Bridgewater State University - Alpha Yearbook (Bridgewater, MA)

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'x whole soul. ,His whole mind and strength were given to his teaching. He threw into his life the poetry of pure and holy motive. By his fidelity, his enthusiasm, and the inspiration ,of his life he constantly drew his pupils to higher fields of thought and life. Declining health made it necessary for Mr. Conant to resign his office, and Albert G. Boyden, the present principal, was appointed to conduct my life. He is a native of South IValpole, Mass., was trained to a good physique and the habit of work on the farm and in the blacksmith shop of his father. He has striven since he was fourteen years of age to qualify himself to be a true teacher. This has been the ambition of his life. He was a graduate of this school under Mr. Tillinghast, was three years an assistant teacher with him, one term an assistant with Mr, Conant, then three years principal of the .English High School of, Salem, Mass., one year Sub-master of the Chap- man Grammar School, Boston, and then three years first assistant with Mr. Conant. In his service as assistant in this school and in his four years' teaching elsewhere he had taught nearly all the branches of study in the Nor- mal School course, which fitted him to take hold intelligently of the conduct of my life. He was thirty-three years of age when he entered upon his prin- cipalship and has directed my life in harmony with the spirit and principles of my father. I The number of different assistant instructors who have taken part in the unfolding of my life is eighty-ive, eleven of whom served under the first principal, thirteen of them served under the second, and sixty-eight have served under the third. Twenty-four of the latter have served in the Model School. Seven of these assistants have become principals of Normal Schools. Eliza B. Woodward, the first permanent lady assistant, served from 1857 to 1887. My course of study is the outcome of the study, observation, and experis ence of all my instructors from the beginning of my life to the present time. It has grown like a great tree spreading its roots and branches wider each. year. In 1846 it extended through three consecutive terms of fourteen weeks each, in 1855 it was made three consecutive terms of twenty weeks each, in 1865, four consecutive terms of twenty weeks each, in 1869 the four years' course was established. I now offer the regular course of four years and live other courses,-the Elementary, Intermediate, Kindergarten, Post-graduate, and Special course for experienced teachers. I The last thirteen years we have had the Central Village School in our building as a school of observation and practice for the Normal students. The average attendance per term for the first ten years of my life was fifty-three, for the last four years it has been two hundred andsixty-five. I9

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'I l s for the internal discipline classifi- 'WVe will not undertake to prescri is ru c. L - , cation and order of study of the School. Wle want at the head of every 7 ' . . . school a man of such energy and skill, that having furnished hnn with school- house Scholars and ZLPPM-atrrs, and a bare outline of our plans and wishes, J ' F U we can trust him to say with the Principal of the Haarlem School, 'I am the Code, there is no other! And indeed there is no other that will accomplish our designs in a manner satisfactory to the public and to the benefactors of the Normal Schools. My father was a man of rare power of discernment, of singular purity of spirit, of marked aptitude for teaching, of most accurate scholarship, and of entire self-abnegation. He devoted himself unsparingly to the Work of establishing my life upon a broad and deep foundation. He said, HMy idea of a Normal School is that it should have a term of four years, that those studies should be pursued that will lay a jbzmzlution on which to build an education. The number of studies should be comparatively small, but much time should be given to them. The teacher should be so trained as to be above his text books. Whatever has been done in teaching in all countries, different methods, the thoughts of the best minds on the science and art of instruction should be laid before the neophyte teachers. ln a proper Normal School there should be departments, and the ablestmen put over them each in his own department. ilfVho knows more than one branch zz.-c1I?'f I was an experiment the first three years of my life, but I had so much vitality at the end of this period thatlmy lease of life was renewed for three years more, and when this lease expired, l was adopted by the State, and christened the Bridgewater State Normal School. At this time the friends of Horace Mann, as an expression of their appreciation of his labors in behalf of the common schools, contributed 3552500 and secured an equal appropriation from the legislature, which with the liberal co-operation of the town of Bridge- water and its citizens, provided a permanent home for me in the lirst State Normal building erected in America. Dr. George B. Emerson was a wa.r1n friend of the school, he contributed the furnaces for this new building. My ,father wrought for me for thirteen years, several terms in this period he taught without any assistant. Failing health compelled him to resign his charge. His work was taken up and carried forward in the same spirit for the next seven years by Marshall Conant, A. M., f1Fatlie1- Cgllglutu as hg was affectionately called by his pupils, a native of l'omfret, Vermont, who was fifty-three years of age when he came to this position from the varied life of an engineer, an author, and a teacher. The crowning traits of his Cl12LI'ELCl3CI' W61'6 his love of trutll 3,11Cl lllS fitltllg ll!! Sought the trlllzh with his I8

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' f l ne fouith acres of land and a ln 1860, my home consisted o one ant o i- ' L 7 , single two storywooden building, forty-two by sixtyfouryfeet, with a meagre l l as about twelve thousand dollars. At the equipment, whose tota va ue W f present time it consists of sixteen and three-fourths acres of land and seven buildings which have ,cost one-half million dollars. The main school 7 building- in its interior arrangement, heating, lighting, ventilating, heatf regulating, electric ime se- , , School buildings in the country. Its collections and apparatus are the pro- t' ivice and equipment is one of the best Normal duct of forty years of continucuseffort. lVe have a first class modern gymna- sium. The residence halls provide a happy, social, home life conducive to the best preparation for teaching, and the out-door conditions are most favor- able to health and strength. ' , I have been a school for co-education from the beginning, combining the strength, beauty and goodness of both sexes. , I have received 5269 pupils, 1330 men, 3939 women. And have graduated 34285 8'84Lmen, 2544 women. 65 per cent. of all in' attendance have been graduated. Careful returns show that 95 per cent. of my pupils have engaged in teaching, and the total of their work aggregates 30,000 years of teaching. I A - My graduates have gone forth into all the lines of educational work from the rural school to the Secretaryship -of the State Board of Education. They are today teaching in all the grades of public schools. Xearly sixty of them are at the present time Masters or Sub-masters in the grammar schools of Boston Fourteen have become principals in Normal Schools. Thirteen are at' this time public school superintendents of this State. Others have passed from teaching into the professions of law, medicine and theology, and many others aremaking homes which are centresof power and iniluence for good in the life of this and other States. A T .My life thus far has been, and 1 trust it will always continue to be, an ever widening stream of influence for good in this good old Commonwealth of Massachusetts. My graduates have wrought on every continent and i11 the islands of the sea. My founders builded better than they knew. 20