Brookline High School - Murivian Yearbook (Brookline, MA)

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In Superintendent Dutton’s first annual report, doubtless impressed by the representations of Prin- cipal Farnsworth, he made a plea for a new High School building that should be the pride and orna- ment of the town, so ample in its appointments and so efficient in every department that no parent would think of sending his children elsewhere to be edu- cated.” This action was followed later by an appro- priation of money sufficient to erect a new high school building complete in all modern appointments. The external appearance of the new building which was erected in 1895 at the corner of Tappan and Green- ough Streets facing the playground was somewhat disappointing. Years afterwards an attempt was made to give the structure less the appearance of a shoe fac- tory by adding something of the beautiful in adorn- ment that the building committee had not felt justified in supplying. The decade of 1890-1900, the period of Superinten- dent Dutton’s administration, was a time of rapid edu- cational development like a spring awakening in nature. Manual training and domestic arts were re- ceiving recognition. The advanced Manual Training School established in 1894 was consolidated with the High School, and manual training and domestic science were offered as electives to all high school students. The dream of Mr. John Emory Hoar was coming true. Brookline High School was becoming a fitting school for college, competing on favorable terms with the Boston Latin Schools, for an opportunity was given to begin French in the seventh grade, Latin in the eighth and elementary algebra and geometry in the ninth. There were now four courses of study: — the classical with Greek, the sub-classical without Greek, the tech- nical, and the general. No special class of student was favored although it was recognized that prepara- tion for college carried with it a beneficient influence that tended to elevate standards of scholarship. Superintendent Dutton ended his ten year term of conspicuous service on July 1, 1900 to enter a larger field of labor in New York City. Mr. George I. Aid- rich succeeded Mr. Dutton as superintendent. Superin- tendent Aldrich undid very little that his predecessor had done. French was confined to grades eight and nine; Latin, algebra and English history to the ninth grade. On the other hand, Mr. Aldrich continually effected an enlargement of educational opportunities just as Mr. Dutton had done. As to policies, both men believed in the wise practise when vacancies in the teaching force occurred of seeking the best talent to be found in all the sections of the country so that the Brookline system might be strengthened and made more fruitful by fresh life and new ideals. In 1905 a local innovation of great import to schol- astic sports was established. Coaching was put on a parity with other forms of instruction in that the coach must be in the future a member of the faculty and assigned to some academic department. In June, 1905, Headmaster Daniel S. Sanford, after fourteen years of notable service, left Brookline. Mr George P. Hitchcock came from the Pratt Institute. Brooklyn, New York, to take Mr. Sanford’s pla c. Some years later the same institution called him back to be vice-chairman. During his administration the commercial course was established. This department was lodged at first in the manual training building but shortly, when the municipal gymnasium was com- pleted and the high school students went there for their physical training, the equipment of t his new course was transferred to the main academic building and occupied the two large rooms in the semi-basement formerly used as gymnasia. Mr. Winfred C. Akers, headmaster of the high school in New Britain, Connecticut was the choice of the School Board for a worthy successor to Mr. Hitch- cock. The decade of 1909-1919 was marked by steady increase of numbers and prompt recognition of suc- cessive educational needs as they appeared. The High School building first occupied in September 1895 was designed to provide adequate accommodations for six hundred pupils. In twenty years the school had grown to six hundred sixty-nine and twenty-nine teachers. In May 1919, much to the regret of the teachers and citizens of the town, Superintendent Aldrich resigned and was voted the title of Superintendent Emeritus, an honor bestowed neither before nor since upon a holder of this office. His successor, Mr. Oscar C. Gallagher, took office in October 1919. Superintendent Gallagher introduced into all the schools of the town a course in money management. Penny savings had been in- stituted in 1891, but was confined to the grades below the high school and was continued successfully for many years. While systematic saving was again made one feature of this new course, a comprehensive treat- ment of wise spending, giving, and saving character- ized the instruction in economic education. By the year 1920 an increase in the number of pupils to nine hundred twenty-one forced the town to plan for additional space in the accommodations. At the town meeting in March 1921, large appropriations were made for an additional story for the Manual Training build- ing, for the purchase of land in the rear and adjoining the High School lot, and for the erection of the first section of a big new plant to be connected with the main High School building and to be constructed unit 11

