by the public schools" (Report 1885-86) was 8,275, the "number of persons employed as teachers in the public schools during the year" was 9,670. It is evident that these figures are for the period beginning with the first day of the annual session 1885-86 [and ending with the last. And this fact we imagine is what is told by the statistics we have just given in the table. They show the change during the school year but say nothing about the change in the personnel between the last day or week of the preceding school year and the first day or week of the school year under consid eration. Suppose we were to consider every place in a system of public schools to have become vacant before the first day of a new school year. Then we might ask, "How many of last year's teachers have been reemployed?" and if this inquiry could be answered we would be able to come to a conclusion as to the permanence of the force as shown by the proportion that one year has of the teachers of the preceding year. This would be a far more accurate way of estimating permanency than the rather rough and ready process of comparing the number of places with the number of different teachers employed during the year as we have done to show the changes occurring during the year. There will be an opportunity to investigate the changes that occur from session to session when speaking of the "summer and winter session" of the New England States. We thought at one time that the Rhode Island report-very full and encouraging on the points under consideration-made the distinction expressed in the foregoing paragraph. That report gives the "number of changes in teachers from report of last year." But in turning to page 96 of the report for 1883 we find that "nearly onethird of the whole number (of teachers) in the State have changed their location during the year," the one-third being the 346 "changes in teachers from report of last year." "If we drop out of our calculation," the school commissioner continues, "the towns where the town system prevails, we find that nearly one-half of the teachers in the remaining towns where the district system holds, are changed during the year." Subject to correction, then, let us take the actual number of changes occurring in Rhode Island and place the ratio they bear to the number of teachers necessary to supply the schools, by the side of the Rhode Island column of Tabulation G, which also is estimated on the number necessary to supply the schools. We would attribute the discrepancy between the two columns to the omissions we have mentioned in discussing Tabulation G. The division into two groups which has been justified in the foregoing is still possible in the table under discussion. In Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island the number of teachers employed to each one hundred places is much nearer and lower than in the other three States of the geographical section under consideration, although New Hampshire is much nearer the southern group than the northern. But Connecticut is computed on the basis of school-rooms or departments as are the computations for all the New England States except Massachusetts and Rhode Island. It must not be forgotten that there are two bases of calculation in Tabulation G, and that it is far more adapted to permit the comparison of the figures for the different years in the same State than the figures for the same year of the different States. The statistics of Ohio have been introduced to compare with those of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, while the statistics of Wisconsin serve the same purpose for New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Vermont. Wisconsin is preeminently an agricultural State, and in 1880 Ohio was undoubtedly in the same category, over half of her population "having an occupation," being on farms. It is not necessary to say that the number of different teachers to a place is rapidly growing less. Massachusetts leads in this respect; but it must be borne in mind that the number of school-rooms has been used in the case of Connecticut, though undoubtedly it is too small; for in 1874, 1878, and 1881, periods for which the "number required to teach the schools" is at hand, there were only 136, 127, and 121 teachers to each hundred places. If the diminishing tendency shown by these figures has been maintained Connecticut would perhaps be on an equality with Massachusetts in respect to the relation which the different number of teachers bears to the number required to teach the schools. If the basis of calculation for Vermont may be trusted, the table shows but little sign of advancement for that State. As we have before remarked, an examination of lithograph map 27 of the last census shows Vermont to have a population almost without those centers of concentration which are comparatively numerous in the southern part of New Hampshire and of Maine, the other less densely populated States of New England. SUMMER AND WINTER SESSIONS OF NEW ENGLAND. To the student of the political institutions of New England who had failed to distinguish between a New England "town" and "a collection of houses," the peculiar phraseology in this respect of the States of that section would be misleading; no less inisleading to the uninitiated is their use of the term "school year," as used in the past. Every twelve months saw two or more school terms in these States, and it is doubtful whether their "annual report," which covers the period called a school year in other sections of the Union, is not more properly to be viewed as representing to all intents and purposes what is covered by the so-called biennial report of several States, and whether in trying to treat the statistics of two terms as the statistics of a single continuous period, things have been put together in these annual reports which should have been kept apart. In two States, however, this has not been done; these are Maine and Connecticut, whose statistics therefore will enable us to examine into the change that has taken place at the date when one consecutive school period is ended by the vacation that intervenes before the beginning of another period of school. In Tabulation G we have compared the different number of teachers with the places for them. We will now compare the number of different women employed as teachers during each term with the whole number of different persons-men and women-employed during that term. TABULATION H.