USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Newton > Town of Newton annual report 1875-1877 > Part 9
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I have made as many personal visits to schools as my time would allow ; and, although not so frequent or as long as I could wish, they have been sufficient to keep myself informed of the character of the work going on in each room. The work of individual teachers comes more properly before the sub-committees, by whom alone they are known. I sincerely hope that the committees of the various schools will make as thorough an examination as possible of their own schools this summer, that they may know for themselves what kind of work is going on, and so be able to judge whether complaints which may be made to them are reasonable or unjust.
Of the high school I have said nothing in this report, as the other schools have seemed to demand more atten-
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REPORT OF SCHOOL COMMITTEE.
tion. The chairman of the committee of this school has kept himself so well informed of its workings, that it is almost superfluous for me to say any thing upon it, as the Board would doubtless prefer a report from the' chair- man himself. I have made occasional visits in the differ- ent rooms, and have, in general, been highly pleased with the character of the work going on there this year. The teachers are very hard workers, faithful, conscientious, and successful. I believe that harder-working and more ear- nest teachers are not to be found anywhere. I have, as time would permit, visited and questioned many of the classes ; and have also listened to the instruction, which has been intelligent and good. If it were not for the hard times, I should urge upon the Board the propriety of employing another teacher to somewhat relieve the present corps of instructors. What with regular teaching, exam- ination of papers, drilling in declamation, correcting com- positions, preparing for the classes, carrying out all the requirements of Harvard College, &c., the work is very exacting; and much time is spent in school by the teachers out of the regular school-hours.
The order of the Board, that none should be promoted unless they had attained fifty per cent, has been a help to the teachers in carrying forward their work.
I have attempted to give as fair a report as possible of our schools, and hope the suggestions which it contains will commend themselves to your attention.
Respectfully submitted.
H. M. WILLARD, Superintendent. NEWTON, May 1, 1876.
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SUPERINTENDENT'S REPORT.
REPORT OF WARREN JOHNSON.
Gentlemen of the School Committee, - Agreeably to your request, I beg leave to present in this communication my impressions in regard to the public schools of Newton, with such suggestions as occur to me from brief observa- tions in your schoolrooms, and a necessarily hasty exami- nation of your school-organization.
I entered upon my duties as Superintendent Oct. 2, and, since that date, have visited every classroom but Mr. Waterhouse's and Miss Worcester's at least once, and to some of them have given half-hour visits six to ten times. I have thus been enabled to learn pretty fully your school and class arrangements, the kind of work required and done in your schoolrooms, the spirit and skill of your teachers, the facilities afforded them to accomplish required results, the quality and character of your pupils, and the degree of comfort, health, and educational conveniences, afforded in your school-buildings.
PUBLIC INTEREST.
Entering your beautiful residential city as a stranger, my attention was equally called to your home dwellings, your numerous church-spires, and your spacious school- buildings, with their well-kept front-yards and ample play- grounds. Home, church, school, declared our forefathers by word and act. Certainly their worthy descendants in Newton appear to base the structure of their community on these fundamental elements. The first essential to a successful public-school system, therefore, - namely, an intelligent public sentiment, - seems to pervade this com- munity.
REVENUES.
Second, and as one of the direct results from the fore- going, your school-revenues seem to be sufficient, ample,
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REPORT OF SCHOOL COMMITTEE.
generous. I am agreeably surprised to find that you have cheerfully given the worthy teacher what he is worth; have made ready and sufficient appropriations for the construc- tion of school-buildings, affording sittings for 3,300, while your census number of pupils is 2,863, and your enrolment in school-attendance is 2,369 ; thus providing amply for the future. Your school-equipments in furniture and appara- tus, the provision made for evening schools to meet the sim- plest educational wants of the ignorant, and also for free- hand and mechanical drawing-schools to meet the higher demands of skilled labor, indicate to me a rare appreciation of social duty, and a rare generosity of wealth to common- weal.
TEACHERS.
