Radio Script #1327
Little Talks on Common Things
November 14, 1982
Last week we talked about the development of Waterville’s school buildings. Today let us consider the development of the school system itself. When Waterville was still a part of Winslow before 1802, Massachusetts, of which Maine was then a part, had had compulsory education for more than 150 years. In 1642 the colonial province of Massachusetts had passed legislation requiring each town to furnish teaching to its children, so that they should be able to read and write and understand province laws. Neglect of that statute subjected an offending town to a fine of 20 shillings. The law made no provision as to who should pay for the teaching. But five years later in 1647 the Province passed this continent’s first compulsory education law, but it provided an option about payment. The cost of conducting a school could be paid by the parents sending children to it, or by the taxpayers in general, whichever the voters of the town should decide.
Especially remarkable is the fact that the 1647 law provided for schooling above the elementary level. While the basic law made a school compulsory for every town with more than fifty families, when it had more than 100, it had to provide also a grammar school. There developed three different names for that kind of school above the common school level. Sometimes it was called grammar school, as was the case with its 17th century opening of the Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven, Connecticut. Sometimes it was called a Latin
school, as in the even earlier opening of the Boston and Roxbury Latin Schools. That designation was because the principal purpose of the school was to prepare students for college, and the earliest college was Harvard, started in 1636. Later the more common name for a grammar school was “academy”, and by 1800 that had become the designation of most such schools in Maine. As was the case in most early Maine towns, the first schools in Waterville were not public, nor even in accordance with Massachusetts law. Men started teaching their own and neighbors’ children in homes. It was indeed that kind of school that the town first recognized to comply with the law. In 1786 they voted to pay Zimri Haywood four pounds, eight shillings and six pence to board a teacher in his home and give him space to conduct a school therein, as well as to pay the teacher’s salary.
Between 1788 and 1796 Waterville teaching was sporadic, the town often making no appropriation. But Waterville was so far away from Boston that the town got away with the lapse without paying the expected fine. Meanwhile more affluent citizens saw that their children got some education through the small, private scbools held in homes. Typical was an agreement made by a group of parents with Abijah Smith in 1796. Smith agreed to conduct a school in Ticonic Village for three months, board himself, and supply a room
for the school for payment of $20 a month. Of those who signed the agreement with Smith, Asa Redington and Nehemiah Getchell together agreed to be responsible for five pupils, and several others subscribed for more than one per family.
In 1802, the first year that Waterville operated as a separate town, $300 was appropriated for schools. The next year it was increased to $400. The town then had ten school districts, the largest of which, Ticonic Village, operated two schools, the little yellow schoolhouse near the present site of City Hall, and the brick school on College Avenue near Getchell Street. The town committee, set up to inspect all the district schools, was well qualified. Two of its members, Timothy Boutelle and Dr. Moses Appleton, were graduates respectively of Harvard and Dartmouth.
When Maine became a separate State in 1820, it required all towns to appropriate for schools not less than 40 cents for each inhabitant, according to the latest census p dividing the money between the town’s school districts, according to the proportion of the number of children between the ages of 4 and 21. Textbooks had to be supplied by parents, but if any family failed to see that their children had the necessary books, the town had to supply them and add the cost onto the parents’ next tax bill.
While men were preferred as teachers, women were permitted to teach under certain circumstances, especially if a school term was restricted to young pupils with no big boys. The early schools had no grades. Each pupil progressed according to his or her ability. Many of them. especially the boys, had long lapses between periods of attendance, which accounts for the fact that in winter terms the enrollment had boys as old as 20 or 21. Children were entitled to attend school until the ,age of 21, unless they finished the common school program earlier. The teacher determined when a pupil had finished all he could learn in the common school by making sure the pupil could read the Bible, write a legible and intelligible letter, and do arithmetic to the “rule of three”, which was the old name for proportion. Not until after the Civil War were Waterville schools
fully graded.
In the early years teachers were poorly paid. In 1836 Martha Sheldon, at $5 a month, claimed to be the highest paid woman teacher in Waterville, and the highest paid man then got only $10. That, mind you, was not for a week, but for a full month until the last quarter of the 19th century curriculum in the Waterville schools was severely limited. Even after the schools were graded, emphasis was on the three R’s, with only a bit of history, geography and physiology. The academies required of all students four years of Latin and three of Greek, until public opinion compelled them to offer a general course without study of the classics. By that time the academies were seeing some instruction in French and German.
Before Maine authorized public high schools in 1870 there had been many attempts to operate private high schools in the larger communities. Portland High School had long been a private school before it was incorporated into the public system. Even after Waterville High was opened as a public school in 1871, pupils had about the same studies that were offered in Waterville Academy and the Waterville Liberal Institute and Greek.
A majority of pupils still took Latin. In a relatively small high school, the one in Bridgton, Greek was taught when I attended it in the first decade of this century. I was already committed to four years of Latin when, at the beginning of my sophomore year, I had to choose between Greek and German. I chose Greek, but after two weeks decided I did not like it and shifted to German. I have never regretted that choice. It enabled me to be good enough in German to become student assistant to Dr. Marquardt in my sophomore year in college, helping me greatly to finance my education.
The narrowness of that high school curriculum caused very heavy attrition in attendance. My own class was typical of what was then happening allover Maine. When we entered high school as freshmen in 1905, we numbered 22. Four years later our graduating class numbered seven, and two of those had joined US after the freshman year from outlyinq towns.
The need of boys and girls not bound for college forced the high schools to broaden their offerings. Music and art became subjects creditable for graduation. Then the manual arts and home economics enabled pupils to learn in school what they could earlier learn only at home or as apprentices. From that time on, the schools paid increasing attention to enabling their graduates to get a living. Education changed from merely cultural accomplishment to a vocational necessity.
As the high school curriculum broadened, it became more expensive. It cost a lot of money to equip the manual training and home economics departments. The smaller towns with fewer than 100 secondary school pupils simply could not compete with the larger communities. If the State were to insist on the democratic principle of equal education for all, the only answer was consolidated schools, in which several towns combined. That was at first accomplished through union school districts, by which towns operated their own elementary schools, but sent children to one high school. Other towns, without forming unions, were legally permitted to pay tuition for high school pupils at any high school of the parents’ choice. A third method was to make a contract with some high school for all the secondary pupils from a town without such a school.
The next step was the so-called Sinclair Law, forming School Administrative Districts, under which all schools in the towns forming a district came under the same central administration. Today these SAD’s are having their troubles, and the attempt of dissenting towns to leave a district was eased by new legislation enacted in a recent Maine legislature.
Expanding curriculum has seen expanding administration. As late as 1940 the Waterville superintendent had a single clerk-secretary and the high school principal had none. Today there are many assistants, clerks, secretaries and aides.
About Waterville’s schools there is too much more to make the story complete. So we shall finish that account next week; but for now we must say goodbye until then.
Year: 1982