How to Learn and Earn; Or, Half Hours in Some Helpful Schools

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. 1884. Excerpt: ... ABOUT SOME SEWING SCHOOLS. I.--IN THE BOSTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS. SOME ten or twelve years ago, the School Committee of Boston passed a resolution to consider the interests of instruction in sewing in the public schools. Not that the needle's sharp eye had not, long before this period, peeped inside our Boston school-rooms; but since the time our grandmothers worked samplers and embroidered mourningpieces in the old-fashioned district school-houses, sewing had always been considered an irregular, nonessential branch of instruction that could be taken up and put down at pleasure. Consequently, it had by slow degrees degenerated into a dull, meaningless routine, dreaded alike by teacher and pupil; indeed it was in a fair way to die out altogether and be superseded by other branches--more ornamental, perhaps, but far less useful--when the School Committee decided to look into the matter. Let us visit, individually, the various schools in the city, they said, and see what the children are really doing in the way of sewing. So one gentleman went down to the Cushman School, another to the Hancock, another to the Winthrop, still another to the Everett, and so on, throughout the city. After a partial investigation had been made in this manner, they met together and compared notes. Patchwork and old rags! exclaimed one. Old rags and patchwork! echoed another. It is just a waste of time and materials, said a third. But if children can be taught to stitch together old strips of cloth and to make those hideous, interminable squares, why couldn't they be taught to hem an apron, a pocket-handkerchief, or to make some article of apparel that would be of some use to somebody? queried the first speaker. Supposing we systematize the whole thing, grade the clas...