Next I have to report a very favorable impression in regard to the quality of your teaching corps. I have failed to discover one who is not trying honestly and conscien- tiously to do his or her duty in the schoolroom ; not one lazy or shirking. I have found a few who do not know the fundamental principles of their profession ; their schol- arship good, their pedagogics poor. They are teaching, not on any acknowledged principles as studied and known by them, but as they have seen others teach. This in- firmity exists everywhere. Normal and training schools are trying to meet it. The evil is not confined to any grade of school-work; although the deficiency appears more strikingly in the primary department than elsewhere; for here the teacher has to deal with blanks, so to speak, and more pedagogic skill is required than in higher grades. Sprouting, transplanting, budding, grafting, - all these in- itiatory, infantile processes require more knowledge of principles than pruning and gathering of fruits with older pupils, whose minds are stored with facts, and ripening with logical deductions. I find a few quite unfamiliar with the laws of development in child-mind. Such are blind guides leading the blind, trying to induce children to reason before they have any thing in mind to reason with,
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SUPERINTENDENT'S REPORT.
proceeding from the unknown to the known, the idea to the object, the abstract to the concrete ; thus reversing the order of nature and necessity. I find a few with too much sympathy for pupils. They cannot bear to push the strong young fledgling off from the nest of constant support out into the flutter of individual activity and responsibility and self-dependence. Such always have a crumb of com- fort and assistance for the nestling robin pupil with up- turned, open mouth, - the one frittering time in wasteful anxiety, the latter simply vegetating. Occasionally I meet with a teacher altogether too conscientious. Trying to keep from the possibly wrong, he or she loses the op- portunity to do the best thing under the circumstances. Hesitating irresolution demoralizes schools and communi- ties as well as individuals. My eye has detected the fore- going weaknesses in your teaching force ; and I mention them here, not for censure, but as common ailments which teachers and school-officers will cheerfully strive to correct.
ORGANIZATION.
Your school-organization seems to me to be admirably adapted to wise counsels and quick execution. The people own the schools. They deliver them in trust to their Mayor, the President of the Common Council, and two gentlemen from each ward of the city, constituting a general committee, subdivided for working-purposes into sub-committees, and represented in its executive action by the school superintendent. The committee is the plan- ning, advising, authoritative body ; the superintendent, the quick-striking force. The former never can become an oligarchy, by reason of popular election ; the latter never an autocrat, because held in restraint by committee. The superintendent himself is assisted by the grammar-masters, as an advisory board, in his duties of supervision. So that inspection and instruction hold a unity and a completeness, from the lowest round of the primary grade up through all school-steps to the end of the grammar-course. This
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REPORT OF SCHOOL COMMITTEE.
portion of your school-system is the real citizen-producing establishment. The high school is the luxury portion, indicating a polished and refined society, itself polishing and refining ; therefore not to be dispensed with, but to be cared for with the nicest judgment. For this purpose you have provided a special committee. You have, there- fore, it seems to me, secured an excellent organization of agencies and checks, - the Jeffersonian ideal of a republi- can form of government. You will, I trust, pardon this brief recapitulation of your school-organization. I desired to express to you my understanding of the same, and the inter-relation of the various parts, that, if I am mistaken, you may correct me. As I understand it, I give it my most hearty acceptance and full indorsement. If we understand it alike, a harmonious concentration of efforts must necessarily be insured.
WORK.
I have employed most of my time in school-visitations, as previously indicated, to ascertain precisely the method of classification, the quantity and quality of work re- quired of pupils, and standard for promotion, to observe the methods of work employed by teachers, and to give such suggestions as seemed necessary, either in consulta- tion with teachers or by actual practice in the classroom. All this work has been most agreeable to me, and met with the cordial co-operation of teachers. The warming, ventilating, and other hygienic conditions of school-build- ings and grounds, have been pretty carefully examined. I have visited the drawing-schools two evenings, and the Pearl-street evening-school twice. I have settled seven cases of school-discipline to the satisfaction of teacher and parents, and, I trust, for the welfare of the pupils. No case of suspension or expulsion has yet occurred. I have examined a few teachers applying prospectively for situa- tions in the Newton schools. I hold their letters of appli- cation and testimonials, together with many from other
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SUPERINTENDENT'S REPORT.
