USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Dedham > The record of the town meetings, and abstract of births, marriages, and deaths, in the town of Dedham, Massachusetts, 1887-1896 > Part 49
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DEDHAM PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
the other, but with the tremendous vista reaching to the ends of the world and to all eternity, that little distance is well-nigh of no importance. " And so I say to you to-night,-there are some among us perhaps to whom this warning is a little tardy,-but to the school-children I would especially say, give up the idea that your education is finished when you leave the school ; it is only then beginning in its truest sense.
Schools have been in existence in this town of Dedham for two hundred and fifty years. That long period has seen vast changes in their methods and in their studies. The old curric- ulum has been greatly enriched. Other languages beside English, music, drawing, modelling in clay, and science have been introduced, and I venture nothing in saying that sooner or later every school in this commonwealth will have its course in manual training which will be considered as an important part of the education of the young. And so the idea of the public school, as it has existed here for two hundred and fifty years, is destined to extend into the unknown time beyond. What shall it be made ? The science of education must keep step in pro- gress with the advance in other sciences. I look to see the Commonwealth of Massachusetts maintain the supremacy it has to-day in giving to all the youth within its borders the wisest and most liberal instruction in method, aim and result.
I noticed this evening upon the programme at the bottom part of the seal of the Town of Dedham, the word "Content- ment." I think I have read somewhere that the earliest settlers when they first established themselves here petitioned the Great and General Court that they might be permitted to call their plantation Contentment. That petition was not granted, and they gave their infant town the name Dedham, which it has held for over two hundred and fifty years. No wonder the thought of contentment was very close and warm in their hearts in this fair valley by the shores of the Charles River, looking eastward to the beautiful Blue Hills of Milton, with the broad meadows of the Neponset abounding in game stretching toward the South. I think it was a beautiful and gracious prayer that they pre-
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250TH ANNIVERSARY.
sented to the Great and General Court, that that word might be perpetuated in the name of their town. But, my friends, content- ment alone is not quite enough ; it is too apt to degenerate into listlessness, apathy, or sluggishness of mind or temper. There must go with it the determination always to press forward each year further on in the march of enlightenment.
That spirit of unrest which incessantly demands such change as shall constitute real progress is of equal importance with that spirit of content which, pillowed on the past, rests satisfied with the present. May these twin spirits of contentment and en- lightened progress continue to brood over your beautiful town, and so may the Dedham of the centuries that are to come be worthy of its honorable and historic past.
IX.
HAIL COLUMBIA.
BY CHORUS AND ORCHESTRA.
THE CHAIRMAN, -The State Board of Education was established by an Act of the General Court on April 20, 1837. This Board has a general oversight of all the common schools in our Commonwealth. The executive officer of the Board is its Secretary, and upon his wis- dom, learning and experience the success and efficiency of their schools in no small degree depend. This office has been filled from the beginning by men of unusual ability and character. The first Secretary of this Board was Horace Mann, a native of Norfolk County, for some years a citizen of Dedham, and unquestionably a man in the foremost rank of the educators of his day. Immediately after him was Barnas Sears, who resigned
£
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DEDHAM PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
the office to become President of Brown University. Following him came Hon. George S. Boutwell, then an ex-Governor of the Commonwealth. Then came Hon. Joseph White and John W. Dickinson. To-day the Secretary is Hon. Frank A. Hill, whose recent appointment gave great satisfaction to all who take an active interest in the welfare of our public schools. We wish him abundant success in this highly responsible position. He honors this occasion by his presence. It affords me great pleasure to introduce to you the Hon. FRANK A. HILL, Secretary of the State Board of Edu- cation.
X.
ADDRESS.
HON. FRANK .A. HILL,
SECRETARY OF THE STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION.
Do you realize, Mr. President, the trying ordeal to which you are subjecting me at the end of your long and brilliant programme ? We have been surfeited, almost, with history, eloquence and song. Here, too, are three hundred boys and girls,-the hardest audience in the world to hold and to please, -and it is past their bedtime. Moreover, I am anxious to catch the last train for Boston ; else I must throw myself on the mercy of the good people of Dedham until morning. On the other hand, this is the first, the last, and the only two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of her first public school that Dedham will ever celebrate, and we can afford to make a night of it. If you have good staying qualities, I will proceed.
