USA > Pennsylvania > Indiana County > Indiana County, Pennsylvania, her people, past and present, Volume I > Part 40
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to engage the best qualified teachers that could and sent their children to school. MeMas- be found, and to insure good behavior and ter, in his history of the People of the United fair progress in learning on the part of the pupils. As to the church schools, but prob- ably with less discrimination, those able to pay for tuition did so, while the children of States, speaking of the educational condition of America directly after the close of the Revo- lutionary war, states that "In New York and Pennsylvania a schoolhouse was never to be those unable to pay were admitted almost seen outside a village or a town." He is mis- everywhere gratuitously. Doubtless many children remained away from school whose parents were too poor to pay for their school- ing, and yet too proud to accept charity, but be it said to the credit of the schools of all kinds in Pennsylvania, from the earliest times, that inability to pay tuition fees never closed their doors against deserving children desiring admission. taken. In Pennsylvania there was scarcely a neighborhood without one. At the time of the adoption of the common school system in 1834, there must have been at least four thou- sand schoolhouses in the State, built by the volunteer contributions of the people in their respective neighborhoods. Thoroughly repub- lican in principle, these schools of the peo- ple grew apace with the progress of republi- Frequently a school was started in this wise: The most enterprising man in the com- munity, having children to educate, would in- terest his neighbors with the proposition to start a school. If the proposition was well received, those interested met together and appointed a board of trustees, whose duty it was to procure a suitable room, or build a schoolhouse, ascertain the number of children who would attend the school, fix the tuition fee, employ a teacher, and in a general way manage the school. The trustees were usually elected annually at a meeting held for that purpose by those who were interested in the school. Women sometimes attended and took part in such meetings. Land was cheap and the site was usually obtained without cost, and the house erected by the gratuitous labor of those most interested. It is said that it was not uncommon for skilled workmen to build a rongh log cabin, which they deemed suitable for a schoolhouse, in a single day. When money was needed for building it was can sentiment, and it only required the leg- islation of after years to perfect the form and systematize the working of what had al- ready in substance been voluntarily adopted by thonsands of communities throughout the State. Such schools were at that day with- out precedent; they were established by the early colonists only from necessity ; but as the people of different denominations and of none mingled more and more together, their sec- tarian prejudices and customs of exclusive- ness acquired across the sea began to wear away, and they finally discovered that neither sect, nor class, nor race, need stand in the way of the cordial union of all in the education of their children. No movement in our whole history is of more significance than the process by which the neighborhood schools came to supply the educational needs of different com- munities, and frequently to displace other schools established on a narrower foundation, making, as it does, the formation of a com- mon bond of union and the molding of the raised by subscription.
population into a common nationality. Nor does one who fully understands this move- ment require further light to direct him where to find the ground upon which our public school system was based, or how to account for the sentiment that produced and sustained it. Its growth is certainly indigenous to Pennsylvania.
In other cases the moving spirit in starting a school was one of the numerous peripatetic schoolmasters who wandered about from set- tlement to settlement, seeking employment. The name peripatetic is taken from Aristotle, who instructed his disciples while he walked about the Lyceum. Seeing an opening the needy schoolmaster would draw up a subscrip-
The early schools established by the people tion paper, obtain a list of subscribers, rent
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a room or a dwelling, or, it may be, secure the fined wholly to boys. Such an acquirement erection of a schoolhouse, and begin school.
The venerable Dr. Donaldson, of Elders- ridge, thus describes a representative school- house of Indiana county, in the year 1811: "Upon entering the door, we had to step down the breadth of one log to reach the floor of puncheons, laid on the ground without any sleepers. The fire was built on the ground. About three feet from the floor, holes were left between the logs for windows, the light being admitted through panes of greased paper. Along the windows, with their backs to the center of the house, sat the writers, on benches so high that their feet could not touch the floor."
