be limited to students over ten years old, and regularity and punctuality were to be required of them, under penalties provided by the town meeting.
This school for pupils over the age of ten was called 'the high school,' and immediately proved so popular that at the next town meeting in August, 1843, the school committee ex- plained that either larger accommodations must be provided or the attendance must be limited on the basis of age or scholas- tic attainment. The Town Hall, still on the Sherburne road, was thereupon appropriated as a school room, and a grant of three hundred dollars made to equip it for the service of the high school.
The following March the school committee viewed with a good deal of satisfaction the progress of education in the town.
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The schools were well attended and the instruction appar- ently effectual. In the high school the cost per pupil was about $13.50 per year, while in the Boston High School it amounted to about $36; and the figures might be viewed with pride, inasmuch as the Brookline equipment and teaching were of a high standard for the times.
By 1846 matters were going pretty satisfactorily, but the high school was crowded, and not all those who were qualified by age were also qualified by their attainments to attend it. In this difficulty the town accepted the recommendation of the school committee that intermediate schools for boys over ten and girls over nine be provided in the new Town Hall (erected on Washington Street in 1845 on the site of the present one), in order that such children might be prepared for the high school without handicapping the teachers there or in the primary schools.
NEW BUILDING PROGRAM
Five years later there was fresh agitation for new school houses, but the committee who reported to the March meeting in 1852 had accomplished little, and the town tabled their proposal that $10,000 be voted for a school, for which no definite plans were offered. The subject lagged for a year, when a new committee was appointed, who came forward with an elaborate list of resolutions on September 22, 1853. These resulted in a program for three new school houses, and an appropriation of $10,000 for their construction.
This was followed, in the spring of 1854, by an appropria- tion of $15,000 for a school house to accommodate not less than three hundred pupils, on 'the town's land between School and Washington Streets.' This was the Pierce Grammar School. At the same meeting, an additional $12,000 was voted to complete the three primary schools of the previous year's program; and the March meeting of 1855 found it necessary to provide an extra $4000 for the $15,000 school.
In 1856 a committee was chosen to report on the erection of a new high school building. They examined several lots, and thought the town's property on School and Prospect Streets was most suitable. On their recommendation, the
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town voted $10,000 for a high school. Three years later there was an appropriation of $8,500 for a brick primary school 'on the Gibbs lot' in the rear of the Town Hall, 'to form part of a larger building to be hereafter erected.'
This completes the major factors in the building program down to the Civil War. But it was not alone in physical equip- ment that evidences of progress were to be found. The cur- riculum was expanded, and subjects were introduced which, a few years before, would have been regarded as totally foreign to public school education.
INNOVATIONS IN STUDY
True, the town had over a period of some years made occa- sional appropriations for the singing school, but that was in the days of the close relationship of town and church. It was not in the interest of better psalms that the school committee in 1844 recommended the introduction of music into the public schools, but in the confident expectation of miraculous results. They had inquired into the experience of some six hundred schools in thirty Massachusetts communities, and concluded 'That Musick, wherever it has been introduced into the public schools, has been productive of the most happy results; that it exerts a beneficial influence upon the intellect, taste, morals, & physical constitution of the young; improves the hearts, pro- motes good feelings, pure tastes, refined sentiments, cheerful- ness & good order; "Softens the temper, sweetens the disposi- tion, and tunes the heart in unison with all the better feelings of their nature; creates domestic happiness in the family cir- cle, and produces a concord of feeling in school."' That wasn't all, but it seems enough. Anyone who has had personal experience of public school music can judge for himself whether these singing exercises had any such effects. However, the committee's recommendation was adopted.
Then, in 1860, the subject of calisthenics came up. The school committee accepted the argument that these country children might have their mental capacity infinitely increased by the exercise of 'free gymnastics' during school hours. In consequence, the town decided to try out calisthenics, too. Eight years later, sewing was added.
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Perhaps it is not for a layman to discount these innovations. They may or may not have been particularly valuable in them- selves, but they were evidence of the progressive sentiment and the disposition to intelligent experiment that are so essential to profitable government.
Another move of unquestioned wisdom was the appropria- tion of one hundred dollars in 1849 'toward the support of a school for adults during the ensuing winter.' A more elaborate project in the same direction was discussed at March meeting in 1857, but indefinitely postponed. A year later it was voted 'To establish and maintain, in addition to the schools now required by law to be maintained in this town, two schools for the education of persons over fifteen years of age.' Passage of a state law in 1857 had opened the way for this move. The schools were to be kept from the first of October to the first of April, for which the sum of three hundred dollars was appropriated.
There were those, of course, who decried every change that involved added expense; yet the school committee in 1846 had reminded the town meeting with pride that Brookline had ranked second the previous year in the State in the appropri- ation per capita for the education of children between four and sixteen. It was about this time that education became the great American fetish, and the influence of a vital public inter- est led in several directions.
PRIVATE SCHOOLS
Some parents, not satisfied with the public schools, however excellent, encouraged private institutions. Several were main- tained at various times for girls, including one by a Miss Steb- bins, another by Miss Lucy Searle, which enjoyed a wide repu- tation, and another by the Misses Elizabeth and Mary Pea- body, the latter of whom became the wife of Horace Mann. About 1820 the Classical School was built, under the inspira- tion of Richard Sullivan and General Henry Dearborn, with the principal purpose of preparing Brookline boys for college. It became a boarding school, and a subsequent owner con- structed the first gymnasium in New England, for the use of students.
