PriiLic SCHOOLS OF CHICAGO. 
 
 PRESIDENT'S REPORT. 
 
 REPRINTED FROM THE 
 
 FIFTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT 
 
 of ?Stiucatton 
 
 
 1869. 
 
WITH THE COMPLIMENTS 
 
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REPORT 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD. 
 
REPORT. 
 
 Gentlemen of the Board of Education: 
 
 ONLY ten years have elapsed since the President 
 of this Board first made a report of the progress 
 of the schools for the year then just past, and pre- 
 sented his suggestions for the work of the year to 
 come. 
 
 Meanwhile the city has enlarged in area from 
 fifteen square miles to thirty-eight, and increased 
 in population from fifty thousand to three hundred 
 thousand inhabitants. 
 
 Her schools were then thirteen in number, em- 
 ploying one hundred and one teachers, with an 
 average enrolment of 5,516 pupils. The present 
 year closes with thirty schools, employing four 
 hundred and seventy-nine teachers, with an aver- 
 age enrolment of 22,838 pupils. 
 
 At that time the total expenses of the schools 
 were $70,000, distributed as follows: Salaries of 
 teachers and superintendent, $43,000; incidentals, 
 $12,000; rent of buildings, $15,000. 
 
4 Public Schools. 
 
 The total expenses of the current year have 
 been $746,320, divided as follows: Salaries of 
 teachers and superintendent, $353,815; other cur- 
 rent expenses, $100,120; for permanent improve- 
 ments, $292,385. 
 
 To secure the most economical expenditure of 
 so large an amount of money, and to prevent 
 waste, requires the utmost care and scrutiny. It 
 should be a source of great gratification and thank- 
 fulness, that we are able to present to our con- 
 stituents a report in which exists so much that 
 is commendable, so little that is deserving of 
 censure. 
 
 We have added to our school accommodations 
 during the year 4,872 seats; by the erection of the 
 Clarke, Franklin, and Hayes houses, each 945 
 seats, and the Elm Street and Wentworth Avenue 
 Primaries, each 512 seats, together with 1,013 seats 
 in additional rented rooms; increasing our corps 
 of teachers 78. 
 
 We have also contracted for full sized buildings 
 upon the Forest Avenue and Larrabee Street lots, 
 and for twelve-room Primary buildings on the 
 LaSalle Street and Mitchell Street lots. These 
 will be ready for occupancy during the coming 
 school year. 
 
Report of the President. 5 
 
 There has been a wide spread misconception on 
 the part of the public in general, induced by the 
 erroneous representations of the Press, regarding 
 the policy of the Board in the erection of school 
 buildings. We have been accused of squandering 
 the public moneys in the erection of " Seventy 
 Thousand Dollar Palaces," in places where half 
 that sum would go just as far in furnishing seats 
 to the thousands of children now denied admission 
 to our schools for lack of room. The great diffi- 
 culty of procuring school sites of sufficient dimen- 
 sions, with clear titles, at judicious prices, in 
 thickly settled localities, and the requirements of 
 the rapidly growing sections upon our outskirts in 
 every direction, have prevented the Board from 
 fully developing its policy, and have given a show 
 of color to a charge which has no foundation in 
 fact. 
 
 While educators differ as to the exact number, 
 it is admitted by all, that economy of classification 
 and of means requires, in cities organized like 
 ours for school purposes, the concentration in 
 one school of not less than eight hundred pupils 
 of all grades, and many able teachers place the 
 minimum at a higher figure. In our schools we 
 place sixty-three pupils under the charge of each 
 teacher; a number so large as to be excusable only 
 
6 Public Schools. 
 
 by the pressing demands upon us for seats, and 
 greater than in any other large city in America. 
 
 In earlier years, when our school buildings were 
 built year by year, by the taxes directly raised for 
 the purpose, which were of necessity small, while 
 the needs of the rapidly growing city were large, 
 the Board was forced to erect such buildings as 
 would afford the greatest number of seats for the 
 least possible amount of money, and we have, as 
 the result, the cheap wooden structures now so 
 rapidly going to decay. Nor was this perhaps so 
 objectionable since the accommodations must be 
 furnished, and no authorities could have been 
 found willing to assess a direct tax sufficient to 
 provide more substantial buildings. The taxes 
 were light, and the buildings ephemeral, but the 
 people received what they paid for. 
 
 For the last few years the conditions have been 
 reversed. In the first report of President Holden 
 to this Board he said: 
 
 " We have school property, paid for by tax, 
 valued at eight hundred thousand dollars, and 
 while the city has borrowed money for many 
 public purposes, it has never borrowed for school 
 purposes. I see no good reason why those of 
 to-day should be over-taxed to purchase lots that 
 are to double and treble in value, and to erect 
 permanent buildings, to be used for the next 
 
Report of the President. 7 
 
 twenty to fifty years, while those who come after 
 us, more able to bear the burden than we of 
 to-day, are to enjoy them without cost." 
 
 At the next succeeding session of the Legis- 
 lature, largely through the determined efforts of 
 our late lamented member, Moses W. Leavitt, 
 authority was given the city to issue bonds for the 
 erection of school buildings and the purchase of 
 sites; and the line of policy indicated above has 
 been pursued sites have been purchased, and 
 buildings erected, with the proceeds of bonds, the 
 interest of which is payable semi-annually; but the 
 bonds themselves are not due for twenty years. 
 The people of to-day have been taxed to pay the 
 salaries of the teachers, and the other current 
 expenses of the schools, and the interest on the 
 bonds or, in other words, the current expenses 
 of the schools, and the rent of the buildings they 
 occupy. The people of the next generation will 
 pay for these buildings, and use them, when the 
 bonds mature. The increased value of the sites 
 will more than counterbalance the deterioration of 
 the buildings. 
 
 Shall we then erect temporary structures, which 
 will become worthless before the twenty years 
 shall roll away, or shall we so build that when our 
 successors pay the debt they will possess solid, 
 
8 Public Schools. 
 
 substantial buildings, worth, with the sites, more 
 than they will then have cost ? What opinion 
 would they have of our fitness for the positions we 
 hold if we were to hesitate for a moment as to the 
 policy to be pursued? Assuming that the question 
 admits of but one answer, let us turn to the question 
 of present economy. 
 
 The general policy of the Board is to erect in 
 each district, as near the centre as possible, a large 
 building, to accommodate one thousand pupils, as 
 a nucleus, and then to concentrate around it, in 
 different parts of the district, Primary buildings as 
 feeders to it. The recent extensive additions to 
 our territory have obliged us to lay out an unusual 
 number of new districts, and thus the larger build- 
 ings have numbered nearly as many as the smaller, 
 instead of being in the ratio of one to four or five, 
 as will be the case now that this demand has been 
 met. But admitting that no such exigency had 
 existed, and the Board had built only the larger 
 buildings, even then, though we might have been 
 liable to censure for creating large districts, and 
 requiring pupils to travel long distances, a charge 
 of extravagance would not hold. 
 
Report of the President. 9 
 
 For such a building, on the most modern plan, 
 would be three stories high, and would cost, at 
 present prices, complete, heated with the most 
 approved steam apparatus, - *$6o,ooo 
 
 The average price of our school lots where 
 
 such a building is needed, is - 20,000 
 
 Total cost for one thousand pupils, $80,000 
 Or, if heated with furnaces, - 75,000 
 
 A substantial brick building, of the plainest 
 style, built to accommodate five hundred pupils, 
 will cost, at present prices, furnished complete, 
 and heated with furnaces, about - - $25,000 
 The same lot upon which we should put 
 the larger building will be required for 
 the smaller, say, - 20,000 
 
 Total cost for five hundred pupils, - $45,000 
 
 * The Clarke and Franklin school buildings, completed during the 
 present year, were considerably more expensive than this, though not 
 enough to make the larger building cost more than double that of two 
 smaller ones. But prices were relatively much higher when the con- 
 tracts for these buildings were let than now, and there were some 
 special circumstances attending their erection which largely increased 
 their cost. The Franklin had large extras, caused by changes in the 
 plan, and was also faced with expensive brick. The natural surface 
 of the prairie at the Clarke School is six feet below the street grade, 
 which necessitated twelve feet of solid masonry below the first floor. 
 Again the cost was considerably increased by the inaccessibility of its 
 situation. 
 
 The two buildings now being erected will not reach my estimate. 
 
io Public Schools. 
 
 * 
 
 So that the larger buildings are absolutely more 
 economical by from \2\ to 20 per cent, depend- 
 ing upon the manner of heating them, than the 
 two smaller ones required to furnish the same 
 amount of accommodation. Instead of the charge 
 of lavish expenditure being true, the very reverse 
 is the case, and there is no city in the Union where 
 school buildings have been constructed with the 
 same regard for economy as in Chicago. 
 
 The Wells Grammar School house, the last 
 Boston building, cost upwards of $80,000, and 
 accommodates but about 500 pupils. The Massa- 
 chusetts Teacher reports Mr. Philbrick as stating 
 that over a million of dollars will be expended 
 upon school buildings in that city during the 
 current year, and that equally serviceable build- 
 ings could be erected for half the price, if the 
 costly pressed brick, of which they will be built, 
 were dispensed with, and only simple or rustic 
 ornaments used. The Thayer Street School house, 
 erected last year in Providence, cost the city 
 $120,000, and will seat only 600 pupils, while in 
 convenience of its interior it is far behind any 
 of our houses built during the last two years. 
 Another, now building in the same city, is ex- 
 pected to exceed the former in cost, and will 
 accommodate the same number of pupils. 
 
 While in other cities the effort has been to 
 
Report of the President. 1 1 
 
 adapt the school buildings to their surroundings, 
 and to produce artistic and ornate structures, fre- 
 quently regardless of expense, we have rigidly 
 required of our architects the severest stiffness of 
 outline, and have tolerated no expense not abso- 
 lutely necessary to furnish the required arrange- 
 ment of the interior. 
 
 Our studied plan has been to produce buildings 
 with conveniently arranged interiors, and we have 
 paid no attention to external architectural effect. 
 So far as arrangement is concerned there is but 
 one serious defect we have not a single house 
 which contains a hall sufficiently large to seat, at 
 one time, every child in the school. 
 
