Excerpt from Eleventh Annual Report of the Board of Education: Together With the Eleventh Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board

The Board of Education, in submitting to the Legislature their Eleventh Annual Report, are happy to have it in their power to represent that the Public Schools of Massachusetts continue to be in a thriving, and, in many respects, satisfac tory condition. To justify this representation, they refer to the accompanying Report of the Secretary of the Board, and to the Abstract of School Returns appended thereto. These documents furnish all the statistical and other information, which can be officially obtained; and they may be relied on to show that the progress of improvement has been unabated, while they also indicate defects, that remain to be supplied. They may especially be referred to as proving, that there is a prevalent disposition to secure better teachers by granting higher salaries; that the people, by submitting, almost every where, to a gradual increase of municipal appropriations for the support of schools, must be considered as prepared and resolved, not only to sustain, but to advance, what is truly the most popular of all our institutions; that, in the erection of improved schoolhouses, the wise liberality of the towns, and the judgment and taste of Committees, continue to provide for a want which, within a few years, has been rapidly dimin ishod and that, in the increasing ratio of regular and continu ous attendance in many of the schools, there is unquestionable and encouraging evidence of the practicable improvement and extension. Of the system.

In the second part of his Report, the Secretary has discussed a subject, which the Board deem entitled to the special and serious consideration of the Legislature, and the public. The correspondence embraced in it points to results which, upon the evidence submitted, may well be deemed practicable; and which, if practicable, it must be admitted to be one of the highest duties of the Legislature and of School Committees to cooperate in producing. Upon the testimony of the most com petent witnesses, and upon the basis of an argument which cannot fail to commend itself to the public judgment, it is made to appear that, if good teachers can be provided for all our schools, and if all the children of the Commonwealth can be kept in regular attendance at school during the entire period (from 4 to 16 years of age, ) which the law now regards as the proper term of education, the proportion must be very small of those who will fail to become worthy citizens, and respectable and useful members of the community. It is impossible to investigate the facts, which attest the prevalence and increase of juvenile delinquency, without coming to the conclusion, that what has yet been done in the cause of popular education is but a partial and incomplete work of beneficence, falling far below the requirements of the Constitution that a very large proportion of scholars enjoy, in but a very limited degree, any of the benefits of attending school; that, to a great extent, the attendance of scholars is so irregular, and is terminated at so early a period, that it is not possible to insure thorough attain ments even in elementary knowledge, or to exert the long-con tinned oversight and various influences which are essential to the formation of good habits; and that the frequent abandon ment and unavoidable exposure of children, who are with 'drawn from school before they are fit to enter the world, is the most fruitful source of the early and wide-spread corruption which is universally deplored.

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