Sir William Berkeley, the courtly Governor of Virginia, in a letter to the King more than two hundred years ago, thanked God there were no printing presses and free schools within his
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250TH ANNIVERSARY.
jurisdiction to make the people discontented and seditious. About the same time a minister of the gospel in Boston, Cotton Mather, was addressing these words to his congregation :-
The more liberal education we bestow on our children, though we should pinch ourselves for it, and them, too, upon other accounts, the greater blessings are they likely to become, not only unto our- selves while we live, but also unto the Commonwealth when we shall be dead and gone.
Here we have the Cavalier and the Puritan, the aristocrat and the democrat, the champion of class and the representative of the people. The masses might slide for all of the Cavalier. There was a sense, however, in the thought of the Puritan, in which the humblest of the masses might rank with kings. Two educational policies could not be wider apart in their inception or their results, or fraught with mightier consequences. A germ, a seed, in the realm of civilization, as in the plant world or the animal, is a wonderful thing in its potency. If blighted or extinguished, as most germs are, that is the end of it, of course ; but if it develops, one cannot, indeed, foresee the great- ness to which it may attain, or even that it will attain greatness at all. One can only look back with astonishment to the humble and unpromising thing from which the greatness has sprung.
Now the Puritan migration to our shores between 1630 and 1640 brought us some remarkable men, of deep convictions, out of joint with the ways of England and deemed dangerous there, -strong men, I say, for be assured it was not dullards and nobodies whom they silenced there and drove to our inhospitable shores. They came to us in large numbers,- artisans, mer- chants, clergymen, graduates of Cambridge University, and of Oxford not a few, the very bone and sinew of England,- ambitious, thinking, determined men, with high ideas; and one of these ideas was the education of the people, in the narrow sense in which the idea was then conceived. This idea laid its grip upon the Puritan ; it sent its roots into his soul, his practice and his purposes ; it grew apace ; it responded to the changing times ; it rose above itself; it has dominated New England
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DEDHAM PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
throughout its history ; and to-day it is the grandest single interest of the Commonwealth. To quote the eloquent words . of His Excellency the Governor, in his recent inaugural address, " education lays its imperial tax upon the treasury with an auto- cratic power readily acknowledged and obeyed by the intelli- gence and conscience of the people."
There has been an evolution in education as in everything else. We see the earmarks of old England in the schools of the Colonists, and the earmarks of the Colonists are distinctly visible to the curious investigator in the schools of to-day.
Take, for instance, early school architecture in New Eng- land. It was not original with the early settlers. Some of them had attended the great schools of England,- Rugby, Eton, Harrow, Westminster,-and they got there the ideas which they reproduced in rude miniature in the new world. Now what was the English schoolroom ? It was long, high and narrow. The floor rose by steps at the sides and ends from a spacious area, and on these were the benches,-the wooden benches,-plain, hard, backbreaking as any you ever sat on. The windows were high up and out of reach. Between them and the floor was the wooden wainscot where the English boys wrote, cut and printed their names, a species of vandalism from which time often removed the stigma, since the name for whose writing the young rogue may have merited a flogging was likely to become a thing of secret, if not of open, pride to the school authorities when it became famous. Now the old New England school- house often repeated the English interior, only in a small and rude way,-the same raised platforms, the same plank seats, the same wooden wainscot, and the same windows high above it; and everything about it, too, was usually whittled and cut in the ruthless English way. In the little room the master's desk often loomed up like a pulpit. Just why so exalted a throne was reared in a room often not much larger than a dry goods box it would be hard to guess, if one did not look into an ancient English schoolroom and see there its undoubted prototype. And so in a score of things pertaining to our old schoolhouses the dominating influence of the mother country is seen.
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250TH ANNIVERSARY.
Consider, next, the teachers of our early schools. They were men exclusively, just as in the old country. To be sure, there were a few dame schools, but they were private and for little children. Women did not figure in the educational schemes of our forefathers either as pupils or as teachers. Indeed, it was not long ago that it was thought akin to insanity for her to aspire to a high institution of learning or for a high institution of learning to give her a chance to do so. And farther back in colonial times it is a matter of history that it was provocative of lunacy for her to write or even to read books.
There is the distressing case of Mrs. Hopkins, wife of the Governor of Hartford on Connecticut. Governor Winthrop tells the pathetic story, in his History of New England from 1630 to 1649, how she "was fallen into a sad infirmity-the loss of her reason-by giving herself to reading and writing books." Her husband saw his error when it was too late. " If she had attended to her household affairs," said the Governor, " and such things as belong to women, and not gone out of her way and calling to meddle with such things as are proper to men whose minds are stronger,"-I am only quoting,-"she had not lost her wits."
