USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Sutton > History of the town of Sutton, Massachusetts, from 1704 to 1876, including Grafton until 1735, Millbury until 1813 and parts of Northbridge, Upton and Auburn > Part 40
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There are other causes which might be mentioned that have had much influence in retarding the progress of our schools, and preventing the attainment of the standard of excellence they ought to have reached; these will readily suggest themselves to the mind inclined to institute inquiry, and desirous of applying a remedy.
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But while admitting that our schools are not what they ought to be, we note with pleasure the fact that, comparing them with the past, they show improvement in many respects ; upon the whole great improvements.
As it regards these improvements, Mr. Wedge, in his sug- gestions, mentions the tasteful and commodious school- houses which have taken the place of the rude structures of olden time-the attractive furnishing of most of these houses-the introduction of maps, blackboards and appara- tus affording facilities for the illustration of the various branches of study, text-books adapted to the wants of schol- ars of every grade, singing and drawing, the encouragement of a taste for the useful and beautiful, less severity in pun- ishment, more governing by love, and an appeal to the rea- son of a child rather than his sense of physical pain. As furnishing incentive to improvements and imparting hints as to the direction in which they should be made, Mr. Wedge also mentions with commendation the work of the State Board of Education in collecting and sending into the towns important facts relative to what is being done elsewhere, as well as at home, in the matter of education, and likewise in endeavoring by means of detectives to learn whether the school laws are enforced. He likewise refers to the libraries with which most of the schools were at one time furnished, as calculated to foster a taste in the minds of the young for general literature, and expresses regret that they were not appreciated more highly, and maintained. In referring to the disposition which was made of them, he notes with indig- nation the fact, that in one of the districts the people voted that the "school library be sold for old paper."
On several of the above topics he enlarges, and we should be glad to give place to his reflections if the space allotted for this article would admit.
For the gratification of the antiquarian of one hundred years hence, and the benefit of the future historian, we append a list of the text-books in use in our common schools in 1876 :
Readers, the Franklin series ; Speller, Monroe's Practical ; Arithmetic, Greenleaf's new series ; Geography, Warren's
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primary and common school; Grammar, Harper's language series ; History, Scott's United States ; Writing, Payson's writing books, six numbers.
HIGH SCHOOL.
BY I. B. HARTWELL.
In this brief historical sketch of the efforts of the friends of a more liberal education, and the action of the town which culminated in the establishment of our present popular high school, we shall omit, here and now, the history of such boarding, select and private high schools as from time to time have been sustained by subscription, and confine these notes to such facts as have reference to high schools recog- mized by legislative acts, and maintained by the town in its municipal capacity. We regret the necessity for this omis- sion, for these subscription schools, by introducing some of the higher branches, induced a more correct appreciation of such branches, and created a demand for high schools.
The historians of our common school system begin by referring to the legislative acts of the Massachusetts colon- ists in 1647, as the inception and foundation of that system. By this early legislation the support of schools was made compulsory, and the means of education became common and free. The same legislation laid the foundation for the high school, for it included an enactment requiring every town of one hundred families or householders to set up and maintain a " Grammar school," under a master competent to instruct youth in such branches as were required to fit them for the university.
In obedience to these enactments "Grammar schools "*
* No text-books on English grammar had been prepared and introduced into the schools of Massachusetts eighty years ago. And it was thought that a knowledge of grammar could be acquired only by the study of Latin Acci- dents as found in Latin grammars. Hence high schools in which the languages and mathematics were taught, were called Grammar Schools.
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were maintained in many of the towns of Massachusetts dur- ing the remainder of the seventeenth and the larger part of the eighteenth century; but in the latter part of the last century and early part of this, seminaries of learning of a higher grade than "grammar schools" but inferior to uni- versities or colleges, and called academies, began to be incor- porated and put in operation in various parts of the State, some of which were well endowed and became permanent institutions. And because they had better instructors and other facilities for acquiring a knowledge of the languages and other higher branches than were found in the " gram- mar schools," the latter were pretty generally discontinued. Young ladies and gentlemen desiring a higher culture than they had obtained in the common district school, and ambi- tious for the prestige and fame which the academy was sup- posed to confer upon its students, resorted to the academy ; while the children of the more wealthy, particularly lads in a course of preparation to enter the college, were sent to the academy. And the comparative poverty of the inhabitants of the rural towns and districts did not preclude the expend- iture of the moderate sum necessary for a few terms of academic attendance of their more promising youth, where there was a just appreciation of a higher culture, and an earnest desire therefor.
