The Toledo chronicle. [volume] (Toledo, Tama County, Iowa) 1873-1924, 1876-11-09
Education i'll Belgium.

IN the city of Client the education is
by no means embarrassed by the con
ditions under which it labors in the
rural communes of Flanders. The
city spends lavishly upon education
and the instruction is entirely in the
hands Of lay teachers. In the yeal
1S74-5, 16,31S children and adults were
under instruction in the elementary
schools directed by the city, in add.
ton to those being educated in de.
nominational schools. At present the
schools are in vacation. They have q
long holiday from the 18th of August
to the end of September. A few pu.
pills are still at work in the sewing
school of the Caller Institution. This
is one of the best schools in the town,
and well deserves visit. 1t is pub
lie elementary day school for girls,
which is attached an infant school for
200 little children. The low forms
without desks which remain in these
airy rooms show the early age at
which the infants are admitted. For
those whose parents cannot take them
away, dinner is gratuitously provided.
There is good playground for the
children. The girls school contains
500 pupils. None of those who live in
the city pay anything for their tuition,
but children from neighboring COM
munes pay few francs per month.
The hours are from 80 to II 30 and
from l 80 to in the winter, and
4:30 in summer. School begins
and ends with prayer, and the
catechism is taught by a priest once a
week. In the upper classes his
tory and geography are taught, al
though the Belgian code only pre-
scribes the teaching of religion,
morality, reading, writing, arithmetic,
the National weights and measures,
and French, Flemish or German, as
the case may be-" Maps, abaci, black
board, devotional pictures, and the
actual measures of capacity ornament
the walls of the principal class-rooms.
In lower class, for girls between the
ages OF six and eight, the following is
one days work. 1t will serve as
specimen: In the morning, prayer,
Flemish, gymnastics, arithmetic,
writing; in the afternoon, French, OBJ
ject lesson, needle-work, prayer. Sat
urday is half-holiday, and no instruc-
ton is given on Sunday; but on that
day the school-building is used for an
adult class OF 200, who also meet there
in the evening as a night school. 1t
will be seen that little girls in Client
have to be bi-lingual-to learn both
French and Flemish. Their mothers
and fathers speak, as a rule, nothing
but Flemish, a fact which makes
Client aperpleXing town to foreigners
The provision as to German in the
article of the code quoted above refers
to some parts of Luxembourg, where
German is the language of the people.
A great many of the children leave at |
the age of eleven, but the
city is trying to keep them till
a later age. There is usual
addition to this institution in the
shape of large work-room, where
girls who have passed the superior
classes in this school or another are in
structed in millinery ard dress-making,
rom one to five in the afternoon, after
ordinary lessons in the morn
ng. This half-time system is found
yery successful one. The girls begin
o earn money from the first day they
inter the room, and there is always
,reat competition to be admitted to it.
t holds sixty girls, at little side-tables