3.8 KiB
thought in the State of New Jersey at that date; and not a popular thought at that.
All expense incurred from the public treasury to individuals was held as pauperism. Thus, the public payment of a teacher for the children of a family placed them in the same category as having food or clothes provided at public expense. The people of no self-respecting community would submit to that degradation. Public schools in that day ceased with the southern boundaries of New England and New York. Each scholar was assessed a certain amount, the aggregate of which formed the teacher's salary, something on the principle of select schools of today. This was a "new thought" to me, and fell with overwhelming force.
I lived over again the days of little district schools in Massachusetts. Those, at the time, I had regarded as sorely lamentable; but this system for the children of very poor, unfortunate, or unworthy parents seemed too unbearable.
I think it was the first Monday in December 1851, when I closed my school and commenced teaching it. To me, there was a tender pathos in the faithful efforts of my bashful farmer boys and girls, and a mingled sympathy when the lengthened days of springtime called them to their accustomed duties.
The winter's observation and thought had gone far towards maturing my plans. This individual system of schools seemed childish.
I had playfully asserted from the first, that the financial method of their system was beyond my mathematics. I had, before now, kept time for working men, but never for children, and could not learn now.
Trenton, Burlington and Newark, as cities, had made efforts at public schools, with more or less success; usually the latter, but all large towns or boroughs remained unchanged. ....
I talked matters over with "Uncle Richard" and it was arranged that I visit Bordentown. .... .... .... .... ....
Learning of a school committee, my first business was a personal call upon its chairman, Mr. Peter Saydam. From him I gained confirmation of the fact, that as a State, New Jersey had made legislative provision for the introduction of public schools, but that, owing to the strong opposition of public sentiment and not proceeded to make it a law obligatory. That the schools were generally, if not entirely, taught by ladies, more frequently in their own house, as a means of eking out a slender living; widows and people who "had seen better days"; often elegant persons, but with no fitness for the position, and no ability for instruction beyond their own limited knowledge gained years before in some similar manner; when this limit was reached, and the pupil became aware of it, he became an "undesirable citizen" and was graduated into the street. The town was full of these children, and out of some seven hundred within a narrow limit of school age, only about three hundred and fifty were in school at all. The remaining hundreds bore all grades of reputation, from more "absentees" to "renegades."
A year or two before, an effort had been made in the direction of a public school. A dilapidated house, some little distance from the center of business had been fitted up, and a man engaged to teach a public school in it, but the effort failed, and the house was closed in disgrace and discouragement.
All of this information left me in what might properly be termed "a state of mind."
Not that I was more discerning or more susceptible, or had any keener sense of justice or of humanity than those about me, but it was something so entirely new to me, and occurring rather in my own lines, that it made its impression. That was probably the only real difference between us. A case of environment. If I had been reared among them, I should have felt the same. "There is nothing like getting used to a thing" they tell us. One might add here, that nothing exceeds that,