Town annual reports of the several departments for the fiscal year ending December 31, 1862-1866, Part 4

Author: Worcester (Mass.)
Publication date: 1862
Publisher: The City
Number of Pages: 1076

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mental magnetism which carries the pupil with the teacher as the attraction of gravitation carries the moon with the earth. The public exhibition of his school in Mechanics Hall, last October, demonstrated the practicability of com- bining in our our public schools the education of the brain and of the muscles, --- the developement of both the mind and the body. Great credit is due to nearly all the teach- ers in the city for the alacrity with which they have sought to become familiar with the subject and with the best methods of making it useful to their respective schools. The experiments made have already demonstrated that dys- pepsia and nervous debility, the twin demons which enter and possess so many students and scholars, need not always haunt the school room, since physical culture, judiciously conducted by either the parent or the teacher, will effect- ually cast them cut.

VOCAL MUSIC.

Vocal music, which for a long period has annually claim- ed the attention of the committee, has at length been sub jected to the test of a trial. An appropriation of $300 was made for this purpose. It was deemed best that the exer- cise should be a study rather than a recreation, that the elements of the science should be taught rather than pop- ular songs be rehearsed, --- and on the recommendation of the special committee appointed to devise a practical plan- of teaching it in the public sohools, it was decided to con- fine the instruction to the high, grammar, and secondary schools, the high school to have two lessons per week, and the others one, of a half hour each, the secondary schools to be taught by a female aud the higher grades by a male.

Mr. Amos Whiting was placed in charge of the higher grades and Mrs. William Sumner of the lower. The ex- periment has not yet been tried long enough, --- only three

months, to warrant the expression of a confident and final judgment upon its success, but the excellent sub-committee who have charge of it, are satisfied that it has fully an- swered all that could be reasonably expected of it in that time. The annual examination in the spring will afford a favorable opportunity to test the value of the experiment · and determine whether the developement and culture of the musical taste and talents of the young may be safely committed to the public schools. The committee have the more confidence in the success of the scheme from the very favorable results of the labors of the principal of the Thomas street grammar school, Mr. J. H. Newton, who, for the last two years, has instructed his classes in the ele- ments of vocal music without any apparent loss of time on their part, or any material increase of their intellectual labor.

SUBURBAN SCHOODS.

The system of schools in the suburban districts is so un- like that in the centre that, when a comparison is instituted between them, these differences should be carefully taken into the account; for, so many elements unknown to the graded school enter into one not graded, that the latter will almost never equal the former in interest, order, or scholarship, though both be taught by teachers of equal skill. The number of classes in an ungraded school is greatly disproportionate to the number of scholars, and the classification, at best, is very imperfect. The admission of one scholar often makes two or three additional classes and correspondingly reduces the time to be given to each.

There is no practical remedy for these defects at pres- ent, for there are not scholars enough in one district to warrant the employment of more than one teacher, except in Quinsigamond, and in South Worcester, where assist-

ants are now employed, and no two districts are near enough to each other to be united into one. If these ob- jections were removed, we should still find accommoda- tions for more than one school in only three of the twelve districts.

The great irregularity of attendance, which arises in part from the distance travelled and the condition of the roads in bad weather, and in part from the habit of making duty subordinate to personal convenience and inclination, soon begets habits of irregularity and effectually excludes from the school those essential elements of success, prompt- itude, thoroughness, and enthusiasm.

Another undesirable and discouraging, but unnecessary, element, is the brevity of a suburban teacher's term of service. The sooner an incompetent teacher resigns, the better ; but the retirement of a good one, though followed by an equal, is always to be deprecated. A faithful teach- er is frequently discouraged by the want of sympathy and co-operation on the part of those parents who lend her no aid, though they may wish her no harm, and by the oppo- sition, covert or open, which the disaffected can array against her. Ill will is infectious, and that teacher must have rare abilities and unusual skill who can long retain a position at the head of a district school after two or three families have become so alienated as to remove their chil- dred from her charge. Every subsequent case of disci- pline, ungraciously received, adds force and strength to the opposition, till the teacher reluctantly and painfully, but wisely, concludes that " discretion is the better part of valor."

