Eastern High School - Echo Yearbook (Baltimore, MD)

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taught; but with the establishment of this school, knOwn for some years merely as uthe High Schoolii or uthe Central SchooP, and later as the City College? educational expansion upward began. In this same year a resolution was passed permitting and indeed advocating the use of the Bible in the schools for its uplifting moral effect. And at the end of the same year in which uthe High Schoolii was established, the Board began presenting to the Council the need of more suitable accommodations for it.. A financial event of special interest to teachers of today who find their salaries scarcely adequate to meet all of todayis demands occurred in 1841. The principal teachers in all of the schools below the High SchooYi lstill classed as Primaryl were given an increase in salary, the i'malef now receiving $850 per year and the iifemalesii 3450. At this time t 18413410 there were twelve Primary Schools, six for each sex, six Night Schools and the High School? and the Board looked with satisfaction upon these creations of its hand under the authority of the Council-but also looked ahead and dreamed of still greater possibilities for free public education in Baltimore. The public schools on the whole present a spectacle calculated to excite the admiration of all. . . . Their future prosperity may be relied on With confidence. Whilst the Board look at the present onward condition of edu- cation throughout the world, and see its importance to our institu- tions and reputation as a free people, we feel anxiously solicitous that such provision be made for the advancement of education in our city as its vast importance demands and that may be consistent with other great interests of the community. It was in keeping with the spirit of this fine pronouncement that the Board, the next year, offered the suggestion that made pos- sible the story that follows. ' XVII

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CHAPTER I THE FIRST ERA 0344-1853 t BEGINNINGS: THE IDEA The beginnings of Easternii and iiWesternii ithose educational twin sistersi constituted the next Outstanding Event in the history of Baltimoreis Public Schools following the establishment of uthe High School? and incidentally made it necessary to refer hereafter to that member of the school family with more precision. The year that these Female High Schools actually came into being was 1844, but the year preceding this must by all means be included in their respective histories, for it was then that the significant idea which produced them flrst became sufhciently clear and hxed in the minds of the School Commissioners to demand expression in action. This idea, slowly and with difficulty arrived at through the ages, expressed in different forms at different times and places, was, stated generally, the belief that the female of the species was sometimes the mental equal of the male and should be treated accordingly. Stated more specifically by the Baltimore Board of Education in ill