Excerpt from Annual Report of the Board of Education, 1900

In submitting to the General Court its fifty-sixth annual report, the Board of Education would congratulate the Commonwealth on the firm anchorage of our public school system in the patriotic instincts of the great majority of our citizens. This is shown in many ways. The intensified watchfulness over our school interests, in almost every section of the country, bears testimony to the common conviction that they hold vital relation to all our free institutions and to the perpetuity of our government.

The numerous voluntary and associated efforts to discover what is most essential in both matter and method in teaching are auguries of vast moment for the future of education. Reference is had not simply to conventions of teachers in towns, counties, States and the nation, but to teachers' clubs, conferences of classes of teachers, as grammar masters, high school teachers, normal teachers, superintendents of schools, and other local movements. These show that the working forces in our schools are neither mere legal functionaries, on the one hand, nor eye-servants on the other, but, over and above being servants of the government, they are devotees of human welfare.

Living Forces.

May we not assume that in such facts we have an exhibition of some of the living forces of the government itself? Under the quiet and unostentatious labors of the Board, through its secretary, numerous springs of wise action are set in motion all over the State. The sinews of war have been freely supplied.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.