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Home : Quarterly Archives : Volume 27 |
Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society |
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Source: October 1989 Volume 27 Number 4, Pages 131–138 Public Schooling in the Nineteenth Century Although free schooling or public schooling had been provided in Pennsylvania for pauper children since 1809 [Note 1], it was not until 1834 that it was extended to all children. In April of that year "An Act to establish a General System of Education by Common Schools" was passed by the legislature and signed into law by Governor George Wolf. Under the act, Tredyffrin and Easttown townships were each constituted a school district, as was each of the other 42 townships and boroughs then comprising Chester County. The act further provided that an election of school directors be held in each school district the following September, and that two months after that, in November, there was to be an election to decide whether the district would agree to provide free schooling for all children residing in the district. Districts accepting the law and providing free schooling for all children were entitled to a state subsidy from a fund that had been established for this purpose three years earlier. From the beginning the new law met with considerable opposition, particularly from those without children of school age, and from members of certain religious denominations who strongly preferred church schools or parochial schools for their children. In fact, in the November election only 17 of the 44 school districts in Chester County voted to accept the provisions of the act and provide the proposed public schooling for all the children in the district. Both the Tredyffrin and Easttown school districts were among the seventeen. An attempt was made in the legislature in the following year to repeal the act, but it was unsuccessful. Instead, the legislature passed a supplemental act which delegated to the school directors in each district responsibility for the operation of the schools in their district, with the authority to hire teachers, build school buildings, and to levy and collect taxes to supplement the state subsidy. Implementation of the law in Tredyffrin and Easttown was accomplished by converting the already existing neighborhood schools into common schools, with the elected school directors replacing their respective boards of trustees, and the tuition payments eliminated. Thus the Davis (or Howellville) School, the Wayne School, the Eagle School, the Diamond Rock School, the Carr School, The Presbyterian School, the Baptist School and the Friends School in Tredyffrin, and the Glassley School in Easttown, all became "common schools" to serve all the children in the two school districts. Aside from the modification of some of these existing schoolhouses, including a considerable expansion of the Eagle School in 1842, no new facilities were needed until the 1850s. Between 1852 and 1856, however, four new schoolhouses were built. In Tredyffrin, the Mt. Airy School was built on the north side of the Lancaster Turnpike just east of the present Daylesford railroad station, and in 1856 a new schoolhouse was built at Howellville, replacing the older school building there. Two new schoolhouses were also erected in Easttown; one was the Leopard School, at the Leopard, and the other was the Ogden School, located on Church Road. With the opening of the Leopard School, the old Wayne School was closed. The facilities, even the new ones, were obviously primitive by today's standards: earthen or wooden floors, a wood or coal stove in the center of the building to provide heat, a water bucket and common dipper, an outhouse in the back. Much of the work was done on slates, with a slate stylus, as the homemade quill pens (sharpened by the teacher with a "pen knife") and homemade ink were not very good, and paper was expensive. (Slates were still used into the early 20th century; in the 1899 handbook for the Tredyffrin schools it was noted that writing and drawing in the primary department were "on slate and tablet", and it wasn't until 1891 that the teachers in Easttown requested the school directors purchase tablets so that slates could be eliminated.) As the pupils progressed, however, they would prepare a copy book. (I have one made by my great-great grandfather; while he did not live in this area, his copy book is typical of those of the pupils here.) In it are page after page of "rules" for the various arithmetic functions, with numerous examples of their application -- all written out in long hand by the pupil. (Perhaps even more interesting are some of the marginal notes in the copybook. One, in an old English script, reads "On the importance of time: employ thy time well, if thous wouldst gain leisure; and since thou art not sure of a moment, waste not an hour. How much more of time than is necessary do we waste in sleeping; forgetting that the sleeping fox catches no poultry." [Doing both school work and farm chores was not always easy.] In another note is a bit of very sound advice: "When the fox reaches," he wrote, "let the geese beware. When the girls flatter, let the boys take care." [What prompted this comment I don't know!]) Discipline was always a problem, and the proverbial hickory stick was in fact frequently resorted to. (One account describes the early schools as "hickory academies".) But there is a