FRAMINGHAM NORMAL SCHOOL.

[The Remarks of His Excellency, Gov. Bullock, and the Address of Ex-Gov. Emory Washburn, on the occasion of installing Miss ANNIE E. JOHNSON as Principal of the Framingham Normal School, September 4, 1866.]

GOV. BULLOCK'S REMARKS.

Gentlemen of the Board and Young Ladies.

I have on many accounts deeply regretted my inability to visit this institution earlier in the year. But that regret is now greatly mitigated by the opportunity to be with you upon the present occasion of so great interest, and to bear a part, by my presence rather than by much speaking, in the ceremony of inaugurating a new mode of making the Normal School system attractive and effective.

This system has now been in successful operation more than a quarter of a century. I have attributed its prosperity largely to two instrumentalities. First, during all this period the schools have been under the oversight and direction of a central Board, comprising gentlemen eminent among the people, fit for this great work, and self-sacrificing in this cause of causes, for the present and the future Commonwealth. And, second, the system began under the management of teachers distinguished for their ability, and has been at all times since kept in such hands.

The distinguished gentleman, one of my predecessors in office, illustrious equally in the practical and the ornamental departments of life (Governor Everett,) under whose administration these institutions were established, marked the new epoch in education by delivering an inaugural address. The last thing I did before coming hither was to read over that very striking address, and I was impressed, as I have often before been

impressed, by the freshness and originality which he at all times brought to his discussions of the subject of education, discussions ranging over his whole lifetime, and adapted with wonderful versatility to every occasion and to every grade, from the highest university to the commonest school of the land. I noticed that he treated the present topic with more than his wonted caution, derived from history and philosophy. He spoke of the system as an experiment, and discoursed under the evident restraints of a felt uncertainty as to the degree of public sympathy it might attract, and as to the public disposition to make appropriations liberal enough to carry it to the verge of reality and success. His words of counsel have sunk deep into the policy of the State, while his fears have disappeared like morning clouds before the rising culture which has kept pace with the general prosperity. The system has gone through many changes,-of locality, of specific plan of administration, of the measure of money appropriations, and of internal details with which you are familiar. But out of all these vicissitudes it has emerged to have and to hold to-day, in the confidence of the people, the position of the central, primary, and essential instrumentality of the entire system of schools in Massachusetts. I regard the Normal Schools now as much a certainty in the complicated yet unified organization of persons and things which we call THE STATE, as the legislative or executive or judicial department of the government. To invest these schools with all the requisite intellectual machinery the State now appropriates nearly thirty thousand dollars annually; and, I doubt not, will increase this amount to meet any reasonable demand. For one, I like this, and take it to heart. I do not believe we can expend too much in this way. I never did believe, and I never shall believe, that from the time of the apparently extravagant expenditure upon Solomon's Temple until now, too much money has ever been laid out on a church edifice, or that from now to the end of time too much of the same article is likely to be expended upon school-houses or school teachers.

I think that every observing person who has watched impartially the stages of our social progress for the last twenty-five years, must concede that in no calling or pursuit has there been greater advancement than in that of teaching; and that the Normal Schools have manifestly elevated the professional standard

in this department. The man who doubts this will doubt all progress, will doubt the benefit of all education,-will be unhappy over a world now covered with a network of railroads and connected in all its parts by the daily communication of a weird tongue which speaks under the seas to all people, and he ought henceforth to have another world and another civilization all his own. We have nothing to do with any such. All men who are fit for our country and our time must agree that these institutions have added dignity and grace and power to the department of education.

And we are here to-day to establish, to mark, to consecrate another stage in this steady and beneficent progress. We commit for the first time to a woman's care and instruction one of these grand public institutions. The institution is worthy of any man or any woman; and I am happy to believe that the woman is worthy of the institution, of the cause it represents, of the consecration she comes here. this morning to receive. As the official head of the Board of Education I need not say that they have arrived at this measure only after mature reflection and much deliberation, and I take pleasure in saying that the theoretical opinions derived from general philosophy and supported by general observation, which have brought them to the present conclusion, have been enforced and illustrated in this instance by the efficient and successful service of the lady into whose hands I now give the keys. We need not doubt that the experiment, if it can be called an experiment, will result in complete and triumphant success.

