Fun Facts About Schools in the 1800s - by Jo-Ann Roberts

 

I have a Christmas book in the works...shh...but I can't reveal too much information just yet. Tentatively, it involves a widower and his scheming seven-year-old daughter who believes her pretty new schoolteacher is the perfect choice to become her mother. Of course, all this can change as the characters decide what they want to do rather than me telling them what to do!

While doing a bit of research on schools in the 1800s, I came across a few fun facts that I'm sharing with you today. 

For most students in the U.S., late August or early September marks the start of back to school. But let's take a look at what American schools were like in the 1800s might convince them how much tougher it could be...and just how good they've got it.

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In the 19th and early 20th centuries, one-room schoolhouses were the accepted norm in rural, country areas. A single teacher taught grades one through eight together. The youngest students--were called Abecedarians, because they would learn their ABCs--sat up front, while the oldest sat in the back. The room was heated by a single wood stove.

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How many of you heard your parents or grandparents complain about walking five

miles uphill to school? There is some truth to that myth. Most schoolhouses were built to serve students living within four or five miles, which was considered close enough for them to walk.

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At some schools, boys and girls entered through separate doors. They were also kept apart for lessons. From my own elementary school days, boys and girls had recess on separate playgrounds. I guess the nuns thought we might get the cooties or something similar from the boys! Do I remember the screams from the girls when a boy stepped on our side to retrieve a ball!

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Rather than the 180 days (which is standard these days), the students attended school for about 132 days depending on when they were needed to help their families harvest crops. Attendance was often sporadic. School days typically started at 9 a.m. and ended anywhere between 2 p.m. - 4 p.m., depending on the area of the country. There was one hour for recess and lunch, which was called "nooning".

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Forget Trapper Keepers©  and gel pens. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, students made do with slates and chalk.

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Students might help the teacher teach, meaning the older students learned lessons directly from the teacher and then taught the younger students.

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Teachers taught reading, writing, arithmetic, history, grammar, rhetoric, and geography. Students would memorize their lessons and then would have to recite what they learned in front of the whole class.

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No cafeteria-type lunches were available to students in the 1800s. Instead, students

brought their lunches to school in metal pails. Every student drank water from a bucket filled by the older boys using the same tin cup! Can you imagine today's parents allowing this practice?

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Teachers often lived with their students' families in a practice called "boarding round", and it often involved the teacher moving from one student's home to the next as often as every week.

"I found it very unpleasant, especially during the winter and spring terms, for one week I would board where I would have a comfortable room; the next my room would be so open that the snow would blow in, and sometimes I would find it on my bed...But the most unpleasant part was being obliged to walk through the snow and water. I suffered much from colds and a cough."

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If students stepped out of line in the 1800s and early 1900s, they could expect a detention, suspension, or expulsion. Often, it could result in a lashing, too. Here's an excerpt from the Board of Education in Franklin, Ohio, from 1883.

"Pupils may be detained...when the teacher deems such detention necessary for the commitment of lessons or for the enforcement of discipline. Whenever it shall become necessary for teachers to resort to corporal punishment, the same shall not be inflicted upon head or hands of the pupil."

In some areas, teachers could use a ruler or pointer to lash a student's knuckles or palms. Other punishments included holding a heavy book for more than an hour and writing "I will not..." do a certain activity on the blackboard 100 times.

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In order to graduate, students would have to pass a final exam. Questions might include:

"Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications."

 "A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?"

I'm not sure I could answer these...how about you?