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Published on 09/14/1998 All articles from this issue

Teachers, my, have you changed

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By Clyde Noel

A Side of Clyde

Whatever it takes for a woman to teach school 47 consecutive years without benefit of prescription drugs or any restraining devises is amazing, and most of us wouldn't be able to do it today.

The average mother has barely enough patience, endurance and video rentals to get through a three-day weekend of uninterrupted contact with her children. So I sit in awe and pay tribute to the teaching profession because things aren't easy today, and they weren't easy teaching school years ago.

My aunt recently passed away short several days of her 101st birthday. Because she had no children of her own, it was left to me to dispose of her material things.

I found her marriage license, her college diploma, the deed to her first house, several passports, and a piece of paper that caught my immediate attention. It was a copy of her first contract to teach school after she graduated from Pennsylvania State Normal School, called Perkiomen School. The year was 1915.

After reading the contract a rural school teacher had to sign in 1915 you become aware how far the profession has come.

My aunt started teaching school in Mud Hole School in Green Lane, Penn. It was a one-room school that included 18 children from first through seventh grade.

There were certain prerequisites before a contract was provided. It stated that teachers must have legal qualifications and married teachers would not be hired, nor could teachers marry during the period of the contract. Once hired, a teacher could not travel beyond the district limits unless permission was provided by the chairman of the school board.

There were other personal things a teacher could not do. It said:

You must be home between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. unless attending a school function.

You may not loiter downtown in ice cream stores or frequent pool halls.

You may not smoke cigarettes and under no circumstances dye your hair. Bobbed hair is forbidden.

Inside the classroom, the teacher was responsible to prepare a lot of things for the student's comfort.

Start the fire early enough to have the room warm by 9 a.m.

Raise the flag before the opening of school.

Sweep the floor at least once a day and clean the blackboards every day.

No place in the contract is it stated what subjects the teacher had to teach. However, there were several things a teacher had to accomplish.

Observe Arbor Day, and try to beautify the school grounds.

Prepare and present a Christmas program for the community.

The teacher's instruction must prepare the 8th grade students to pass the county examination, which will qualify them for high school entrance.

My aunt retired from teaching in 1962. She was high school principal her last 12 working years, but she missed teaching in the classroom. Every time I visited her we would talk about school conditions in today's lifestyle and English as the second language.

"Keep in mind," she would say, "you never spoke a word of English until you went in the first grade, because we always spoke Pennsylvania Dutch around home."