Evening star., 1940-09-01
By JESSIE FAINT EVANS.

More than 300 years ago the free
holders of the new settlement of
Boston, Mass, turned aside from
their plowing and fishing, came to-
gether in their puncheon-floored
meeting house and voted to have a
schoolmaster to teach their boys
Latin and Greek.
Thus, between their votes on the
management of their community
cows and other problems of their
town, the Boston Latin School,
Americas first high school, came
into being, and with its inception
the beginning of our present public
school system.
Little did those early New Eng
landers realize that the handful of
pupils their action started along the
way of Latin and Greek at public
expense were to foreshadow the
mighty army of boys and girls who
will be enrolled this September in
the public schools of our land. Ac-
cording. to statistics of the Office of
Education, approximately 1925 900
pupils will present themselves at
elementary schools when the school
bell rings and 6,650,000 at the por-
tails of our high schools.
Nearly 100000 Teachers.
Instead of that solitary school,
master of the long ago in New Eng
land, $4,000 teachers will guide the
educational destinies of the elemen-
tary school children and 100000 will
in the public high schools of the
country.
A far cry from the beginnings of
public education in America in that
Boston Latin School? Yet, modern
as we consider ourselves as Ma
ton from an education standpoint,
do you realize that there are still
10000 one-teacher schools in the
United States with an enrolment of
2,680,00O pupils?
Boston Latin Schools aim was
to train selected group of future
leaders, ministers in particular. All
girls were excluded as improper
and inconsistent with such a gram
mar schoole'," according to another
Colonial order. It's graduates were
prepared, if they wished, to enter
the university where Latin was the
only language spoken or written.
Such a university, Harvard pro-
hibiting the "use of the mother
tongue" was provided in Massachu-
setts the year following. Thereafter
it dictated the policies of the Latin
school so effectively that the schools
original two courses were not ampli-
fled for another 100 years.
1t was not until 1914, nearly 18O
years after the founding of the
Latin school in Boston, that it gave
way to public pressure and the COM
petition set up by private academies
and permitted such "unlearned" sub
jects as mathematics. geography
history and English to be taught its
pupils. But those two original
courses, Latin end Greek. were the
beginning Of the curricula which
the high schools of today have de-
veloped and expanded.
Set Schooling Precedent.
One thing Is certain. The inno-
vation of those history making
freeholders of old Boston made ours
the only Nation in the world where
II years of schooling at the expense
of the community are considered
the inalienable right of all its chill
dren.
This fall the 100000 college fresh
men and the grand total of 1,425 900
students who will be enrolled in
American higher institutions of
learning are the lengthening
shadow of that Boston Latin school,
Such is it's influence, too, that the
primary objective of our high
schools generally is still to prepare
for college rather than life itself.
But how different is our high
school enrolment today from the
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