 In the Dearborn, Jones, and Kinzie Districts our 
 public school system has lost and is continuing to 
 lose favor with the better class of citizens, on 
 account of the long continued failure of this Board 
 to provide decent and respectable school accom- 
 modations. Ten years ago the President in his 
 report, referred to these as " very unsuitable for 
 school purposes now, and daily becoming more 
 so," and his successors have repeatedly urged the 
 necessity of immediate action. 
 
 The following table, showing the number of 
 pupils attending these schools from the east and 
 the west of Dearborn Street, respectively, is the 
 
12 Public Schools. 
 
 strongest argument I can advance in favor of a 
 better class of buildings therein: 
 
 East of "West of 
 Dearborn. Dearborn. 
 
 Kinzie School, - 100 1,032 
 
 Dearborn School, no 520 
 
 Jones School, - 328 764 
 
 53 8 
 
 The patrons of these schools may be divided 
 into two very unequal classes: those who, from 
 lack of means, are compelled to send to them or 
 keep their children at home, and the few who, 
 at great sacrifice, support them from a desire to 
 sustain the system. No portions of the city are 
 more heavily taxed than these; no portions have 
 such an utter lack of accommodations. In our 
 suburbs, for those who bought lots there because 
 they were cheap, and who, with the cheap homes, 
 were willing also for a time to be deprived of 
 water, gas, pavements, and sewers, and to be con- 
 tent with moderate school privileges, we have 
 furnished school accommodations unsurpassed in 
 any city in America, while in the heavily taxed 
 central districts, those who have helped to pro- 
 vide the accommodations of the suburbs, have 
 been forced to send their own children to private 
 schools, because they dared not risk their health 
 
Report of the President. 13 
 
 in the wretched barracks we still, in these dis- 
 tricts, call school-houses. 
 
 The reason the Boston public schools stand 
 so high in the estimation of her own citizens is 
 that every class of the community has patron- 
 ized them generation after generation. Said the 
 Rev. James Freeman Clarke, in his speech at the 
 Annual School Festival in July last: 
 
 " I thank God for the public schools of Boston, 
 'of Massachusetts, of New England, and of the 
 United States. The only school I ever went to in 
 my life was one of Boston's public schools, the 
 public Latin School. My father went to it before 
 me, and my grandfather before him. Therefore 
 I ought to be thankful for the public schools." 
 
 To make our own schools thus successful we 
 must make them thus popular, and to make them 
 thus popular they must approximate in their appur- 
 tenances and their surroundings to those of the 
 homes of the best classes who, under the most 
 favorable circumstances would patronize them. 
 They have risen considerably in the popular esti- 
 mation during these ten years, as is evident by a 
 comparison of the relative attendance then and 
 now, with that of the private schools, viz.: 
 
14 Public Schools. 
 
 1859. 1869. 
 Total number of pupils in private 
 
 schools, - 45675 18,000 
 
 Average number in the public 
 
 schools, - SjS 1 ^ 22,838 
 
 [The gain is in reality more positive than the figures show, since 
 of the 18,000 noted in private schools in 1869 only about 4,000 are 
 attending Academies and Select Schools, while the remainder are 
 in the various Parochial Schools.] 
 
 Our city, from its location, is liable to sudden 
 and rapid changes of the weather, and to severe 
 storms. Many of our school districts cover a wide 
 area, and the pupils are of necessity exposed to 
 the full severity of our most rigorous climate. It 
 frequently happens that a pleasant morning is 
 succeeded by a stormy afternoon, and that the 
 attire which was ample when the pupils left their 
 homes is most insufficient at the time they should 
 return. It has been the practice in some of our 
 schools, on such occasions, to omit the noon inter- 
 mission, and to close the afternoon session corres- 
 pondingly earlier. This course has not only pre- 
 vented undue exposure of health, but has kept the 
 attendance more uniform, since many pupils, when 
 required to go home through the storm at noon, 
 were absent in the afternoon. There has, how- 
 ever, been no concerted action in this direction, 
 and the practice has not been uniform, for since 
 no two Principals would exactly agree as to what 
 
Report of the President. 15 
 
 degree of inclemency of weather would justify a 
 single session, it has sometimes happened that 
 schools in less exposed situations have been dis- 
 missed, while others, more exposed, have held 
 their regular course. In another city the Superin- 
 tendent communicates by means of the fire alarm 
 telegraph, an order to the several Masters to dis- 
 miss their schools whenever, in his judgment, the 
 occasion justifies it. Such an arrangement could 
 be adopted by us at a very slight expense, for 
 most of our buildings are already crossed by the 
 wires, and only the simple means of giving an 
 alarm would be required. I believe that the 
 saving in medical fees in a single season, to say 
 nothing of the discomfort of sickness, or the risk 
 of life from exposure, would more than equal the 
 cost of the very moderate amount of additional 
 apparatus required. 
 
 Of perhaps equal service, and involving no 
 expense, would be an arrangement by which, 
 through the various fire-alarm bells in the different 
 sections of the city, the Superintendent might also 
 give notice, on stormy mornings, that there would 
 be no session of any of the schools, and prevent 
 the pupils from venturing forth at all. 
 
 We ought, during the coming winter, to pur- 
 chase several school lots in each Division of the 
 
1 6 Public Schools. 
 
 city, even though we may have no immediate 
 necessity, nor intention, of building upon them. 
 The price may not as rapidly advance during the 
 next few years as it has for the past, but year 
 by year property is becoming more and more 
 sub-divided and we are more often obliged to 
 treat with several owners, which has the effect 
 of materially increasing the price. This has 
 been our invariable experience, and we have 
 sometimes been obliged to abandon wholly the 
 site we had selected, and to purchase one less 
 desirable, because we were unwilling to pay the 
 extravagant prices which the several owners, 
 after consulting with each other, have placed upon 
 their property. 
 
 As compared with private purchases, the city is 
 always at a disadvantage, for in a very brief time 
 after it is known we desire to purchase a school 
 site, property in that locality invariably increases 
 in value, in the estimation of the owners, from 
 twenty-five to fifty per cent. Hundreds of thous- 
 ands of dollars would be saved to our people dur- 
 ing the next ten years, and more desirable locations 
 would be secured, if the Common Council pos- 
 sessed the power to condemn property for school 
 purposes, and pay its appraised value. Did this 
 power exist no very long time would elapse before 
 we should reach a conclusion of the vexed ques- 
 
Report of the President. 17 
 
 tion of the Dearborn and Kinzie districts, more to 
 our own satisfaction, and at less cost than from 
 present indications is likely to be the case. 
 
 The question of a new High School building 
 still remains unsettled, and we should during this 
 year take some definite action thereon. Refer- 
 ing to this subject the Superintendent, in his report 
 for last year, said : 
 
 u With the increase of our Grammar Schools, 
 the deficiency in accommodations must be more 
 pressing, and over-crowding of our High School 
 must result in turning away into other schools 
 many young men and women who would other- 
 wise complete their course with us. Such losses 
 must diminish popular favor. 
 
 " The necessity for rebuilding is enforced by the 
 location of the building. Pupils from the North 
 and South Divisions of the city must take two 
 lines of cars, and those from the North Division 
 must cross two bridges. Were the school located 
 in the South Division, near the termini of the 
 several street railways, all divisions of the city 
 would be about equally accommodated, both in 
 matters of distance and expense. 
 
 " As we have no Hall large enough in which to 
 gather all our teachers, we lose the great benefits 
 flowing from a general Institute 5 and thus all our 
 
1 8 Public Schools. 
 
 schools suffer to a greater or less extent. Even 
 for the meeting of the Institute in sections, the 
 present rooms are insufficient. 
 
 " The importance of another more commodious 
 building, and one more conveniently located, can 
 not be over-estimated. The present building will 
 not be left useless; it is now needed for Grammar 
 School purposes, and could be turned to good 
 account in the Scammon District, where more 
 than 400 children are crowded into uncomfortable 
 rented buildings." 
 
 In arranging a public school Course of Instruc- 
 tion, due regard must be paid to the requirements 
 of each of the two great classes into which our 
 pupils divide: those who are intended for the pro- 
 fessions, and who, therefore, require the ground- 
 work of a collegiate education; and those who, 
 from various causes, never get beyond the Gram- 
 mar School, and who, before finally crossing its 
 threshold, must receive all that the Public can 
 provide for its children in preparing them for the 
 sterner work of life. 
 
 The former are sufficiently well provided for in 
 our Course as at present arranged. 
 
 An attempt has been made to reach the neces- 
 sities of the latter, in the formation of the so-called 
 High School classes at the recent examinations. 
 
Report of the President. 19 
 
 To fully meet the reasonable expectations of those 
 who will patronize these schools, we shall, I think, 
 find it advisable to enlarge the Course of Study, 
 making several studies optional, but covering as 
 much of the rudiments of practical mathematics, 
 chemistry, mechanics, and natural history as can 
 be judiciously included in the Course. Of the 
 two, it is of far more importance that the Course 
 of Study of these schools should be broad and 
 generous than that of the High School proper, 
 since these will serve the many, that the few. 
 Out of seventeen thousand children attending the 
 Boston Grammar Schools last year, only five hun- 
 dred were graduated. We admitted to our High 
 School last year 242, of whom only 199 entered 
 the school, and our graduating class of this year 
 numbered but 85, of the 197 pupils of which it 
 was originally composed. 
 
 It will be well, also, as soon as practicable, to 
 furnish separate accommodations for these classes, 
 not only for their own benefit and convenience, 
 but for that of the schools in which they at 
 present hold their sessions. 
 
 I commend also to your attention the question 
 of the advisability of giving instruction in sewing, 
 through the primary grades, by the regular teachers 
 of these grades. It is not a matter of experiment, 
 
2O Public Schools. 
 
 for it has been tried with marked success in New 
 York, Philadelphia, Boston, Providence, and other 
 cities. Besides affording a knowledge of a most 
 necessary art to thousands of children who other- 
 wise would never obtain it, the introduction of 
 sewing would be a most delightful interruption of 
 the ordinary routine of study. 
 
