Each particular meeting to name its own committee
Three schools in the preparatives
After this there was no report for nearly two years, when the meeting, taking cognizance of the fact, urged all the preparatives to appoint individual committees of their own to attend to school affairs. In 1787 the committee of the monthly meeting made report that within the compass of the monthly meeting there were three schools under the care of the preparative meetings, in all of which the masters were members of the society of Friends.[502]
Value of the organization cited
The value of the organization of meetings for getting something accomplished can hardly be overestimated. The directing power of the quarterly meeting must have often been the cause which produced a conscious activity in the lower meetings. The quarterly meetings were at all times feeling the educational pulse of their constituents and making suggestions, requiring reports, etc., which did not fail to keep up the local interest. The quarterly meeting at Abington in 1792 made the following suggestions:
At a quarterly meeting held at Abington, November 8, 1792, the subject of schools coming under consideration, it is thought expedient that the meetings be earnestly requested to take that matter into solid consideration and send up in their reports next quarter how far the advice of the yearly meeting has been complied with in that respect. The clerk is requested to furnish each member with a copy of this minute extracted from the minutes of the quarterly meeting.
Nathan Cleaver, Clerk.
The clerk is directed to furnish the preparatives with a copy of the above minute, and they are desired to inform this meeting of their situation in the above respects.[503]
The poor educated; 1792