6th. Having a teacher selected, we will make him the friend rather than the hireling of the district. Plainly but kindly reminding him of his responsibilities, and demanding of him an effort at self-culture that shall each day make him better qualified for his daily duties, we will provide for him in the best house in the district, a quiet, well warmed and well lit room, where he can possibly find time and opportunity for self improvement.

7th. We will insure the comfort and health of pupils and teachers by reconstruction or repair of the schoolhouse, by an abundant supply of good fuel, and all the means and appliances of maps, globes, black-boards and those books and simple articles of apparatus that are within the reach of every district.

8th. We will disuse ourselves and discourage in others that prevalent spirit of carping and fault-finding, that has worked everywhere so much of evil to all our schools, and endeavor to surround the teacher with an atmosphere of kindly friendship that will elicit from him the exercise of his utmost ability in behalf of our children.

9th. We will visit the schools as opportunity offers, to give kind looks and perhaps kind words for the encouragement of the teacher and the inspiration of the scholars. No single instrumentality can be made to accomplish so much of good for our schools, as these regular and faithful visitations by intelligent parents and citizens.

The multitude of topics that continually present themselves, demanding discussion in the Annual Report, make a selection from among these, always a matter of great difficulty. Such as seemed most to deserve presentation at this time I have dwelt upon, and now am constrained to leave untouched many points of great interest.

Abundant reasons for gratitude for the past and for hopefulness in the future, are apparent from the Report. In a year of unprecedented public trial and private embarrassment, the statistics, with the official returns of the local superintendents and the report of my observations, show a surprising state of prosperity in all school matters. In the midst of so many unfavorable circumstances we find a larger attendance upon the schools, a larger attendance upon the Institutes, an increase of expenditure for school houses, an improvement in the qualification of the teachers, an increase of success attending their schools and a general increase of interest in the welfare of our schools.

We ought then to take courage, and still strive on in the cause of popular education.

Our country in this the day of her sorest necessity has duties for all her citizens, and while he who perils his life for her on the red field of battle may well occupy the front rank among her children, his place is not far behind, who in the quiet of her glens, is joining hands with his neighbors in protecting and fostering the common schools, which are the very fountain sources of ropublican strength and growth.

Respectfully submitted,

J. S. ADAMS, Secretary.

APPENDIX.

REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION ON THE SUBJECT OF SCHOOLHOUSES, SUPPLEMENTARY TO HIS FIRST ANNUAL REPORT.

HON. MYRON LAWRENCE, President of the Senate:

SIR-I have the honor herewith to transmit to you, for the information of the Legislature, a Supplementary Report from the Secretary of the Board of Education on the subject of Schoolhouses.

I am, Sir, with great respect, your obedient servant,

Council Chamber, 29th March, 1838.

EDWARD EVERETT.

REPORT.

TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION:

Gentlemen :-In the Report which I lately submitted to you on the subject of our "Common Schools and other means of popular education," I mentioned schoolhouse architecture, as one of the cardinal points in the system, and I reserved the consideration of that topic for a special communication.

In my late tour of exploration, made into every county in the State, I personally examined or obtained exact and specific information, regarding the relative size, construction, and condition of about eight hundred schoolhouses; and, in various waysprincipally by correspondence-I have obtained general information respecting, at least, a thousand more.

As long ago as 1832, it was said by the Board of Censors of the American Institute of Instruction, that "if we were called upon to name the most prominent defect in the schools of our country,-that which contributes most, directly and indirectly, to retard the progress of public education, and which most loudly calls for a prompt and thorough reform, it would be the want of spacious and convenient schoolhouses." As a general fact, I do not think the common, district, schoolhouses are better now, than when the above remark was written; I have, therefore, thought that I could, at this time, in no other way, more efficiently subserve the interests of the cause in which we are engaged, than in bringing together and presenting under one view, the most essential points respecting the structure and location, of a class of buildings, which may be said to constitute the household of education.

I do not propose to describe a perfect model, and to urge a universal conformity. It is obvious, that some difference in construction is necessary, according to the different kind of school to be kept. In each case, it must be considered, whether the school-room be that of an academy or of an infant school; whether it be in the city or in the country; for males or for females, or both; whether designed to accommodate many scholars or only a few; or whether the range of studies to be pursued is extensive, or elementary only. The essentials being understood, the plan can be modified for adaptation to each particular case.

