He attacked the customs and ridiculed the prejudices of
the people, made war upon the practice of corporal punishment, engaged
in a controversy with the Boston schoolmasters, and in the end he
either achieved a victory whenever a stand was made against him, or
he laid the foundation of ultimate success.
Dr. Sears was a man of peace. He was a carefully educated scholar and
progressive in his ideas, but he relied upon quiet labor and carefully
prepared arguments. He was at the head of the school system for the
long period of thirteen years, and in that time great progress was
made. He supplemented Mr. Mann by a steady and sturdy effort to
establish permanently the reforms which Mr. Mann had inaugurated. One
obnoxious relic of the ancient ways remained--the district system. In
1840 Governor Morton had called the school districts of the State,
"Little Democracies." They were in fact little nurseries of
selfishness and intrigue. In the selection of teachers, in the
erection and repairs of school houses, and even in the business of
furnishing the firewood, there were little intrigues and arrangements
by which interested parties secured the appointment of a son or
daughter to the place of teacher, or a contract for wood or work. The
election of the committee not infrequently turned upon the interest
of some influential citizens.
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