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The history of The Baltimore City College began in March 1839, when the City Council of Baltimore, Maryland, United States, passed a resolution mandating the creation of a male high school with a focus on the study of English and classical literature. The Baltimore City College was opened later in the same year on October 20th, with 46 pupils under the direction of Professor Nathan C. Brooks,(1809-1898), a local noted classical educator and poet, who became the first principal.〔Steiner (1894), p.207.〕 It is now considered to be the third oldest public high school in the nation. In 1850, the Baltimore City Council granted the school the authority to present its graduates with certificates of completion.〔Steiner (1894), p. 209〕 An effort to expand that academic power and allow the then named "Central High School of Baltimore" to confer Bachelor of Arts degrees began in 1865, and continued the following year with the renaming of the institution as "The Baltimore City College", which it still holds to this day, with also the retitling of its chief academic officer from "principal" to "president", along with an increase in the number of years of its course of study and the expansion of its courses. However, despite this early elevation effort, it ended at that time unsuccessfully in 1869, although the B.C.C. continued for a number of years as a hybrid public high school and early form of junior college (later known as community college) which did not fully appear in America until the beginning of the 20th Century. Very often the graduation diploma in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries was accepted by many other colleges and universities entitling City graduates to enter upper-division schools at the sophomore year, (which was also coincidentally a privilege also accorded to its later local academic and athletic rival, the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, founded 1883).〔Steiner (1894), p. 218.〕 As the importance of higher education increased in the early 20th Century, the High School's priorities shifted to preparing students for college.〔Board of Commissioners of Public Schools (1902), p. 79.〕 In 1927, the academic program was further changed, when the City College divided its curriculum into two tracks: the standard college preparatory program, or "'B' Course", and a more rigorous "Advanced College Prep" curriculum, the famed "'A' Course" of study (also available in the mathematics/science/technology fields at Poly).〔Leonhart (1939), p. 121.〕 The school underwent demographic changes following the U.S. Supreme Court's unanimous ruling in the May 1954 decision ''"Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas"'' case that called for an end to racial segregation. African Americans joined City College for the first time at the end of that summer, in September 1954 and became a significant proportion of the student population by the 1960s. Mr. Pierre H. Davis, also later became the first "Negro"/"Colored" teacher to join the B.C.C. faculty the following year, who coincidentally became the first Afro-American principal in 1970.〔Hlubb (1965), p. 51.〕 The school saw further changes in the student population with the admission of women in 1978.〔Daneker (1988), p. 58.〕 Academic standards and enrollment at the Baltimore City College (B.C.C.) went through a period of decline first in the mid 1960s to mid 1970s. The 'A' and 'B' courses were slowly dying out and unfortunately discontinued by 1973, and a single academic track was offered. After another period of neglect in the late 1980s and early 1990s, by the mid-1990s, with an increase in funding from the school system, the B.C.C. began to experience a turnaround. Administrators re-strengthened academic standards and, in 1998, the school began offering the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program. By the beginning of the decade of the 2000s, City College was experiencing an academic resurgence. During this period the school was recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as a National Blue Ribbon School, was listed as one of the top high schools in the United States by ''Newsweek''. == Early years == The creation of a male high school "in which the higher branches of English and classical literature should be taught exclusively" was authorized unanimously by the Baltimore City Council on March 7, 1839.〔 A townhouse of probably two stories with a sloped roof and dormer window structure on what was then known as Courtland Street (now east side of "Preston Gardens", built in the late 1910s with terraced and bermed flower beds with shrubs and monumental staircases along St. Paul Street and St. Paul Place, of five square blocks between East Centre Street in the north and East Lexington Street to the south, as Baltimore's first downtown "urban renewal" project, which unfortunately resulted in the razing of hundreds of beautiful, but run-down, then neglected Federal, Georgian, and Greek Revival architecture-styled townhomes and classical business structures that would be considered to be saved under the "historic preservation" standards today) was acquired to serve as the home of the new high school. The school opened its doors that Fall on October 20, 1839 with 46 students.