BOSTON HIGH-SCHOOL FOR GIRLS.

THIS school is intended to supply a deficiency in the provisions for public instruction in this city, which has been long felt and regretted. The English high-school has been in successful operation, since 1821; and the satisfactory result of this experiment, prepared the way for the establishment of the High-School for Girls. Our system of public schools, for the instruction of boys, may be pronounced complete; and the liberal manner in which it is supported, is equally honorable and beneficial to the city. It is no exaggeration to say, that every boy in Boston, whatever may be the character and condition of his parents, may receive a thorough course of instruction,-not only in the lower and more common branches of knowledge, but also in classical literature and the sciences,—in the schools supported at the public expense; and that he may acquire in them an education, which will well fit him for the active duties of life, and will be found as good, at least, as can be acquired at many respectable colleges.

While they to whom is committed the superintendence of the public schools, have been assiduously and successfully laboring to elevate the character and extend the usefulness of these schools, the interesting subject of female education has neither been overlooked nor neglected. Many important and salutary improvements have been introduced into this department of the system. With new motives for diligent exertions in their studies, the girls have found themselves in possession of more equal privileges in the grammar schools. Beyond these schools, however, the city has hitherto taken no care of their education: there have been no provisions for their instruction in the higher departments of literature and science. It is a consideration highly gratifying to all the friends of the new school, that the various measures, relative to its establishment, have been attended with a unanimity almost unprecedented. The motives which influenced the authorities of the city to establish the High-School for Girls, the general principles upon which it is to be organised and conducted, and the branches of education to be pursued, may be learned from the following interesting documents, extracted from the Records of the School Committee.

At a meeting of the school committee, held May 10, 1825, on motion of the secretary, it was

Voted that a committee be raised to consider the expediency and practicability of establishing a public school for the instruction of

girls in the higher departments of science and literature, and to report upon the same to this board.

Voted that this committee consist of Messrs. Welsh, Pierpont, Bassett, and Hayward.

At a meeting of the Board, held June 22d, the report of this committee was read, and unanimously accepted. We subjoin some extracts from this report.

THE Committee appointed to consider the expediency and practicability of instituting a school for the instruction of the female children of this city, in the higher departments of science and literature, have had under their consideration the matter referred to them, and ask leave to report to this board.

That your committee have construed the terms in which the subject has been referred to them, as inviting their attention, in the first place to the expediency, and in the second to the practicability, of the measure proposed.

In the first place, in regard to the general expediency of placing women in respect to education, upon ground, if not equal, at least bearing a near and an honorable relation, to that of men in any community, your committee think that no doubt can, at this day, be entertained by those who consider the weight of female influence in society, in every stage of moral and intellectual advancement; and especially by those who consider the paramount and abiding influence of mothers upon every successive generation of men, during the earliest years of their life, and those years in which so much, or so little, is done, towards forming moral character, and giving the mind a direction and an impulse towards usefulness and happiness in after life. As to the general expediency, then, of giving women such an education as shall make them fit wives for well educated men, and enable them to exert a salutary influence upon the rising generation, as there can be no doubts, your committee will use no arguments at this board; but will confine themselves to the particular expediency of provision for a higher education of our daughters, at the public expense.

And your committee think favorably of making an effort to this end, for the following reasons which are particular, as well as for the many reasons which are more general in their nature.

In the first place, it would render more efficient, and, consequently, more profitable to the city, the provision which has already been made for the public education of its daughters.

As our public grammar schools are now constituted, some of the finest scholars in the girls' department are seen in the first class at the age of eleven or twelve years, by the side of girls of

fourteen or fifteen years old, who have been rather tolerated in the first class either from courtesy to their age, or from pity to their unsuccessful efforts, than to any title that they could urge on the score of their good scholarship. As the class must, on the present system of organisation, move on together, the former are continually held in check, that the latter may keep in their company; and as the masters have neither time nor authority to go with them into higher studies. It is easy to see, what is of every day's occurrence, that the more sprightly girls find it difficult to fill up their hours profitably to themselves; and are in constant danger of falling into habits of inattention, and mental dissipation, a danger which now presses upon them for two or three of the last years that they are allowed their seats in the public schools. Now, by the school proposed, this evil, which is a very serious one, would be obviated. The same field would be opened in this school, for the girls, as has for a few years been so successfully opened in the English High-School, for the boys in the grammar schools. An object would be presented of honorable ambition, and of lively competition, to the misses who are now condemned to two, and sometimes three years, very inadequately and unprofitably employed; and those indolent habits of mind might be avoided, which it is so much more easy to prevent than to correct.

Secondly. The school contemplated seems to your committee to be particularly expedient for this city, in respect to the impulse that would be given by it to the whole machinery of our public instruction, through the medium of the primary schools.

