Francis J. Degnan
Can we make our Colonial History come alive for our students? Can we have them share in some of the crafts, customs and traditions of our New England forefathers? Our New Haven Public Schools’ curriculum includes studies of both Colonial New Haven and Connecticut at the primary level. It is only to be texts, names, dates and associated facts or is it to be translated into activities that will develop an appreciation of what it was like about one hundred fifty to three hundred fifty years ago? I believe that through handson activities that are related to colonial living coordinated with visits to the Pardee Morris House, Yale University Art Gallery, Grove Street Cemetery and the New Haven Historical Society, students will internalize an ‘experience’ that will make concrete what is presented as an abstraction. Particularly for primary students in an urban environment this approach is a definite need!
The Colonial Period is part of New Haven’s Social Studies curriculum. It is a period in our history that is wonderfully alive in our area. Eighteen years in the New Haven School System’s classroom teaching grades three through six have given me a chance to develop a multidisciplinary approach to this area of study. My last three years as an itinerant instructor of the talented and gifted students as well as a desire to develop a handson segment for a unit that would seek to thoroughly immerse the youth of New Haven in the study of our New England heritage. I work with both whole classes and small groups of direct service children. Yearly I’m asked if my enrichment activities for whole class include activities and ideas that would develop an appreciation of the Colonial period. I hope this unit enriches and allows for the development of individual curricula. In addition I feel that the unit has afforded me an excellent opportunity to create and evaluate a learning experience that seeks total involvement of the students. This unit will serve as the basis for many small group exercises. When called upon this year for colonial material I will present the unit to interested classroom teachers and in collaboration develop whole day programs or schedule shorter weekly class presentations.
The research has been focused on the crafts, education and home life of the colonial period. The information is presented to refresh, add to and, hopefully, serve as incentive for further study. The plans may require some changes for individual situations. There are projects and supplies that may not be readily available. To some degree I am prepared to implement and present all of the activities suggested. Furthermore an all important segment of the presentation are the trips to one or more of the suggested sites; most can be scheduled for visits during the year.
The Colonial School
One very supportive mother who teamed with me to aid, guide and direct her son through a school year once advised me that she often reminded her son that all, by law, she really had to do for him was provide an education. All the extras, a television, his own room and clothes that were in fashion were just that extra! As unique as this stand might seem it is, in fact, the truth. This particular parent reflected the attitude in our colonial ancestors. Less than twenty years after the settlement of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1620 and the New Haven Colony in 1630 similar laws required communities of fifty households to provide instruction in reading and writing for their children in a school. If the settlement had more than one hundred families the community was instructed to provide a grammar school, one that would prepare the student for a college at which he would study to become a member of the ministry. Ministers of the period often preached that unless we educated our youth the church and government would cease to exist. Actually at this point in our history it is important to realize that the three R’s were reading, ’riting and religion. Such emphasis is responsible for the founding of Harvard University in 1636, a mere sixteen after the landing by the Puritans at Boston. New Haven’s Yale University followed much later in 1701.
The emphasis on education from the very beginnings of the colonies led to many varied classroom settings. As one might surmise some of the earliest education had to be done in the home. Early ‘blackboards’ have been found in some houses. They were actually boards that were covered with a combination of egg white and ash to blacken them. This was necessary in rural districts where the community was widespread. In some cases in-home education gave rise to the dame schools. These were homes to which neighborhood children went to be instructed by a housewife. She would teach the catechism and the Lord’s Prayer. Some of the schools might include instruction in reading and writing. This would usually start with the teaching of the alphabet using the time honored hornbook. Lessons were often rhyming to aid in their memorization.
Youth of the period had considerably less time for schooling. The agrarian nature of the society demanded that the young men stay home and tend to the chores associated with the farm homestead. Schooling, in many cases, was limited to the winter months when there was less work to be done outside. In some areas of New England, school would start in late November and last about sixteen weeks or until the beginning of March. Young women were likewise schooled when there was less work to be done, but admittedly their education was done on a more limited scale.
In more centralized communities among the first buildings to be raised was the meeting house. On the days that this building was not being used for community or religious meetings, it is safe to assume that it became school. Once the community began to grow and thrive they would erect a proper church and at that time the original meeting building may well have been given over entirely to the education of youth. Our conventional idea of the red schoolhouse with the bell to call children to study may well have been the same bell that once called the townspeople to worship.
Many communities had to build their own schools. These buildings were apt to be crude, one room affairs generally made of logs; however, some were occasionally built of stone. The furnishings of the early one room school left much to be desired. Desks were along the walls; they consisted of boards resting on lumber that had been driven into the crevices between the logs or stones. The floors were usually dirt and younger students sat on benches nearer the teacher in the center of the room. It was not uncommon for the more active students to raise clouds of dust when the teacher wasn’t looking. The teacher was usually situated near the fireplace which could be either in the center or end of the room. Desks as we know them didn’t become standard until the mid 1800’s.
At rough hewn desks the students tended to their lessons. Though these lessons focused on reading and writing, published texts were not in use until well into the 1800’s. The first widely used text, the McGuffey reader, didn’t make its appearance until 1836. The book depended upon to aid in instruction in the colonies from the earliest dame schools to the introduction of the McGuffey reader was the hornbook. The hornbook wasn’t a book at all, but a thin generally wooden paddleshaped object upon which a printed piece of paper was glued. The text on the ’book would contain the alphabet, in both upper and lower cases, protected by a thin transparent piece of horn. The horn not only protected the paper but served as a surface on which the students could trace the letters. Paper was expensive and the young children traced, used blackboards or erasable slates to learn to make their letters. The handle of the hornbook was often drilled so that it could be hung from a cord and easily carried. These books were held up, read from, actually shouted from, then dropped by one’s side and the lesson orally repeated again. Oral recitation and memorization were the principle methods of instruction. Young women might learn the same information at home making a sampler.
Writing was the second requisite taught in the colonial schools. It often wasn’t until the youth was twelve that he would be allowed to make his quill pen, and yes, he had to carry his ‘pen’ knife to do it. Lead pencils were exactly that—rods of lead that were generally used to line the copy books these children used for their lessons. The lead might be cast into arrowheads or various shapes and used to line the books; these objects were called plummets. Many items were needed by the young writing master. They might include wax, for his seal; a ruler, to make the lines with the plummet; sand, to help dry the ink; ink, which had to be made from powdered ink or boiled from tree bark and sap; and quills, perhaps from the family goose. Penmanship became the most important skill a teacher could impart to his students. Every community held in high esteem their writing master. Intricate penmanship became known as knotting. We can call to mind John Hancock’s signature which reflected this emphasis. Teaching was done by drill and repetition. The disciplines required obedience and frequently the birch or willow rod served as the encouragement to keep the student on task.
Parents of the children supported the schools and teachers. The communities regulated fees according to the family’s ability to afford education for their children. During the colonial period in some New England communities all children were expected to attend school. Sometimes land was set aside and any income derived from it would help defray the educational expenses. Lotteries were also a method commonly used to raise funds. The South was so rural that schools were few and far between. Occasionally neighbors erected schools on land that had been overused. These were dubbed ‘old field’ schools. Teachers would travel from one area to another during a year offering instruction. George Washington gained much of his early education from this type of school.