parties, for the benefit of the employing committees. Names, post-office address, and communications have been placed on file in the superintendent's office. I have ob- served the office-hours of my predecessor; viz., Wednes- days, from two to five P.M. In concurrence with the mas- ter of the Bigelow School, I changed the class places in that school, so that wholes were brought into one room, under one teacher, instead of two halves of different classes as at beginning of term. This has been effected without increasing the number of teachers, and with de- cided advantage to the pupils. I will add, that, in making this change, it became necessary to promote eight pupils from the fifth to the sixth class. This we did for two reasons : first, to equalize the number of pupils in the respective classes ; second, because they were on their third year in the fifth class. Having doubts as to the regularity of this promotion, I would respectfully ask for instruction from the School Committee.
SUGGESTIONS.
In a local school-system so well planned and so admira- bly administered as yours evidently has been, it would be presumption in me to indicate any improvements. I shall seem to have discharged my duty fully if I succeed in keeping the present machinery in good running order. By your courtesy, and agreeably to your order, however, I will present the following points for your considera- tion : -
First. Class promotion of pupils in grammar-schools. The standard now fixed is seventy per cent clear promo- tion, sixty-five per cent conditional, deduced as an average from four written examinations - at middle and close of each term - in all the branches studied. To illustrate : Suppose pupil examined in four branches, - spelling, geography, grammar, and arithmetic. His rank might be as follows : -
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REPORT OF SCHOOL COMMITTEE.
Spelling,
40
50
0
Geography,
50
60
90
Grammar,
90
(or)
80
(or)
90
Arithmetic, 100
90
100
4)280
4)280
4)280
70 average.
70 average.
70 average.
From the foregoing it will be seen that pupils may receive certificate of honorable promotion with a partial scholarship less even than the conditional requirement. I would suggest that the " average in all studies " be changed to " average in each study." The present ten- dency under this arrangement is to educate the child away off sideways, so to speak, abnormally, arithmetic-ward, or any other way towards which the tastes of the child are inclined. A hundred in arithmetic will cancel a total deficiency in spelling, as above shown. Now, the child needs strengthening right where he is weak, to turn his energies from what he can do easily to that which he can- not do so well, but which his life-wants and a symmetrical culture demand for him from us. Again : a pupil promoted with these deficiencies cloaked under high percentages in branches to his taste becomes a steady, disheartening drag to the end of the course, a weariness to himself, a thorn to the teacher, an impediment to the class. Your school- records disclose to me, that, last year, pupils were promoted on seventy per cent average, whose special rate was as low as thirty-five per cent; and my observations above are fur- ther corroborated by experiences of teachers as detailed to me in personal interviews. I suggest a minimum of sixty per cent in each branch for honorable promotion, and fifty per cent for conditional. It is easier to secure seventy per cent average in all than sixty per cent in each : so that we do not lower general scholarship by lowering the special standard. Pupils should not be kept in one class more than two years. All exceptional promotions should be made by the School Board.
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SUPERINTENDENT'S REPORT.
A second point connected with this is, that promotions should not be determined wholly by four written examina- tions, but should depend largely on daily recitations First, because a daily responsibility is thrown upon the pupil. Second, the pupil is not discouraged by one day's failure ; for it may be largely corrected the next day. A failure at quarterly examination covers ten weeks, and that admits of no repair. Third, a daily record gives an account of the pupil in his natural working condition. Fourth, as the judgments of twelve men, on the whole, will gravitate nearer to justice than that of one, so I am inclined to place more reliance on one hundred oral and written expressions in ten weeks than one written expres- sion at the close of each term. Fifth, neither scholarship nor thinking ability can be so well or justly exhibited in a single written examination as in combined oral and writ- ten examinations. Lastly, it is impossible to make the re- quired and desirable monthly reports of scholarship to par- ents from the present quarterly examinations. I suggest a daily ranking of pupils by teachers. I do not mean by this a strict, set, infinitely precise way of doing things ; a big blank-book, solemn teacher, a calm, deliberate, stifling judgment, and then a sad percentage record to the credit or debit of the pupil. No. What we want are simple, easy, plain judgments on record, such as any teacher can almost always give in regard to the work of a pupil at the end of a recitation, when asked to do so. These judgments preserved will show the pupil in what particu- lar he failed, the parent in what branch and line of con- duct the child is weakest, and the school-officer the surest measure of attainments made by the young student. I will add, that the grammar-masters and their teachers are already experimenting to ascertain the simplest and easi- est method of arriving at and recording these recitation- judgments.
