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to our number, and about 1,400 pupils. We have in the employ of
the Board thirty-four teachers, whose salaries are as follows:
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Besides this, the Board employ a general Superintendent, at a salary of $1,500.

The houses we have built during the past season, will cost when completed, about $13,500 each, and are the most commodious in the city. A house and lot generally cost us about $2,500. Our income last year was $47,500; consisting of rents about $15,000, taxes $27,000, sundries $5,500.

The Board also employ a music teacher to give two lessons a week in each of the Grammar Schools, at $500 per annum. The public teachers have an Association, which meets every fortnight, and they have established a library for the use of the Association, out of their own funds. The Board, this year, have appointed $100 to aid them, and have ordered an annual appropriation of like amount. It is the intention of the Association to give a course of lectures this winter, and appropriate the proceeds to the library, a philosophical, chemical, and astronomical apparatus.

Our text books have, in a few years, been entirely changed. Webster is our standard, and a copy of his quarto Unabridged Dictionary is placed by the Board in every school. Mitchell's Geographies are used, together with Pelton's Outline Maps and Keys. A. Smith's Astronomy, and Holbrook's School Apparatus, are used in our Grammar Schools. Greene's Grammar and Analysis were substituted for Bullions's Grammar about three years ago, and are giving general satisfaction. Stoddard's American Intellectual Arithmetic was substituted about the same time for Colburn's. The improvement in Arithmetic has since then been astonishing and unprecedented. I doubt whether there are any schools anywhere, which surpass ours in this branch of study. Mandeville's series of Readers has just been adopted by the Board, with the expectation that it will do for schools in reading, what Stoddard has in Arithmetic. His method, or system, developed in his Elements of Reading and Oratory, is sentential classification and analysis, and is well worthy the attention of educators. We use Greenleaf's Common School and National Arithmetics, and Greenleaf's Algebra. Johnston's Philosophy is the text-book prescribed for that branch. The following books are also used: Town's Analysis, Worcester's, Willard's, Goodrich's, and Frost's Histories, Cutter's Physiology, Davies's Bourdon and Legendre, Playfair's Euclid, and Fowle's Speller.

I have thus hastily sketched such items as I thought might be of interest to you, which occurred to me at the time. Your indulgence is asked for the crude and hasty manner in which they are presented, as I have not even had time to revise it.

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Secretary Board of Public Schools, St Louis, Mo.

REPORT.

The president from a Select Committee, made a report, accepted, and after certain amendments, was adopted in the form and ordered to be published:

The Committee to whom was referred the last quarterly the Superintendent of the Public Schools, would respectfull that they have examined the same, and find three suggestions p for their consideration :

In reference to the first, namely, the establishment of a High the Board, as early as June, 1843, adopted a system w was intended should ultimately embrace a High School; state of your finances, and the demand for Primary and G Schools have, as yet, prevented the completion of the syste adopted.

Your Committee believe that the time has now arrived wh income of the Public Schools and their wants and increased eff absolutely demand the establishment of a High School. The have authorized the teaching of algebra, geometry and natural ophy and in each of the Grammar Schools there are some fe are well qualified to enter upon the study of these branches, but whom, for the want of time on the part of teachers in some schools, have not been enabled to do so. In the other schools in these subjects are taught the classes are small, and still to instruct thoroughly, the tax upon the time of the teacher is disproportions the small number of scholars engaged in the prosecution of branches of knowledge.

Your Committee believe that, were the studies pursued in Grammar Schools restricted to spelling, reading, writing, mental written arithmetic, geography, grammar and composition; and were those pupils whose attainments and mental training qualified t to enter upon the study of other and higher branches of knowled collected together in one building with the same corps of teachers, a greater number of pupils could be better and more thoroughly tau Thus would be brought together pupils possessing less diversity attainments, and thus could be introduced a better classification, a consequently more time be given to the instruction of each cla Thus, moreover, would your teachers become more efficient, for th attention and energies being concentrated upon fewer branches knowledge, they would thus be enabled to become more expert a skilful in teaching them.

The increased facilities afforded by the city improvements, and t many lines of omnibuses running in every direction through the cit render the present highly propitious for the establishment of a Hig School. Boys and girls who would be qualified to enter it, can no come from the extreme limits of the city with greater case and less in convenience than ten years ago they could go six squares. To com from the remotest boundaries of the city will now require no greate exercise than is absolutely demanded for health, of all who are actively and energetically engaged in the study of the higher branches of knowledge.

Your Committee are satisfied that annually numbers have left the

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public schools, and gone forth into the world simply for the want of means and facilities to pursue other and higher branches of knowledge, than those authorized by the Board. They have left them at the most interesting and critical periods of their lives. They have left them when their tastes were beginning to be formed; when their thirst for knowledge had been but excited; when their mental and moral characters were but half developed; when they were best prepared to study, and just beginning to realize the profits, the pleasures, and the advantages of knowledge. They have been cast out simply because the longings of their minds could not be satisfied in the public schools. Your Committee, moreover, believe that a large class in the community have neglected to patronize the public schools from a conviction that the instruction imparted by them was too limited in its range. Had they been satisfied that their children could have acquired in them that sole legacy which their parental hearts desired to leave them, viz., a good education, gladly would they have patronized them but supposing that the instruction given in them was as indifferent in quality as it was limited in quantity, they have sent their children, at great expense, to other schools. The establishment of a High School would then tend to disabuse the public mind of the false estimate now placed upon the schools already organized, and thus secure for them what is most desirable, the abiding interest, sympathy and patronage of greater numbers of our citizens.