lovely account of another type of discipline, at the Eagle School, as recalled by a former student there. It seems that although the teacher had put the school "on honor not to misbehave", when she stepped out of the school briefly, there ensued what he described as a general "rough-housing" the moment she left. On her return she requested that each student apologize for this "outrageous violation of decorum", and one by one all the students but one did so. When class was resumed, he was completely ignored by the teacher. At the end of the week he finally "murmer[ed] a faint but sincere apology", where upon, he later reported, "the stern, relentless disciplinarian ...threw her arms around me ... and we both cried in concert. ... Never was a conquest more absolute and complete, never did a teacher more effectively win the esteem and love of a delinquent scholar." There was a considerable turnover of teachers. In the forty-five years the Diamond Rock School was in operation, for example, there were twenty-eight different teachers, 10 of them women and 18 of them men. Each summer there were advertisements in the newspapers soliciting applicants for teaching positions. "Eight teachers wanted," was the headline of a typical advertisement in 1851. "The board of school directors of Tredyffrin Township, will meet on Monday, 28th of July, at 9 o'clock A.M., at the public house of Hugh Steam in Howellton [Howellville], to examine and employ Teachers for the schools of the district. Salary, $25 per month. The schools will be opened in August. Strangers applying, good references will be required as to moral character."
from the American Republican July 3, 1851 (Fortunately, the situation in our districts apparently never reached the point it did in Wallace Township in 1880, when it was advertised, "Wallace Township is a good place for female teachers. Three of our directors are bachelors, one rich, and all good looking. Here is a chance for you, girls." Of course, it may be that our school directors did not have all these attributes.) The school directors not only examined and employed the teachers, but, beginning in 1840, were also given the authority to grant certificates of competency for the teachers of their schools. After 1854, when the position of county superintendent was established by the legislature, one of his duties was to assist the district school directors in these examinations and certification. During the Civil War and immediate post-Civil War years, six new schools were built in our two townships. In Tredyffrin, the Walker School and Salem School were built on Yellow Springs Road in 1863, replacing the Diamond Rock School. Five years later, in 1868, the Mt. Pleasant School was built on Upper Gulph Road to the east of the Carr School, which it replaced. In 1871 a school was built at Strafford, at "Pechin's Corner" at the intersection of West Valley and Upper Gulph roads to replace the Eagle School; and in the following year the Fairview School was built on Swedesford Road east of New Centreville, replacing the Baptist and Friends schools. In Easttown, a new Glassley School was built in 1863 to replace the first school there after it burned down, and in 1872 a second story was added to the Leopard School. As needed, improvements were also made to some of the other older school houses. In 1870, for example, after an inspection by the president and secretary of the Tredyffrin board of "the School Houses and appurtenances thereto belonging" in the district, it was reported that they found "the schools in good condition, teachers active, scholars orderly and improving in their studies", but that at School House No. 2 [Mt. Airy] the floor needed repairs, the coal house was "badly broke into with coal flowing over the ground scattered about", and that the "privy is badly in need of repair, the roof being torn off at one end, one door torn off its hinges & laying on the ground & boarding torn off one end & utterly unfit for use." In 1867 a number of "trees for shade" were also planted around the Salem, Walker, Howellville, and Mt. Airy school houses, and thirteen years later the school directors in Tredyffrin were described in the West Chester Daily Local News as "an enterprising body of gentlemen" when they "decided to sink a well at each of the [eight] schools" in the district. Vandalism was also a perennial problem. In early 1867, for example, a reward of $25 was offered for the arrest and conviction of the "evil disposed persons" who had "many times" broken into the school houses in Tredyffrin, with "the teachers seriously annoyed thereby". When this offer apparently was to no avail, later in the year the reward was increased to fifty dollars. Although the Pennsylvania state law making it optional for a school district to furnish pupils with free textbooks did not go into effect until 1885 -- it was made mandatory eight years later -- this policy was adopted in Tredyffrin as early as in 1868, when $250 was added to the "educational assessment" for the purchase of books. When the legality of the action was challenged, the State Superintendent of Schools reassured the board that its decision to furnish books at the public expense "would be sustained" by the court. The textbooks selected by the board included Sanders' New Union Reader, Stodart's Mental Writhmetic, Greenleaf's Written Arithmetic, Mitchell's Geography, Goodrich's History of the United States, Smyth's Grammar, and Sanders' Spellers and Definers.
