The rise of local school supervision in Massachusetts (the school committee, 1635-1827)

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Contents

CHAPTER, PAGE.

I.—INTRODUCTION . : ‘ : : j ; ‘ ° School supervision and public control of education.—The need of special school officials —The two special agencies of supervision.—Characteristic stages in the development of each.—The purpose of the study to trace the rise of the school committee.—Early delegated powers the basis of later supervision.—Differentiation of supervision and administration implied early.—The delegation of functions concerning the teacher marks the rise of the school committee.—The entanglement of supervision and administration.—Local and central control of supervision.

IIl.—TueE ContTROL OF THE TowN MEETING : : ’ ; 5

Chapter I Introduction

THE development of school supervision in the commonwealth of Massachusetts accompanied the evolution of a state system of public schools. As more and more public money was devoted to the fostering of education, it was natural that the people should desire to control and supervise the schools to which such money was given. The outcome of the increasing support of education was a system of public schools. The outcome of the tendency in the direction towards controlling the schools supported by public funds was the evolution of the special functions and agencies of school supervision.

At first the supervision of schools was a very simple matter; it had to do largely with matters of support, hiring a teacher, ” or providing a place for the school. But the conception of the teaching process carried on within the school by the instructor gradually came to be more complicated. More studies were introduced, newer methods came into practice. The standards for efficient teaching became higher. In consequence more supervision of the teaching activity seemed necessary. This

I complication of the educational idea simply added force to the movement for special agencies and functions of supervision.

At first, when neither the business nor the teaching aspect of a school was regarded as a difficult matter, the people, as a ‘ whole, in their town meeting, attended to it well enough. As the notion of the whole business of education came to demand special and frequent attention, the power was delegated to the selectmen, who were the town’s representatives, or to the ministers, who were the town’s learned men having a special interest in education. But even these individuals with other distracting duties could not satisfy the 2 i wh li and special school officials came to be created.

The special school officials which came into existence were the school committeemen and the school superintendents. The development of each has marked a significant period in the growth of local supervision. The school committee came first, and was, in a sense, evolved from the town meeting, as the superintendent was later evolved from the school committee. The rise of the school committee marked the earlier period, from the first educational foundations of the Massachusetts colonies to about the year 1827. The rise of the school superintendent marked the later period, from about the year 1827 to the present time. To trace the rise of these two agencies of school supervision is the twofold purpose of this study.

Each of these sets of school officials presents in its evolution the same characteristic stages of development, four in number. They are as follows: (1) The general body, out of which the agency evolved, began to delegate its power to a person or group of persons, usually members of its own body, for a limited period of time and without the creation of a specific office; (2) | individual towns or cities created an official position, incorporating the powers previously delegated, on their own initiative, without the express sanction of the general law of the commonwealth; (3) the state passed a law, permissive in its’

nature, which sanctioned, tacitly at least, the creation of such we offices by the cities or towns; and (4) the state finally required _ all towns, districts, or cities to establish and maintain the office.

To trace the development of the school committee through these four characteristic stages during the earlier period, is the first purpose of this study. The rise ofthe school committee in influence has been felt largely through two channels. On the one hand, the individual communities have, by their ownj}initiative, tended to create such powers and agencies of supervision in response to local need. On the other hand, the central government has exerted its influence from above, to meet certain needs of the commonwealth as a whole. Through about two centuries, the local governments and the General Court were at work upon the agencies of local school supervision. The final product, the school committee, was the product of both forces. Its evolution can be rightly understood only as both sources of legislation are studied.

Chapter II The Control Of The Town Meeting

There were two agencies through which the Massachusetts colonists of the early seventeenth century could exert a legislative influence upon the education of that time. There was the General Court for matters of legislation expressing the will of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, and the town meetings of the various towns. They were both agencies of general political control, through which civil, ecclesiastical, educational, and other matters of common interest were treated.

There were certain laws having an educational bearing, passed almost at the very beginning of the commonwealth.! But the General Court passed no general law requiring schools until the year 1647.2. In consequence the earliest recorded attempts at school control are to be found in the town records prior to the year 1647.