 By recent action of the Board, drawing has been 
 introduced into the six higher grades of our 
 schools. It will be found, I believe, a most satis- 
 factory experiment, and, as thoroughly in accord- 
 ance with the demands of this most practical gene- 
 ration, will become an established portion of our 
 course. I quote from the report of another city 
 on this subject: 
 
 " While we rejoice at the proficiency which has 
 been acquired in music, we think that drawing is 
 worthy of far more attention than is now given to 
 it, not as an ornamental branch of education, but 
 as a most desirable discipline both for the eye and 
 the hand, essential to the best culture of the per- 
 ceptive faculty, identified with habits of pure 
 taste, and in many respects of the greatest practical 
 advantage, not only at the time of youthful study, 
 but through the whole of the maturer life. There 
 is hardly an artisan 'who ivould not be a better 
 workman if he kneiv hoiv to handle a pencil ' ; 
 
Report of the President. 21 
 
 and neither a merchant nor a professional man 
 would be less qualified for his duties, if he knew 
 how to draw a plan or sketch a landscape." 
 
 " If we go back into the earlier days of classical 
 antiquity, we find there the value of such instruc- 
 tion recognized. Pamphilus, the Macedonian, a 
 proficient in the higher branches of learning, 
 introduced the rule that drawing should be taught 
 to children through all the schools of Greece. In 
 our own time, Prussia, with a population of fifteen 
 millions, teaches drawing in all her schools." 
 
 More than twenty years ago, Mr. Mann, on his 
 return from Europe, said: "Almost every pupil, 
 in every school, could draw with ease, and most 
 of them with no inconsiderable degree of beauty 
 and expression." As a qualification on the part of 
 teachers, he adds: "I never saw a teacher in a 
 German school make use of a ruler, or any other 
 mechanical aid, in drawing the most nice and com- 
 plicated figures. I recollect no instance in which 
 he was obliged to efface a part of a line because 
 it was too long." All who have witnessed 
 the rapidity and playful ease with which Agassiz 
 illustrates his teachings upon the blackboard, 
 and the delight of his audience as, with a dash 
 of the chalk, some antediluvian inhabitant starts 
 again into life, will readily understand the advan- 
 tage of a skillful use of the pencil to the teacher. 
 
22 Public Schools. 
 
 This study teaches the pupil to observe and 
 analyze the forms of things, and also to cultivate 
 the taste. It opens the eye to nature. It is in 
 itself a language. It becomes to its possessor 
 forever a pleasant resource, and its pursuit is, in 
 nearly all cases, so delightful as to be a joy rather 
 than a task. 
 
 If there is any one branch of instruction, in 
 which the public schools of the city of Boston 
 stand pre-eminently superior to those of any other 
 city, it is that of vocal culture. One needs but to 
 see and hear to be convinced of this fact. For 
 clear and distinct articulation, for accuracy of 
 expression, for uniformity of power of voice in 
 classes naturally widely varying, her pupils chal- 
 lenge the world. This result has been attained 
 by a course of training covering several years, and 
 identical with that introduced into our own schools 
 this year, under the direction of Miss Perkins. 
 The schools in which she has taught bear marked 
 testimony of the efficiency of her work. I trust 
 we may not be content to allow this good work to 
 stop here, but that, at an early da) 7 , we may have 
 one teacher in each Division of the city, assigned 
 to this special service, and all at work on this 
 plan. 
 
Report of the President. 23 
 
 During: the two months of the summer vacation 
 
 O 
 
 there is a large class of children who, from various 
 causes, remain in town, and who are most of the 
 time to be found upon the street, subject to all its 
 demoralizing influences. The pupil who has 
 steadily attended school for ten months of the year 
 needs this two months vacation, and ought not to 
 be allowed to tax his brain further; but the class 
 of children to which I refer are not noted for close 
 attention to study, nor for regular attendance at 
 school, and I wish it might appear feasible to devise, 
 for their benefit, some system of unclassified Vaca- 
 tion Schools, very like an ordinary Summer country 
 school, taught by other than our regular teachers, 
 in much the same localities, and under much the 
 same rules as our Evening Schools. 
 
 In the Annual Report for 1867, the Superin- 
 tendent urged upon the Board the appointment of 
 Sub-Masters in our larger Grammar Schools. The 
 matter was referred to a special committee, of 
 which I was a member. The committee, after 
 having had the matter under advisement, made a 
 report, recommending the appointment of such 
 teachers in certain schools, at a salary somewhat 
 higher than that of our Head Assistants. Among 
 
 O O 
 
 the considerations, which led them to make this 
 recommendation, were the following: 
 3 
 
24 Public Schools. 
 
 first. A very large portion of the time of 
 the Principals must of necessity be devoted to the 
 supervision of the various schools under their care. 
 With a very few exceptions, each of our District 
 Schools now numbers nearly or quite 1,000 pupils, 
 several have from 1,300 to 1,600 pupils each. To 
 conduct the requisite examinations for promotion 
 from grade to grade, to keep a watchful oversight 
 of the discipline and instruction of each teacher, 
 and to give the requisite time to parents and 
 visitors, leave the Principal but little time for the 
 work of teaching. As a result of this, all the 
 teaching is done by ladies. Excellent as this is, it 
 can not be denied that pupils should not leave our 
 Grammar Schools without feeling the influence of 
 a thorough male teacher. 
 
 Secondly. During the occasional absence of 
 the Principal, there is often need of a male assist- 
 ant, who shall take his place, and do the work that 
 can not conveniently be done by lady assistants; 
 and during the presence of the Principal there is 
 need of assistance upon the play-grounds and 
 about the school premises that should not be 
 required of lady teachers. 
 
 Thirdly. The rapid growth of our city requires 
 a rapid increase of school accommodations. How 
 best to supply the new schools with Principals is 
 a serious question with the Board. Had we Vice- 
 
Report of the President. 25 
 
 Principals in our schools, selections could easily 
 be made, and those who would then take charge 
 of new schools would enter upon their work with 
 a pretty thorough acquaintance with the require- 
 ments' of our school system. The Vice-Principal- 
 ship would serve as a training school for the 
 Principalship, and through this course of training 
 new applicants would naturally expect to pass. 
 
 The Superintendent, in his report of last year, 
 again alludes to the subject, and gives the follow- 
 ing additional weighty reasons for the adoption ,of 
 this plan: 
 
 " As is shown elsewhere, we are in great need 
 of school houses to accommodate the thousands 
 who can not find seats in school-rooms already 
 erected. The argument that, until our wants in 
 this direction are supplied, we should not increase 
 expenditures beyond absolute necessities in other 
 directions, is plausible. Our first duty is to supply 
 the uneducated children, now excluded from school 
 by reason of insufficient school accommodations, 
 with educational facilities. Every child of school 
 age in the city should have a seat in some com- 
 fortable school-room. It is a great wrong that 
 any are excluded. The rapid growth of the city 
 requires large expenditures that we may keep pace 
 with the demands. No person can feel more 
 deeply than I do, the absolute necessity for more 
 
26 Public Schools. 
 
 buildings simple, tasteful, and convenient build- 
 ings, especially for smaller children located at 
 suitable distances from each other, and around our' 
 Grammar School buildings, which do not need to 
 be very largely increased in numbers at present. 
 It is the policy of the Board, and a wise policy, I 
 think, to increase the number of Primary Schools 
 like those already erected, and to build larger 
 buildings only in those parts of the city which, by 
 reason of very rapid recent growth, are not prop- 
 erly supplied with Grammar School privileges. 
 
 " This necessity, universally recognized, creates, 
 as it appears to me, the necessity for the employ- 
 ment of Sub-Masters. With present plans carried 
 out, the work of our Principals would be largely 
 increased. Added to the immediate care of their 
 own schools, must come the supervision of one or 
 more Primary schools each, that in the end con- 
 tribute to the Grammar departments of the several 
 schools. Some such supervision is essential to the 
 unity and success of the system. This admitted, 
 it will be seen that more time must be given the 
 Principal for supervisory work, and by so much 
 will his time for instruction be diminished. Either 
 we must lose the influence of the male mind over 
 the higher classes of our Grammar schools, or 
 additional male help must be employed. I do not 
 depreciate the female teacher's work, when I ask 
 
Report of the President. 27 
 
 that the male teacher supplement it, any more 
 than I depreciate man's work, when I say that it is 
 imperfect without woman's aid. My son needs the 
 influence of the female teacher, as my daughter 
 needs that of the male teacher. 
 
 " I have said that our first duty is to make full 
 provision for the accommodation of the many who 
 are crowded out of our schools;, but do we owe 
 nothing to those thousands that are received ? Is 
 not our duty to those in school at least equal to 
 what we owe those without? If the good of the 
 schools demands it, is it wise to refuse a slight 
 additional expenditure which would undoubtedly 
 lead to the adoption of a policy which will prove a 
 saving in expense? I do not favor decrease of 
 expenditures if thereby is to come decrease of effi- 
 ciency. It is not what schools cost, but what they 
 are worth to the people, that should form our basis 
 of action. And I dismiss the subject with referring 
 to the report of the Special Committee above given, 
 as embodying the strongest reasons for adopting 
 the policy recommended, and by saying that I do 
 not believe we can extend our Primary District 
 System without injury, unless male help be given 
 our Principals." 
 
 For reasons growing out of the state of our 
 finances, no definite action was taken upon this 
 
28 Public Schools. 
 
 matter. But it seems to me that the financial 
 argument is as strong as any other in its favor. 
 For no matter what has been the previous expe- 
 rience of those whom we have put in charge of 
 our schools as Principals, the greater part of the 
 first term has invariably elapsed before the new 
 man has become acquainted with his duties, and 
 the characteristics and requirements of our system. 
 If we were to appoint Sub-Principals in our 
 schools numbering one thousand pupils, we should 
 then have a few male teachers occupying this sub- 
 ordinate position for a short time, and prepared at 
 any moment for advancement to Principalship on 
 a vacancy occurring, and with scarcely the proba- 
 bility of any friction, especially if, as might easily 
 be arranged, the new Principal were to have a few 
 weeks' experience under the one whom he was 
 appointed to succeed. Such a policy would in- 
 crease our expenses less than one-quarter of one per 
 cent; what it would save, those of you who, since 
 your connection with the Board, have given the 
 matter of the appointment of teachers much atten- 
 tion, do not need to be told. 
 
