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school ended in 1879, and who subsequently removed to New York to take a professorship in Columbia College; of the director, Walter Smith, and of several of the experienced teachers, who so long served with Professor Smith, and whose removal from the school preceded by a year that of the director, the Normal Art School entered upon an untried experience; but it may be fairly presumed that its course will be upon the lines laid down by Walter Smith and carried out by his welltrained pupils, since time has proved the correctness, comprehensiveness, and value of his methods, and the thoroughness of the training thereby acquired.

II.-REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION TO THE MASSACHUSETTS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.

Only such brief extracts from the first report of the committee of the legislature as seemed material to a connected account of the legislative investigation of the Normal Art School, are given in the pages immediately preceding; but it is due to the school and its supporters that the testimony of its utility and of its value to the State, so emphatically set forth, should be here perpetuated.

House.]

[No. 330. COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS, House of Representatives, May 5, 1882.

The Committee on Education, who were instructed to investigate the supervision and management of the Normal Art School, and consider what legislation, if any, is needed to secure its greater efficiency, report that it is inexpedient to legislate thereon. For the committee,

D. DORCHESTER.

[Mr. Humphrey, of Athol, and Mr. Hill, of Haverhill, dissenting.]

The report is accompanied by four "statements" and contains 23 pages. "Statement 1" occupies thirteen pages; "statement 2," five; statement 3," one; 66 statement 4," four. "Statement 1" is by the majority of the committee, from which is quoted as follows:

The majority of the committee on education agree in the following statement of the case under investigation:

As to the vital question of the value of the institution and its permanence, which has, to some extent, obtruded itself upon us during our inquiries, we are fully persuaded it is too intimately connected with the mechanical industries of Massachusetts to be easily discarded. Artisans in the Old World are able to work from drawings, having all the dimensions of the things to be constructed upon them; but no workman can read a drawing so as to be able to work from it unless he has had instruction in drawing. It was the conviction of many intelligent citizens that Massachusetts could not hope for eminence in the higher manufactures, if the great body of the workmen in other countries were superior to our own in the arts of design, in the drafting of machinery, &c. Therefore, in the year 1869, leading citizens of Boston petitioned the legislature, asking for the establishment of a system of public instruction in drawing, that the artisans of the commonwealth might be able to successfully compete with foreign workmen.

The law making drawing a required study in the schools is given in full, and the fact stated that its provisions were practically nullified owing to a lack of competent teachers.

To supply this want, the State Normal Art School was established in 1873, in compliance with requests of leading representatives of great industrial interests in the State. It was the first institution of the kind ever established in this country, and was intended to be a training school to qualify teachers in industrial drawing. It was believed to be indispensable, as a means of enabling our manufacturers to successfully compete with the manufacturers of Europe. The material prosperity of the State obviously depends upon the development of the higher artistic skill. No adequate means for developing this have heretofore existed in our country. All our most skilled workmen, therefore, have come from Europe. It was evident that the future growth of these industries would be much hindered unless we could raise up at home men who could perform these high services. Such were the objects for which this

school was founded-to prepare teachers for the industrial drawing schools of the State, and thus raise up persons of superior skill in technical drawing and high art culture.

It is now a matter of congratulation that Massachusetts has an art-training school whose curriculum and drill are as thorough as those of any European school, and whose influence is extending over a broad area. No other institution of this grade and scope exists in the United States; Massachusetts in this great work, as in many other movements of the higher civilization, leading the vau of progress.

The committee then give tables of full statistics of attendance. They sum up a total of 1,089 pupils during the eight years ending July 1, 1881. Your committee think that this institution, in the nine brief years of its existence, and especially when considered as the pioneer institution of its kind on the western continent, has a record of which we have reason to boast, entitling it to the fullest confidence of the people of Massachusetts. While only seventeen students have graduated with full diplomas, it should be kept in mind that several hundreds have taken certificates from the three lower classes, declaring their qualification to teach art in the primary, grammar, and high schools of the State, and also in evening schools. Many have aimed only to fit themselves to teach in one of these grades of schools, and have gone forth to engage in the work. A certificate of having passed the studies in Class A signifies that the person is qualified to teach art in primary schools; in Class B, siguities a qualification to teach art in grammar schools; in Class C, in high schools, &c.

