Eastern High School - Echo Yearbook (Baltimore, MD)

Page 31 text:

THROUGH THE YEARS AT THE EASTERN HIGH SCHOOL time, as slates were still at the height of their unhygienic popularityi were supplied by the Board. There were also, of course, the questions of the studies to be pursued ta rather important itemi and the actual organization and procedure of the school day and year, but these matters can more conveniently be glanced at when the first students of Eastern Female High School have actually been enrolled. And they have yet to . take the entrance examinations! We are indebted to the Baltimore S an of 1844 for the definite record of two highly important events, the giving of the first entrance examinations and the opening of the school. The former took place, evidently, the latter part of July-the end of the school year-- for the newspaper item, dated July 315 reads: After an examination held by Dr. Monmonier, Dr. Collins and Mr. Toner, a committee of the Board of School Commissioners;k the following young ladies were granted admission to the Female High School: . Ada Blanche Franciscus, Mary P. Wise. . . . U-Iere follow 73 more names, not arranged alphabetically, with no indication as to which school the respective young ladies were to enter. The other Sun article, mentioned below, reported that 38 pupils made up the flrst class at Eastern? Of this historically important first group we therefore are not certain even of the names, only that they had met the requirements previously enumerated and were, according to the standards of the lower school from which they came, outstanding students, good higher school materialfii There is unfortunately no copy of the iirst entrance examina- tion, or of those of the years immediately following, but one of the year 1854 tbefore any of the changes for improvement suggested by the principal of iiEastern,i were incorporatedi doubtless gives a fair idea of what this first one was like. The questions were printed in fine print on small strips of paper-10 each in Grammar and Geography, 5 in Arithmetic, 6 in Definitions tnot mentioned in the original list quoted abovei , with 10 words in Parsing and 20 in Spelling. Of Reading nothing is said; hence that was prob- :kThe committee here referred to was one of a number of such committees that played a very important part in the functioning of the early school system, assisting in various ways in the proper conducting of the schools. One of the duties of the particular committee assigned to the two Female High Schools tfrequently referred to in the records as uThe Committee of the SchoolW was, naturally, to preside over the examinations for admission to these schools. 1251

Page 30 text:

THROUGH THE YEARS AT THE EASTERN HIGH SCHOOL would not be large, and expense must be considered. No details of their efforts in this direction are available except the result to be announced presently. But what were the provisions in regard to the first pupils, the reason for all the other action? A number of these applied equally to all the higher schools and were made part of the Boardis policy when it established the High Schooli, in i 39. Perhaps the most important one had to do with those eligible for entrance. Certainly the passage in which this provision is formu- lated lafter it had been in force for some dozen yearsl is significant as an illustration of democracy at work in the school system; These schools are not confined to any portion of the community; it is intended that pupils shall be gathered from every section of the city, and that all classes and conditions of life shall partake of their benefits. Such regulations, therefore, have been adopted for admission as will not exclude any one on account of his or her position in society. lReport of 1851i In terms of the history of iiEasternfi the Boardis pronounce- ment meant that all young females living in the corresponding sec- tion of the city could take advantage of the opportunity for ua more liberal education,, by complying with certain requirements that had no regard to their social position. These were four in number: ill pupils must be twelve years of age; lZl they must have had at least one year in a Female Primary School lthis was before the two classes, Primary and Grammar, had been madel; Bl they must be of good moral character; Ml they must pass a satisfactory examination in Reading, Spelling, Grammar, Parsing, Geography, and Arithmeticfk Another general provision concerned costs, and will doubtless surprise most readers of these annals, unless they have read the Prologue with care. So that the ufree schoolsii might not seem like ucharity schoolsi, the Board had required from the time of the earliest ones established the payment of a so-called tuition fee of $1.00 per quarter or the presentation of the Boardis certihcate excusing from payment, and this was still the custom when the Female High Schools were established and was to be continued in them. Books and stationery lvery little of the latter at the 3kA different requirement in Ml for the males is one of those straws which show the way of the wind: their examination also included iiAlgebra as far as the extraction of the Square Root? l 4 1

Page 32 text:

THROUGH THE YEARS AT THE EASTERN HIGH SCHOOL ably tested orallyfk The following questions are typical samples: GRAMMAR 1. How many Personal Pronouns are there? Name them. 2. Name the number of Tenses in each Mood 3. What does an Active-Transitive Verb express? 4. How is a Passive Verb conjugated? GEOGRAPHY . How is Oceanica divided? . Where is Cape Gerda? . Which is the 111081: southern division of Europe? . Where is the Channel of Tartary? DEFINITIONS . What are Numbers? . What does Nought express? . What is Notation? . What is N umeration? ARITHMETIC 1. Reduce UZ of 3M of U8 of W 18 of U 3 to a simple fraction. 2. If 750 men require 22,500 rations of bread for a month, how many rations will a garrison of 1200 require? 3. If 25 men can earn $6250 in 2 years, how long Will it take 5 men to earn $11,250? 4. Divide 33.66431 by 1.01. PARSIN G Parse the underlined words in the following passagezivk To see young persons who are courted by wealth and pleasure resikt all the allurements of vice and steadily pursue virtue and knowledge, is cheering and delightful to every good mind. SPELLIN G Un iiSpeIIing,i the candidates were given 20 words to write, a number of them being proper adjectives or nouns, such as Olympic and Absalom. All words were carefully capi-talizedJ .4;th- AWNH It might be supposed that the young ladies who made the required grade on this middle-of-the-nineteenth-century type of the Report for 1851 states that the examinations were conducted Qiby the Com- mittee and the Instructors belonging to the respective school, in the presence of such members of the Board of Commissioners as please to attend? WSentences to be parsed were obviously chosen with more than one end in view. Here is another from the questions given on another day: The thoughtless man bridletb n6: his tongue; he speaketh at random, and i5 entangled in the foolishness of his own words. I 61