Al

The schoolhouses in the State have a few common characteristics. They are almost universally contracted in size; they are situated immediately on the road-side, and are without any proper means of ventilation. In most other respects, the greatest diversity prevails. The floors of some are horizontal; those of others rise in the form of an am. phitheatre, on two, or sometimes on three sides, from an open area in the centre. On the horizontal floors, the seats and desks are sometimes designed only for a single scholar; allowing the teacher room to approach on either side, and giving an opportunity to go out or into the seat, without disturbance of any one. In others, ten scholars are seated on one seat, and at one desk, so that the middle ones can neither go out nor in without disturbing, at least, four of their neighbors. In others, again, long tables are prepared, at which the scholars sit face to face, like large companies at dinner. In others, the seats are arranged on the sides of the room, the walls of the house forming the backs of the seats, and the scholars, as they sit at the desks, facing inwards; while in others, the desks are attached to the walls, and the scholars face outwards. The form of schoolhouses is, with very few exceptions, that of a square or oblong. Some, however, are round, with an open circular area in the center of the room, for the teacher's desk and a stove, with seats and desks around the wall, facing outwards, separated from each other by high partitions, which project some distance into the room, so that the scholars may be turned into these separate compartments, as into so many separate stalls. In no particular does chance seem to have had so much sway as in regard to light. In many, so much of the walls is occupied by windows, that there is but little difference between the intensity and the changes of light within and without the schoolroom; while in some others, there is but one small window on each of the three sides of the house and none on the fourth. Without specifying further particulars, however, it seems clear that some plan may be devised, combining the substantial advantages and avoiding the principal defects of all.

In the Report above referred to, it was observed that "when it is considered, that more than five-sixths of all the children in the State spend a considerable portion of the most impressible period of their lives in the schoolhouse, the general condition of those buildings and their influences upon the young stand forth, at once, as topics of prominence and magnitude. The construction of schoolhouses connects itself closely with the love of study, with proficiency, health, anatomical formation, and length of life. These are great interests and therefore suggest great duties. It is believed, that in some important particulars, their structure can be improved, without the slightest additional expense; and that, in other respects, a small advance in cost would be returned a thousand fold in the improvement of those habits, tastes, and sentiments of our children, which are so soon to be developed into public manners, institutions, and laws, and to become unchangeable history."

The subject of schoolhouse architecture will be best considered under distinct heads.

VENTILATION AND WARMING.

Ventilation and warming are considered together, because they may be easily made to co-operate with each other in the production of health and comfort. It seems generally to have been forgotten, that a room, designed to accommodate fifty, one hunured, and in some cases, two hundred persons, should be differently constructed from one, intended for a common family of eight or ten only. In no other particular is this difference so essential as in regard to ventilation. There is no such immediate, indispensable necessary of life, as fresh air. A man may live for days, endure great hardships, and even perform great labors, without food, without drink, or without sleep; but deprive him of air for only one minute, and all power of thought is extinct; he becomes as incapable of any intellectual operation as a dead man, and in a few minutes more, he is gone beyond resuscitation. Nor is this all;-but just in proportion as the stimulus of air is withheld, the whole system loses vigor. As the machinery in a water-mill slackens when the head of water is drawn down; as a locomotive loses speed if the fire be not seasonably replenished: just so do muscle, nerve and faculty faint and expire, if a sufficiency of vital air be not supplied to the lungs. As this Keport is designed to produce actual results for the benefit of our children; and as it is said to be characteristic of our people, that they cannot be roused to action, until they see the reason for it, nor restrained from action when they do, I shall proceed to state the facts, whether popular or scientific, which bear upon this important subject.