 I have a deep interest also in the establishment 
 of a Public School Library, with its Reading- 
 Rooms, Art Galleries, Cabinets of Natural History, 
 and system of Public Lectures. In St. Louis, 
 
Report of the President. 29 
 
 under the management of the late City Superin- 
 tendent, Hon. Ira Divoll, a remarkable success has 
 been achieved. During the first year, the Asso- " 
 ciation acquired a membership of over eighteen 
 hundred persons, with about ten thousand volumes, 
 and a circulation of over thirty thousand volumes, 
 the issues sometimes amounting to five hundred 
 volumes per day. It receives no support from 
 any public fund, but has been built up solely by 
 membership fees, small donations, the proceeds 
 of lectures, etc. It enjoys a steadily-increasing 
 patronage, and its influence in elevating the 
 standard and widening the scope of popular edu- 
 cation is admitted on all hands. 
 
 No one question in connection with school 
 management has been so often brought to our 
 attention in one form or another during the past 
 year or two as the abolition of corporal punish- 
 ment. Repeated and persistent efforts have been 
 made for its prohibition by standing rule of this 
 Board. Through the press, a few injudicious 
 teachers have been held up to the people as a 
 type of all, and their few unfortunate mistakes in 
 discipline, warped and magnified beyond all sem- 
 blance of truth, have been made to appear to be 
 characteristic of the whole, till there is danger that 
 the sound common sense and discreet judgment of 
 
30 Public Schools. 
 
 the community may be so distorted as to induce it 
 to make demands which, if yielded to, must work 
 incalculable and lasting injury to our schools. 
 
 This agitation has not been confined to our own 
 locality. In support of the conclusion to which 
 this Board has always arrived, as well as showing 
 the extraordinary unity of opinion which prevails 
 on this subject among those who should be best 
 qualified to decide the question, I invite your atten- 
 tion to the following extracts from the reports of 
 the various school committees and school officers 
 in different parts of the country, who have had 
 the matter under discussion sufficiently to give it a , 
 place in their reports: 
 
 " Corporal punishment is more infrequent than 
 in former times, and is generally becoming less 
 and less a means of enforcing discipline j other 
 and milder corrections are used." St. Louis 
 Report. 
 
 " While its recognition as an ultimate practical 
 necessity may for a time be deemed expedient, 
 its exercise in any case not absolutely demanding 
 such a resort will be strongly discountenanced by 
 the Board and by this Department." New York 
 Report. 
 
 " A willful persistence in wrong doing must be 
 met with proper punishment. When society shall 
 have become so far perfected in knowledge, virtue 
 
Report of the President. 31 
 
 and religion as to warrant the annulling of its 
 penal code, then, and not until then, will it be safe 
 to ignore the idea of corporal punishment in the 
 family and school." Brooklyn Committee. 
 
 " It is satisfactory to know that throughout the 
 schools of the State, the infliction of corporal 
 punishment is the exception and not the general 
 rule, and that it is the study of intelligent teachers 
 to reduce it to the lowest possible minimum. 
 Many schools, indeed, are governed for months 
 in succession without any resort to such punish- 
 ment; but this is only rendered possible by the 
 reserved right of the teacher to inflict it if 
 necessary" California Report. 
 
 " A school that is not well and wisely governed 
 soon becomes a nuisance instead of a blessing. 
 One of the first lessons, as well as the last, to be 
 impressively taught is obedience to law, and 
 respect for authority. All other teaching, without 
 this, is of little worth; and authority without 
 power to enforce its behest, and law without 
 adequate penalties, are the merest nullities. 
 
 " In an age like the present, it is especially im- 
 portant that the foundations of truth and virtue be 
 laid in early youth, and that the materials be of 
 the firmest and most substantial nature. Under 
 the ever revered name of liberty, there is now 
 sought an unlimited freedom for every one to act 
 
32 Public Schools. 
 
 as he pleases, without let or hindrance. This 
 lawless spirit derives great encouragement and 
 support from a kind of morbid sentimentalism or 
 mistaken misanthropy, that would soften and miti- 
 gate all human penalties that they would cease 
 to be a terror to evil doers. The fruits of these 
 Utopian vagaries are already manifest in the rapid 
 increase of crime, and in the recklessness with 
 which all moral obligations are violated. 
 
 " If our schools are to be preserved in their 
 highest efficiency, they must be kept in the most 
 perfect discipline. To direct and control the 
 hearts and minds of the young, to secure prompt 
 and cheerful obedience to every just command, 
 by the noblest and most elevated motives, is one 
 of the rarest and most valued gifts. And when 
 this can not be accomplished by moral force 
 alone, other agencies should be em-ployed. The 
 main objection to the infliction of bodily pain, 
 under any circumstances, grows out of the fact 
 that the authority to do this has sometimes been 
 abused. This is also true of the most valued gifts 
 and blessings ever conferred on man. There is 
 not one that has not been perverted from its 
 original design. 
 
 " One of the most obvious and inevitable results 
 of taking away this power from teachers would be 
 to largely increase the numbers of idlers and 
 
Report of the President. 33 
 
 vagrants that now roam our streets. It would be 
 virtually offering a premium for disobedience. 
 There is many a wayward youth now kept in 
 submission principally by fear of the rod. If this 
 were taken away they would resist the teacher's 
 authority, for the express purpose of being sent 
 out where they might range at large without 
 check or control." Providence Report. 
 
 "A resort to measures of severity sometimes 
 becomes absolutely necessary, and though corporal 
 punishment should be adopted only when other 
 means have been persistently tried and have failed, 
 yet when, in the deliberate judgment of the 
 teacher, it is deemed necessary, there should be 
 no shrinking from the duty, however painful it 
 may be. And when the punishment is properly 
 administered from right motives, and from a good 
 end, it is fully recognized by the law of the land, 
 as well as by the higher law, as a legitimate and 
 justifiable mode of discipline, the teacher being 
 for the time in loco parentis, and having, in this 
 respect, the same powers and responsibilities as 
 parents. 
 
 " In our opinion, the right and the power so to 
 punish should still be vested in the teacher, to 
 be exercised when they deem it absolutely neces- 
 sary for the good discipline of their schools. Then 
 the mere consciousness on the part of the teacher 
 
34 Public Schools. 
 
 that he is possessed of this power, and the knowl- 
 edge on the part of the pupils that it is so possessed 
 and may be exercised, will, in a large proportion 
 of cases, answer every purpose, without the actual 
 application of it. An abuse of this power seldom 
 occurs in our schools, much less frequently, we 
 believe, than in the family discipline to which 
 the pupils are subject at home. 
 
 "It is sometimes urged that exclusion from 
 school of disorderly pupils may be adopted as a 
 substitute for corporal punishment. We believe 
 the substitute proposed can not be legally adopted 
 as a rule, and that so long as corporal punishment 
 is recognized by law, and sanctioned by the civil 
 courts as legal and proper, it is questionable 
 whether a committee would be justified in resort- 
 ing to this extreme measure of depriving children 
 of the advantages of education until, as the only 
 remaining means and hope of reform within the 
 school, this, by corporal punishment, had also first 
 been tried and proved a failure. 
 
 "Other substitutes are sometimes adopted, which 
 are vastly more mischievous in their effects than 
 any of the ordinary corporal chastisements that are 
 inflicted. Of these are morose and repulsive looks 
 and treatment, habitual petulance and scolding, 
 and above all, the holding up of pupils before the 
 school as objects of ridicule and sarcasm. All 
 
Repot t of the President. 35 
 
 these modes of discipline, by frequent repetition, 
 defeat their own purpose, while their tendency 
 is to inflict a lasting injury upon the characters 
 and tempers of the children, with a corresponding 
 reaction upon the teachers themselves." Spring- 
 field (Mass?) Committee. 
 
 " In recommending that the Board continue in 
 the future, as in the past, to justify the occasional 
 and judicious use of corporal punishment in its 
 schools, duty "demands that we should give our 
 reasons for the course we recommend. 
 
 " Recognizing corporal punishment as abstractly 
 an evil, we have earnestly desired that it might 
 with consistency and safety be abolished; but 
 we have reluctantly been forced to the decision 
 that the greatest good to the greatest number 
 demands that the Board should continue to author- 
 ize the exercise of it, under proper restrictions, 
 when necessary to enforce obedience and to main- 
 tain discipline. If we abolish corporal punishment 
 entirely from our schools, we take from our teach- 
 ers the power to enforce obedience. They may 
 counsel and reason, beseech and implore; they 
 may employ every minor penalty; but when these 
 have failed, there is no power to command obedi- 
 ence, or to justify the broken law when it is defied, 
 and make it respected by the offender, and honor- 
 able in the estimation of the school. 
 
36 Public Schools. 
 
 " Coming, as the pupils do, from widely different 
 home influences, with various tempers and disposi- 
 tions, it is essential that the teacher should use 
 those means to govern each child which a careful 
 study of its character has led him to believe to be 
 best. To do this successfully it is necessary to 
 leave all proper and legal means of restraint and 
 government to the discretion of the instructor. If 
 he unfortunately fail in government, or exceed 
 either his rights or his duty, that is the weakness 
 of the individual, and not of a system of disci- 
 pline^ 'which, under jtidicious and qualified 
 instructors has been, and 'would be., perfectly suc- 
 cessful. 
 
 " The purpose of the State in assuming the 
 charge of the education of its children, is that they 
 may all be so trained as to become good and useful 
 citizens. The first duty of a good citizen is to 
 yield cheerful obedience to the powers that be. 
 If a boy is persistently profane, vicious or untruth- 
 ful, is a teacher doing his duty who does not use 
 every instrumentality which the law justifies, to 
 command obedience and break up wicked and 
 degrading practices? Corporal punishment is one 
 of these instrumentalities, sanctioned by the best 
 authorities, and justified by the decisions of the 
 courts. If we withhold from teachers this last 
 resort, just and legal as it is, we not only require 
 
Report of the President. 37 
 
 them to do what we deny them the most efficient 
 means of doing in extreme cases, and compel them 
 ' to make bricks without straw,' but we practically 
 say to the bad pupils, ' Go on in your violation of 
 the regulations, in your wicked practices, we do not 
 choose to have the proper, legal and necessary 
 means used to prevent such conduct, and to deter 
 you from becoming immoral men and unworthy 
 citizens.' 
 