About the only branch attempted to be taught regularly in the schools in the early times was reading, and this instruction was mainly given as a preparation for learning the catechism and taking part in other reli- gious exercises. The schools at that day were generally established as auxiliaries to the church, and the first primers were quite as much church books as school books, contain- ing hymns, prayers, creeds and catechism, as well as the alphabet and elementary lessons in reading. Such were the characteristics of the primers used by the Catholic Church before the Reformation ; of Luther's "Child's Little Primer," which contained the Lord's Prayer, the Commandments, the Creed, and the Cate- ehism; of the "Prymer" that Henry VIII. in England directed "to be taught, learned and read" throughout his dominions; of the primers, or A-B-C books, with which the first colonists who sought homes in America were acquainted in the several countries from which they came and copies of which they brought with them across the sea and used in the in- struction of their children; and, indeed. of the first books of the kind published in the New World. As soon as the child had fairly mastered the reading lessons of the primer he was expected to learn the catechism, and in connection therewith to read the Psalter and possibly other portions of the Bible, commenc- ing with the New Testament. The nineteenth century had dawned before a regular series of readers, with graded lessons, was fairly introduced into the most progressive neigh- borhoods, and those more backward were com- pelled to wait many years for the coming of their improvement. Even the spelling hook in its modern form is little more than one hundred years old.
When instruction in writing was first in- troduced into the early sehools, it was con-
was deemed unnecessary for girls, and so deep-rooted was this prejudice that men who entertained it could be found almost down to the present day. Paper was costly in Colonial times, and it is said that bireh bark was some- times used in teaching children to write. Ink was made of nutgalls, a round gall produced on the leaves and shoots of the various spe- eies of the oak tree. The nutgalls were bruised and placed in a bottle with a proper propor- tion of water and some rusty nails. Less than fifty years ago ink was made from poke- berries. In some schools an ink boy was ap- pointed, who carried ink in a bottle or horn to each writer as he needed it: but it was the general custom for each pupil to have his own ink bottle or ink horn. Pens were made of goose quills, not a little of the master's time being taken up in cutting and mending them. In arithmetie there were as many classes as there were pupils studying that branch. The teacher assisted such pupils as needed help. even while a class was reciting in spelling or reading. Afterwards an im- provement was made on that plan, and at a certain time in the forenoon and afternoon the teacher passed around among the pupils and solved problems for them. In a large school, with about twenty in arithmetic, each studying in a different part of the book, or in a different book, with difficult problems. it would sometimes take from one to two hours to get around. Of course the little fellows were busy during that time, especially when the teacher was particularly interested in some difficult problem in Pike, Gough, or the Western Calculator; but woe to the un- lueky fellow who was caught being busy at anything else than learning his spelling les- son, or looking steadily at his letters. If it took the teacher till noon to get through with the process, the spellers and readers would get their forenoon's lessons in the afternoon. unless, perehance, there were many "hard questions" in the afternoon, in which case they were almost sure to get them the next day. Slates and pencils did not come into use until after the Revolutionary war, and black- boards as an article of school apparatus are much more modern. During the last half of the eighteenth century, for the most advanced pupils, masters began to select problems from an arithmetic, or from a manuscript, called a "eyphering book." in which they had pre- viously recorded both the problems and their solutions. Later, however. textbooks on arith- metie came into general use, and schools could
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be found where pupils were taught not only
To begin with, there was little uniformity arithmetic, but mensuration, surveying, alge- of textbooks. Children generally carried with bra and astronomy.
Geography and grammar received no atten- tion as studies in the earliest church or neigh- borhood schools, and were introduced into pils as individuals, and not as formed in them as distinct branches only to a very lim- classes. The classification considered essen- tial in a modern school was then an undis- covered art. Without any general control, the grading of schools into higher and lower was impossible. No attempt at such a thing was ever made, and, if made, could not have been successful. Each school was established without any reference to another; each had its own management, and would have considered its life sacrificed had it been forced to take an assigned place in an educational system. ited extent before the adoption of the com- mon school system. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the great defect was the want of education that was not satisfied with an acquisition so limited as that of reading, writing and arithmetic. There may have been an occasional teacher or member of the com- munity who went beyond these simple ele- ments, but the people, generally, thought that if their sons acquired a knowledge of reading, writing and arithmetic, it was all-sufficient- their daughters were supposed to need a still less amount of learning than their sons. Soon after 1800, however, with the appearance of textbooks on these subjects, there was a marked increase in the number of schools where something of geography and grammar were taught.
