servatism of the school organization, the School Committee as late as 1898 refused to grant permission to the Board of Supervisors, or any one of them, to examine classes in the respective schools of the city. Boston has certainly always been progressively conservative in the conduct of its schools. During this latter period less attention was paid to reconstruction and enlargement than to the effective working of the existing system. The course of study has been carefully revised two or three times, but not radically changed. In Mr. Seaver's Report of 1903 he exprest the opinion that "the reform work which now seems most needful in our schools is to rid the several studies of unnecessary or useless details. There is an almost irresistible tendency to over-elaboration in every branch of study."

Early in the nineteenth century two important educational measures adopted by the inhabitants of the town of Boston resulted in permanent enlargement of the field of public education. One of these was the extension of elementary education downwards by the opening of primary schools in 1818, and the other was the extension of non-classical education upwards by the establishment of the English High School in 1821. "That public primary schools for children under seven years of age were greatly needed in Boston was a surprizing and unwelcome truth to the officials and the leading men. The selectmen and gentlemen chosen by the town as a School Committee, with other eminent gentlemen who visited the schools, annually, dined together in Faneuil Hall at the expense of the town." "They either had not learned that there were hundreds of children in Boston who from poverty or neglect of parents had no means of preparation for admission to our justly celebrated grammar schools, and other hundreds of grammar school age who were growing up in ignorance, or while knowing these facts made no allusion to them in their afterdinner speeches in Faneuil Hall." These discreditable facts were first brought to light by the managers of the Sunday Schools. A report published in 1817 states that of 336 children admitted to the Mason Street Sunday School,

none of whom was under five years of age, one quarter could read words of one syllable, and most of them did not know their letters. Other Sunday schools furnished similar evidence. This state of things was all the more discreditable since the law of the Commonwealth, past in 1780, which provided for the establishment of preparatory schools to prepare children for admission to grammar schools, had been neglected by the authorities in Boston for more than a quarter of a century. Other towns meanwhile had taken action under the law and were enjoying their primary schools. That this neglect is to be charged upon the authorities and some of the leading men in Boston and not upon the people, is evidenced from the prompt and favorable response the people gave whenever the subject of primary schools was brought before them for action. The authorities looked upon primary schools as an expensive fad. The people took a different view.

In May, 1817, a town meeting was called to take up this subject and the matter was referred to the school committee with the addition of one person from each ward to be appointed by the selectmen. This Committee began by canvassing the town to enumerate the children both above and below the age of seven years who were not attending school. Of the former number they found 283 and of the latter 243, a number which in a town of 40,000 inhabitants certainly called for serious attention, but the chairman of the selectmen wrote a report carefully designed to persuade the people that there was nothing in the facts that need cause any uneasiness and concluded that it was inexpedient to establish primary schools at the public expense for children under seven years of age, and that an increase in the number of reading and writing schools was not required by any evident public necessity. The School Committee accepted this report and printed it for the information of the people supposing that this action would end the matter. The report, however, was vigorously assailed in the public press.

In May, 1818, a new petition was presented at the town

meeting, referred to a special committee and favorably reported upon. This report, instructing the School Committee to appoint three gentlemen from each ward to provide instruction for children between four and seven years of age and appropriating $5000 for the purpose, came up for final action on the 11th of June. The opposition thereto was led by Hon. Harrison Gray Otis and the Hon. Peter O. Thatcher who supported the position which had been taken by the School Committee the year before. The leading petitioners, Elisha Ticknor, formerly one of the grammar masters of Boston, and James Savage, supported their views earnestly, aided by Thomas B. Watt. The report and the votes were adopted almost unanimously. The School Committee bowed gracefully to the will of the people, and meeting five days later chose 36 gentlemen, three from each ward, to carry into execution the votes of the town. Thus was constituted the primary school committee, a body which had the whole management of the public primary schools from 1818 to 1855, a period of thirty-seven years and for the first time children were then taught to read in the schools of Boston at public expense.

In 1833 the primary school committee discovered that in primary school No. 8, in the sixth district, Peter Parley's Geography with maps and a globe had been introduced, also geographical cards and models of various figures. The geography, it was learned, was used as an occasional reading book by the children, as geography was taught at this time, and the other things were also used by the teachers. In three other schools more or less of the same things had been introduced. It appeared further that all of them had been given to the schools, tho in some cases the parents had been requested to purchase the geography for the children. These acts were formally censured by the committee on the ground that variations had been made in the course of study without first obtaining the consent of the whole board. The gentleman censured for these acts was a new member of the committee, Josiah Holbrook, an educational reformer of considerable originality and merit in his day.

This dread of innovation manifested itself a month later when one member moved that each district committee be allowed to select one school in which new methods of instruction may be experimentally introduced, and another member asked leave to introduce at his own expense certain articles for the purpose of instruction, namely, a blackboard, a number of slates and pencils and some forms suitable for the children to write on the slate. Both motions were laid on the table. The first was not taken up again, but the slates and pencils were allowed after due deliberation later in the same year, and the blackboards some years afterwards. In 1838 there was a controversy in the General School Committee over the amount of time spent respectively in the writing school and grammar school section of the double headed Writing-Grammar School. The course of study in the Writing School required the teaching of writing, penmanship, arithmetic, bookkeeping by single entry and a little of algebra and geometry. The Grammar department required the teaching of reading, spelling, grammar, geography, English composition, declamation, some portions of natural philosophy and natural and civil history. The majority of the Sub-Committee reported in favor of giving the grammar school department more time because of the enlarged and enlarging curriculum. The minority argued in favor of the time tried and valued old policy and won out by a vote of 80 to 70.

The primary school committee was dissolved in 1855, and the primary schools were transferred to the care of the general school committee. The conditions in the primary schools were very much more unpromising than in the grammar schools. Teachers long accustomed to the old order were now called upon to adapt themselves to a new order. The schools furnished many evidences of neglect. Houses were ill lighted and ventilated and were not well provided with playgrounds and sanitaries. The rooms were small and badly overcrowded. Attendance was irregular and truancy prevalent. The furniture was scanty, no desks for the use of slates, only little movable arm chairs

for the children to sit in.

There was no course of study in

the modern significance of the term. The principle of gradation had not been recognized and promotion from one teacher's room to another was unknown. It is true that each teacher had six classes, but this meant that her children began their A B C's with her and stayed in her room until they were ready for admission to the grammar school. Many children were kept in the primary schools long after they were ready for admission to the grammar school because their teachers were unwilling to impoverish their first classes by parting with the most brilliant pupils.

The plan for an English Classical School was suggested by one of the members of the School Committee, Samuel A. Wells, and brought before the selectmen in 1820 with a request that a public meeting of the inhabitants of the town be called to consider and act thereon. The town meeting was held on the 15th day of January, 1821, and the plan was nearly unanimously accepted, but three persons voting in the negative. The course of study, a three years' course, was quite simple in comparison with the courses in modern high schools. It contained no foreign languages, no bookkeeping, no chemistry and no drawing, and remained unchanged for eleven years. In 1832 a teacher of French was appointed. Drawing was also added as a permitted study about the same time. Spanish was also a permitted study for some years following the Mexican War, but few pupils took it and it was finally dropt for lack of interest. Bookkeeping was added in 1842. Chemistry and the German language were added to the list of studies in 1870, but were open only to the few boys who remained in school for a fourth year.

"In 1825 the School Committee instructed a sub-committee of its body to consider the expediency and practicability of establishing a public school for the instruction of girls in the higher departments of science and literature. They adopted later unanimously a favorable report on the subject, providing for the opening of a high school for girls. The number of girls who presented themselves at the ad