It might be expected that the various towns, left to act out of their own initiative, might present a varying practice, and this they did. The variation existed, not only as to the extent

- of the school control exercised, but likewise as to the particular method by which the town came to establish and regulate its schools. Thus Boston, in 1635, practically established its school by entreating “‘our brother Philemon Pormont . . . to become scholemaster, for the teaching and nourtering of children.’’ 4 i Records of Mass., ii., 6, 7, 99, 167. 2 Ibid., ii., 203. 3 Boston, Rep. Rec. Com., 11., 5.

Dedham, in 1642, projected its school, not by electing a teacher in its initial action, but by providing the necessary support for a schoolmaster through an act which set aside school land.! Cambridge, in 1638, laid its educational foundation by doing both. Its first vote gave certain lands to the school, for “‘the vse of mr Nath Eaten as long as he shall be Imployed” in the work of teaching school.?

The variation was as extensive in the means used in regulating the school as it was in bringing it into existence. For many decades Watertown, though it had selectmen,’ controlled its school affairs, with the single exception of ordering a letter written in the year 1649,‘ directly and exclusively through the town meetings Dorchester in its first school record, in 16309, distributed certain powers not only to its selectmen, but to the elders as well.® | The extent of regulation of the internal affairs of the ey showed the same tendency towards divergency. Some towns did little more than to vote upon the teacher, his support, and the management of the school lands which were the basis, in large part, of such support. Of these Boston is a good example. From 163s on, till the end of the century, the internal affairs of the school seem not to have been a matter of general concern. q Dorchester, on the other hand, tended to do the opposite from the very beginning. As early as 164 5) “the maior p’te of the Inhabitants’? adopted certain detailed “‘rules and orders’’ concerning the school which applied not only to the teacher, his support and election, the fuel to keep the schoolhouse warm, but also to the hours of instruction, the time for Be cate- : chizing, the use of corporal punishment, etc.8 ee These variations in the method of conducting sean eh . were more than merely the record of adjustments — which ‘were © au peculiar to certain places. In some cases, they were the product of differing notions as to the proper method of school 1 Dedham, Records, i., 2 Cambridge, Records, 4 43° 3 Watertown, Records, pp. 1, 2, 6, 8, 10. 4 Ibid., p. 18. s Ibid., pp. 21, 22, 26, 31, 34-36, 40 et seq. Us 6 Boston, Rep. Rec. Com., iv., 39. 7 Ibid., ii., 5 et seq.; Vil., 22. 8 [bid., iv., 54-57:

control, and marked the beginninys of movements which in a later period assumed a widespread significance. In many cases, to be sure, there were variations due to the mere factor of individual initiative alone. Not representing any vital principle in school organization and management, they gave way to others that did, making the way more easy for a tendency toward un1- formity, which existed from the beginning, and became most powerful in the period of Massachusetts statehood.

In spite of all the variations noted, there was from the earl1- est colonial days some tendency toward uniformity of action in} school affairs. Socially the Massachusetts colonists were a homo geneous people. They were English, and, more than that, they were English religious dissenters, dominated most intensely by common religious convictions, in a time when religious convictions were unusually strong bonds. The demand for education among them came out of this very religion which bound them together. Education was a religious necessity.” To the extent that a common nationality and a common religion existed among them, there was some tendency toward a general interpretation of educational needs which many of the colonists held together. When they came to the means of educational control and supervision, they had the traditions of long-established English practice to start with.1

The tendency toward a certain uniformity is clearly discernible even before the unifying influence of the legislation of the General Court was exerted. The most significant fact that appeared in the period prior to the law of 1647 is that, in general, educational controlwwas centred in the inhabitants of a given community as a whole. The political machinery for the expression of their joint will was the town meeting. At this time the people managed their own school affairs, dominantly by direct vote. The Law of 1647, in placing the responsibility for schools upon_the town ‘as a whole, recognized the practice most current among the towns.

