CHAPTER XVIII. 



SCHOOL PROGRESS AND THE ACADEMY. 



WHILE the town government was gradually relin- 

 quishing its responsibility for public worship, it 

 was taking on an increasing care of public schools. 



The precinct at its beginning in 1717 had no schools. 

 As we saw in a previous chapter, the first money for 

 schools which they received from the town of Hingham 

 was not obtained until four years after they became a pre- 

 cinct, and this was spent for a " dame school " and for 

 "reading and syphering." 



They tried to get a schoolmaster for a few months of 

 schooling each year, but failed. The first committee to 

 engage, a schoolmaster was appointed October 14, 1728, 

 but there was no schoolhouse except what little building 

 might be rented by the committee. 



The next year, 1729, the school term began as late as 

 December 20 and the amount of money expended was 

 ;^I9 ly. yd., so that we may imagine the school to have 

 closed by the month of March. 



The dame schools were no more mentioned in the pre- 

 cinct records, but they were probably kept and paid for 

 by the parents of children who attended them in various 

 parts of the town. Nowadays the majority of our teach- 

 ing is done by women in the public schools, but it was 

 not for many years that any woman teacher in this 

 community could venture to control the public school. 

 It would have seemed absurd to have for a teacher any 

 one whose muscle was inferior to that of the brawniest 

 boy in the room. The discipline was necessarily of a 

 brutal sort ; and if the boys could "whip" a teacher in a 



