A Second Visit to the United States of North America by Sir Charles Lyell

Author:Sir Charles Lyell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: J. Murray
Published: 1849-06-15T16:00:00+00:00

less attitudes, and we were told by the masters that they avoid as much as possible finding fault with them on minor points when they are studying. The only punishments are a reprimand before the class, and keeping them back after school hours. The look of intelligence in the countenances of the greater number of them was a most pleasing sight. In one of the upper classes they were reading, when we went in, a passage from Paley *^ On Sleep," and I was asked to select at random from the school-books some poem which the girls might read each in their turn. I chose Gray's Elegy in a Churchyard, as being none of the simplest for young persons to understand. They each read a verse distinctly, and many of them most gracefully, and explained correctly the meaning of nearly all the words and allusions on which I questioned them.

We afterwards heard the girls of the arithmetic class examined in algebra, and their answers showed that much pains had been taken to make them comprehend the principles on which the methods of calculation depended. We then visited a boy's grammar school, and found there 420 Protestant and 100 Catholic boys educated together. We remarked that they had a less refined appearance and were less forward in their education than the girls whom we had just seen, of the same age, and taken from the same class in society. In explanation T was told that it is impossible to give the boys as much schooling because they can earn money for their parents at an earlier age.

The number of public or free schools in Massachu-

setts in 1845-6, for a popuktion of 800,000 souls, was about 3500, and the number of male teachers 2585, and of female 5000, which would allow a teacher for each twenty-five or thirty children, as many as they can well attend to. The sum raised by direct taxation for the wages and board of the tutors, and for fuel for the schools, is upwards of 600,000 dollars, or 120,000 guineas; but this is exclusive of all expenditure for school-houses, libraries, and apparatus, for which other funds are appropriated, and every year a great number of newer and finer buildings are erected.

Upon the whole about one million of dollars is spent in teaching a population of 800,000 souls, independently of the sums expended on private instruction, which in the city of Boston is supposed to be equal to the money levied by taxes for the free schools, or 260,000 dollars (55,000/.). K we were to enforce a school-rate in Great Britain, bearing the same proportion to our population of twenty-eight millions, the tax would amount annually to more than seven millions sterling, and would then be far less effective, owing to the higher cost of living, and the comparative average standard of incomes among professional and official men.

In Boston the master of the Latin School, where boys are fitted for college, and the master of the High School, where they are taught French,.

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