The Public Schools | Whitman Archive

About This Item

Title: The Public Schools
Date: 1 December 1858
Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Whitman Archive ID: per.01102
Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 1 December 1858: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
Contributors to digital file: Kaylen Michaelis Brandi Faulkner Stefan Schöberlein Karie Cobb
Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "The Public Schools." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 17 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
Source File: per.01102.xml (TEI)

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THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

We still continue to receive complaints from parents, one of which published on Saturday, of the continued closing of several of the public schools, through the inexcusable neglect and circumlocution of the committee to whom the heating of the repaired buildings was entrusted. This is no light matter, but one which demands a vigilant scrutiny from the Board of Education at its next meeting, and a severe reprimand of that member of the Board, whoever he may be, whose duty it was, as chairman of the Heating Committee, to have called the Committee together and taken steps for completing the heating arrangements in every school house during the holidays, so that when the schools were once opened, they might have progressed uninterruptedly with their tuition until the Christmas recess. Instead of this, we have several schools still closed, the salaries of the teachers of course running on, though they are necessarily incapacitated from rendering that service to the city for which they are remunerated. There ought to be some provision, when the negligence or unfaithfulness of a member or committee thus causes a pecuniary loss to the city, of reimbursing the public treasury at the individual expense of the delinquent officer, even when, as in this case, the office is an unsalaried one.

Schoolhouse No. 18, in Remsen street, we are informed, will not be opened until the latter part of next week or the commencement of the week following; thus losing nearly a month of the time of children and teachers. No. 12, in Adelphi street, will lose, we are told, even a longer space of time. The amount of time lost by the other schools which we mentioned some days since as being closed, we have not ascertained. During the closing of No. 18 the Evening school, which would otherwise be held there, is carried on in No. 19.

The Committee on Heating still persist, we learn, in their absurd plan of admitting hot air at the highest part, instead of the bottom of the rooms—so that it is morally certain that the children will suffer greatly from cold during the winter, unless their parents make a virtue of necessity, and, as they have been kept out of school so long, keep them home during the balance of the winter also. We certainly think that the Board of Education should revise its committee list, at least so far as this Heating Committee is concerned, and either return the functions of that body to the School-house Committee, or appoint industrious and competent men (of whom there are plenty in the Board) to supervise the heating.