American History

1 Pages 331 Words

Schools in the 1770’s

Schools back in the 1770’s were very different, Massachusetts and Connecticut both had laws saying every town with fifty families or more in the town must hire a teacher and build a schoolhouse.

Most schools in the 1770’s had only one room; witch was freezing cold in the winter. Some towns are considered very lucky to have a schoolhouse because most towns don’t have any!

The teacher of the schoolhouse actually held classes in her home.

The puritans thought paper was way too much to waste on the students. They wrote on birch bark for their lessons they worked on. There were no chalkboards, globes, or maps for the children to use. The puritans believed that everyone should be able to read the bible. When the children are not working at home, they had to go to school. In school they are taught to read, write, and do arithmetic witch is practically like math.

They need to learn all of this stuff above so then they could read the bible, write letters to people, and keep track of their amount of money.

Older boys went to grammar schools for the next six years. Most boys sat on hard, cold benches studying Latin, Greek, arithmetic, and geography.

Puritans didn’t think that girls needed anymore education then what they all ready learned in a regular schoolhouse. For girls it ended with dame school. Some other young children went to private schools; they were also called dame schools.

The villagers put their best clothes on and then walked to the meetinghouse for religious worship.

Each one of the schoolmasters had one of the most important tools, a birch stick.

A watchman (like a policeman) watched over the meetinghouse so no one would get in. The watchman carried a long pole type thing with a knob on one end and a squirrel tail on the other end of the pole. Some meetings and school lasted all day, but with a break for lunch. On Sundays there were no school or work....