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explaining the object of the Institute, and requesting that, when the schools were in session, the teachers might be allowed to close them so as to attend the Institute. Posters are also prepared to be sent to many towns; each Institute is advertised in several newspapers; and arrangements are made with railroad officials, and for the printing of the free return tickets. All these preliminary arrangements are in the highest degree essential to the success of the Institute; but they require much time, and with the seven weeks of constant attendance upon the exercises of the Institutes prevent me from accomplishing more in the way of town visitation, school inspection, and other related duties.

ADMISSION TO NORMAL SCHOOLS.

I have frequently, at your request, attended the examination of applicants to enter the Normal Schools,-the three in the eastern part of the State,--to represent the Boards of Visitors in deciding who should be admitted. I have at such times generally made a very careful and critical examination and analysis of the results presented in the papers of the applicants, for each one is required to present at least four written papers containing answers to the printed questions on the subjects in respect to which they are examined. I have before me a very full analysis which I made at one of these examinations, and, as I think it is a fair specimen of all of them, I ask your attention to a few of its details. Of the forty-eight examined, seven-eighths lived in Massachusetts, and the average age of all was eighteen years and nine months. Twenty-one of the thirty-seven ladies examined were graduates, or had been members for some time, of High Schools, five of Academies, and the other eleven of Grammar Schools. Nine of these had taught schools for a period varying from twelve weeks to one hundred and forty-three weeks. I do not find upon my paper any minutes with regard to the kinds of schools previously attended by the eleven young men who were examined, or whether any of them had ever taught. The questions in geography and history, arithmetic and grammar, had been prepared by the Principal of the school, and were not above the average of questions proposed to candidates for admission to our High Schools. There were no "catch questions," nor, as is frequently the case, were there one or two more difficult questions on each subject to test the maximum ability of the applicants. The words for spell

ing were all practical, every-day words. I think you would all agree with me, that, under the circumstances, there should have been an average of at least eighty per cent. of correct answers. Only four, however, had this average, and only eleven had seventy and upwards. Eighteen had less than sixty per cent. To attain even this result, their reading had to be taken into account, for which they were marked much higher than for their written papers, and this gave them a higher average. With this, the general average of correctness for all who were examined was sixty-two per cent.; without it, fifty-nine. Several of these applicants passed a very satisfactory examination in everything; several others in most of the subjects, but did not do so well in one or two branches, for which there was a satisfactory explanation. The results in many other cases were not satisfactory, nor creditable; and yet, following the established precedent of admitting on quite a low general average of correctness rather than my conviction of what should be done under such circumstances, only four of the forty-eight were rejected, and seven, somewhat doubtful cases, were admitted on probation. An examination of the papers of these applicants shows that in too many instances the writers were allowed to take up the higher branches of study in High Schools and Academies before they had thoroughly mastered the simple, elementary branches, which are the corner-stone in a good education.

The papers of many were very faulty in respect to the correct use of language, the construction of sentences, the use of capital letters, and spelling. In view of such facts, I cannot repeat too frequently, nor emphasize too strongly, the words of Everett in speaking of the great importance of these elementary branches :"They are the foundation, and, unless you begin with these, all your flashy attainments, a little natural philosophy, and a little moral philosophy, a little physiology, and a little geology, and all the other ologies and osophies, are but ostentatious rubbish." "If," says a distinguished educator, "to make room for what are termed the higher studies, it is necessary to remove the so-called lower, it strikes one that the room is hardly worth the making, for, without the lower to support them, the higher must be insecure; and the more these are expanded, the larger the plan of the superstructure, the larger also, and the more substantial, must be the foundation."

I have presented this topic thus prominently, and with such minuteness of detail, to give emphasis to the recommendation that I would make, that a more thorough and exact knowledge of the common English studies should be required as indispensably necessary for admission to our Normal Schools than has heretofore been.

I am decidedly of the opinion, too, that it would be wiser to add a year to the minimum age required for admission, at least for the ladies, and not admit any under seventeen years of age, than to admit them at sixteen, as now required, or considerably under sixteen, as occasionally permitted. With a higher standard of scholarship for admission, and with greater maturity, physical and mental, of those admitted, I think we should secure a superior class of teachers for graduation, and thus elevate the character of our Normal Schools.

SCHOOL AGE.