 "// is -patent to the experience of all familiar 
 with ottr schools, that the simple fact that pupils 
 know that this power can be exercised, very 
 largely prevents the necessity of punishment. 
 The wholesome fear of the law and its penalties 
 keeps in restraint a certain class in every com- 
 munity who have not sufficient principle to govern 
 themselves. This influence is as necessary in the 
 school-room as elsewhere, not only as a check 
 upon the positively bad, but upon that large class 
 who, in the formation of character, need something 
 more than the teacher's personal influence to 
 restrain them from acts of impropriety and dis- 
 obedience. In this respect the influence of corpo- 
 ral punishment is only good, and its benefits are so 
 salutary that they far overbalance any evil effects 
 which may sometimes arise from its improper use 
 by indiscreet, unworthy and incompetent teachers. 
 
 "The alternative which is presented is this: 
 
38 Public Schools. 
 
 either to retain the pupil in school, with the fear- 
 ful effect of his influence, as one who has obtained 
 a complete victory over law and right, associated 
 with the daily miasma of his unchecked evil 
 practices, or to expel him from school, and send 
 him into the streets to grow up in ignorance and 
 vice. It would be most dangerous to the public 
 welfare, as well as that of the unruly pupil, if, 
 just at the time when he had started on the wrong 
 course, and most needed all the restraining and 
 reclaiming influences which could be thrown 
 around him, he should be left, in defiance of 
 authority and right, to take a course dictated only 
 by inexperienced and perverse judgment, when, 
 under a firm, steady hand, knowing that he must 
 yield or be punished, he might be saved from 
 growing up a pest of society. Yet this is unques- 
 tionably the only way which is open to the Board 
 if corporal punishment is abolished. There would 
 be, however, in the practical operation of such a 
 plan, results so startling that the Board may well 
 pause before them, and ask if any evils -which 
 have existed in the past, or may exist in the 
 future, can bear any comparison 'with those 
 which crowd around the adoption of such a 
 measure. 
 
 " If others are so thoughtless or so shortsighted 
 as to allow resentment or indignation to originate 
 
Report of the President. 39 
 
 principles of action, and to claim, because the right 
 to use corporal punishment is sometimes abused by 
 unworthy teachers, it can have no advantages and 
 should be abolished, it is most certainly the duty 
 of this Board, standing as the independent arbitra- 
 tor of all interests, not hastily and inconsiderately 
 to jump at the same conclusion, but to move 
 judiciously and cautiously, coming to this decision 
 only when it shall have become convinced that the 
 use of corporal punishment cannot be separated 
 from its abuse, so as to make it clear that the 
 benefits of the former decidedly outweigh the evils 
 resulting from the latter. 
 
 " If corporal punishment were prohibited, that 
 prohibition would be no more restraint upon an 
 unsuitable person than exists under the present 
 rule. Disgrace, loss of situation, and the penalties 
 of the law have been no check heretofore on such 
 teachers, and no greater deterring influence can be 
 exerted in any case. Hundreds of teachers in our 
 schools have used corporal punishment wisely, 
 judiciously, and with good results, for every one 
 who has been guilty of outrage and abuse. Can 
 any other field of duty show results more creditable 
 to those engaged in it, or to the principles upon 
 which it is conducted? The right of the father 
 to chastise his child has been abused. If abuse, 
 then, in a few exceptional cases is a justification, 
 
 4 
 
40 Public Schools. 
 
 the law ought to take from all parents this means 
 of controlling their children. 
 
 " We find a strong reason for permitting cor- 
 poral punishment in the well known fact that 
 teachers, with great, if not perfect unanimity, 
 claim that it is necessary to retain it in order to 
 secure success and efficiency in education. We 
 have more faith in the judgment of good practical 
 teachers than in those who deal only in theories. 
 
 " It is urged that corporal punishment is degrad- 
 ing and barbarous. It is one of the objects of this 
 kind of punishment to make a refractory pupil feel 
 dishonored and disgraced, and that, through such 
 an appeal to his feelings, he may learn that the 
 way of the transgressor is hard, and not an easy, 
 pleasant path to travel. On the part of the teacher, 
 when properly performed, it is the dignified act of 
 administering justice, and as worthy of respect as 
 that of the judge who passes sentence, the warden 
 who confines, or the sheriff who executes a prisoner. 
 In either case it does not require a mind of very 
 large compass to look beyond the act to the great 
 public good it is intended to serve. We may say 
 further, that if the disuse of it encourages dis- 
 obedience and defiance of law, vicious and degrad- 
 ing habits, idleness and falsehood in school, drives 
 children into the streets, and into the company of 
 those twin sisters, ignorance and vice, and tends to 
 
Report of the President. 41 
 
 fill the penal institutions of the city, it is more 
 barbarous not to use such punishment than to 
 exercise it. If we desire to reap the whirlwind, 
 there is no surer way than to sow the wind. Un- 
 governed, unrestrained, willful boys become turbu- 
 lent, violent and vicious men. It is the fitful, rest- 
 less wind to-day, but in the darker hour of the 
 morrow it is the devastating whirlwind. 
 
 " There would be no good purpose served by 
 concealing the fact that the prejudice which exists 
 in regard to corporal punishment is largely due to 
 its indiscriminate, unwise and excessive use by 
 some teachers. Nothing looks more suspicious 
 than the constant recurrence of such reasons for 
 corporal punishment as impertinence, inattention, 
 disorder, restlessness, disturbance, playing, tardi- 
 ness, not one of which, unless aggravated in its 
 character is worthy of it, but should be met by 
 some other form of punishment. The kind, sym- 
 pathetic teacher rarely reports impertinence as a 
 cause for punishment, for it is generally the reflec- 
 tion in the pupil of anger, undeserved reproof, or 
 bitter sarcasm on the part of the teacher. Inatten- 
 tion and restlessness too often originate in the 
 teacher's lack of ability to make the studies inter- 
 esting; disorder, disturbance, playing, in a want of 
 that quiet power which makes itself constantly felt 
 as a check upon the pupils; or, it may be, in a 
 
42 Public Schools. 
 
 most foolish waste of power by attempting to 
 enforce too strict discipline. This latter failing 
 lies at the door of those who think a school is a 
 failure unless you can hear a pin drop, and that it 
 is a heinous offence for a child to take an easy 
 position at its desk. 
 
 "We know that the vast majority of our teachers 
 are doing their work with marked success, wisely, 
 considerately, and kindly. A proper regard for 
 the rights of the children in our schools, for the 
 feelings of parents, and the highest interests of our 
 whole system of public instruction, demands that 
 the Board unflinchingly administer its sure and 
 certain condemnation upon every teacher who, 
 instigated by passion, prejudice or cruelty, violates 
 the sacred trust reposed in him. 
 
 " Feeling that corporal punishment is a valuable 
 and necessary auxiliary in the administration of 
 discipline in our schools, that its abolishment 
 'would bring great and lamentable evils upon 
 them and upon the public welfare, and that it can 
 be judiciously controlled, we recommend that the 
 right to use it be retained by the teachers, and its 
 exercise be left to their discretion under the exist- 
 ing regulations." Boston Special Committee. 
 
 " The task of defending the continued employ- 
 ment of corporal punishment in our public schools, 
 
Report of the President. 43 
 
 is, for various reasons, a very ungrateful one, and 
 exposes those who undertake it to much miscon- 
 ception. The ignorance of the general public in 
 regard to the duties of public school teachers is 
 extreme; while, on the other hand, it is perfectly 
 easy to excite the feelings of that large class in the 
 community who are governed by their feelings, and 
 not by their reason. Corporal punishment is in its 
 nature an ugly necessity; so is the incarceration of 
 adult offenders in jails and state prisons; so are 
 many other incidents of an imperfect state of 
 society. No one advocates its continuance as a 
 good in itself; few consider it a permanent and 
 necessary element in our school system. While 
 nothing in the experience of the past year has led 
 your Committee to change their opinion, that its 
 retention is still a necessity incident to the present 
 imperfections of that system, they are, in common 
 with all other friends of educational progress, 
 desirous of seeing it now reduced to a minimum, 
 and at some future time entirely abolished. They 
 can not think, however, that any measure which 
 looks to its immediate discontinuance without 
 those great and important changes and improve- 
 ments in our schools, which will alone do- away 
 with its necessity, and which time alone can bring, 
 is either wise, consistent, or safe; and they would 
 especially deprecate the mischievous effects on 
 
44 Public Schools. 
 
 their good order and progress, which the persistent 
 agitation of the subject for the past twelve months 
 has had upon the condition of the schools. 
 
 " Your Committee are of opinion that the present 
 regulations in regard to corporal punishment are 
 entirely sufficient, and that the -persistent agita- 
 tion of the subject, from whatever motives it 
 originates, is mischievous to the good order and 
 discipline of the schools. It is mischievous in 
 more than one way. It not only tends to produce 
 a feeling of insubordination in the minds of the 
 pupils, so that it is the testimony of teachers of 
 the longest experience, that the schools have 
 never been more difficult to govern than since 
 the commencement of the agitation; but, by rais- 
 ing a false issue on a subordinate point, it tends to 
 retard, if not wholly prevent, those much-needed 
 and far more important improvements in other 
 directions, which have been alluded to. 
 
 "Of the arguments employed by the advocates for 
 entire abolition of corporal punishment, some are 
 almost beneath criticism, while others are refuted 
 by stubborn facts. In opposition to the infliction 
 of pain by the teacher, the example of the surgeon 
 is adduced, who strives by every means to avoid 
 or to alleviate it; but surely he would not do so 
 if the pain were a needful and essential part of the 
 cure. We do not incarcerate adult criminals 
 
Report of the President. 45 
 
 simply for the sake of incarcerating them, but for 
 the promotion of the welfare and good order of 
 society, and for the reformation not the suffering 
 
 - of the criminal himself. Corporal punishment 
 can only be defended, in the view of your Com- 
 mittee, upon similar grounds as a police regulation, 
 incident to the imperfections of society and of the 
 present school system, and to be diminished, and 
 finally disappear, as that system gradually im- 
 proves; precisely as it is to be hoped that the time 
 will come when capital punishment and crowded 
 State prisons will no longer be needed for the 
 safety of society at large. 
 
