USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Weymouth > Town annual report of Weymouth 1877 > Part 5
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30. Superannuated. 47. Suitable.
14. Once.
31. Sanguine.
48. Precious.
49. Skeleton.
16. Caterpillar.
17. Flattery. 34. Classics.
33. Indigent.
50 Coral.
15. Concrete.
32. Bilious.
13. Successor.
39. Eulogies.
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Table showing the per cent of correct answers to the foregoing questions given by pupils admitted to the High Schools in July, 1877.
Scholar's Number.
Arithmetic.
Grammar.
Geography.
History.
Spelling.
Average
Mark.
Mark.
Relative
Rank.
From which School promoted.
1
84
72
76
70
84
77
79
14
Pratt.
2
75
58
66
77
76
70
70
29
Main Street.
4
77
78
82
37
64
68
73
27
Athens
6
100
71
84
63
74
78
85
10
Torrey Street.
7
85
64
63
54
76
68
72
30
Pratt.
9
45
65
80
65
84
68
62
38
Pratt.
10
80
62
91
65
50
70
74
23
Athens.
11
82
65
85
69
42
69
74
24
Torrey Street (did not enter ;.
13
94
99
84
92
84
91
92
1
Commercial Street.
21
75
88
68
42
54
65
71
36
Athens.
22
95
89
40
71
82
75
79
16
Commercial Street.
23
100
76
78
85
54
79
85
9
Torrey Street.
26
100
80
74
87
60
80
85
8
Torrey Street (did not enter).
29
90
95
78
79
90
86
87
4
Commercial Street.
30
98
61
97
79
76
82
86
5
Mt. Pleasant.
.
31
75
83
71
69.
90
78
77
15
Torrey Street.
32
65
70
85
64
86
74
72
20
Athens.
40
91
68
77
63
68
73
79
17
Mt. Pleasant.
41
85
65
89
93
68
80
81
11
Torrey Street.
42
100
82
93
84
68
85
Pratt.
43
90
78
43
70
72
71
74
22
Commercial Street.
45
58
78
59
74
80
70
66
37
Torrey Street.
46
80
80
94
59
44
71
19
Commercial Street.
47
98
87
78
73
96
86
89
3
Main Street.
49
90
83
51
72
90
77
79
13
Commercial Street.
52
94
76
88
88
62
82
85
6
Torrey Street (did not enter).
54
89
72
82
85
60
78
81
12
Commercial Street.
61
79
65
78
67
56
69
72
26
Mt. Pleasant.
74
79
47
81
84
42
67
70
34
Torrey Street (did not enter). Athens.
76
92
76
89
71
80
82
85
7
Pratt.
80
80
73
66
63
50
66
71
33
Main Street.
81
95
54
66
61
52
66
73
31
Athens.
83
69
76
79
65
74
73
72
21
Athens.
84
100
46
78
37
66
65
75
28
Main Street.
85
89
65
85
60
60
72
78
18
Mt. Pleasant.
88
68
81
60
61
74
69
69
32
Torrey Street.
97
83
51
80
70
62
69
73
25
Mt. Pleasant.
C.
97
72
45
92
68
75
78
75
75
61
78
66
56
67
70
35
90
2
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The four pupils indicated by the numbers 19, 21, 45, and 88 were admitted at or near the beginning of the year, upon re-examination and revision of their papers, and in some of the cases, a comparison of them with the results of their Grammar School examinations. The pupil indicated by the number 9 was admitted at beginning of the second term, chiefly upon her excellent record in the Grammar School, special causes having existed for her deficiency in the examination for
Combination
74
High School. The pupil indicated in table by the letter C, having moved into this town after the beginning of the term, was then admitted upon examination to the North High School. In behalf of the school committee,
JAMES HUMPHREY,
WEYMOUTH, Jan. 1, 1878.
Chairman.
SUPERINTENDENT'S REPORT.
TO THE SCHOOL COMMITTEE OF THE TOWN OF WEYMOUTH :
This report is intended to embody an account of the manner in which the schools of the town have been superintended during the first half of the school year of 1877-8, a statement of the condition of the schools, and a presentation of the plans which have been made and of some of the changes which are yet needed for the advancement of our educational interests.