The catalogue for 1881 shows that in the years 1880 and 1881 ten students took certificates of qualification to teach in primary and intermediate schools, thirty-six in grammar schools, and eighty in high and normal schools-a hundred and twenty-six certificates in all, in two years. Could more have been expected?- And the figures already cited show, too, that the sons and daughters of Massachusetts are chiefly receiving these benefits, only about three and a half per cent. of the students coming from beyond our State lines.

The importance of this institution to Massachusetts is underestimated, we fear, by many. Without instruction in industrial drawing, skilled labor, such as the world requires to-day, is an impossibility. The period in which Massachusetts can control the coarser manufactures is rapidly passing away. Other sections of the country, taking up this kind of products, are destined to outdo us in a short time. Massachusetts, if she would hold her ground and make for herself a sure commercial future, will be obliged to enter upon the manufacture of finer and costlier textiles, for which we have hitherto depended upon the European markets. The commercial value of industrial products depends upon the amount of skill employed in producing them. We are in danger of not appreciating this economic principle. While our American exports represent the results chiefly of unskilled labor, on the other hand our imports represent the results of skilled labor, of art, and taste. In achieving success and wealth in this department of industry, Massachusetts is plainly called to lead the American States. In so doing, she will place American products in successful com petition with the best products of Europe, and her skilled industry will be a more effective protection than a high tariff.

But it is impossible to gain this result without a general dissemination of industrial art among our people. To this end this institution is a necessity; it raises up and qualifies teachers of art. Such is the commercial value of the State Normal Art School.

In view of the foregoing facts, your committee believe that the Normal Art School should be maintained, and its benefits should be widely distributed in the commonwealth. It is important that the school committees of the various towns and cities should arrange for the introduction of instruction in drawing, as far as possible, in the public schools where it has not already been done, and that industrial art culture should everywhere be more extensively cherished.

We come next to the troubles that have recently afflicted this valuable institution. The delicate duty of investigating the supervision and management of the State Normal Art School, on an order referred to our committee, was mandatory; but we cautiously entered upon our work, hesitating to open the door of investigation until convinced that the public good really required it. Even then we hoped that our inquiries might be confined to existing difficulties, without traversing the transactions of previous years; but it soon became evident that such restrictions were not practicable, and the fullest scope was given to the investigation. It subsequently became apparent that many of the matters involved, however important they may have seemed to the parties concerned, were petty and trivial.

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A summary of this portion of the report has already been given, as above stated. The two members of the senate who sign the second

statement

concur with the majority in their estimate of the impor

tance and usefulness of the Normal Art School.

The third" statement" briefly questions the advisability of continuing the school. The fourth "statement" is much longer, and, as the following extract shows, the writer differs widely from the judgment. of the majority in his estimate of the value of the school:

From the conclusions reached in that part of the majority report relating to the general character of the school the undersigned must radically dissent.

It cannot be admitted that its permanence is assured or that the kind of education imparted there has any just claim for support from the State.

What the commonwealth needs, and all that it ought to foster in the way of art education, is that part of it directly related to its industrial interests. For this the school was established. From its original and ostensible design it has widely departed. How, for instance, teaching water-color, modeling in clay, and modeling from the nude human figure has any connection with industrial education it would be difficult to imagine.

If the State wishes to furnish this kind of education for its citizens at public expense, why not go still further and provide instruction in law, medicine, theology, and particularly in commercial pursuits? A dividing line must be drawn somewhere, and if this be at graduation from the high-school course, the State cannot be called illiberal.

The drawing-books now published have arrived at such a state of perfection that they are sufficient, in the hands of teachers of ordinary intelligence, for all primary and grammar school work. If, however, the commonwealth wishes to furnish any facilities for a higher education in this direction, scholarships can be established or worthy and talented pupils can be aided in the Institute of Technology and the Worcester Free Institute, where legitimate instruction in this work is reduced to a science. Should this be done, some means should be adopted for securing returns in the way of teaching in the State by those thus benefited.