-Women in the winter and the summer teaching corps of Connecticut. For Maine the number of teachers employed during the summer as well as during the winter term is not at hand. But it is possible to find the relation which the number of women in the summer corps bears to the number of women in the winter corps. TABULATION I.- Women in the winter and the summer teaching corps of Maine. It is quite observable that in Connecticut the number of men employed is steadily retrograding, while the continuity of service is still more rapidly advancing. The converse of this is shown by the statistics of Maine. There we find that until lately the percentage of women in the winter corps has been quite uniform, while the number of women in the summer corps has been equally uniform and nearly twice as large as the number employed in winter. It must be remembered in the case of Mame that this is the minimum change that occurred during the year, it does not necessarily follow because there is a female teacher in a school for the winter term, and a female teacher in the same school for the summer terin, that this statistically one teacher is the same woman. These facts while helping out the showing of Tabulation G, lead us to inquire what has been the PROPORTION OF WOMEN IN THE TEACHING CORPS. Not only did the calendar year in New England see two distinct scholastic periods, but each period saw a scholastic revolution, a sort of educational somersault'. In winter the larger pupils attended school and were taught by young men; in summer the little children attended and were taught by young women. The change, as far as it was a change in sex, is readily seen from the following percentages of women in each corps for 1858: New Hampshire (1855).. Winter. Summer. "Previous to twenty years ago," says the State superintendent of Maine in 1878, in discussing the change in the character of the attendance at the schools, "it was the almost universal practice, in the country districts at least, for young men and women to attend school [in winter] till their majority; now they are rarely found in them after they are sixteen or seventeen years of age. Of this change lowing figures give conclusive evidence: Average annual number of scholars in State for Five years, including and following 1850, for winter 1874-78, for winter... Decrease for winter Summer schools (1850-54). Increase for summer........ .... the fol 147, 158 131, 627 15,531 122, 391 123,861 1,467 "One of the most frequent causes for the change of teachers," says the State superintendent of Maine in 1866, "is to be found in the long-cherished idea that there must be a male teacher for the winter and a female teacher for the summer. This idea doubtless originated in the olden days of our New England life, when the education of the females had received but little attention and when needlework and knitting were deemed indispensable qualifications to be acquired in the schoolroom, and the literary attainments of the mistress were not expected to go much beyond the ability to manage the little pupils in reading (for the larger ones were not expected to be present) and hear them read and spell." * * The Rev. Birdsey G. Northrop, in 1863, while agent of the Massachusetts Board of Education, speaks incidentally of this matter thus: "In chemistry, in the arts and agriculture, experiments, however expensive, are often necessary and useful. Persevering trials and repeated failures usually precede, and sometimes suggest valuable inventions. But of all experimenting, the most needless, costly, and fruitless, and yet the most common, is the practice of placing a new hand at the wheel, annually or even twice a year, in our school houses. And yet not a few prudential agents in our districts, from mere whim, or pique, or more often from nepotism, practice a system of change in teachers which introduces confusion, waste, weakness, discouragement, and often retrogression, in the place of system, economy, efficiency, and progress. There are still towns which retain the old system of semiannual changes, male teachers in the winter and female in the summer, and even each successive summer and winter, in some towns, the same teachers are seldom reemployed. In such places I find the schools in the lowest condition, with no uniform methods, or well-arranged plan consistently and persistently sustained. * It often requires nearly a term to initiate a new teacher into the policy of the school committee who officially direct his course. * ** It has long been a conceded point among successful teachers that a second term in the same school is worth at least [to the pupil] one-third more than the first. The schoolroom is the most unfortunate place for those experiments which ‘rotation in office,' must here involve-entailing a dead loss of more than 30 per cent. of the expenditures made for the schools. * ** Many towns seem, from precedent, to take it for granted that there is a necessity for male teachers in the winter, and therefore of semiannual changes, as they can not afford to continue males in the summer. This was formerly the general practice throughout the State."2 * Speaking of the "Duration of Schools," the superintendent of Vermont in his report for 1867, says: "Taking all these facts together, then, it will appear that in a large proportion of the schools the prevalent custom must be to secure the services of a teacher to sustain a school for two and one-half months, and then at the close of that term to allow a vacation of three and one-half months, after which another teacher is engaged and a school supported for another term of two and one-half months, to which succeeds another vacation of three and one-half months." 