USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II > Part 56
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It is perfectly clear to everybody, that one of two rules should be adopted : either that the ministers of each and all schools should be admitted whenever request is made, or that none should be admitted. . The trustees have endeavored to avoid any cause of complaint by the extremest caution upon their side ; . . . they have avoided any sectarian explanation of the Bible itself. They have prohibited the introduction into the school of any sectarian books, or the admission of sectarian teachers. I do not undertake it upon myself to say that either the one or the other of these courses is the most judicious and conducive to the well-being of the pupils of that institution. I admit that these pupils, perhaps of all other classes in the community, are entitled to, and perhaps ought to have, that religious instruction which should make the deepest and most permanent impression upon their minds and characters, and do them the most good. . . . That there has been no effort at proselytism is proved. That the children have been denied teaching in the religion of their choice is a charge that has been found to be without any foundation whatever. There is no evidence of their having been refused the ministrations of their church. They are permitted to go at certain periods to attend the churches where their parents worship.
Counsel for the petitioners argued :
The charge is this-not that there has been permitted, before the school, upon the stated days when religious exercises are had, a discussion of the different points in controversy among the sects of Protestants, but that Protestantism is taught and forced upon these children, and that no opportunity is given to priests
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of the Romish Church to minister to the religious wants of the inmates, no matter how great may be the desire of the inmates to receive the consolation of the faith in which they were born. . . . If you will admit to that school the pious teachings of these Catholic ministers who would be only too willing to render such services for the instruction of the Catholic youth there confined, the influence would be the best possible upon the condition of the institution. . . . The exclusion of the priests of the Romish Church is a graver wrong, it seems to me, than my brother was inclined to admit it to be. It is the very means of influence that should be resorted to. We ought not to forget that these children are sufficiently instructed in the faith of their fathers to have a thorough conviction of mind that Protestant teachings are not according to the Word of God. All teaching, therefore, coming from that source, necessarily fall upon barren ground when addressed to them.
The hearing ended with no agreement among the aldermen; and no action was ordered. There was, nevertheless, immediately, an improvement in conditions at the Reform School. The General Assembly in 1880 assumed complete responsibility for the Reform School, changing the name, and placing it under control of the Board of State Charities and Cor- rections, and plans were made to remove the school from the Tockwotton House to the estate purchased earlier by the state board, at Cranston. There separate buildings for boys and girls were constructed, and the divided institution was known, thereafter, by two names- Sockanosset School for Boys and Oaklawn School for Girls. Both are now administered by the State Welfare Commission.
Sockannosset School for Boys is an institution "for the confinement, instruction and reformation of juvenile offenders and of young persons of idle, vicious or vagrant habits," as described by the statutes, but a former superintendent* declared that it "is an institution for the moral uplift of the unfortunate boy who has been brought here through conditions for which he is not always responsible. Prominent among these might be neglect of proper guid- ance by those who should have been responsible for his upbringing, by virtue of which the lad is the real sufferer, and these conditions should be considered by those who have him in charge. The real object of this institution, therefore, is to reclaim these lads and endeavor to make of them law-abiding and useful citizens by educating them along lines that would lead them into useful pursuits, and developing those talents which it may be found they possess." The school is operated on the cottage plan. Under Superintendent Gardner marked attention was given to the improvement of school education and the teaching of skilled trades. A building formerly used as a dormitory was remodelled as a school building. The boys were organized in graded classes, but special attention was given to boys needing indi- vidual instruction. The boys constructed a vocational trade building of reinforced concrete, which housed eight shops, in which the boys were taught as many trades while producing articles used at the school and in other state institutions. The estimated value of the building at the time of construction was $46,000; the boy labor employed saved the state half that amount. The building is an enduring monument to boy labor well employed. In recent years the general policy of dealing with youthful offenders has been modified by the introduction of juvenile courts for trying minor offences, and of the probation system. There has been a general tendency to fewer commitment and to shorter sentences. In consequence of the latter the tenure of boys at the school averages a shorter period, and thus diminishes the opportunity for effective vocational training up to the point of complete apprenticeship. There has been less attention to training for trades, and several of the vocational shops have been dismantled, the machinery having been transferred to other state institutions.
Oaklawn School for Girls was opened at Howard in 1882. Its purpose is corrective. It provides care and education for female juvenile offenders. A cottage plan is in operation for the segregation of girls into classes according to the nature of their offences. The small number of girls committed to the Oaklawn School, the comparatively short periods of sen-
*Ezekiel Gardner.
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tences, and the necessity of separating girls in cottages, prohibit the organization of graded school classes, although schools are conducted, and an earnest effort is made to promote edu- cation. Much the same reasons have almost inhibited the organization of vocational classes, but all girls are given careful training in various departments of domestic service. The juvenile court and probation laws tend to restrict commitments.