from Comly's Spelling and Reading Book The selections in the spelling and reading books were quite moralistic in their tone and content. Here are some examples from Comly's Spelling and Reading Book. A good boy loves his father and mother, brothers and sisters. Heal ways minds what his parents say to him and ever tries to please them. If they desire him not to do a thing, he does not do it; if they tell him to do any thing, he does it with pleasure. He likes to go to school, and to spell, and read, and write, and to learn some good lesson every day; so that, if he should live to be a man, he may be wise and good. To be good is the way to be happy. To be content with a little, and to have few wants, is one of the means of being happy. . . .If people would think how many good things they have more than they really need, they would learn to be content without wanting so many things that they have not. How doth the little busy bee / Improve each shining hour; / And gather honey all the day / From every opening flower! Many of the other textbooks were in question and answer form, similar to a catechism, the pupils reciting the answers in unison. This example is from an old geography book: Q. How is Pennsylvania situated, and what is its extent? A. It is located between 59 degrees 45 minutes and 42 degrees N. latitude, and between 74 degrees 34 minutes and 80 degrees 34 minutes West longitude. It is 288 miles long and 156 broad. Q. How is it bounded? A. On the east by the Delaware River, north by New York and a part of Lake Erie, on the west by the state of Ohio and a part of Virginia, and on the south by Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. Rhymes to learn and remember the names of the states and their capitals, rivers, and so on were also "sung" by all the school. A song sung in unison by the pupils at the Walker School in the 1870s to learn the names of the presidents in succession, for example, went: First Washington, Adams with Jefferson reckoned, / Madison, Monroe, then Adams, the second, / Andrew Jackson was next, of New Orleans fame, / Van Buren and Harrison and Tyler then came. / Then Polk, then Taylor, then Fillmore, then Pierce, / Then Buchanan, then Lincoln, with war's dreadful curse, / Then Johnson, of whom there is little to say, / Now Grant, who presides in the White House today. To teach spelling, spelling bees were frequently used. Annual spelling contests between the different schools in Tredyffrin were introduced in 1897, and later, when county-wide spelling bees were inaugurated in 1909,the winning team was from the Tredyffrin schools. (Tredyffrin also won the competition in 1910, Easttown took top honors in 1911, 1912 and 1913, and Tredyffrin again in 1914 and 1915; it was not until the competition was in its eighth year that the "monopoly" of our two districts was finally broken.) In 1886, when the average length of the school term in Pennsylvania was still only five and a half months, the term in our two districts was nine months. By the time the state eastablished a minimum term of seven months, in 1899, the school term here was nine and a half months. During the latter half of the 19th century, teachers' salaries also rose gradually from the $25 a month advertised in Tredyffrin in the 1850s. In 1864 teachers in Tredyffrin were paid $28 a month; in 1868 "no ... less than $33 a month"; and not less than $35 a month in 1870. In that year, incidentally, the Tredyffrin school directors, it was reported in the minutes of the School Board, "deem[ed] it not proper to raise the salary of the County Superintendent, whilst the salarys of the teachers of the Common Schools of the County are kept generally at so low a rate". Eight years later it was noted in the Daily Local News, "Your correspondent visited some of the schools in Tredyffrin, and in his opinion they are ahead of the average schools of the county. The township pays a high salary and thereby secures the best teachers. Howellville and Salem," he added, "are the larger [schools], and the discipline is excellent." By 1894 the salaries in Tredyffrin were $40 a month, with the total amount spent for teachers' salaries in the district that year $2912. In 1890 the monthly salaries for teachers in Easttown Township had reached $50. In addition to their teaching duties, the teachers were expected to keep the school building clean and, in the winter, were responsible for the fire to keep it warm. In response to a petition from several of them in 1868, it was resolved by the Tredyffrin board "to pay [the] teachers of the district five dollars each for the term for the purpose of compensating them for making fires in their respective schoolhouses". The introduction of the "graded school" in the late 1880s