The common, or atmospheric air, consists, mainly, of two ingredients, one only of which is endued by the Creator with the power of sustaining animal life. The same part of the air supports life and sustains combustion, so that in wells or cellars, where a candle will go out, a man will die. The vital ingredient, which is called oxygen, con

stitutes only about twenty-one parts in a hundred of the air. The other principal ingredient, called azote, will not sustain life. This proportion is adapted, by omniscient wisdom, with perfect exactness, to the necessities of the world. Were there any material diminution of the oxygen, other things remaing the same, every breathing thing would languish, and waste, and perish. Were there much more of it, it would stimulate the system, accelerating every bodily and mental operation, so that the most vigorous man would wear out in a few weeks or days. This will be readily understood, by all who have witnessed the effects of breathing exhilarating gas, which is nothing but this oxygen or vital portion of the air, sorted out and existing in a pure state. Besides, this oxygen is the supporter of combustion, and, were its quantity greatly increased, fire would hardly be extinguishable, even by water But the vital and the non-vital parts of the air are wisely mingled in the exact proportions best fitted for human utility and enjoyment; and all our duty is not to disturb these proportions. About four parts of the twenty-one of vital air are destroyed at every breath; so that, if one were to breathe the same air four or five times over, he would substantially exhaust the lifegiving principle in it, and his bodily functions would convulse for a moment, and then stop. As the blood and the air meet each other in the lungs, not only is a part of the vital air destroyed, but a poisonous ingredient is generated. This poison constitutes about three parts in a hundred of the breath thrown out from the lungs. Nor is it a weak, slow poison, but one of fatal virulence and sudden action. If the poisonous parts be not regularly removed, (and they can be removed only by inhaling fresh air,) the blood absorbs them, and carries them back into the system. Just according to the quantity of poison, forced back into the blood, follow the consequences of lassitude, faintness, or death. The poisonous parts are called carbonic acid. They are heavier than the common air, and as the lungs throw them out at the lips, their tendency is to fall towards the ground or the floor of a room, and if there were no currents of the air, they would do so. But the other parts of the air, being warmed in the lungs and rarified, are lighter than the common air, and the moment they pass from the lips, their tendency is to rise upward towards the sky. Were these different portions of the air as they come from the lungs, of different colors, we should, if in a perfectly still atmosphere, see the stream divided, part of it falling and part ascending. A circulation of the air, however, produced, out-of-doors by differences of temperature, and in our apartments by the motion of their occupants and by other causes, keeps the poisonous parts of the air, to some extent, mingled with the rest of it, and creates the necessity of occasionally changing the whole. Though the different portions of the air have the same color to the bodily eye, yet in the eye of reason their qualities are diametrically opposite.

Although there is but the slightest interval between one act of breathing and another, yet, in a natural state of things, before we can draw a second breath, the air of the first is far beyond our reach, and never returns, until it has gone the circuit of nature and been renovated. Such are the silent and sublime operations, going on day and night, without intermission, all round the globe, for all the myriads of breathing creatures that inhabit it without their notice or consciousness. But, perhaps some will suppose, that, in this way, the vital portion of the air, in process of time, will be wholly consumed for used up; or that the poisonous portion, thrown off from the lungs, will settle and accumulate, upon the earth's surface, and rise around us, like a flood of water, so high as eventually to flow back into the lungs and inflict death. All this may be done; not however in the course of nature, but only by suicidal or murderous contrivances. In the Black Hole of Calcutta, in the year 1756, one hundred and forty-six persons were confined to a room only eighteen feet square for ten hours; and although there was one aperture for the admission of air and light, one hundred and twenty-three had perished at the end of that time. Only twenty-three survived, and several of these were immediately seized with typhus fever. In the Dublin. Hos. pital, during the four years preceding 1785, out of seven thousand six hundred and fifty children, two thousand nine hundred and forty-four died, within a fortnight after their birth; that is, thirty-eight out of every hundred. The cause of this almost unexampled mortality was suspected by Dr. Clarke, the physician, who caused fresh air to be introduced by means of pipes, and during three following years, the deaths were only one hundred and sixty-five out of four thousand two hundred and forty-three, or less than four in a hundred; that is, a diminution in the proportion of deaths of more than thirty-four per cent. Hence it appears, that, through a deficiency of pure air, in one hospital, during the space of four years, there perished more than twenty-six hundred children. In Naples, Italy, there is a grotto, where carbonic acid issues from the earth and flows along the bottom in a shallow stream. Dogs are kept by the guides who conduct travellers to see this natural curiosity, and, for a small fee, they thrust the noses of the dogs into the gas. The consequence is, that the dogs are immediately

seized with convulsions, and, if not released, they die in five minutes. But let us not ory, Shame! too soon on those who are guilty of this sordidness and cruelty. We are repeating every day, though in rather a milder fashion, the same experiment, except that we use children instead of dogs.

