L 
 
 W 
 
 (JTommoiilvicnltlj of Ulassacljusctts, 
 
 ANNUAL REPOrvT 
 
 OF thj: 
 
 SPECIAL AGENT 
 
 Of THE 
 
 BOARD OF EDUCATION. 
 
 J A N U iV Jl Y , 18 7 5 
 
 BOSTON; 
 
 WRIGHT &. POTTER, STATE PRINTERS, 
 7!t Milk Street (corner of Federal). 
 
 1875. 
 
(^ontmaittoolflj of glassa^jus^ffs. 
 
 AKIS^UAL BEPOPtT 
 
 OF TELE 
 
 SPECIAL AGENT 
 
 OF THE 
 
 BOARD OF EDUCATIO^^, 
 
 Jai^uaet, 1875. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 
 WRIGHT & POTTER, STATE PRINTERS, 
 
 79 Milk Street (corner of Federae). 
 
 1875. 
 

 "^ O.ofD. 
 
REPORT 
 
 Gentlemen of the Board of Education : — 
 
 During the past year, I have visited 391 schools in 74 towns 
 and cities. I have observed the methods of teaching and 
 management, and in nearly all have taught one or more 
 topics, and made suggestions and brief addresses. Exclusive of 
 the exercises in the eight Teachers' Institutes attended in 
 the autumn, I have given fifty- seven lectures on educational 
 topics to teachers and to people. In my visits to the schools, 
 I have generally been accompanied, as heretofore, by the school 
 committee or by the superintendent of schools. I take great 
 pleasure in acknowledging, in this connection, the uniform 
 courtesy extended to me by school officers, teachers, children, 
 and by all with whom I have been associated. The general 
 interest manifested leads me to hope that my labors serve to 
 encourage and stimulate to greater activity those engaged 
 in the work of education. 
 
 I am happy to note, as a sign of progress in public sentiment, 
 the approval by committees and people of rational methods of 
 teaching. This is shown by the demand for good teachers, and 
 the effort to retain those who have proved themselves com- 
 petent to teach. It is shown in the increased attention 
 bestowed, especially in the larger places, upon the arrangement 
 of courses of study, in all of which more time is given to object- 
 teaching and illustrations, and to general exercises. In many 
 towns, evening schools are established, and meetings of 
 teachers are held regularly. Provision is made for the 
 attendance of teachers upon Teachers' Institutes, and upon the 
 State and County Associations ; and teachers gladly avail 
 themselves of the privileges thus oflfered. 
 
The required study of drawing, so long neglected, is coming 
 to be recognized asTi useful and necessary branch of education, 
 and is receiving considerable attention in many of the schools. 
 Evening classes of adults for the practice of mechanical 
 drawing have been started this year for the first time, in some 
 of the larger manufacturing places. Those which have come 
 under my observation, as those at Adams and Holyoke, are well 
 attended and give assurance of great usefulness. The students 
 in these classes, embrace operatives, book-keepers and over- 
 seers in the mills, tradesmen, and mechanics of all trades. This 
 branch of education is greatly indebted to Mr. Walter Smith, 
 State Director of Art-Education, whose skill in delineation, 
 and not less in statement, encourages the most timid to take 
 the first step^the step which costs — in teaching this new art. 
 
 Another sign of progress, and a very hopeful one, is the 
 relaxing of the hold upon the district system, which seems 
 to have been particularly firm in some portions of this section 
 of the State. It would now be easy, I think, to obtain the 
 signatures of the most influential citizens in nearly all the towns 
 at present under this system, for its immediate abolition. The 
 school committees would be a unit in this direction. Instead of 
 awaiting the slow, but inevitable process of sloughing off, will 
 they not make and circulate petitions for the removal altogether, 
 and at once, of this excrescence upon the school system? In 
 several instances, the district system has been abolished since 
 my previous visit. One result which uniformly follows the 
 abolition, is better school-houses. In many places the necessity 
 for better houses is forcing abolition upon the town. The 
 sooner the towns make a virtue of this necessity, the better for 
 all concerned. With the abolition of the districts, wise counsels 
 should prevail as to the grading of the schools ; as to the 
 locating, heating, lighting and ventilation of houses, building or 
 remodelling ; as to the several acts relating to uniting districts 
 with those of adjoining towns ; to conveying to school children 
 living at great distances ; to uniting several towns under one 
 supervision, etc., etc. 
 
