Excerpt from Sixty-Fourth Annual Report of the Board of Education: Together With the Sixty-Fourth Annual Report of the Secretary of the Board, 1899-1900 The Massachusetts school fund was established in 1834, at the close of the first third of the passing century. The Board of Education was established three years later. These legis lative acts are the foundation of the present organization of our school system. The purpose of the fund was the aid and encouragement of common schools. The towns were stimulated to make more generous appropriations for public education, and the statistical returns of the condition and growth of the schools were secured, which enabled the Board of Education to frame intelligently and wisely the legislation that has been the inspiration and the safeguard of popular education for two thirds of a century. These acts marked the change from an unrelated mass of schools to a superior system of organization, which was brought about by the persuasive in uence of the fund and the wise counsels of the Board of Education, rather than by the enforcement of any general mandatory act. The great force which the State exerted beyond certain requirements as to the maintenance, freedom and attendance upon the schools was mainly in the form of aid and advice. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."