Tight school budgets, outdated school buildings, and uncontested School Committee elections: When did these issues begin? Fig City News dug into archives and discovered a history of Newton’s schools dating back to the 17th century rife with issues that vex us to this day: funding, teacher pay, curriculum, governance, school construction, and ‘ungracious’ public debate. This is the first in a series on the history of Newton Public Schools.
In 1647, the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed the Old Deluder Satan Act, the “first compulsory government-directed” public education law in America. It required:
That every Township in this Jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty Housholders, shall then forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read, whose wages shall be paid either by the Parents or Masters of such children, or by the Inhabitants in general, by way of supply, as the major part of those that order the prudentials of the Town shall appoint. Provided that those which send their children be not oppressed by paying much more then they can have them taught for in other towns.
The Act was “intended to protect the children of Massachusetts from the snares of the Devil, whom they loosely identified with the Roman Catholic Church” by giving children the ability to read the Bible. It was also the first time communities were allowed to tax themselves to pay for public education.
At this time, the nearest grammar school for families living in the Newton area was Master Elijah Corlett’s “lattin school,” beside what was then called Harvard College. The school year ran from November to December. There is no record of any student crossing the river to go to Corlett’s grammar school. Nonetheless, the Newton area was taxed to support it:
In 1648 ten acres of common land was sold to a certain Edward Jackson to raise the sum of ten pounds to pay the school tax. [1]
Beginning in 1654, Newton (then a village of Cambridge) began petitioning the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony for independence from Cambridge and freedom from the ‘burden’ of paying taxes to Cambridge. [2]
Colonial Massachusetts had two taxes: the poll tax (one shilling per adult male annually) and property taxes, called county rates. In their 1678 petition, Newton complained that Cambridge had tripled their property tax without telling them:
This last year, the townsmen of Cambridge have imposed a tax upon us, amounting to the sum of three country rates, without our knowledge or consent, which we humbly conceive is a very harsh proceeding for any townsmen. [3]
Cambridge, in a lengthy and florid response, compared Newton taking their land away from them to a child murdering its parents by starvation.
The Newton area’s population grew steadily from its first settlement by Deacon John Jackson in 1639 to more than fifty families by 1678. The 1678 petition for separation from Cambridge, signed by 51 freemen and the Widow Jackson, stated the area has “so many families, that a school is required for the education of our children, according to law.” [4]
Ten years later, in 1688, after repeatedly petitioning the General Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony for over thirty years, Newton was granted separation from Cambridge during a time of administrative turmoil (Dominion of New England) when King James II of England attempted to control the colonies by appointing a governor for all of New England over the Massachusetts Bay governor.
Gaining freedom from Cambridge meant the New Town was required to hire a ‘schoolmaster’ and educate its children or pay the General Court a five-pound fine annually.
New Town took its time to fulfill the obligation. Townspeople argued over where to place the school and why they should “lay out money’ for ‘free schools’ that offered no immediate return ‘in the necessary staples of living.’ [5]
Extracts from the Town records:
- 1698. March 7. “The Town voted to build a school house as soon as they can!”
- 1699. May “Voted, to build a school house, sixteen feet by fourteen, before the last of November.”
- 1700. January 1. “Voted, that the school house be set in the highway, near to Joseph Bartlett’s, and that it be finished by the first of October, and agreed with John Staples to keep the school one month, four days a week, for one pound, four shillings.”
- 1700 November 25. “Voted, that the Selectmen shall hire a room, or place to keep school in, and shall agree with John Staples, or some other, to keep and continue the school until Town Meeting of election in March.” [6]
In 1701, the town voted first for and then against spending 50 pounds on a grammar school in town meeting. At this point, Newton had over 71 families. The General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony got involved and threatened to fine the town for its lack of a grammar school capable of fitting scholars for college, which meant training in Greek and Latin, in addition to reading, writing, and arithmetic. [7] At the time, Harvard, founded to train ministers and educate the “English & Indian youth of this Country in knowledge: and godliness”, was the only college in Massachusetts.
