The Private Schools of Colonial Boston

Abstract

These seem to be slips in proof-reading rather than errors in scholarship. There is also some lack of consistency in citing footnote references, probably traceable to the same source. The index lacks detail and at times the style lacks lucidity. In spite of these limitations, the study is a real contribution within somewhat narrow limits. Colorado State Teacher's College 0. M. DICKERSON The Private Schools of Colonial Boston. By Robert Francis Seybolt. (Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1935. viii + 106 pp. $1.50.) Addressed primarily to the ladies and gentlemen of colonial Boston, the newspaper notices of private schools which Mr. Seybolt has collected indicate clearly the cultural progress of the New England aristocracy.A number of private reading and writing schools exempted the children of wealthy families from attending the public schools of the town, while more advanced schools (which prepared students for college) gave instruction in algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and geography, as well as in more non-utilitarian studies French, Latin, Greek, letter-writing, oratory, philosophy, and civil government. It is worth noting that history enters the picture relatively late and in the higher curriculum of the most aristocratic schools.One important type of school trained the sons of merchants in higher mathematics, surveying, foreign exchange, business methods, mechanics, optics, dialling, gauging, astronomy, navigation, fortification, and gunnery. From such schools the young gentleman might either enter college or go directly into business as a merchant's apprentice. Shorthand was recommended to gentlemen for " dispatch in what they would write for their own memory, and concealing what they would not have lie open to every eye."Of particularly decorative character was the advanced instruction offered to young ladies in painting, drawing, and fancy needleworkconvincing evidence of a class enjoying leisure that should not be de ,voted to base or gainful pursuits. Fencing and swordsmanship were presented as honorable attainments of young gentlemen, while the youth of both sexes were inspired to achieve refinement through dancing (minuets, cotillions, "Brettans"), instrumental music (the flute and strings), psalmody, French (increasingly popular after 1763), and horsemanship (" an art justly admired and courted as a part of polite education"). The reader learns that one object of education was to enable youth to enter "the stage of life with advantage and to make an amiable figure in the world." Instruction in small classes and in the homes of gentlemen (the tutorial system) were the approved modes. One music master taught by the methods of "the organist of his Majesty's chapel," and at