The first century of our public schools was a raw, glacial time, you see, -- no girls among the students, no women among the teachers. Then came the second century,-the era of the Alpine flowers fringing the glacier,-in which girls were taught in summer schools but not in winter, and then in winter schools after the boys were dismissed, while women were tried here and there as teachers in the hope that they might succeed, but in the fear that they would not. And now we are striking into the second half of the third century, with girls outnumbering the boys in our high schools, and young women rivalling young men in numbers and attainments in the colleges, while as teachers women are everywhere in overwhelming force It may be that the pendulum has swung too far the other way,-that we are now having too much of a good thing, for we really need in the school, as in the family, the robust influence of man as well as the refining influence of woman.
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DEDHAM PUBLIC SCHOOLS. .
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Three centuries of evolution, therefore, in respect to the employment of women in the schools,- the first of woman ignored, the second of woman timidly and sparingly recog- nized, the third of woman dominant and triumphant. If in this overturn she can remain truly and sweetly woman, far removed from that devitalized type of the abnormally intellect- ual woman that we sometimes see pictured in society papers as hailing from Boston, the revolution will carry with it its own justification.
Again, there has been an interesting evolution in the matter of discipline. Our fathers believed in the efficacy of bodily punishment. To-day we look upon a child's will as a weak, immature thing that needs to be strengthened; in the psy- chology of our fathers it was a stubborn thing that needed to be broken. Moreover, old-time school boys were all theoreti- cally depraved and some of them naturally. All this needed the rod, that " ordinance of God," as the Dorchester colonists used to call it. If it did not stop wrong and reform the wrong-doer, it was not applied vigorously enough. I speak of the rod as symbolizing innumerable instruments and methods of punish- ment. These methods came from England, but, in spite of their harshness, they had lost barbarism in the transfer.
Think for a moment of that dreadful catalogue of capital offences that sullied the fame of England during the reigns of the three Georges. "It is a melancholy fact," wrote Black- stone, "that among the variety of actions men are daily liable to commit, no less than one hundred and sixty have been declared by Act of Parliament to be worthy of instant death." In the Colony of Massachusetts Bay there were only twenty capital offences, and in Plymouth Colony only eight. If these data do not sufficiently illustrate the trend among the Colonists to greater moderation, let me cite the common law of England that allowed, and still allows, if I am not misinformed, a man to chastise his wife,-moderately, indeed, but still to chastise her. Now the Colonists forbade this mode of family discipline, and I
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250TH ANNIVERSARY.
will say in passing that when they forbade it the American ideal of woman began to take shape.
But why this allusion to punishment of crime in the Old World and the New ? Simply because punishment in the schoolroom sympathized with the spirit of punishment that" pervaded the laws and was in the very air of the times. The harshness of the Colonists in the schoolroom was gentleness itself as compared with the harshness of England. Nor is it necessary to cite Dotheboys Hall, with its tragedy of poor Smike and old Squeers, or any other Yorkshire school, to prove this, for the flogging block was common in the great schools of England, and not unknown even in her universities. It was ruthlessly used, for instance, by that famous master of the Blue Coat School of London, a clergyman, under whom Coleridge, Lamb and DeQuincy were pupils, and of whom DeQuincy said : " The man fairly knouted his way from bloody youth tip to truculent old age." And when Coleridge heard of his death, he exclaimed, "Lucky that the cherubim who took him to heaven were only faces and wings, or he would infallibly have flogged them by the way.".
There has been a gratifying softening in this matter of dis- cipline in both countries since 1644, in which we have led the way. Moral power is found to be more effective than the rod after all. Frail women in Dedham, and elsewhere throughout the State, are ruling in a superb way, by sheer force of char- acter, great boys who, under the old regime, would have turned half their masters out of doors, or, at least, would have been willing to do so.
An English writer1 who recently visited our schools in order to get points that might be of service at home, says :-- " The discipline of American schools, both elementary and secondary, cannot be too highly approved. It is the more admirable, as it seems to be entirely a matter for the pupils." After contrasting it with the discipline of even the good schools of England, to the greater credit of American schools, the writer adds that
· Burstall, "The Education of Girls in the United States," Macmillan & Co.
