SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL LIFE
_First mark whereof scholes were erected,
And what the founders did intend.
And then doe thou thy study directe
For to obtain unto that end._
_Doubtless this was all their meaning,
To have their countrie founded
With all poyntes of honest lernynge
Whereof the public weal had nede._
--_The Last Trumpet. R. Crowley, 1550._
No greater contrast of conditions could exist than between the
school life of what we love to call the "good old times," and that
of the far better times of to-day. Poor, small, and uncomfortable
schoolhouses, scant furnishings, few and uninteresting books,
tiresome and indifferent methods of teaching, great severity of
discipline, were the accompaniments of school days until this
century. Yet with all these disadvantages children obtained an
education, for an education was warmly desired; no difficulties
could chill that deep-lying longing for learning. "Child," said one
noble New England mother of the olden days, "if God make thee a good
Christian and a good scholar, 'tis all thy mother ever asked for
thee."
Not only did parents strive for the education of their children, but
the colonies assisted by commanding the building and maintaining
of a school in each town where there was a sufficient number of
families and scholars. Rhode Island was the only New England colony
that did not compel the building of schoolhouses and the education
of children.
So determined was Massachusetts to have schools that in 1636, only
six years after the settlement of Boston, the General Court, which
was composed of representatives from every settlement in the Bay
Colony, and which was the same as our House of Representatives
to-day, gave over half the annual income of the entire colony to
establish the school which two years later became Harvard College.
This event should be remembered; it is distinguished in history as
the first time any body of people in any country ever gave through
its representatives its own money to found a place of education.
In Virginia schoolhouses were few for over a century. Governor
Berkeley, an obstinate and narrow-minded Englishman, wrote home to
England in 1670,
"I thank God there are in Virginia no free schools nor printing, and
I hope we shall not have, for learning hath brought disobedience
and heresy into the world." Some Virginia gentlemen did not agree
with him, however, and gave money to try to establish free schools
for poor children. A far greater hindrance to the establishment
of schools than the governor's stupid opposition, was the fact
that there was no town or village life in Virginia; the houses and
plantations were scattered; previous to the year 1700 Jamestown
was the only Virginia town, and it was but a petty settlement.
Williamsburg was not even laid out; a few seaports had been planned,
but had not been built. Hence the children of wealthy planters were
taught by private tutors at home, or were sent to school in England.
Occasionally, as years passed on, there might be found in Virginia,
the Carolinas, and Georgia, what was called an old-field school, the
uniting of a few neighbors to hire a teacher, too often a poor one,
like the "hedge-teachers" of Europe, for a short term of teaching,
in a shabby building placed on an old exhausted tobacco field.
In one of these old-field schools kept by Hobby--sexton, pedagogue,
and "the most conceited man in three parishes"--George Washington
obtained most of his education. A daily ride on horseback for a
year to a similar school ten miles away, and for another year a
row morning and night even in roughest weather across the river
to a Fredericksburg teacher, ended his school career when he
was thirteen; but he had then made a big pile of neatly written
manuscript school books, which may now be seen in the Library at
Washington; and he had acquired a passionate longing to be educated,
which accompanied him through life.
An "advisive narrative" sent from America to the Bishop of London,
toward the end of the seventeenth century, says:--
"This lack of schools in Virginia is a consequence of their
scattered planting. It renders a very numerous generation of
Christian's Children born in Virginia, who naturally are of
beautiful and comely Persons, and generally of more ingenious
Spirits than those in England, unserviceable for any great
Employment in Church or State."
[Illustration: Mary Lord, 1710 _circa_]
This statement was not wholly correct; for though Virginians were
not usually fitted to be parsons, they certainly proved suited to
state and government. When the war of the Revolution broke out,
the noblest number of great statesmen, orators, and generals,
who certainly were men of genius if not of conventional school
education, came from the southern provinces. These brilliant
Virginians were strong evidence and proof of what the great
orator, Patrick Henry, called, in his singular pronunciation,
"naiteral pairts"; which he declared was of more account than "all
the book-lairnin' on the airth." Different climates and surroundings
soon bring out different traits in the same race of people. The warm
climate and fruitful soil in the southern colonies developed from
English stock an easy-living race who needed the great stimulus and
noble excitement of the Revolution to exhibit the highest qualities
of brain. The Puritan minister, Cotton Mather, said in 1685, in a
sermon before the Governor and Council in Massachusetts, "The Youth
in this Country are verie Sharp and early Ripe in their Capacities."
