South Danvers Wizard, 3/2/1864, p. 2/3
HIRING TEACHERS [Editorial]– “March meeting is upon us when the town must again decide the question yearly put to it by the statutes of the State, whether the Prudential, or the Superintending School Committee shall hire its teachers.  We trust the town this year will decide to abolish the District system.  The cities and nearly all the larger towns of the Commonwealth did away with it long ago and the opinion of the Secretary of the Board of Education, and leading educators of the day, are decidedly adverse to it.  Why should we continue to walk the old way wrapped in swaddling bands, which we have outgrown?  A few reasons why we should not…”

South Danvers Wizard, 3/9/1864, p. 2/4
SCHOOL EXAMINATIONS – Schedule of examination including teacher and school committee member for each examination.

South Danvers Wizard, 3/16/1864, p. 2/3
HIGH SCHOOL EXHIBITION  – Announcement of exhibition to be held at the Peabody Institute.  “The teacher and pupils of the school get up this popular entertainment for the commendable object of furnishing and adorning their school room….”

South Danvers Wizard, 3/30/1864, p. 2/1
HIGH SCHOOL EXHIBITION [Editorial/Review] 

South Danvers Wizard, 4/13/1864, p. 2/3
TEACHERS’ CONVENTION – Report of the annual meeting of the Essex County Teachers Association. Reprinted from the Salem Gazette.

South Danvers Wizard, 4/13/1864, p. 2/4
ROCKVILLE – Report of the school district.

South Danvers Wizard, 4/20/1864, p. 23
PEABODY HIGH SCHOOL – “The annual examination of candidates for admission to the Junior Class of the High School took place on Tuesday of week before last…”  Includes listing of the Junior Class, with the Districts from which they enter school.” 

South Danvers Wizard, 4/27/1864, p. 2/2
ROCKVILLE – “We hear that the School District Meeting held in this part of the town last week was abandoned as illegally called.  Another one is to be held on Monday evening next, and as that will be the third attempt of District No. 4 to get up a School Meeting this spring, we sincerely hope they will succeed.”

South Danvers Wizard, 4/27/1864, p. 2/4
TEACHERS’ SALARIES – Lists salaries approved by the Salem school committee.

South Danvers Wizard, 5/4/1864, p.2/1
[Letter to the Editor] -  “So. Danvers, May 2, 1864, Mr. Editor, - I observe in a later Wizard an article about the Peabody High School, which contains the following: ‘During the vacation the room has been renovated and improved by carpeting the aisles and platform, tinting the walls and hanging of historical pictures.’
    This is all true, but I think, in justice to our teacher, to say nothing of the claims of the pupils, it ought also to be stated that these improvements were not made at the expense of the town, as might be reasonably inferred from the article in question, but were paid for from the proceeds of entertainments given by the pupils at Peabody Hall. 
    This, of course, is generally well enough understood in town; but as the circumstance is recorded in your paper, I thought this part of it ought also to be stated.” Signed “One of the Pupils”.

South Danvers Wizard, 5/4/1864, p. 2/3
PRESENTATION – “Mr. J. L. Davis, the principal of the Grammar School in Wallis District, was recently presented by retiring members of his first class, with a silver syrup pitcher.”

