1870
1871
1872
1873
1874
1875
1876
1877
1878
FEBRUARY 6, 1878
TRANSCRIPT:
School Attendance – The attendance at our public school is quite large enough to give the two teachers plenty of work, especially with the present miscellaneous collection of text books, but the irregularity of attendance of many pupils is a source of annoyance and additional trouble to the teacher which parents in many cases could prevent. Too many of the children of our city who should be gaining now an education from the advantages that will have slipped away from them ere they are aware, are allowed through the neglect of their parents to run the streets and learn those lessons of vice and evil habit which are always so easily impressed upon the minds of boys, whatever their condition, who are allowed to idle away their time upon the street. The present contrast between those children who are always found in their places at school while school lasts and those who are there only occasionally, is so convincing an argument in favor of constant school attendance that further comment on it is superfluous. And this contrast increases and the paths of the two classes diverge more and more as the years hurry them onward to man’s estate; and then look in the positions of honorable trust in society for the ??? class, and in the records of the criminal court and the ??? for the other.
The above article hints at the state of education in Tacoma at this time. By 1878, 122 children were attending the school.1 However, attendance was not legally required yet.
1879
References
- Eliel, Jillian. “A Day in the Life of a Pioneer Child: The School Day, Tacoma in the 1870s.” Job Carr Museum, 2020. https://www.jobcarrmuseum.org/blog/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-pioneer-child-the-school-day-tacoma-in-the-1870s. ↩︎
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Lowell Elementary School History Project 