SUPERINTENDENCE.
To perform the duties of the office of superintendent has required time, averaging over ten hours a day for six days of each week, including all holidays and vacations. It has seemed best to devote about one half of the time the schools were in session to their direct inspection. To do more in this direction would lead to unauthorized intrusion upon the domain of the teachers and unnecessary interrup- tion of their work. In addition, a large amount of office labor, of indirect and invisible inspection, of effort with families, and for the welfare of those whose education it is the special interest of the town to secure, has involved more intellectual exertion than any one person can long venture to put forth. Such of the office-work as has been mechanical could be more cheaply done for the town by the printer or the copying-press, and a part of the time of the superintendent would thus be released for work demanding higher faculty than that of cor- rect imitation of words with a pen. A hundred dollars spent in this way would bring a return of double value to the town. Time would also be saved for the town by furnishing means of conveyance to the outlying schools. The necessary expense attending the performance of the duties of superintendent is at least $120 a year. The salary nominally received is, therefore, actually reduced by that amount.
A part of the results reached within the half-year named are exhib- ited in the following statements of condition and needs, courses of study, and statistical tables.
LANGUAGE.
Study of correct English and practice in its use has been crowded out of its due place in the upper four grades of our schools by the study
76
of technical grammar, and has been altogether neglected in the lower five grades except so far as teachers of the middle intermediate grade have attempted to carry out suggestions given in October last. A radical reform is needed in this respect, and it is hoped that the intro- duction of such methods as are outlined in Greene's Thought and Ex- pression No. 1, and Swinton's Language Primer, may lead to better customs in our school-rooms in speaking and in writing English.
The thing should take precedence of the theory of the thing, and not be supplanted by it. From the lowest primaries our children must be carefully trained by approved methods to express in good English, correctly written, what they themselves see and feel and think. In the grammar grades they will encounter full early enough the difficul- ties of theoretical grammar, and even there practice should walk hand in hand with theory. We may thien have reason to hope, as we have a right to expect, that the King's English will not be murdered by the habitual use of such palpable and gross errors as are now often heard from both floor and platform in not a few of our school-rooms.
READING.
The changes now in progress in a department closely allied with that of language will save a year of school-life by rapidly and effect- ively training our children in reading as the art of interpreting to themselves and to others the thought represented by the characters of the printed page.
Until this year, in nearly all of our lower primaries, the children began to learn to read in the antiquated manner of first wasting a half- year or more in learning the alphabet, and then another half-year or more in trying to build up letters into words, - a process requiring not only a knowledge of the names of tlie twenty-six letters of the English alphabet, but also of the fifty to sixty ways in which those letters are sounded in words, and discrimination, moreover, as to which of these sounds are used in each word. "Cat," for instance, contains the let- ters named " see," "aye," "tee "; those letters in use have, together, from seven to thirteen sounds. Learning even this one simple word by aid (?) of the alphabet required knowledge of these three letters, choice of the proper sound of each, and combination of those sounds, utterly unlike the names, into a word ! We met infants on the thresh- old of their school-life, and flung in their faces a handful of unknown quantities having unknown relations to each other in the words these little ones first encountered. Why wonder that their formation of an equation for the solution of such a problem proved a long and unsat-
77
isfactory effort? "See" +"aye" + "tee" = what? The method had been disapproved by all good educators for scores of years, and other methods had taken its place in all school systems abreast with the times.
Enlightenment spreads slowly, but once received is appreciated and prized. It has become evident, in our own schools, that in five months, by other methods, children utterly innocent of a knowledge of the alphabet and its perplexing variations, as well as those who unfortu- nately know the names of the letters, can be taught to read more read- ily and naturally than the A B C fashion had taught similar children to read who had spent twice and even thrice that time in school.