The instability of a teacher's position in a suburban school will appear from the statement of a single fact. In the centre district sixty-nine teachers are constantly em- ployed; in the suburban districts fourteen. In the former there have been eight resignations, the last year; in the latter thirteen; or in other words, the centre district has

lost in one year by resignations less than 12 per cent. of the whole number employed, and the suburban districts, more than 92 per cent.

The people of any of the districts have it in their power to prolong the stay of a desirable teacheramong them by mak- ing her relations to them so pleasant and attractive that the larger social privileges of the centre, its libraries, and lec- tures, will not so far outweigh the attractions of the rural district as to permit a valuable teacher to constantly grav- itate towards the centre.

The people themselves can do more to improve the schools in their respective districts, secure a superior scholarship, attain a more elevated moral tone, encourage a manly spirit in the lads and a taste for a higher and more refined culture in the girls, by frequent visits to the school, kindly suggestions to the teacher, whose authority should never be weakened by adverse criticism, but who should be strengthened and encouraged by decided ex- pressions of confidence in her wisdom and integrity, and by hearty co-operation in all difficult cases of discipline, than can be done by the largest, the wisest, or the most attentive, visiting committee from another part of the city.

ADULT SCHOOLS.

What has heretofore been known as the "apprentices' school," has been re-organized since the last annual report was published. Previous to this year it was only a winter school, open to those lads and young men who were at lei- sure at no other time .. Grave doubts of the utility of the school have been entertained by some members of the committee for several years. The low standard of scholar- ship and the still lower standard of deportment, an appar- ent and almost uniform indifference on the part of the

scholars to what ought to concern them most, their irregu- larity of attendance, and impatience of wholesome restraint, contributed to produce these doubts and to make the re- sults of each winter's work unsatisfactory.

The failure of the school to accomplish all that was ex- pected oi it was not so much the fault of the teachers, who from time to time have had charge of it, as of the system on which it was conducted and the character of its pupils. Not one in fifty of the members of the school came into it with regular habits of study formed, or with any distinct idea of the difference between knowing anything and not knowing it. Very few of them had ever learned by prac- tic.il obedience to parental authority what respect nd def- erence are due to law. A term of fourteen weeks is not long enough for the best teacher, even if nothing else were attempted, to thoroughly break up the vicious habits of an unfortunate childhood or of a misspent youth, to transform the indolent into the industrious, the lawless into the obe- dient, the heedless and reckless into the careful and dis- creet.

The large and constantly increasing number of lads who laboratintervals and who wish to attend school at all other times, whether in the winter or the summer, ---- and that class of truant boys to be found in every large town and city, whose vagrant habits have been formed under evil influen- ces which morally unfit them to associate with children less unfortunate in their home culture, ---- and that other class, whose spirit ofinsubordination requires a discipline as inflexibly firm as it is invariably kind, effectual as well as paternal, made demands upon the committee for a perma- nent school adapted to their special wants. The improve- ment of the school in the winter of 1861-2, especially in its order and discipline, under the charge of Mr. Thomas Whee- lock, convinced the committee that the interests of the city would be promoted by the continuance of the school

through the year with the same efficient principal at its head.

The experiment has thus far proved satisfactory and in every respect confirmed the anticipations of those who proposed the change. It has exerted a salutary influence on the other schools, since it in a large degree relieves them of their worst and most dreaded element,-those scholars whose presence and influence have a tendency to corrupt the rest. The expediency of organizing such a school was discussed in the last annual report, and since that time the legislature has recognized the necessity of such a school in every city in the commonwealth by so amending the truant law, sec. 5, chap. 42, general statutes, as to make it obligatory up on cities and towns to make ed- ucational provision for all truant children, and such as are growing up in ignorance and vice.

The evening school in all its essential features resembles the day school; but there are some scholars in both whose characters compare favorably with the best in the gram- mar schools, who are members of one or the other of these, not from constraint, but from choice.

SUB-PRIMARY SCHOOLS.

