Person · 1841 - 1910

James A. Baker

Born	1841-02-18
Died	1910-12-29
Town Music Teacher
In Office	1889 - 1910

J. Avison Baker of Lowell was the first special teacher of music in the Billerica public schools, and he taught there for more than twenty years. At the annual town meeting of 1889 the town appropriated three hundred dollars "for the purpose of establishing a systematic course of instruction in music in the public schools," and the School Committee, "after due inquiry and consideration," appointed Mr. Baker Musical Instructor. He visited each school once a week and gave an hour of instruction. At the end of the first year the committee reported that primary pupils had been taught "to take, correctly, difficult intervals of sound," and that older pupils sang part songs "in a most accurate and pleasing manner."

His teaching rested on reading music at sight. He used the "movable do" system, examined the voice of every child at the start of the fall term, and called on pupils to sing alone as well as in chorus, writing that "if the individual singing is good, the chorus will be good also." In 1891 he gave two concerts, one at the Centre and one at North Billerica, and in the summer of 1896 classes from the different grades were tested in sight singing in the Town Hall. In 1895 the superintendent found that pupils who came to Billerica from towns with special music teachers were "markedly inferior to our pupils in ability to read music," and judged that the town's musical instruction "compares not unfavorably with the best musical instruction in the public schools of the State." By 1897 his salary had risen from $300 to $500 a year, and his title changed from Musical Instructor to Director of Music and then to Supervisor of Music.

Not every superintendent shared his views. When a drawing teacher was added in 1899 the time given to music was cut to an hour and a half a week, shared between Mr. Baker and the regular teachers, and in the reports of 1901 and 1902 the superintendent argued that the youngest pupils should learn their songs by rote. Mr. Baker answered with a report titled "Are Rote Songs Educational?", holding that children should learn to sing by note just as they learned to read. In 1906 he counted 450 pupils in the fifteen rooms of the town's schools, 397 of whom could sing alone, and wrote that "something over ninety-five per cent. of the children in Billerica learn to read music." The School Committee wrote in 1907 that he continued his work "in the same energetic and successful manner as has characterized him during the last twenty years."

Illness kept his report out of the town report of 1909. In his last year he visited the schools once every two weeks instead of three days a week as before, and he wrote that the lower grades were doing "more correct sight reading than they have ever done before." He died in office in 1910 or early 1911. The School Committee wrote that "by the death of J. Avison Baker, who was instructor of music in our Town for over twenty years, we lost a man who will be long remembered by many of the older pupils," and Ella M. Reilly of North Billerica succeeded him.

James A. Baker

James A. Baker

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