GOOD SCHOOL HOUSES SHOULD BE PROVIDED.
A school ought to be a noble asylum, to which children will come, and in which they will remain with pleasure; to which their parents will send them with good will.—Cousin.
If there is one house in the district more pleasantly located, more comfortably constructed, better warmed, more inviting in its general appearance, and more elevating in its influence than any other, that house should be the school-house.—Michigan School Report, 1847.
In considering the means of improving our schools, the place where our country's youth receive their first instruction, and where nineteen twentieths of them complete their scholastic training, claims early attention. It is, then, proper to consider the condition of this class of edifices, as they have almost universally been in every part of the United States until within a few years past, and as they now generally are out of those states in which public attention has of late been more especially directed to improvements in education; for, before any people will attempt a reform in this particular, they must see and feel the need of it. Even in the more favored states, comparatively few in number, the improvements in school architecture have been confined mostly to a few localities, and are far from being adequate to the necessities of the case. Did space allow, I would present statements made by school officers in their reports from various states of the Union: for, however wide the differences may be in common usage, in other respects there has heretofore been a striking sameness in the appearance of school-houses in every part of the country.
Condition of School-houses.—In remarking upon the condition of this class of edifices, as they have heretofore been constructed, and as they are now almost universally found wherever public sentiment has not been earnestly, perseveringly, and judiciously called to their improvement, I will present a few extracts from the official reports of Massachusetts and New York, where greater pains have been taken to ascertain existing defects in schools, with a view to providing the necessary remedies, than in any other two states of this Union.
School-houses in Massachusetts.—The Secretary of the Board of Education of this state, in his report for 1846, remarks in reference to the condition of school-houses in the commonwealth as follows: "For years the condition of this class of edifices throughout the state, taken as a whole, had been growing worse and worse. Time and decay were always doing their work, while only here and there, with wide spaces between, was any notice taken of their silent ravages; and, in still fewer instances, were these ravages repaired. Hence, notwithstanding the improved condition of all other classes of buildings, general dilapidation was the fate of these. Industry, and the increasing pecuniary ability which it creates, had given comfort, neatness, and even elegance to private dwellings. Public spirit had erected commodious and costly churches. Counties, though largely taxed, had yet uncomplainingly paid for handsome and spacious court-houses and public offices. Humanity had been at work, and had made generous and noble provision for the pauper, the blind, the deaf and dumb, the insane. Even jails and houses of correction—the receptacles of felons and other offenders against the laws of God and man—had in many instances been transformed, by the more enlightened spirit of the age, into comfortable and healthful residences. The Genius of Architecture, as if she had made provision for all mankind, extended her sheltering care over the brute creation. Better stables were provided for cattle; better folds for sheep; and even the unclean beasts felt the improving hand of reform. But, in the mean while, the school-houses, to which the children should have been wooed by every attraction, were suffered to go where age and the elements would carry them.
"In 1837, not one third of the public school-houses in Massachusetts would have been considered tenantable by any decent family out of the poor-house or in it. As an inducement to neatness and decency, children were sent to a house whose walls and floors were indeed painted, but they were painted all too thickly by smoke and filth; whose benches and doors were covered with carved work, but they were the gross and obscene carvings of impure hands; whose vestibule, after the Oriental fashion, was converted into a veranda, but the metamorphosis which changed its architectural style consisted in laying it bare of its outer covering. The modesty and chastity of the sexes, at their tenderest age, were to be cultivated and cherished in places which oftentimes were as destitute of all suitable accommodation as a camp or a caravan. The brain was to be worked amid gases that stupefied it. The virtues of generosity and forbearance were to be acquired where sharp discomfort and pain tempt each one to seize more than his own share of relief, and thus to strengthen every selfish propensity.
"At the time referred to, the school-houses in Massachusetts were an opprobrium to the state; and if there be any one who thinks this expression too strong, he may satisfy himself of its correctness by inspecting some of the few specimens of them which still remain.
"The earliest effort at reform was directed to this class of buildings. By presenting the idea of taxation, this measure encountered the opposition of one of the strongest passions of the age. Not only the sordid and avaricious, but even those whose virtue of frugality, by the force of habit, had been imperceptibly sliding into the vice of parsimony, felt the alarm. Men of fortune without children, and men who had reared a family of children and borne the expenses of their education, fancied they saw something of injustice in being called to pay for the education of others, and too often their fancies started into specters of all imaginable oppression and wrong.