Radio Script #1328

Little Talks on Common Things
November 21, 1982

Last week we told you about early schools in Waterville. Today we want to complete the story by bringing it up to the present time.

Before 1887 the Office of Superintendent of Schools was a part-time job, held by some man who had another major occupation. Often the office was held by the pastor of one of the local churches.

In 1887, when Waterville changed from town to city government, William C. Crawford, a Colby graduate of 1882, was chosen the first full-time superintendent. He completely reorganized the system, getting uniform textbooks into all the schools, requiring that all teachers hold certificates, and encouraging prospective teachers to attend the Farmington Normal School.

While Crawford was superintendent Maine passed its free textbook law. It is difficult for us today to appreciate the problems that confronted a teacher before this law was passed. Seldom did a town’s school committee exercise much control over books used in the district schools. Although they did exercise some control, by having approval of books, they usually approved half a dozen for any subject. The result was that the pupils of a given school might have as many as eight different readers, six different arithmetics, and four different geographies. Although most had Webster’s Blueback Speller, other spelling books were also used. How any teacher managed to do any classwork in any subject is almost inconceivable.

Such changes as the free textbook law added to the expense of operating schools. As the heavier burden fell chiefly upon the local property tax, there grew a demand for State support, especially for poorer towns. Almost from its beginning the State had given some aid to local schools. In 1828 revenue from the sale of public lands set up the first school fund. Later came a bank tax devoted to education; and in 1872 the Legislature authorized a State tax of one mill devoted to common schools. In 1909 it was increased to two mills, with one and one-half mills assessed according to school census, and one-half mill according to valuation.

Meanwhile people became increasingly committed to the principle of equal educational opportunity for all children regardless of where in Maine they happened to live. Gradually changes were made in State support to effect equalization. In 1935 was enacted the Sinclair Law, permitting voluntary organization of School Administrative Districts by a combination of towns. That resulted in the gradual formation of more than 60 districts, each composed of from three to ten towns. While the District had one governing board and one superintendent, each town had its own elementary schools, but sent all its children to a central high school.

Even earlier another method of joint operation had been adopted and still persists. That was the formation of school unions, whereby each town retained its separate board, but hired a common superintendent. The larger cities and towns retained single unit control of their schools. Since 1935 many changes have been made in the formula by which State support of a town’ s schools is computed. Al.l. have been designed to increase equality of opportunity, giving a larger percentage to the towns with low valuation and the least to the wealthiest towns. Although in general the larger communities get the least help, this is not uniformly true because so much of the formula is based upon valuation. For instance, the town of Wiscasset, heavily supported by taxes on the Maine Yankee nuclear power plant, receives a small percentage of State support. The tiny community of Pleasant Ridge is in the same class, because it gets so much tax revenue from Central Maine Power’s Wyman Dam.

In recent years, besides general aid, other forms of specific State aid have been adopted. These include transportation, vocational education, driver education, and attack on such problems as alcohol and drugs.

In its relation to the State, Waterville is unique. The rapid and costly extension of the State post-high school vocational institutes caused education officials to seek more economical ways of operation. The State thus made arrangements with the City of Waterville to operate jointly a post-secondary vocational school in Waterville’s new high school building. Recently that school was moved to the vacated junior high school building on Gilman Street.

It was a 20th century invention that made possible the consolidation of all Waterville schools into four buildings today. It could not have been effected without the invention of the automobile, making rapid transportation possible between school and distant homes.

Although Waterville, having few black residents, has never felt the strain of communities affected by transportation to achieve racial equality, its transport of pupils has not been without difficulties. No system can be devised that will not seem to be unfair. Transportation limits must be fixed. There must on every route be a line within which pupils have to walk and beyond which they can ride. Thus one family’s children ride, while the next door neighbor’s children have to walk. But that is what we find in most life experiences. There can be no such thing as absolute equality.

It was not many years ago when the only libraries seen in our schools were an unabridged dictionary and an encyclopedia. If there were other books, they had been donated. There was no librarian and no systematic cataloging. By 1972 Waterville had respectable libraries in both Senior and Junior High Schools.

In that year a generous federal grant selected the Waterville High School Library to be developed into a model school library. With a trained staff, ample room and lavish funds, it stocked not only books, but also tapes, records, visual aids and many kinds of the most modern equipment.

After the expiration of the federal grant such an extensive program, with such large annual expense, could not continue. But it had given that library such a start that today it is one of the best school libraries in Maine. Meanwhile the library at the. Junior High School has been greatly improved, and libraries have been set up in the elementary schools. To the latter the Waterville Public Library regularly sends bulk loans of a hundred or more volumes at a time.

If a pupil of Waterville High School in 1882 could return today, probably he would note as the most radical change the program in physical education and athletics. When sports first entered the school, they were not part of the system, but were conducted by private clubs that raised their own funds and arranged their own games. The first organized sport was baseball coming soon after the Civil War. A school team was often organized by a principal who had played the game in college. He was often both player and coach, as was the case of my high school principal in 1908, who played second base on the team. No one paid any attention to eligibility, and the village blacksmith might be a member of the team. As the program extended to other sports like football, basketball and hockey, schools were compelled officially to take over the whole athletic program. Today the operation and management of sports, not only in Waterville, but in all other Maine high schools, demands large staffs and a large expenditure of money. Meanwhile a very important program of health and physical education is in operation from kindergarten through the twelfth grade.

American people today believe in “mens sana in corpore sano”, a sound mind in a healthy body. Schools have always been subject to criticism. Today we sometimes hear extravagant praise of the old one-room rural schools, with nostalgic yearnings to return to them. Such critics would not think of exchanging their car for
horse and buggy, nor giving up their toilets to use outdoor privies, nor taking a bath in a wooden tub in front of the kitchen stove.

In their day those one-room schools did a good job, but 1982 is no longer their day. With the expansion of knowledge specialized teaching has become necessary, not only in junior and senior high schools, but even in the upper years of elementary school. Music and art became essential subjects. As in the old one-room school. it still remains true that no classroom is stronger than its teacher, and in the quality of its teachers Waterville has been fortunate.

For many years, in respect to wages and working conditions, teachers were at the mercy of school boards and administrations. Today Waterville has a powerful teachers association with union connections, making collective bargaining an effective process.

Criticism of schools for losing discipline and being too permissive seems justified, but we ought to have a better understanding of how it has occurred.

Permissiveness swept all American society. As long ago as the late 1930’s the eminent preacher, Harry Emerson Fosdick, said at a Colby commencement, “There is just as much obedience in the American home as there ever was. The difference today is that the parents obey the children.”

What we fail to recognize is that restraint and discipline in all American society, home and school alike, have always been connected with religion. No school should be blamed for the Supreme Court decision banning religion from our schools. Nor should we forget, as to discipline, boys and girls have many more hours of the day at home than they have at school. A stream can rise no higher than its source, and the source of our students is their homes.

Year: 1982