The British Almanac Volume 35 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1862 Excerpt: ... sustain injuries which the best school will afterwards be unable to correct and remedy." Besides these public Infant Schools, there arc found in all parts of the country private or dames' schools, which are frequently little more than nurseries, in which the nurse collects the children of many families into her own house instead of attending upon the children of some one family. Here congregate the "Infants of busy, humble wives, who pay Some trifling price for freedom through the day." The education given in such schools is in general wofully inefficient, as might be expected where the teachers are, in many cases, aged females, or unqualified persons who have taken to teaching as a last resource, and who, in the most favourable circumstances, can expect to realize only a very small income from the school-fees of their pupils. The children are collected together, it may be, in the one room which is the only apartment of the schoolmistress. "Scholars may often be seen sitting round the sides of a four-post bed on low forms, the sides of the bed forming a back to the seat; sometimes on the sides of the bed.... The room is often so small that the children cannot stand iu a semicircle round the teacher." Trained Infant-school mistresses are as yet very few in number: the Home and Colonial School Society has for some years directed special attention to this department of training', and some of the recently-instituted Normal Schools are assisting to prepare a larger supply of properly-qualified mistresses for Infant Schools; but more enlarged effort in the direction is urgently needed, and the Commissioners "earnestly recommend that the Committee of Council devote its attention, and give its powerful aid to the supply of this want.&...