Rev. Charles Brooks Issues a Call For Educational Reform, and the Establishment of a Board of Education

"Parents! you wish your children to possess learning and virtue...Let us study the requirements of our situations, and then we shall feel the imperative moral obligation which there is upon us to patronize our schools..."

Hingham, (Massachusetts), November 10, 1836. Bifolium, 10 x 8 in., (254 x 203 mm.) Two-page printed circular, being an address by Rev. Charles Brooks titled "To the Friends of Education in Plymouth County", calling for a general convention on education reform. Abolitionist and reformer Rev. Samuel J. May's copy. Docketed on verso, "Mr. Brook's Circular on Education." Creasing from old folds; scattered light foxing.

Very rare printed circular containing an address by Reverend Charles Brooks (1793-1872), a Massachusetts minister, and an early vocal advocate of public school education.

In this address, Brooks argues that the main goal of education is "to develope all the powers of human nature in their natural order, proper time and due proportion." He goes on to raise several questions such as "Whether school houses might not be constructed on better models...Whether greater advantages may not be derived from vacations...What apparatus is necessary for high schools and academies...Whether a well instructed Lecturer could not be employed to go from town to town...Whether there should not be a Bureau of Public Instruction in the state", and many more. Brooks also calls for a convention of delegates from several local towns to be held in Plymouth, on December 7, 1836.

As a young pastor, Brooks had toured Europe, becoming exposed to the educational systems of Germany and France, and was struck by the attention paid in both countries to instructor training. Upon returning to Massachusetts, he became affiliated with fellow education reformers Horace Mann and James G. Carter, and the three were instrumental in the establishment of the Massachusetts State Board of Education in 1837, as well as the system of public "normal" schools across the state. Brooks remained active in issues regarding educational reform for the rest of his life.

Rev. Samuel J. May (1797-1871) was an American Unitarian minister, and ardent supporter of abolition, women's rights, and educational reform. Born in Boston, he was a descendant of two renowned colonial families, the Quincys and the Hancocks. His sister, Abby May Alcott was the mother of author Louisa May Alcott. May was one of the founding members of the New England Anti-Slavery society, being a close supporter of William Lloyd Garrison, the publisher of the famous Liberator newspaper. Throughout the 1830s and 40s, he was actively involved in the national abolition movement, traveling throughout the northeastern United States to local anti-slavery chapters or societies as a lecturer and agent. A friend to Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Douglass, May aided freedom seekers directly, led the Syracuse Fugitive Aid Society, and founded one of the nation's first Freedmen's Relief Associations in 1862. He was a prolific author and orator, writing a multitude of essays and speeches on reforming political and religious society until his death in 1871.

Throughout his life, Rev. May was intimately involved in educational reform in the United States. He founded the Brooklyn, Connecticut Lyceum, served on that town's school committee, and sponsored the first state-wide common school convention in Connecticut, in 1827. Under the aegis of educational reformer Horace Mann (known as the "Father of American Education"), who founded Lexington Normal School, May served as its principal in the early 1840s, where he instituted educational reforms and oversaw the increase in the student population.