These schools are daily gaining the confidence of the community, and consequently are daily furnishing a greater and greater proportion of the children to our grammar schools. Of course, it is of continually increasing importance that these first schools should be taught by those who are themselves well educated. They are, and probably will be, taught exclusively by women; and it is doing no injustice to the city, or to the gentlemen who so faithfully superintend these schools, to say, that they are not always able to find women qualified as they ought to be, to take charge of these very interesting public institutions. A school like that now in contemplation, would certainly and permanently furnish teachers for the primary schools, competent in every respect to render the city efficient service; and especially in this respect, that they will have gained by their own experience a thorough knowledge of our whole system of public instruction, and the relations of its several parts to each other. Thus, the city will insure to itself a greater excellence and uniformity in the primary schools than is possible at present, and be always able to recur to its own resources, to meet its own wants;-exhibiting thus, in morals-what has been so

long a desideratum in mechanics-a piece of machinery that, by its own operation, produces the power by which itself is driven. Thirdly, your committee think a school such as is proposed particularly expedient to this city, in regard to the experiment that might be made in it, of the practicability and usefulness of monitorial or mutual instruction; or, at least, of so much of that system as on experiment would be found to accord with the genius and habits of our community. That something of this system might be introduced into all our public schools, to the benefit of the schools and to the pecuniary advantage of the city, your committee can hardly doubt. One experiment has been made, and made successfully. But there were considerations which prevented the carrying of that system up from the school in which it was tried, into the higher public schools. The same system, with some qualifications, has been under successful experiment in a subscription school, composed of the daughters of our most respectable families; and your committee are persuaded that, under the control of a master of judgement and genius, so much of that system might be profitably introduced into a female high-school, as would prove to the public in this city that the same might be carried into our grammar and reading schools, at least, to great advantage. At any rate a satisfactory experiment might be made. Should it fail, as it hardly can, the city will lose nothing but the time and comparatively trifling expense of making it; and should it succeed, the city will secure to itself the better instruction of one third more children than are now instructed, and at probably one third less expense.

Your committee are not sure that it falls within the spirit of their commission to present a statement of the studies which should be pursued in the proposed institution. But, without attempting a particular statement, or a definite arrangement, of the studies,leaving that duty to a future committee, should the city think favorably of the project,-your committee would beg leave to recommend, in general, that in the female high-school should be taught reading; writing words and sentences from dictation; English grammar, embracing frequent exercises in the composition, transposition, and resolution of sentences; composition, to be taught systematically, and to be a regular exercise in all the classes; rhetoric; geography, ancient and modern, embracing the use of maps and globes; elements of geometry, so far as is necessary to the construction of maps, and to the study of natural philosophy; arithmetic, intellectual and written; book-keeping by single entry; general history; history of Greece, Rome, England, and the United States; natural philosophy, with as much of chemistry as would be useful in domestic economy; moral philosophy; natural theology; and astronomy.

Of these studies, however, your committee would recommend that some be required, and others only permitted, as tokens of merit and incitements to industry; thus opening, in this school, what this is intended to open to all the grammar schools of the city, a course of higher instruction, as an object of honorable emulation, and the most unexceptionable reward of industry.

Having spoken thus of the general character of the school, and of the considerations which, in their opinion, render the establishment of it particularly expedient, your committee would, in the second place, state briefly their views of the practicability of establishing it.

To this there can be but one objection,-that of expense. But your committee are persuaded that this is not an insuperable ob-. stacle to the effecting of an object which seems to be so important to the best interests, and to one of the most cherished objects, of the citizens of Boston;-their system of public education. Indeed, in this respect, the present seems to be an auspicious moment; and, on close examination, the school will not be so expensive, as it might, at first, be supposed. For, first, in respect to a house, no new one would be required, for the first year, at least, of the school's operation.

In regard to the other source of expense, that of teachers; this, also, it is believed, will be less formidable than may be apprehended. It is intended, indeed, to place the master of this school, in respect to his salary, upon a level with the respective masters of the Latin and English High-Schools. But for the first year, certainly, the master is to be the only instructer recognised by the city; and, as it is intended to conduct the school, in a degree at least, upon the system of mutual instruction, the ratio between the number of teachers and of scholars will always be much less than in either of the schools last mentioned.

But, in regard to the expense at which the contemplated school is to be instituted and sustained, your committee think the same remark may be made of this, as of all our other public schools. When liberally supported they more than support themselves. They are a source not of honor only, but of pecuniary profit, to the city; for, taking into view-as an enlightened policy does take into view the whole period during which these institutions exert their influence upon the community, they more than indemnify the city for the expense of their maintenance, in that the knowledge they diffuse through the great mass of the population, throws open new and wider fields to enterprise, gives higher aims to ingenuity, and supplies more profitable objects to industry.