1 Mann, Horace, Twelfth Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board , in Twelfth Annual Report of the Board of Education (Boston, 1849), 140.Google Scholar

2 Cremin, Lawrence A., ed., The Republic and the School: Horace Mann on the Education of Free Men (New York, 1957), 79; Mann, Horace, Fifth Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board (Boston, 1842), 120; Vinovskis, Maris, Education, Society, and Economic Opportunity: A Historical Perspective on Persistent Issues (New Haven, Conn., 1995), 103. Vinovskis offers some excellent insight into Mann's use of rhetoric to advance the cause of the common school in the chapter “Horace Mann on the Economic Productivity of Education.” Google Scholar

3 Spring, Joel, The American School, 1642–1993, 3d ed. (New York, 1994), 63. For extensive discussions of challenges to common school ideology, see, for example, Katz, Michael B., The Irony of Early School Reform: Educational Innovation in Mid-Nineteenth Century Massachusetts (Cambridge, Mass., 1968); Lazerson, Marvin, The Origins of the Urban School: Public Education in Massachusetts, 1870–1915 (Cambridge, Mass., 1971); and Kaestle, Carl F., Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780–1860 (New York, 1983), ch. 7.Google Scholar

4 For population data for 1800, see Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of the Population: 1960 , vol. 1, Characteristics of the Population, pt. 23, Massachusetts (Washington, D.C., 1963), table 5, p. 23–8; for the school enrollment data, see Osgood, Robert L., “History of Special Education in the Boston Public Schools to 1945” (Ph.D. diss., Claremont Graduate School, 1989), 54–55.Google Scholar

5 Subcommittee of the Primary School Board, Report, 25 Apr. 1820, quoted in Wightman, Joseph M., comp., Annals of the Boston Primary School Committee, from Its First Establishment in 1818, to Its Dissolution in 1855 (Boston, 1860), 53–54, quotation 54.Google Scholar

6 Standing Committee of the Primary School Board, 21 Apr. 1829, quoted in Wightman, , Annals, 116.Google Scholar

7 City of Boston, Common Council (1837), document no. 3, 2–5, Government Documents Room, Boston Public Library, Boston, Mass. (all City of Boston documents cited are at this location); City of Boston, Common Council (1837), document no. 4, 2–11. For a useful discussion of the establishment of intermediate schools, see Schultz, Stanley K., The Culture Factory: Boston Public Schools, 1789–1860 (New York, 1973), 268–71.Google Scholar

8 City of Boston, Common Council (1837), document no. 17, 2–4; City of Boston, Common Council (1837), document no. 4, 8–9.Google Scholar

9 Order of the City Council, 22 Mar. 1838, quoted in Wightman, , Annals, 173; Report of the Subcommittee on Intermediate Schools of the Primary School Board, 1838, quoted in Wightman, , Annals, 173–74; Wightman, , Annals, 173. See also Schultz, , Culture Factory, 268–69.Google Scholar

10 Wightman, , Annals, 174, 304; Schultz, , Culture Factory, 269; City of Boston, Common Council (1843), document no. 13, 6; Annual Report of the School Committee of the City of Boston (Boston, 1879), 9–10 (hereafter referred to as ARBSC); City of Boston, Report of the Committee on the Supervision of Schools for Special Instruction (1857), document no. 43, 4. The existence of an intermediate school enrolling only children of African descent raises an interesting question regarding its connection with Boston's segregated subsystem for black children that existed from 1806 to 1855. That separate system was spotlighted by the famous lawsuit brought in 1849 on behalf of five-year-old Sarah Roberts to permit her attendance at an all-white primary school, a suit which Judge Lemuel Shaw### denied. The school that Sarah's father refused to have her attend was not the intermediate school, which was designated for much older children and may not have existed in 1849; rather, it was one of the two segregated primary schools then in existence. The intermediate school for black children was mentioned in the reports of 1854 but not those of 1857, suggesting the possibility that the school was disbanded along with the other segregated schools by state legislation in 1855. For a brief discussion of the Roberts case see Schultz, , Culture Factory, 201–6.Google Scholar

11 Philbrick, John D., Fifth Quarterly Report, June 1, 1858 , in ARBSC (1858), 25; Tenth Semi-Annual Report of the Superintendent, in ARBSC (1865), 123, and Ninth Quarterly Report, in ARBSC (1859), 80–81; Second Semi-Annual Report, in ARBSC (1861), 71; Wightman, , Annals, 210.Google Scholar

