A history of public education in Rhode Island, from 1636 to 1876 ... Comp. by authority of the Board of education, and ed. by Thomas B. Stockwell ...

210 PROVIDENCE.
teaching not less than competent literary qualifications, will more than
ever guide in the selection of teachers. Changes in courses of study
and in methods of instruction, to harmonize with the ever-changing condition and new wants of society, will be made. Plans tending to create
an aristocracy in education by limiting free instruction to grammar
school studies, will be repudiated as consistent only with monarchical
institutions, and as antagonistic to the spirit of a republic. The duty
of the appropriate authorities to see that every child in the community
is educated, will be made paramount. Methods of supervising schools
adapted to the progress of the age, will be devised, and every influence
which a liberal, just and statesman-like policy can bring into activity,
will be employed in carrying forward to the highest ideal of perfection
the free school system of 1876. Such is our prediction.
In closing this brief history of the progress of public free school
education in Providence, from the crystalization of the thought in 1767
to the present time, words recently spoken in another connection, may
not be considered inappropriate:
" Our schools are among the most attractive institutions of our city.
Enterprise, capital and a better population are drawn to it by the
superior advantages they afford for the education of the young, and by
the reputation which intelligence and culture always give to a community.
The enlightened spirit in which they have been conducted, and the
liberal support they have ever received, has enabled them not only to
give tone to the educational sentiment of the State,'but to maintain a
front rank with other States in educational progress. No city in the
country has stronger reasons for so fostering public schools as that their
influence shall be perceptible among every class of the population; than
our own. Her varied industries demand intelligent labor such as the
schools only can provide. Her influence in State and Nation is to be
perpetuated by the potency of mind which has received its development
and culture in her educational institutions. Let it be the wisdom of the
future as it has been of the past, to render them all the support that the
broadest views of public free education shall require, or that can honor
the Rhode Island name."
ERRATA.-Page 137. For Captain John Whipple read Captain Joseph Whipple.