No one method has been used exclusively, but a combination of sev- eral methods has been recommended. The children's interest is fixed upon a certain object or action, until an idea or mental picture of that object or action is developed in their minds ; then, having a thought to express, they attempt to express it ; having something to say, they try to say it. They say it first upon the blackboard, through the crayon of the teacher; then with their own crayon, tracing the character expression of the thought, and ultimately copying it; and repeat it with pencil until familiar. They start with the proper unit, a sentence, that which expresses a thought. In using it they learn a few words by sight, seconded by hand-work. The teacher introduces phonics only in pronouncing the words slowly at first, to accustom the child's ear to their successions of sounds, and in drilling incorrect habits of utter- ance out of the vocal organs.
Can children read sentences and words without first learning their alphabet? Yes. Perception and memory abound in the child-mind ; these powers, therefore, we use to unlock to it the mysteries of symbol contained in printed and written language, instead of demanding intri- cate analysis and difficult synthesis, as formerly.
Can script on the board and slate, and print in the books, be used together in this initial instruction, without confusion? Yes ; and both are more helpful together than either alone. Our new primary read- ing and language book, therefore, presents both styles upon the same page.
Will these children learn to spell correctly? Yes, at once, in the way in which we grown people spell in practical life, by writing the word just as it should be. Oral spelling, which furnished opportunity of yore for entertainment and display, has lost most of its former pres- tige as one of the agencies of education, and fallen through various stages of disrepute to form only a basis for money-getting exhibitions in public halls. In good schools of all grades in which spelling is
78
taught, the oral exercise is becoming less and less frequent, and is given only in review of words whose spelling has already been learned by writing them. Our methods of instruction in the lower primaries are in keeping with this tendency.
When will these little children learn to spell orally? Quite as soon and quite as well as they need, in the third or fourth year of their school-life, and then as well as when taught by the now discarded method of beginning with the alphabet, besides having learned to read more readily, correctly, and naturally than children trained under the old system can read three or four years further on.
WRITING.
As already intimated, a change has been made in the matter of writing. Instead of spending many hours of two or three years in acquiring and practising an art which few grown persons use and which proved a hindrance rather than an aid in school-life, the chil- dren are taught to write in the lowest primaries, by imitating words and the essential forms of which script letters are composed. It has been shown by trial that, started in this way, children will write in their third year better than those who have printed three years can then print, and as well as the latter can write in their fifth year. So clearly is this the case that printing has been altogether abandoned in the best private schools and in the most progressive public schools. Drawing does not need any aid it might get from printing, and is as much assisted by writing, while many manual habits must be unlearned, and many mental pictures of separate angular forms be put out of mind in passing from printing to writing.
The teachers of all grades have been instructed to teach writing systematically : not to crowd into their scholars' memories detailed information as to a multitude of technicalities, upon which their own knowledge how to teach must be based, but to form and follow a well- developed plan in the instruction they give. Good results will be the ultimate outcome of earnest effort to do this.
ARITHMETIC.
The progress of schools in this most important branch is not yet sat- isfactory, although some gain will be made by our now beginning writ- ten arithmetic lower down in the grades. The weakness of the present condition of the study may be due, in part, to great stress having been brought to bear temporarily upon other studies, the time not yet being ripe for the initiation of larger improvements in this. Many of our
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teachers, who would be glad to pursue a natural and effective order of instruction in arithmetic, have felt themselves hampered rather than helped by the assignments printed for their guidance. Something has been done to remove these hindrances, by a reassignment of the work to be done on the basis of the three books of the authorized series, but a more radical change will be advisable by and by. Arrangements must be made to have the arithmetic taught first by illustration and statement of principles, accompanied and followed by interchange of thought through the medium of examples for mental and oral solution, and then supplemented by the pupils' use, in study-time, of examples for written practice, preparatory to a subsequent test.
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY.
In these departments the teachers have received orally, and through the questions furnished for examinations, this suggestion : That they begin with and continue the use of natural objects and materials, models, maps, diagrams, pictures. By these means the information gained by their scholars will be concentrated, systematized, linked with locality.
In the half-year examinations, the pupils have been asked to repre- sent what they know, as well as to write out what they have learned by rote. That they were not well able to do so indicates too little teach- ing, and especially too little teaching of the best sort, and too much memoriter recitation in nearly all of our schools.
DRAWING.