 " In the case of the German schools, so much 
 relied on by the advocates of the entire abolition 
 of corporal punishment by regulations, there is 
 direct and unimpeachable evidence to prove that 
 such regulations have aggravated the very mischief 
 that they were intended to cure, and that, while 
 careful and regulated punishment is abolished^ 
 brutal, ill-regulated, passionate, and dangerous 
 punishments still prevail.* No mere regulation 
 
 * " ' If in an American school,' says a competent witness, who has 
 resided in Germany, and paid great attention to the subject, the Rev. 
 William L. Gage, ' with our newspapers Argus-eyed to see every 
 thing and report it to the world, the violence which takes place in a 
 German school should occur, it would create such deep feeling in the 
 community, that nothing short of the removal of teachers would quiet 
 it. Of course, before the visitor this violence is not apparent. Yet I 
 have seen a boy struck with a clenched fist on the side of the head 
 with benumbing force; and I know that the teachers kick the boys and 
 
46 Public Schools. 
 
 will suffice to control a passionate or tyrannical 
 teacher; the only safeguard is the employment of 
 teachers to whose judgment and good temper the 
 task of discipline can be safely intrusted, and to 
 place them under circumstances where good disci- 
 pline by mild methods can reasonably be expected. 
 " It has been argued, that the abuse of corporal 
 punishment in our public schools has come to be 
 so great as to furnish a valid reason for abolishing 
 it altogether. The argument is apt to come from 
 persons who, remembering the state of school 
 discipline a quarter or a half a century ago, and 
 rarely visiting them now, suppose the same condi- 
 tion of things existing as in the days of their own 
 boyhood. That, in many quarters, there is still far 
 too much corporal punishment, that it is inflicted 
 for trifling offences and on improper occasions, that 
 it is often the resort of teachers too lazy or too ill- 
 tempered to learn how to govern in better ways, 
 your Committee are not disposed to deny. But it 
 is equally true that a steady progress has been 
 made, and is making, in the amelioration of the 
 
 strike the head and snap the nose and pinch the back of the neck in a 
 brutal manner. If German schools are of such superior excellence, it 
 is gained, not by the help, but in spite, of a system of such gross and 
 injurious punishments as are not only hurtful to the health, but to the 
 character of pupils and teachers. Well-considered, faithful unishings 
 on the hand are not in vogue here : only passionate outbreaks of 
 violence, which generally accomplish their object by blows on the side 
 of the head.' " 
 
Report of the President. 47 
 
 discipline of our public schools; and that the 
 teachers most strenuous for the retention of the 
 power to inflict punishment are precisely those who 
 find least occasion for its use. The possession of the 
 power obviates the necessity for its employment. 
 Its abuse must be guarded against by the vigilance 
 of parents, committees, and superintendents; and, 
 above all, by promoting the professional education 
 of teachers, and making the calling attractive to a 
 superior class of minds. Under any and all cir- 
 cumstances, however, your Committee believe that 
 the maintenance of authority is absolutely neces- 
 sary to the success of a school; and that, to this 
 end, in the schools, as at present organized, resort 
 must sometimes be had to a short, sharp, and 
 decisive, but not cruel, mode of punishment." 
 Cambridge Report. 
 
 " The public schools of Massachusetts constitute 
 the chief excellence of her power. To them she 
 is largely indebted for her position among the 
 States, and for her salutary influence at home and 
 abroad. Whatever injures them injures her; 
 whatever benefits them is a public benefit. In 
 these schools the rising generation are trained for 
 the duties of life. In them they learn to think, in 
 connection with acquiring useful knowledge, and 
 their learning, thus obtained, enters largely into the 
 formation of their characters. The highest object 
 
48 Public Schools. 
 
 
 of these schools is not instruction in the several 
 
 branches taught from the text-books prescribed, 
 however important that object may be. Their 
 highest object is the education of the manners, the 
 principles and the conscience in the formation of a 
 noble character, fitted to ornament and bless 
 society. It is to prepare the pupils to act well 
 their parts in all the relations of life. It is to help 
 make them good sons and daughters, good brothers 
 and sisters, good fathers and mothers, and good 
 citizens. It is, in connection with other means, to 
 form and strengthen habits of strict and ready 
 obedience to proper authority, rationally enforced, 
 to reasonable government, to the laws of the land, 
 and the laws of God. A person is not fitted to 
 take part in governing who has not learned to sub- 
 mit to rational government; loyalty, therefore, is 
 an important part of education, and should be 
 taught in our public schools. The pupils in these 
 schools should be rationally restrained from the 
 wrong as well as encouraged in the right. Without 
 such restraint, like Eli's sons, they will bring ruin 
 upon themselves and injury upon those with whom 
 they are associated. 
 
 " Can these important objects be accomplished in 
 all our public schools, if their teachers are forbid- 
 den the use of corporal punishment, by legal 
 enactment? Would a law declaring that no teacher 
 
Report of the President. 49 
 
 should inflict physical pain upon a pupil, in en- 
 forcing his rules, promote the cause of education 
 and render the department of teaching more effi- 
 cient for good? This question was very differently 
 answered by the two parties who appeared before 
 the Committee in the several hearings given upon 
 the subject under consideration. From one party 
 we had an emphatic Yes, and from the other an 
 emphatic No. The former declared corporal pun- 
 ishment in our schools an unnecessary evil, ( a 
 relic of barbarism,' which should be rendered 
 impossible by law. They testified their abhorrence 
 of the practice of inflicting physical pain upon 
 pupils in the enforcement of the rules of school, 
 declaring that teachers who can not maintain good 
 discipline without a resort to this kind of punish- 
 ment are wholly unfit for the office of teaching. 
 The gentlemen 'who urged the Committee to 
 report a bill prohibiting every form of corporal 
 punishment, were not experienced teachers, in the 
 common schools of 'New England. Most of them 
 have had little or no experience in this department 
 of labor. Most of the gentlemen, tuho opposed 
 the legislation asked for, 'were practical teachers. 
 Some of them had made school teaching the busi- 
 ness of their lives. They acknowledged that 
 corporal punishment should be used sparingly, and 
 as a last resort; but they claimed that its prohibi- 
 
50 Public Schools. 
 
 tion by legal enactment would be disastrous. They 
 claimed there were disorderly, lawless, and perverse 
 pupils, who would yield only to superior force, and 
 who could be kept in subjection to good discipline 
 only by the fear of punishment. They claimed 
 that government, whether family, school or civil, 
 implied power to enforce its laws. They claimed 
 that this power, in school government, belonged to 
 the teacher, who might safely be intrusted with its 
 exercise. They claimed that to take away this 
 power, by legal enactment, thereby declaring that 
 the kind of punishment under consideration should 
 never be inflicted, not even in the most extreme 
 cases, would tend to degrade teachers in the esti- 
 mation of their pupils, who would understand that 
 the legislature did not regard it safe to trust them 
 with the exercise of so dangerous a power. They 
 claimed that -persons 'with 'whom this power could 
 not be safely trusted 'were unfit for the -position 
 of teacher, and should not be allowed to fill it. 
 They claimed that the true policy was to educate 
 teachers for their work, and intrust to them the 
 government of the schools, including the power to 
 enforce wholesome rules and regulations, with the 
 direction to exercise discipline, as intelligent and 
 affectionate parents would exercise it toward the 
 children they loved. Granting the correctness of 
 much that was said by the advocates for the pro- 
 
Report of the President. 51 
 
 hibition of corporal punishment, the undersigned 
 is, nevertheless, strongly opposed to recommending 
 the legislation asked for. 
 
 " I oppose the legislation asked for, because its 
 advocates have failed to present a substitute for 
 corporal punishment ivhich is practicable. The 
 substitutes recommended were the following: ist. 
 Truant schools, to which pupils should be sent 
 who would not submit to the mild government 
 sustained without the employment of force. Such 
 schools would be impracticable in a large portion 
 of the towns in our Commonwealth. 2nd. Suspen- 
 sion, and, if necessary, expulsion; and 3rd. Im- 
 prisonment. Suspension and expulsion would not 
 be feared by many on whom they would be exer- 
 cised; and they being deprived of the benefits of 
 school would be a far greater evil to them than the 
 infliction of the punishment complained of, besides 
 the injury inflicted upon society by the turning of 
 such pupils from the schools into the streets. As 
 to imprisonment, what parent would consent that 
 his children should be subjected to it for the offence 
 of violating the rules of school? 
 
 " Finally, I object to the proposed legislation be- 
 cause I believe that the evil complained of can be 
 reduced to its lowest minimum, if not driven to a 
 position where it will be held far more in theory 
 than in practice, by other means. 
 
52 Public Schools. 
 
 " Let it be inculcated in our normal schools, 
 academies, colleges and seminaries in which teach- 
 ers are trained, that the best disciplinarians punish 
 the least; and let it be generally understood that 
 they are worthy of the highest praise who maintain 
 good discipline without inflicting physical pain, and 
 public opinion will so regulate punishment in our 
 schools as to render it harmless." Senator Clark 
 to Massachusetts Senate. 
 
 In the city of Chicago the records show that for 
 several months there has been an average of but 
 one case of corporal punishment each half day for 
 every ten to twelve thousand children in attend- 
 ance. When it is considered that even the most 
 trivial punishment is required to be recorded, it 
 will be seen that the amount of corporal punish- 
 ment in the public schools of this city must be 
 rapidly approaching the minimum consistent with 
 the welfare of the schools, if indeed that point be 
 not already passed. 
 
 I am firmly of the opinion that the latter is the 
 case, and that our schools are suffering from a lack 
 of discipline, rather than an excess of it. The 
 most unremitting exertions of the teachers are 
 required to maintain them in a healthy condition ; 
 and there is great danger that in the effort to avoid 
 corporal punishment, other more objectionable 
 
Report of the President. 53 
 
 methods may be made use of. Indeed, in every 
 case of undue or injudicious punishment which I 
 have been called to investigate, as a member 
 of this Board, the trouble has arisen from an 
 attempt on the part of the teacher, either systemati- 
 cally or for the time being, to substitute irregular 
 and exceptional methods of discipline for those 
 which are natural and well-established. It has 
 been well said, that what the schools of Chicago 
 need, is not the abolition of corporal punishment, 
 but teachers who know how to use it; and that 
 if teachers are incapable of governing their schools 
 by the aid of corporal punishment, they are unfit 
 to govern them without it. Teachers honoring the 
 positions they hold, we have, with certainly as few 
 exceptions as exist among any like number of 
 persons of any other employment or profession; 
 and I trust that until that happy time shall arrive 
 when humanity shall be so far advanced in enlight- 
 enment and morality as to be able to dispense with 
 corporal punishment in the home, that they may 
 not only be permitted, but encouraged to govern 
 their schools by the exercise of that benignant 
 discipline which is practiced " by a kind, judicious 
 parent in his family." 
 
