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. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ...twenty of us in all. And there were three teachers; one for the 'first class/ one for the 'second class, ' and a French-German-music-anddrawing-teacher-in-one for both classes." "And what did you study?" I asked. "Besides French, German, music, and drawing?" my elderly friend mused. "Well, we had the three R's ...
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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. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ...twenty of us in all. And there were three teachers; one for the 'first class/ one for the 'second class, ' and a French-German-music-anddrawing-teacher-in-one for both classes." "And what did you study?" I asked. "Besides French, German, music, and drawing?" my elderly friend mused. "Well, we had the three R's; and history, English and American, and geography, and deportment. I think that was all." "And you liked it?" I ventured. "Yes, my dear, I did," replied my friend, "though I used to pretend that I didn't. I sometimes even 'played sick' in order to be allowed to stay home from school. Children then, as now, thought they ought to 'hate to go to school.' I believe most of them did, too. I happened to be ac smart' child; so I liked school. I suppose ' smart' children still do." A "smart" child! In my mind's eye I can see my elderly friend as one, sitting at the "head " of her class, on a long, narrow bench, her eyes shining with a pleased consciousness of "knowing" the lesson, her cheeks rosy with expectation of the triumph sure to follow her " saying" of it, her lips parted in an eagerness to begin. Can we not all see her, that " smart" child of two generations ago? As for her lesson, can we not hear it with our mind's ear? In arithmetic, it was the multiplication table; in English history, the names of the sovereigns and the dates of their reigns; in geography, the capitals of the world; in deportment--ah, in deportment, a finer lesson than any of our schools teach now! These were the lessons. Indeed, my elderly friend has told me as much. "And not easy lessons, either, my dear, nor easily learned, as the lessons of schoolchildren seem to be to-day. We had no kindergartens; the idea that lessons were play had not come in; to us lessons were...
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