"During the five years immediately succeeding the report made by the Board of Education to the Legislature on the subject of school-houses, the sums expended for the erection and repair of this class of buildings fell but little short of seven hundred thousand dollars. Since that time, from the best information obtained, I suppose the sum expended on this one item to be about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars annually. Every year adds some new improvement to the construction and arrangement of these edifices.
"In regard to this great change in school-houses—it would hardly be too much to call it a revolution—the school committees have done an excellent work, or, rather, they have begun it; it is not yet done. Their annual reports, read in open town meeting, or printed and circulated among the inhabitants, afterward embodied in the Abstracts and distributed to the members of the government, to all town and school committees, have enlightened and convinced the state."
School-houses in New York.—About ten years ago, special visitors were appointed by the superintendent of common schools in each of the counties of this state, who were requested to visit and inspect the schools, and to report minutely in regard to their state and prospects. The most respectable citizens, without distinction of party, were selected to discharge this duty; and the result of their labors is contained in two reports, made, the one in April, 1840, the other in February, 1841. "It may be remarked, generally," say the visitors of one of the oldest and most affluent towns of the southeastern section of the state, "that the school-houses are built in the old style, are too small to be convenient, and, with one exception, too near the public roads, having generally no other play-ground."—Report, 1840, p. 47.
Say the visitors of another large and wealthy town in the central part of the state, "Out of twenty schools visited, ten of the school-houses were in bad repair, and many of them not worth repairing. In none were any means provided for the ventilation of the room. In many of the districts, the school-rooms are too small for the number of scholars. The location of the school-houses is generally pleasant. There are, however, but few instances where play-grounds are attached, and their condition as to privies is very bad. The arrangement of seats and desks is generally very bad, and inconvenient to both scholars and teachers; most of them are without backs."—Report, 1840, p. 28.
In another large and populous town in the northwestern part of the state, it appears from the report of the visitors that only five out of twenty-two school-houses are respectable or comfortable; none have any proper means of ventilation; eight of them are built of logs, and but one of them has a privy.
According to the report from another county, where the evils already enumerated exist, "There is, in general, too little attention to having good and dry wood provided, or a good supply of any; or to have a wood-house or shelter to keep it from the storm." This neglect is very common. Another neglect, noticed by many of the visitors, is "the cold and comfortless state in which the children find the school-room, owing to the late hour at which the fire is first made in the morning."
Three years later—and after the appointment of county superintendents in each of the counties of that state, who collected statistics with great care—the Hon. Samuel Young, then state superintendent, after making a minute statement of the number of school-houses constructed of stone, brick, wood, and logs; of their condition as to repair; of the destitution of privies, suitable play-grounds, etc., remarked as follows:
"But 544 out of 9368 houses visited contained more than one room; 7313 were destitute of any suitable play-ground; nearly 6000 were unfurnished with convenient seats and desks; nearly 8000 destitute of the proper facilities for ventilation; and upward of 6000 without a privy of any sort; while, of the remainder, but about 1000 were provided with privies containing different apartments for male and female pupils! And it is in these miserable abodes of accumulated dirt and filth, deprived of wholesome air, or exposed, without adequate protection, to the assaults of the elements; with no facilities for necessary exercise or relaxation; no convenience for prosecuting their studies; crowded together on benches not admitting of a moment's rest in any position, and debarred the possibility of yielding to the ordinary calls of nature without violent inroads upon modesty and shame, that upward of two hundred thousand children, scattered over various parts of the state, are compelled to spend an average period of eight months during each year of their pupilage! Here the first lessons of human life, the incipient principles of morality, and the rules of social intercourse are to be impressed upon the plastic mind. The boy is here to receive the model of his permanent character, and to imbibe the elements of his future career; and here the instinctive delicacy of the young female, one of the characteristic ornaments of the sex, is to be expanded into maturity by precept and example! Is it strange, under such circumstances, that an early and invincible repugnance to the acquisition of knowledge is imbibed by the youthful mind? that the school-house is regarded with unconcealed aversion and disgust, and that parents who have any desire to preserve the health and the morals of their children exclude them from the district school, and provide instruction for them elsewhere?"
A volume might be filled with similar testimony; but one more quotation from another state must suffice. After noticing the common evils already referred to, the superintendent remarks as follows:[68] "But this notice of ordinary deficiencies does not cover the whole ground of error in regard to the situation of school-houses. In some cases they are brought into close connection with positive nuisances. In a case which has fallen under the superintendent's own personal observation, one side of the school-house forms part of the fence of a hog-yard, into which, during the summer, the calves of an extensive dairy establishment have been thrown from time to time (disgusting and revolting spectacle!), to be rent and devoured before the eyes of teacher and pupils, except such portions of the mutilated and mangled carcasses as were left by the animals to go to decay, as they lay exposed to the sun and storm. It is true, the windows on the side of the building adjoining the yard were generally observed to be closed, in order to shut out the almost insupportable stench which arose from the decomposing remains. But this closure of the windows could, in no great degree, 'abate the nuisance;' for not a breath of air could enter the house from any direction but it must come saturated with the disgusting and sickening odor that loaded the atmosphere around. It needs no professional learning to tell the deleterious influence upon health which must be exerted by such an agency, operating for continuous hours."
If such evils as have been considered have existed so generally, and still prevail to an alarming extent, even in the states where education has received the most attention, what need must there be for the dissemination of information on this vitally important subject, especially in those states where education has heretofore received less attention! In remarking further upon this subject, I shall consider several leading particulars in the order they naturally suggest themselves. I will, then, commence with the