HIGH SCHOOLS-The first public high school in Rhode Island was established in Provi- dence in 1843. Newport established a public high school at the same period. Other town high schools followed in this order: Warren, 1847; Bristol and Woonsocket, 1849; Paw- tucket, 1862; Westerly, Lincoln and Hopkinton, 1871; Barrington and East Providence, 1884; Johnston, 1885; New Shoreham, 1887 and 1898; Cranston, 1890; Burrillville, 1891 ; Cumberland, 1894; North Kingstown, 1901; South Kingstown, 1904; Warwick, 1905; Lit- tle Compton, 1918. Lincoln high school became Central Falls high school in 1895. Johnston high school was closed when part of the town was annexed to Providence. South Kingstown high school was established in 1880 as a private high school. Warwick high school became West Warwick high school in 1913, when the town of Warwick was divided. Warwick established its high school in another building later. In recent years the enrollment in public high schools has increased so rapidly that new high school buildings have been constructed in many places to provide the accommodations needed. Among the new high school buildings are those at Burrillville, rebuilt and enlarged after a fire; Woonsocket; Central Falls; Paw- tucket ; Providence, Commercial; Cranston; Warwick, new building erected after fire; Barrington, Warren and Westerly. The new high school buildings are ample in proportions and include, in many instances, shops and other special rooms which were not considered properly part of the equipment in earlier construction. The high school at Pawtucket is notable in these respects, including besides classrooms, laboratories, shops, etc., an assembly hall large enough and so well outfitted as to be available for use as a community centre, and one of the finest swimming pools in New England. Additional to new high school buildings, the rapid extension of the "junior high school" movement has been experienced in Rhode Island as elsewhere. Junior high school buildings have been constructed at Bristol, Woon- socket, West Warwick, Westerly, Cranston, two in East Providence, three in Pawtucket, and five in Providence, with plans for others underway. Henry Barnard School at Rhode Island College of Education includes a junior high department.
One of the recommendations made by the State Board of Education in reply to a request made by the General Assembly in 1896, was improved high school facilities. Twenty-two towns then had no high school, and these towns comprised eighty per cent. of the area of the state, though their children numbered only twenty per cent. of the school population. The General Assembly, in 1898, as part of an act "to secure a uniform high standard in public schools of the state," provided that "any town maintaining a high school having a course of study approved by the State Board of Education, shall be entitled to receive annually from the state $25 for each pupil in average attendance for the first twenty-five pupils, and $15 for each pupil in average attendance for the second twenty-five pupils, and that any town not maintain- ing a high school, which shall make provision for free attendance of its children at some high school or academy approved by the State Board of Education, shall be entitled to receive aid on the same basis." In 1909 the per capita was increased five dollars, and the new law pro- vided that a town not maintaining a high school must make provision at the expense of the town for free attendance of its children at some high school or academy approved by the board. Thus the provision of a high school or high school education was made obligatory. This interpretation of the high school law has been established by a decision of the Commis- sioner, which was approved by a justice of the Supreme Court, and is, therefore, final in fact and in law. In the particular case the town's obligation to provide high school education was not denied, but it was asserted by the town that this obligation was limited to four years for
LEANDER R. PECK SCHOOL, BARRINGTON
0
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each pupil, and was conditional upon the pupil's maintenance of class standing. The town refused to pay tuition for a boy who had already attended high school at the town's expense for four years without completing his course, and also for a boy who was repeating the school work for a year for which tuition had been paid by the town. The Commissioner held that the public high school, as an extension of the public elementary school, is to be governed by essentially the same rules and regulations, practices and customs ; that no restrictions or con- ditions of the kind set up by the town had prevailed in elementary education; that such restrictions and conditions were inconsistent with attendance laws, and contrary to the public policy which dictates always an extension rather than a restriction of public education. The decision held that the law is mandatory .* By later legislation state support for high school education has been increased $5 per pupil, being now $35 per pupil for the first twenty-five pupils, and $25 for each of the second twenty-five pupils. The compulsory attendance law extends to high schools in the provision that requires attendance to age sixteen in all instances except those of children over fifteen who are lawfully and regularly employed. The operation of this statute since 1926 has been manifested in a marked increase in attendance at public high schools. The distribution of high schools by towns and cities in 1930 was four senior and five junior schools in Providence, one senior and three junior high schools in Pawtucket, one senior and two junior high schools in East Providence, one senior and one junior high school in each of Bristol, Cranston, West Warwick, Westerly and Woonsocket, and one senior high school in each of Barrington, Burrillville, Central Falls, Cumberland, Hopkinton, Little Compton, Newport, North Kingstown, New Shoreham, South Kingstown, Warren and Warwick.