Moral lessons were intermingled with the other lessons all through the books. "My view went," says the author, "not only to make spelling more easy, familiar and agree- able than usual, but also to cause the bent and aim of all the lessons from the beginning to the end to be such as tended to mend the heart as well as convince the judgment by raising in the tender mind principles of com- passion and tenderness, as well to the brute creation as to their fellow-men, a nobility of mind and a love of virtue."
For many years, and down to a period within the memory of men now living, the study of grammar was confined for the most part to a few select schools. It required a great change in public sentiment and the supe- rior attractions of the works of Kirkham, Smith, Brown and others, to secure its gen- eral introduction into country schools. Kirk- ham's Grammar was particularly serviceable in this respect, as its author was a Pennsyl- vanian, educated at Lewisburg, and his book published at Harrisburg. The prejudice against the study of grammar probably arose from the abstract method adopted in teach- ing it, from which unfortunately it has not yet wholly escaped.
them to school such books as they happened to have, and they were seldom asked to procure others. Instruction was imparted to the pu-
Children were taught as if the only faculty they possessed needing culture was memory- as if the only intellectual appetite God had given them was for facts and forms. Spell- ing and writing were the branches best taught, and both of these almost wholly mechanically. Branches naturally requiring thought were taught in such a way by rule and example as to become a mere exercise of the memory.
In giving instruction in the alphabet no charts were used, no blackboards, no slates, no blocks. Each child was called upon in turn, four or six times a day, "to say a lesson," which was done by the master's pointing to each letter and calling upon the child to name it, and if unable to do so requiring him to repeat the name as given. No matter how many were learning the alphabet, each was in a class by himself; came up and named the letters from a to "izzard," as the last letter of the alphabet was generally called. At times the letters were repeated backwards; but it was an extraordinary teacher who had the ingenuity to teach his pupils to name the letters when pointed out miscellaneously, or when named miscellaneously to point them ont. The time required "to say a lesson" was on the average scarcely more than two min- utes, and during all the hours of intervening periods the suffering children were expected to sit on seats without backs and do nothing. The first term of the child's life in school was spent in learning the names of the letters.
"Spelling on the book" was taught by at- tempting to lead the pupils to give the names of syllables and words by naming the letters of which they are composed. The first lessons consisted of combinations of a vowel with one of rhyme aided the pronunciation; as, ab, eb, ib, etc .; ba, be, bi, etc .; bla, ble, bli, etc.
Methods of teaching were as varied as were the characteristics or idiosyncrasies of teach- ers; but in the schools of our forefathers they or more consonants, arranged so that a kind had certain features in common which must be noted.