During what may be called this academic period the stat- ute school acts, in reference to "grammar schools" from time to time revised and amended, but never as we think repealed, had become inoperative and nearly obsolete. And not until after the passage of the act establishing the State school fund in 1834, and the establishment of the school board in 1837, and not until after the zealous and efficient efforts of the late Horace Mann, the great apostle of a reformed common school gospel, aided by a more stringent legislation and the increasing wealth of the cities and large towns, did high schools, properly so called, and as defined in our statutes, begin to be established. And even so late as 1863, nearly twenty years after the statutes had assumed substantially the same form and meaning that they now have, by which, at that time, one hundred and twenty-eight towns
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in the commonwealth were required under penalty to main- tain a high school, forty-six of these towns, including Sut- ton, were delinquent, either by having no high school or by not having such an one as conformed to the requirements of the statutes.
Hoping that these preliminary considerations may help in forming a more correct judgment of the action, or want of action, of the town of Sutton in the premises than would be otherwise entertained, we come now to a special history of our High School, beginning with its embryonic state.
Because the wish is often parent to the thought, the thought to action, and the action to beneficial results, we are pleased to find in the report of the school committee for 1859, Foster Freeland, chairman, a strongly expressed wish that Sutton might have the advantage of grammar school * instruction ; and a recommendation that the excess of school money raised by the town, above a specified amount, then deemed sufficient for the common district schools, should be appropriated to the establishment and maintenance of two " grammar schools ;" and this followed by a suggestion that the school acts should be so amended as to give the income of the State school fund to the several towns of the Com- monwealth to aid in the maintenance of such schools.
In the warrant of the selectmen, Horace Leland, chairman, for the annual meeting of 1860, we find :
"Art. 13. To see if the Town will establish a High School or act or do any thing relative to the same."
It is believed that the article was inserted in the warrant by the selectmen in compliance with the request of the late Paris Tourtellott.
Mr. Tourtellott strenuously defended the affirmative of this article, on the position that, first, Sutton should wipe out the stigma on her fair fame for dereliction to legal duty. Second, that the town was liable to a fine of four thousand ($4,000) dollars t for neglecting to maintain a high school,
* It is evident from the context that Mr. Freeland used the term Grammar School in its original sense.
t See Section 2d and 14th, Chapter 38, General Statutes.
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and lastly, that the more advanced scholars in town sadly needed such a school.
The negative was defended by arguments not even now wholly removed, which were concisely, correctly and can- didly set forth in the following quotation from the report of the school committee, Foster Freeland chairman, for the year ending March 5th, 1860, and presented to this meeting :
"Your committee concur in the opinion that whatever is appropriated for this noble cause"-a higher education- " considering the territorial structure of our town and the sparsely located proper recipients of High School privileges, the greatest good to all the inhabitants of the toum will be attained by the division of the fund * in the districts."
Notwithstanding the above "opinion," the chairman of the school committee did not oppose the establishment of a. high school, but seemed rather to favor the enterprise, by showing how his own objections might in part be overruled, by having successive terms or successive years of a high school, by equitable rotation, in different parts of the town. After a fair and full discussion, it was voted by a large ma- jority to pass over the article and postpone the subject indefinitely.
But by this discussion, if not by the vote, something was gained in the right direction ; for it at least vitalized the question, and many who voted for postponement were unwil- ling to accept the conclusion that Sutton was not to have, for many years in the then future, a legally established high school. For several years, and during our unhappy civil war, when large sums of money were required for defending the flag of the Union, though the question was not formally submitted to the town, yet it was informally discussed by its citizens, and was not totally ignored in the yearly school reports.
* The term "fund," as appears from the context, was intended to include all school money raised by the town, received from the income of the State school fund and all other sources.
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Nor was the secretary of the State Board of Education remiss in charging upon delinquent towns what he consid- ered an unwise, niggardly and reprehensible economy, in refusing to appropriate money as required by law.
Previously, and during these years, there had been and was a partial and imperfect compliance with the intentions of the statutes, by employing occasionally in several of the school districts teachers amply qualified in the higher branches, in which instruction was given to the more advanced scholars. Prominent among these teachers was our respected citizen, Newell Wedge, a graduate of Amherst, who came to this town in 1849, and has been a popular and successful teacher of subscription high schools.
It is not within the scope of this article to consider the wisdom of making laws with penalties annexed, without providing means which shall be swift and sure in penal inflic- tion. It is apparent, however, that our legislature thought our school acts might be improved in relation to a penalty which had seldom, if ever, been inflicted on delinquent towns ; from the recommendations of the State school board, it enacted (see section 1st, chapter 142, acts of 1865), " That no distribution or apportionment of the annual income of the State school fund should be made to towns not com- plying with certain requisitions of chapter 38, sections 1 and 2, general statute, including the maintenance of a high school."
(The apportionment to Sutton at this period, 1865, was $116.85, and was increasing yearly ; in 1875 it was $290.95.)
