98 History of Hingham. 



They therefore recommended the appointment of a Public School 

 Superintendent, who should be the executive officer of the School 

 Committee, acting under their direction, and directly responsible 

 to them in all school matters. The School Committee would 

 then, under the statutes, be simply a prudential committee, hav- 

 ing the charge of the school property, and an advisory board, serv- 

 ing without pecuniary compensation. 



The town adopted the recommendation and chose a School 

 Committee of twelve with authority to employ a superintendent. 

 The following have been elected to that office : — 



T> 



Rev. John Snyder 1872-1872 



Rev. Allen G. Jennings 1872-1881 



John F. Turgeon 1881-1882 



William C. Bates 1 882-1 8S4 



Allen P. Soule 1884-1887 



Louis P. Nash 1887- 



The High School. 



The term "High School" does not appear in our statutes from 

 the earliest time until the publication of the Public Statutes in 

 1882, but for many years, by common usage, it has been the des- 

 ignation of those schools which the statutes required to be " kept 

 for the benefit of the whole town." 



The act of 1(347 required every township of one hundred fami- 

 lies to maintain a grammar school, whose master should be qual- 

 ified to fit boys for the University. 



In 1692 the master of this school was to be " well instructed in 

 the tongues." 



In 1789 such a school was to be maintained by towns having 

 two hundred families, the master of which was to be " well in- 

 structed in the Latin, Greek, and English languages." 



The grammar school of those days must not be confounded with 

 those of the same name at the present time. They were under- 

 stood to be the schools in which Latin and Greek were taught. 

 The grammar school was the head of the system of gradation in 

 the town-schools, and therefore the type of the High School of 

 to-day. 



The act of 1826 established our present system of High Schools. 

 Towns of five hundred families were required to maintain one 

 school of the higher grade, but Latin and Greek were not required 

 to be taught until towns had a population of 4000. The increased 

 number of Academies throughout the Commonwealth afforded 

 facilities for classical instruction, and undoubtedly had the effect 

 of eliminating Latin and Greek from the list of required studies 

 in the advanced schools of the smaller towns. 



In 1857 (Acts of 1857, chap. 206) the list of studies required 

 to be taught in all the public schools was revised. Latin and seve- 