 It would be agreeable to say much more in commendation of 
 the schools. Justice demands that I should testify to the 
 faithfulness of the teachers in general, and I might specify 
 important particulars in which very many of the schools are 
 
eminently successful, and particular schools which are models of 
 excellence, but the brevity of this Eeport forbids farther 
 details ; and I pass to notice a few of the needs of the schools, 
 such as result mainly from thg want of the most eulightened 
 public sentiment. I will specify first the need of a more 
 efficient supervision. In some instances, the towns grudgiugly 
 pay the pittance charged for the altogether too-infrequent visits 
 of the committee to the schools ; and in many, the task of 
 superintending the schools has come to be so thankless, that 
 those best fitted for the duties refuse to accept the office of 
 school committee. Unquestionably, the worst possible form of 
 supervision is that which results from the district system, where 
 the selection of the teachers is left to a prudential committee, 
 and the oversight of their work, perhaps, to a sub-committee of 
 the general committee to whom are assigned the schools of a 
 particular section of the town. The best results are secured by 
 placing the inspection and direction of the schools in the hands 
 of a single person, competent and able to devote himself to 
 giving advice in all matters pertaining to the teaching and 
 general management of the schools, he acting under the full 
 committee as an advisory and authoritative board. This plan is 
 virtually adopted in most of the larger places and in many of 
 the smaller ones, and uniformly with most satisfactory results. 
 An important duty devolved upon the school committee by 
 statute, is that of assistino- the teacher in the orsfanization of the 
 school. This includes the preparation of a course of study and 
 the arrangement of the classes. It would seem, also, to imply 
 that previous to entering upon the duties of the school, the 
 ■.teachers should bo definitely advised as to the particular work 
 to be accomplished, according to the plan of the committee. 
 Another duty of the committee is to prescribe text-books to be 
 used, and to sec that none others l)e introduced into the schools. 
 Is it less a duty to see that all the pupils are furnished with 
 books, and especially with slate and pencil, at the opening 
 session of the school? The children are frequently many days 
 without books, and even an entire term ; in many instances 
 without slate and pencil. However watchful the teacher may be, 
 no ingenuity can keep idle hands out of mischief. The slate and 
 pencil are indispensable for every school-child, and delinquency 
 here should be anticipated by the school committee, and 
 
6 
 
 provided for at the start. Another duty which devolves upon 
 the school committee, is to provide the schools with suitable 
 apparatus aucl reference-books, and all needed appliances for 
 carrying on the work of the schools. With rare exceptions, 
 the schools are perfectly barren of every means of illustration, 
 except, indeed, the blackboard and crayon, and these are 
 frequently nothing of what they ought to be, and everything 
 that they ought not to be. The boards are both short and 
 narrow ; they are rough or glazed and greasy ; their surface is 
 soft and gummy, or worn with age ; they hang dangling from 
 nails with straps or strings ; the good name they bear is often 
 a misnomer ; and the crayon is yet too often a large, shapeless 
 lump of flinty chalk, and occasionally there is none even of 
 that. It is provided by statute that the school committee may 
 expend twenty-five per cent, of the town's share of the income of 
 the school fund for the purchase of appfjratus and books of refer- 
 ence. If this duty were faithfully discharged for three years, and 
 if the judicious use of such purchases were secured in the schools, 
 their efficiency would be increased full twenty-five per cent. 
 The bare mention of these several duties, and they are but a 
 part of what is required of the school-committee man, will serve 
 to show how largely the success of the schools depends upon 
 him, and the necessity of bestowing the office with pretty full 
 power upon one well qualified for the duties, and suitably com- 
 pensating and otherwise supporting him in their discharge. 
 