This act was a coup de maitre, the effect of which Sutton could not easily evade. It said virtually - To them that do shall be given, but from them that do not shall be taken that which they expect to have.
Not far from this time, it having been noticed that recent school legislation originated with the school board, the school committee initiated a correspondence with the secretary of the board, Joseph White, Esq., reiterating the substance of the " opinion " heretofore quoted, that no one high school could be so located as to be practically beneficial to all the inhabitants of the town, according to the wording of the
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statute, because the centers of population were on the extremi- ties of the town and widely distant, and that the honorable secretary was stopped from recommending a moveable, a rotary, school, by his own emphatic condemnation of peri- patetic high schools.
It was deemed too obvious then to be mentioned that the expense of two or more high schools would be dispropor- tionate to the ability of the town, and the beneficial results to all the inhabitants.
The influence of the board was solicited in favor of sev- eral suggested amendments of the school acts, which, while they would not relieve such towns as Sutton from an expense equivalent to that of maintaining a high school, would pro- vide for a more equitable distribution of the benefits procured by such an expense to " all the inhabitants of the town."
Not having the correspondence before me, and relying on memory for the substance of the same, it undoubtedly had some expressions which justified the secretary in saying in his reply that our construction of the statute was unwar- ranted ; that benefit to all the inhabitants did not mean a direct and equal benefit to each individual, or to each district even, but a general benefit, direct and indirect, to all the inhabitants, and that the contemplated school should be open and free to all the pupils of the town, qualified to enter upon the study of the higher branches. The secretary also suggested that we were not prevented by the statute from having two or more high schools; and lastly, that Sutton was in a delinquent company that was rapidly diminishing, there being only thirty-seven towns * that failed to comply with the statute requirements in the matter of high schools.
In 1866 the school committee submitted informally to the selectmen, I. A. Dodge chairman, several articles on school
* These were reduced to two or three in 1873. By an act of 1866, chapter 208, section 2, towns maintaining a high school thirty-six weeks in each year, instead of forty weeks, as required by section 2, chapter 38, general statute, were not liable to forfeiture of their share of the income of the State school fund. But the fine designated in section 14, chapter 38, general statute, though by no means imminent, is very gently impending over all towns required to maintain a high school, which do not maintain the same forty weeks in each year, exclusive of vacations.
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matters, to be inserted in the forthcoming warrant for the annual meeting, two of which were substantially as follows :
1st. To see if the town will establish a high school, or act or do anything relative thereto.
2nd. To see if the town will raise and appropriate five hundred dollars, to aid the pupils in Sutton in prosecuting their studies in the higher branches in some of the high schools and academies of the neighboring towns, or act or do anything relating thereto.
Objection being made to the word establish, in the first article, that it might appear to the voters as imposing a prospective permanent tax, the article was amended by sub- stituting the word maintain, as not necessarily implying more than a temporary tax.
Thus amended, the article was put in the warrant as num- ber seventeen. The second article was rejected, as having no features which the town would be likely to receive with favor.
In the annual meeting which followed, March 19, 1866, and during a temporary absence of the writer, who had hoped for a discussion that might indicate the sentiments of the leading men of the town, article seventeen was hastily reached and passed over without comment by an indefinite postponement.
By an act of the legislature of 1869 the school district system was abolished throughout the State, very much to the satisfaction of the State school board, but very much to the dissatisfaction of more than two-thirds of the voters of Sutton. By an act of the legislature of 1870, "Towns which had not voluntarily abolished the district system," were permitted, by a two-thirds vote, to return to that system; very much to the satisfaction of more than two- thirds of Sutton's voters, who very soon re-established what they had reluctantly abandoned. This going out of and into the district system was the occasion of not a little discussion and party feeling, of some necessary and more unnecessary expense, and of serious injury to the cause of education. The excitement consequent to these measures seemed to
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obscure the interests of our prospective high school, for the school reports made no favorable allusion to the subject until 1873.
During the session of the legislature of 1871, our respected fellow-citizen, Edwin H. Hutchinson, Esq., then a member of the house, had a conference with the secretary of the Board of Education, with a view to have the act of 1865 so amended, that on condition that such towns as Sutton pro- vided for instruction in the higher branches by other means than that of maintaining a high school, they might be relieved from the forfeiture of their proportional part of the income of the State school fund. A bill emanating from the State school board, to establish a school fund by a half- mill tax on the whole taxable property of the Common- wealth, was introduced into the legislature of 1873. The consequence to Sutton of the passage of such a bill is shown in the following quotation from the report of the school committee of 1872-3 :
"For many years the town of Sutton has been delinquent in relation to a high school; and, as a consequence, that which would otherwise be our share of the State school fund, amounting, perhaps, to two hundred dollars, has been with- held from us. Let us also add to this consideration that a bill has been lately introduced into our present legislature to establish what is called the half-mill school fund. If the bill passes to be enacted, as is probable,* it will increase the annual state tax on Sutton about six hundred dollars ; but from the school fund thus raised by a half-mill + tax on the whole Commonwealth, Sutton will receive back annually about fourteen hundred dollars, on condition that the town comply with statute requirements in reference to a high school, etc .; otherwise the town must raise six hundred dollars annually for the support of schools in other towns of the common- wealth. With these considerations before us, it seems but little less than suicidal folly for the town to delay any longer the maintenance of a high school. And such a school need
* No bill of the kind has yet been passed to be enacted.
