EDUCATION. lia 



I like the system of educating youth in Sweden much 

 better than in England. It is freer, and much less 

 expensive. In nearly every town there is a public school 

 open to all classes, and peasants' are admitted on an 

 equality with gentlemen's sons. There is a head rector, and 

 excellent professors in every branch of education, and a large 

 public school-house where the lads meet, and repeat their 

 tasks. The lads are under little or no restraint, except 

 during school hours, which occupy from perhaps seven a.m. 

 till twelve, when the several classes repeat the lessons they 

 have learned out of school hours. They board and lodge 

 with different people in the town, at a very moderate ex- 

 pense (I fancy about 15 will cover all the yearly expenses 

 of their education), they do pretty much as they like, 

 and, so long as they behave properly, go where they please 

 out of school hours. Of course they are under the eye of 

 the different teachers; nor may they frequent public houses, 

 or get drunk at home. To their credit I will say, better 

 behaved lads I never saw. No one is ever insulted by 

 them, nor has a stranger, as is often the case in England, 

 any fear of meeting a mob of these schoolboys in the 

 streets ; and nearly all the hilarity I ever saw them indulge 

 in was a little lark of snow-balling a drunken peasant rolling 

 across the court-yard in front of the school-house. The tutors 

 all live at home with their families, and, unlike the school- 

 masters and ushers in England, have little or no trouble 

 with the lads except during the hours of teaching. They 

 have a long three months' vacation in the summer, and 

 a month at Christmas. The salaries of the teachers are 

 paid, I believe, altogether by Government, which is far 

 more liberal than any other I know, in promoting everything 

 for the general good of the country ; and each year three or 

 four professors in the different branches of learning or science 

 are sent out at Government expense on little trips and ex- 

 cursions to gain information in foreign countries. The 

 degrading system of corporal punishment is quite unknown 

 in Swedish schools, and as the boys all live separately 

 there is no bullying. 