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Months were frequently spent in exercises of of the words. When pupils of the same this kind, before the pupil made any attempt grade happened to have books alike they read in classes; but it was not uncommon for one half the pupils in a school to read each in his own book by himself. In such cases, even mistakes in pronunciation usually passed without correction. to read or pronounce words without spelling them. It was customary for pupils to "spell on the book" until they had gone almost through the speller, before they were required to "spell off the book." While this custom was to the extreme, yet we believe at the Writing was probably better taught in the old schools than any other branch. There was no "system" of writing, no analysis of letters, no engraved copies of graded lessons ; but the master wrote a fair plain hand and the pupils were made to copy it. True, the first lessons given were meaningless "strokes" and "hooks" and "hangers"; but the course usually left the pupils in the command of a hand neat and legible. The first copy books were made of sheets of foolscap paper folded double, cut open at the ends, sewed along the back and ruled with a lead pencil. The copies were set by the master, either by writ- ing lessons for imitation along the line at the top of the page or at the end of the line down the left-hand side. The master made and mended pens, and skill in this art was con- sidered one of the prime qualifications of a good schoolmaster. Makers of mischief thought themselves comparatively safe when a crowd gathered around the master's desk with pens to mend. present day the other extreme has been reached by teaching spelling exclusively by "spelling off the book" and by writing the spellings. "Spelling off the book" consisted in naming the letters of words pronounced for that purpose. Some columns in a spelling book were usually assigned as a lesson, and the task was to study the words until they could be spelled from memory. The study- ing was done by repeating the letters of the words over and over; and when the voices of all the pupils in a school were joined in concert, as they frequently were in preparing the spelling lessons, the constantly increasing volume of sound could be heard far beyond the walls of the schoolhouse. It seemed to be understood that spelling should be prepared by uttering letters and words in a loud whis- per, and many masters, otherwise very strict disciplinarians, suffered the noise as an un- avoidable annoyance, if not as an agreeable relief from schoolroom monotony. The whole process of learning to spell was purely me- chanical, little effort ever being made to ex- plain the meaning of words in a lesson, and none to use them in the construction of sen- tences. But it must be added that these old schools turned out many good spellers, the memory being strengthened by the continued repetition, and the effort to excel stimulated by "the trapping system" of the recitation and the frequent spelling matches that varied the life of the school in the days of our fore- fathers. Besides, the attention of the pupils was less diverted by a multiplicity of studies than in modern times.
The beginners in reading were accustomed to spell nearly all the words as they went along before pronouncing them, thus forming habits that rendered it almost impossible for them to become good readers. No attention was paid to the definition of words or to the meaning of sentences. Nothing whatever was required of young learners but correct pro- nunciation and some attention to arbitrary pauses at the several marks of punctuation. Force, emphasis, inflection, expression and, in most cases, sense were wholly ignored. To read well was in a general way to read fast, without being compelled to stop to spell any
When pupils were without books, the mas- ter instructed them in arithmetic either by dictating suitable problems for them to solve or by copying same from a mathematical manuscript or an arithmetic kept for the pur- pose. With a book of his own the pupil solved the problems contained in it in their proper order, working hard or taking it easy as pleased him, showed the solution to the master, and if found correct generally copied his work in a blank book provided for the pur- pose. The matter copied embraced about the whole of the arithmetic, including headings, definitions, rules and examples. Some of these "cyphering books," the best, one may sup- pose, having come down throughi several gen- erations, are still preserved among old family records, bearing testimony to the fair writing and the careful copying, if not to the arith- metical knowledge, of those who prepared them. When a pupil was unable to solve a problem he had recourse to the master, who solved it for him. It sometimes happened that a dozen or twenty pupils stood at one time in a crowd around the master's desk, waiting with slate and problems to be solved. By times the teacher was called to the pupil's seat by a loud rapping on the slate with the
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pencil. When'eight or ten rapped at the same dle of well seasoned rods was concealed in time, as was the custom, there was a great his desk, or looked threateningly down upon uproar in the school. There were no classes in arithmetic, no explanations of processes either by master or pupil, no demonstrations of prin- ciples either asked for or given-the prob- lems were solved, the answers obtained, the solutions copied and the work was considered complete. That some persons did obtain a good knowledge of arithmetic under such teaching must be admitted, but this result was clearly due more to native talent or hard per- sonal labor than to wise direction.
So much of geography and grammar as was imparted in the early schools was taught mainly by question and answer. The master read the question from the book, and the pupil gave the answer he had committed to memory. Taught in this way, without maps, globes, illustrations, pictures of life past or present, even geography was a dull study. Much more dull must grammar have been, pre- sented wholly in the form of abstract defini- tions and rules, uncombined with practical exercises of any kind.