Third. I suggest the more frequent use of the spelling- book in the eighth and ninth classes of the grammar- schools.
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REPORT OF SCHOOL COMMITTEE.
Fourth. The transition from the third to the fourth class work seems quite abrupt, so far as study or how to use a book is concerned. I would advise placing a primary arithmetic in the third class, to be used in connection with the present purely oral method. The present third-class pupil gets all his arithmetic from the blackboard, the card, and the teacher. Except illustrations used by teacher, this is all abstract work, and is reversing the natural order of acquiring knowledge. It seems to me desirable to place the book in the hands of the pupil a portion of the time, that he may learn how to study, how to think, and may improve in reading. I have already experimented with several of your third classes in this direction with success, and to the satisfaction of teachers and pupils. No primary arithmetic is now used in your schools.
Fifth. I think White's " Intermediate Arithmetic," now used in fourth and fifth classes, should be extended to the end of the seventh. Walton's " Written Arithmetic " is now used in sixth and seventh. It contains much more than the pupil can or need go over, is cumbersome for this class of pupils, and is not in the line of economy. The work covered by those four classes is all embraced in White's "Intermediate " in the general principles there presented, which could and should be supplemented by test and original examples thrown into the recitations by teach- ers. The arithmetical work for these classes could, in my judgment, be better arranged on the basis of White than it is now on Walton.
Sixth. Supply of text-books. After a ten-years' observa- tion of various plans to solve the text-book problem, I feel quite confident in suggesting for your approval the town plan, so called ; that is, the town or city furnishes books free as it does schoolhouses and instruction. The favorable points drawn from the experience of towns and cities within my own knowledge are, -
1. Economy.
2. Convenience of pupil, teacher, and parent.
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SUPERINTENDENT'S REPORT.
3. School-classification.
4. Reference-books.
5. Uniformity through town.
6. Books better cared for.
7. Saving of time at commencement of school.
8. Increases school-attendance.
9. Removes caste distinctions.
10. Makes the schools absolutely free.
In evidence on foregoing points, I present the following statement from the city of Bath, one of several towns in Maine that have adopted the free text-book plan. The scholar census of Bath is 2,830: that of Newton is 2,863.
SCHOOL-BOOKS. - The present makes the sixth year since the city began to furnish school-books for all the children in the public schools.
For convenience sake, and as a matter of reference, the cost of school- books to the city is here given for each year from beginning : -
1868-69. - First year $1,583.52
1869-70. - Second year 2,795.40
1870-71. - Third year 1,224.08
1871-72. - Fourth year 1,674.44
1872-73. - Fifth year
1.591.72
1873-74. - Sixth year
1,291.25
The average cost of school-books to the city thus far has been $1,693.40 per annum.
The reader will also notice, as he runs his eye over the above column of figures, that there has been a gradual diminution each year in the cost of books, though the population of the city has, the most of these years, been steadily increasing ; the last year or two, increasing to a con- siderable extent. Of course it is not to be expected that this diminu- tion will continue any longer beyond the last year, with the present increase of population ; though the cost for the pro rata pupil may dimin- ish possibly a little more in the future.
The past year, the average whole number of pupils being 1,703, and the cost of school-books $1,291.25, gives the cost per pupil seventy-five cents and a fraction of another cent. This is, perhaps, about one-quarter of its cost, per scholar, to that before the books were furnished by the city. This is a mere estimate. I have no means at present of knowing the exact cost, to the parents of the city, of school-books when they were provided at their own expense. I think, however, the parents who in former years furnished books for their children will be ready to allow
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REPORT OF SCHOOL COMMITTEE.
that the general average of the cost of books was not less than three dollars for each child per annum.
