It’s the beginning of September and we all know what that means: it’s back-to-school season! It’s the time of the year when caregivers are hunting down school supplies for children, teachers are readying their classrooms, and college students are reading over class syllabi. Education has always been an important part of Massachusetts’ history, starting with the development of the Boston Latin School in 1635, which was the first school in the colonies. This week we’d like to feature some items in our collection that celebrate this exciting time of year and highlight the history of education in the Commonwealth.
The Board of Education for what is now named the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, was established by
1837 Cha. 0241. This Act, titled An Act Relating to Common Schools, was pushed into motion by Horace Mann. Mann, who had been a Representative in the Massachusetts State Legislature and later became a State Senator, had a passion for education. In the 1800s he sought to improve Massachusetts' failing educational system. While serving as the Board of Education's first secretary, he had yearly reports published on the state of education in the commonwealth. These annual reports were his way of working to reform the struggling system and these are the same types of
annual reports that the State Library has in its collection today. Here you can see the 1827
annual report of the Board of Education that named Mann as Secretary.
Not only did Mann work to have annual reports published, but he also established the Common School, which is today’s version of a public school. He believed that every child in the commonwealth was entitled to have a quality education paid for by taxes and local funds. He also was at the helm of the concept of the Normal School, which provided teachers with proper training.
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The first state-sponsored Normal School, established
in 1839 on the Lexington Battle Green. It would later
become Framingham State University. |
As I was researching the above act related to Common Schools, I came across an act that is very exciting for librarians such as myself.
1837 Chap. 0147 established libraries in Common Schools. It allowed for every legally recognized school district to raise money to establish and maintain a library. As you can see in this act, the budget for a Common School library at the time was just a little bit different than the budgets of today’s libraries!
In order to serve all students in the area, the New England Asylum for the Blind opened in 1832. Now known as the Perkins School for the Blind, the New England Asylum for the Blind made Massachusetts home to the first school of its kind. The educational methods used there were inspired by Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe’s visits to institutions for the blind in Europe.
Before the invention of Braille, Howe developed a raised, embossed type called Boston Line Type, or Boston Line Letter. Examples of this are rare, so we were excited to find pages of line type at the back of our 1833 volume titled Address of the trustees of the New-England Institution for the Education of the Blind to the public.
If you’d like to learn more about the Perkins School for the Blind, you can view their annual reports
here.
Education in Massachusetts has come a long way since the start of the Boston Latin School and the work of Horrace Mann. If you’re curious about what is going on with education in Massachusetts these days, check DSpace, our digital repository. Here you’ll find some of the latest documents that the Executive Office of Education has produced, broken down by department or school system. A few collections to note include:
It’s thanks to an exhibit done by State Library staff in 2016 that brought the inspiration for this blog post. Please be sure to take a look at that now-virtual exhibit. It outlines a detailed history of education in Massachusetts and provides some great visuals as well. Happy start of the school year!
Jessica Shrey
Reference Librarian