2 In an account given of a "common school from 1801 to 1831," by "a teacher," in the October, 1831, number of the American Annals of Education, we find it recorded that "male teachers have been uniformly employed [for the school] in winter and females in summer. The instructors have usually We have shown both by figures and expert testimony that not very long ago the New England States had a summer and a winter teaching corps, the first almost entirely composed of young women, the other about equally divided between the sexes. It is known that, for the country at large, the female element has been gaining on the male, and we shall now attempt to ascertain how far this fact holds for New England, reproducing in a parallel column for two States in Tabulation J, the results obtained in Tabulation G. This should show for these two States any coincidence of increase of permanency in service as compared with the increase in the number of women in the teaching corps. TABULATION J.-Ratio of women employed during the year to whole number of different persons employed during same period. Where the distinction between the winter teaching corps and those employed in summer has been continued down to recent years as in Maine and Connecticut, the work of the investigator is probably reliable. But in the other New England States, as this distinction was discontinued, as far as the annual reports show at various dates before 1870, the statistics are not above question. In Connecticut, for instance, in 1865 the male teachers formed 31 per cent. of the winter corps, but only 5 per cent. of the summer corps; yet by adding the number of male teachers cmployed in summer to the number employed in winter it will be found that the men formed 20 per cent. of the two corps. Taking 1880, 28 per cent. of the winter corps of the same State were men, but of the summer corps only 14 per cent. To add the two corps and compute the percentage of men on that base is to bring out strongly the weak point of an average. Under such circumstances comment on the table is somewhat hazardous, yet it is plain enough that the per cent. of women has been increasing in Rhode Island, Maine, and Connecticut. In the late comprehensive report of the secretary of the State Board of Education of Connecticut the principal of the normal school of Connecticut notes that about 1883 an extraordinary increase occurred in the enrollment of that school which he admits he can not explain. It is noticeable that just before this date Tabulation J shows a rapid advance for Connecticut in the number of been changed every season, but sometimes they have been continued two successive summers or winters. A strong prejudice has always existed against employing the same instructor more than once or twice in the same district. This prejudice has yielded in one instance so far that an instructor who had taught two successive winters twenty-five years before was employed another season. I have not been able to ascertain the exact number of different instructors who have been engaged in the school during the last thirty years; but I distinctly recollect thirty-seven. Many of them, both males and females, were from sixteen to eighteen years of age, and a few over twenty-one. women employed, and that this was preceded by a period of slight depression, a period covering the "hard times" that marked the last half of the seventies. In Maine the same phenomena appears, and also, though to a less extent, in Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Had we extended our inquiry into the elements of the teaching of New England back for 20 years the constantly increasing proportion of women in the winter corps would have been shown still more clearly. In Massachusetts, for instance, 76 per cent. of the different teachers employed in the public schools were females as early as 1858. Statistics of the two coeducating normal schools of this State confirm the tendency of the teaching corps to become femininized, as is shown by the following statistics. Women in the two Massachusetts Normal Schools admitting both sexes. And the following table will show how Massachusetts stands in this respect with her sister States. TABULATION K.-Showing the ratio of women enrolled in New England Norral Schools to whole enrollment.1 1 Based on annual reports to the Bureau of Education. When it is remembered what a determined advocate of women for teachers the first secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education was, and that in all probability it was through his determined attitude that the first normal school-that originally at Lexington-was devoted to the training of women for teaching, comment on the large percentage of women in the teaching corps of Massachusetts would seem to be unnecessary, provided always that the figures obtained by iumping the statistics of the winter and summer sessions may be trusted. The secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, however, while corroborating the high percentage of women in the teaching corps, claims in 1875 that it is an increase that is due to the civil war, the cause assigned by the French commission to the Centennial in their report to the minister of public instruction. The secretary says: "The demand for young men during the war of the rebellion and the higher rewards for labor of all kinds after it, did much to change the old custom [of change of teachers for winter and summer]. The school committees of some of the * 併 towns, from motives of economy, and on account of the difficulty of procuring male |