For "Children Who Vary from the Normal Type": Special Education in Boston, 1838-1930

7. Disciplinary Programs for the Boston Schools

7 DISCIPLINARY PROGRAMS FOR THE BOSTON SCHOOLS The axiom that public schools represented a fundamental weapon in the battle against poverty and crime remained strong in Boston through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. One result ofthis powerful and durable belief was the continued effort to bring into the public schools children whose public behavior and/or private life style allegedly threatened the stability and security of the city. Because supporters of public education deemed regular school attendance essential, truancy-especially of impoverished children-became a primary concern, particularly after the passage ofcompulsory education laws. Attendance alone, however, was not sufficient for the schools to do their job. The axiom also suggested that appropriate classroom behavior by all students was of crucial importance if they were to benefit from public education. Students who failed to attend school lacked critical exposure to school training; misbehavers in the classroom disrupted effective dissemination of that training to themselves and others. This double-barreled problem of school discipline greatly worried educational as well as civic authorities. As the school system grew larger and more complex, the need for effective measures to cope with truancy and classroom misbehavior increased. Until the 1890s the problem of truancy received most of the official attention, leading to the opening of the Boston Parental School in 1895. Most of the chronic misbehavers were either tolerated, sent to an intermediate school or ungraded class, or permitted to leave school. Only those convicted by the courts of violating school regulations were sent to the Parental School. However, with the increased specialization of the system and evolving interpretation of some of the conditions leading to misbehavior, Bos118 Disciplinary Programs 119 ton developed programs within its system for students who continually disrupted their classes. The first ofthese were the disciplinary classes begun in 1906. Eventually, school officials merged responses to truants and misbehavers into a single program designed to address the problem ofstudents who seriously challenged the public schools' authority: the Boston Disciplinary Day School, started in 1915. The founding of each of these programs represented definitive steps to move control of truants and other poorly disciplined pupils from judicial to educational authorities. These efforts also constituted a remarkable exhibition ofperpetual optimism that was fueled by faith in the power of schooling and rarely tempered by the frustration and disappointment that so often resulted from their implementation . The Boston Parental School, 1895-1914 Once Massachusetts's compulsory education law took effect in 1852, Boston children convicted of truancy were typically sent to the House of Reformation , located on Deer Island in Massachusetts Bay. By the 1860s the House of Reformation had acquired a firm reputation for harboring some of the state's most dangerous youth, and the Boston School Committee joined other educators and officials in claiming that sending "neglected" children convicted of the minor crime of truancy to Deer Island was illadvised and counterproductive. The BSC, supported by Superintendent Edwin Seaver, consequently urged the Boston City Council to establish a separate truant school. After several years ofdelays and negotiations among the BSC, the city council, and the state legislature, the city of Boston finally appropriated $125,000 to establish a Parental School for Boys designed specifically for truants. The Parental School commenced in 1895 with accommodations for about eighty students.1 The Boston Parental School existed for nineteen years, operating under a partnership of the school committee and the city council. It opened amid considerable optimism. Edwin Seaver was greatly relieved to have an alternative to the infamous "Deer Island," and he advocated for the school an approach to education and discipline, known as "intelligent selfcontrol ," which he believed reflected the most modern theory and practice in the treatment of "delinquent" or "incorrigible" children.2 The school committee described the new school in glowing terms: 120 SpecializedEducation Programs The Deer Island institution for "incorrigible" youth had a notorious reputation , which led to the eventual establishment of a "safer" school for truants, the Boston Parental School, in 1895. Admirably situated, its physical surroundings alone exert a most wholesome influence. The boys committed to the school will be removed from every suggestion ofcrime and criminals, and while under constant surveillance, they will be cared for in a manner which will show them that the restraint they are under is not punitive.... Ifthe Board of Directors of Public Institutions place the management of the school in the hands of men and women...