Specifically, the town meeting, rather than any delegated authority of the inhabitants of the community, tended, in the earliest years of colonial life, to chodse the schoolmaster and to provide for his support,—the two most fundamental acts in

1Cf. Eggleston, Transit of Civilization, chap. v., ‘‘ The Tradition of Education.”’

the establishment and maintenance of a school as it was then conceived.

Charlestown was one of the earliest to vote school support

/ in its town meeting. In 1636, Lovell’s Island, which had been granted by the General Court, was set aside for the school.! Cambridge in 1638, entered a memorandum concerning land to be devoted to the school, and assigned it to the use of the schoolmaster. Dorchester, in an extensive order of its town meeting, did a similar thing. In 1639 it imposed forever an annual rental of thirty pounds upon the inhabitants of “‘Tomsons Iland ”’ “‘to bee payd to such a schoolemaster as shall undertake to teach.” ° In the same year Newbury granted to Anthony Somerby “‘foure akers of upland,’’ and “‘sixe akers of salt marsh,’ as an ‘‘encouragement to keepe schoole for one yeare.’’* Boston, in 1641, followed the precedent of both Charlestown and Dorchester and contributed Deare Island to the support of the Boston Latin School.> Finally, the town of Dedham, in the year 1644, decided “‘yt the remainder of ye Training ground be improued for ye vse of the Fre Schole in the sd towne.”’®

While the general tendency of the town as a whole directly to care for the support seems to be established, there were exceptions among important communities. While a Boston town-meeting gave Deare Island to the support of the town school in 1641, an earlier record of support granted by subscription in 1636 shows that it was done, not at a town meeting of all the freemen, but at a ‘‘general meeting of the richer inhabitants.”’ ’ Even in this case the vote was that of a “‘general meeting”’ of interested persons. The old town of Roxbury presented another departure from the usual practice. A famous old covenant regarding “‘the Free Schoole in Roxburie” was agreed upon by a number of ‘‘donors (Inhabitantes of the said Towne).”® In this case, as in that of Boston in 1636, the covenant was probably the work of the richer inhabitants of the community, rather _

1 Barnard, Amer. Jour. of Educ., xxvii., 127. ae

2 Cambridge, Records, p. 33.

4 Coffin, History of Newbury, p. 32.

5 Boston, Rep. Rec. Com., i1., 92.

6 Dedham, Records, 1., 108.

7 Boston, Rep. Rec. Com., ii., 160, footnote.

8 Dilliway, Free schoole of 1645 in Roxburte, pp. 6-9 than of all the freemen. In the case of Boston, the practice

seems to have been limited to the specific case mentioned, the Be town-meeting assuming the function in other instances. In the Ae cs case of Roxbury, the control passed into the hands of feoffees; provided for in the covenant, the whole procedure partaking of

the nature of a corporation engaged in the establishment of a

school, rather than of a town establishing a public town insti-

tution.

Not only did the town as a whole contribute support to the schgol, which in many cases meant direct contribution to the schoalmaster, but the town meeting elected the teacher in mos places in the thirties and early forties of the seventeenth century i Numerous instances are upon record. The town of Boston selected Philemon Pormont in 1635.!. A year later Charlestown arranged with William Witherell ‘‘to keep a school for a twelvemonth” and fixed his salary at forty pounds a year.2 Two years later than Charlestown, Cambridge established, or at least ratified, such establishment of its schoolmaster, ‘‘mr Nath Eaten,” by giving him the use of ecrtain school lands “‘as long as he shall be Imployed in that work.’’? The same practice is found among other towns. In 1639, Newbury named its schoolmaster, Anthony Somerby, in making a grant of land to him for his services as schoolmaster for one year.* Dorchester, in the same year, while it did not elect a teacher, distinctly ordered that “‘the sayd schoolmaste [is] to bee chosen fro tyme to tyme p the freemen.’’> In 1640, there was the record that at “‘a generall towne meeting,” held in Salem, ‘‘yong Mr. Norris [was] chose by this assembly to teach schoole.’’®