Public high schools have replaced old-time academies. Of the early academies many, which though offering instruction in secondary branches, offered also work of the elemen- tary school grades, endured not long beyond the opening of public schools. Those that sur- vived and others organized at later dates confined themselves to branches now taught in public high schools and to preparation of boys and girls for college. Of the old Rhode Island acad- emies only the Moses Brown School in Providence, replacing the Friends' School, and the East Greenwich Academy, replacing Kent Academy, are still in existence. The development of academies by the Roman Catholic Church is discussed in another chapter.
The early New England academy was a finishing school, in the sense that it undertook to offer a complete education, without emphasis upon preparation for college. The first plan for a public high school in Providence contemplated an education that would round out elementary instruction, and prepare boys and girls for active participation in the life of the growing commercial and manufacturing city. In later years high school education has become diversified, with objectives that suggest variety in courses, the most common in Rhode Island being college preparation, commercial, scientific or technical, and English or general. The modern high school, except in cities in which separate buildings may be provided for different courses, offers usually several courses in parallel, with provision sometimes for interchange of courses on a selective basis.
IMPROVEMENT OF SCHOOLS-Improvement of the public school system in the past thirty years has followed eight principal lines of endeavor as follows: (1) Stricter compulsory attendance, extension of school age, and restriction of the employment of children; (2) estab- lishment and maintenance of uniform high standards for all schools; (3) improvement of teaching, and of the economic and professional status of teachers; (4) extension of profes- sional supervision of schools; (5) improvement of administration of schools in town and city systems; (6) provisions for the safety and health of school children; (7) patriotic instruction ; and (8) vocational education.
*Hudson vs. Coventry.
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The first American child labor and compulsory school attendance law, enacted in Rhode Island in 1840, established a precedent in the extension of which modern systems have been developed. In Rhode Island significant developments have been (1) the taking of an annual school census whereby to obtain the names of children of school age; (2) extension of the years of required attendance gradually to include the years from seven to sixteen; (3) inspec- tion of factories and other places where children may be employed to insure compliance with law; (4) standard records of attendance in all schools, public and private; (5) correlation of census and school attendance records through a system of individual pupil card recording required by statute; (6) systematic reporting and checking. The aims and purposes have been insuring school education for all children, and preventing the employment of children of tender years, for humanitarian and other equally good reasons. The attendance law requires attendance on public instruction all the days and hours that public schools are in session, but, in recognition of parental rights, accepts attendance on private instruction approved by public authority as compliance with the educational purposes of the law. Children over fifteen years of age who are literate in English, who have attended school eight years or completed the work of eight grades, and who are in sound health and physically fit for employment, may be excused from school for lawful and regular employment. Through rigid enforcement of this law, as well as public appreciation of the soundness of Rhode Island's general education pro- gram, has come a regular attendance on instruction in day schools, public and private, that averages more than 150,000. In the years of strict compulsory attendance, seven to fifteen, more than ninety-eight per cent. of children attend school, the little more than one per cent. of failure to attend including those physically or mentally handicapped.
A statute to insure "a more uniform high standard in the public schools," enacted in 1898, offered a bonus for "consolidation" of schools and state support to encourage the estab- lishment of high schools, and required that public school teachers should hold certificates of qualification issued by the State Board of Education. "Consolidation" is the process of unit- ing small classes in such manner as to permit a better classification of the aggregate, and graded instruction of groups as a substitute for individual or small group instruction; it is the accepted remedy for the deficiencies attributed to country schools enrolling only small classes, and suggesting for economy a single teacher and a little attention to the mechanics of graded schools. Fifteen years later, in 1913, the "deficient school" act, so-called, placed at the disposal of the Commissioner and State Board of Education an annual appropriation of $5000, to be apportioned at discretion "for the purpose of aiding the schools in such of the towns whose taxable property is not adequate at the average rate of taxation throughout the state to provide schools of high standard." The money was used to insure a lengthened school term of not less than thirty-six weeks; to increase teachers' salaries in towns in which teach- ers' salaries were an obstacle to obtaining qualified instructors; to repair buildings the physi- cal condition of which was woefully inadequate; to provide apparatus and equipment, books, blackboards, and other things that are almost indispensable to efficient instruction; to promote consolidation by providing transportation from closed schools to better schools; from all of which there was a remarkable improvement in rural schools in Rhode Island over the period of ten years until the statute was repealed in 1922. In the year last named the income of the permanent school fund, then approximately $12,500 annually, was made available, in lieu of the $5000 for deficient schools, to be expended for emergencies, with discretion in the Com- missioner and State Board of Education to apportion any part of the income to assist school committees facing unusual problems. One of the first uses of the fund was the replacement of books and furniture destroyed in the fire that razed the Block Island high school. With assistance from the fund the high school was reopened in rented quarters with actual loss of only a few days of school. When with the assistance provided from the "deficient school" fund all schools had attained, in 1914, a school year of thirty-six weeks, the minimum was
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established at thirty-six weeks, by statute, to prevent retrogression. The average school year in Rhode Island was 179 days in 1873, 191 days in 1898, 193 days in 1912, 195 days in 1915, 195 days in 1930. The statutory minimum school year was made 180 actual days in 1927. Rhode Island has had the longest average and longest minimum school year in the United States for most of the years of the twentieth century.
