The record-union., 1894-10-13
COSMOPOLITAN SCHOOLS.
One in Boston Has Over Two
thousand Pupils.
Not One ''Yankee'' in Hancock
School-An Army of Scholars Who
Cannot Speak One Word of Eng
lish When They Enter the School.
from the Boston Advertiser. !


There are 2,l00 pupils in this school
division" said H. l.. Dutton, master of
the Hancock School, yesterday. And"
he continued, there is not q Plymouth
Rock Yankee among them. Ofthe ?, 100,
about 200 are Russian, Polish and Ger
man Jews, and about 600 are Italians.
The remaining 500 are all sorts of
nationalities. good proportion of
them, though not, perhaps, majority,
are Irish, or of Irish extraction. The
rest are of nearly every nation under
heaven. Many are from the Western
Islands. some are Portuguese, and few
class which we had once, which included
fourteen different nationalities."
How do you account for the small
number of children of Irish parentago in
the school?
The Irish, you know, have largely
migrated from the North End since the
Jews and Italians began to come III. And
then the parochial schools take many Of
the girls OF Irish pareutage."
The children of Italian Catholics do
not attend the parochial schools gen
erally?"
Not SO generally, believe as those of
Irish extraction. The Italian people al
most universally send their children to
the public schools"
And what Is your chief trouble with
sucn cosmopolitan schooI?"
LAS may readily be inferred, our cfief
trouble is on the score of language The
school year has just begun, as you know,
and 2OJ new pupils have entered the
schools III this division, not one of whom
is able TO speak word OF English. our
first interest is TO teach them to speak our
language. In doing this, our teachers are
charged not TO use word of the language
of the pupil. l should greatly prefer. if
possible, that we might have teachers
who know nothing OF the French, Italian
or Portuguese languages themselves, so
that 1t would be impossible for them to
use them III any degree in teaching Eng
lish. We use The object system Of teach
ing, wholly.
The teacher has various small objects
on her desk and holding them up, one
by one, Sno prOnOunceS its name and
teaches the pupils to pronounce it. Then
she writes the name of the object on the
black board and thus familiariZes the
pupil with the object and its writ
ten name. The next step is to write
phrases or short sentences on the board
III which the words already learned are
used. And SO. step by step, the child
grows into the language. We find our
greatest trouble in the fact that we have
the pupil with US and under English in
tlueuces but few hours each day, while
during all the remainder Of the time she
is at home with her parents, who con-
stantly use their own language and make
no effort TO assist us. On this account
the progress Of the pupils in acquiring
our language is much slower than it
would be if they heard English spoken at
home and on the street. The greater
number of the new pupils who are
obliged to learn our language arc young
children, many of whom were born in
this country or were brought over as in-
fants, who have just reached the school
age.
There are some, however, who are
older, and who have recently come across
the water. We do not put these in the