Can you imagine a one-room school house with one fire place? If a boy forgot to bring fire wood he had to sit the farthest away from the fire, in the coldest part of the room. School wasn't so great back then.
The boys went to school more and learned more. The girls went to Dame School and learned less. Most of the girls stayed at home, and it was thought that they were not smart enough to learn to read and write. People thought that weaving and spinning and housework were more important for girls.
The town's people said the schools did't have to be comfortable. The schools were really very cruel by our standards. They had to sit on hard benches and the one room was really cold, like being out- doors all the time.
The boys had to pay the schoolmaster corn and foods. Unfortunately, the schoolmaster sometimes had too much food so he made a boy stand near the window and if someone walked by the boy had to trade the food for something the schoolmaster wanted.
The schools did not have blackboards or maps or pencils. The children used big lumps of lead on a slate or a quill pen dipped in ink, which froze on cold days.
Paper was hard to get and was really expensive. The children sometines wrote on birchbark because they could always get more in the woods.
They used a lot of time for handwriting. One of the ways of shaping letters was called the Boston Style. John Hancock shaped his letters that way when he signed the Declaration of Independence. Incidently, he was one of the few men who was able to write his name. The master didn't care how words would be spelled as long as the child made the letters small and clear. Everybody spelled the words differently.
The children had to read a book called New England Primer. When a boy knew everything in the book he would go to another school. When the boy turned 11 years old, he would go to college.
If the boys misbehaved, they got hit or whipped with a birch rod or a belt. Another punishment was putting a whispering stick in their mouth, which had to be held like a horse bit.
Noah, Erin, Evan, Ryan and Bo