IMPROVING TEACHING AND TEACHERS -- To improve teaching and teachers Rhode Island has used certification, pensions, minimum salary, and professional education. The school act of 1800 forbade any person to teach in school or academy "reading, writing, grammar or mathematics unless he shall be a native or naturalized citizen of the United States and be approved by a certificate in writing from the town council of the town in which he shall teach." School committees were empowered, in 1828, to "appoint all the schoolmasters or school mis- tresses to be employed in teaching the schools, taking care that such masters and mistresses are qualified for the task." The school committee, in 1839, was directed "to appoint all instruc- tors and instructresses, taking care that they be of good moral character, temperate and otherwise well qualified for the office," and, in 1842, to "ascertain by their personal examina- tion, or that of a committee to be appointed by them, the qualifications and capacity for the government of all instructors that may be employed in their respective towns." The Barnard act of 1845 permitted certification for a town by the town school committee, for a county by a county inspector, for the state by the Commissioner, but no certificate might be issued "unless the person named in the same shall produce evidence of good moral character and be found on examination, or by experience, qualified to teach the English language, arithmetic, pen- manship, and the rudiments of geography and history, and to govern a school." Barnard's "remarks" on the school law, published to assist school officers in achieving a uniform interpre- tation, added :
No person should be considered qualified to teach any school who cannot speak and write the English language, if not elegantly, at least correctly. He should be a good reader, be able to make himself under- stood and feel all that the author intended. He should be able to give the analysis as well as explain the meaning of the words of the sentence, and to explain all dates and names and allusions. He should be a good speller. He should understand practically the first principles of English grammar . . . . He should also be able to write a good hand, to make a pen and to teach others how to do the same. He should show his knowl- edge of geography by applying his definitions of the elementary principles to the geography of his own town, state and county, and by questions on the map and globe. He should be able to answer promptly all questions relating to the leading events of the history of the United States and of his own state. In arithmetic he should be well versed in some treatise on mental arithmetic, and be able to work out before the committee . such questions as will test his ability to teach the textbooks on arithmetic prescribed for the class of . schools he will be engaged in.
The "remarks" suggested teaching a practice class or lesson as a good test for ability to teach. Barnard's plan for state and county certification failed to function, and from 1857 until 1871 school committees examined and certificated teachers.
With the reestablishment of the Rhode Island Normal School, 1871, the trustees were authorized to issue certificates, valid throughout the state, as a measure to insure acceptance without question of the graduates of the school as qualified to teach. The suggestion that the teacher should be "able to make a pen and to teach others how to do the same," was dropped from the Manual of 1873; otherwise qualifications continued as outlined in 1845 until 1896, when the Manual suggested that aside from examination or experience the school committee "would also have the right under the law to grant a certificate for one term at least, without an examination, to a person having a diploma from an accredited normal school or college." The statute law, 1873, provided that "the school committee shall not sign any certificate unless the person named in the same produce evidence of good moral character, and be found on
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examination qualified to teach the various branches required to be taught in the school." Under a statute of 1898, the State Board of Education was made the exclusive certificating agency, with power to establish qualifications by rule or regulation, and to issue certificates on examination, or without examination on satisfactory evidence of qualification. The board's policy has been progressive, in the sense that from time to time the standard of qualifications has been advanced in such manner as to require more and better training, thus guaranteeing to the citizens who support the schools through taxation a quality of service commensurate with the compensation paid, to the citizen who attends the schools more efficient instruction, and to the teacher who has made adequate preparation for service reasonable protection against competition for positions by those not properly fitted. The standard qualifications for pro- fessional certification in 1930 are graduation from a standard normal school for elementary school teaching, or graduation from a standard college with additional training in professional education for teaching in high schools, and equivalent education and preparation, academic and professional, for teachers of special subjects. All candidates for certification must file evidence of good character, name responsible references, present documentary evidence of educational and professional qualifications, and pass a successful examination in Rhode Island education, including Rhode Island school law and history of Rhode Island schools.
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