REPORT. To the Honorable the General Assembly of the State of Rhode Island: The Board of Education respectfully submit the following report, together with the more detailed reports of the Commissioner of Public Schools, and the heads of the various departments of educational work. The duties of the Board have been to consider what the educational interests of the State demanded, and how best to expend the funds intrusted to their charge. To this end they have held frequent meetings, visited the different departments and come into intimate acquaintance with the details of management. It is believed that substantial progress has been made, and that the results of the year indicate an increased interest in education, a higher appreciation of good methods, and a more critical knowledge of what are the proper and legitimate products of our schools. The times change and our schools must change with them. The intensely practical character of our generation naturally and necessarily demands a modification in our system of instruction. Some of the old methods are to be improved, others abandoned. Conservatism is sometimes criminal. The problem of education must not be restricted by conditions that interfere with its successful solution. The State's connection with the subject of education is purely selfish, a matter of business, with very little philanthrophy about it. The youth of Rhode Island are to be made self-supporting, moral and intelligent citizens, for the sole purpose of rendering more secure our form of government and increasing our material prosperity. Just so far as our present system of instruction does not accomplish this, it ought to be changed. Society demands more and more that the schools teach something that can be used, that they be more in harmony with real life. Our schools are responding to this demand. A wiser adaptation of means to ends. is apparent in many courses of study recently adopted. We believe that it is expedient for the State to require the study of civil government in every high and grammar school. The form of government, his rights and duties under that government, certainly are important lessons for the youth who, ignorant or intelligent, is soon to exercise a freeman's prerogative. Every boy above the age of fourteen ought to be familiar with the Constitution of Rhode Island, and have at least a general idea of how its provisions are carried out. What more valuable lesson could the State's beneficiary learn than about his benefactor? The subject of Industrial Education must in the near future have a place in our system of study. It has been already successfully introduced into many parts of the United States, and in our own State to a limited extent. It is not claimed that manual training will furnish the solution of the question as to what is the right education of the masses, but that it is an important factor in working out the problem, experience goes far towards demonstrating. "Our whole material as well as mental culture rests upon labor; hence the principal task of education must be to awaken and educate the rising generation to an interest and joy in it, for this at the same time implies the advancement of culture. Pleasure in labor provides against idle, foolish, immoral dissipation. The feeling of capability and of his own usefulness, raises the feeling of dignity and selfconfidence in the child, and preserves it from error. The living interest in things worthy of effort, and to be reached by his own strength, closes the door on all unbridled and weakening dreams, with all their enticements, and the satisfaction attained by labor returns constantly to that from which it flows-to labor." The difficulty thus far has been in determining where, in our course of studies, industrial training should have a place. Nothing essential in the old course should be removed, it must not supplant anything, but be supplemental to whatever is best in the old order of things. We are a manufacturing community; our skilled laborers are recruited largely by importation; apprenticeships are no longer in vogue and it seems fitting that the State should provide for some distinctive training that shall serve as a preparation for the work to which so many of our youth are to devote themselves. At present the criticism made on our system is that it only looks to the so-called Pearned |