SCHOOL-HOUSES.

THERE is no particular in connection with school affairs, as to which public opinion needs a more thorough renovation, than the character of the school-houses that it is inducing our cities and towns to build.

The pride of New England in her public school system has naturally begotten a corresponding pride in the structures in which that system finds its practical exemplification. When any distinguished stranger has visited us, to cast a glance at our people, our territory and our "institutions," the organization that has towered up in glorious proportions before the eyes of nine-tenths of our public functionaries, as the object most worthy of his attention under the last head, has been "The Public Schools." Perhaps the school children have been ranged in two rows up and down some leafy mall or grassy common, for him to pass between, and receive the greetings of the bright-eyed, clean-dressed boys and girls. Then he must be taken to some school-house, representative embodiment of the most advanced ideas on the subject, that he may see the boys and girls at their tasks, illustrating the noble democracy and excellence of the grand popular institution. Of course it would be an anomaly full of covert satire, to boast of an organization as something precious beyond measure to the hearts of the people, because one of the strongest bulwarks of liberty and most effective instrumentalities of progress, and have no splendid edifices to exhibit, that shall adequately symbolize the intensity of the public regard for that organization. Here we have one of the primary incentives to the erection of expensive school-houses.

A second cogent instigation to lavish expense in this direction has been this. The pride I speak of has been eager for visible .concrete symbols of itself on which to gaze in affectionate and admiring complacency. It has not been satisfied to plume itself on the mere consciousness of the progress of the good work, nor on successes manifested in the general intelligence, prosperity and elevation of the people. But the patriotic tax-payer, as he passes along the street, must be confronted on his way by a stately and

comely structure, whose proportions are a similitude of his inward feeling, just as "in a glass, face answereth unto face."

And once more, pride is the prolific parent of jealous emulations. When a fine new school-house is built among us, the newspapers chronicle the incidents of its dedication, "spread-eagle" speeches and all, and append elaborate descriptions of its architecture and arrangements. Prominent educational officials, in the honest feeling that all this is legitimate, and in the right direction for good to the great cause, take up the story and blazon it anew. These glowing records stimulate some other city or town, in need of a new school-house, to attempt to rival the expenditure and achievements of those whose patriotic devotion has been so loudly trumpeted. And thus the competition has gone on, until from sixty to seventy thousand dollars is now the minimum cost of a High or Grammar school-house in our more wealthy and populous communities, the expense, indeed, very often amounting to double that sum.

But I hear some one saying in rejoinder, " What jaundiced, invidious carping is this! What a parade of false premises and a studied silence as to the real motives that actuate our communities to build their costly school-houses! What a contemptible aspersion of one of the channels through which the truest and healthiest sentiment of New England is finding expression! Let the truth be spoken! This comes not from the instigations of pride. It is not through a spirit of jealous emulation. But it is because our admirable schools can be properly accommodated only in admirable buildings."

I

I wish, with all my heart, that I could be convicted of injustice in what I have said: I would bear the reproach with gladness. fear, however, that I can easily prove myself to be too sadly near the truth.

For if the good of the scholars were the leading incentive to the erection of massive and imposing school-houses, the character of their interior arrangements, and the number and variety of the helps furnished for the purpose of directly aiding the work of instruction in them, would correspond in every way to the cost of the buildings themselves. It would be fair to say that at least ten per cent of what is put into a school building should be expended in

supplying it with necessaries and facilities for the daily operations of the school. Thus, if the building has cost a hundred thousand dollars, ten thousand dollars should be invested in maps, charts, philosophical instruments, illustrative cabinets, books of reference, and other provisions to second the teachers' efforts, and render them in the highest degree effective, no less a proportion, in view of these vital purposes, would justify the assumption that such vast amounts are put into brick and mortar for the good of the scholars alone.

Now what are the facts in this particular? What is the actual comparison of the cost of apparatus, maps, cabinets, etc., to facilitate the work of our splendidly housed schools, with that of the houses themselves? I will not attempt to draw it. The result, I know in advance, would be too painfully humiliating. The best furnished schools have nothing to boast of in this regard, while the meagre poverty of the great majority forces reflections on the mind of the discriminating observer, that are anything but complimentary to the public opinion, which is content to put its schools into the naked rooms of a great edifice, and then to go complacently around exclaiming, "See what a splendid school-house we have built!" Just here we find the most crying vice and defect in the working of our public school system: that so little is done, comparatively speaking, to equip our teachers fully for their labors. How many teachers are there, of the intelligent, cultivated class, who know what a thoroughly furnished school-room is, who can say that they have everything desirable? How many can even say that they have everything they actually need? How many, indeed, and that in costly school-houses, it may be, are so stinted and trammelled as to be worn down more by vexation than by toil? One is often led to say, in view of these things, Oh that a part of the money invested in the mere ornamentation of the outside of school-houses, had been saved for the essential uses of the inside!