Thus speedily had keen New England air and hard New England life
developed these characteristic New England traits.
New England at that time was controlled, both in public and private
life, by the Puritan ministers, who felt, as one of them said, that
"unless school and college flourish, church and state cannot live."
The ministers were accredited guardians of the schools; and when
Boston chose five school inspectors to visit the Latin School with
the ministers, many of the latter were highly incensed, and Increase
Mather refused to go with these lay visitors.
By a law of Massachusetts, passed in 1647, it was ordered that
every town of fifty families should provide a school where children
could be taught to read and write; while every town of one hundred
householders was required to have a grammar school. In the
Connecticut Code of Laws of 1650 were the same orders. These schools
were public, but were not free; they were supported at the expense
of the parents.
In 1644 the town of Salem ordered "that a note be published the next
lecture day, that such as have children to be kept at school, would
bring in their names, and what they will give for a whole year; and
also that if any poor body hath children or a child to be put to
school, and not able to pay for their schooling, that the town will
pay it by a rate." Lists of children were made out in towns, and if
the parents were well-to-do, they had to pay whether their children
attended school or not.
Land was sometimes set aside to support partly the school; it was
called the "school-meadows," or "school-fields," and was let out for
an income to help to pay the teacher. This was a grant made on the
same principle that grants were made to physicians, tanners, and
other useful persons, not to establish free education. At a later
date lotteries were a favorite method of raising money for schools.
It was not until about the time of the Revolution that the modern
signification of the word "free"--a school paid for entirely by
general town taxes--could be applied to the public schools of most
Massachusetts towns, and when the schools of Boston were made free,
that community stood alone for its liberality not only in America,
but in the world.
The pay was given in any of the inconvenient exchanges which had to
pass as money at that time,--in wampum, beaver skins, Indian corn,
wheat, peas, beans, or any country product known as "truck." It is
told of a Salem school, that one scholar was always seated at the
window to study and also to hail passers-by, and endeavor to sell
to them the accumulation of corn, vegetables, etc., which had been
given in payment to the teacher.
The logs for the great fireplace were furnished by the parents or
guardians of the scholars as a part of the pay for schooling; and
an important part it was in the northern colonies, in the bitter
winter, in the poorly built schoolhouses. Some schoolmasters,
indignant at the carelessness of parents who failed to send the
expected load of wood early in the winter, banished the unfortunate
child of the tardy parent to the coldest corner of the schoolroom.
The town of Windsor, Connecticut, voted "that the committee be
empowered to exclude any scholar that shall not carry his share of
wood for the use of the said school." In 1736 West Hartford ordered
every child "barred from the fire" whose parents had not sent wood.
[Illustration: "Erudition" Schoolhouse, Bath, Maine, 1797]
The school laws of the State of Massachusetts, framed in 1789,
crystallized all the principles, practice, and hopes that had been
developed by a hundred and fifty years of school life. The standard
set by these laws was decidedly lower than those of colonial days.
Where a permanent English school had been imperative, six months
schooling a year might be permitted to take its place; where every
town of a hundred families had had a grammar school in which boys
could be fitted for the university, only towns of two hundred
families were compelled to have such schools. Thus the open path
to the university was closed in a hundred and twenty Massachusetts
towns.
Judge Thomas Holme composed in grammarless rhyme, in 1696, a _True
Relation of the Flourishing State of Philadelphia_. In it he says:--
"Here are schools of divers sorts
To which our youth daily resorts,
Good women, who do very well
Bring little ones to read and spell,
Which fits them for writing; and then
Here's men to bring them to their pen,
And to instruct and make them quick
In all sorts of Arithmetick."
These statements were scarcely carried out in fact; in Pennsylvania
educational advantages were few, and among some classes education
was sorely hampered. The Quakers did not encourage absolute
illiteracy, but they thought knowledge of the "three R's" was
enough; they distinctly disapproved of any extended scholarship,
as it fostered undue pride and provoked idleness. The Germans were
worse; their own historians, the Calvinist and Lutheran preachers,
Schlatter and Muhlenberg, are authority; there were among them a
few schools of low grade; but the introduction of the public school
system among the Germans was resisted by indignation meetings and
litigation. The Tunkers degenerated so that they did not desire a
membership of educated persons, and would have liked to destroy all
books but religious ones. It was said by these German settlers that
schooling made boys lazy and dissatisfied on the farms, and that
religion would suffer by too much learning. As Bayard Taylor puts it
in his _Pennsylvania Farmer_:--
"Book learning gets the upper hand and work is slow and slack,
And they that come long after us will find things gone to wrack."