Moreover, the time is now favorable for the commencement of a High School, inasmuch as in a few weeks the La Fayette and Webster schools will be opened, and will then furnish accommodations for at least 600 additional grammar pupils.

Thus will be afforded ample accommodations for all scholars who may be displaced by the temporary appropriation of a part or the whole of any of the more central buildings for a High School: while the facility of access renders them convenient to all who may desire to attend. Moreover, citizens are daily removing from the business and the more closely built portions of the city, to find in less densely built parts their dwellings; so that these schools will, in a short time, be nearest to family residences, and the most convenient for attendance.

The Benton School House being the most central seems the most suitable for the temporary location of a High School. By vacating the female grammar department, and appropriating it temporarily for a mixed High School, accommodations would be obtained for 164 scholars. The 133 girls belonging, at the close of the last quarter, to the Benton Female Grammar School, could doubtless find seats in the Clark, Laclede, Jefferson and Mound Female Grammar Schools; in all of which, taken together, were at the above time 104 vacant seats. But your Committee are satisfied, independent of all considerations connected with the establishment of a High School, that the character of the Eliot should be changed. As now organized it is an intermediate school, consisting of two departments, male and female, in both of which are taught branches that belong in part to the primary, and in part to the grammar school. By establishing in the lower part of the building a mixed primary school, and in the upper a female grammar department, your Committee believe that the condition of this

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school would be greatly improved, and at the same time add more than sufficient accommodations would be provided fo who may be displaced by the proposed change in the femal THE department of the Benton School.

Satisfied that the establishment of a High School canno deferred without great detriment to your Primary and Gramm that its partial organization is now feasible; that it is deman completeness to the system already in operation; that it wi by the ever active stimulus which it will exercise upou Schools; that it is required for equalizing the facilities for good and thorough education, and that it is absolutely essenti your Schools to perform their true mission, and to become should be, the Educational Institutions of the City,-your would propose and recommend the adoption of the follow tions:

Resolved, That a High School be established; the course tion in which shall occupy four years, and comprise the studies: Higher Arithmetic, English Analysis and Compo tory of the United States, Algebra, Geometry, Plane and Trigonometry, Surveying, including Navigation, Analytical Natural Philosophy, Natural History, Mineralogy, Geology gineering, Rhetoric, Mental Philosophy, Constitution of States, and the German, French, and Latin Languages.

Resolved, That after the close of the present quarter, Grammar departments of the Benton School be changed i and Female High School, to be under the charge of a Male with one Male Assistant for the present, and as many more found requisite.

Resolved, That to be admitted to the High School, th shall be twelve years of age, shall have attended at least on year in one or more of the Public Grammar Schools, and passed a satisfactory examination on spelling, reading, writi and written arithmetic, geography and grammar.

Resolved, That written applications be received by the S ent, until the first of February next, for the situation of the High School, and persons applying be required to show have received a thorough, liberal and classical education, sional teachers, and to furnish the necessary testimonials an that they are qualified for the office.

Resolved, That the salary of the Principal of the High twelve hundred dollars per annum.

Resolved, That after the close of the present quarter, the the Grammar School be restricted to spelling, reading, writi and written arithmetic, geography, grammar, and English c history and algebra, in the schools of the First and Sixth W

Resolved, That at the close of the present quarter, the E Primary be changed into a Female Grammar department, a Male Primary of the same be changed into a Mixed Prin that the Superintendent be authorized to have the alterat building and furniture, necessary for this change, made.

Resolved, That a Special Committee be appointed to as

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best site that can be obtained for a High School, and report on what terms the purchase can be made.

Resolved, with reference to the other two suggestions of the Superintendent, your Committee would recommend their adoption, and propose the following resolution.

Resolved, That the Principal of each school be required to send to parents or guardians, a monthly report of the attendance, absence, tardiness, general conduct, and character of visitations of each child, to be returned to the teacher, countersigned by the parents or guardian.

All of which is respectfully submitted.

George PartrIDGE,
C. J. GREELEY,
CHAS. L. TUCKER.

Committee.

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MASSACHUSETTS TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION.

[The following letter from Mr. Tenney, of Pittsfield, deserves a place in this number of the "Teacher," as it will correct a wrong impression which has gone abroad in regard to the Charter of the Massachusetts Teachers' Association. The error had its origin in the fact that neither the records nor the files of the Association show that an Act of Incorporation was ever obtained, although from the proceedings at a meeting of the Board of Directors, held at the Phillips School, Boston, January 14th, 1846, it appears that a Committee was appointed for the purpose:-]

ACT OF INCORPORATION.

AT the late meeting of the State Association at New Bedford, on my motion, the Board of Directors were instructed to apply to the State Legislature for an act incorporating the Association. This I did because I was told by one of the Board, and also by another member, older than myself, that this important measure had never been taken. Since then, I find, on looking over our first volume of Transactions, page 24, that similar instructions had been given before; and, on looking into the "Special Laws" of the State, vol. 8, p. 643, chap. 213, for the year 1846, it appears that the business was promptly and properly attended to.

It may be well to have the act published in the "Teacher," for information, and more convenient reference to the teachers of the State. For this purpose, I forward the following copy :

"An Act to Incorporate the Massachusetts Teachers' Association.

"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives, in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:

"Sect. 1. Oliver Carlton, Samuel Swan, their associates and successors, are hereby made a Corporation, by the name of the Massachusetts Teachers' Association, with all the powers

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