USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Quincy > Inaugural address of the mayor, with the annual report of the officers of the city of Quincy for the year 1889 > Part 10
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There is good reason for thinking that reading is the most important branch taught in the common schools. If instruction therein is successful at least three results will be secured : First, pupils will very early learn to read with great facility. The second result is directly dependent on the first and consists in the creation of a love for good reading. Dependent on both is the third, viz., the establishment of the reading habit as a means of self-education after school-days areended. For accomplishing these results - and nothing less should satisfy us - there is imperative need that the schools should make constant and active use of the library, and no more powerful stimulus to such action now occurs to me than the reproduction of Mr. Adam's article.
NATURE STUDY.
Probably the most important matter considered by the School Committee during the year may be found in a proposi- tion submitted by the Superintendent looking to the employ- ment of a thoroughly competent person to serve as organizer and director of systematic instruction in elementary science in the primary and grammar schools. Perhaps the simple term "Nature Study" may best indicate the character of the undertaking recommended. It would seem that no lengthy argument is needed to demonstrate the wisdom of the action proposed. We may divide the studies pursued in the schools into two classes. The first class will contain those studies which furnish the materials for thought. The natural sciences, arithmetic, geometry and history will be found in this class. The second class will contain those studies which relate to the symbols of thought : reading, spelling, writing,
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composition, may serve as examples. If we examine the work of the primary schools as it now exists we shall find that it consists almost wholly of the last named variety of studies. The two chief ends for which pupils attend schools are knowledge and training. It is well known that of all those who enter school, very few complete the grammar school course, even fewer enter the high school. Can any one successfully defend a course of studies as philosophical and complete which permits this great number of pupils to leave school ignorant of the simplest facts in the realm of nature ?
The comparatively few pupils who reach the high school will there have an opportunity of studying botany, chemistry, and physics, but even these few must learn in the high school the veriest elements of the sciences and occupy so much time in the mastery of the elements as to have little or none remain- ing for true scientific study.
It is not proposed to undertake the formal study of botany or chemistry or physics in the lower schools, but it must be remembered that the elements of all these studies are very simple. The pupils who leave school early should have an opportunity of acquiring these elements, and it is almost equally necessary that pupils who subsequently pursue a high school course should do the same thing by way of prepara- tion for their advanced work. If we turn now to the other end suggested - training - we shall find equally cogent rea- sons in favor of the plan recommended. A sound course of studies is so framed as to afford right occasions for the disci- pline of the different orders of activity as they develop in the child mind.
By way of a simple outline of this order of development we may name: 1. The perceptive faculties. 2. The imagi- native powers. 3. The reflective powers. We have to consider just now the first named. It must be admitted that
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recent years have witnessed great improvement in our schools in the line of right training of these observing powers. Our methods of teaching reading, spelling, writing, and number - the work undertaken in the study of form, color and drawing - have contributed to this end.
It still remains true, however, that we are leaving unused the best possible materials for accomplishing the desired re" sults, inasmuch as we almost ignore the existence of the natural world. In the views thus briefly and imperfectly stated all educational authorities are'agreed. Every where do the judicious grieve that, in this particular, schools are as we find them. Such being the facts, of course the pertinent inquiry concerns ways and means of effecting an improvement. The marked success which has attended the introduction of drawing and singing into the schools is a suggestion - unless I am over sanguine, it is almost a guarantee - that success will attend similar action in this matter of elementary science. I believe as thoroughly as any one, that the teaching of all subjects in the public schools must be done chiefly by the reg- ular corps of teachers, but in such matters as drawing, sing- ing, and elementary science, who shall teach the teacher? Scarcely any persons of the generation now actively at work received in youth such instruction as we we wish to secure to pupils now in the school? With the small salaries which we pay it is futile to expect to secure teachers who can teach well what have been known as the common school branches, and also these branches which have more recently found place in the schools. We are fortunate indeed when we secure, as we do, persons who are disposed, under competent leadership, to carry forward with zeal and discretion branches which at the the outset are unfamiliar to themselves. Instead, therefore, of spending more time in lamenting this deficiency in our course of studies, it seems wise to secure a person who is by aptitude, special training and experience fitted to do for our
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schools in this line of nature study, what persons of like qualifications have already done in the drawing and music. These views found favor in the eyes of your School Committee and when the report of 1890 is written, I hope it may be pos- sible to chronicle the successful beginning of a work, which, I am sure, must be far reaching in its influence for good.