School-teachers in the middle and southern colonies were frequently
found in degraded circumstances; many of them were redemptioners
and exported convicts. I have frequently noted such newspaper
advertisements as this from the _Maryland Gazette_:--
"Ran away: A Servant man who followed the occupation of a
Schoolmaster, much given to drinking and gambling."
So universal was drunkenness among schoolmasters that a chorus of
colonial "gerund-grinders" might sing in Goldsmith's words:--
"Let schoolmasters puzzle their brains
With grammar and nonsense and learning,
Good liquor, I stoutly maintain,
Gives genius a better discerning."
[Illustration: handwritten note]
Scotland furnished the best and the largest number of schoolmasters
to the colonies.
The first pedagogue of New Amsterdam was one Adam Roelantsen, and
he had a checkered career. His name appears with frequency on the
court records of the little town both as plaintiff and defendant.
He was as active in slandering his neighbors as they were in
slandering him; though, as Miss Van Vechten observes, "It is hard
to see what fiction worse than truth could have been invented about
him." In spite of the fact that "people did not speak well of
him," he married well. But his misdemeanors continued and he was
finally sentenced to be flogged. We may contrast the legal records
of this gentleman's shortcomings with his duties as set forth in
his commission, one of which was "to set others a good example as
becometh a devout, pious, and worthy consoler of the sick, church
clerk, precentor, and schoolmaster."
Some of the contracts under which teachers were hired still exist.
One for the teacher at the Dutch settlement of Flatbush, Long
Island, in 1682, is very full in detail, and we learn much of the
old-time school from it. A bell was rung to call the scholars
together at eight o'clock in the morning, the school closed for a
recess at eleven, opened again at one, closed at four; all sessions
began and closed with prayer. On Wednesdays and Saturdays the
children were taught the questions and answers in the catechism
and the common prayers. The master was paid (usually in wheat or
corn) for "a speller or reader" three guilders a quarter, for "a
writer" four guilders. He had many other duties to perform besides
teaching the children. He rung the church bell on Sunday, read the
Bible at service in church, and led in the singing; sometimes he
read the sermon. He provided water for baptisms, bread and wine
for communion, and in fact performed all the duties now done by a
sexton, including sweeping out the church. He delivered invitations
to funerals and carried messages. Sometimes he dug the graves, and
often he visited and comforted the sick.
Full descriptions exist of the first country schoolhouses in
Pennsylvania and New York. They were universally made of logs.
Some had a rough puncheon floor, others a dirt floor which readily
ground into dust two or three inches thick, that unruly pupils
would purposely stir up in clouds to annoy the masters and disturb
the school. The bark roof was a little higher at one side that the
rain might drain off. Usually the teacher sat in the middle of the
room, and pegs were thrust between the logs around the walls, three
or four feet from the ground; boards were laid on these pegs; at
these rude desks sat the older scholars with their backs to the
teacher. Younger scholars sat on blocks or benches of logs. Until
this century many schoolhouses did not have glass set in the small
windows, but newspapers or white papers greased with lard were
fastened in the rude sashes, or in holes cut in the wall, and let
in a dim light. At one end, or in the middle, a "cat and clay"
chimney furnished a fireplace. When the first rough log cabin was
replaced by a better schoolhouse the hexagonal shape, so beloved
in those states for meeting-houses, was chosen, and occasionally
built in stone. A picture of one still standing and still used as a
schoolhouse, in Raritan, New Jersey, is here shown. It retained its
old shelf desks till a few years ago.