There are certain exceptions to be noted in the matter of the election of teacher, asin the provision of school support. That single record of a ‘“‘general meeting of the richer inhabitants”’ of Boston, previously referred to, not only made subscription “towards the maintenance of a free school master,’’ but Mr. Daniel Maud was ‘‘also chosen thereunto.’’’ In the case of

1 Boston, Rep. Rec. Com., i1., 5. 2 Barnard, Amer. Jour. of Educ., xxvii., 127.

3’ Cambridge, Records, p. 33. 4 Coffin, History of Newbury, p. 32. 5 Boston, Rep. Rec. Com., iv., 39. ’

6 Felt, Annals of Salem, i., 427. © ? Boston, Rep. Rec. Com., ii., 160, footnote.

a oh Lf ye < we ne Rise of Local School Supervision in Massachusetts

Roxbury, the famous covenant of 1645 definitely provided that the persons selected as feoffees ‘‘shall have power to putt in or remove the Schoolemaster.’’! Dorchester, which in 1639 had distinctly ordered that the freemen should elect the teacher, in 1645 made it the business of certain wardens or overseers to see that the ‘‘sayd Schoole may fré tyme to tyme bee supplied with an able and sufficient Schoolemaster.’’ But the town further ordered that the person provided “‘is not to be admitted into the place of Schoolemaster without the Generall césent of the Inhabitants or the maior p’te of them.’’2 This leaves the final control of the election of the schoolmaster where it was before The function of the wardens was merely to nominate.

It is not an accidental thing that the towns should early show a certain uniform method of providing support for the teacher and electing one. These were the two fundamental acts in the establishment of the school of that time. The school of the early seventeenth century was a simple thing. It con- | sisted largely of some one to teach and some to be taught. Com; plex systems of education, with costly plants, complicated courses of study, elaborate methods for licensing teachers, skilled bodies of administrators and supervisors, there were none. The choice of one “‘able to instruct youth”’ and the payment of his service were the two essential duties of the community. Hence, in general, the freemen of the town attended to both of these matters at their common gathering. In time, as school affairs / tended to become more complex, there was a growing tendency to delegate some of the special duties which grew out of these

two types of town vote. The tendency existed only in a slight

degree in the period prior to 1647. Consequently, when the

General Court of the colony came to pass its first general law}

in 1647, requiring the establishment of schools, it did not delegate the responsibility to any existing body of officials: it charged . the “town” or “‘township’’ as a whole with the responsibility.

The portion of the law which is of concern here is as follows:

© ANY

It is therefore ordred, yt evry township in this iurisdiction, aftr ye = Lord hath increased ym to ye number of fifty householdrs, shall then _ forthwth appoint one wthin their towne to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write & reade, whose wages shall be paid eithr by =

1 Dillaway, Free Schoole of 1645 in Roxburie, p. 8. 2 Boston, Rep. Rec. Com.. iv., 54.

kd.

ye parents or mastrs of such children, or by ye inhabitants in genrall, by way of supply, as ye maior pt of those yt ordr ye prudentials of ye towne shall appoint; provided, those yt send their children be not oppressed by paying much more yn they can have ym taught for in othr townes; and it is furthr ordered, yt where any towne shall increase to ye numbr of one hundred families or househouldrs they shall set up a gramer schoole, ye master thereof being able to instruct youth so farr as they may be fited for ye university; provided, yt if any towne neglect ye performance hereof above one yeare, yt every such towne shall pay sf to ye next schoole till they shall performe this order.

It will be noticed that in both the pia te) of schools and | the election of teachers, the legal obligation is placed upon the © town as a whole, not upon any special officer or set of officers. ©

It is the “‘towne”’ that “‘shall set up a gramer schoole.’’ It is the ‘‘township’’ which “‘shall then forthwth appoint one wthin their towne to teach.”’ It is the “‘towne shall pay 5t’’ in case “‘any towne neglect ye performance hereof above one yeare.”’ And such levying of responsibility by the General Court in its first compulsory school law was the recognition of the general local practice.

