CHARLES DICKENS'S DESCRIPTION OF HIS VISIT TO A FREE SCHOOL IN CINCINNATI IN 1842

[摘要] Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was among the first of several English writers who visited the United States during the 1840s and 1850s. The description below of his visit to a free school in Cincinnati was included in his American Notes which Dickens wrote in 1842 upon completion of his six months' visit to our country.Cincinnati is honorably famous for its free schools, of which it has so many that no person's child among its population can, by possibility, want the means of education, which are extended, upon an average, to four thousand pupils annually. I was only present in one of these establishments during the hours of instruction. In the boy's department, which was full of little urchins (varying in their ages, I should say, from six years old to ten or twelve), the master offered to institute an extemporary examination of the pupils in algebra; a proposal which, as I was by no means confident of my ability to detect mistakes in that science, I declined with some alarm. In the girl's school, reading was proposed; and as I felt tolerably equal to that art, I expressed my willingness to hear a class. Books were distributed accordingly, and some half dozen girls relieved each other in reading paragraphs from English history. But it seemed to be a dry compilation, infinitely above their powers; and when they had blundered through three or four dreary passages concerning the treaty of Amiens, and other thrilling topics of the same nature (obviously without comprehending ten words), I expressed myself quite satisfied.

[学科分类] 儿科学