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 ...

VIII. HENRY BARNARD'S SCHOOL LAW.
(1843- 1845.)
AT the session of the Assembly in May, 1844, the new school agent made
his report of a school law, which was considered and printed. At the June
session it was passed by the House, and the Senate ordered it to be
printed-together with the remarks of the agent, explaining each sectionand voted that it should be circulated among the school committees of the
several towns. The year after, 1845, it was again considered by the Senate,
carefully revised by a committee and passed by a large majority. It
was also passed by the House, but with the condition that the law should
not go into operation until after the rising of the General Assembly in
October, in order that its provisions should be thoroughly understood.
The chief advocate of the bill in the Assembly, during the debate,
appears to have been Mr. Updike, whose pictures of the need of edacation were very vivid. In the course of his remarks, he said:
"There is a wide-spiead dissatisfaction with the schools as they are; with
the inefficient manner in which the system is administered; with the shortness
of time for which the schools are kept,-although they are quite long enough,
unless they can be kept by better teachers; with the amount of money which is
now appropriated by the State without calling forth any corresponding efforts
and appropriations from the towns and districts; with the want of any suitable
regulation as to books and studies; with the defective methods of instruction,
and the harsh, unnecessarily harsh, discipline pursued by many of the schools;
in fine, with the entire organization and administration of the system, as far, at
least, as the great mass of the totTwns are concerned. True, there are good schools
in Providence, Bristol, Warren and Newport, and in some of the eastern towns of
Providence county, but the returns to the secretary of state, and the report of
your school commissioner, will show that the public schools are not kept in the
country districts, on an average, three months in the year; that there are a great