There are some things which we must set down to the credit of the old schools. As a compensation to the girls for the pau- city of their instruction in other respects, provision was sometimes made for teach- ing them needlework. Whatever may be said of their own conduct, old-time school- masters, especially those of foreign birth, Children were not spoiled on account of the sparing use of the rod in these old schools. None of them, probably, equaled in number the punishments inflicted by the famous "flog- ging schoolmaster," who in his fifty-three years of service, according to his own faithful record, administered the following: 911,500 would not tolerate bad manners in the pu- pils. They were required to show proper respect to. the master by bidding him "good morning" and "good evening" as they came into the schoolhouse or left it, and to take off their hats when they met him in the street or on the highway. canings, 121,000 floggings, 209,000 custodies, They were also required by some masters to lift their hats or make a curtsy to the stran- gers whom they met on their way to or from the school, and to receive visitors by rising from their seats.
As contrasted with the discipline of the mod- ern school, oldtime school discipline was ex- ceedingly severe. Its chief aim was to secure order, and force was the only means consid- ered effective. Punishment was meted out for all grades of offense. The makers of mis- chief and the doers of evil in a school seldom escaped a full measure of chastisement, and small allowance was made for even the inno- cent indiscretions of youth. One of the first qualifications in the master of a school was of a rod on the back, a ruler on the hand considered to be his ability to keep order; and, to be prepared for an emergency, a bun- for missed lessons, pupils were compelled to
timid urchins from a shelf on the wall be- hind it. A long list of rules was generally read to the pupils at the beginning of the school term, and it often happened that with- out waiting for offenses to occur or to try milder modes of treatment, it was at once pro- claimed that disobedience would be followed by punishment. Such a beginning was apt to be accepted as a challenge by the older pupils, and a contest immediately began between strength and vigilance on one side, and cun- ning and pluck on the other. The victory was generally on the side of the master, but not always, and instances of his being over- awed by the opposition, or even of his being beaten and driven away, were not uncommon. When not openly defied, he was sometimes made the subject of personal indignities, and tricks unknown in modern school keeping were frequently played upon him. To secure a holiday or a treat, it was the custom to bar the master out of the schoolhouse, or to place some obstruction in the chimney that caused the fire to go out or the room to be filled with smoke. His wig might be ingeniously removed from his head, his cue tied to his chair, the legs of his chair so weakened that it would not bear his weight, or his dinner (including, most likely, the almost indispen- sable bottle of rum) mysteriously disappear.
10,200 earboxes, 22,700 tasks, 136 tips with the rule, 700 boys caused to stand on peas, 6,000 to kneel on sharp-edged wood, 5,000 to wear the fool's cap, 1,700 to hold the rod- in all, 1,287,936 cases of punishment. An average of ten or even twenty whippings a day for the whole term, in one of these schools, neither excited surprise on the part of the pupils within, nor provoked inquiry in the neighborhood outside. There were multitudes of boys who received their whippings every day as regularly as they recited, or attempted to recite, their lessons, and, in addition, these luckless youths were apt to be whipped at home for being whipped at school. Instead was sometimes used; and in certain schools,
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sit on a dunce block and wear a fool's cap or allowed to work in their own way and ac- a pair of leathern spectacles. Petty punish- cording to their own bent. ments were common, such as snapping the forehead, twisting the nose, boxing or pulling SCHOOLMASTERS the ears; and, sometimes, prolonged tortures were resorted to, like the following: holding Of the schoolmasters, a certain proportion were selected from the neighborhood of the school to be supplied. In the early days women were employed in teaching school to a very limited extent. They seldom held a more responsible position than that of head of a small private school, nor were they en- trusted with the instruction of any but the younger children. The fact that so many women are naturally qualified for the work of teaching is a discovery made at a much later date. a book in the open hand with the arm fully outstretched ; bending the body so as to touch a nail in the floor with a finger; standing on one foot; sitting astride a sharp-edged trestle; etc. Offending pupils were frequent- ly frightened by strong epithets such as "dunee," "blockhead," "booby," "rascal," etc. Somewhat of this severity in school dis- cipline was owing to the stern manners of the times, and somewhat to schoolroom tradi- tions, for which preceding generations must bear a share of the responsibility. Certain it
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