was a significant innovation in the program of the schools. In 1887 the teachers in Easttown presented a plan and program for the graded course of study, which they recommended after a month's experience with the program. It was approved by the Board, and put into practice that fall. Six years later it was also adopted for the Tredyffrin schools, although not without some deviations during the first year. In the following year R. S. Macnamee, the supervising principal of the Tredyffrin schools, noted, "I believe I can safely say ... that never before has each class in each school received its full share of the teacher's time and attention. Under the old system it was general to find certain classes (either the larger pupils, or the smaller ores, according to the likes and dislikes of the teacher) well taught, while the others would be more or less neglected", adding that "under the present [graded] system each class has its work so clearly set forth that it cannot be neglected without both pupils and teachers being thoroughly conscious of it". During the last quarter of the 19th century the Pennsylvania Railroad conducted an extensive campaign to promote the advantages of suburban living and summer residence along its lines. [Note 2] Brochures were issued from time to time "to show the present and prospective advantages of this region". Reeseville became Berwyn in 1877, and between 1875 and 1890 its population increased from about 200 to about 550, and the population of Easttown Township as a whole in 1890 was twice that of ten years earlier. This concentration of population "along the ridge" traversed by the railroad brought with it a need for additional schools. In 1888 a new Easttown School was opened in Berwyn, on the west side of Bridge Avenue south of the pike, replacing the out grown Glassley School. Four years later the North Berwyn School was opened in Tredyffrin, at the southeast corner of Howellville and Conestoga roads. A school was also started in Paoli in 1890, in a room rented from Miss Ida Hall, at which time the Mt. Airy School was closed, and two years later a new schoolhouse was built on Chestnut Road [about where the Fidelity Bank is now located] in Paoli. With the continued growth in Paoli, ten years later this new school was already outgrown, and in 1902 a new Paoli School was built on the eastside of South Valley Road just south of the Lancaster Pike. A second story was also added to the Strafford School in 1895. When the Easttown schools started manual training classes in 1890, along with two other school districts in the county, it was one of the first rural districts in the nation to do so. Vocal music "throughout the entire course" was also included in the course of studies the following year, even though music was not required in the elementary schools by the state until another thirty years. In 1893 provision was made by the state legislature for the establishment of public high schools in districts other than the larger ones. In the spring of that year, meetings were held in Berwyn to discuss plans for a high school in Easttown Township. (One of the speakers, discussing "Why a Township High School is Necessary", was Martin Brumbaugh, who was later governor of Pennsylvania.) In May the board gave formal approval to the project, and also approved the addition of a second floor to the school in Berwyn to accommodate the high school. It opened in the fall of 1894; at the first commencement in June 1896, five students were graduated. The three-year course of studies included English literature, rhetoric, Latin and Greek, history, algebra, plane geometry, trigonometry, geology, botany, and chemistry. In its second year, stenography and typewriting were added to the curriculum. Graduating students were admitted to Lafayette College without examination, if they so chose. In 1897 a high school was also established in Tredyffrin, in a room in the Strafford School, offering a two-year course. There were three students in the first class. For the final examination, the entrance examination for Haverford College was used. The high school continued at Strafford until 1902; with the opening of the new school in Paoli in that year the high school was moved into the new building. Despite the fact that, at the end of the century, most of the schools in Tredyffrin and Easttown were still one-room, one-teacher schools, public schooling showed considerable progress during the 19th century in our two school districts. 1. See "Free Schooling for the Poor", Tredyffrin Easttown History Club Quarterly, October 1987 [Volume XXV, Number 4] 2. See "When the Pennsylvania Railroad Promoted Suburban Living", Tredyffrin Easttown History Club Quarterly, January 1981 [Vol. XIX, No. 1] |
