1707

150

repairs to the house. It was expected that they should visit
the school, but actual supervision was almost unknown.
Teachers of several years incumbency declare that before
the past year, no school officer was ever seen within their
doors, during the hours of study and recitation.

Little care was taken to secure the services of fit and
competent men, and the selection was too often decided by
personal favor, or, what is worse, by partizan partiality.
Yet there were many good teachers. Recently, one of the
abuses of the old system, the multiplication of the kinds
Of school books, had been measureably corrected by the
adoption by the County Commissioners, at the suggestion of
Some of our most enlightened teachers, of a series of books
which should be used in all the schools. The evil had become
so great that scarcely any two schools used the same Text-
Books, and often in the same school, classes could not be
formed on account of this diversity. I found in one school
four Spellers, six Readers (or thirteen, if each one of a se-
ries should be counted,) six Arithmetics, (or eight, counting
all of a series,) four Grammars, four Algebras, and three
Philosophies. The cost of these books to the County (for
the County supplied books free of charge,) was enormous.
There was no school apparatus, with the exception, in a few
of the houses, of black-boards, of the use of which the
teachers seemed to be unconscious, and in fewer still, of
outline maps, which were unintelligible to the gentlemen in
charge. And yet, with all these drawbacks—want of care
in the selection of teachers, entire absence of supervision,
multiplication of books, want of school apparatus, and loss
of interest on the part of the people—the schools were doing

food, educating in the rudiments of learning, a large num-
er of children; and what is not to be disregarded in our esti-
mate of them, praparing the public mind for the introduc
tion of that salutary reform projected in our " Uniform sys-
tem of Free Public Schools."

II. " By what funds supported, and what degree of effici-
enoy the schools attained."

The latter clause of your query I have answered as fully
as needful, above. It remains only for me to reply to the
former. Our schools were supported by the share of the
State Free School Fund, which falls to the county annually,
and by a levy made by the County Commissioners to supply
the deficiency. There was an additional levy to pay for
books and stationery which were furnished to the child-
ren free of charge, and for fuel, but no other incidental ex-
penses were defrayed from the common fund. The expenses
of building and repairing school houses were borne by the
District requiring such houses, and the repairs to them, and
the necessary funds were raised by a tax upon the assessable