USA > New Hampshire > History of New Hampshire, Volume III > Part 18
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subscribers. In 1864 the New England Journal of Education had taken its place.
Certain resolutions of the Association are of interest, as "That as Americans we should pronounce Greek and Latin according to the principles of our vernacular tongue and not in accordance with the principles of any foreign nation." This was in 1865. Educational opinion has radically changed in this particular. In 1876 it was voted to admit women to full membership in the Association, and without the usual initiatory fee. In 1887 it was resolved "That the teachers of New Hamp- shire are in favor of scientific temperance education," and in 1895 they further resolved "That temperance instruction should be pre-eminently for character building, and moral rather than scientific." A noteworthy statement was made at its fifty-fourth session, in 1908. . "We note with satisfaction the millions of dollars yearly bestowed upon our colleges and other private institutions of learning. We believe, however, that it is too often wealth given for the education of the classes, rather than of the masses, and that the donors forget that it is not the colleges, but the common schools, which are the bulwarks of national power. We, therefore, ask the wealthy men of our state to consider whether their money may not be more justly bestowed upon the schools now wholly supported by taxation,- bestowed, not as endowments, but as comparatively small, out- right gifts for special equipments, which shall add much to the practical working efficiency, especially of our high schools." Will the time ever come when ambitious and far-seeing men of wealth will build, name and endow primary schools, fully equipped to give boys and girls the best possible start in life? This would be public beneficence indeed, and of an impartial character. There should be accompanying "fellowships," to push the brightest and best clear through the University. Presi- dent Cyrus Hamlin, Professor Calvin E. Stowe and Speaker Thomas B. Reed probably never would have been heard of, if some keen-sighted business men of Portland, Maine, had not picked them out of a Sunday School and paid their expenses through Bowdoin College.
The State Teachers' Association has grown to have twelve hundred members, and its annual meetings are held in Concord or Manchester. It has been a means of education for the teachers
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themselves and it has been a strong factor in the moulding of public opinion in favor of better schools and higher education of the masses. The high schools and academies have more students now than ever before, and the colleges are over-crowded and keeping many on the waiting lists.
The inaugural report of the present State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Henry C. Morrison, is remarkably thorough and worthy of careful study. It calls attention to supervisory districts, authorized by the legislature in 1899. Supervision has now been extended over four-fifths of all the children in the State. A group of towns unite in supporting a supervisor, or District Superintendent. The cities have their own superintend- ents, but all are under the general oversight of the State Super- intendent. The grading of schools has advanced till more than half have regular courses of study. Manual training has been in- troduced into many of the secondary schools, and industrial, or vocational, education in commerce, mechanic arts, household arts, and agriculture is found in fifty-nine different secondary schools. Boys are taught to analyze soils, trim and spray apple- trees, make farming implements, build cement walls, and become expert gardeners. Towns furnish free text books and school supplies to all, and there are eighty approved secondary schools in the State where one can get a preparation for college gratui- tously. Within the college are free scholarships, and opportuni- ties to earn and to borrow money, so that any aspiring and energetic youth may arrive at the degree of Bachelor of Arts. The eight grades of the elementary schools give to a boy or girl fourteen years of age what was considered almost a liberal education in the days of our grandfathers. The branches of learning there taught are reading, handwriting, arithmetic, spell- ing, composition, English grammar, geography, United States history, physiology and hygiene, and civil government, a fair foundation for good citizenship and business prosperity. Patrio- tism is taught by the stars and stripes floating over every school house.
NORMAL SCHOOLS.
Some of the early teachers learned to teach by teaching ; the rest never learned. The Teachers' Institutes served a useful purpose and revealed a deeper need of technical instruction.
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Teaching was the lifework of only a few, and those who intended to quit the business of teaching as soon as they could find some- thing that paid better had no desire to spend years of prepara- tion for a brief task. After the teachers themselves began to clamor for a normal school it took many years to convince the legislators that such an institution was needed. Was not the education which they had received good enough for their children ?
In 1823 there was established in the village of Franklin, which was then a part of Salisbury, what was called an Instruct- ors' School. It was founded by Mr. Joseph Noyes of that place, and the principal for many years was Captain Benjamin M. Tyler, a graduate of the military school at Norwich, Vermont. This was an embryo normal school, without the name. In the spring and fall terms Mr. Tyler formed a teachers' class and taught them the best known methods of instruction. In fact an excellent teacher is almost a normal school in himself, and his spirit and method will be unconsciously imbibed by those under his instruction. Every recitation is an object lesson, and practice is better than theory, unless the theory has been deduced from large practice. The Instructors' School at Franklin was discontinued for lack of endowment and financial support.
