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Naturally the next step taken was that of combining the six separate primary school buildings, which were one-room affairs, built according to no recognized standard or model plan, and erecting one structure of six rooms, comprising a completely organized and classified primary school. The first building in accordance with this plan was erected in Boston in 1864.1

While in Boston the primary and grammar schools covered the entire period of elementary education, in several other cities the elementary period, as the school organization developed, came to be made up of a union of three, and in some instances of four divisions, each separately designated, and varying in the time required for its completion. For example, in Concord, N. H., before 1860, the schools had been graded into "primary," "intermediate," and "grammar" schools. The primary and intermediate schools were scattered in small buildings in different parts of the district, while the three grammar schools gathered their pupils from wider districts and the high school from the entire city. In Harrisburg, Pa., the school divisions below the high school were designated "primary" and secondary." In Hartford, Conn., the divisions were called "primary," "secondary," "intermediate," and "grammar." In Indianapolis, Ind., the elementary division compassed the "primary" and "intermediate" divisions, each four years in length.5 In Kingston, N. Y., the terms "primary," "junior," and "senior" were applied to the three divisions into which this period was broken, while the high-school period was called the "academic" division." In Madison, Wis., to mention but one more instance, the designations were "primary," intermediate," "grammar," "senior grammar," and "high schools," each of two years."

At first these divisions, which were due to various local causes, were pretty definitely separated, promotion from one to another in many instances being based upon formal examination, but gradually the lines of demarcation fell away, leaving the designating terms for the several divisions without significance other than that of indicating their distinct origins. From time to time various changes in nomenclature have been made, usually in the direction of simplification, until now the common practice applies the term "elementary" to all grades below the high school, "primary" to the first four or five years or grades, and "grammar" to the upper three or

1 For most of the facts respecting primary school organization, see Philbrick, Twentyninth Semiannual Report (Sept., 1874), pp. 84-88; 108-111.

2 Henry Barnard, in Am. Jour. Ed. (1870), vol. 19, p. 86.

3 Ibid., p. 94.

4 Ibid., p. 95.

5 Ibid., p. 96.
• Ibid., p. 97.
Ibid., p. 100.

four. Occasionally, however, the term "intermediate" is used in its early sense, referring somewhat loosely to the fourth or fifth grades, or perhaps to the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. In recent discussion, it should be noted, the term "intermediate" is sometimes employed to designate the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades, though this will probably give way to either the "lower high school" or the “junior high school."

To secure any semblance of grading in the schools of the rural communities and of the villages proved exceedingly difficult. In 1839 Henry Barnard wrote that "there was hardly an instance of the gradation of schools [in Connecticut] by which the evils of crowding children of different ages, of both sexes, in every variety of study and schoolbook, under a single teacher, were avoided." And again he wrote, in Principles of School Architecture: 2

To enable children to derive the highest degree of benefit from their attendance at school they should go through a regular course of training in a succession of classes and schools arranged according to similarity of age, standing, and attainments, under teachers possessing the qualifications best adapted to each grade of school. The practice has been almost universal in New England and in other States where the organization of the schools is based upon the division of territory into school districts to provide but one school for as many children of both sexes and of all ages, from 4 to 16 years, as can be gathered in from certain territorial limits, into one apartment, under one teacher-a female teacher in summer and a male teacher in winter. The disadvantages of this practice, both to pupils and teachers, are great and manifold.

On the same theme Horace Mann wrote, 1842:

There is but one class of persons in the whole community-and that class not only small in number, but the least entitled to favor-who are beneficially interested in the establishment of small and feeble districts. This class consists of the very poorest teachers in the State, or of those who emigrate here from other States or countries in quest of employment as teachers, who are willing to teach for the lowest compensation, and for whose services even the lowest is too high. These teachers may safely look upon the small and feeble districts as estates in expectancy. Such districts, having destroyed their resources by dividing them, must remain stationary from year to year amidst surrounding improvement; and hence, being unable to command more valuable services, they will be compelled to grant a small annual pension to ignorance and imbecility, and this class of teachers stands ready to be their pensionaries.3

In 1842, to quote another writer of the time, Alonzo Potter, in discussing the unnecessary multiplication of school districts, particularly in the State of New York, said:

In 1815, when the system (of New York State) was organized, the whole State contained but 2,756 districts. These have since been divided and sub

1 Henry Barnard, First An. Rep. (to Connecticut Legislature), extracts in Am. Jour. Ed. (1856), vol. 1, pp. 669–676.

2 In Proc. of the Am. Ed. Conventions (1849-1852).

3 Mann, Fifth An. Rep. (1842), p. 30; also in Potter, The School (1846), pp. 211

divided till they number now 10,769. The present average rate of attendance appears, from the reports of the visitors (school inspectors) in 1840 and 1841. to be less than 35. It must be evident that such a school is not sufficiently large to fully occupy or remunerate the services of a first-rate teacher; and hence instead of multiplying districts still further, as is often the disposition at present, it is very important to diminish their number. The process of uniting two or more adjacent districts or of forming two out of three ought to be commenced at once, and it might be carried on through our smaller villages and the more thickly settled rural districts with the greatest advantage. The schools, being larger, would admit of a more thorough classification of the scholars; being kept throughout the year, the organization would be more permanent and effective, and the manifold evils growing out of the constant change of teachers might be obviated.1