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THE LYCEUM AND ITS WORK
Two outgrowths of the general concern with education were the establishment of lyceum courses and a public library, both really measures for the instruction of adults. Josiah Holbrook, a Connecticut man and Yale graduate, launched the lyceum plan about 1820. Originally it contemplated gatherings within each community, where individuals of more than ordinary learning in certain subjects, would expound such matters to their neighbors. From this it soon evolved into an association for the employment of lecturers, the character of whose con- tributions may be suspected from the fact that they were called 'lay sermons.'
The Brookline Lyceum Society was organized under the inspiration of Isaac Thayer in 1832, and nine years later the Lyceum of the Town of Brookline was incorporated by mem- bers of the Union Hall Association, who had allied themselves to provide an adequate auditorium for the lectures. Both money and personal services were enthusiastically contributed by public-spirited citizens who felt that this cultural enterprise deserved encouragement.
Unfortunately the plan of instruction was somewhat hap- hazard. In 1834 there were several lectures on the pseudo- science of phrenology by one Christopher Duncan, who seems to have been personally attractive to the young ladies of Brook- line, and thoroughly respectable by reason of the fact that the wife of the town's Baptist minister was his aunt. Other topics included physical education, Socrates, and music, which last a listener reported 'Very inappropriate for audience.'
In the years immediately following, more was heard from the immensely popular Mr. Duncan. Rufus Choate spoke, Ralph Waldo Emerson lectured on 'Toleration,' Jared Sparks on 'The Career of the Revolution,' and others on electricity, chemistry, geology, astronomy, and the characteristics of vari- ous foreign lands. A lot of information, in more or less popular form, was delivered by more or less competent lecturers, on such a variety of subjects that nobody learned very much about anything. And of course there were those who regarded the lyceum assemblies as social rather than educational occa- sions, although prizes were offered for the best reports of the
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lectures, and some listeners undertook to make notes of what was said.
The spirit of this project, however, was the spirit of adult education. At a later time it blossomed in the more practical university extension and high school extension lectures, in which were evident some, at least, of the characteristics of the lyceum.
A PUBLIC LIBRARY
It was a very similar interest in the promotion of the higher order of book learning that gave rise to a public library. This started with a private association in 1825, organized on a sub- scription basis of five dollars a year for the first two years, and two dollars annually thereafter. The president was the Rev- erend John Pierce, secretary, Otis Withington, treasurer, John Robinson, and librarian, Oliver Whyte, who was town clerk and subsequently postmaster. At the outset the books were kept at the librarian's home, but quarters were afterwards pro- vided in the shoe shop of John Leeds.
The next move in this direction came more than twenty years later, in the formation of a group which Benjamin F. Baker has described thus:1
In the autumn of 1846, a number of young men, mechan- ics and others, in this town, having a desire for some oppor- tunity whereby they could improve themselves and obtain a larger range of information and mental improvement, as well as a better knowledge of books and of what was being done in different parts of the country, agreed to hire some place where they could meet evenings and dull days when they were obliged to be idle. Each one was to contribute whatever he might have of books, or papers, whether of biography, travel, fiction, or other works that might be of interest. In pursuance of that object a small room was hired and fitted up with some rough shelves and tables; each one brought his contribution of books or other matter, and they were used interchangeably. They also subscribed for and took newspapers from Boston, New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington and New Orleans.
I Mr. Baker contributed the account at the request of Charles Knowles Bolton for the latter's book, Brookline: The History of a Favored Town, pp. 124-125.
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This room was first opened in the autumn and was kept open in the evening through the winter and summer, so that the members could visit it when they had an opportunity (each member having a key). They also occasionally hired a larger room and had discussions on the topics of the day, or read papers on some subject, or recited or read poetry or prose.
This room was used until the fall of 1849, when the news of the finding of gold in California reached the town. Sev- eral of the members were taken with the gold fever, and various circumstances arising to call others away, the associ- ation was disbanded.
Anyone who is skeptical about the far-reaching influence of economic geography may see here how the gold resources of California influenced cultural opportunities in Massachu- setts. The indirect effect was advantageous rather than other- wise. Elisha Hall, who had been one of the library associates, was so convinced of the worth of the enterprise, that when it had to be abandoned as a private undertaking, he persuaded Horace Mann to father a bill in the legislature to permit the appropriation of money by cities and towns for the main- tenance of public libraries. But this law, passed in 1851, was not turned to advantage by the town of Brookline until 1857.
In that year the maximum permissible appropriation, one dollar for each ratable poll in the town, was voted for establish- ment of the library. To this sum of $934 was added an appro- priation of one quarter that amount for the year's maintenance, and the hall on the first floor of the Town Hall was made avail- able to accommodate the books. J. Emory Hoar, then master of the high school, became the first librarian, with nine hundred volumes as a starter, and more than a thousand additional ones contributed by forty interested citizens within two months. Twelve trustees supervised this new public institution.
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