From the September 3, 1929 edition of the Vineyard Gazette:

The opening of schools, now at hand, is quite different from the opening of schools on the Vineyard half a century ago. Just how different schools used to be is difficult for one of the present generation to realize, even though he may have listened to the reminiscences of real old timers about their school days. In addition to these reminiscences, we have some bits of documentary evidence to show what was thought and done about schools years ago. Such a piece of evidence is an old report of the Tisbury school committee for the year 1859-60 which has chanced to be preserved by an Island resident.

The report starts with a statistical table, giving the names of teachers and their salaries. One discovers that J. B. Everitt taught 47 pupils for a term of 5 months for a remuneration of $280. This salary, however, was the highest paid by the town, Mr. Everitt being the principal of the Holmes Hole South school. Other teachers at the school were A. Judson Gray, 89 pupils, $205; Miss Alice B. Merry, 89 pupils, $100; Miss Lydia Weeks, 65 pupils, $90; and Serene Daggett, 65 pupils, $90. F. W. Wing taught 35 pupils in the Holmes Hole North school for $220. Other schools were taken as follows: Northeast, Horatio Norton, 10 pupils, $105; Lambert’s Cove, Miss R. H. Nickerson, 47 pupils, $123; Northwest, Thurston W. Tilton, 53 pupils, $190. Miss R. H. Nickerson and Miss Eleanor Allen taught the South school for 2 and 3 months, respectively for $75 and $50. There were some 40 odd pupils. The Southeast school was taught by Miss Mary M. Athearn who had 9 pupils and received $62.

The total amount of money raised by the town for the support of schools was $1,500, to which was added the sum of $83.37 received from the state.

All this information out of the way on a single page of the report, the school committee launched at once into an earnest and at times highly oratorical discussion of Reading, Pronunciation, Spelling and education in general. The earnestness with which the committeemen tackle these matters leaves no doubt of what seemed to them to have paramount importance.

The section of the report devoted to Reading begins with general definitions, rather involved. Then there is this passage, a fair sample of the whole:

“One great fault that the committee have noticed is the manner which usually prevails in teaching children to read. Good reading is to be regarded as the most important branch of education. It is, indeed, a great accomplishment, and youth is the time and the common school is the place for acquiring it...The teacher should not permit a single sentence to be passed over till each scholar is able to read it correctly — observing every pause, emphatic word, and inflection aright; and the correct pronunciation of the words.”

One gathers that the committee had strict ideas and would not permit anything to be easy. On the subject of Spelling we read:

“The main reason why some scholars do not learn to spell correctly is that the consequences are about the same to them whether they spell right or wrong. Now, this is a wide departure from all the laws of Nature, which invariably attach some inconvenience or suffering to error. If the lesson assigned be appropriate to the scholar’s’ capacity; then the erroneous spelling of a word betrays a neglect in the studying of it on the part of the scholar, and this neglect should be followed by some substantial inconvenience. Let him write the missed words upon the blackboard, or enter them in a book and carry it in his pocket, so he may have the correct spelling somewhere about him, till he secure a place for it in his head, and expunge them as fast as he finds a place for them in his mind.”

Clearly, here is an able exposition of the pedagogical theory of our grandparents.

But the climax of the school report is a flight of language so grandiose and lofty that one cannot fail to be affected by it.

“As a plentiful supply of pure water is valuable to a community, infinitely more so is the instruction of the common school; for it is the fountain at which the mind drinks, is refreshed and strengthened by its career of future usefulness. The immortal, imperial mind beards no mark of high or low, rich or poor. It heeds not the bound of time or place, or rank or circumstance. It requires but freedom and light. Weakness does not enfeeble it; nor poverty repress it. Antagonism does but stimulate its vigor, and the poor tallow chandler’s son, that sits up all night to read the book which an apprentice lends him, shall stand and rest with kings; shall add new provinces to the domain of science; shall bind the lightning with a hempen cord and bring it harmless from the clouds.”

The school committee which raised this glorious standard for the young of Tisbury in the year 1859 had as members M. P. Butler, Edmund Cottle and D. A. Cleaveland.

Compiled by Hilary Wallcox

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