Schools
The Newfoundland School Society quickly and easily became the principal school society working across the Island, promoting literacy and numeracy among adults and young people alike, regardless of their denomination. The first advertisement of the Society was placed in the "Mercantile Journal" on September 16, 1824, which stated that the Society would offer non-denominational education, but that all teaching staff were required to be followers of the Church of England. The first N.S.S. school opened in St John's in September 1824 with an enrolment of 75. Just two years later a larger building was needed to accommodate the 450 students; there was a staff of three teachers and a female monitor. The children were taught reading, writing, arithmetic, sewing, knitting and net-making. By 1829 there were 8 principal schools, located in the larger settlements, ran by society teachers, recruited and trained in England; and there were 15 branch schools in smaller communities. A year later in 1830, the Society operated 28 day schools with 1513 children around the Island, along with 18 Sunday schools and 10 adult evening schools for religious instruction. By 1836, its 46 schools were located as far north as Twillingate, along the south coast, and up the west shore to St. George's Bay. By 1840 there were 52 schools, and five years later there were 3907 students. The Society underwent changes in name and mission, but was always commonly referred to as the Newfoundland School Society. The society claimed to have provided instruction for nearly 16,500 students, both children and adults, which equalled slightly less than 25 per cent of the total population.
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Famous quotes containing the word schools:
“In America the taint of sectarianism lies broad upon the land. Not content with acknowledging the supremacy as the Diety, and with erecting temples in his honor, where all can bow down with reverence, the pride and vanity of human reason enter into and pollute our worship, and the houses that should be of God and for God, alone, where he is to be honored with submissive faith, are too often merely schools of metaphysical and useless distinctions. The nation is sectarian, rather than Christian.”
—James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851)
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—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“I lay my eternal curse on whomsoever shall now or at any time hereafter make schoolbooks of my works and make me hated as Shakespeare is hated. My plays were not designed as instruments of torture. All the schools that lust after them get this answer, and will never get any other.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)