A year later, two wooden schoolhouses were built, one 16-feet-square in Oak Hill along Dedham Road (now Street) south of Bald Pate Hill on land donated by Johnathan Hyde, and one 17-feet-square in Newton Centre beside the cemetery on Centre Street in the BC Law School area on land donated by Abraham Jackson. Some town members objected that “the burying lot” was not a fit place to educate children. The lands were donated for school use but not given to the town.
Local deacon and ‘weaver by trade’ John Staples was hired to keep school four days a week from January 1 until March. He spent two-thirds of his time in Newton Centre and one-third in Oak Hill. Families paid three pence a week for their children to learn to read and write. For an extra pence, children could also learn ciphering (math). Families supplied their own school books and materials. [8]
Newton was one of the earliest towns to elect a school committee. The first School Committee members, Abraham Jackson and John Mason (one for each school), were elected at the 1706 town meeting. Their responsibilities were to hire the schoolmaster and supervise instruction. Thereafter, school committee elections were held at the annual town meeting, but the position was not taken very seriously:
The names (of school committee members) are changed so often, and, apparently, so arbitrarily, as to indicate that the citizens, in the construction of the school committee, thought only of rotation in office, – the policy of giving every man in the town a chance to hold office for once in his life, and that this committee was, in their estimation, the waste and useless territory, where this system of policy could be experimented on with the least public detriment. [9]
Through the early 18th century, the town’s public school grew in fits and starts. The 1718 town meeting voted ten pounds be given to the northwesterly, west, and southwesterly inhabitants to pay for schoolmasters to teach in an available space to be determined by the communities. Children in these areas could be three miles or more from the Oak Hill or Newton Centre schools. This vote led to a lot of arguing and little schooling. Townspeople “found no little difficult in coming to an amicable decision” of where to place the schools “and they seem to have beene not only dilatory, but also ungracious, in their attempts to settle it, as if they dreaded least their private interests might be compromised by the decision.” [10[
At the 1720 town meeting, twelve pounds for remote schooling was approved only to be vetoed at the next town meeting. In 1721, the town agreed to form a committee on schooling “to make theire repoart of what they do agree upon at ye next publick town meeting” according to town clerk and schoolmaster John Staples. No report has been found. [11]
By 1753, Newton had hired two schoolmasters and elected four school committee members, one for each school: Newton Center, Oak Hill, and the westerly and southerly schools (most likely in private homes). School was kept open from the 12th day of November until the first Monday of March. The town meeting also approved repairs to the schoolhouses, and Judge Fuller started a private school for higher learning.
In spite of all this hiring, building, discussing, and voting by 1762, the schools were of such poor quality that the General Court became involved, again, and Newton was “haled into court for not maintaining a grammar school” able to prepare boys for college. [12]
Next in the series: A school mistress is hired, and more committees are formed “to mature a plan relative to the regulation and government of schools.”
________________
- Francis J. Foster, A History of the Newton Schools, 1973 (Newton: Jackson Homestead) 1. [back]
- Various authors, Mirror of Newton Past and Present, 1907 (Newton: The Newton Federation of Women’s Clubs) 13. [back]
- Samuel Smith, History of Newton, Massachusetts, 1880 (Boston: The American Logotype Company) 62. [back]
- Foster, A History of the Newton Schools, 9. [back]
- Francis Jackson, A History of the Early Settlement of Newton,1854 (Boston: Stacy and Richardson) 238. [back]
- Jackson, A History of the Early Settlement of Newton, 64. [back]
- Ibid, 40. [back]
- Foster, A History of the Newton Schools, 4. [back]
- Smith, History of Newton, 235. [back]
- Smith, History of Newton, 241. [back]
- Smith, History of Newton, 242. [back]
- Mirror, 48. [back]