[Illustration: "Old Harmony" Schoolhouse, Raritan Township,
Hunterdon Co., New Jersey]
In a halting way schools in America followed the customs of English
schools. The "potation-penny," or "the drinking," was collected in
schools in the colonies. In England a considerable sum was often
gathered for this treat at the end of the term; but the pennies
were doled out more slowly in American schools. Young Joseph
Lloyd (of the family of Lloyds Neck on Long Island), in the year
1693, paid out a shilling and sixpence "to the Mistris for feast
and wine." A century later, in a school in New Hampshire, the
children diligently saved the wood-ashes in the big fireplace and
sold them to a neighboring potash works for their treat. They had
ample funds to buy rum, raisins, and gingerbread for all who came
to the treat, including the ministers and deacons. It was of this
school, doubtless attended largely by Scotch-Irish children, that
the teacher recorded that the boys, even the youngest, wore leather
aprons, while many of the girls took snuff. Another old English
custom, the barring-out, occasionally was known here, especially in
Pennsylvania.
The furnishing of the schoolrooms was meagre; there were no
blackboards, no maps, seldom was there a pair of globes. Though Mr.
MacMaster asserts that pencils were never used even in the early
years of our Federal life, his statement is certainly a mistake.
Faber's pencils were made as early as 1761. Peter Goelet advertised
lead pencils for sale in New York in 1786, with india rubbers, and
as early as 1740 they were offered among booksellers' wares in
Boston for threepence apiece, both black and red lead. Judge Sewall
had one; perhaps it was not our common lead pencil of to-day.
In 1771 we find the patriot Henry Laurens writing thus to his
daughter Martha, "his dearest Patsey," when she was about twelve
years old.
"... I have recollected your request for a pair of globes,
therefore I have wrote to Mr. Grubb to ship a pair of the best
18 inch, with caps, and a book of directions, and to add a case
of neat instruments, and one dozen Middleton's best pencils
marked M. L. When you are measuring the surface of the globe
remember you are to cut a part in it, and think of a plum
pudding and other domestic duties. Your father,
"HENRY LAURENS."
Still lead pencils were not in common use even in city schools till
this century. The manuscript arithmetics or "sum-books" which
I have seen were always done in ink. Many a country boy grew to
manhood without ever seeing a lead pencil.
[Illustration: Samuel Pemberton, Twelve Years Old, 1736]
In country schools even till the middle of this century copy-books
were made of foolscap paper carefully sewed into book shape, and
were ruled by hand. For this children used lead plummets instead of
pencils. These plummets were made of lead melted and cast in wooden
moulds cut out by the ever ready jackknife and were then tied by a
hempen string to the ruler. These plummets were usually shaped like
a tomahawk, and carefully whittled and trimmed to a sharp edge.
Slightly varied shapes were a carpenter's or a woodcutter's axe;
also there were cannon, battledores, and cylinders.
Paper was scarce and too highly prized for children to waste; it was
a great burden even to ministers to get what paper they needed for
their sermons, and they frequently acquired microscopic hand-writing
for economy's sake. To the forest the scholars turned for the ever
plentiful birch bark, which formed a delightful substitute to cipher
on instead of paper. Among the thrifty Scotch-Irish settlers in New
Hampshire and the planters in Maine, sets of arithmetic rules were
copied by each child on birch bark and made a substantial text-book.
Rolls of birch bark resembling in shape the parchment rolls of the
Egyptians and lead plummets seem too ancient in appearance to have
been commonly employed in schools within a century in this country.
It has been asserted that school slates were not used till this
century. Noah Webster says distinctly in a letter written about
the schools of his childhood, that "before the Revolution and for
some years after no slates were used in common schools." S. Town,
attending school in Belchertown, Massachusetts, in 1785, says that
slates were unknown.
I have seen but a single reference to them in America and that is in
such an ingenuous schoolboy's letter I will quote it in full:--
"To MR. CORNELIUS TEN BROECK
att Albany.
"Stamford, the 13th Day of October, 1752.
"HONORED FETHAR,
"These fiew Lines comes to let you know that I am in a good
State of Health and I hope this may find you also. I have found
all the things in my trunk but I must have a pare of Schuse. And
mama please to send me some Ches Nutts and some Wall Nutts; you
please to send me a Slate, and som pensals, and please to send
me some smok befe, and for bringing my trunk 3/9, and for a pare
of Schuse 9 shillings. You please to send me a pare of indin's
Schuse, You please to send me som dride corn. My Duty to Father
and Mother and Sister and to all frinds.
"I am your Dutyfull Son,
"JOHN TEN BROECK.
"Father forgot to send me my Schuse."
