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RELATING TO THE

PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF RHODE ISLAND,

FOR 1848.

BY HENRY BARNARD,

COMMISSIONER OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY.

PROVIDENCE.

v. 3 1848

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION

MONROE C. GUTMAN LIBRARY

To his Excellency Henry B. Anthony, Governor :

In place of the printed Report required of the Commissioner of Public Schools by the act creating his office, and defining his duties, the General Assembly was pleased to receive from the undersigned, each year since 1845, one or more oral communications respecting the condition and improvement of the Public Schools, and the manner in which the duties of the department were performed. It was always his intention, before closing his official connection with the system, to embody in a final report a summary of his several oral communications submitted from year to year to the two Houses of Assembly in joint convention, together with a collection of such documents as threw light on the past and present condition of the Public Schools, and other means of popular education in the several towns of the State. The materials for this Report were in part collected and in type when the Legislature, at the October session, 1848, made provision for the printing and distributing of one thousand copies of the same. The active labors of the office in reference to Teachers' Institutes, Libraries and Appeals, which it seemed desirable and necessary to finish before retiring, prevented his completing the document before his health utterly failed, and compelled him to resign the office in the midst of his unfinished business. In his letter to Governor Harris, tendering his resignation, and in his final communication to the General Assembly at the January session, the intention to complete the publication of the document at the earliest moment of recovered strength and health, was renewed. For months after his resignation the undersigned had not health sufficiently vigorous to renew the work, and it is now presented in a far less condensed and elaborated form than it was his intention originally to prepare.

The Catalogue of the Pawcatuck Library in Westerly, and of the School Library in District No. 1, in Barrington, are included in the documents, not only because they are the best specimens of the Village and School District Libraries, which the undersigned has been enabled, through the liberality of individuals, to establish in different towns in the State, but

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