CHILDREN AND EDUCATION IN THE 1800s. In the Victorian Age very few children went to school before the 1840s. Some rich people paid a tutor or a governess, others paid for their children to go to boarding school such as Eton or Rugby. The girls stayed at home and learned to draw, sew, sing and play the piano. Their education prepared them for marriage. There were different kinds of schools for poor children. The younger ones went to a “Dame” school where a local woman taught the children in a room of her house. He older ones went to a day school which was usually dirty, crowded and unpleasant. Some schools were organised by churches and charities. These were called the “ragged”. There were few books except for the Bible. There were often 100pupils in one classroom! Discipline was very strict. The teacher hit them with a cane. Schools cost at least a penny a week for each child. Most poor families did not have the money to send their children to school. They sent them to work becausethey needed the money. They worked in factories and coal mines in terrible conditions. They often worked 12 hours a day. Children often died of cold, hunger and disease. When Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837, the only schools available for poor children were charity and church schools or 'dame' schools set up by unqualified teachers in their own homes. There were eventually 200 Ragged Schools in Great Britain providing an
education for over 300,000children who, as Charles Dickens noted, were 'too ragged, wretched, filthy, and forlorn, to enter any other place'. Sandra Gonzรกlez, Celia Urbano, Sara Barrios, Estela Trujillo. 2ยบBS2.