section of it enumerates them, so as to leave no room for cavil. Its general provisions are, that the Board shall lay before the Legislature, annually, in a printed form, such parts of the returns made by the school committees of the respective towns, to the Secretary of the Commonwealth, as they shall consider useful; that they shall cause to be collected, by means of their Secretary, information of the actual condition and efficiency of the Common Schools, and other means of popular education; that they shall cause to be diffused, as widely as possible, throughout every part of the Commonwealth, information of the most approved, and successful methods of conducting and promoting the education of the young, "to the end, that all the children of the Commonwealth, who depend on the Common Schools for instruction, may have the best education, which those schools can be made to impart."

The 3d section provides, that the Board shall annually make a detailed report to the Legislature, of all its doings, with such observations as their experience and reflection may suggest, upon the condition and efficiency of our system of popular education, and the most practicable means of improving and extending it.

The passage of a statute, containing these provisions, of itself raises the implication, that there was some defect, either in our system of popular education, or in the efficiency with which it was carried forward. No measure of a similar character had been adopted before that time, or, as is believed, had been agitated in the Legislature of this Commonwealth; and the extraordinary unanimity with which the law was enacted, and the cordial reception which was extended to it, by all classes of our citizens, notwithstanding the novelty of its character, are evidences of the deep-seated desire of the Legislature and of the people, to seck out and to remedy any existing deficiencies in the great subject of Common School education.

We are not, however, compelled to resort to implication, in establishing the fact, that there was a necessity for the improvement of our Common Schools. If we give credence to the popular voice, which, at that time spoke loudly on the subject; if we believe in the correctness of the reports of the friends

of education, whether made by them as individuals, or as associated for the purpose of lending their combined aid in the furtherance of this great cause, we shall be compelled to admit, that, at no period in the history of our time-honored State, had the Common School fallen so far short of its original destination, as at the very period of the establishment of the Board of Education.

Various causes have been assigned by different individuals, for this deterioration. It is the opinion of many persons, that the law of 1789,-leaving it optional with towns, either to carry on the public schools in their corporate capacity, or to divide their territory into districts, by taking away the feeling of competition between different parts of the same town, by weakening the benevolent tendencies of many of the friends of educational improvement, and by destroying the necessity of an enlarged and general supervision, by the municipal authorities, of all the schools in the town, as well remote as central,laid deep the foundation of an evil, which has been going onward, with increasing influence, for the last half century.

It has been said by others, that the greatest cause of this deterioration, is to be found in the numerous private schools, which had sprung up throughout the Commonwealth. And, again, it has been speciously replied, to this assumption, that the establishment of private schools is not the cause, but the effect of bad Common Schools; inasmuch as parents will not, ordinarily, remove their children from schools established and maintained by the public, to those which are sustained at private expense, unless the public schools have become unsuitable for the purposes for which they were designed.

But whatever may have been the cause of the establishment of private schools, the effect of their establishment has been most disastrous upon the interests of Common School education. By increasing the expenses of education, without out proportionally improving its quality; by drawing off to the private schools the best of the teachers; by depriving the Common Schools of their best scholars, and thus robbing them of a bright example, the best incentive to diligence; by withdrawing from them the care and sympathy of the most intelligent part

of the population; by taking away from the patrons of these private institutions the motive to swell the amount of the appropriation for the support of Common Schools; by degrading the Common School from its just estimation in the minds of the community, to an institution where those only are sent whose parents are too poor or too neglectful to pay a proper regard to their condition; by fostering that feeling of jealousy which will always spring up between persons of antagonistic interests; by instilling into the mind of the youthful student a feeling of inferiority; by pointing him to a fellow student, born under the laws of his country to the same destiny, yet in the enjoyment of superior intellectual advantages; and by dissolving that community of feeling which should ever be consecrated to this great cause, they have done an injury to our Common School system, which their discontinuance only can repair.

