Excerpt from Report of the Examination of the Public Schools in the City of Roxbury: For the Year 1849

This school seems now to be making a gradual but sure improvement.

During the present year an order was passed by the School Committee, by which the writing of Compositions has been made one of the stated exercises in the Grammar Schools. It was the design of the Committee that these compositions should be first written out upon a slate or loose paper, then corrected, and copied into a book by the pupil, and subse quently corrected by the Teacher. This, it was thought, would exhibit the pupil's knowledge of chirography, con struction of sentences, spelling, punctuation, and use of capitals. The Washington School seems to have misunder stood the design of the Committee, and therefore we are unable to form any judgment respecting the compositions it has furnished, except upon a single point. We have com pared, as carefully as we were able, the compositions of the first divisions of the several schools, and find them generally as good as we could have expected. The improvement is very striking since the introduction of the exercise, and this is sufficient to prove the wisdom of the order. The spelling in the Dudley School was the best. The best compositions were from the Dudley and Westerly Schools, one or two of which were of decided excellence; considerably the best writing books we found in the Dudley and Washington Schools. The Westerly and Central Schools have made very little, if any progress, in writing during the last year. Some well executed specimens of pencil-sketching were shown by the first divisions of the Dudley and Westerly Schools; also some maps very accurately and beautifully drawn. Those of the Dudley School were deserving of special praise.

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