In an advertisement of an English bookseller of the year 1737,
one James Marshal of the Bible and Sun at Stockton are named
Slate Pocket Books, Slates, and Slate Pens. The first slates were
frameless, and had a hole pierced at one side on which a pencil
could be hung, or by which they could be suspended around the neck.
An old gentleman told me that he distinctly recalled the first time
he ever saw slates in school. The master brought in a score that
had been ordered to supply his pupils. He asked if any scholar had
a bit of string. My old gentleman thrust his hand in his pocket and
confidingly brought out his best fishing-line. The master took it,
calmly cut it into twenty lengths, each long enough to go around the
neck of a child and permit the slate when hung on it to lie loosely
in front of his chest. It was a bitter blow to the boy to witness
the cruel and unexpected severing of his beloved treasure, and he
never forgot it.
[Illustration: Nathan Hale Schoolhouse]
In England for centuries existed the custom of sending young
children to the houses of friends, relatives, or people of some
condition and state to be educated. Young boys were placed in
noblemen's households to learn carving, singing, and good manners.
Young girls went to learn housewifery, needlework, and etiquette.
The work of these children in what would to-day be deemed the duties
of upper servants was given in payment for their board and tuition.
The housemistress gained a large corps of orderly, intelligent
servitors; and there was no disgrace in that day in being called a
servant. In the time of Henry VII. these customs were universal.
_The Italian Relation of England_, of that date, is most severe upon
English parents, saying this putting away of young children, though
under the guise of having them taught good manners, was done really
through lack of affection, through greediness. The _Paston Letters_,
the _Verney Papers_, give ample proof that children of good families
were thus banished.
A remnant of this custom of the "putting-forth" of children lingered
in the colonies. A good education could generally be obtained only
in the schools in larger towns, or in the households of learned men.
The New England ministers almost universally eked out their meagre
incomes by taking young lads into their homes to educate.
When at school in Andover, Josiah Quincy boarded with the minister.
The boys, eight in number, slept in a large chamber with four beds,
two boys in each. The fare was ample but simple; of beef, pork,
plentiful vegetables, badly baked rye and Indian bread. The minister
had white bread as the brown bread gave him the heart-burn.
Children went, if possible, to the house of a kinsman. An old
letter in the _Mather Papers_ is from Mary Hoar. She writes "To her
Esteemed Sister, Mistris Bridget Hoar at Cambridge." One sentence
runs thus:--
"I presume our sonn John is left in the hands of a stranger;
which may be of some evel consequence if not timely prevented
and therefore I doe look upon myself as conserned (soe far as
I am capable to diserne ye evel at such a distance) to make my
request to you to prevail with my brother to receive him into
your own family that he may be under your own ey. And to goe to
school in the same town, where you cannot doubtless be destitute
of a good schoolmaster, which might be of singular benefit to ye
child."
Bridget Hoar was the daughter of Lady Alice Lisle, the martyr, and
the wife of Leonard Hoar, president of Harvard College.
Another letter similar in kindly intent is this written to Henry
Wolcott, at Windsor, Connecticut;--
"SALEM, April ye 6th, 1695.
"DEAR BRO^R:
"I cannot but be much concerned for your children's disadvantage
in your remote livinge (tho' God has blest you with a good
Estate which is likely to descend to them) the want of Education
being the grand Calamity of this Country, but you have always
Been offered no small advantages, besides their diet free,
w^ch I deeme the Leest. I can only Renew the same offer which
I have made tenn yeares since and annually, that if you please
to send either of your daughters to my House they shall find
they are welcome to spend the Summer or a year or as long as
you and they please; and they will be equally welcome to my
Wife, also I think it may be to your Sons' advantage to hasten
downe to the Colledge while our nephew Price is there, and if
you have anything by you, that you designe for their Cloathing,
let it be made up here; Else it will not be fit for either of
them to ware. Also for the next Winter if your Son be minded to
Retire for a month or two, as many do in the Dead Season, he
may come to my howse, and Mr. Noyes, I am sure, will be very
ready to oblige him, with the use of his Library and Stoody, he
being Remooved to his own House next weeke, and has a Tenant in
one end of it that dresses his Victualls. I shall not Enlarge
only to assure you that I shall be happie wherein I may be
serviceable to my father's Children and theirs. I am Sir your
very Aff. Bro^r & Servant,
"J. WOLCOTT."
