The Management of Early Schools

While school districts were largely self-governing, they were subject to town oversight and a growing body of state regulation on the qualifications of teachers. There were two bodies established during this period to oversee the operation of Nelson’s schools: The Prudential Committee and the Superintending Committee.  These committees seem not to have existed simultaneously and made reports to the town suggesting that their functions were nearly the same.  In their reports we learn what was being taught in the schools and read opinions about the quality of that teaching.  These committees also presented rules of school conduct for consideration at town meeting.

Reproduced below is such a report for 1829

District Teacher # Schollars Arithmetik Grammar Geography History Rhetoric Latin # weeks Budget
1 Jonas Whitney 58 18 20 10 1 10 $77.63
Ursula Newell 35 4 11 6 1 16
3 Jonas Whitney 43 15 21 5 1 1 8 $59.44
Saphrona Whitney 29 0 10 11 10
4 Breed Batchellor 55 25 11 8 10 $73.33
Saphrona Whitney 41 0 3 8 9
5 Nehem. Cutter 49 14 15 11 7 $49.08
Saphrona Herrick 33 0 5 2 1 9
6 Charles Manson 36 10 10 3 7 $32.55
Amoret Wild 26 5 6 3 7
7 Benj. Frost 40 16 13 9 9 $62.40
Lois Hardy 26 0 7 2 10
8 Breed Batchellor 47 14 8 16 8 $53.79
Lois Whitney 36 0 11 6 8
9 John Perry 29 11 5 3 5 $47.00
Louisa Morse 24 3 5 2 8
Total Winter 357
Total Summer 250

There was a report on the performance of each school.  The comments for School Number Seven reads as follows:

No. 7  taught [sic] by Mr. Frost made a degree of improvement but not so much as we expected from the Teacher’s good qualities and easy manner of instructing there being a manifest want of discipline.

It is worth drawing some other conclusions from this report. The school population reflects the still very large number of children among the farm families in Nelson. Three hundred-fifty seven of Nelson’s eight hundred and seventy-five residents were attending school. The length of the school terms varied greatly from one district to the next.  Each district did set its own schedule.  Winter school was invariably taught by masters and summer schools by mistresses. Winter schools were one and a half times better attended than summer schools. Few summer schools taught arithmetic.

The records of school Number Seven reveal that mistresses were paid routinely $1 per week while their male counterparts  were paid $3. Most of the mistresses employed by school #7 had local surnames, but only one master did.  The 1840 budget illustrates this.

The above budget summary for 1840 shows a total school budget of $67.98 They paid Amanda Farwell, a local woman, $9.32 for teaching 7 weeks and Harvey Wardwell $22.92 for seven weeks – two and a half Mistress Farwell’s rate.

After 1840 the district employed only mistresses. Their stipends edged up and they achieved the $3 per week level occasionally by the end of the record in 1858.  Were masters harder to get? Did the qualifications of the mistresses improve?  The district didn’t actually save money; it no longer had lower paid summer teachers.

District Number Seven elected a member of the Superintending Committee to represent it. One such committee of which Benjamin Buckminster was the member from School Number Seven drew up a set of Bye Laws for Nelson schools in 1824 that was adopted at town meeting. The committee wrote 24 rules. Five dealt with discipline expected in classrooms.  These four are illustrative:

  1. It shall be the duty of the Instructor to examine his scholars once a week at least in the several branches, which they are studying, and to inculcate in his school the principles of morality and the necessity of a decent behavior.
  2. The scholars shall at all times treat their Instructor with respect, shall behave with decency and propriety, shall use no profane or obscene language when going to or returning from school or in or about the school house.
  3. When the Instructor approaches the schoolhouse the scholars shall retire into their seats and respectfully rise when the Instructor enters and shall not afterwards leave their places without leave of the Instructor.
  4. There shall be no whispering, laughing or playing or other unnecessary disturbance in school nor shall there be any playing cards or any other gaming plays in intermission time.

The final rule threatened the heavy hand of the town if a school wasn’t measuring up:

The Selectmen shall not appropriate the school tax towards the support of any school taught by an Instructor who shall not have complied with the above regulations.

It was too much; the town rescinded them all the next year.

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The Management of Early Schools

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2020-12-11T23:17:00+00:00Government, Rick Church, Schools|

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