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DEDHAM PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
when American teachers were questioned, as they were repeat- edly, "as to how this admirable result was secured, they attributed it first of all to the national character, and second to the system of trusting the pupils."
One might go on at length in this way, tracing scores of educational matters in their descent from England. I have mentioned neither the Catechism nor the New-England Primer, nor have I alluded to the grander features in the great educa- tional trend. I have simply touched two or three things of an obvious kind, just enough to show that each detail in the schools has had a growth or retrogression of its own corre- sponding to changes in the life and spirit of the people, and to enforce the thought that, under a government like ours, the schools cannot do other than reflect the people.
In this way our school system has gradually acquired a distinctive, American character, as if it had never had anything to do with the mother country to which we can trace back so many of its features. Its development during the last half century has been peculiarly marked, largely owing to the wisdom and zeal of one who for some time was an honored citizen of Dedham,-I refer to Horace Mann, the first secretary of our Board of Education.
Sometimes people inquire : "Are the schools of to-day really training their pupils any better than the humble schools of the past ?" Is the Dedham High School, for instance, doing any better work than the rude school planted here two hundred and fifty years ago? How a man with any knowledge of the past can give other answer than an emphatic "yes" to such inquiries, I cannot conceive. I know how natural a thing, and often how good a thing, it is to idealize the past. Iknow, too, how sensitive we are to the defects of the present. And I know, consequently, how easy it is to fall into the wail that the former days were better than our own. But if we trust our history a little more for right views of the past, and our philosophy a little more for right views of the present, we shall not fail to recognize the gain of the last two centuries and a half.
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250TH ANNIVERSARY.
We may, however, readily concede this, that gain is never unmixed gain. We push improvement to the verge of luxury, but every improvement has its own vexation. High culture, as in the garden, brings in its train of pests, and it takes a higher culture to drive them out. Are some of our schoolhouses pal- aces ? No palace ever made a scholar or ever will. Are methods more agreeable, teachers more considerate, studies more like play, and school a daily entertainment? This is the approved and sunny goal of the new education. But what if the pupil's nerve become soft and limp ? What if drudgery and weariness in the pupil be readily taken as signs of a vicious system rather than as incidents of a toil that tells? What if the hard but blessed gospel of work be feebly preached, or preached not at all ?
The spirit of the old school training and that of the new I sometimes liken to two methods of learning to swim. The learner puts on his tight-fitting bathing suit, girds himself with a life preserver, goes into the water with the confidence of an athlete, is told how to strike out, and after a while becomes a happy swimmer; or, if not, he has had a good time idling in the water. The Puritans would have seized him vi et armis, stripped him to the skin, tossed him in beyond his depth, and then cried out, "Swim for it or go to the bottom !" And so through splashing and spluttering and untold terror, the hapless youth would have learned how to do it or hated the water ever there- after.
'Tis the school of adversity vs. the school of prosperity. If we shun the hard, grinding, merciless ways of the former, how shall we strengthen the heroic and self-reliant spirit in the latter ?
that we might have attractive books, inviting school- 0 houses, grand, lovable and helpful teachers, all the highways of learning thick with flowers and redolent of incense, without running the old and terrible risk of lulling to a stupid repose on beds of ease the sturdier and finer forces of the human soul.
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DEDHAM PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
Again I congratulate you, good people of Dedham, on the virility of the seed planted here two hundred and fifty years 1 ago, and on the great educational tree that has sprung from it and now flourishes in your midst. Some of its buds, doubtless, are blighted from time to time ; some of its fruit falls unripened or lives on with stunted growth; some of its limbs need trim- ming, grafting or removal ; but it is a sturdy, prolific tree withal, whose branches bear,- some thirty-fold, some sixty, and some a hundred.
XI.
AMERICA.
BY THE AUDIENCE AND CHORUS.
The exercises, carried out in accordance with the plan, came to a successful end at half-past ten o'clock; and the occasion will long be remembered as an important step in our educational progress, not only on account of the pleasant features of the event, but because of its close bearing upon the elevation and improvement of our school system.
The Committee desire to thank the Historian and the distinguished guests for their presence and inspiring words; to express their grateful appreciation of the val- uable assistance given by Mr. Samuel W. Cole in making the music so marked a success, and of the aid given by teachers in our schools to the same end; to thank the ushers, Mr. Lusher G. Baker, Mr. John B. Fisher, Mr. C. Eastman Webb, and Mr. Elmer E. Clapp, for their services; and to speak of the taste displayed by Mr. Arthur B. Cutter and Mr. Henry P. Cormerais in arranging the decorations.