The experiment of dividing the primaries into two grades, the lower of which should include all the children incapable of studying books, in which oral instruction should prevail, and object lessons have a place, where the children would feel the constraint of the school room as little as possible and would enjoy as much physical and mental freedom as is compatible with the good of all, where the first impressions of school and study would be attractive and pleasant, was commenced more than two years ago. It was impracticable to effect the change in all the schools at once. Some of the primaries retained their old organization up to a very recent period, but the divis- ion is now effected in all.

The results have justified all the expectations of the commi. tee. The change imposes greater responsibilities, and harder work, and the necessity of higher attainments, upon the teachers, but the investment has paid large divi- dends. The alphabet is learned in a fourth of the time the acquisition of it formerly required, and the school room, where the teacher, having a natural aptitude for her posi- tion and a love of the work, presides, is the child's place of amusement as well as of instruction.

The resources from which the teacher in this grade must draw for the health, instruction and amusement of her pupils should be practically inexhaustible. A mere routine of daily exercises, relieved by nothing new in matter or method, soon becomes as spiritless and monotonous to the teacher as it is disgusting and irksome to the children. Nature, in her triple kingdoms, animal, vegetable, and min- eral, surely has specimens enough to furnish every teacher a new object of interest for every day in the year. Objects judiciously presented to the senses of a child teach him to think, to observe, to discriminate, to notice differences, and to recognize similarities, ---- in a word, --- educate him. A teacher fit to have charge of such a school must be one who

" Finde tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in every thing."

PRIMARIES.

Children on entering this grade are not expected to know how to study a book independently of a living teacher. This is something yet to be learned. Much has been done in the grade below in teaching the forms and powers of the let- ters, their combination into syllables, and syllables into words, and of words into intelligible sentences. The teacher's help has been needed at every step. It will be

needed for a long time to come. Teachers make a grave mistake when they presume too much on what the pupils already know. It is safer to presume that they know nothing than that they know more than they do. No greater mistake in the art of education can be made than to suppose that what is intelligible and simple to us is equally so to a child. Every truth the human mind ap- prehends and appropriates is an additional light to assist in the discovery of other truths. All truths are in harmo- ny. It is the work of education to teach the mind to look through the forms, the symbols, the words which clothe an idea, upon the idea itself. Pictures and images and ob- jects are always attractive to children,-for they under- stand them. Reading is also attractive when a distinct men- tal image is seen beneath the words of everysentence. Chil- dren often get the undesirable reputation of dunces because they cannot drain out from the obscure and complex sen- tences of a book, which in style and matter is beyond their comprehension and perhaps their capacity, the sense which the author meant to convey. It is the office of the teach er to unweave the intricate web, to untwist the complicated fibres, to strip off the superfluous coverings of thought and lay it bare before the mind of the pupil, ---- to bring all the light of his own mind to dispel the darkness from the child's and to illumine and illustrate the subject of study. Teachers able to do this are needed nowhere more than in the primary school. A book may be full of priceless treasures of thought which may not be discovered for the want of light enough to reveal them. We discover the whole beauty of passages in Shakespeare, Milton, and Ba- con, only by the aid of the elaborate commentary, the glos- sary, the learned note, which unlock and open the chambers where mysteries sleep which, imperfectly seen, puzzle the world. What the commentary, the lexicon, the cyclopedia, are to the teacher, ----- the teacher should be to the child, ----- light, understanding, wisdom. Not to be this is to darkell

counsel with words without knowledge, and to commit the folly of teaching the principles of art and science backward. The acquisition of knowledge is a positive pleasure, and a school kept constantly learning will be constantly orderly and happy. The teacher who has discovered this secret never fails,-for, appreciating just what the undeveloped mind of the child needs, he can

"What in them is dark, Illumine, what is low, raise and support."

Of such teachers this grade enjoys its full propor- tion. Though the experience of some of them has ex- tended through a series of years, each new year has been an improvement on the one before it, and none of them has taught so long as to make it desirable that they should retire. A very serious obstacle to the progress of several of these schools is the excess of scholars above the accommodations. If suitable rooms could be had for as many schools as there are teachers, and one more was or ganized and added to their number to receive the excess, it would materially improve them all ;- but this can only be hopedfor on the return of national peace and municipal prosperity.

