DESCRIPTION OF A DAME OR PRIMARY SCHOOL IN BOSTON ABOUT 1825

[摘要] Many New England children in the early 1800s attended dame schools before being admitted to the common schools. In these dame schools, pupils as young as 3 or 4 years, were taught the alphabet and a little reading and writing by a maiden lady; but reading for the very small rarely extended beyond the criss-cross row of the horn book or the simple lessons of the New England Primer . Many towns in New England supported dame schools as their only source of primary education.1Mrs. Livermore gives this vivid picture of one of these schools she attended in Boston about 1825:The primary (dame) schools which received children at the age of three or four years were very shabby. As I remember them; they were kept, not taught by elderly or middle-aged dames, who dozed in the chairs, took snuff, drank tea, and often something stronger from a bottle stowed away in a cupboard. At one of these schools kept by Ma'am Adams, I was daily sent to the grocery store for the teacher's 11 o'clock dram of New England or Santa Cruz rum, until my mother discovered the practice, when my father called upon the mistress and forbade her to send me on such errands.The school benches on which we sat were without backs and sometimes so high that we beguiled the weary school hours by swinging our feet violently back and forth, by which process we worked off a good deal of animal vigor. We sometimes tipped off the bench backwards, and fell atop the children behind us, when we all set up a prodigious howling; not because we were hurt, but we enjoyed the noise hugely and prolonged the commotion as long as we could.

[学科分类] 儿科学