Built in 1894-5. THE AVERY SCHOOL.
111
444444
-
£
PROCEEDINGS
AT THE
DEDICATION
OF THE
AVERY SCHOOL BUILDING,
DEDHAM, MASS.
SEPTEMBER 2, 1895.
With an Appendix.
OF DEL
0
HE
A
T
· PLANTATION BEG
RATED 1
CONTENTMENT
BEGUN 1635: 1
.
DEDHAM: 1896.
CONTENTS.
-
EXTRACT FROM THE TOWN RECORDS, V PRELIMINARY ACTION OF THE TOWN, vii
THE TABLET PLACED ON BUILDING, x
The Dedication.
EXERCISES IN THE SCHOOL HALL,
II
PRAYER, REV. LEWIS P. CUSHMAN, 12
ORIGINAL HYMN, REV. JOSHUA F. PACKARD, 13
DELIVERY OF KEYS BY THE BUILDING COMMITTEE, ROBERT H. O. SCHULZ, 14
.
RECEPTION OF KEYS BY THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE, JULIUS H. TUTTLE, 15
. SONG,-How Merry the Life of a Bird must be, BY THE SCHOOL, 17
ADDRESS OF DEDICATION, FREDERICK D. ELY,.
17
SONG,-Holy, Holy, Holy, O Sweet Summer Wind, BY THE SCHOOL, 24
ADDRESS OF REV. JOSEPH B. SEABURY,
25
CHARLES F. KIMBALL, 29
iv
ADDRESS OF DORUS F. HOWARD, PRINCIPAL, . 30
REV. JOSHUA F. PACKARD, 33
AMERICA, BY THE AUDIENCE AND SCHOOL, 37
Appendix.
OPENING OF THE BRANCH LIBRARY ROOM,
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January 20, 1896.
REPORT OF THE BUILDING COMMITTEE, 42
January 31, 1896.
DESCRIPTION OF THE BUILDING,
44
·
FINANCIAL STATEMENT OF BUILDING COMMITTEE, . 46
V
EXTRACT FROM THE TOWN RECORDS.
May 27, 1784. *
* *
Whereas We your Humble Petitioners which have not an Equal Privilege to Sending to School that other Parts of the Town have by reason of being so great a distance & the present Schools so full we find but Little Benefit of our Proportion of School Money which has movd we the Subscribers to Request this favour of the Town to Be Set off from the School we now Belong and to Draw our Proportion of School money and to Dis- pose of it to the Use and Benefit of Schooling as the Petitioners see fit.
DEDHAM, Jan'y 29th 1784
Signed by
Israel Fairbank Wm Paul Jonathan Daman Joseph Swan Samuel Daman Thomas How Thomas How Jr Wm Whiting Israel Fairbank Jr Stephen Whiting Solomon Whiting Joseph Whiting Moses Whiting Aaron Whiting Abner Whiting Paul Lewis Paul Whiting Joseph Whiting J' Eben" Paul Lem1 Badlam William Badlam.
The Town Voted to Grant the foregoing Request and that the Petitioners be allowed to Draw their Proportion of School Money and to use it according to the Prayer thereof
PRELIMINARY ACTION OF THE TOWN.
THE desire for a new building in the place of the old Avery school-house, publicly expressed from time to time, for several years, finally led to decided action by the Town, in the spring of 1894, to begin the work of construction. The result was a beautiful and com- modious building completed in the summer of 1895. The following is a brief statement of the proceedings of the Town in regard to the matter :-
In accordance with a vote passed by the Town at its annual meeting held on April 2, 1894, a committee of five, consisting of Heman W. Chaplin, Thomas P. Murray, Alfred Hewins, James T. Clark, and Robert H. O. Schulz, was chosen " to take into consideration the whole subject matter" of Articles 14, 15 and 16, relating to the building of a new school-house for the Avery School, and the enlargement of the school lot. This committee was instructed " to procure a plan or plans . . . together with estimates of the cost . and to report on all matters connected with these three articles at the earliest practicable day." In addition to these instructions, a vote was passed "that the Trustees of the Public Library consider the expediency of establishing a
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