Identifier: curiousschools00bost (find matches)
Title: Curious schools
Year: 1881 (1880s)
Authors:
Subjects: Schools
Publisher: Boston, D. Lothrop & company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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wed to hurry from one kind of sewing toanother before they had mastered the interveningsteps. An absence of method, and a lack of time on thepart of the regular teachers to attend to this extrabranch of instruction, seemed to be the main causesof failure ; and after a few more animated discussionit was finally decided by the city that to obtain anysatisfactory results, special teachers for sewing mustbe provided for every school. How this experiment has worked, and is still work-ing, may be seen most satisfactorily by a visit to theWinthrop School, which from the first, has takenadvance steps in this department of instructions.The school is divided into eighteen classes, accord-ing to the several grades of progress, and the teacherof sewing meets each class twice a week, one hour at atime. From the opening exercises in the morning until the close of the afternoon session, Miss Cummings goes from room to room throughout the building; so there is not an hour in the day when some one J34
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NEEDLING IT.—MISS BRACKETTs SCHOOL. In the Boston Public Schools. of the eighteen classes may not be found busily en-gaged in sewing. The first thing I insisted upon, said the teacher,was to discard patchwork, and pieces of cloth usedmerely for the purpose of practising different stitches;it was impossible to interest the children or to stimu-late their ambition until we began to utilize everythingthat was done in the sewing hour. I told them to bring from home, towels, handker-chiefs, or some simple article of underwear, and totell their mothers that everything of this kind theybrought to school, was not to be returned untilentirely completed. At first the mothers did not seem to understand,and were very reluctant to send pieces of work.Many of them, I suppose, were really too busy to getanything ready for the children, and some of them, Iknow, were too poor to furnish the materials. So we sent over to the Hollis St. Chapel andprocured a few simple articles which the Ladies Sew-ing

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