In my planning and researching for “Where Flowers Bloom”, I came across rules for teachers in 1872, which I shared here last week. There were also School Rules. (“Frontier Teachers: Stories of Heroic Women of the Old West” by Chris Enss.)

“Teachers on the frontier often used any facility available for a classroom: canvas tents, sod houses, barns, or abandoned mining shacks. Supplies were limited. Where readers were absent, Bibles and Sears, Roebuck Catalogs were used to teach children how to read and write. Depending on the size of the town or the mining camp, class size could be as little as three and as many as fifty. Pupils from grades one to eight congregated together in one room. Younger students sat in the front, and older ones were in the back. Girls were on one side, and boys were on the other. The curriculum focused on the basics: reading, spelling, penmanship, arithmetic, and history. Ten-to-fifteen-minute sessions were dedicated to each grade level.

“The length of the school terms was dictated by the farming families. The children of farmers needed to be available to help their parents with the planting and the harvest. A school year was generally twelve weeks long and ran from Thanksgiving to early spring.

“There were stiff penalties for pupils who talked out of turn or forgot to hand in a lesson. Disciplinary measures ranged from standing in the corner and staying after school, to spankings with rulers or hickory switches. Often times the most serious offenders were expelled before corporal punishment was initiated.

“At the end of the year it was customary for many frontier schools to invite parents and townspeople to join the students in a celebratory banquet. School patrons and mothers of students brought baskets filled with food. Before anyone could enjoy the meal [sic] the pupils would reiterate for the guests all they had learned during the term and share the kind thoughts they had about their long-suffering teachers.”