The age at which children may be admitted to and excluded from Public Schools is not legally defined, and the subject is not unfrequently agitated in towns visited by me. In one place I found many of the citizens, for certain local reasons, wishing to exclude from school all over fifteen years of age, and asserting that they were under no legal obligation to make provision for the education of any beyond that age. This impression, which I have found somewhat prevalent elsewhere also, grows out of the fact that the number of children between five and fifteen years of age is made the basis for distributing the school fund among the towns in the State, and hence is supposed to define the age for which the people are bound to provide means of education. The same statute, however, that makes this limitation of age for the apportionment of the school fund, provides that nothing in that Act contained shall be considered as prohibiting the attendance upon the schools of scholars under five or over fifteen years of age. City Solicitor Healy, whose opinion on this subject was asked by the Boston School Committee in 1859, says :

"This provision was not intended to confer upon scholars under five or over fifteen years of age, any right to attend the schools; but it was intended merely to negative the otherwise possible construction of the statute, that the school committee have not the power to

admit to the schools, in their discretion, pupils not between the ages. of five and fifteen years.

"The committee, then, may not exclude from the schools persons between the ages of five and fifteen years; but they may admit or exclude, in their discretion, all persons under five or over fifteen years of age."

In the twenty-fourth annual report of the Secretary of the Board, Mr. Boutwell says:—

"It is not to be assumed that the legal rights of children in the schools are limited to the period when they are between five and fifteen years of age, for it cannot be doubted that youth under twentyone years of age are entitled to the benefits of the Public Schools, while committees may exercise a discretion in excluding those who are not physically and intellectually qualified, even though they are more than five years of age."

The fact that twenty-two thousand persons over fifteen years of age, or more than one-tenth of the whole number in average attendance upon our schools during the year, enjoyed the advantages of education so liberally provided for them, shows that this interpretation of the statute is accepted by the great body of the people. Still, for the reason above given, I have thought it desirable to present this topic in my report. It is to be regretted, I think, that the statute does not absolutely prohibit the admission of children into our Public Schools under five years of age, and even make it a penal offence for parents to send them at an earlier age. Better still, if children were not permitted to enter the school-room under six years of age, until their brain and nervous system are better prepared for so severe an ordeal, and then for a year or two at least not confined there-for what else is it to them, at that tender age, but confinement ?-more than half the usual number of regular school-hours, each half of the day. When I say that nearly three thousand children under five years of age were in attendance upon the Public Schools of our State during the year, and that the greater part of them were compelled to breathe the vitiated air of school-rooms, and to sit quietly on hard benches, for five and often six hours a day, for five days in the week, does it not suggest the necessity of some legal prohibition to remedy an evil so deplorable in its consequences, immediate and prospective?

HIGH SCHOOLS.

During the past year one hundred and seventy-nine High Schools have been maintained in one hundred and sixty-five cities and towns. I have visited within a few years very many of these, and have found quite a number of them not what might be expected from the name. Still, even in the poorest of them, with all their deficiencies of apparatus, books of reference, and other things, of which I have spoken in previous reports, greater advantages for a higher education are presented than could be furnished by the other schools in the same towns. I have spoken of these as "High" Schools because they are popularly so called; but the statutes relating to them nowhere so designate them. They are town schools "for the benefit of all the inhabitants of the town," in distinction from district schools, which are for the benefit of districts only. Many a town school has been defeated because it had the misfortune to be called a high school. As these schools are open to all, they are, as Mr. Mann once said, "emphatically the poor man's school."

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So highly are these advantages appreciated, that in many instances pupils living at remote distances from the school will overcome every obstacle that interferes to prevent their availing themselves of them. To attend the High School which was kept for six months in one of the small country towns, having a population of less than twelve hundred, one young man daily walked six miles, and during the six months was absent but once. In another instance, a young man and his sister, living four miles from the High School, walked that distance morning and evening, in sunshine and in storm, for three years, and after completing its course of study, went to one of our Normal Schools, and are now ranked among the successful teachers of our Public Schools. Numerous facts of a somewhat similar character have come to my knowledge.

Many of these schools in the cities and large towns are provided with large, convenient, beautiful, and in some cases very costly buildings, furnished with all needful appliances, and affording the means of acquiring, without expense to the pupil, an education more extensive and complete than can be acquired in very many of the so-styled Colleges of our country. The Principals of many of these schools are thoroughly educated, and not unfre

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