The Frontier Teaching Gender

Male teachers were especially difficult to find and keep on the frontier.  A man well-educated enough to teach could easily find work at better wages.  The frontier teaching conditions as well as the necessity of maintaining discipline with 17-18 year old farm boys who continually challenged authority, made the frontier teaching profession for a man unacceptable in most cases. 

Women, however, fared a bit better.  They weren't expected to do physical tasks that men were expected to do.  Most women were dedicated to teaching because it was one of the few career choices available to females on the frontier.  The work also gave them a good chance to find a suitable husband in an atmosphere dominated by males. Once a schoolteacher married, she had to resign from the teaching profession.

As early as 1845, Catherine Beecher, daughter of prominent New England educators and clergymen, was recruiting for women into the teaching profession.  Her pamphlet, "The Duty of American Women to their Country" cried out about the shortage of teachers on the frontier and predicted that men would never fill that gap. "It is women who are to come at this emergency and meet this demand", she wrote, "women whose experience and testing have shown to be the best, as well as the cheapest guardians and teachers of childhood."  Women by the hundreds, and later by the thousands, answered Miss Beecher's call, although many were mere teenagers.

A five month school year seemed insufficient for even minimal instruction to the dedicated women who came to the frontier to teach.  These women fought local prejudices against the necessity of formal education, and against frugality - from textbooks to outhouses.  Over time they would change the course of education on the frontier, one school and one pupil at a time.

Next time...The Schoolmarm and the Schoolroom
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Today in Pioneer History: "On September 24, 1789, the Judiciary Act is passed by Congress and signed by President Washington, establishing the Supreme Court of the United States as a tribunal made up of six justices who were to serve on the court until death or retirement. John Jay was nominated to preside as chief justice, along with John Rutledge, William Cushing, John Blair, Robert Harrison, and James Wilson.

A Bit of Learning

"The average farmer and rural teacher think of the rural school as a little house, on a little ground, with a little equipment, where a little teacher, at a little salary, for a little while, teaches little children little things."  This was a cynical quote from the early days of frontier education and although there is a lot of truth to it, many did not agree.

Planning the schooling of their children was one of the first tasks some settlers tackled after their own shelters.  In Buffalo County, Nebraska, settlers organized a school district, and even levied a tax upon themselves to pay for a schoolhouse to be built.  In some places, however, there were suspicions about formal education's necessity, but if there was New England influence, the naysayers were quickly overruled.

Frontier schools were financed by the local districts eventually, but in the early days the individuals paid for their families' education.  For each child attending school for five months a year, the family paid $1-$1.50 per child for a total for the school year of $5-$7.50 per child. For families with many children, not all could attend school at the same time. Lucky teachers earned a $1 a day or $150 a school year.

Along with the teacher's salary and the cost of school, parents were expected to provide room and board for specified periods.  The more children attending school in a family, the longer the teacher lived with the family.  And the more children, the less privacy, comfort and food was available to the teacher.  For many large families, education became a real burden.

Low wages, rugged living, poor working conditions, and scarce teaching supplies - who would want to teach on the frontier?  Turnover was constant and not surprising.  In a single one-room schoolhouse, there might be three different teachers within a full school year - divided into three terms of 1 and 1/2 months each.  When a teacher left at the end of a term, it was virtually impossible to replace them immediately, so school was closed until a replacement could be found. 

Next time...Male vs. Female Frontier Teachers
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Today in Pioneer History: "On September 20, 1565, Spanish forces under Pedro Menéndez de Avilés capture the French Huguenot settlement of Fort Caroline, near present-day Jacksonville, Florida. The French, commanded by Rene Goulaine de Laudonniere, lost 135 men in the first instance of colonial warfare between European powers in America.