Saturday, September 08, 2012

From a History of the Village Where I Live

About a one-room schoolhouse in use in the 1830's.....

The first seats were long homemade benches. The deep window sills held the lunch pails. Just inside the door was a low bench that held the drinking water pail. This had a long-handled tin dipper hanging inside it. Pupils considered it a treat to be named by the teacher to go and get a pail of water from a nearby neighbor.

The school was not graded. Promotion and assignment of subjects was up to the teacher. The books ran from the First Reader to the Fifth Reader. After a year or more in the Fifth Reader a boy or girl usually stopped going to school. In those days school started at 9:00 a.m. There was a 15-minute morning and afternoon recess, an hour for lunch, and finished at 4:00 p.m. School was seven months long. It closed in April, and they never had homework.

The teacher received $25 a month for her services. Her total pay for a year was $175.

5 comments:

crystal said...

It reminds me of Little House on the Prairie :)

Susan said...

LOL It does, doesn't it. Let's hope the people were as sweet. Although Little House had a mean girl (with a mean mother) as I recall.

crystal said...

I only saw a couple of episodes - maybe I should revisit it.

Eulalia Benejam Cobb said...

There is one such school just a couple hundred yards from my house. Need I say it's no longer in use?

Susan said...

This one isn't either, but I hope it's being kept up. It's a cool little stone building.