Another cause, which has been relied on, as a fruitful source of evil, is the change which had taken place in the original character of the Common School, as an institution for the instruction of youth in the fundamental branches of learning, to a school which in some measure partakes of the nature of a university. Originally, but few branches of learning were taught in a Common School. The object was not to make the scholars proficient in the various branches of human knowledge, or even to give them what is sometimes called "a smattering of learning," but to lay a solid and substantial foundation for future proficiency. But of late years this design had been perverted; and, instead of resorting to them to learn the common branches, the pupils were anxious to be instructed in those studies which are more properly taught in high schools and academies. The reasons of this change were obvious. Scattered over the country, were various establishments, presided over by learned and scientific men, created for the purpose of teaching the young, for a course of years, the whole range of studies necessary to qualify a young man for entering a college. The tuition at these schools was high, so high that only the rich could avail themselves of their advantages; and when the public contrasted these establishments and the advantages afforded by them, with the public schools in the various dis

tricts, they felt a natural desire that their children should obtain, at the latter institutions, a knowledge of those branches of learning, which were taught to the children of their more wealthy neighbors; and they very unadvisedly thought, that the object of their solicitude was, at least, partially answered, when a thorough and critical knowledge of the ordinary studies of a Common School, was exchanged for a partial acquaintance with the studies of the academy. The evils of this change are numerous and apparent." It is hardly necessary to refer to the comparative value of an education in a few fundamental branches of learning, thoroughly understood, and, therefore, permanently fixed in the mind for future use, and a partial acquaintance with the whole range of the sciences, so little understood as to impart no interest, and so slightly appreciated as to be soon forgotten. But it is not merely the time which is thus wasted at this important and interesting period of life, which is most to be regretted; it is the habit which the student is thus led to form,-a habit which will exert a pernicious effect upon his whole future life.

There is, besides, a great want of economy, both in time and money, in a school so constituted. Suppose a school to consist of seventy pupils, and to be divided into classes of equal numbers, each class attending to a particular study from the alphabet upwards. Suppose such school to be kept six hours per day for the space of thirty-three weeks. Dividing the time equally, each scholar will receive individually five minutes of instruction daily, one half of an hour weekly, and sixteen and a half days in the whole time! Now here are seventy immortal minds which are to be taught the alphabet, spelling, reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, grammar, the definitions of words, philosophy, &c. &c., and two and a half minutes is the average time allowed to each pupil every half day! If it is said that by a classification of the school, the time. spent by the teacher in the instruction of a class is in fact instruction given to each individual scholar, it is conceded that this is true with pupils of cultivated minds. But what shall be said of those who have but just begun the study of letters or simple words, who are engaged in learning characters, and

sounds, and words without ideas, things of themselves possessing no interest, and which require the assiduous care of a most judicious teacher to take from the exercise its utter irksomeness? What shall be said of a system which, after a few minutes' employment, in designating to the learner the apparent difference in the various letters of the alphabet, leaves the young searcher after wisdom to one of three most distressing alternatives : either of listening to recitations which, of necessity, he cannot understand, or infringing upon the laws of the school, by whispering and disorder, or, what is the worst of the three, of spending the remaining hours of the day in a state of intellectual inaction.

There were other causes relied upon of greater or less importance, such as the dilapidation or want of repair of schoolhouses, the unhealthiness of their sites, the deficiency in their size, and also the multiplying of school books and their want of adaptation to the purposes of instruction, the neglect, by school committees, parents and guardians, of a proper oversight of the schools, and the niggardly appropriations which were made by the towns and cities for the support of what may justly be called the people's institutions; but all these are perhaps resolvable into one cause, the apathy of the people in regard to Common School education.

The reasons we have above briefly referred to and commented upon, are probably among the inducements which stimulated the Legislature of 1837, to establish the Board of Education, and which also induced succeeding Legislatures to pass acts of concurring legislation. We may have stated many of these reasons too strongly, but in our opinion, we have rather fallen short of the truth, in regard to the then existing state of the case, than gone beyond it. It is enough for our present purpose, that there were, at that time, existing evils to remedy, and that there was also a state of comparative perfection of which the Common School was believed to be susceptible. We propose now to inquire whether the establishment of the Board of Education has in any manner answered its ends.

We have before remarked that, of the original members of the Board, no one is now in office, and our remarks as to the