It is not a little remarkable, that while in all the avenues and retreats of domestic life we have appreciated the power of woman, and have made the recognition of it a part of our religion and of our rhetoric, in this broad field of education our action has been in advance of our theories,-and that the greater part of our schools have actually gone into the hands of female teachers before it has occurred to us to frame a theory in support of the practice. It looks a little as if our instincts had proved superior to our wisdom,-as if our conduct had outrun our logic, as I believe usually happens in practical life. It proves the power of these conquerors in the State, that noiselessly and without public observation they have taken possession of the school-houses,

where their success appears to be as absolute in shaping the characters of a rising generation of men, as it is afterwards in turning the men themselves to the best account. And thus we have it before us, as a great fact of social progress and public administration, that the best instructors, they who best develop the faculties which afterwards ostensibly prevail and rule in our affairs, are women, whom we have so long acknowledged rather as subjects for our protection than as moving powers of control and government. I speak of them as the best instructors, not to the exclusion of male teachers, and under the limitation of equality with males in acquired attainments and fitness. The induction of Miss Johnson to her office to-day is perhaps the first official and conspicuous announcement of a policy which appears to be founded on philosophical reasoning and on the results of a large experience.

And it is after all a promulgation of a policy which has much to support it in the analysis of the mind and heart of the sexes. I cannot at this time expand this topic. I trust, however, that some of the many gentlemen who go about and do the lecturing upon Education, while the women are doing so much of the teaching, will sometime favor us with a discussion that shall be worthy of this question. When they shall do that, they will portray those manifest and appreciable qualities, as well as those finer and more subtle qualities of nature and genius and art and culture and divinity, which make woman in many respects the best teacher; best by reason of her masterly power of patience, which is sought in the first and in the last solemn nursery of life, -best by her instincts, which are quite as safe as the common logic of men,-best by her greater industry, which no labor paralyzes, best by her quicker perceptions, which are brought into beautiful play in all conversational or oral instruction, as well in the school-room as in the social circles,-best by her moral sensibilities, which neither physical exhaustion nor mental fatigue can dull,-by her radiant countenance, which reflects the soul and becomes a utility as well as a joy forever,-by the whole music of her nature, which makes the heart of the universal school-room of mankind to sing in tune with her own.

EX-GOVERNOR WASHBURN'S ADDRESS.

The circumstances and considerations by which the Board of Education have been led to adopt the change in the direction and management of this school, which has this day been inaugurated, have been so well and ably presented by those who have preceded me, that nothing is left to be supplied. And it remains for me, therefore, only to offer, in their behalf, a few brief suggestions upon one or two topics which seem to be naturally associated with the occasion. One of these is the position which the Normal Schools hold in our general system of popular education. They must from their constitution be regarded in the nature of a specialty. They supply no part of the scheme of free schools which the law originally contemplated as requisite for the wants of the people. Nor do they profess to occupy the place of our academies or private seminaries in furnishing the broader or more liberal culture which these are expected to provide. The purpose they have to serve is a special and peculiar one, and the time within which they are expected to accomplish it is the shortest in which it can reasonably be attempted to be done. Nor is it so much to contribute a given amount of learning, as it is to give to their teaching such a practical character that it may in turn act upon others through the agency of their own pupils. What pupils acquire here, can hardly fail to yield the fruits of liberal culture in their minds, although the instruction they receive is designed to have an ulterior bearing upon those whom they are themselves to teach. It is therefore not only to communicate useful and valuable learning to their pupils that these schools are maintained, but to explain to them practically the best mode of doing this, that they, in turn, may know how best to apply the processes of educating others, by knowing how they themselves have acquired the knowledge they possess. There is nothing in all this incompatible with the cultivation of science or literature for their salutary effect upon the individual pupil, or with the development of a refined taste or any of those qualities which give ease and grace in the amenities of social intercourse. These are among the legitimate fruits of any well-directed intellectual culture. What I mean by this, is, that while the scheme of instruction which is prescribed in these schools, tends, almost as