Roosevelt High School - Bwana Yearbook (St Louis, MO)

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9 BVJEINH MR. C. HAROLD SACKETT Assistant Principal Nine

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BWEHH A MESSAGE FROM MR. SACKETT The year I935 is significant to high school boys and girls because it marks the three hundredth anniversary of the founding of the first secondary school of America. I want to give you a little sketch of the history of our American public high school. By secondary education we mean, in general, education in high schools. Where there are junior high schools, the seventh and eighth grades are usually included in this classificationg junior colleges, where only two years of college work are taught, are also included. The first secondary school in America was the Boston Latin School. It still exists as one of the public high schools of Boston, and its principal, or head master as he is called, is Mr. L. Powers. On April 23, I635, only five years after the settlement of Boston and one year before the founding of Harvard College, the citizens voted that our brother Philemon Pormont shall be intreated to become schoolmaster for the teaching and nurturing of children with us. It was a school for boys onlyg girls had not yet had the opportunity of showing that they have equal mentality. It was a free school supported by donations of the citizens. When the colonists settled in America, they naturally tended to found schools similar to those of the home country. ln England at this time the prevailing secondary school was the Latin grammar school. This taught chiefly Latin and Greek, and its only purpose was to prepare for college. Pupils entered at an early age-when they were eight or nine-and they were ready for college when they were fourteen! But college in those early days con- sisted of only more Latin and Greek: the college graduate did not have as good an education as the graduate of a modern high school. So, in schools like the Boston Latin School, pupils entered early, and early in more than one sense, for school began at seven or eight in the morning. There was a two-hour intermission at noon, and then pupils returned for the afternoon session which lasted until nearly dark! Girls, however, were not entirely neglected. A few were taught before or after schoolg and they were taught also on Thursday afternoons, when boys had a half-holiday. Later they were educated in boarding schools called female seminaries. But the Latin grammar schools did not fit the pioneer conditions of America. ln 1749 Benjamin Franklin published a proposal that a new type of school be established that would put more emphasis on practical education rather than on entrance to college. The number of college students in those Eight 93

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BWEHH days formed a much smaller percentage than today. Such a school, called the Philadelphia Public Academy, was opened in Philadelphia in 1851. The movement spread, and a hundred years later it was estimated that there were six thousand of these academies. At first there were separate academies for boys and girls, but in l784 one was opened for both girls and boys. This was the beginning of coeducation-the education of boys and girls in the same school. But as the Latin grammar schools were replaced by the academies, most of the latter were to die and to be replaced by high schools, and the academies gradually became merely schools to prepare for college. The first high school opened in Boston in l82l, and still exists. It was first called the English Classical School, but three years later the name was changed to English l-ligh School. It was a school for boys. ln 1824, Wor- cester, Massachusetts, opened a high school for girlsg New York and Boston followed with similar institutions- in ISZ6. The Boston school, however, was so popular that two years later it had to close: so many parents demanded admission of their daughters that the city could not stand the extra expendi- ture. ln this same year, l826, the first coeducational high school was opened at Bridgeport, Connecticut. And now, after three hundred years all of the Latin grammar schools and most of the academies have disappeared, but there are about twenty-five thousand public high schools! C. H. SACKETT J F ,ra S 1,9 - V 45 V ' . - .'f'fff:- cf' ...--P-saiiiimm '1'-ir:-f'1'112 rf i' -...-.--Z.:'7',7:'.1F'.- 4 si 122222: - .nf- Ten 5