17, in 1837, to $1,341,252.03,
in 1858, without the influence of the statistical tables that are
appended to the Annual Reports of the Board of Education; and it is also
true that the materials for these tables could not have been secured
without the agency of the school fund. Our experience as a state
confirms the wisdom of the reports of 1833 and 1834; and I unreservedly
concur in the opinion that a fund ought not to be sufficient for the
support of schools, but that such a fund is needed to give encouragement
to the towns, to stimulate the people to make adequate local
appropriations, to secure accurate and complete returns from the
committees, and finally to provide means for training teachers, and for
defraying the necessary expenses of the educational department. The law
of 1834, establishing the school fund, was reenacted in the Revised
Statutes (chap. 11, sects. 13 and 14). The Revised Statutes (chap. 23,
sects. 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, and 67) also required that returns should be
made, each year, from all the towns of the commonwealth, of the
condition of the schools in various important particulars. The income of
the fund was to be apportioned among the towns that had raised, the
preceding year, the sum of one dollar by taxation for each pupil, and
had complied with the laws in other respects; and it was to be
distributed according to the number of persons in each between the ages
of four and sixteen years.
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