A Town’s Effort To Educate Its Children

by Robert Hanaford Smith, Sr.
Weirs Times Contributing Writer

An 1878 Lesson On How To Do Better

As New Hampshire schools open for a new school year in this year of 2020 students and teachers are experiencing changes to their usual expectations of the educational system. Things are going to be different this year as the teachers try to educate and scholars try to learn while striving to avoid COVID-19!
School officials in rural New Hampshire in the year 1878 had their challenges also as they tried to organize and support educational instruction in an not so favorable social climate. The town of New Hampton’s Superintendent of the School Committee had some choice words for the town’s educators, parents, and students as well as those who determined the school budgeting.
In 1878 the school children went to the school in their district, of which there were 16 in the town of New Hampton with children attending school in 12 of those districts with some of them attending an additional union district, indicating that New Hampton and Ashland shared a school with pupils from both towns.
The school year was broken up into terms with each district being open for teaching for one to three terms a year. The length of a term could vary in the number of weeks that the school in a particular district was open. Remember those were still horse and buggy days, though I expect that most of the children had to walk to school.
Each of those districts had to have a schoolhouse for the children to gather in order to be taught. Mr. E. H. Prescott was the Superintendent of the School Committee and in his report to the town for the year ending on March first of 1878, he had some comments about the buildings: “Good school houses are essential, well ventilated, well arranged and well furnished with black-boards, with wall-maps and globes and with all the apparatus necessary to illustrate every branch of art or science taught. A good supply of the best text-books is invaluable, and money enough should be expended to give three terms, of twelve weeks each, every year.”
Maybe the Superintendent himself could have used a refresher course in grammar, though I guess one error (as above) should be excusable, as I hope the readers will be merciful concerning mine.
Each school needed a teacher. In New Hampton’s District 1 the first term of four weeks duration was taught by Miss Ida J. Batchelder of Meredith Center. There were eleven scholars, according to Supt. Prescott with the average age being 10. The second term of 6 weeks was taught by Miss Elvena D. Sanborn of Gilford, and, according to Prescott, “was one of rare excellence.”

District 2 was taught by Miss Marrilla H. Smith of New Hampton and consisted of one term of eight weeks. The teacher was reported as being qualified to give instruction, but “The discipline was not quite rigid enough.” Her class was made up of 17 children with an average attendance of 14. It was predicted that with experience she would make a “very good teacher.”
District 3, which is the same district where the writer would go to school many years later, had one term of eleven weeks, and was taught by Miss Nellie a Ward of New Hampton. There was a total of only 6 scholars with an average attendance of 5. This is contrasted with the three terms in District four of eight, twelve, and seven weeks with the total number of scholars in each term being 38, 40, and 33. The teacher was Miss A. Melissa Gordon of New Hampton. All of the teachers listed except those in District 1 were from New Hampton, and only one was a Mrs. or married woman. None of the teachers was a man.
Superintendent of the School Committee, Mr. Prescott, had some harsh words for teachers concerning their preparation to teach. He said, “…too many who are engaged to teach our common schools have no adequate idea of the magnitude of the calling. They choose this avocation because they think there is less hard work in it than in other pursuits for the same remuneration. Easy employment and good pay seem to be the highest motive that some have for engaging in school teaching. Instead of arousing themselves to earnest work and to infusing a spirit of enthusiasm among their pupils to excel in their studies, they allow themselves to indulge in habits of indifference and neglect.”
He also stated, “The teachers in this town for the past year have not all of them been equally efficient in their work,” while adding that the majority of teachers “…have acquitted themselves with much honor.”
The Superintendent’s criticism extended to parents and guardians, expressing the opinion that they needed “to be stirred up.” He accused, without naming them, some of the town’s most influential and wealthiest citizens as doing as little for the schools as the law will allow them. “The fact that only twelve of the sixteen districts in town have even the apology for a school house, and that more than one half of what we have are unfit for use, proves conclusively that the majority of the people value their money above the education of their children.”
The amount the town appropriated for schools in 1878 was $912.80. The average wage per month for teachers was $23.73.
The comments about New Hampton School District 7 were interesting to me. The teacher of the first term of eight weeks was Miss Almeda Emerson of New Hampton who was described as “one of the most successful in town. Her scholars are always found orderly and studious.” Miss Emerson had three students with an average attendance of 2½. Districts 8 and 9 were recorded as having no school. Mrs. Rebecca R. Blake, the teacher of the summer term in District 5, had 23 scholars, many of whom were “ small and uneasy but she succeeded in managing them very nicely.”
Superintendent Prescott let the readers of his report know that the number of days that schools were open during the year was short “in consequence of so small an amount of money.”
The total expenditures of the town for the year ending on March 1, 1878 were $ 9,085.65, meaning that the town spent a little more than 10% of its total expenditures on its schools.
So as the 2020 teachers struggle with the present uncertainties and difficulties of educating, they might reflect on the fact that the administrators and teachers of the past, such as in the year 1878, were also working under uncertain circumstances, though for different reasons.

Robert Hanford Smith welcomes your comments at danahillsmiths@yahoo.com