GRADUATIONS.
The town hall having been fitted up as a council chamber, and the coliseum rented for mercantile purposes, the year 1889, witnessed a considerable change in both the high school and grammar school graduations.
The former held exercises of the usual character in Han- cock Hall, but on account of the small size of the building, only a limited number of tickets could be issued. With one exception the grammar schools held graduating exercises of a simple character in their respective buildings.
The Wollaston school constituted the exception just re- ferred to. Several cases of diphtheria having appeared in that district, as a measure of safety, the committee deemed it wise to close this school on June 3d and it was not re-opened until the beginning of the fall term.
Prior to 1889, for some dozen years, the grammar schools had united in exercises held in the town hall or coliseum which marked the close of the school year. I shall not claim that it is absolutely essential to the welfare of the schools that a union graduation of this sort occur as often as once a year ; but I am convinced that an occasional repetition of the event exerts a helpful influence. It does not afford the public much knowl- edge of what the schools are doing. Such knowledge is only to be secured by frequent observation of teachers and pupils amid their daily work. It does something, however, to stim- ulate public interest in the educational affairs of the town; it does something to hold pupils in school who might otherwise drop out by the way.
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In common with all other school authorities we each year experience more or less dissatisfaction with the acquirements of the pupils who are sent out from the grammar schools. The question naturally arises whether these pupils have spent as much time in the lower schools as is necessary for such attain- ments as we would have them possess,-whether they are suffi- ciently mature to properly assimilate the materials offered them from week to week. As possibly throwing some light upon this interesting inquiry, I gathered at the end of the last school year the following information in regard to the average ages of the pupils graduated :-
SCHOOLS.
NO. OF GRADU'S.
AVERAGE AGE OF CLASS.
AVERAGE AGE OF GIRLS.
AVERAGE AGE OF BOYS.
Adams .
21
14 yrs, 11 m.
14 yrs, 11 m.
14 yrs, 11 m.
Coddington
29
14 yrs, 9 m.
14 yrs, 7 m.
14 yrs, 11 m.
Quincy .
14
15 yrs, 2 m.
15 yrs, 2 m.
15 yrs, 1 m.
Washington .
16
15 yrs, 5 m.
15 yrs, 6 m.
14 yrs, 10 m.
Willard
31
14 yrs, 7 m.
14 yrs, 4 m.
14 yrs, 10 m.
Wollaston .
14
14 yrs, 3 m.
13 yrs, 10 m.
14 yrs, 5 m.
It will be necessary to use great caution in making deduc- tions from the facts set forth in the above table. We cannot safely conclude, for instance, that the average age of graduates of the Washington school will be uniformly greater then the average age of graduates of the other schools. Although we admit pupils to the primary schools when five years of age, we cannot safely assume that these graduates have actually been in continuous attendance on school for as many years as is the difference between five and their average age at graduation.
In general, however, the figures would indicate that these graduates have spent time enough in the lower schools, so far as that one element is concerned. If their maturity can be measured at all by their years, they would seem old enough to
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comprehend such instruction as is appropriate to the courses of study to be found in the grammar schools.
TRAINING CLASS.
As I have observed some misapprehension in regard to the training classes, which have for several years formed a part of our school system, it seems advisable to recall the circum- stances which lead to the formation of the first class of this character and which have seemed to warrant the organization of succeeding classes. When Mr. Parker began his work in Quincy, he found various young ladies in town who desired to teach and who deemed it impossible to secure a regular Normal school training. Moreover he doubtless deemed the element of actual school-room practice, insufficient in the case of others who had attended the Normal school. Under these circum- stances he made it a part of his duty to instruct such persons in principles and methods of teaching, and in general school management. From persons so taught valuable recruits to the regular teaching force were secured from time to time. If membership had been restricted to residents of Quincy, these classes would have been inconveniently small, and the admis- sion of ousiders involved no expense. It was essential that the conditions of membership should be such that the town would secure some adequate return for the instruction afforded by the superintendent. Accordingly these conditions have been from time to time extended, until in the organization of the class of 1889, it was stipulated that members should devote a full school year to the work of the class. The underlying idea was that during the last half or two thirds of the year, these young ladies would be able to render service which would go far at least toward making good the efforts put forth in their behalf by teachers and superintendent. Repeating an obser- vation made last year I may remark that the training class ought to give way to a regularly organized training school as our school system increases in magnitude.