SECONDARY SCHOOLS.

In the school systems of many of the cities of New Eng- land these schools do not constitute a distinct grade, but are included in the grammar grade. The children in them have not yet acquired fixed habits of study. Protracted mental application is a severe and exhausting labor, and few form the habit at an early age, many never. To assist the pupil to acquire this habit is one of the most difficult tasks of the teacher. The upward pressure from the grade below has lifted the lower classes of these schools to a higher in- tellectual standard, and the upper classes are consequently pushing higher the standard for promotion into the gram-

mar grade. The course of study covers a period of two years, but the studies of the first year include what were formerly of the second, and the studies of the second now include what used to constitute the first year's work in the grammar schools.

In former years these schools have been subject to fre- quent changes of teachers, chiefiy from the discourage- ments incident to the government of children at that crit- ical age when a bold self-reliance and spirit of indepen- dence, without a corresponding self-control, too often sup plant the charming symplicity and cheerful submission of an earlier age. We are happy to report no changes this year on this account. Three teachers of long service have indeed retired, and all for the same most excellent and sat- isfactory reason, not that they loved their schools less, but their prospective homes more. The respective com- mittees of the schools where these vacancies occurred have been fortunate in their selection of the successors of those that retired. The schools have not depreciated either in scholarship or character, though one of them, under its former accomplished principal, was justly deemed a model in both.

No schools require teachers of more diversified gifts of superior tact, or of better judgment than these ; and it is but justice to those who now have charge of them to say that they have never been better supplied.

GRAMMAR SCHOOLS-LOWER GRADE.

The promotions from the secondary schools at the last annual examination so far exceeded the existing accommo- dations in the grammar schools that a new one was organ- ized and located in the Salem street house. For several years there has been a constant annual increase of scholars in the public schools of the city, but the percentage of in-

crease has been largest in the upper grades,-a significant and gratifying fact, since it evinces a prevailing tendency in the right direction, to a longer stay in school, and a more thorough and complete education.

The increase in the average daily attendance in all the schools during the six years from 1857 to 1862, both in- clusive, was 1148. or a little more than 45 1-2 per cent,- while in this grade it was 63 per cent.

Several resignations of teachers have occurred during the year; among them that of Mrs. E. L. Gird, who had been connected with the Thomas street schools for twelve years, and that of Miss S. M. Rogers, a very efficient and successful principal of the Ash street grammar school from its organization in 1858, and Miss Mary A. Davis, who had charge of the New Worcester school two terms.

In filling the vacancies the respective committees have consulted primarily and only the best interests of the schools over which they preside and for which they are responsible. Unwilling to try experiments they have been careful to select those applicants whose previous success- ful experience in similar schools furnished at least a condi- tional guaranty of success in these. Time enough has not yet elapsed to test the entire effect of all the changes, but the committee confidently expect most favorable results.

These schools suffer in common with others of the high- er grades from the loss of many pupils who, under the vig- erous demands of necessity, enter the store, the office, or the workshop, just when they would derive the greatest ad- vantages from a continuance in school. The instances are rare, we are happy to testify, where the folly of the parent is so great as to permit a child to waste in indolence or pleasure the years which should be given to study.

Another important subject claims a brief notice. No person accustomed to visiting schools can have failed to notice that the genial relations subsisting between the teacher and her pupils in one are often in direct contrast

with what is found in another. Some teachers have the happy faculty of so disciplining their scholars as to secure their prompt and cheerful obedience, and at the same time to command their respect and love ; while another, in at- tempting the same thing, hopelessly and permanently alien- ates the school and makes it more difficult to control than ever.

The schools of this grade in Sycamore and Ash streets are excellent illustrations of the better method ; for, while they are among the happiest in their internal relations, they also rank among the first in order and scholarship.

GRAMMAR SCHOOLS-UPPER GRADE.

In the number of schools and of the teachers employed this grade remains the same as at the last annual report.

