Country Districts.—In country districts, as they have long been situated, and still generally are, aside from separate entries and clothes-rooms for the sexes, there will only be needed one principal school-room, with a smaller room for recitations, apparatus, and other purposes. In arranging and fitting up this room, reference must be had to the requirements of the district; for this one room is to be occupied by children of all ages, for summer and winter schools, and for the secular, but more especially for the religious meetings of the neighborhood. But in its construction primary reference should be had to the convenience of the scholars in school, for it will be used by them more, ten to one, than for all other purposes. Every child, then, even the youngest in school, should be furnished with a seat and desk, at which he may sit with ease and comfort. The seats should each be furnished with a back, and their height should be such as to allow the children to rest their feet comfortably upon the floor. The necessity of this will be apparent by referring to what has been said on the laws of health in the third chapter of this work, at the 68th and following pages.
No one, then, can fail to see the advantages that would result to a densely-settled community from a union of two or more districts for the purpose of maintaining in each a school for the younger children, and of establishing in the central part of the associated districts a school of a higher grade for the older and more advanced children of all the districts thus united. If four districts should be united in this way, they might erect a central house, C, for the larger and more advanced scholars, and four smaller ones, p p p p, for the younger children. The central school might be taught by a male teacher, with female assistants, if needed; but the primary schools, with this arrangement, could be more economically and successfully instructed by females. In several of the states legal provisions are already made for such a consolidation of districts. This would invite a more perfect classification of scholars, and would allow the central school-house to be so constructed, and to have the seats and desks of such a height as to be convenient for the larger grade of scholars, and still be comfortable for other purposes for which it might occasionally be necessary to occupy it. Such an arrangement, while it would obviate the almost insuperable difficulties which stand in the way of proper classification and the thorough government and instruction of schools, would at the same time offer greater inducements to the erection of more comfortable and attractive school-houses.
Cities and Villages.—The plan suggested in the last paragraph may be perfected in cities and villages. For this purpose, where neither the distance nor the number of scholars is too great, some prefer to have all the schools of a district or corporation conducted under the same roof. However this may be, as there will be other places for public meetings of various kinds, each room should be appropriated to a particular department, and be fitted up exclusively for the accommodation of the grade of scholars that are to occupy it. In cities, and even in villages with a population of three or four thousand, it is desirable to establish at least three grades of schools, viz., first, the primary, for the smallest children; second, the intermediate, for those more advanced; and, third, a central high school, for scholars that have passed through the primary and intermediate schools. While this arrangement is favorable to the better classification of the scholars of a village or city, and holds out an inducement to those of the lowest and middle grade of schools to perfect themselves in the various branches of study that are pursued in them respectively as the condition upon which they are permitted to enter a higher grade, it also allows a more perfect adjustment of the seats and desks to the various requirements of the children in their passage through the grade of schools.
New York Free Academy.—In the public schools of the city of New York, two hundred in number, six hundred teachers are employed, and one hundred thousand children annually receive instruction. The Free Academy, which is a public school of the highest grade, and which is represented in our frontispiece, was established by the Board of Education in 1847. The expense of the building, without the furniture, was $46,000, and the annual expense for the salaries of professors and teachers is about $10,000. Out of twenty-four thousand votes cast, twenty thousand were for the establishment of this institution, in which essentially a complete collegiate education may be obtained. No students are admitted to it who have not attended the public schools of the city for at least one full year, nor these until they have undergone a thorough examination and proved themselves worthy. Its influence is not confined to the one hundred or one hundred and fifty scholars who may graduate from it annually, but leaches and stimulates the six hundred teachers, and the hundred thousand children whom they instruct, and thus elevates the common schools of the city in reality not only, but places them much more favorably before the public than they otherwise could be.
Smaller cities, and especially villages with a population of but a few thousand, can not, of course, maintain so extended a system of public schools; but they can accomplish essentially the same thing more perfectly, though on a smaller scale. For the benefit of districts in the country and in villages, I will here insert a few plans of school-houses.
Plan of a School-house for fifty-six Scholars.
Size, 30 by 40 feet.Scale, 10 feet to the inch.
D D, doors. E E, entries lighted over outer doors, one for the boys and the other for the girls. T, teacher's platform and desk. R L, room for recitation, library, and apparatus, which may be entered by a single door, as represented in the plan, or by two, as in the following plan. S S, stoves with air-tubes beneath. K K, aisles four feet wide—the remaining aisles are each two feet wide. c v, chimneys and ventilators. I I, recitation seats. B B, black-board, made by giving the wall a colored hard finish. G H, seats and desks, four feet in length, constructed as represented on the next page. The seat and desk may be made together, and instead of being fastened permanently to the floor, attached in front by a strap hinge, which will admit of their being turned forward while sweeping under and behind them.