Tenth Week - Saturday's "Medfield Historical Minute"

A Medfield Historical Minute...

This "Medfield Historical Minute" is brought to you by town historian Richard DeSorgher.
A little something to read and learn to give you a little break during this time of boredom during isolation due to the Coronavirus Crisis. A different "Medfield Historical Minute" will appear each day during the Crisis.

"Medfield High School was founded in 1870 but for many years problems continued of parents pulling their children out of school, before they graduated, to instead go to work. School Committee report of 1872 warned that “there is a growing evil of removal of children from school at too early an age, to engage in the active pursuits of life. The practice of taking boys and girls from school and placing them to work in the straw-hat factory in town is fraught with the most pernicious consequences. They must be educated somewhere and if not in the schoolroom, then in the street. The schoolroom makes them good citizens and enables them to take honorable positions in life, the streets make them bad. If they leave school, the time will soon come when they will look back at their removal from school as the greatest misfortune of their lives.”