But why, in process of time, it may still be asked, is not the vital principle of the air wholly exhausted, and the valleys and plains of the earth, at least, filled with the fatal one? Again, Divine Wisdom has met the exigency in a manner fitted to excite our admiration and wonder. The vegetable world requires for its growth the very substance which the animal world rejects as its death; and in its turn, all vegetable growth yields a portion of oxygen for the support of animal life. One flourishes upon that which is fatal to the other. Thus the equilibrium is for ever restored; or rather it is never disturbed. They exchange poison for aliment; death for life; and the elements of a healthful existence flow round in a circle for ever. The deadly poison thrown from the lungs of the inhabitants of our latitudes, in the depths of winter, is borne in the great circuit of the atmosphere to the tropical regions, and is there converted into vegetable growth; while the oxygen, exhaled in the processes of tropical vegetation, mounts the same car of the winds, and, in its appointed time, revisits the higher latitudes.* Why should we violently invade this beautiful arrangement of Providence?

There is another fact, impossible to be overlooked in considering this subject. Who can form any just conception of the quantity of air, which has been created? Science has demonstrated, that it is poured out between forty and fifty miles deep all round the globe. It was to prevent the necessity of our using it, second-hand, that it was given to us by sky-fulls. Then, again, it is more liquid than water. It rushes into every nook and crevice, and fills every unoccupied place upon the earth's surface. All the powers of art fail in wholly excluding it from any given space. We cannot put our organs of breathing, where some of it will not reach them. All we can do is to corrupt it, so that none but fatal or noxious air shall reach them. This we do. Now if the air were a product of human pains-taking; if laborers sweated or slaves groaned to prepare it; if it were transported by human toil from clime to clime, like articles of export and import, between foreign countries, at a risk of property and life; if there were ever any dearth, or scarcity of it; if its whole mass could be monopolized, or were subject to accident or conquest, then, economy might be commendable. But ours is a parsimony of the inexhaustible. We are prodigals of health, of which we have so little, and niggards of air, of which we have so much. In the State Lunatic Hospital at Worcester, there are eight hundred feet cubic measure to each apartment, for one patient only. In the Prison at Charlestown, one hundred and seventy-one and a half cubic feet are allowed to each prisoner's cell. In addition to this, free ingress and egress of the air is allowed, by means of apertures and flues in the walls. In the Penitentiary, erected at Philadelphia a few years sicce, thirteen hundred cubic feet were allowed to each prisoner, solitarily confined; while in some of our school-rooms, less than forty cubic feet is allowed to a scholar, without any proper means of ventilation; and in one case, a school has been constantly kept, for thirteen years, in a room which allows less than thirty feet of air to the average number of scholars, now attending it; and even this schoolroom, contracted as it is, is besieged by such offensive effluvia, that the windows are scarcely opened, even in summer.

I know of but three causes, which can have led to these opprobrious results. In populous and crowded places, the price of land may have been thought to justify the use of small rooms for many scholars. But this can never have been even a pecuniary argument of any weight with a financial mind; for the ultimate public expense of the sickness and poverty engendered, would overbalance, a thousand fold, the requisite original outlay. Besides, even if there were limit and constraint horizontally, there can have been none perpendicularly.

A motive of some efficacy may have been felt in the increased expense of erecting a house of adequate size. This is a tangible motive. But how feeble is it, when compared with the health and comfort of children, their love of study, and their consequent proficiency in it! Should a case of necessity actually arise, where children were obliged to undergo some privation, far better would it be to stint them in their clothes, their food, or their fuel, than in their air. But in regard to schoolhouses which are built at the public expense, such a necessity never can occur. Besides, these considerations affect size only, not ventilation.

An economy of the air, which has once been warmed, is the only remaining motive for using foul air. But if the warm air is saved, the foul air must be breathed; for

* See articles A. and B. appended.