As the clocks struck eight one Monday late in August the big gates to
the school grounds swung open. With a shout waiting boys ran through one
gate to a playground which they had not seen for several weeks. Crowds
of girls ran through a gate to another playground on the other side of
that same schoolhouse.
That August day was the first day of school for girls and boys in nearly
every city and town in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.
Girls and boys who live in those countries do not have such long summer
vacations as have American girls and boys. Many of them go to school
until the first of July and come back to school again in the last week
of August. They go to school more days each week, too, than do American
children. They go to school on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,
Friday, and Saturday.
They start to school each morning after a very early breakfast. In
winter all the children of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark must dress and
eat their breakfast by electric lights, and go along the streets to
school while the street lights are still burning. Of course, those girls
and boys in the far northern part of Norway and Sweden work by electric
light in their classrooms all the winter days.
[Illustration: THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL]
With such an early breakfast, the pupils are hungry by the middle of the
morning. They are given a lunch time around ten thirty or eleven o’clock
each day. Many girls and boys eat a lunch at the schoolhouse, but others
go home for a lunch which they call “breakfast” even though they had
eaten an earlier meal. The younger pupils go home from school about one
o’clock and the older pupils leave school each day about three o’clock.
[Illustration: SWEDISH BOYS IN SCHOOL]
Schoolhouses in the lands far to the north look much like American
schoolhouses. Of course all the schoolhouses in those countries do not
look alike any more than do the school buildings in America.