Going To School Back Then

Food for thought . . .

Take a look at the eye-opening statistics the school committee supplied for the town of Turner in 1869. (Be aware that Turner's statistics are typical for small towns all over Maine in this time period.)

Why do you think the time students spent in school was so short?
What do you think students did when they were not in school?
How was the overall attendance record In Turner?
How do you account for the vast discrepancy of pay between male and female teachers?

Here is a summary of how the Turner District Superintendent's Committee saw their schools a few years later in 1872.

Why did the committee now think that hiring female teachers was a particularly good idea?

(Note: Many other communities had drawn the same conclusion and it would be many, many years before the resulting injustice was rectified.)

What did the Committee want to see changed?

Can you find any issues or problems that haven't changed at all, even today?

Here is a sample of physical education - or "gym" - as it was practiced in 1890. GO TEAM!

   If you had attended public schools (or "common schools", as they were then known) in the Nineteenth Century, you would have spent only a few weeks each year actually in the classroom. If you were a small child, you probably would have attended in the summer term, which usually ran in Mayand June, and your teacher would most likely have been a woman. If you were older, you would have gone to school in the winter term, which usually ran in December and January; and you would almost invariably have been taught by a man - until the Civil War. It was believed that women could not maintain discipline among the bigger boys, but the Civil War caused such a shortage of manpower that schools were forced to let females try their hand at teaching in the winter term.
   The experts were amazed that this experiment proved successful, no unusual discipline problems were reported; and from 1865 on, more and more female teachers were employed to instruct students of all ages. Until the end of the Century, these schools were ungraded, and it was not uncommon to have students in their late teens attending classes in the same one-room school with six or seven year-olds under the supervision of one teacher.
   Free public high schools did not appear in Maine until the 1890s, and students who wanted to further their education or prepare for college had to pay tuition to attend an academy or seminary if there was one nearby, or make travel and boarding arrangements elsewhere. In 1869, Turner, like every other community in Maine, was divided into numerous "school districts" within its boundaries. This little town had 19 "districts" comprising 20 one-room schools! These were superintended by a committee of three townsmen, who reported to the State Superintendent of Common Schools.
   One thing that hasn't changed is the difficulty of making certain that all public school students all over the State get the same quality of education and that all students are able to meet some kind of standard in terms of the knowledge they have gained at some given point in their public school years. Here is the State Examination given to students who were at about the 8th - grade level in 1886. Can YOU pass this test?
   Although the one-room school did not entirely disappear until the middle of the Twentieth Century, by the 1890s, most communities had abolished the numerous little districts within their boundaries and had built schoolhouses that contained graded classrooms from the kindergarten or 1st grade through grades 8 or 9. The curriculum had expanded to include art, music, and physical education. It was felt that a regular regimen of exercise helped students to be more wide-awake and attentive! Turner did not get a high school until 1895, when a generous native of the town who had made a fortune in New York City endowed the Leavitt Institute.
   Check the town of Turner's web page, which is under construction, but which promises to have information about Leavitt Institute on-line in the near future.

Going to School Back Then