/ The law contains certain other statements and implications which may be noted, as they have to do with the detailed factors involved in the two above-named acts of the town. (1) The particular method by which such support was to be raised was left optional. The teacher’s “‘wages shall be paid eithr by ye parents or mastrs of such children, or by ye inhabitants in genrall, by way of supply.” (2) The law implied that the teachers appointed by the town should have certain qualifications. Certain abilities were recognized in the grading of the schools into two groups, and in the mention of their function in terms of varying definiteness. The law says that the elementary school teacher is ‘‘to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write & reade.’’ Inthe case of the grammar or secondary ~ school teacher it states, ‘‘y° master thereof being able to instruct youth so farr as they may be fited for y® university.”’ Just what relation these two further implications of the law bear to the local practice of the various towns prior to 1647 is dificult to state. The use of the profits of the town school lands, as previously stated, was common. But there is no record sufficiently illuminating upon either the contribution of

1 Records of Mass., ti., 203.

parents and masters of children to the school expense, or upon the detailed manner of selecting a teacher at this time in the town records of Boston, Cambridge, Dorchester, or Dedham; all of which towns legislated upon school affairs prior to the date of this law. In the twofold responsibility of the town for the provision of some means that a school might be set up and for the appointment of a teacher, many of the complex actions of modern education are in a way involved. As the social demands upon the school become greater through the centuries, and the work of the school responds through a more subtle and complex machinery, the specialized agencies of educational control and supervision come into existence. The historic beginnings of it all are in these simple votes of the colonial towns. The Massachusetts town of to-day still votes its support in the town meeting much as it did in the early seventeenthcentury.1 But it is far different with the powers that were then merged in the simple election or re-election of the. teacher by the town-meeting. The latter action, the supplying of the school “‘with an able and sufficient Schoolemaster,’2 buried within itself the functions of certification, appointment, assignment, and, where a teacher was reappointed to his place, inspection and supervision. The appointment of a teacher involved, unconsciously to be sure, the first three factors in modern school supervision. His reappointment also involved the two more purely educational factors; however such inspection was founded upon the chance visits of some freeman bent upon seeing his truant son to school, or upon the idle babblings of the children to their parents at the close of school. And the town supervised its school by the annual or term vote which expressed a supervisory opinion formulated upon just such chance and unreliable data. :

In time the state demanded a more or less sharp differentia- ; | tion of the powers that have been suggested as lying buried in the vote which appointed the teacher. It came later to treat the whole question of the support of the school with more careful detail. But that action of the state was late in coming. As education became more complex, the various powers or functions began to differentiate and were gradually delegated to

1 Revised Laws of Mass., 1904, chap. xlii, sec. 22, p. 19. 2 Boston, Rep. Rec. Com., iv., 54.

particular officers rather than to the town asa whole. Not until 1693 did the General Court lay the responsibility ‘‘for the settlement and maintenance of such schoolmaster and masters’’ anywhere else than upon the inhabitants of the town in general. In that year it divided the responsibility, or, at least, laid it in two places,—upon ‘‘the selectmen and the inhabitants of such towns.” The law reads as follows:

That every town within this province, having the number of fifty householders or upwards, shall be constantly provided of a schoolmaster to teach children and youth to read and write. And where any town or towns have the number of one hundred families or householders, there shall also be a grammar school set up in every such town, and some discreet person of good conversation, well instructed in the tongues, procured to keep such school. Every such schoolmaster to be suitably encouraged and paid by the inhabitants. And the selectmen and the inhabitants of such towns, respectively, shall take effectual care and make due provision for the settlement and maintenance of such schoolmaster and masters.!

As late as 1671 a law was passed which placed the responsibility for the setting up of schools and the appointment of masters upon the town as a whole, exactly as the act of 1647 had done. No mention is made of selectmen in this law, a portion of which reads: ‘‘ Whereas the law requires euery towne, consisting of one hundred familjes or vpward, to sett vp a grammar schoole, & appointe a master thereof; . . .’2

A still later law of the General Court, that of 1683, made the same assumption. It reads:

As an addition to the law, title Schooles, this Court doth order and enact, that euery towne consisting of more than fiue hundred familjes or householders shall set vp & mainteyne two gramer schooles and two wrighting schooles, the masters whereof shall be fitt and able to instruct youth as sajd law directs; . . .’’3

In Plymouth, which was separate from Massachusetts Bay, until the year 1691,* the tendency was the same as in its sister colony. The law of 1658, which urged the support of schools, made its appeal to the ‘‘Towne’”’ or ‘‘ Townshipes.”’