It is ordered by the School Committee, that, in all cases where pupils destroy or intentionally injure the school-books loaned them by the city, their parents are required to furnish new books in the place of those destroyed or abused. The following law, passed by the legislature in 1873, makes this duty plain : -
"SECTION 1. - When a pupil in the public schools of any town shall lose, de- stroy, or unnecessarily injure, any school-book or school-appliance furnished such pupil at the expense of said town, the parent or guardian of such pupil shall be notified of the fact; and, if the loss or damage is not made good to the satisfaction of the School Committee within a reasonable time, it shall be the duty of said com- mittee to report the case to the assessors of such town, who shall include in the next town-tax of the delinquent parent or guardian the value of the book or appliance so lost, destroyed, or injured, to be assessed and collected in the same manner as other town-taxes.
" SECT. 2. - School committees are hereby authorized to make such rules and regulations for the distribution and preservation of school-books and school- appliances furnished at the expense of the town as they may deem proper, provided the same shall not be repugnant to the laws of the State."
The purchase of the school-books is ordered by the Superintendent of Schools. The discount on the larger portion of them is forty per cent. Some of the books used in the high school, where only a few are used in a year, and published by houses of whom small purchases are made, are necessarily bought at a less discount, - thirty-three and a third per cent, or perhaps, in some rare cases, twenty-five per cent even. The books have been hitherto kept, at the order of the School Committee, in the bookstore of Mr. John O. Shaw. Mr. Shaw sends for the books from time to time as they are wanted, at the order of the School Com- mittee. He receives no commission for sending for, receiving, storing, and delivering to teachers, the books. He simply charges the actual cost and expenses. The only profit he derives for his trouble is the incidental profit on the sales of stationery to teachers and pupils, the most of which he probably gets from the books being kept on deposit at his bookstore. This is small pay enough ; though perhaps either of the other booksellers would receive the books on deposit on similar terms.
The City Council may at any time direct the School Committee to keep the books on deposit in some room in the City Hall building.
The advantages of furnishing school-books to the pupils of the public schools by the city are several : -
1. Its economy. The books are purchased at a wholesale rate, at a discount from the usual retail trade of from thirty-three and a third to forty per cent. Then the books are used till worn out. In the high school, it is found that the same books will answer for three classes usually. In the lower grades of schools, of course, the books are worn
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SUPERINTENDENT'S REPORT.
out sooner. It is seen above that the average cost of books for a year is about seventy-five cents per pupil for the whole city. This is a great saving over the old expenditure.
2. Convenience. All the pupils are supplied with books on the first day of the term. There is no waiting for dilatory parents to furnish books for their children, - sometimes even to the middle of the term. The teacher has books furnished on the first day of school, and is held responsible for them, and gives out books to the pupils, and holds them responsible. Much time and trouble are thus saved.
3. Classification. Pupils are more easily and can be better classified. The pupil is examined, his qualification considered ; and then suitable books are given. Formerly parents bought larger books for the older children, and refused to buy smaller books for younger ones ; saying, " Let the younger children read with the older : if they are not qualified now, they will soon be. I cannot afford to buy another book, when this will answer in so short a time." Thus many pupils suffered from ill classification, and do at this time in most of the rural schools in this State. This will be remedied, in a very good degree, when cities and towns furnish school-books for all the pupils at the public expense.
4. Facility for exchange. If the present books we use are not the best, they can be easily exchanged, and new ones introduced, with less trouble, and at less expense.
5. Reference-books. A larger number and variety of reference-books may be furnished to the teachers at a small expense. This is an impor- tant item. Every teacher's desk ought to be furnished with a good dictionary, a variety of the best books on the different branches tauglit in the school, as well as treatises on the best methods of giving instruc- tion. When the city or town furnishes school-books, all the teachers' desks can be easily and cheaply furnished with suitable reference-books.
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