Excerpt from Summer Work in Public Schools Former lengths of school years. During the earlier part of the nineteenth century, and even later, it was not unusual for rural and small - town children, especially girls and small boys, to attend school during a considerable part of the summer rather than during the severe winter weather. Probably the chief cause was that because of the lack of good roads and the distances that must be travelled to reach the schools, it was difficult to attend school during the winter. However, as roads were improved and as cities and towns became more numerous, the practice Of having summer terms became less common until it has become the almost universal practice for the longest vacation period of the year to come during the summer months, or perhaps to include all of them. In the larger cities Of the country conditions were different. Many, probably most, of them formerly had school years much longer than is the custom now, with Short vacations including only a small part of the summer. For example, the Commissioner of Education1 has re ported data on lengths of school years about 1841-42. Some of the lengths are reported in days, some in weeks, and some in months. Boston is stated to have had a session of 224 days, Washington of 238, Philadelphia Of and Detroit of 253. That of Cleveland was forty - three weeks in length, that of Chicago forty-eight, and that of. New York forty-nine. Brooklyn, Baltimore, and Cincinnati had eleven-month sessions, whereas Buffalo had one of twelve months. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.