During the first year the classes continue under the charge of female teachers ; but in the second, they come for the first time under the immediate supervision and per- sonal instruction of males.

The course of study has not been essentially changed, though it has been considerably extended by the elevation of the standard for admission into the high school, where the first year is no longer devoted to a review of the grammar school studies and where a rigid examination in them is now required as a test for admission. While this relieves the high school of an unwelcome and onerous task and properly imposes it upon this grade, the standard of the schools below has been correspondingly raised, so that the work done here, though of a higher order than for- merly, is not materially greater.

The introduction of physical education forms a novel and interesting feature of the history of these schools the last year. While these exercises have occasioned no serious interruption of the usual intellectual labors, they have been

attended with a marked improvement in the health, vigor- and happiness of the pupils.

The study of the elements of music, which is not new to the Thomas street school, is now introduced into the others, and promises to awaken in the city a taste an the art which Americans have too much neglected.

The masters who have charge of the schools in Sycamore and Thomas streets have brought them up to a standard of scholarship and discipline of which Worcester may just- ly be proud and which would be creditable in any locality. A brief visit would be sufficient to convince a good judge that the spirit which pervades them is the pledge of the good order, promptitude, accuracy, and self-reliance of the scholars. The very general desire of the children in the schools below to reach these, their contentment after get- ting into them, and the amount and character of the work which they voluntarily and accurately perform while there, are very decisive tests of what the schools are.

CLASSICAL AND ENGLISH HIGH SCHOOL.

The chairman of the committee on this school, Rev. R. R. Shippen, has kindly furnished the following report of its condition and prospects :

Since the earlier school reports are becoming rare, a few facts drawn from them concerning the history of the high school may be interesting for present comparison and for future reference.

At a town meeting in April 1844 it was resolved, "That there be established in the centre school district, a school for the benefit of all the inhabitants of the town, to be called 'The Classical and English high school,' open to scholars of both sexes, and capable of accommodating at least sev- enty-five boys and one hundred girls." The present build. ing on Walnut St. was accordingly erected during the

ensuing year, and the school opened under its new organ- ization August 5, 1845, in charge of Mr. Elbridge Smith as principal, with Mr. Hasbrouck Davis for assistant and two female teachers, with an attendance of 142 pupils. Mr. Wm. E. Starr soon succeeded Mr. Davis as assistant and retained the place filling it with great acceptance for a little more than ten years. With this exception unusual fickle- ness has characterized the teachers or patrons, and muta- bility has been the order of administration in the school. Within fifteen years it enjoyed the services of six different principals, of four assistants, five second assistants and twenty-one female teachers, of the latter only two at a time, and for some years only one, besides many temporary supplies. Mr. Smith was succeeded as principal in Sept. '47 by Nelson Wheeler, in the autumn of '52 by George Capron, Feb. '55 by Osgood E. Johnson, autumn of '56 by Homer B. Sprague and in Jan. '60 by Harris R. Greene, the present incumbent. Since experience in the teacher and stability in the school are essential to success, in this remarkable record of change we see one plain detriment to our school's highest prosperity. The school has learned to its cost that change is not always improvement, nor revo- lution, reform. The present corps of teachers were elected as follows : Messrs H. R. Greene, principal, Jan. '60, J. K. Lombard, assistant, July '61, Misses Ava Williams, Oct. '59, Anna Russell, Dec. '61, C. C. Plimpton, Oct. '61, Ella A. Baker, Oct. '62. The committee believe all to be con- scientious and earnest in the discharge of their duties. The school has made perceptible improvement within the year. Its chief need still lies in the direction of discipline. It would gain by a stricter adherence to system, and by greater precision and regularity of method. This we hope will come by harmonious co-operation of teachers, commit- tee and patrons.

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Town annual reports of the several departments for the fiscal year ending December 31, 1862-1866, Part 4

Author: Worcester (Mass.) Publication date: 1862 Publisher: The City Number of Pages: 1076

Author: Worcester (Mass.)
Publication date: 1862
Publisher: The City
Number of Pages: 1076