PREFACE. THE following contribution to the improvement of school-houses, was originally prepared by the author in 1838, as one of a series of addresses designed for popular and miscellaneous audiences, and as such, was delivered in various towns in Connecticut during the four years he acted as Secretary of the Board of Commissioners of Common Schools for that State. It was printed for the first time in the Connecticut Common School Journal in the winter of 1841; and again, in 1842, as one of the documents appended to his Annual Report to the Board for that year. Since that date it has been repeatedly published, each time with additional plans anc. descriptions of new and convenient school-houses, until upwards of twenty thousand copies have been gratuitously circulated in the States where the author has been called upon to labor in the cause of common-school improvement, or among the friends of popular education in other parts of the country. At the suggestion of many of these friends, the work has been put into the hands of a publishing house, to be brought before the public, in the hope that it may still continue to help those who are looking round for approved plans of school-houses, by introducing them to the results of much study, observation and experience on the part of many laborers in this department of public education. It was the wish of the author to revise that portion of the work in which the general principles of school architecture are discussed, and to arrange the various plans and descriptions of improvements in the construction, internal arrangement, and furniture of school-houses, which have been added to each successive edition in the order of time in which they have been brought to his notice, under appropriate heads. But his time is too much absorbed in the immediate and pressing duties of his office, to admit of his doing any thing beyond a general superintendence of the publication, and the preparation of a few additional plans, for this edition. With such views, therefore, as the essay originally presented, and with such modifications and additions as he has been able to embody in each successive edition, it is now committed to the hands of the publishers. These views were formed after a careful consideration of the subject in its various relations, direct and indirect, to the health, manners, morals, and intellectual progress of children, and the health and success of the teacher, both in government and instruction. The subject was forced on the attention of the author in the very outset of his labors in the field of public education. Go where he would, in city or country, he encountered the district school-house, standing in disgraceful contrast with every other structure designed for public or domestic use. Its location, construction, furniture and arrangements, seemed intended to hinder, and not promote, to defeat and not perfect, the work which was to be carried on within and without its walls. The attention of parents and school officers was early and earnestly called to the close connection between a good school-house and a good school, and to the great principle that to make an edifice good for school purposes, it should be built for children at school, and their teachers; for children differing in age, sex, size, and studies, and therefore requiring different accommodations; for children engaged sometimes in study and sometimes in recitation; for children whose health and success in study require that they shall be frequently, and every day, in the open air, for exercise and recreation, and at all times supplied with pure air to breathe; for children who are to occupy it in the hot days of summer, and the cold days of winter, and to occupy it for periods of time in different parts of the day, in positions which become wearisome, if the seats are not in all respects comfortable, and which may affect symmetry of form and length of life, if the construction and relative heights of the seats and desks which they occupy are not properly attended to; for children whose manners and morals,— whose habits of order, cleanliness and punctuality,-whose temper, love of study, and of the school, are in no inconsiderable degree affected by the attractive or repulsive location and appearance, the inexpensive out-door arrangements, and the internal construction of the place where they spend or should spend a large part of the most impressible period of their lives. This place, too, it should be borne in mind, is to be occupied by a teacher whose own health and daily happiness areaffected by most of the various circumstances above alluded to, and whose best plans of order, classification, discipline and recitation, may be utterly baffled, or greatly promoted, by the manner in which the school-house may be located, lighted, warmed, ventilated and seated. With these general views of school architecture, this essay was originally written. The author will be happy to receive from any quarter, plans and descriptions of new school-houses, and to insert them in subsequent editions of this work, with proper acknowledgment for the same. Office of Commissioner of Public Schools, H. BARNARD. |