On October 30, 1908, Superintendent Sutcliffe of the Newport-New London school district addressed a conference of Cheshire county school boards, advocating more normal schools and recommending one be located in Cheshire County.
Keene Evening Sentinel
October 30, 1908
Page 3
STATE BOARDS CONFERENCE
For Cheshire County Held in Keene with Good Attendance
A conference of school boards for Cheshire county was held in this city today, at the common council chamber, under the direction of the state department of public instruction, Henry C. Morrison, Superintendent. The boards of the county were very well represented, twenty members being present at the morning session, with a probability of more in the afternoon.
Mr. John E. Warren of Worcester, agent of the Massachusetts state board, spoke first in relation to the consolidation of schools. He spoke of the advantages of this as proved by Massachusetts experiences, which showed important advantages gained in the small towns….
Superintendent Sutcliffe of the Newport-New London district spoke of the equalization of school revenues. New Hampshire has some $63,000 a year to apply in thus helping the smaller towns. This sum, altogether too small and, in comparison with other New England states, is almost insignificant….
Superintendent Morrison explained what state equalization means and what the functions of the state board of equalization are. He said we had made great progress in New Hampshire in equalizing our schools. The state has helped the small towns and has interested the towns themselves in the work so that they have voted much larger appropriations on their part….
Mr. Warren next spoke on district supervision, which he said had grown in Massachusetts since 1836, when it began in Cambridge, first into a practically universal custom, simply because of its evident advantages, and finally into a condition everywhere required by law….
Mr. Sutcliffe spoke next on normal schools, saying that our state is in great need of more of them and that Cheshire County certainly ought to have one. The teacher who goes into a school with 80 per cent of the problems that are bound to come up in teaching, solved by previous training and instruction, so that he or she knows what to do and how to do it, has a manifest advantage over the untrained teacher. Normal school training makes this difference over that of the untrained teacher. Our normal school has seven times as many applications for teachers as it can supply. Such a school must give its pupils practical work and the Plymouth school cannot give such work to more pupils than it now has. To train more teachers the state must have more schools. Normal teachers cannot be hired from other states because these states do not have enough teachers for their own use.