[Illustration: Old Brick Schoolhouse, Norwich, Connecticut]
It was the custom of the wealthy planters of the island of Barbadoes
to send their children to New England, usually to Boston, to school.
At one time a special school flourished there for the education of
the sons of these planters. Several volumes of letter books of Hon.
Hugh Hall, Judge of the Admiralty, are in the possession of his
descendant, Miss Margaret Seymour Hall. He had occasional charge of
his younger brothers and sisters, who were sent to Boston from the
Barbadoes, and his letters frequently refer to them. Many of these
letters are to and from his grandmother, Madam Lydia Coleman, the
daughter of the old Indian fighter, Captain Joshua Scottow. She had
three husbands,--Colonel Benjamin Gibbs, Attorney General Anthony
Checkley, and William Coleman.
Richard Hall came to Boston in 1718. His older brother writes:--
"This Northern Air seems well calculated for Richard's
Temperament of body and I am Psuaded he never appeared so Fat
and Sanguine while in Barbados. I am taking all Imaginable Care
in Placing him at our best Grammar School and have desir'd the
Master and Usher to treat him with the highest Tenderness,
Intimating he has a Capacity to go thro ye Exercises of ye
School & that a Mild and good Natur'd Treatment will best
prevail; who have promised me their Pticular favour to him."
A few months later the grandmother writes in various letters:--
"Richard is well in health, and minds his Learning and likes our
Cold country better than I do.... I delivered Richard's Master,
Mr. Williams, 25 lbs. Cocoa. I spoke with him a little before
and asked him what he expected for Richard's schooling. He told
me 40 shillings a yeare. As for Richard since I told him I would
write to his Father he is more orderly, & he is very hungry, and
has grown so much yt all his Clothes is too Little for him. He
loves his book and his play too. I hired him to get a Chapter
of ye Proverbs & give him a penny every Sabbath day, & promised
him 5 shillings when he can say them all by heart. I would do my
duty by his soul as well as his body.... I hope he does consider
ye many inconveniences yt will attend him if he wont be ruled.
He has grown a good boy and minds his School and Lattin and
Dancing. He is a brisk Child & grows very Cute and wont wear his
new silk coat yt was made for him. He wont wear it every day so
yt I don't know what to do with it. It wont make him a jackitt.
I would have him a good husbander but he is but a child. For
shoes, gloves, hankers & stockens, they ask very deare, 8
shillings for a paire & Richard takes no care of them.... I put
him in mind of writing but he tells me he don't know what to
write."
Then comes Richard's delightful effusion:--
"BOSTON, NEW ENGLAND, July 1, 1719.
"HONOURED SIR:
"I would have wrote now but to tell ye Truth I do not know
what to write for I have not had a letter from you since Capt.
Beale, and I am very sorry I can't write to you but I thought
it my Duty to write these few lines to you to acquaint you of
my welfare, and what proficiency I have made in Learning since
my Last to you. My Master is very kind to me. I am now in the
Second Form, am Learning Castalio and Ovid's Metamorphosis & I
hope I shall be fit to go to College in two Years time which I
am resolved to do, God willing and by your leave, I shant detain
you any longer but only to give my Duty to your good self &
Mother & love to my Brothers & Sisters. Please to give my Duty
to my God father and to my Uncle & Aunt Adamson & love to Cozen
Henry,
"Your dutifull Son,
"RICHARD HALL."
Soon another letter goes to the father:--
"Richard wears out nigh 12 paire of shoes a year. He brought 12
hankers with him and they have all been lost long ago; and I
have bought him 3 or 4 more at a time. His way is to tie knottys
at one end & beat ye Boys with them and then to lose them & he
cares not a bit what I will say to him."
Mothers and guardians of the present day who have sent boys
off to the boarding school with ample store of neatly marked
underclothing, stockings, and handkerchiefs, and had them return
at the holidays nearly bereft of underwear, bearing stockings with
feet existing only in outlines, and possessing but two or three
handkerchiefs, these in dingy wads at the bottom of coat-pockets and
usually marked with some other scholar's name--such can sympathize
with poor, thrifty old lady Coleman, when naughty Richard tied his
good new handkerchiefs in knots, beat his companions, and recklessly
threw the knotted strings away.