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With the class of the present year have been connected the following persons :-
Helen V. Barton,
Winnifred Macdonald,
Julia A. Boland,
Mary E. McCabe,
Nellie F. Boyd,
Susie H. McKenna,
Hattie M. Boynton,
Cora A. Newcomb,
Blanche W. Bright,
Alcie L. Noyes, Hannah B. Nye,
Helen Burgess, Annie M. Cahill,
Emma L. Osgood.
Fannie Cannon,
Nina A. Page,
Emily G. Chamberlin,
Louisa Parrott,
Katharine Cunniff,
Marion A. Paul,
Bertha K. Cushman,
Clara A. Penley,
H. Louise Daley,
Josephine P. Poole,
Katharine Drew,
Martha M. Power,
Gertrude W. Grose,
Mattie S. Sawyer,
Eudora H. Gurney,
Francis M. Seymour,
Maggie E. Haley,
Lottie B. Shaw, Lena G. Smith,
Fannie W. Hatch,
Georgia A. Stone,
Lillian F. Hatch,
Helen J. Sullivan,
Josie C. Hayward,
Mary A. Tebbetts,
Nellie B. Hooper,
Minnie Welsh,
Anna B. Kelley,
Nellie Welsh.
Pearl E. Kilburn,
Cora V. Leavitt,
In drawing this report to a close, the superintendent de- sires once again to testify to the zeal, intelligence and discre- tion displayed by the teachers of Quincy. Even as a prophet is not without honor save in his own country, it sometimes seems that the services of our teachers are more fully appre- ciated by casual visitors, by the strangers within our gates, than by those most closely related to the pupils in the schools. Surely this ought not so to be.
Lucy M. Hall,
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For any measure of effectiveness attending the efforts of the superintendent, he is chiefly indebted to the great"degree of freedom allowed him by the Board of School Committee and to the hearty support of that body. To both"committee and teachers he desires to express hearty appreciation of their un- failing courtesy and invaluable assistance.
G. I. ALDRICH.
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RESIGNATIONS AND TRANSFERS.
High School. Martha P. Valentine.
Adams School. Arthur N. Whitney, to Cambridge ; Josephine Spurr; Mabel E. Adams, to Boston; Ada P. Zeigler, to Newton.
Coddington School. Mary E. Nightingale, to Ashmont Private School.
John Hancock School. Mary M. Boyd; Irene M. Hall.
Quincy . School. Abbie J. Gannett ; Mary E. Raymond, to Waltham ; Iva A. Woodward.
Washington School. Ellen N. Farnam, to Quincy School ; Mary G. Collagan, to Coddington School ; Mabel E. Blake, to Arlington.
Willard School. Eliza S. Dinnie, to Waltham; Nellie S. Dickey, to Somerville.
Wollaston. John S. Emerson, to Malden; Gertrude Goodwin, to Quincy School.
THE PUBLIC LIBRARY A PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
A PAPER PREPARED FOR THE TEACHERS OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF QUINCY, MASS., AND READ TO THEM ON THE 19TH OF MAY, 1876.
As the result of a conversation I some time since had with our School Superintendent, Mr. Parker, and at his suggestion, I propose this afternoon to say a few words to you about books and reading ; on the use, to come directly to the point, which could be made of the Public Library of the town in connection with the school system in general, and more particularly with the High and upper-grade Grammar Schools. I say "could be made " intentionally, for I am very sure that use is not now made, and why it is not made is a question, which, in my double capacity of a member of the School Committee and a trustee of the Public Library, I have during the last few years puzzled over a good deal.
You are all teachers in the common schools of the town of Quincy, and I very freely acknowledge that I think your course as such, especially of late, has been marked by a good deal of zeal, by a consciousness of progress, and a sincere desire to accomplish good results. I am disposed neither to find fault with you, nor with our schools, - as schools go. I should like, however, to ask you this simple question :- Did it ever, after all, occur to you what is the great end and
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object of all this common school system ?- why do we get all these children together, and labor over them so assiduously year after year ? - Now, it may well be that it never suggested itself in that way to you, but I think it may safely be asserted that the one best possible result of a common-school educa- tion, - its great end and aim, - should be to prepare the children of the community for the far greater work of edu- cating themselves.