The first step taken in the direction of grouping children of the same ages or attainments in rural schools appears to have been that of merely separating the older from the younger children and employing a man to teach the former and a woman the latter. In his fourth annual report to the Connecticut Legislature (1842) Henry Barnard wrote:

The evils of crowding children of different ages in a great variety of studies, and in different stages of progress in the same study, under one teacher, have been obviated in more than 100 districts by employing a female teacher for the younger children and primary studies and a male teacher for older and more advanced scholars, and in a few instances by the establishment of a central or union school for the older children of a society, or of two or more districts.2

As the school attendance of a given district increased, either through growth of population or through the consolidation of districts, the segregation was carried further by removing the older children to a point central to the joint district, while the younger children were left behind to attend at their several schools. In describing this arrangement, Henry Barnard, in the report just referred to (fourth), said:

Provision is made (in the law) for the union of two or more districts, for the purpose of maintaining a union school for the older children of the associated districts, while the younger children are left to attend in the several districts under female teachers.

The union of school districts thus authorized obviates many of the difficulties and evils of common schools as they are, and secures a much higher degree of improvement with the same means. In a large portion of the district schools the ages of the scholars range from 4 to 16, or, rather, from 3 to 18. The studies extend from the first rudiments to the branches of an academical education; the classes are as numerous as the various studies,

1 Potter, The School (1846, Harper & Bro.), pp. 210-213.

2 Am. Jour. Ed. (1856), vol. 1, p. 718.

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increased by the variety of textbooks in the same branch; and the teachers are constantly changing, from male to female, and from season to season.

Now the plan of union districts, leaving the younger children by themselves, and including the older children together, cuts down by one-half the variety of ages, studies, and classes. It enables the teacher to adopt methods of classification, instruction, and government suited to each grade of school.1

This plan of consolidating districts and forming union schools was the first step taken in the movement, not completed at the present day, toward unifying and standardizing the school organization. It was the first effort in opposition to the tendency toward decentralization, which arose naturally under the conditions which prevailed in the days when population was sparse. Each cluster of families found it more convenient to establish a separate school than to send their children to a more remote population center. The region contributing to such a school formed the school district, which, in Massachusetts, was without legal rights until 1789. The act of this date gave to the district privileges so extensive as to lead Horace Mann, in his tenth annual report, to declare the provision to be "the most unfortunate law on the subject of common schools ever enacted in the State." The most disastrous legislation came, however, in 1801, when the district was granted the authority to raise money for the support of its schools by taxation-a right heretofore vested in the town. The district proved to be too small to be intrusted with the tax-levying power, and insufficient support of the school resulted.

In one form or another the district school system still exists in most of the States, though there is a growing tendency, where conditions will admit, to replace the district with the township unit and the incorporated city. Massachusetts abolished the district plan of organization in 1882; New Hampshire in 1886; Vermont in 1892; and Maine in 1893.2

The movement toward graded schools developed slowly at first, but by 1860 nearly every city and town of any consequence in the country, as well as many populous rural communities, had its own. unified system of schools organized on a graded basis and with a defined course of study, embracing definite time limits, the whole sanctioned and protected by legislative enactment. The following table, compiled mainly from the Special Report of the Commissioner of Education on the Condition and Improvement of Public Schools in the District of Columbia (1870) gives the significant facts respecting the status of the movement between the years 1860 and 1870 in the principal cities of the United States.

1 Am. Jour. Ed. (1856), vol. 1, p. 713.

2 For discussion of the Unit, see Educ. Bull., 1914, Nos. 30 and 44.

3 In Am. Jour. Ed. (1870), vol. 19.

Legal school age and school courses in certain cities.1

Boston, Mass...
Cambridge, Mass.

Chicago, Ill.

Cincinnati, Ohio.

Cleveland, Ohio.

Columbus, Ohio.

Dayton, Ohio.

Detroit, Mich.
Dubuque, Iowa..

Fond du Lac, Wis.
Fort Wayne, Ind.
Hartford, Conn..
Indianapolis, Ind.
Kingston, N. Y.
Louisville, Ky.
Lowell, Mass..
Madison, Wis.
Manchester, N. H.
Milwaukee, Wis..
Nashville, Tenn..
New Bedford, Mass..
Newburyport, Mass..
New Brunswick, N. J.
New Haven, Conn..
New Orleans, La.
New York, N. Y..
Newark, N. J...
Niles, Mich..
Oswego, N. Y.
Philadelphia, Pa.
Portsmouth, N. II.
Providence, R. I.
Rochester, N. Y..

Rutland, Vt..

Sacramento, Cal..

San Francisco, Cal.

Springfield, Ill.

Springfield, Mass..

St. Louis, Mo.

Syracuse, N. Y.

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1 See Rept. of U. S. Commis. of Educ., 1871, for list of over 600 secondary schools with length of highschool courses given.

2 English high school, 4 years (1854); Latin high school, 6 years.

3 English course and classical course, 3 years each; both, 4 years.

4 Seven years, with two years' extension of the course.

5 English course, 4 years; classical course, 3 years.

By 1860 it became clear that the length of the elementary-school course was to be either seven, eight, or nine years, beginning at the age of 7, 6, or 5, with the preference for the arrangement which is now so general as to be typical—namely, an eight-year course, the child entering in his sixth year and completing the course in his fourteenth year. The organization of the elementary course in this final form was so nearly identical with the plan evolved among the German States and fully established therein prior to the inauguration of a graded system in any American State as alone to make probable the indebtedness to Germany, even though no account be

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