 From a misapprehension of the ends to be accomplished by 
 the schools, many persons are employed to teach who have 
 neither zeal nor fitness for their calling ; and even well-qualified 
 teachers are sometimes compelled to pursue traditional and often 
 irrational methods in the schools. In very many, the whole 
 time is spent in brief recitations of mere words, and where 
 something more is attempted than committing to memory mean- 
 ingless expressions, the facts learned are so disassociated as to 
 be of little or no use to the learner. The pages of arithmetics, 
 geographies and grammars are committed to memory, but the 
 knowledge of arithmetic, geography and grammar is not ac- 
 quired. This results from classifying the schools wholly upon 
 the pages passed over in the text-books, and frequently requires 
 half as many classes in a single branch as there are pupils, and 
 in all the branches recitations of eight or ten minutes throughout 
 
the day. Whereas, if the classification were made according to 
 the knowledge actually possessed by the pupils, or upon what 
 is really the proper basis, — the development of the mind, — the 
 classes might be reduced to a very small number, and the schools 
 be made to assist nature, in aid of which alone they can in 
 justice be maintained. 
 
 The aphorism, "Teach but one thing at a time," is quite too 
 literally applied in the schools generally ; thus, mental and writ- 
 ten arithmetic, as at present pursued, are distinct studies, and 
 not only require separate text-books, but the slate and pencil 
 are not allowed as an aid in the one, whilst the mental process 
 is equally ignored in the other. Now, the mental process and the 
 written expression are naturally associated, the latter being the 
 sign, the former the thing signified ; hence they should be taught 
 together, the one for the sake of the other. So in the study of 
 language ; reading, composition, and grammatical analysis, which 
 are mutually dependent, are frequently taught as independently 
 as if one were a branch of physics, one of metaphysics, the 
 other of mathematics. So, again, in the study of geography ; 
 it is a study of petty details, of particular rivers or mountains, 
 seldom of systems. A great element of beauty in this study 
 is the relations which exist in the difierent features of the earth, 
 as between river and mountain systems ; between towns and 
 river navigation or railroad routes ; between bays and harbors 
 and commercial cities ; between climates and peoples, soils and 
 industries ; between the directions and elevations of land, masses 
 and productions ; — without these relations the study of geogra- 
 phy is as empty of all mental aliment as the wind. By thus 
 clothing these skeleton forms of the school-room with their re- 
 lations of beauty, by thus associating things which have a nat- 
 ural dependence in the branches taught, they come to be a true 
 means of education. And, again, in learning to read ; if, instead 
 of being required to learn the alphabet, then to spell out in the 
 most painful manner the words of the reading lesson, the child 
 should be led to observe the parts and properties of objects, 
 then to make oral expressions of the thought excited, then to 
 write these expressions upon the slate or board, and finally to 
 read these written expressions, the slow and laborious process 
 of learning to read would become an incidental means of devel- 
 oping the powers of observation, memory and imagination, and 
 
8 
 
 the child would at once acquire the habit of expressing his 
 thoughts intelligently, orally and in writing. He would read 
 with expression, and learn the elementary sounds and letters of 
 the language with perfect ease ; and with proper objects as the 
 occasion for the exercise of his faculties, he would at the same 
 time become familiar with the elements of the natural sciences, 
 of grammatical analysis, of history, and of many other things. 
 In fine, to secure the best results in the schools as they are, the 
 needs are an enlightened public sentiment, a careful supervision, 
 and knowledge, skill and enthusiasm in the teachers. I esteem 
 it a privilege to have been permitted to labor for the promotion 
 of these means. 
 
 Having previously become pretty well acquainted with the 
 methods of teaching in the schools generally, I have thought it 
 advisable, for the past year, more frequently to assemble the 
 teachers and people for illustrative exercises. and addresses, even 
 if less of my time was spent in the schools. This seems to me 
 to be good policy for the future. 
 
 GEO. A. WALTON, 
 
 Agent for the Western Counties. 
 Westfield, January 1, 1875. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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