1 Mass., Prov. Acts & Res.,i., 63.

2 Records of Mass., iv., pt. 2, p. 486.

4 Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America, iii., 282.

ad

It is proposed by the Court vnto the seuerall Townshipes of this Jurisdiction as a thinge they ought to take into serious consideration that some course may be taken that in euery Towne there may be a Scoolmaster sett vp to traine vp children to reading and writing.!

Later, when the General Court of Plymouth made the provision of schools compulsory, the responsibility was laid upon the town as in the much earlier laws of Massachusetts Bay. ‘This law of 1677 begins, ‘‘This Court doth therefor order; that in whatsoeuer Townshipp in this Gou'ment consisting of fifty families or vpwards; any meet man shal be obtained to teach a Gramerscooles oo ne

The tendency of the town-meeting to give up some of the management of school affairs by placing it upon the selectmen, which, as will be seen later, was gradually developing among the towns, through their own initiative, received some recognition from the General Court before the law of 1693. In 1654 it commended it to the care of “‘the selectmen in the seuerall townes, not to admitt or suffer any such to be contynued in the office or the place of teaching, educating or instructing of youth or child, in the colledge or schooles, that haue manifested y™selves vnsound in the fayth, or scandelous in theire liues, & not giueing due satisfaction according to the rules of Christ.” % While there was nothing obligatory in the act, it was nevertheless a sanction to the assumption of some authority on the part of selectmen with reference to the qualifications of schoolmasters that might be hired by the town.

While the General Court was recognizing more and more the authority of the selectmen in school affairs, the towns were definitely delegating more and moré power to them. This was quite marked in the period from about 1647 to the year 1692/3, when the law was passed which made the town and the selectmen jointly responsible for the ‘‘settlement and maintenance”’ of schoolmasters.*

The town records of Boston from 1644 to 1689 are practically the record of what the selectmen did in school affairs, or of what the town instructed or permitted them to do.° There are

1 Plymouth Col. Rec., Xi., 142. 3 Records of Mass., iii., 343, 344.

£33, 140,'1423 Vll.,.22, 24,30, 32, 33, 30, 38, 51, 535 57a auteur ees E71, 183,/184,'1O1, 192% some exceptions, however, but they are scattered. In 1650 the town fixed the salary of ‘‘M: Woodmansey, the Schoolmaster.’’! In 1669/70 the town granted his widow seven pounds, provided she vacated the schoolhouse.2 In 1689 the old-time authority of the town meeting in school affairs seems to have been returned, temporarily, at least, by the following motion: ‘‘ Voted that the former Custome & practice in managing the affairs of the free schools be restored & continued.’’ °

The town of Cambridge, from 1662 to 1691, recorded no action in educational matters at its town meeting. Such action as is recorded is given as part of the proceedings of the selectmen.*

The town of Dorchester elected a schoolmaster at a town meeting in 1665.5 After that time, until 1683, when the printed record ceases, there is no record of the election of a teacher by the town. The power “to looke out after,” “‘agree with,’ or ‘hire a schoolmaster’’ is delegated to some set of officials or to some committee. The town meeting released the schoolmaster in 1669, in order that he might become a minister to the people at Hadley.’ There was evidently some action of the town bearing on the support of the school,’ though even here the evidence is not clear as to the general practice. The selectmen may have levied the rate.?

Dedham is another example of a town where the town meeting tended gradually, in this period, to relieve itself of certain functions which had to do with the operation of the school, particularly with those involved in the selection and hiring of a teacher. In 1658 the town hired a teacher and asked that the selectmen ‘‘agree’’ with him.19 After that time and until the close of the printed record in 1673, the votes of the town on educational matters are limited.11 In 1660 the town voted “‘that