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The history of the Brookline High School is the story of a humble beginning and of gradual adaption to changing conditions and to increasing needs in its growth. In 1841, it was voted in town meeting that it was expedient to have a high school. In 1843, being au- thorized to go ahead, the School Committee seized the opportunity presented by vacant town property and by means of an appropriation of $300 equipped for high school use a room in the old stone town-hall removed to Sherburne Road, now Walnut Street. The tov n seems to have been fortunate in the choice of the first master — Mr. Hezekiah Shailer, a graduate of Brown University. As long as he re- mained head of the school, discipline was good and the attitude of the students toward their work com- mendable. The School Committee’s report of 1847 comments frankly as follows; — The school is well managed and orderly but unsatisfactory, and in some respects does not compare favorably with similar in- stitutions in this vicinity, because the one teacher can- not do justice to the task while he has to hear so many recitations and allot only fifteen minutes to each. Therefore, your committee recommends that there be appointed a female assistant in the High School to take charge of the girls in a separate room. The proposed change would obviate in a measure the scruples of those who object to the instruction of both sexes in the same room by a male teacher.” In accordance with the above recommendation, an assistant was em- ployed. The year 1852-53 marked the beginning of a bad slump in the High School achievement, due primarily to frequent changes in the teaching staff. The ques- tion was raised whether the High School should be discontinued as such and blended with the Pierce Grammar School in a single institution. It is in fact,” says the report of the School Committee, nothing more at present than a grammar school in which a few advanced studies are partially and imperfectly taught. Notwithstanding this discouraging report, the committee did not despair, but recommended steps to change the deplorable condition. The school was too heterogeneous; a more rigid examination for ad- mission was necessary to weed out the unfit. More- over, appreciating the truth of the old adage As is the teacher, so is the school”, it urged the payment of liberal salaries to get and keep the very best teachers. The recommendation of the School Committee was adopted. Out of blackness of despair suddenly came the dawn with the appointment of Mr. John Emory Hoar, from the high school in Cambridge, to the prin- cipalship. I his skillful teacher and remarkable char- acter began at once to help mightily in bringing about a swift change for the better. Mr. Hoar attacked vigorously the evil of irregular- ity in attendance and succeeded in awakening a public sentiment in the scholars against tardiness and absence. He was constructive in other measures that made for a better school. He called for reference books. A good library , he said forms an indispensable part of the apparatus of a high school. The knowledge where to look for information is by no means an unimpor- tant item in a man’s education.” Within two years there were in the high school library two hundred and forty volumes. In 1884 Mr. Hoar secured again the appointment of an additional woman instructor. With the approval of the School Committee, he also secured the adoption of a five-year classical course of study. This approval was only a matter of form, for the committee had recom- mended this extension of the classical course in their report of 1880-81. In July 1888, Mr. John Emory Hoar resigned the principalship after a splendid service of thirty-four years with scarcely a day’s absence in them all. His consistent aim from first to last was to combine the main features of two such representative schools as the Boston Latin and the English High Schools and so incorporate the composite results into Brookline High School that the latter institution would become the peer of any in this Commonwealth in all respects. Mr. Frederic T. Farnsworth, Principal of Bristol Academy in Taunton, Mass., succeeded Mr. Hoar. The new headmaster modified the course of study, securing more freedom in the matter of elective studies. One of the two courses was now called the General Course and the other the College Preparatory. Selections from the former fitted the candidates for M.I.T.; the latter afforded thorough preparation for Harvard and other colleges. Mr. Farnsworth remained as principal only three years. He was a strict disciplinarian and an excep- tionally skilful teacher, so successful in getting his boys into Harvard College that he earned the commenda- tion of the School Committee who expressed them- selves as convinced from the result of college exam- inations and the gratifying high scholastic standing in college of recent B.H.S. graduates that Brookline scholars can get all needed preparation in this school to enter creditably on their college or institute course.” Mr. Samuel T. Dutton entered upon his duties as Superintendent of Brookline schools in September, 1890. He brought Mr. Daniel S. Sanford to succeed Mr. Farnsworth in September, 1891. Mr. Sanford was an able man with social graces and suited in every way to cooperate heartily and efficiently with Superin- tendent Dutton in an educational new deal . 10