For the support of the Normal Art School the State treasury has been annually depleted to the extent of from fifteen to twenty thousand dollars. By the expenditure of half this amount, as above mentioned, it is believed that larger and better results could be attained.

Questions as to whether results commensurate to the expense have been secured; as to the government of the school, the insubordination of some of its teachers, and the wisdom of the importation of teachers; whether the State at large has received any considerable benefit in return for an outlay for which the entire State is taxed, and for which two or three counties chiefly receive the advantage; why so small a proportion of those attending the school engage in that teaching of art in our public schools which they have promised; and whether any impulse has been given towards raising the standard of our finer manufactures, are all included in and overshadowed by that of its right of existence.

The inability of this legislator "to see any connection" between the kind of art instruction given in the normal school and "industrial education" sufficiently disposes of his claim to possession of the kind of knowledge that would enable him to form an intelligent judgment upon such a question.

He might, it is true, have inferred such a connection from the fact that such studies as he criticised had been adopted in the school, and that this would hardly have been done if they had not been thought to be of use: but no modest doubt as to their own want of knowledge seems ever to disturb the complacency of the class of legislators of whom we have here a typical specimen.

It would hardly have seemed possible that a governor of Massachusetts should have thought the author of this report, of a minority of one, such an authority on industrial art education as to give to his opinion the honor of a place in the gubernatorial address to the legisla ture, but so it proved in the opening session of 1883.

III.-MESSAGE OF THE GOVERNOR AND ACTION BY THE LEGISLATURE.

In the annual "address" of the governor of Massachusetts to the Legislature, in January, 1883, a large space is given to criticism of the methods of public education in the State, and the charge is made that the interests of the many are subordinated to those of the few. Much stress is laid upon the necessity of having the best teachers for the pri mary schools, all of which is excellent; but the worthy governor seems to think, if not with Dogberry, that "reading and writing come by nature," at least that the ability to teach them does, for, of all illustrations, he selects the normal schools of the State, the schools whose especial business it is to train competent teachers for these primary public schools which he has so much at heart, as examples of the unjustifiable manner in which the few are taught and the many neglected! and gravely asks, "What right have these young men and women to so expensive an education out of the common school fund of the State?" Since this is the attitude of the governor towards the regular normal schools, it may readily be understood that the Normal Art School should come in for a large measure of criticism, for if it is an outrage on the children of the State to divert any part of the school funds for the purpose of giving to the public schools well-trained teachers, how much more obnoxious must be a school whose only work is to afford the means for securing the efficient teaching of a single study?

As an incident in the history of the school, and as illustrating some of the difficulties that have been met with, that portion of the address is here quoted in full:

In order that I cannot be misunderstood when I say that our school fund money is diverted extravagantly from the many to whom it does belong to the use of the few to whom it does not belong, I illustrate this topic by the facts concerning an industrial school established in this State in 1873, under the name of the State Normal Art School. It had been in existence eight years up to the time of which I have a report. During its existence the whole number of pupils resident in Massachusetts had been 1,047, an annual average of 131, who attended it for any time at all. Of the whole number 42 resided outside of the State. Most of its pupils attended the school a very short time each. Only seventeen of the whole number graduated from the full course, and only a small part of the whole number were ever qualified to teach in one or more branches of art education. Of the total number of pupils residing in the State, to wit, 1,047, 839 came from two counties, and 44 only came from six other counties of Massachusetts, or only two more than those who came from other States. Can such a school as that be deemed to be a common school of Massachusetts, equally open to all her citizens, or is it a special and very uncommon school for a few only? Each Massachusetts scholar ever in that school has cost the State $128.46, being his proportion of $134,507.16, which the school has cost the State during eight years. A large proportion were evening scholars, the percentage of whom was 30 in 1881. It is fair to conclude that the same percentage obtained during the eight years of its existence. Ought the common school fund, or money derived by taxation, to be given to such a school? Are the branches of learning taught in it those necessary to the common education for the whole people? A committee of the late legislature

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