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The Emergence of Bureaucracy in Urban Education: The Boston Case, 1850–1884. Part II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Michael B. Katz
Michael B. Katz*
Affiliation:
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and the University of Toronto
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Extract

The boston school board added to its problems by its choice of a successor to Philbrick. The man elected, Samuel Eliot (a relative of Harvard's president), had little practical experience in the administration of public education. Born in Boston in 1821, Eliot had graduated first in his class from Harvard at the age of eighteen. Following graduation he toured Europe and wrote a series of history books, including The History of Rome, The Early Christians and a Manual of U.S. History. In 1856 Eliot became Professor of History and Political Science in Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, and from 1860 to 1866 he served as its president. In 1874 (the intervening eight years are vague) he became principal of the Girls' High and Normal School in Boston but resigned the position after only two years because of ill health and family bereavement. Eliot, a scholar and a nearly rank amateur in public school affairs, appealed to the reformist element of the school board, and his reports quickly made it evident that he sympathized with the faction that had deposed Philbrick. Eliot's difficulties were compounded by his snobbish social darwinism and isolation from the schools. As a practical administrator, he was generally inept. By contrast to Philbrick his reports were filled not with pragmatic discussions of practical subjects but with long and florid discourses more suitable to a late nineteenth-century literary magazine than to the report of an urban superintendent.

Type
Research Article
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , Fall 1968 , pp. 319 - 357
Copyright
Copyright © 1968 by New York University 

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References

Notes

43. New England Journal of Education, VII (January 1878), 56; Thirty-Fourth Semi-Annual Report of the Superintendent of the Public Schools (School Document No. 16 [Boston, 1878]), pp. 25–26, 28–30; Thirty-Fifth Semi-Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Schools (Boston, 1879), p. 28; Thirty-Sixth Semi-Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Schools of the City of Boston (School Document No. 20 [Boston, 1879]), p. 17. Samuel Eliot was the superintendent at this time.Google Scholar

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57. Ibid., pp. 9–10.Google Scholar

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78. On Parker in Quincy see Katz, , “The ‘New Departure’ In Quincy.” Google Scholar

79. Exeter, , loc. cit.; Boston Evening Transcript, March 28, 1880.Google Scholar

80. Loc. cit. Google Scholar

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82. Boston Evening Transcript (quoting Herald), April 11, 1881; Boston Daily Globe, April 10, 1881.Google Scholar

83. Loc. cit. Google Scholar

84. Boston Evening Transcript, April 12, 1881; April 13, 1881; April 27, 1881.Google Scholar

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88. Boston Evening Transcript, February 2 and 15, 1882; Exeter, , “Boston Gossip,” Journal of Education, XVI (January 1882), 9, 25; Report of the Special Committee upon Primary Schools and other Supervision (School Document No. 2 [Boston, 1882]).Google Scholar

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91. Loc. cit. Google Scholar

92. Boston Evening Transcript, March 15, 1882; Journal of Education, XV (March 1882), 186; XV (April 1882), 222; XV (April 1882), 238.Google Scholar

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95. Journal of Education, XX (November 1884), 296; Report of the Special Committee on Method and Work of Superintendent and Supervisors (School Document No. 9 [Boston, 1884]).Google Scholar

96. Journal of Education, XX (November 1884), 296.Google Scholar

97. On the alienation of the working class see Katz, , The Irony of Early School Reform, Part 1.Google Scholar

98. Etzioni, , Modern Organizations, pp. 98–99.Google Scholar