In 1837 the Rev. Samuel Read Hall, then a teacher in Phillips Academy, Andover, was invited to become principal of Holmes Academy at Plymouth. He was the author of a pioneer book, Lectures on School Keeping, and had conducted a normal school, the first on this continent, at Concord, Vermont, in 1823. He accepted the call to Plymouth on condition that the school should be called a teachers' seminary and should have a depart- ment specially devoted to the training of teachers. The expected endowment failed to materialize, and the school was closed after two years of good work. Out of an enrollment of 229 pupils 28 belonged to the teachers' department. Mr. Hall spent the remainder of his life in the Christian ministry.
Neighboring States established normal schools long before New Hampshire. The reliance here was upon teachers' institutes and academies. Ignorance never feels its need. The common schools were in a deplorable condition up to 1870, but the people did not realize it. In that year, after sixteen years of effort, the legislature voted to establish a normal school and
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authorized governor and council to appoint trustees. Bids were invited, and Plymouth offered $42,000 in money and real estate, impelled perhaps by the remembrance of their teachers' seminary. The old building of Holmes Academy proved to be inadequate, and the legislature was asked for an appropriation of $12,000 for a building and $3,000 for apparatus and library. The grant made was only $5,000, and two years later $8,000 were added to this amount. The institution attracted students from the start, as well as the schools of the village, which were placed under the control of the Normal School for practice. The enrollment of the Normal School the second year was 184 pupils.
It was hampered by legislative requirements and penurious- ness. The educational dollar was the biggest one the legislators knew, bigger than the "cartwheel," of silver. The legislative act declared that "the said normal school shall be established without expense to the State, except the necessary expenses of the trustees, which shall not exceed $300." The school was sustained by tuition fees and contributions. In 1875 the State made its first appropriation and the school was declared free. That is, no tuition is required of those who will obligate themselves to teach in New Hampshire as long as they have been in attend- ance at the normal school. The early classes were graduated after twenty weeks of instruction and practice, which was then the length of the school year, one-fourth the length of the shortest course in other New England normal schools. In 1878, in spite of reduction in appropriation to $3,000, the time necessary to graduation was extended to two years of forty weeks each, and then the State began to have a real normal school. The debt on the school and the reduced appropriations of the State per- mitted only a principal and one assistant for a year and a half, who taught seven or eight hours a day and nearly worked them- selves to death. Those who never tried it have no idea that eight hours of teaching is nerve-racking work. Sage legislators think that public school teachers have an easy time and deserve only small pay. They are not quite ready to grant pensions to the few that have spent their entire lives in the public service. It has been a prevalent notion that teachers and ministers ought to be kept poor and dependent on the dictum of the powers that be, discharged at the will of a changing and fickle committee.
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In old age let them shift for themselves, while military and naval superannuates are well cared for.
But there has been steady advancement during the last forty years. The legislators have grown in grace and knowledge, increasing appropriations and erecting new buildings as they were made necessary by success. The Normal School at Ply- mouth, when its new building is completed, will have ample accommodations for its one hundred and eight students.
In 1909 another Normal School was established at Keene, and still the Superintendent of Public Instruction asks for two more. Four such schools are needed to meet the annual demand for teachers in the elementary schools of the State. The young ladies who have graduated at Normal School soon go to a higher institution, the family, through the gateway of marriage. It is a pity that mothers can not keep right on teaching in the public schools, since motherhood fits them to do still better work. Perhaps that reform and expansion will come some day. But so long as it costs more to hire a housemaid than a country school teacher receives in wages, the educated mother will remain at home all day and send her children to be educated by some- body who knows less than she does. The Normal School at Keene has a dormitory costing $100,000, which is a three-story building of brick and concrete, designed to accommodate fifty- nine students and teachers. The building is not yet completed. There are also a school building, a heating plant, the Hale house for administration and library, a laboratory for the household arts department, a principal's residence and a greenhouse.
In all schools some attention is given to physical culture. A gymnasium is now a necessary part of a high school or academy. There are playgrounds for the children, superintended during the time of summer vacation, in the larger cities. Inter- scholastic sports add zest to school life and seem to some persons to be over-emphasized. Evening schools are teaching immigrants the English language and the duties and privileges of American citizens. The increasing effort of all the States is, to make out of all its inhabitants, even the feeble-minded, the blind, and the deaf mutes, as much as nature will allow and patient endeavor will produce. While the soul of education is the education of the soul it is remembered that a sound mind can manifest its powers best in a sound body.