〔 Enrollment was restricted to white, male students of Baltimore City who had completed grammar school and passed an entrance exam. Additional student applicants from the surrounding rural (and later suburban) Baltimore County and Anne Arundel County were considered upon payment of tuition to the Baltimore City Public Schools system Those enrolled were offered two academic tracks, a classical literature track and an English literature track. The sole instructor for both tracks was the educator and poet, Nathan C. Brooks, who also served as principal.〔 To accommodate the two tracks, Brooks split the school day into two sections: one in the morning from 9 am to 12 am, and another in the afternoon from 2 pm to 5 pm. During the morning session, students studied either classics or English; however, the afternoon was devoted to English.〔 In its first three years, the school was housed in many locations before returning to the original townhouse building on Courtland Street. In 1843, the City Council allocated $23,000 to acquire a building for the school at the northeastern corner of East Fayette and Holliday Streets, (across the street from the later Baltimore City Hall, constructed 1867-1875), and the site of the present War Memorial Plaza, constructed 1917-1925).〔Steiner (1894), p. 208.〕 The renovated new school building was the former old "Assembly Rooms", a Greek Revival architecture civic landmark, built in 1797 by architects Robert Cary Long, Sr. and Col. Nicholas Rogers (ancestor owner of the estate which became Druid Hill Park) to accommodate social events for Baltimore's social elite at the Baltimore Dancing Assembly, which had begun in the 1780s. and the site of the first private library company of Baltimore. The school was next door to the famous Holliday Street Theatre, where the poem "The Defence of Fort McHenry", now known as the ''"Star Spangled Banner"'' written by Frederick and Georgetown lawyer and amateur poet, Francis Scott Key, (1779-1843), was first performed on its stage in October and November 1814, following the Battle of Baltimore, with the British Royal Navy and Army attack on Baltimore during the War of 1812, (now known as "Defenders' Day") on September 12-13-14, 1814.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=Holliday Street Theatre )〕 Although it was not designed to house an academic institution, the school would occupy this building for 30 years. The male high school for Baltimore went through the first of a series of name changes in 1844. First known and founded in 1839 as "The High School", it was renamed the "Male High School" because of the establishment of two schools for females — Eastern and Western High Schools, which opened in November of that year.〔Leonhart (1939), p. 19.〕 In 1849, after a decade of service, Prof. Brooks resigned as principal of the school, which had now grown to include 232 students and 7 teachers, excluding Brooks. Rev. Dr. Francis G. Waters, who had been the president of the Washington College, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in Chestertown, succeeded Brooks. The following year the city council renamed the school "The Central High School of Baltimore" and granted the commissioners of the public schools the right to confer certificates to the high school's graduates.〔 Exercising that new authority, the new C.H.S. of B. held its first commencement ceremony in 1851 with noted local philosopher, author and civic leader Severn Teackle Wallis, (1816-1894), as the guest speaker, (Wallis has a bronze statue to his memory and many city accomplishments at the eastern end from the Washington Monument of Mount Vernon Place/East Monument Street facing the intersection with St. Paul Street.〔Steiner (1894), p. 212.〕 This bolstered enrollment in the school, as students were drawn by the prospect of receiving a certificate attesting to their level of education. That year 156 students applied to the school—an increase of 50 students.〔 The growing enrollment necessitated a reorganization of the school. Under the direction of Waters, the school day was divided into eight periods lasting forty-five minutes: four sessions were held in the morning and four in the afternoon. In addition to reorganizing the schedule, he divided the courses into seven different departments: Belles-letters and history, mathematics, natural sciences, moral, mental, and political science, ancient languages, modern languages and music. Each of the seven instructors was assigned to a distinct department and received the title of "professor".〔Steiner (1894), pp. 210–211.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of Baltimore City College」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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