The School Census (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1910. Excerpt: ... II, Historical Development of the School Census. Before proceeding with an exposition of existing systems, it may help to clarify the subject to trace out in some detail, their historic evolutions in some of the older states. This sort of longitudinal view, we shall find for most states, presents a degree of diversity much anaiagous to the variation now to be found among the different systems. This coincidence leads to the inference that possibly all of the states are evolving systems along quite similar lines, and that present variation may be due, more than to anything else, to difference in stage of evolution. But at any rate this backward look may point out what is most useful and lasting as opposed to what is defective in present systems. The school census began with the "district system," and its primary function was the one it still serves in most states, to furnish a basis for the distribution of common school money. The natural increase in population of the New England towns, in the course of time, made the early community plan of organization difficult to continue, especially as agriculture developed. At the Ciobs of the Indian wars, it became more safe to live out away from the villages, and expansion in territory of most towns not unnaturally followed. But as the families moved away from the central community, it beoame increasingly difficult because of distance, for their children to attend school. To solve this problem of providing education for all the children, the town-meetings or selectmen, found it necessary to divide the town into units, which were variously known as "Center" and "angles," or "outskirts," "squaddams," "squadrons," and "district," the last term finally being used generally. But the division of the town called for a divi...