12 City of Boston (1843), document no. 13, 6; ARBSC (1857), 46.Google Scholar

13 Report of the Committee on the Supervision of Schools for Special Instruction, 4–5.Google Scholar

14 Emerson, George B., quoted in Schultz, , Culture Factory, 269–70.Google Scholar

15 ARBSC (1879), 9–10.Google Scholar

16 Ibid. For a detailed account of the restructuring of the Boston schools during this time, see Katz, Michael B., Class, Bureaucracy, and Schools: The Illusion of Educational Change in America (New York, 1971), 56–104.Google Scholar

17 All data in table 1 was compiled from the June statistical appendices to the respective ARBSC of the years cited.Google Scholar

18 8th Annual Report of the Board of Supervisors (hereafter referred to as ARBS), in ARBSC (1885), appendix 175.Google Scholar

19 10th ARBS, in ARBSC (1887), appendix 151–52; 12th ARBS, in ARBSC (1889), appendix 135; Report of George Conley, Supervisor, supplement to ARBSC (1895), appendix 134; ARBSC (1890), 13.Google Scholar

20 All data compiled from the ARBSC, esp. the statistical appendices from June 1881, 1890, 1893, 1897, and 1899.Google Scholar

21 10th ARBS, appendix 150–51; 12th ARBS, appendix 134; ARBSC (1890), 12.Google Scholar

22 Report of Walter S. Parker, Supervisor, in ARBSC (1895), appendix 166; Report of Walter S. Parker, Supervisor, in ARBSC (1896), appendix 137; Report of Walter S. Parker, Supervisor, in ARBSC (1898), appendix 130–32.Google Scholar

23 8th ARBS, appendix 175; 19th Annual Report of the Superintendent (hereafter ARS), in ARBSC (1899), appendix 64.Google Scholar

24 10th ARBS, appendix 151–52. On overenrollment in ungraded classes, see, for example, the comments from the reports of Walter S. Parker in ARBSC (1895), appendix 166, and ARBSC (1898), appendix 131.Google Scholar

25 10th ARBS, appendix 152.Google Scholar

26 13th ARBS, in ARBSC (1890), appendix 144; Proceedings of the Boston School Committee (1894), 394; Report of George Conley, Supervisor, 132; 22nd ARS, in ARBSC (1902), appendix 57.Google Scholar

27 8th ARBS, appendix 175; 10th ARBS, appendix 151.Google Scholar

28 10th ARBS, appendix 151; 13th ARBS, appendix 143–44.Google Scholar

29 13th ARBS, appendix 144; Report of George Conley, Supervisor, appendix 133–34, 132.Google Scholar

30 Schultz, , Culture Factory, 270.Google Scholar

31 33rd ARS, school document no. 11, 1914, 36; 1908 data from “Semi-Annual Statistics of the Boston Public Schools,” school document no. 6, 1908. Data from 1915 to 1939 are summarized from the respective years of the “Annual Statistics of the Boston Public Schools” in the bound volumes of the School Documents (Boston, Mass.) for those years. For a detailed chronology of the establishment and evolution of these programs, see also 47th ARS, school document no. 7, 1929, 91–126.Google Scholar

32 33rd ARS, 1914, 42; ARS, school document no. 10, 1910, 6; “Annual Statistics of the Boston Public Schools,” school document no. 6, 1914, 14–15; 33rd ARS, school document no. 13, 1914, 42–43.Google Scholar

33 Boston seems to have been ahead of other systems in establishing special education programs in terms of both time of establishment and complexity of structure. See, for example, Tropea, Joseph L., “Bureaucratic Order and Special Children: Urban Schools, 1890s–1940s,” History of Education Quarterly 27 (spring 1987): 29–53; Franklin, Barry M., “Progressivism and Curriculum Differentiation: Special Classes in the Atlanta Public Schools, 1898–1923,” History of Education Quarterly 29 (winter 1989): 571–93; Gelb, Steven A., “‘Not Simply Bad and Incorrigible’: Science, Morality, and Intellectual Deficiency,” History of Education Quarterly 29 (fall 1989): 359–79; Lazerson, Marvin, “The Origins of Special Education,” in Special Education Policies: Their History, Implementation, and Finance , ed. Chambers, Jay G. and Hartman, William T. (Philadelphia, 1983), 15–47; Sarason, Seymour B. and Doris, John, Educational Handicap, Public Policy, and Social History: A Broadened Perspective on Mental Retardation (New York, 1979), 261–320; Scheerenberger, R. C., A History of Mental Retardation (Baltimore, Md., 1983). Several professional and scholarly journals are particularly rich sources for a variety of articles on education and disability during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, esp. the Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, Mental Hygiene, and the Training School Bulletin. Google Scholar