Now, in education, as in almost everything else, there is a strong tendency among those engaged in its routine work to mistake the means for the end. I am always struck with this in going into the average public school. It was especially the case in the schools of this town four years ago. Arithmetic, grammar, spelling, geography, and history were taught, as if to be able to answer the questions in the text-books was the great end of all education. It was instruction through a perpetual system of conundrums. The child was made to learn some queer definitions in words, or some disagreeable puzzle in figures, as if it was in itself an acquisition of value, - something to be kept and hoarded like silver dollars, as being a handy thing to have in the house. The result was that the scholars acquired with immense difficulty something which they forgot with equal ease; and, when they left our grammar schools, they had what people are pleased to call the rudiments of education, and yet not one in twenty of them could sit down and write an ordinary letter, in a legible hand, with ideas clearly expressed, and in words correctly spelled ; and the proportion of those who left school with either the ability or desire to further educate themselves was scarcely greater.
Perhaps you may think this an exaggeration on my part. If you do, I can only refer you to the examination papers of the candidates for admission during any year to our High
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School. I have had occasion to go over many sets of them, and I assure you they warrant the conclusion I have drawn.
Going a step further and following the scholar out into grown-up life, I fancy that a comparison of experiences would show that scarcely one out of twenty of those who leave our schools ever further educate themselves in any great degree, outside, of course, of any special trade or calling through which they earn a living. The reason of this, I would now suggest, is obvious enough; and it is not the fault of the scholar. It is the fault of a system which brings a community up in the idea that a poor knowledge of the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic constitutes in itself an educa- tion. Now, on the contrary, it seems to me that the true object of all your labors as real teachers, if indeed you are such, - the great end of the common-school system, is some- thing more than to teach children to read; it should, if it is to accomplish its full mission, also impart to them a love of reading.
A man or woman whom a whole childhood spent in the common shools has made able to stumble through a news- paper, or labor through a few trashy books, is scarcely better off than one who cannot read at all. Indeed, I doubt if he or she is as well off, for it has long been observed that a very small degree of book knowledge almost universally takes a depraved shape. The animal will come out. The man who can barely spell out his newspaper confines his spelling in nine cases out of ten to those highly seasoned portions of it which relate to acts of violence, and especially to murders. Among those who make a profession of journalism this is a perfectly well-known fact ; and any one who doubts it may satisfy him- self on the subject almost any day by a few words of inquiry at a news-stand. Mr. Souther, in this town, I fancy, could impart to any of you, who happen to be curious, a considerable amount of information under this head. A little learning is
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proverbially a dangerous thing ; and the less the learning the greater the danger.
Let us recur, then, to my cardinal proposition, that the great end of all school education is to make people to educate themselves. You start them ; that is all the best teacher can do. Whether he is called a professor and lectures to great classes of grown men at a university, or is a country school- master who hammers rudiments into children, he can do no more than this ; but this, every teacher, if he chooses, can do. How very few do it though ! Not one out of ten ; - scarcely one out of twenty. It is here our system fails.