The general interest in this branch on the part of the children has made the duty of teachers but little practised in giving instruction in drawing much easier than it would be without a readiness in their pupils to do as well as possible. In the courses of study a new method- ical assignment of time and books has been made, in the hope that this branch of study, required of all our school-children by State law, and acquainting them with an art which enters into the occupations of real life as widely as any other study pursued in our schools, may thus be led forward into a position coequal with that occupied by the other topics of instruction.
MUSIC.
The traditional charms of music are familiar to all. To those versed in the science of pedagogics, equally well known is the power of music as a means of discipline, of training the auricular and vocal organs,
of securing mental harmony and physical health, of promoting orderly and rhythmical development of the intellect. For these purposes, as well as because of its intrinsic value as an art, music ought to be taught in all our schools by an instructor who, violin in hand, can go into them and produce such results as have been secured in towns where the average attainment in music is as high as the average attainment in mathematics or language.
ATTENDANCE.
It has been heretofore the custom for the teachers to make return of the whole number belonging and of the average attendance. The per cent of attendance has often been unjustly low when found from these two returns ; for in order that a child may belong to a school, but ten days' attendance during the term is required ; and if one or more scholars remain in school but a short time, and yet are counted as members for the entire term, the denominator of the fraction to be reduced to a per cent is manifestly swollen to undue proportions.
These returns will yet be made ; but in order that the actual aver- age attendance of bona fide members of each school may be fairly rep- resented, another per cent of attendance, based upon the average num- ber belonging, will be recorded. The average number belonging will be found at the end of each school month, any pupil absent any five successive days not being counted a member until his return, and the number belonging, as well as the attendance, being ascertained each day.
This method will bring our local reports of attendance into agree- ment in plan with those made in the cities and large towns of the Commonwealth.
HIGH SCHOOLS.
During the month of December, searching examinations were made in the High Schools, with a view to testing for knowledge in its usable form of power ; not only for accurate memorizing, but quite as much for independent thinking. To suit this purpose, a passage new to the pupils was given for translation and grammatical investigation as part of each examination in the languages, original work was asked for in the mathe- matics, and fresh application of principles required in the sciences.
A copy of the new High School course of study is included in this report. Besides dropping Moral Philosophy altogether, and Physiol- ogy to the upper grammar grade, it brings other studies into more con- venient positions, and introduces the two important changes which are mentioned in the following paragraphs.
₹
S1
The old system of weekly reviews of grammar-grade studies worked only weariness, waste of time, and a tendency to absenteeism on the review-day. To take its place, two series of normal reviews were arranged, one within the first half, and the other near the end of the latter half of the course. Each leading branch of grammar-school study is assigned, in each of these series, at least three exercises every week of an entire term. Instruction in the best approved methods of teaching these branches is to be given. To render such instruction practical, small classes have been brought twice a week from the lower-grade schools to the North High. With these classes, the assistant teacher in that school has been enabled to impart and illustrate better the methods with which, fortunately, her Normal- school training and experience have acquainted her. Similar arrange- ments will be provided at the South High.
At the end of the High-School course of study is printed a list of books, the use of which, in the prescribed way, it is expected will secure such an introduction to good literature as will elevate the liter- ary taste and moral and intellectual tone of the pupils.
MID-YEAR PROMOTIONS.
To promote but once a year from each of the nine grades below the High Schools is to insure two undesirable results. The ablest pupils cannot advance as rapidly as they might to their own advantage ; and those who from various causes fail of promotion at the end of one year must remain in their old grade an entire year more.
These evils have been generally recognized, and several methods of remedying them have been proposed and put into use. In some cities and towns scholars are promoted whenever, in the course of the year, they seem ready ; in others, each grade's work is assigned by the half- year, or, as in St. Louis, by the quarter, and· promotions are made at the end of each period ; elsewhere, classes, or such sections of classes as may be, are carried through the essential parts of a year's assign- ment in a half-year. The first method interferes most with grade- lines, and requires most of special work from the teacher ; the second results in creating as many sections in each grade as there are times of promotion in a year ; the third lies open to some objections, chief among which is the risk of undue speed.