54 Public Schools. 
 
 While there is no reason to doubt the sincerity 
 of purpose of many of those who have been promi- 
 nent advocates for the abolition of corporal punish- 
 ment in our schools, there are not a few who believe 
 that the agitation of this subject has its root in sec- 
 tarian opposition to our entire public school system. 
 
 So far as the question of the use of the Protestant 
 Bible in our schools is concerned, it must be con- 
 ceded that the weight of argument lies with those 
 who, on the ground of religious toleration, ask for 
 its removal. One of the great central ideas of our 
 government is religious liberty. We have grown 
 to be a great nation because here liberty is best 
 understood, and most perfectly enjoyed. We 
 represent in our people all shades of religious 
 opinion and belief. Those of us who are Protest- 
 ants would resent any attempt on the part of the 
 authorities to require our children to listen to a 
 daily lesson from the Douay Scriptures. Why, 
 then, should we compel our Romanist neighbor to 
 listen to the version of King James, or insist that 
 the followers of Moses join in the reading of the 
 New Testament? 
 
 The division among sectarian schools of our 
 public school fund, however, rests upon an entirely 
 different basis. The argument which favors the 
 removal of the Bible from the schools, opposes with 
 equal strength the diversion of any portion of the 
 
Report of the President. 55 
 
 school fund to sectarian purposes. The public are 
 taxed to support a system of free schools to 
 educate the whole people. The spirit of our free 
 institutions does not countenance the fostering of 
 any class or sect at the expense of another, or to 
 its exclusion. The greatest good of the whole must 
 be the end in view, and if this fails to reach the 
 peculiar necessities of any individual it is his mis- 
 fortune, not the fault of the system. 
 
 Assuming that the positions above taken are cor- 
 rect in principle, would it not be best, by discon- 
 tinuing the use of all versions of the Scriptures in 
 our schools, to remove the only tenable ground of 
 opposition to their hearty support on the part of 
 any portion of our citizens ? 
 
 The question of the introduction of scientific 
 training into the general education of the country, 
 is a topic which has occupied considerable atten- 
 tion in the public mind for the last few years, and 
 upon which public opinion has undergone a rapid 
 modification. 
 
 Mr. Carlyle says that for many years " it has 
 been one of my constant regrets that no school- 
 master of mine had a knowledge of natural history, 
 so far at least as to have taught me the grasses 
 that grow by the wayside, and the little winged 
 and wingless neighbors that are continually meet- 
 
 5 
 
56 Public Schools. 
 
 ing me with a salutation I can not answer, as things 
 are. Why didn't somebody teach me the constel- 
 lations, too, and make me at home in the starry 
 heavens which are always overhead, and which I 
 don't half know to this day ? I love to prophesy 
 that there will come a time when in all Scottish 
 and European lands and colleges the schoolmaster 
 will be strictly required to possess these two capa- 
 bilities, and that no ingenious little denizen of this 
 universe will be thenceforward debarred from his 
 right of liberty in these two departments, and 
 doomed to look at them as across grated fences all 
 his life." 
 
 It was a pertinent inquiry which Lord Bacon 
 made, whether we " are the richer by one poor 
 invention by reason of all the learning that hath 
 been learnt for these many hundred years in 
 schools?" 
 
 So thoroughly has this idea become infused into 
 the minds of the English people that the Govern- 
 ment has taken hold of the matter, and through 
 the Department of Science and Art, are endeavoring 
 to diffuse practical knowledge and art among 
 working-men. This department aids some three 
 hundred schools, scattered all over the kingdom. 
 Its funds are not squandered by political influence, 
 but given as the reward of the hard and profitable 
 work of teacher and pupil. Fourteen thousand 
 pupils attend these schools, which are mostly 
 
Report of the President. 57 
 
 evening schools, and accessible to actual working 
 people. For this work the department paid, in 
 the year ending March, 1868, more than 144,000. 
 Of this sum, only 13,000 was in direct payment 
 of teachers the balance being for books, museums, 
 etc. The subjects taught were mathematics, 
 chemistry, natural philosophy, botany, zoology, 
 physiology, geology, mechanics, navigation, mining, 
 metallurgy, civil engineering, drawing, painting, 
 and modeling. 
 
 There seems on every hand to be a growing 
 conviction that in many respects our systems of 
 education have not been what they should be, and 
 that "the education which has lain outside of them 
 has been largely the real tutor of the world." In 
 that were " the realities, while the schools taught 
 shadows." In that were " the free and glad con- 
 spiracies of the sun and wind and rain, trooping 
 together to accomplish what academic traditions 
 were too discordant or too dull to do." 
 
 The real value of the new education is that " it 
 proposes to unite in better balance and efficiency 
 the old elements of instruction, while it adds the 
 novel ones deemed necessary by the demands of 
 the age." I do not wish to be understood as 
 sympathizing with that spirit which denounces all 
 classical learning. " For students preparing for 
 college or professional life it is indispensable, not 
 
58 Public Schools. 
 
 because it is customary or prescribed, but likewise 
 for its intrinsic merits. Wherever health, capacity 
 and condition admit of high culture, scholastic 
 studies are agencies potential for giving command 
 of language, refining the faculties, and invigorating 
 the mental powers." 
 
 On this point, Prof. Huxley, in a late address, 
 says: "There are other forms of culture beside 
 physical science, and I should be profoundly sorry 
 to see the fact forgotten, or even to observe a 
 tendency to starve or cripple literary or aesthetic 
 culture for the sake of science. Stick a narrow 
 view of the nature of education has nothing to 
 do with my firm conviction that a complete and 
 thorough scientific culture ought to be intro- 
 duced in all schools. By this I do not mean that 
 every school-boy should be taught everything in 
 science. That would be a very absurd thing to 
 conceive, and a very mischievous thing to attempt. 
 What I mean is, that no boy or girl should leave 
 school without possessing a grasp of the general 
 character of science, and without having been 
 disciplined more or less in the methods of all 
 sciences; so that when turned into the world to 
 make their own way, they shall be prepared to face 
 scientific discussions and scientific problems, not 
 by knowing at once the conditions of every prob- 
 lem, and being able at once to solve it, but by 
 
Report of the President. 59 
 
 being familiar with the general current of scientific 
 thought, and being able to apply the methods of 
 science in the proper way when they have ac- 
 quainted themselves with the conditions of the 
 special problem. To furnish a boy such an educa- 
 tion, it is by no means necessary that he should 
 devote his whole school existence to physical 
 science ; it is not even necessary for him to give 
 up more than a moderate share of his time to such 
 studies if they be properly selected and arranged, 
 and if he be trained in them in a fitting manner." 
 
 Concerning one division of this great subject, 
 we have the testimony of an eminent American 
 clergyman, to whom, to use his own language, 
 " it came only as an autumn flower, late in the 
 sunshine of our academic life." 
 
 " In the accurately adjusted scale of a true edu- 
 cation, Natural History must, we think, fill a large 
 space. We appeal for it as a discipline calling 
 out eye and hand and brain to their most delicate 
 and best performance, and as a recreation peopling 
 leisure with sweet and innocent shapes. 
 
 " We plead that it is practical, and that it leads 
 man among organizations and laws that may become 
 comforts or luxuries in his discreet dominion; and 
 that it develops the poetic faculty by its kaleido- 
 scopic shows of beauty and intelligence. We 
 claim that its alphabet is simple as the letters of 
 
60 Public Schools. 
 
 our mother tongue; that its combinations are as 
 elaborate and grand as the Paradise Lost which 
 those letters may make; and that thus it is milk 
 for babes and meat for men. We urge that if you 
 wish to educate for earth, it has its value in your 
 scheme as helping the vision to behold the furniture 
 of our physical abode; if you are looking beyond 
 earth and thinking of what faith anticipates, it 
 agrees with faith by its suggestions of a Will, to 
 which its wonders are but the richly-woven veil. 
 To bring us near to the world of life, in which we 
 are a part, yet out of which we rise, or to catch us 
 up into the calm chambers of meditation from 
 which the world dwindles and its noises drop off 
 into silence, we believe to be within the power of 
 these scientific studies. There is use in them, and 
 there is honor in them; and what Cicero wrote so 
 long ago in his plea for Archias, and wrote so well 
 that the boy Latinist still loves to quote its sonorous 
 eloquence, was but the fitting prelude to the praise 
 of those other studies which have placed undying 
 laurels on the head of Audubon and Agassiz and 
 Humboldt. 
 
 " Whether or not there be any Cicero to plead 
 for it to-day, the power of this study is confessed 
 on every hand. The immense popularization of 
 science is an index of this. Books are not printed 
 for the solitude of a desert; and the current litera- 
 
Report of the President. 61 
 
 ture of popular natural history at once implies and 
 creates readers. It is a curious fact, that there are 
 no children's books better illustrated by the highest 
 skill in drawing and color than the bits of natural 
 history placed in their infant hands. Even Cock 
 Robin finds his Audubon, and Whittington's Cat 
 its Cuvier. There are in the press to-day, under 
 the sanction of the oldest State of New England 
 and the golden State of the Pacific, two merely 
 local and popular reports on Natural History, that 
 will bring the birds of the air and the shells of 
 the sea to every fireside in the finest style of print 
 and art. Some of the most remarkable overflows 
 of charitable wealth of the last few years have 
 been in the channels of Natural History Societies. 
 To crack the rocks for fossils does not now alto- 
 gether imply that your head is cracked itself; to 
 study beetles or hunt butterflies does not every- 
 where earn the suspicion that you are bug or vermin 
 mad; nor do your friends simply point you to the 
 reform school for taking toll of an occasional bird's- 
 nest. The aquarium and fern-case are precious 
 corners of nature which beauty and even fashion 
 does not disdain. An ingenious and profound 
 naturalist is this moment toiling to reproduce among 
 the wonders of the great Central Park of New 
 York, the images of the huge monsters of America's 
 geologic youth. It may soon become, let us hope 
 
62 Public Schools. 
 
 it will, a part of polite education not to be ignorant 
 of these things; and a wrong determination in sci- 
 ence may be as horrible as a false quantity in 
 quoting Horace, or a mutilation of the Queen's 
 English. 
 
