The Schoolmarm and the Schoolroom

By the time the West was opening for settlement, the schoolmarm was already an icon in American education, moving from east to west as the American frontier grew.  For almost a century, the schoolmarm ruled the one room schoolhouse like education dictators. 

Whether their name was Grace, Prudence or Hortense, they had a style, a look that was passed down in journals and diaries.  They were usually thought of as "plain, bony, hardened, with angular features".  Their eyes were gray, "like the sky on a bleak morning."  They were "brisk in manner, prim and even fidgety".  Schoolmarms were careful about their clothes, their money and their reputation.  The men who courted them needed to do so in a sober, serious and regulated spirit.  Of, course if the schoolmarm married, her career was over.

In that one room, all ages were taught.  The schoolmarm was also responsible for building fires, and cleaning the school. There were no janitors.  Many families close to the school would board students (along with the teacher) during the school term so that no child had to walk more than three miles to school (a bit less than the stories we heard!).

So what did the schoolmarm teach? Surprisingly in the late 1800s, the Plains states had one of the highest literacy rates in the country.  Farmer ordered books from mail order catalogs, larger towns started libraries, and if lucky subscribed to big city newspapers.  School resources included a blackboard, a Bible, a hymnal, dictionary, almanac.  If money was available they added a McGuffy's
reader, then a grammar, geography, and arithmetic book.  In the early days, there was only one copy for the entire schoolroom.  Children advanced when they could read the next most difficult book.

So as education got established (along with churches), the community could attract more professionals and families with permanent settlement plans, growing the West into civilized communities...thus America grew.

Next time...Frontier Medicine
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On September 27, 1869,  Ellis County Sheriff Wild Bill Hickok and his deputy respond to a report that a local ruffian named Samuel Strawhun and several drunken buddies were tearing up John Bitter’s Beer Saloon in Hays City, Kansas.

One Room Schoolhouse Education

From movies and nostalgia we get think of education in a one room schoolhouse as great education...it was not.  Imagine yourself being a first term teacher meeting a class of 28 students with 7 children between the ages of 5 and 7, 13 children between the ages of 10-14, 4 students between the ages of 15-20 and 4 more between the ages of 20-29!  Some can read, most can not, or read at several levels below their age.

Attendance is casual.  Parents see the need for work on the farm far more necessary than education, so attending school on a regular basis is both irregular and unpredictable.  Parents are the first to criticize you and the older students give you trouble.

Few frontier teacher lasted more than 2 years in these classrooms.  The majority of the community saw them as unnecessary , overpaid, and a burden on the family in whose home they resided.  A teacher had no privacy, no possessions, and were not allowed any contact with a single man, let alone a marriage proposal.


Would you want to teach??

Next time - the duties of a 1800s teacher.

Education Takes a Front Row Seat

The Western frontier towns were badly lacking in education by failing to provide public education.  As late as the 1870s and 80s, only 40% of eligible students attended school in Oregon for instance, because the cost of $5 was just too much for most frontier families.

Teaching was viewed as the natural extension of mother hood and a highly respectable job for a pioneer woman.  Roughly 1/4 of all women had taught at some point in their lives, so when schools began on the frontier they were staffed by women.   The curriculum was English, Plain and Fancy Needlework, Painting and Drawing - the same subjects women themselves had been taught.

Women were paid 1/2 of what a man demanded and as the community matured men seldom were found in the teaching profession, yet education remained the key to civilization on the frontier.

Next time...The Life of a Teacher