To determine which method to adopt in behalf of the twenty per cent of the pupils in our schools whose interests were injured by the limitation of their chances for promotion to once a year, was a prob- em by no means so easy of solution as it would be were all of our
6
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schools organized upon the excellent one-grade plan now existing in Ward III. That a decision was made, however, to provide in some way for a more frequent passage from grade to grade, the results thus far have given no occasion to regret. It is yet too early to speak with confidence of the final and total effect of the change. Experience may suggest that the door now open be swung another way, or unfastened at a different time ; but we have gone far enough to see that it should never again be permanently shut.
The table of mid-year promotions shows that there were 377 pupils left unpromoted last July in the grades below the High Schools, - a number none too large, but rather a number which might well have been increased, and would have been had the time set for the next promotion-examination then been but a half-year ahead. Of this number 50 had left school before January, 1878; but of the 327 who remained, 89 gained promotion at the examination of Jan. 19, 21, 22. It is only to be regretted that the rest, 238 in number, · did not put forth sufficient exertion to reach the same end.
That so many pupils as 134 could in five months successfully ac- complish the essential part of the year's work is due to three things : the presence of a goodly percentage of capable children in our schools ; the fact that both teachers and scholars have worked harder than before ; and the further fact that our school course is not so varied or extensive as the courses of study now generally in vogue.
It will be noticed that the schools of one grade have, on the whole, carried on the preparation for a mid-year examination more success- fully than those of many grades. This has been possible, and likely to occur, because the teachers of such schools could most easily sepa- rate their scholars into two sections in the more difficult studies after marked differences in ability and disposition had developed in the class. For rapid, energetic, clear, and sure work, the one-grade schools have proved themselves incomparably superior. A minute statement of all the circumstances affecting each school, and bearing upon this point, would fix it with greater certainty than the table of figures alone establishes.
The examinations were made so as to test the pupils' remembrance of work in previous years, their industry during the present year, and their power of original thought. The standard to be reached was set at seventy per cent average, a high figure, but so far exceeded in a few instances that ninety, and even ninety-four per cent was attained.
The examinations were extended downwards lower than ever before, the upper primary grade taking papers in arithmetic, geography, and
83
spelling. This extension can be carried even lower down to advan- tage, now that the children begin to write as soon as they enter school.
ORGANIZATION.
Our schools need to be centralized in location, and to be unified in spirit and aim by being brought under the influence of a few strong head teachers. The policy of creating numerous small schools, scat- tered about here and there, to appease the successive demands of spe- cial localities, one after another, is costly, and is effective only as a means of preventing progress to the best standard. To centralize in a few large buildings the upper six or seven grades of schools, leaving only the primaries in outlying schoolhouses, is a step absolutely neces- sary, if decided improvement in the quality of our schools is to be made. Beyond a certain limit, now nearly reached, the schools of Weymouth cannot advance towards excellence, if they are to remain widely distributed, as at present.
To say this is not to say anything new, but merely to utter the opin- ion that is held by every citizen who has had actual experience in the school-rooms of the town in modern times ; and although this counsel runs counter to former custom here, yet the drift of custom for a few years past has been in this very direction, as witness the building, of larger size than usual, and in central location, recently dedicated in East Weymouth.
As population accumulates at the various centres of settlement, this drift will become a conscious flow of opinion, and bring in that cen- tralization and unification, for the lack of which our schools now suffer. Already the population is sufficiently concentrated in a few villages to warrant the inception of a broad and comprehensive plan for ridding ourselves of the evils of an obsolete system, and the inauguration of the new. It is not more system that is wanted so much as an aban- donment of the false for the true.
With such an arrangement, better system will be possible, better dis- cipline be maintained, better instruction be secured, better spirit be engendered, less annoyance be suffered by neighboring residents, and economy be favored. In a similar town of the county the current annual expense of educating a pupil in its large buildings, containing many schools, mostly of one grade each, is but $13.00, while the cur_ rent annual expense of educating a pupil, in an inferior way, in its smaller outlying buildings, is from $17.00 to $19.00 ; besides, $30,000 will build a schoolhouse which will accommodate more children than three schoolhouses, costing $13,000 each, and the current expenses
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