South Danvers Wizard, 6/29/1864, p. 2/5
 [For the Wizard] “Mr. Editor, - “From our infancy we have been told that the American nation was the freest, the bravest, the most intelligent, the most elevated, most magnanimous, honorable glorious, disinterested and Christian nation on the face of the earth; and we are sure that South Danvers is the point where all this collective excellence culminates: and we are sorry enough, that it is necessary for anybody to give the people of this little Eden a hint on justice and fair dealing.  But we do it partly in self-defence. 
 During a little trip a short time ago, we fell in with a small company that hailed respectively from New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts.  One of them was the principal of a High School in New Hampshire, in a town forty or fifty miles from here. Naturally enough he asked a good many questions about our High School: some of them we answered consecutively, as they were asked: we said, ‘a thousand a year;’ – said ‘sixty scholars’ when we knew there were seventy, and, ‘one assistant’.  He responded ‘one thousand – sixty scholars, and only one assistant.
     We knew before, that he had a ‘thousand a year’ before the war; that he had one assistant, and never over forty scholars. (We are glad that in this respect things look a little more encouraging for Mr. Carleton.) Now, we never had any especial love for our High School; perhaps we have had a little pique towards it, because it did not come up soon enough for us to have the benefit of it in our younger days; and we know that we should not feel put out if we never had to pay any more taxes to support it.  But while we do have one, let us make it respectable.  Let us have respectable pupils, and a respectable teacher with a respectable salary; so that the Peabody High School can take a high and honorable stand among the High Schools in the state.
    At present, there is a good understanding between the teacher and the pupils, - always excepting the feeling of their wrongs occasioned by their ‘marks’.  The teacher, in addition to his other qualifications, is even tempered, and what is more, he understands boys, which is a great attainment.  There are good many teachers, and parents too, who might understand their boys better than they do, or better than they manage them, if they would only remember that once they were boys themselves.  As it is, they draw the rein where when they ought to slack it, and slack when they ought to put on the curb, - they see double when they ought to see with half an eye and are blind when they ought to be lynx-eyed.  Owing to these mistakes, the boys of the present day are a much injured, calumniated set.
     Well, Mr. Carleton understands boys; and from the first, it has seemed to be a principle with him to make the best of those under his care.  He deals gently with their follies, and judiciously with their perversities; and we wish that his services could be accrued until we were sure of a better by change.
     It is some credit to South Danvers that she had employed one teacher, - and a native at that, - as many years, in the same district.  She has reaped the benefit of it.  Year after year, more than double the number of successful candidates for admission to the High School (compared with other districts) have gone from Mr. Upton’s school.  Other districts may have had good scholars; but it is impossible for a teacher to understand the disposition, and mental caliber of his pupils, and adjust the school for successful operation in one term or year.
     But our immediate concern is with our High School.  A good many High Schools – Danvers among the rest – have a vacation through the months of July and August.  Mr. Carleton and his pupils worked a good part of the spring vacation to get money to furnish their schoolroom comfortably; and now they have sixteen weeks (if it keeps through July) of the most trying, wearisome months in the year (except August), with very little relaxation.  Parents- more than one – have told their children that they must leave the school, or they will be sick.  They reply ‘I must go until I am sick, I shall be marked so, if I leave the school before it closes.’  And by the way, neither teachers, committees, nor boards of education are aware of the oppressive workings of what is called the ‘system’ of marking: not how much fatal risk of life and health attaches to it.  It is the testimony of many parents that the marks – owing to their strictness – are just as likely to discourage as to encourage their dull and slow children – the slow are not always the dull ones – and they are an injury to the fast ones – operating as a spur when they need a check – as a stimulus when a quietus. The fast, the slow and the dull often go into their class, feeling that they have perfect lessons, and then miss from over anxiety all the questions: and then go home with the bitter lament, ‘O mother, he marks us awfully!’  We should like to hear an argument that would convince us that there was not (in the long run) inconceivably more lost than gained by the marks, especially in our High Schools, where the studies are all hard enough at the easiest without being intensified by any questionable means.
     But the object of our present writing is to make a suggestion to those who have a right to decide the matter.  The two days’ vacation for the Fourth brings the time to the sixth and considering the time to the sixth; and considering the great number of scholars, and the extraordinary heat of the school-room every summer, we think that most of the parents would be glad, for their children’s and the teacher’s sake, if the summer vacation could commence with the Fourth.
    There is considerable interest in the matter by those who have no particular interest in the teacher or the scholars, except to be just to them.  Some of them have never spoken to Mr. Carleton, others do not even know him by sight; but they are all, individually, gentleman or lady.”