GENTLEMEN,

TO THE BOARD OF EDUCATION.

The Annual Abstract of the School Returns, for the year 1841-2, accompanied by selections from the school committees' Reports, is herewith submitted in a printed form.

The mode of preparing this class of our public documents, together with its character and object, is already so familiar to the Board and to the community, as to supersede the necessity of much detail in presenting the present work.

With the exception of Topsfield in the county of Essex, Ludlow in the county of Hampden, Richmond in the county of Berkshire, and Wellfleet in the county of Barnstable, Returns were received from all the towns in the State. Reports also were received from all the towns excepting Tops field in the county of Essex, Westford in the county of Middlesex, Ludlow in the county of Hampden, Wendell in the county of Franklin, and Wellfleet in the county of Barnstable.

The Reports of the school committees were still more voluminous than for any preceding year,-being equivalent, in the whole, to almost twentyfive hundred manuscript, letter-paper pages.

Forty-one of the Reports were printed. If a much larger number of them were printed, it would far more effectually subserve the object of the law in requiring them to be made. The views and suggestions which they contain are too valuable to be lost, as many of them now are.

Owing to an unavoidable mistake in the Abstract of last year, (the cause of which was explained in the Report to the Board, prefixed to the volume,) the Tables of Population were not entirely correct. The Tables of Population in the present volume have been carefully copied from the last census of the United States.

The form of the present Abstract has been so far modified as to bring all the selections from the Reports together in the body of the work, and to place all the statistical part in consecutive tables at the end. This mode effects a little economy in regard to space, and is, on the whole, attended with no increased difficulty in consulting the work.

It was thought also that the lists of school books might be omitted, at least for one year, without detracting any thing from the value of the Abstract.

The present volume is not only full of promise, but it abounds also, in proofs of performance. The Reports of the committees manifest a higher degree of intelligence in regard to the principles on which our schools should be conducted, and a greater familiarity with the proper modes of