t Half-mill on one dollar.
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not subject the town to a very great expense ; indeed the balance in our favor from the ' half-mill school fund,' if the bill becomes a law, and our share from the old school fund [then withheld] may be made to pay nearly all the extra expense of a high school, besides conferring on the town all * the benefits which may result from such a school.
And this school may be conducted in our common school-houses, one year in one part of the town, the next year in some other part, and so on ; and may take the place of what are now called ‘ grammar depart- ments' (in our common schools)."
About the time the above extract was written, the school committee prepared the two following articles, which, with the approbation and concurrence of the whole school com- mittee and board of selectmen, William Abbott, Esq., chair- man, were inserted in the warrant for the approaching annual meeting :
" Article 14. To see if the town will maintain * a high school according to the requirements of statute law, or act or do anything in relation to the same."
" Article 15. To see if the town will raise money for the maintenance of a high school."
After a dispassionate discussion and a more detailed state- ment of the case than is found in the foregoing extract, the affirmative of both articles was sustained by an almost unani- mous vote of the persons present and voting.
Under article 14-" Voted that the town will maintain a high school to hold one term of three months at Wilkinson- ville, one term of three months at Sutton Centre, one term of three months at West Sutton, and one term of three months at Manchaug Village."
Under article 15-" Voted to raise and appropriate five hundred dollars for the maintenance of the high school."
No single action of the town for the previous fifteen years afforded such joy and exultation to the writer as did
* Remembering how the word establish had been rejected, as ominous to a certain class of tax-payers of a permanent incubus, the word maintain was here used.
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the birth of our beloved high school. We trust that it will not be thought that we impute to Sutton such sordid motives as are not found elsewhere, if we say that doubtless some of the votes in the affirmative were given from motives of economy. But the success of the measure was principally due to a higher standard of public opinion, and an apprecia- tion of a higher culture and a demand therefor. Many good citizens had labored to bring about this improvement in public opinion, prominent among whom were Rev. H. A. Tracy and James W. Stoekwell, Esq. Agreeably to the foregoing vote the first term of the high school was com- menced at Wilkinsonville, April 14th, 1873, under the tuition of Walter A. Wheeler. It was well known that this district alone could furnish only a small number of pupils qualified to enter with profit on the curriculum of a veritable high school, and earnest efforts were made to bring in scholars from other districts, with indifferent success. The whole number of scholars registered was 26. Average attendance 23.7. By the consent of all concerned, the next or fall term was held at West Sutton, under the charge of Miss M. E. Manly. Whole number of scholars 42 ; average attendance 32.5. The winter term at Sutton Centre ; whole number of scholars 40; average attendance 34.45 ; under charge of Miss Fannie E. Lawrence. For a further account of our first year's experiment, we quote from the report of the school committee for the year ending March 1874.
" During six [seven] years previous to the last annual meeting of the town, that which would have been its share of the income from the State school fund, amounting to $200 at first, and finally to $245 yearly, was withheld, as a punish- ment for our delinquency in the matter of a high school. Immediately after your vote, at our last annual meeting, to maintain a high school, we notified the secretary of the Board of Education of the same, and, better than we ex- pected, and before our official and certified returns were made, and even before our high school had been in session the legal time of nine (school) months, as a reward for our repentance and good intentions, we received through our town treasurer our share of the income of the State school
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fund, amounting to $244.92. This amount pays very nearly the extra expense of our high school over what the gram- mar schools [departments] superseded by the high school would have cost. In this, our first experiment, the high school has had three sessions in three different places, and under three different teachers. We recommend that here- after the high school be at one place only during the year, and that it be under the charge of one and the same teacher. About forty per centum of the pupils of the high school at Sutton Center, thirty per centum at Wilkinsonville, and still less at West Sutton, were engaged in the study of the higher branches. We believe that the qualifications of our high school teachers have been amply sufficient to meet the demands of their pupils, and we also believe that by continu- ing our high school, the number and qualifications of its pupils in the higher branches will greatly advance."
At the time the above was written, the committee had some fears about the next vote of the town on the high school question.
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