 " One very common error about Natural History 
 serves also as an argument in the hands of the 
 adherents to a merely classical, mathematical, and 
 philosophical curriculum. We allude to the idea 
 that it is only a study of technicalities and dry 
 classification; while a word-mill turned by natural- 
 ists pours out continually a flood of Latin and 
 Greek names which would have made Cicero 
 shudder, and would have been sand in the Attic 
 salt. r Professors are pedants here,' says the objec- 
 tor, 'and Nature a show of ticketed mummies.' 
 Precisely the same tendency may act here, we 
 grant, as in other departments of instruction and 
 classified knowledge. Language is a living thing; 
 bone is articulated to bone, and swung in ligaments; 
 while under its ribs a warm heart beats, and from 
 its brain a flexible telegraph directs the foot, the 
 lip, the hand. But language is taught by pedants 
 sometimes; and the exquisite spirit of the Greek, or 
 the world-conquering charge of the Latin is gone 
 in their handling, as surely as the green from last 
 year's grass or the birds from last summer's nest. 
 Mathematics is not a soulless array of figures, 
 
Report of the President. 63 
 
 equations, and lines; but a world of order, awe, 
 beauty, design, well worthy to be the foundation 
 of all knowledge. Who has not known it, in its 
 perversion, as the dreariest bondage that ever made 
 bricks without straw, or covered a slate with calcu- 
 lations more wearisome than death? Philosophy, 
 also, golden-tongued, telescopic-eyed, majestic, may 
 degenerate with an unphilosophic book or teacher 
 into a waterless well, where two empty buckets, 
 the f ego ' and the ? non ego ' pass and repass till 
 the head swims and the heart is sick. So Botany 
 may deal with f learned hay,' and geology with 
 f rocks and old bones,' while Zoology pets ? beasts 
 and snails,' Entomology ? grubs and bugs,' and 
 Mycology ? mould and toad-stools.' Nature may 
 become worse than carrion. But with Henslow, 
 Carpenter, Huxley, Tyndall, Gray, or Agassiz to 
 teach, these things can never be. Good teachers 
 are not to be picked up like laborers waiting at the 
 corners of the streets, though they are mostly paid 
 as if they were; and in the practical experience of 
 the school, all cannot give the necessary glow and 
 life to the subject of tuition. But the cramp of 
 drill, the dust of professorship, the pedantry of 
 routine are not peculiar to scientific studies. The 
 intense fascination with which science so-called 
 magnetizes its devotees, is, we venture to say, unex- 
 celled in power by the influence of any other 
 department of the world's knowledge. 
 
64 Public Schools. 
 
 "And now, what is the -place of this instruction 
 of Natural History in our ideal scheme of Educa- 
 tion ? We claim that scientific instruction should 
 have one of the first -places, in order of time, in 
 education. It appeals to the first senses that 
 mature, the first powers that have the privilege of 
 experiment. It is related to the most familiar sights 
 and sounds of early life. Its omission is the parent 
 of superstitions that growth makes chronic. Its 
 neglect robs childhood of innocent recreation and 
 useful work in play. Where it is not, one door 
 stands open to vanity and wrong. Our old con- 
 servative systems put Natural History away, as the 
 miser shirks the execution of his will. These 
 studies are nominally or partially taught in High 
 Schools; in their fullest extent in the College or 
 a few special departments. On any theory, there is 
 an egregious wrong somewhere. The boy can 
 look forward to a smattering of Natural History, 
 perhaps, just before active life beckons, and ? its 
 bounding pulses are mated with his veins.' The 
 girl gets only the crumbs from his table, and 
 where the table only has a crust, what then ? Ad- 
 mitting all this to be right, the instruction comes 
 too late. It is the good seed among thorns. Already 
 have those prejudices which thwart the aim of true 
 scientific instruction, attained too rank a growth. 
 
Report* of the President. 65 
 
 "Natural History belongs in the Primary School. 
 Give the children the alphabet which is the key to 
 the record of human wit and folly, but let them 
 learn, too, the alphabet which the Divine hand has 
 written on the leaves of Nature. We wish that 
 Henslow's life could be told so that all could hear. 
 It is a sweet, beautiful story of an humble sphere 
 made radiant and wide with celestial glory. He 
 buried himself, as the world would say, in a mean 
 country parish. Talents that thrilled London were 
 dropt in the furrows where plowmen walked, 
 scarce nobler than the clod. But he was buried 
 only as the violet and acorn are, under the snow. 
 Perfume and strength grew out of the soil at last. 
 In a word, the appeal of an eminent botanist, for 
 such Henslow was, to the children of the parish, 
 his instruction, his friendliness, his patient labor to 
 make them see the works of the great Father, 
 gave, ere he died, the glow of intellectual and reli- 
 gious life to that sullen and sottish town. He put 
 the study of Nature in its best place, the childrens ' 
 hands, and great was his reward. 
 
 " The place of Natural History is amid the most 
 unstinted expenditure and the most careful pro- 
 vision for its instruction. It is not to go hiding 
 in a corner. It is not to be the ravelled hem of the 
 tutor's gown. 
 
 " By this we mean, that every public school, rising 
 
66 Public Schools. 
 
 from the lowest grade, should be supplied with 
 books, pictures, apparatus, and cabinets, sufficient 
 for the work of a thorough instruction in Natural 
 History. And the single piece of apparatus which 
 will afford the most satisfaction and instruction to 
 old and young at the least cost, is the microscope. 
 ? Within that instrument lies the revelation of a 
 world more variable and populous than that which 
 is revealed to the unaided eye of man. Like the 
 work of some mighty genius of oriental fable, the 
 brazen tube is the key which unfolds a world of 
 wonder and beauty before invisible, and which one 
 who has once gazed upon can never forget, and 
 never cease to admire.' The question of supplying 
 these aids is one at once of right and of economy. 
 
 u We may, perhaps, lament the decline of the 
 old Spartan virtue which made money of iron, 
 and men of gold. We ought not to be compelled 
 to state the . fact, however, that we so thoroughly 
 ignore the right our children have to education in 
 the laws and forms of the universe which, we 
 hope, is to be for three-score years their home. 
 If duty ever governed a dollar it ought to do it 
 here. It is economical, too, as we have hinted, 
 to furnish these appliances for culture. We have 
 only two elements in our capital our land and 
 our labor. Intelligence of every honest kind 
 fertilizes the one and gives skill to the other. For 
 
Report of the President. 67 
 
 our enjoyment in this world, too, we have but two 
 factors, our world-home and ourselves, and the 
 more we get out of life, the happier we are. It is 
 economy to give as thorough knowledge of nature 
 as schools can confer. Enough will come from 
 discovery and invention to make the investment 
 good. It is economy to add to the resources of 
 innocent joy. Life grows long and prisons empty 
 in this way. Have we any blood in our veins, or 
 only water, like the worms that are only half- 
 warmed clay? 
 
 "We may build costly academies and schools, 
 and this is well. Better a temple than a den! But 
 as the hull of the steamer to the engine, so is the 
 building to the machinery that is to find its work 
 to do within. Apart from this, the great hulk lies 
 stranded and motionless, to be wrapped in the 
 shroud of the rotting weed, and dissolve away at 
 last. The people have what they think they want. 
 It is a grave question how much hay or corn or 
 fish or lumber are raised or exported, and how 
 much taxes can be pared or scrimped. The best 
 crops are left at some points to nature's charity. 
 Every farmer knows how many teeth and claws 
 are waiting for the first leaves that spring from 
 every seed he plants, those first tender leaves 
 that hold the future of the plant in their delicate 
 hands. Shall we think there is a less crisis when 
 
68 Public Schools. 
 
 the first leaves of future citizenhood or matronhood 
 open to the light?" 
 
 While natural history can easily be worked into 
 the routine of the school, it should also take its 
 place among the recreations of the family, where 
 it will be most effective in promoting a good moral 
 end. The school will lay the foundation; but since 
 school-time for the mass of the people is short, its 
 chief cultivation must take place independent of 
 school aid, and after its termination. And if a 
 capacity for making intelligent observation can be 
 cultivated in youth, which shall grow into a fixed 
 habit, few will be without opportunities for their 
 exercise in the years of manhood and age. We 
 believe our system of education must come to this 
 at last. Perhaps Lexington did not intend to 
 begin the revolution. It came nevertheless in 
 her musket-balls. So it may be forced on some 
 community to begin another revolution, for which 
 a more intelligent posterity will honor its uncon- 
 scious virtue. 
 
 " We sometimes dream of the perfect school- 
 house of the future a building that stands, haply, 
 among the lights of the twentieth century a 
 building conspicuous even among the temples of its 
 sublime faith or the halls of its progressive govern- 
 ment. We dream of it, as visited by the genial 
 breath of the air, and loving smiles of the sun; 
 
Report of the President. 69 
 
 never a tropic desert of withered heat nor an arctic 
 desolation of frost. Pure as the air itself is the 
 children's blood, vigorous their limbs as the physical 
 culture which is molding them into manly and 
 womanly beauty. And together with the body's 
 training the mental work is attuned to Heaven's 
 own rule. We fancy its government the law of 
 love, and mutiny or discord a thing unknown, 
 though the spacious halls are thronged and the 
 teacher's dais full. Pictures speak from the wall; 
 books are not few; all that can illustrate the seen 
 or unseen in creation, stands or moves or shines in 
 its proper place. And we can only give an espe- 
 cial niche of honor to one great culture, that, among 
 these various agencies, is making ready for useful 
 and honored lives these young spirits the culture 
 that teaches them the story of the world in which 
 they live, that fills its forms with glory and unveils 
 its laws. Such a school may be more than a dream 
 it will be, if we do something more than dream 
 about it to-day." 
 
 Respectfully submitted, 
 
 S. A. BRIGGS, President. 
 
L