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ACADEMIES
Comparatively few of the old academies remain. The earliest have been mentioned in the preceding volume. The names of a few more have survived. The largest and most prosperous are the institutions that have been fostered by some religious denomination. A few have resulted from the heavy endowment of some man of wealth, who wished to benefit his native town. These are located in villages remote from the large cities, and thither resort students from the towns that have no high schools, those who prefer private to public schools, as well as a considerable number of students from other States. Sometimes an attempt is made to use them as "gilt-edged peni- tentiaries" for such as are undesirable in other schools by reason of lack of scholarship or of manners, yet all schools are on their guard against such applicants, and a pupil expelled from one school is usually black-listed till repentance. Thus educational institutions protect one another. The early academies were established by ministers and pious laymen for the promotion of science, morality, and religion. The religious element in educa- tion, even in denominational schools, is not so much emphasized now as formerly, this being due perhaps to a changed conception of religion as inseparable from morality. It has been learned that students can behave and study just as well without chapel exercises twice a day and the memorizing of the catechism. The denominational institutions are managed as non-sectarian, and there is freedom of religious belief and worship.
One of the oldest and most flourishing academies for a full century is the Kimball Union Academy of Meriden, endowed by Hon. Daniel Kimball and named in his honor. It has been a. noted fitting school for Dartmouth College. Until the year 1839 it was for young men only ; since then it has been coeduca- tional. Two of its early principals were Rev. Israel Newell and Cyrus S. Richards. The former served thirteen years and the latter thirty-six. For a long time it had between two hundred and three hundred students annually, but the statistics of 1913 show only one hundred and forty-four in attendance. It has an agricultural department. Before the close of the last century it had graduated 1,750 students, of whom 333 became clergymen, 26 foreign missionaries, 211 physicians, 313 lawyers, 36 editors,
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431 teachers, 7 college presidents, 34 professors, 4 members of congress, and 3 judges of the higher courts. It is still in a flourishing condition, with good buildings and considerable endowment.
Colby Academy is the leading institution of the Baptists in New Hampshire. It is situated in New London, thirty miles northwest of Concord, among the lofty hills and itself on a hilltop 1,350 feet above the level of the sea. First it was called New London Academy, then New London Literary and Scien- tific Institution, and in 1878 it took the name of Colby Academy in honor of a benefactor, Governor Anthony Colby. The school was opened in 1853, with 120 pupils the first term, and 210 the second. The main building, erected in 1870, stands in a campus of twenty acres. The Heidelberg is the name of the girls' dormi- tory, having accommodations for twenty-eight boarding pupils. Colby Hall is the corresponding dormitory for boys and accom- modates fifty. The gymnasium is between the two dormitories. A new three-story Academy Building and girls' dormitory has been erected since 1911, two hundred feet long. This provides recitation rooms, laboratories, chapel, administration rooms, a dining hall and on the upper floors dormitory rooms for more than fifty persons. There are adequate heating, lighting and water plants. One hundred and seventy-three students were registered in 1912-13. The endowment amounts to more than $200,000.
Tilton Seminary is under the special patronage of the Metho- dist Episcopal Church. It was first known as the New Hamp- shire Conference Seminary and was located at Northfield in 1845. The building there was destroyed by fire in 1862, and directly afterward Tilton was made the location of the institution and three buildings were erected on a hill a short distance from the railway station. One of the buildings was burned in 1887, and the present main building was then erected. It is constructed of brick, three hundred and fifty feet long, and contains recita- tion rooms, offices, parlors, chapel, halls for literary societies. bath rooms, and rooms for teachers and students. The gymna- sium is a brick and stone structure, sixty by ninety feet, with shower baths, swimming pool and running track. The Durrell Laboratory contains the chemical laboratory and the manual training department. There are also a Music Studio, the Prin-
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cipal's House, the Boys' Cottage and the Chase Cottage, as well as a new Dining Hall, which will accommodate two hundred and fifty persons and is fitted with every convenience. Alto- gether the collection of buildings is all that could be desired for school purposes. They are furnished with steam heat and elec- tric lights. The necessary expenses of a student may be about $350, if he rooms alone. The courses of study are classical, English Scientific, English and business. The attendance during the year 1913-14 was three hundred and fourteen, representing twelve States. The Faculty has nineteen members.
New Hampton Academy dates from 1821, when Mr. George Richardson opened a school in a wooden building, 24 by 32 feet, at the Center, a mile or two from the present village. This institution came under the control of the Baptists in 1825 and was known as the Academical and Theological Institution, with Rev. B. F. Farnsworth as principal. Another building was erected in 1826 and still another in 1829. The latter was three- story and built of brick. It served for a dormitory. A theologi- cal department was established, which for twenty-three years had an average attendance of twenty-five. A female department about the same time was in operation at the village. This department is said to have had three hundred pupils annually. Students came to this institution from distant States. Forty- five per cent. of them were from outside of New Hampshire. While the Baptists had control it is estimated that as many as 7,500 students were enrolled in this institution. The tuition was low, and there was no endowment. Debts accumulated and for the sake of financial support elsewhere the school was re- moved to Fairfax, Vermont, in 1853. Empty buildings were left, which the Free Baptists acquired. A new charter was ob- tained under the name of New Hampton Literary and Biblical Institution, and the entire school became located at the present village, with separate dormitories for ladies and gentlemen and common recitation rooms and chapel. The brick building at the Center was taken down and the material was used in the erection of Randall Hall. Prof. Benjamin Stanton was the first principal. A Biblical or Theological School was established in 1854, with the Rev. Doctors J. J. Butler and John Fullonton as instructors. It had an attendance of about twenty students till 1870, when it was removed to Lewiston, Maine, being there connected with
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Bates College and known later as Cobb Divinity School. This has now been discontinued.
