To Colonial America
Lifestyles of the Colonists
in Colonial America
Colonial Education
By Meryl See
Usually the schoolroom was located at the edge of town. Every child from the town would go to the same school.
The teacher would give each grade an assignment. The three main subjects were reading, writing, and arithmetic or math.
Students used a quill pen and ink. Students normally had slate boards. These are little boards that the students could hold and wipe off. Students also had hornbooks which were a wooden paddle with a paper with numbers, the alphabet, a sentence, or a Bible verse or prayer attached to the board.
The teacher normally lived at the back of the schoolhouse, beside it, or at a student’s house. School was held when it was convenient to the farming season. The teacher was called a schoolmaster; if a boy, and school-mistress, if a girl.
Since most children had to work in the fields most girls didn’t go to school past the sixth grade. Boys stayed until the eighth grade and a few were able to go to college.
Discipline was very strict. The teacher would crack fingers, put the student in a corner with a dunce hat, or even spank them. The girls swept the schoolroom and the boys gathered firewood. They helped keep the school warm and clean.
Children loved recess. They played tug O’ war, hide and seek, and usually there was a rope on a tree they swung on.
They had an out house as a bathroom. This is a little building that was outside that the students and teacher used as a bathroom. Since they didn’t have a water fountain or a sink they got their water from a well that they dug in the ground. The bell summoned the children to school. It was an honor for a student to ring the bell in the morning.
The children brought their lunches from home and ate them outside if the weather was nice. The children normally didn’t have homework because they had to do their chores at home.
A teacher had to quit teaching when they got married. When a person, normally a woman, taught at a house it was called a Dame school.
http://www.townofsomsbury.com/history/15.html
http://www.iupui.edu/~engwft/hornbook.html
teacher and students; PicturesNow!
From Old Time Clip Art