towns private and parochial schools drew off a number of pupils, and that the summer heat, early and intense, was one of the main causes of the comparatively short term—about six and one-half months. The salary paid teachers, while falling slightly from year to year, was “equal to if not larger” than that paid elsewhere, while positions in the Territorial schools were “so eagerly sought as to render possible the selection of teachers of the highest grade.” The teachers’ institute, however—
seems to work rather a hardship than a benefit, and is frequently ignored. * * * The conditions in this Territory of distance and inaccessibility are such as to render it well nigh impossible for any excepting those at the county seat to attend. For the same reason it is impossible, with the funds he is permitted to use, for the county superintendent to provide the lecturers whose instruction forms the chief value of an institute. It is a question whether under the circumstances the improvement of the teacher is sufficient to compensate the school for the annual loss of a week’s services, and I recommend that the law be modified in so much as the annual institute is made obligatory.
The superintendent points out that, while the new normal school was intended primarily to provide teachers for the Territorial schools, it was hardly less useful in furnishing “an opportunity for an education at home beyond that possible in the grammar school, and the course of study has been so arranged that the pupil upon completing the grammar school course shall be fitted for entrance to the normal school.” Indeed, this was the first service to which the new institution was put. Before taking prospective teachers into the deeps of professional subjects, it was necessary to give them instruction in secondary subjects.
In his message to the assembly in 1891 Gov. Murphy has much to say on educational matters. He discussed the university, the normal school, and the school laws. He urged that the Territorial superintendent should be again required to visit the counties “and ascertain the true conditions of the schools therein” and urged that the law which prohibited teachers from serving on the county board of examiners was “an absurdity which should be corrected. It is in keeping with a provision that requires doctors to be examined by farmers or lawyers by merchants.” He made an argument against the special privileges given to towns in the matter of textbooks and urged that the rate of taxation be fixed at 30 to 60 cents instead of 60 to 80, as was then the law. He urged also that the Territorial superintendency should be maintained and its duties extended; that the services of the superintendent be made more effective; and that the superintendent “should be a capable and experienced educator.” Bills were introduced to carry the terms of these recommendations into effect, but along with them was another to reduce the salary of the superintendent of public instruction and to attach his office to