This institution has had a useful career and is now in a flourishing condition. It is beautifully situated among the hills. The buildings are commodious and attractive. There is an en- dowment of $12,000 or more. The library and apparatus are sufficient for practical purposes. During the year 1913-14 one hundred and sixty-eight students were enrolled, and there are five courses of study and nine professors. The expenses of stu- dents are kept down to the lowest possible figure, since many go here who are working their own way to a liberal education.
The Protestant Episcopal Church has its leading school in New Hampshire about two miles west of the State House in Concord and is known as the St. Paul's School. It was incor- porated in 1855 and opened the following year with three pupils under the care and instruction of the Rev. Henry A. Coit as rector. The gift of land and original endowment were made by George C. Shattuck, a physician of Boston. His design is thus expressed : "The founder is desirous of endowing a school of the highest class for boys, in which they may obtain an education which shall fit them either for college or business, including thorough intellectual training in the various branches of learning ; gymnastic and manly exercises adapted to preserve health and strengthen the physical condition; such aesthetic culture and accomplishments as shall tend to refine the manners and elevate the taste, together with careful moral and religious instruction."
The school has grown to be a village, such is the number of halls, dormitories, residences for professors, infirmary, chapel, work shops, stables, and farm buildings. There are artificial ponds for boating in summer and games of hockey in winter. Tennis courts abound, and athletic grounds for baseball and football. The buildings are large, commodious and costly. No expense is spared in securing the best of instruction and the best of good times and perfect health. The course of study requires six years to prepare for college, and no boy is received over sixteen years of age. Boys are under the oversight and care of tutors continually and given something to do all the time, at play or work. The growth of the school in buildings, endowment and attendance has been remarkable. Hundreds of
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boys come from all parts of the nation. Indeed it is a denomi- national and national institution, rather than a part of the educa- tional system of New Hampshire. The price of tuition and resi- dence is nine hundred and fifty dollars annually, and other expenses, such as for clothing, books, travel and incidentals, make the yearly expense to be twelve hundred dollars or so, while the sons of millionaires can spend more. It is readily seen that this institution is designed to be for the rich, while there are a few scholarships to aid those who have more brains than money. The school has a good reputation for turning out young men of character, well fitted for college. Every trustee of the school must be an Episcopalian, and the services of that denomination are conducted regularly, yet there is no direct effort at proselyting. Young men of other denominations fre- quent the school, and they do not suffer in their religious train- ing. The aim is to make the school a large family, a home for all who reside there temporarily. Such institutions seem to be needed, but they are on a different plane from that of the high schools and many academies, where the rich and the poor meet together, and sometimes the good and the immoral. The private school has its advantages, and so has the free public school. In either those who want education and character can obtain them. St. Paul's reports forty-eight instructors or masters, three hun- dred and fifty pupils and an endowment of $357,000.
The Episcopalians have another school at Holderness, founded in 1879 on what was the estate of Chief Justice Samuel Livermore. The main building has accommodations for seventy pupils, besides apartments for teachers, recitation rooms, etc. There is a beautiful chapel and a fine gymnasium with play- grounds, or an athletic field, if that name is liked better. It is a family school and fits for the leading colleges. The expense is five hundred dollars per annum, one hundred dollars of which are deducted for students coming from New Hampshire. Thus the annual expense for a boy is about half what it is at St. Paul's School, and the fit for college is equally good, no doubt. There is no royal way to scholarship.
Proctor Academy is under the management of the Unitarian Educational Society of New Hampshire. It is situated at Andover and is the outgrowth of the Andover Academy, which was established in 1848. The academy then had two hundred
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and fifty pupils, but that was before the days of high schools. The expenses are very moderate, from two hundred to three hundred dollars a year, and there are about sixty pupils.
Old Phillips Exeter Academy, of which something was said in the preceding volume, goes on its way rejoicing in increased endowment and number of students. It is one of the best fitting schools in the United States. The campus and buildings are about all that could be desired; the democratic spirit prevails; emphasis is laid on character and scholarship; there are between five hundred and six hundred in attendance. This institution always has been a blessing and honor to the State and to very many students from other States. There is a group of about twenty-five buildings, and the endowment funds amount to about $350,000. The annual expense of a student is reckoned to be from $377 to $666, and there are scholarships and oppor- tunities for self-help.
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