Well, what is the obvious deduction from all this? That the ex-pensive school-houses are built to glorify the children—or their fathers.

But more: If the public opinion that builds such houses were healthy and laudable, it would be just and equable in its manifestatious. It would be uneasy unless all the children were expensively

housed as well as a part of them. But, on the contrary, it is the singular characteristic of most New England communities in this regard, that when they have reared one or two grand edifices, capable of accommodating, perhaps, only a small fraction of the whole number of children, they are willing to do no more. The rest must get along as they can, working on in the old tumble-down houses built by a former generation, or elsewhere, under similar disadvantages. And if it be a growing locality, and the number of children is rapidly increasing, the school committee must extemporize school-rooms in stores, halls, sheds, garrets, and what not, according to their opportu tunity. All very well! The school machinery will grind along at some rate or other, and the parts where there is friction will be in by-ways, out of sight. The grand edifices on the main streets symbolize the value that the people set on the system, and they are in plain view. All very well! Some time or other another great house will be built!

The obvious deduction once more. Is it the children who are specially thought of, when these grand houses are erected?

But to approach the subject in another form. The present rage for large and costly school-houses is extremely injurious, because it tends to limit the accommodations given to our schools. I do not know a single city or town, of any considerable size, in which all the schools are comfortably and conveniently housed. On the contrary, the contrast, in the most between the palatial structures enjoyed by a part of the schools, and the wretched, makeshift apartments to which others are condemned, is as disgraceful as it is unjust and harmful. Yet, when this contrast is commented on, the ready answer is, "Oh, we are anxious to do equally well by all. But the school-houses we have lately built have cost so much that the load of taxation would be intolerable, if we should attempt anything more of the kind at present." Yes, there is where the strain is felt in this ill-considered economy. Each grand schoolhouse represents such a load of taxation, that the children not so favored by it must be content with miserable accommodations, perhaps through all their school career.

And is such lavish expenditure necessary in any particular? Is it indispensable for the illustration of any point in convenience

comfort, health or æsthetic culture? Not at all. Handsome school edifices are desirable on many accounts. But the imposing proportions and costly finish that now so often distinguish them, far exceed every reasonable demand in the direction of symmetry and beauty. And when the points that have been commented on are taken into view, - the disgraceful buildings in which many of the schools are compelled to be holden, and the poverty-stricken lack of facilities for the work of instruction that characterizes the interiors of a still larger number, our costly houses, instead of being an honor, are a reproach to the communities that build them.

Let the tendency to this extravagance be checked. Let better counsels, more comprehensive views, prevail. The city of Worcester is setting a noble example in this regard. It is building capacious and convenient houses, to accommodate from four hundred and fifty to five hundred scholars, for less than half the money that other cities are spending to secure the same number of sittings. It is limiting the cost of each of these structures to thirty thousand dollars. And it is proving that this can be done at no sacrifice of strength, nor of the essentials of symmetry and comeliness. True, the houses already built on this economical plan, are in some respects painful failures. Some of them are, in vulgar parlance, so squat, that they seem as though an envious earthquake had rent the ground asunder beneath them, and swallowed up one story; while the last built has a hall so contracted in height, in comparison with its other dimensions, that nothing short of taking the windows entirely out will suffice to ventilate it when filled with company. But these are the blunders of the architect. They are remediable. They do not vitiate the original undertaking, and so, for every dollar spent in Worcester on this class of school buildings, there is, in comparison with other cities, a double return. The result is, that the people are encouraged to endeavor to accommodate in like manner all the children. The taxation for a single house is not so great as to weigh like a millstone about their necks. The prospect for the future is not clouded and dismal; and will not other cities reform their customs and imitate this example? Will they not realize the fact that to build school-houses at a lavish, unnecessary expense, that will accommodate only a part of their schools,