The twenty-sixth annual report of the school committee of the City of Lowell, being for the year ending December 31, 1851

Abstract

The past year commences the second quarter-century of the municipal existence of Lowell. Its school-history forms an important page in its annals. Other parts of the Union have long been familiar with the sudden and rapid growth of populous cities. Lowell has presented the first example in . Massachusetts. While its first planting was watched with a natural solicitude, heightened by ,the peculiar experience of the manufacturing communities of the old world, the actual results developed must be looked for with more than curiosity. These results, for a quarter of a century, are now before us. The contrast of its commencement in 1826, and its termination in 1851, are striking - Then, a population of two thousand three hundred souls ; now, of thirty-four thousand - then, some three hundred and fifty school children ; now, over five thousand four hundred -then, six, generally small, district schools, with as many teachers, kept, for the most part, a few months in the year ; now, a graduated system, from the Primary to the High School, numbering in all sixty schools, kept the entire year, and instructed by one hundred and three teachers - then, an annual appropriation for the support of schools, based upon a valuation of about two hundred thousand dollars, of one thousand dollars, (less than a half-dollar to each individual of the population); now, one, based on a valuation of over nineteen millions, of forty-five thousand five hundred dollars, (exceeding one dollar). When to this is added, that, within the space of nineteen years, a sum, amounting to over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, has been expended in the erection of spacious and convenient school-houses, we possess a concise summary of the important items, from which may be in part estimated the liberality and efficiency of the public endowments for popular education in our city... [Excerpt]