I do not know that what I am about to suggest has ever been attempted anywhere, but I feel great confidence that it would succeed ; therefore, I would like to see it attempted in Quincy. Having started the child by means of what we call a common-school course, - having, as it were, learned it to walk, - the process of further self-education is to begin. The great means of self-education is through books - through much reading of books. But just here there is in our system of instruction a missing link. In our schools we teach children to read ; - we do not teach them how to read. That, the one all-important thing, - the great connecting link between school-education and self-education, - between means and end, - that one link we make no effort to supply. As long as we do not make an effort to supply it, our school system in its result is and will remain miserably deficient. For now, be it remembered, the child of the poorest man in Quincy- the offspring of our paupers even - has an access as free as the son of a millionaire, or the student of Harvard College, to what is, for practical, general use, a perfect library. The old days of intellectual famine for the masses are over, and plenty reigns. Yet, though the school and the library stand on our main street side by side, there is, so to speak, no bridge lead- ing from one to the other. As far as I can judge we teach our
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children the mechanical part of reading, and then we turn them loose to take thcis chances. If the child has naturally an inquiring or imaginative mind, it perchance may work its way unaided through the traps and pitfalls of literature ; but the chances seem to me to be terribly against it. It is so very easy, and so very pleasant too, to read only books which lead to nothing, - light and interesting and exciting books, and the more exciting the better, - that it is almost as difficult to wean ourself from it as from the habit of chewing tobacco to excess, or of smoking the whole time, or of depending for stimulus on tea or coffee or spirits. Yet here,-on the thresh- old of this vast field, you might even call it this wilderness of general literature, full as it is of holes and bogs and pitfalls, all covered over with poisonous plants, - here it is that our common school system brings our children, and, having brought them there, it leaves them to go on or not, just as they please ; or, if they do go on, they are to find their own way or to lose it as it may chance.
I think this is all wrong. Our educational system stops just where its assistance might be made invaluable, - just where it passes out of the mechanical and touches the individ- ual,-just where instruction ceases to be drudgery and becomes a source of pleasure. Now, I do not propose for myself any such task as an attempted radical reform of educa- tion. Each man has his own work to do, and that is not mine. What I do want to suggest to you Grammar School teachers is that it is in the power of each one of you to intro- duce a great spirit of improvement into your own schools, and at the same time the greatest pleasure and interest a true teacher can have into your own lives.
You know it is said that poets are born, not made; and the same is true of teachers. For myself, I don't think I could teach ; - if I had to take my choice I would rather break stones in the highway ; and yet other and better men than I
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would rather teach than do anything else. There is Dr. Dimmock at the Academy, for instance. He found his place in life, and a great one too, only when he got behind the master's desk. He was born to teach boys, and, with much happiness to himself and them, he is fulfilling his destiny. But, though I never could teach myself, I can see clearly enough that the one thing which makes the true teacher and which distinguishes him from the mechanical pedagogue, which any man may become, is the faculty of interesting himself in the single pupil, - seeing, watching, aiding the development of the individual mind. I never tried it, but I know just what it must be from my own experience in other matters. I have a place here in town, for instance, upon which I live; and there I not only grow fields of corn and carrots, but also a great many trees. Now, my fields of corn or carrots are to me what a mechanical pedagogue's school is to him. I like to see them well ordered and planted in even rows, all growing exactly alike, and producing for each crop so many bushels of corn or carrots to the acre, one carrot being pretty nearly the same as another; - and then, when the Autumn comes and the farming term closes, I prepare my land, as the pedagogue does his school-room, for the next crop; and the last is over and gone. It is not so, however, with my trees. They are to me just what his pupils are to the born school-master, - to Dr. Dimmock, for instance ; in each one I take an individual interest. I watch them year after year, and see them grow and shoot out and develop. Now let me apply my simile. You are, all of you, I hope, and if you are not you at least believe yourselves to be, born teachers, and not mechanical pedagogues ; so, of course, your schools ought to be to you, not mere fields in which you turn out regular crops of human cabbages and potatoes, but they should be plantations also in which you raise a few trees, at least, in the individual growth of which you take a master's interest. This feeling and this
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only it is which can make a teacher's life ennobling, - the finding out among his pupils those who have in them the material of superior men and women, and then nurturing them and aiding in their development, and making of them something which, but for their teacher, they never would have been. These pupils are to their teacher what my oak trees are to me ; - but for me those trees would have died in the acorn, probably, - at most they would have been mere scrub bushes ; - but now through me, - wholly owing to my inter- vention and care, - they are growing and developing, and there are among them those which some day, a hundred years, perhaps, after my children are all dead of old age, will be noble oaks. Then no one will know that I ever lived, much less trouble himself to think that to me those trees owed their lives, - yet it is so, none the less, and those are my trees no matter how much I am dead and forgotten. So of your scholars. If you, during your lives as teachers, can, among all your mass of pupils, find out and develop through your own personal contact only a few, - say half-a-dozen, - remarkable men and women, who but for you and your obser- vation and watchfulness and guidance would have lived and died not knowing what they could do, then, if you do nothing more than this, you have done an immense work in life.
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