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by unit as growth of the town necessitated. Material improvements were not, however, the chief gains made in the administration of Headmaster Akers. Changes for the better in the inner life of the school constituted a far more real and discriminating cause for congratula- tions. Besides the several musical organizations such as boys’ and girls’ glee clubs, mandolin club, life and drum corps, band and orchestra and the more numerous supervised sports of all kinds for both sexes, there were other student enterprises no less valuable, among them, to name only a few, the school paper — the Sagamore — the year-book, later called the Murivian, school drama- tics and the girls’ league. Mr. Akers saw organized sports that came into the school life during the headmastership of Mr. Sanford approach their highest development in his term of serv- ice. They had multiplied among both sexes until the boys had, with the exceptions of polo and wrestling, all the varieties of contests found at Cambridge, including a crew on the Back Bay; and the girls all but one of the varieties of feminine sports practised at Wellesley, in- cluding Lacrosse, archery and horse-back riding. Furth- ermore, Brookline High School graduates, owing to their expert training in their preparatory days, supplied not infrequently captains and star athletes for the foot- ball, baseball and track varsity teams of Harvard, Yale and Pennsylvania and for a score of smaller similiar in- stitutions as well. In June 1930, owing to ill health, the beloved and venerated Mr. Akers resigned from the headmastership of the school and in the following year for the same reason Mr. Gallagher from the superintendency. Mr. Ernest R. Caverly, Headmaster of the Brookline High School for the year 1930-31, whose administrative abil- ty had impressed the school committee, was appointed the successor of the latter and Mr. Wilfred H. Ringer, for ten years successful principal of the Gloucester High School, was picked to take the place of the former. The rapidly expanding high school enrollment had now reached a total of seventeen hundred students and ninety-one teachers. The town rose to the exigencies of the situation by making a prompt appropriation of two hundred eighty-five thousand dollars for the erection of a second unit of the extensive plant for the whole of which the architects had drawn plans. Without delay ground was broken and construction begun to provide additional class rooms and new enlarged laboratories for all branches of science. After the Roberts auditorium was built and there was no longer need for Shailer Hall for desk room and study periods, the question how to make the best use of the old assembly hall became pertinent. This was satis- factorily answered when federal funds became avail- able to remodel and redecorate the old auditorium and transform it into what was probably in respect to spaci- ousness, utility and beauty, the finest high school li- brary in existence. This unfortunately was not long enjoyed, for hardly had it been furnished and put to use before it was involved in a ruinous fire that broke out in the afternoon of September 25, 1936. Before the flames and smoke could be brought under control, the interior of the main building was so seriously dam- aged that the school committee felt that the expendi- ture of a large sum of money in rebuilding a forty-year old out-of-date plant was unsound from an economic point of view. Therefore the grand old building, as firm as the rock of Gibraltar, was with difficulty taken down and the present south and central sections of the quadrangular plant erected. One last unit remains to be built to provide two superimposed gymnasia, additional classrooms and enlarged science laboratories whenever the time is ripe for the completion of the architectural whole. There is no question but that the Brookline High School plant will then be a fitting and practical memo- rial of the generosity of the tax-payers and of their firm belief in the value of the finest educational equipment. The Brookline High School has kept faith with the citizens of the town and justified large expenditures by the quality of its work. This was never better than in the last decade if we may trust the evidence of the scholarship records kept on file in the school office. Brookline graduates not only do remarkably well in the College Board examinations as the results published in the annual school reports reveal , but maintain a good rank in college. That fact is proof that their prepara- tion was thorough, that a broad, firm foundation had been laid by their whole training in the Brookline schools, and that habits of industry and the will to learn had been ingrained. It is yet too soon to appraise the contribution toward winning the second world war that the Brookline High School is making. At present, the endeavor is to main- tain a balance between the demands of the national emergency and the basic needs of education for life in time of normal peaceful conditions. Teachers and stu- dents are adjusting themselves heartily to the exigencies of war, responding to every call for preparedness. The High School buildings have been freely made available for all sorts of courses, not only for the older boys and girls in the junior and senior classes to fit them for em- ployment in national defense industries, but also for hundreds of men and women from metropolitan Bos- ton who are being fitted by the regular manual training instructors to do work assigned to them by federal agencies. The High School is meeting intelligently and in a spirit of fullest cooperation its new obligations imposed by the transition from peace to war without, however, neglecting those things in education that are indispensable for the building of the post-war world. These pages contain in an abbreviated form, material written by Mr. William Snow in connection with the 100 th Anniversary of Brookline High School. 12